AGRICULTURAL SOCIETIES. 415 



the principles on which agricnltural operations depend." He 

 may not have acquired dexterity in their application. He may 

 be less successful at first than the other. That is no reason 

 against his ultimate success. For the best farmers that I know 

 are intelligent booli-farmers, not brought up to the business, 

 but having adopted it in mature life and conducting it on just 

 principles, make it profitable. Such men may fail at first ; and 

 the man of routine who dreads or dislikes innovations may be 

 diverted by their mistakes. We have enjoyed a laugh at the 

 blunder of the farmer, who, in attempting for the first time to 

 trim his apple-trees, placed his ladder against the limbs he 

 sawed off, and gained knowledge through artificial bumps upon 

 his forehead. Such blunders are fair game. Put the mere 

 practical farmer and the man of science in a new position ; let 

 them be required to determine on the cultivation of a new 

 article, or the use of a new manure, or the renovation of a 

 worn-out soil, or the probable result of a new method, and 

 there can be little doubt whose judgment would be safest. 

 There can be little doubt which would be most likely to foresee 

 what part of a proposed system is erroneous and what correct. 

 The man of routine is then at sea without compass. The man 

 of science has a guide in his knowledge and his intellectual 

 discipline, not infallible, but of inestimable advantage. The 

 merely practical man is apt to look at proposed changes through 

 the spectacles of prepossessions engendered by habit, — forget- 

 ting that there is nothing so destructive as unreasoning conser- 

 vatism, nothing so unnatural as an eifort to counteract the laws 

 of the world's onward movement. No man can originate 

 improvements, however well he may perform specific tasks, 

 unless he understands the principles on which the processes 

 depend. The end of life will find him in the place he occupied 

 at its beginning. The man of science has liberalized his mind 

 by the study of first principles, and is not hampered by his 

 experience. Practice not directed by science can do something, 

 but it works at great disadvantage ; for general principles 

 impart the inclination as well as quicken the capacity for 

 improvement, make its progress more rapid and prevent the 

 adoption of error. 



It is a truth i-ecognizcd in every department of industry that 

 intelligent labor is always tlie most successful labor. The agent 



