286 EUROPEAN AGRICULTURE. 



late as well as to obtain, which, though liable to abuse, yet, like 

 all other original tendencies of our nature, is designed for good. 

 This operates as a continual stimulus to exertion, and rouses 

 energies, and awakens an ambition, and strengthens and pro 

 duces a perseverance and tenacity of purpose, which, in the 

 creation and accumulation of wealth, lie at the foundation of 

 most of the great improvements of society, and again in its turn 

 creates a power or instrument of influence, which itself com 

 mands thousands of minds, and thousands of hands, to unite with 

 an energy similar to its own in the accomplishment of its own 

 objects. 



All this does good ; prevents the waters of society from be 

 coming stagnant and unwholesome, and keeps them in a state 

 of continued and healthful agitation. If human wants, having 

 a sort of polypus vitality, are constantly increased by being sup 

 plied, it is no less true that the powers of the human mind and 

 body are always increased and strengthened by being properly 

 exerted. As the mind becomes enlightened and expanded, it is 

 tempted to extend its dominion over matter and over other 

 minds. In the spirit of an ambition never knowing enough, it 

 goes out &quot;conquering and to conquer.&quot; It invades other 

 dominions of nature, and makes every where the elements of 

 the material world subservient to its purposes. 



It is said that an Indian, when, on a certain occasion, he was 

 brought from the solitude and destitution of his forest-home into 

 a busy manufacturing town, and saw windmills with their sails 

 inflated by the air, and water-wheels driven by the running 

 stream, and steam-engines impelled by an agent of which before 

 he had scarcely conceived, and the furnaces where, by the appli 

 cations of fire, the iron-stones were made to flow in liquid 

 streams, and to take the forms which the workman s pleasure 

 dictated, exclaimed, in his amazement, that the white man made 

 every thing work for him the fire, the air, the water. Nothing 

 could have been more natural than his surprise. Thus it is that 

 human genius devotes itself to science ; and every step in science 

 imparts a disposition and capacity to advance farther. It invents 

 language and signs, that it may transfix, and hold fast, thoughts, 

 and facts, and discoveries, for further use. It employs the powers 

 of nature to increase, and multiply, and strengthen, other powers, 

 and thus is constantly extending its sovereignty over mind and 



