LABOR AND EDUCATION. 221 



instead of exalting. IMan has a varied nature, which requires a 

 variety- of occupations, and requires discipline for its growth. Study, 

 meditation, society and relaxation should be mixed up with his 

 physical toils. He has intellect, imagination, taste, as well as bone 

 and muscle, and he is grievously wronged when compelled to exclu- 

 sive drudgery for bodily subsistence. Life should be an alternation 

 of employments so diversified as to call the whole man into action. 

 Variety of action corresponding to the variet}- of human powers and 

 fitted to develop all is the most important element of human civili- 

 zation. There is a too general disposition to shun labor, and this 

 ought to be regarded as a bad sign of the times. In the city and 

 elsewhere are throngs of adventurers in the hope of escajjing the 

 primeval sentence of living by the sweat of the brow. The body as 

 well as the mind needs vigorous exertion, and even the studious 

 would be happier were the^' trained to labor as well as to thought. 

 Not a few of the wisest, grandest spirits have toiled at the plow ; 

 which toil aided them no doubt, not only in developing their physical 

 powers, but in reaching a higher plane in the moral and intellectual 

 world. 



There is but one elevation for farmers and all other men. There 

 are not different kinds of dignitj' for different orders of men, but one 

 and the same for all. The onl}' true elevation of a human being 

 consists in the exercise, growth and energ}' of the higher principles 

 and powers of the man. A bird may be shot upwards to the skies 

 by a foreign force, but it rises in the true sense of tlie word only 

 when it spreads its own wings and soars by its own living power. 

 So man may be thrust upwards into a conspicuous place b}' outward 

 accidents, but he rises only in so lar as he exerts himself and expands 

 his best faculties, and ascends by a free effort to a nobler region of 

 thought and action. This elevation is indeed to be aided by an 

 improvement ,of his outward condition, and in turn it greatly 

 improves his outward lot : and thus connected outward good is real 

 and great. 



We are placed in the material creation not to be its slaves but to 

 master the situation and to make it minister to that highest of 

 powers — the energy and efficiency of mind. The highest force in 

 the universe is mind. This created the heavens and earth. This 

 has changed the wilderness into fruitfulness, and has linked distant 

 countries in a beneficent ministry to one another's wants. It is not 

 to brute force, to physical strength, so much as to art, to skill, to 



