406 Associated Effort — Agricultural Fairs. [September, 



ASSOCIATED EFFORT— AGRICULTURAL FAIRS. 



Activity is the law of life for the race of men, as well as for the 

 atom on the one hand and the planet on the other. Jiest is the 

 attribute of death alone. And whether we maintain the perfect- 

 ability of man or not, we know that he possesses the elements of 

 progress, and, blind as we are, have no difficulty in discovering that 

 as yet he has taken but the first steps in the grand march of the 

 ages. 



For sis thousand years or more, he has been feeding on the pap 

 of God's providence, developing the bone and sinew, muscle and 

 brain with which, in the manhood of his strength, he will realize to 

 the world the hope of the race — the actual, and even greater deeds 

 than hitherto we have been wont to ascribe to the false gods of 

 mythology. Just now beginning to be conscious of his power he 

 already seems a very Titan. See how he levels or bores through the 

 mountains of limestone or granite, and fills up the deep valleys that 

 his pathway may be easy and unobstructed — how he disembowels 

 the earth for the iron with which to belt the continents and pave the 

 world's great thoroughfares — how he builds great cities in a day, 

 bridges, rivers, lakes and seas — how he puts the very elements into 

 harness of steel and drives them as his chariot steeds ! Then let 

 us not talk of limitations, but rather resolve anew to become an 

 essential element in the great world's progress. 



But what is the grand secret of this century's success as com- 

 pared with the past? Doubtless too much can hardly be ascribed 

 to the inductive philosophy under whose influences all the material 

 sciences have been so rapidly developed ; and yet we claim almost 

 as much for the equally important discovery of the potency of 

 As.^ociatcd Effort. 



"In union there is strength," is beginning to be as true in/«c/ 

 as in theory. Carlyle may ridicule and anthematize as much as he 

 ■will the " mechanical character" of the age — and pigmy ascetics in 

 saintly garb may whine over it as a monstrous vice of the times — 

 it is this mechanical characteristic to which should be ascribed the 

 rapid growth of mankind in that great civilization which is the har- 

 binger of the "good time coming ;" and the world's mightiest achiev- 

 nients will not appear until the whole human family shall have been 



