FERTILIZERS: AGRICULTURAL, INTELLECTUAL, ETC. 175 



light, air, and rain let in, so do tliese fanatics, as we sometimes 

 call them, with their somewhat fierce energy, arouse from leth- 

 argy' calmer men to wise and earnest thought, and to efficient 

 action. 



The author of " The Eighteen Christian Centuries," speaks of a 

 certain marvellous quickening of thought, and sudden springing 

 up of men of genius during and subsequent to the reign of the 

 great Elizabeth ; and in tracing out the cause of it all he uses 

 this very figure of a " fertilizer" which I have adopted. 



He says, "-The moral battles of a nation in pursuit of some 

 momentous object, like religion and political freedom, bring forth 

 great future crops ; as fields are enriched on which mighty armies 

 have been engaged." ..." The fertilizing influence extends in 

 eve' y direction, far and near." . . . "The intellectual harvest 

 that followed the mental and moral activity that led to the final 

 rejection of the Pope and the defeat of the Spaniard, included, 

 as the result of its fertilizing work, Shakespeare and Bacon, and 

 a host of lesser but still majestic names." 



And not an intellectual harvest only, let it be added, but this 

 same quickening of the human mind in these special directions led 

 also to those great commercial enterprises and those exploring 

 expeditions which have helped to make the seventeenth century 

 a glory in the history of civilizatron. 



All those which I enumerated, with many more, are intellec- 

 tual fertilizers that can be used for enriching the mind and mak- 

 ing it productive. Productive of what? I answer, productive of 

 what the world so much needs, — good, honest thinking, just 

 opinions, self-respect ; ability to be useful ; a conscious capacity 

 to take hold with a strong hand of whatever is rightly to be done, 

 a consciousness of a certain kind of power. 



These are the staple products of the mind, and of the whole 

 inner man, just as corn, wheat, and hay are of the field ; and as the 

 rose, the pink, and the heliotrope are of the flower garden. And 

 when man has got them, he has got something worth the harvest- 

 ing. It really seems as if a great many people did not attach 

 much value to these products ; at any rate make not half as 

 much endeavor to secure these fertilizers as they would to get a 

 ton of guaoo or of Mapes's phosphate for the field. Nay, but 

 they are the verj- men, usually, who don't care for guano or phos- 

 phates ; — don't believe in the value of any such thing. A man's 



