346 STATE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



years to come we expect the milleunium, when the moral nature of man shall 

 reach its most perfect state in this world ; so, too, may we not look for a mil- 

 lennium of material and intellectual interests ; when wars and strifes shall 

 cease and all the arts of peace shall be foremost, when man shall attain his 

 highest condition — physical, intellectual, and moral — may we not also look for 

 a period when all the noble industries shall have their millennium, when agri- 

 culture shall come to its best condition and reach its highest state, when every 

 farmer may be a thorough student of nature, working in unison with her 

 immutable, no longer a mere delver and drudge, a "hewer of wood and drawer 

 of water" to the other industries; no longer seeking from an infertile soil a 

 precarious subsistance, but improved and strengthened by greater knowledge, 

 rising above natural conditions, bringing barrenness into fertility and making 

 waste places to wave with abundant harvests. No more taking from a fertile 

 soil its best and most accessible elements and appropriating them to his own 

 use, borrowing, aye, stealing from the future, taking for himself what of right 

 belongs to future generations, that which he simply holds in trust, and using 

 it for his own advancement, without even thanks, with no compensation^ 

 Such are some of the farmers of this day; pirates of the soil, receiving but not 

 giving. This is that increasing that wasteth away. 



Man is not nature, nor a part of nature; he is above nature, and in nature 

 he finds materials which he can mold at his will. They are governed by immu- 

 table laws, and the discovery and application of these laws is man's work. If 

 we look at this earth and man's relation to it, physically, intellectually, 

 morally, and spiritually, if we consider that the earth is the storehouse of all 

 the materials of man's progress, civilization, and refinement, from the dark 

 and shapeless stones of the mountain to the marble halls reared by master 

 builders; if we reflect that all the material of man's labor and adornment and 

 wealth and comfort, from the rude tools of the barbaric tribes to the wonders 

 of modern mechanism, from the spontaneous growths of nature to the rich 

 nutritious products of cultivated fields and gardens, and whatever in material, 

 condition, and power distinguishes the civilized man from the savage is from 

 the dark, sleeping yet bright and wakeful earth, we are impressed with the- 

 susceptibility of what we call nature to the touch of man. A wilderness blos- 

 soms as a rose, a desert is changed to a fruitful field, and the rock pours out 

 rivers of oil. 



AVhen we look at this earth whose products are so important to human wel- 

 fare, and think of its having within its own heart the materials of which this 

 fair fabric of human society is constructed; from the blocks of wood hewn 

 out of the forest, to the matchless bodies in which our minds live, and that it 

 waits only the touch of man's spiritual nature to transform it and bring forth 

 its latent powers of life, and use, and beauty, we are impressed with the idea, 

 that the world is imbedded in mind. 



While we are attracted by and feel so vividly the magnificence and sway of 

 superior kingdom, we need to be reminded that nature by nature has no power 

 to develop itself into working powers of life and beauty, and that the contact 

 of mind is everywhere required to bring out and unfold to its highest excellence- 

 what is in nature. We need to be continually admonished that the constant 

 presence of mind is the power that awakes and develops nature in all her 

 realm, and that man in his relation to what we call nature, is supernatural. 



Of course, the boundaries and limitations in this relation are obvious. It is 

 not to be supposed or assumed, that man's dominion over the earth, his con- 

 trol of its products, his power to modify and change the world, fill out or 



