220 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



should make vegetation so exuberant as to anticipate everj' want, 

 and the minerals so ductile as to offer no resistance to our strength 

 and skill. Such a world would make a contemptible race. 



Man owes his growth, his enorg}-, chiefly to that striving of the 

 will, that conflict with difliculties, which we call effort. Eas}', 

 pleasant work does not make robust minds ; does not give men a 

 consciousness of their powers ; does not train them to endurance, 

 to perseverance, to steady force of will, — that force without which 

 all other acquisitions avail but little. Manual labor is a school in 

 which men are placed to get energj' of purpose and character, — a 

 vastly more important endowment than all the learning of other 

 schools. The material world does much for the mind by its beauty 

 and order, but it does more by the pains it inflicts ; by its obstinate 

 resistance, wliich nothing but patient toil can overcome ; by its vast 

 forces, which nothing but unremitting skill and effort can turn to our 

 use. I believe that difficulties are more important to the human 

 mind than what we call assistance. Work we all must, if we mean 

 to bring out and perfect our nature. Even if we do not work with 

 our hands, we must undergo equivalent toil in some other dn-ection. 

 No business or study, which does not present obstacles tasking to 

 the full the intellect and the will, is worthy of a man. In science 

 he who does not grapple with hard questions, who does not concen- 

 trate his whole intellect in vigorous attention, who does not aim to 

 penetrate what at first repels him, will never attain to mental force. 

 To me labor, or rather the honest laborer, has great dignity, — the 

 dignity of a man made in the likeness of God, faithfully striving in 

 the battle of life. 



Work is not merely the grand instrument by which the earth is 

 overspread with fruitfulness and beauty, and the ocean subdued, and 

 matter wrought into innumerable forms for comfort and ornament ; 

 it has a far higher function, which is to give for^-e to the will, 

 efliiciency courage, the capacit}' of endurance and of persevering 

 devotion to far reaching plans. Alas, for the man who has not 

 learned to work ! He is a poor creature and does not know himself. 

 He depends on others with no capacity of making returns for the 

 support they give. 



Manual labor is a gi-eat good, but in so saying I must be under- 

 stood to speak of labor in its just proportions. In excess it does 

 great harm. It is not a good when made the sole work of life. It 

 must be joined with higher means of improvement or it degrades 



