56 THE INNER ORGANIZATION OF TREES. 



Can any position be more false, unnatural, and ruinous in 

 its tendencies, than one founded on the doctrine that labor 

 is degrading? Yet the majority of men are making it 

 the business of their lives to render themselves and their 

 children independent ! Independent of what? Not of labor, 

 surely. Riches are very uncertain possessions. Better 

 bring up children to a regular business, even if you have 

 wealth to leave them. Let them be early taught to work. 

 Then they will be more likely to live long and happily, and 

 to maintain that position in society to which your industry 

 has elevated them. 



Every person in good health ought to employ his powers. 

 Labor is ennobling. It is the sure road to a high and 

 honorable career. All the great men of ancient and modern 

 times have acquired distinction through labor. Demos- 

 thenes and Newton acquired their imperishable renown in 

 this manner. In a letter to one of his friends Newton says, 

 "If I have done the public any service, it is due to nothing 

 but industry and patient thought." It is the idle man alone 

 who degrades himself. He lives in the habitual violation of 

 a great natural law, and becomes enervated both in body and 

 mind. It may be that he is possessed of all the appliances 

 of wealth and modern civilization, yet he lives wretchedly 

 and is cursed with ennui. Where is the flashing eye, the 

 light elastic footstep attendant on useful, agreeable, and 

 profitable employment? You might be surrounded by the 

 creations of your own genius, with the advantages which 

 you have at your command, if you possessed any nobility or 

 energy of soul. You are miserable, because you are idle a 

 jarring string amid the surrounding harmonies of indus- 

 trious nature. Every thing about you is a rebuke on your 

 conduct. All nature cries shame on your idleness. You 

 ought to blush to look at the flowers of the field, the blades 

 of grass, or those monuments of leaf-industry, the trees, in 

 all their endlessly diversified varieties of architecture. It is 

 impossible for any family to continue pre-eminent in a com- 

 munity, unless, along with the wealth which they receive 

 is transmitted the industry and life-energy of their ancestors. 



