AGRICULTURE OF MASSACHUSETTS. 



TPIE RELATIONS OF AGRICULTURE TO MAN. 



From an Address before the Essex Agricultural Society. 



BY GEORGE J. L. COLBY. 



The first and most obvious relation of agriculture to man is 

 that which it sustains to his physical nature. From the 

 products of the earth he supplies his temporal wants, and 

 agriculture is but the art of drawing from the earth its most 

 valuable productions in the greatest abu)idance. Tliis, then, is 

 man's primary occupation on which depends his existence. It 

 is the parent and head of other arts — the highest and noblest of 

 them all. It is true that a few savages might exist upon the 

 spontaneous productions of the soil without its cultivation, but 

 civilized society could not so exist. 



Again consider the relation of agriculture to man's physical 

 development, and the physical development carries with it 

 intellectual and moral development, for a sound mind is de- 

 pendent on a healthy body. All life and all character are 

 susceptible of modification, and man's more than all, since it is 

 higher in the scale of creation and lias the largest sphere of 

 individual action. The brute cannot l)e debased or elevated 

 beyond certain points, but man may sink below the brute, or 

 rise to the very heavens. What, then, has been the modifying 

 influence by which savages have risen to civilization ? AViiat 

 has made the difference between the Digger Indian of Califor- 

 nia and the people of New England ? — between the Hottentot 

 and the European ? There is a natural difference of races, but 

 beyond that agriculture has been the first modifying cause. 

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