The Heather Plot 53 



unproductive land is there in the plot to show 

 how the bulk was when I began ; and the bulk is 

 there to show what it produces now. The cattle 

 on it can be counted and valued, and not one 

 intelligent man has ever seen it without admitting 

 that the capital expenditure must come back once 

 a year. What, then, can the executive head of the 

 Department have in view in discrediting these 

 results ? If they are better than his own, that is 

 not my fault. ,1 cannot imagine that he has any 

 desire to do me a personal injury. I have never 

 had anything to do with him personally. 



The controlling fact which Mr. Russell and I 

 and the rest of us have to face is that the peasant 

 is not scientifically approachable, and that it is 

 waste of good money trying to approach him in 

 that way so long as his primary education is under 

 the present control. Where science is " sin," 

 who would be scientific ? Talk science to the 

 peasant if you must the man paid for attempting 

 it must only do his best, and hold his tongue as 

 to the waste of money. When he has done his best, 

 the peasant proceeds empirically, if at all. If 

 science is to reach him, it must be in the concrete 

 result, not in the abstract causes. His pocket 

 may lead him from the concrete to the abstract ; 

 his head cannot lead him from the abstract to the 

 concrete. From something which he can touch 

 with his hand, he may proceed to the forces 

 governing its production ; he cannot proceed from 

 these to any touchable thing producible from 

 them, but not yet produced. It is time I knew 



