286 Promotion of Scientific Agriculture. [June, 



should place its occupants in the condition of serfs — mere beasts of 

 burden ! " He is going to be nothing but a farmer," says the father, as 

 he sends his son to sr-hool to get these simple rudiments of an education 

 to fit him for his station ; which shows how much he respects himself, 

 and the measure of ability he regards sufficient for his calling, and what 

 pernicious influence is thereby eifected ! We may see thousands of young 

 men, blessed with education and fortunes adequate to supply all reason- 

 able wants in the country, rushing into cities, exhausting their small 

 means in the extravagancies and dissipations of fashionable life, crowd- 

 ing all the professions to repletion, pressing on with vexation and disap- 

 pointment heaped on vexation and disappointment into all the avenues 

 of political office and distinction, and into all the bitter strifes of polit- 

 ical controversy, forcing their way iuto the pursuits of trade, without 

 talents for their prosecution, and almost sure to involve themselves in 

 bankruptcy and ruin. How different would be the course pursued, if 

 agriculture, by some manner of means, w^ere made more honorable and 

 attractive ? This can only be done by education. 



But further, there is nothing more calculated to strengthen and invig- 

 orate the mind than earnest and deep inquiries into nature, the study of 

 natural facts, and the observation and classification of natural phenom- 

 ena ; and there is no knowledge, as we have seen, fraught with so many 

 practical and varied applications. The man of books and of mere book- 

 knowledge is liable to be the slave of other men's opinions, and his powers, 

 thus trammeled, never go beyond certain prescribed limits ; but he who goes 

 for himself to the original sources, and draws water out of living foun- 

 tains, will acquire a power of investigation and a vigor of thought which 

 will grow strong by the nature of the aliment furnished, and multiply 

 for himself the sources of his knowledge and consequently his pleasure, 

 turning every object and occurrence which he meets into an instrument 

 of instruction, and will find the world around him no longer a dull, deso- 

 late, inanimate chamber, but its walls all over radiant with lessons of 

 wisdom, and every object with which it is crowded vocal with the teach- 

 ings of a divine spirit. But in addition to the intellectual and social 

 beneficial results which the mental elevation proposed would originate 

 and furnish, there are. tl-ose of amoral and poliiical character no less 

 important and desirable. 



This system of industrial university education would impart a prestige 

 and stability to our free republican institutions that nothing else could 

 accomplish. Indeed, educated labor is the loveliest and grandest element 

 of human progress. It is the moral dignity of educated labor which 

 must exalt man from the degradation into which his evil passions, appe- 



