134 BOARD OF AGEICULTUEE. [Pub. Doc. 



knowledge be limited to that fact ? Or of what use is it for 

 a person to know that a potato is an esculent, farinaceous 

 tul)er, and not a root, if his knowledge is to stop there ? 

 To be sure, the acquisition of facts may call into exercise 

 certain mental faculties, and the retention of these facts in 

 the mind may call into exercise certain other faculties ; but 

 it is when we pass from a knowledge of facts to the appre- 

 hension of their relations, when we recognize the connection 

 between cause and effect, when we compare and systematize 

 and reach principles, that the work of mental development 

 is most successfully accomplished. On the other hand, ig- 

 norance is not sim})ly a lack of knowledge of facts, but also 

 of facts in their relations. It is not because the thousands 

 who are coming to our shores from foreign countries are 

 wholly ignorant of facts that their coming is to Ijc depre- 

 cated. Many of them know many things and have acquired 

 skill in certain dei)artments of effort ; but it is because, 

 while having this knowledge, they are so ignorant of the 

 fundamental principles of our government and of the rela- 

 tions that, in a republic, one man sustains to another, — 

 this it is that makes their presence here a menace to the 

 perpetuity of our institutions. We see how it is that there 

 is truth in the statement, "Knowledge is power." Knowl- 

 edge may be a power for evil. Knowledge is a power for 

 good when with the knowledge itself there is the spirit of 

 goodness ; but the simple acquisition of knowledge may not 

 give a man this power. We see, moreover, that a walking 

 encyclopivdia is not necessarily an educated man, and that a 

 so-called learned professor may have stopped so far short of 

 a perception of the relation of his knowledge to the prac- 

 tical affairs of life as to merit the ridicule of his gardener. 

 One of my colleagues said that he met a gentleman not 

 lone: ao-o Avho told him that "college professors are not 

 in it," to use a very common expression; "that they are 

 away behind the rest of the world, because they know so 

 many things, and yet some of them do not know anything." 

 It is in this apprehension of relations and principles that 

 that activity of mind is aroused which is the condition of 

 development, and " teaching," — I make this statement here 

 because of its importance, and because I know that there 



