RELATIONS OF AGRICULTURE TO MAN. 13 



motliei" empire so vast the sun never sets on it — an empire whose 

 morning drum beat and evening guns resound around the worhl. 

 The same are they in the United States, where the love of the 

 soil has in the lifetime of one generation of men pressed us 

 over the Alleghanies, across the broad valley of the Mississippi, 

 and down to the shores of the Pacific — has carried us from the 

 lake region over the great plains to the Rio Grande, and must 

 soon land us at the Isthmus, in full possession of all the 

 territory to that point, whether we remain one people or half a 

 dozen, for that is our destiny. What the Anglo-Saxon race 

 north of us do not take of this continent, we of the United 

 States do. It is our natural Anglo-Saxon love for land — 

 " earth-hunger,*' as Emerson terms it, that makes us the 

 colonizing, civilizing, controlling and dominating race of the 

 West, as Russia is of the East, and that to-day gives us — the 

 Anglo-Saxons — the same position on the globe that the Romans 

 held two thousand years ago. 



Thus far I have treated of the influence of agriculture on 

 man as a physical being, and in his material surroundings — 

 upon man in his animal life, on his civilization, and his associa- 

 tions which require commerce, manufactures, laws, nationali- 

 ties. Now for a few moments I will ask your attention to the 

 relations of agriculture to science, and to what pertains to 

 man's mental organization. 



I said of the influence of agriculture upon man's material 

 nature, that man was composed of the earth, of the air, of the 

 water, of what surrounded him, of what he received into his 

 system and assimilated with his being. Mentally it is the 

 same. What is the food of the mind — its atmosphere, its 

 earth, and its heaven — give character, bias, direction. As 

 compared with town life, every thing in the country is favorable 

 to strength and vigor of intellect. First is health, second 

 employment, and third, the natural and social surroundings. 

 The town may give quicker growth, for it is the hot-bed 

 culture ; and it may give more activity and intensity ; but it 

 will lack breadth and depth of character. No more will man 

 come up to his fulness of stature and strength between brick 

 walls and under the shadow of high buildings in narrow streets? 

 fed on dry-goods boxes, stitfened with yard-sticks, and bound 



