182 RURAL SOCIOLOGY 



vails in cities. It is harder to rise above the conventions in the 

 country, simply because there are few strata of popular habit. 

 In the city there are many ; the individual can pass from one to 

 another. Things are reduced to simpler terms in the country. 

 This has its advantages, but it tends to blight budding ideals or 

 to drive them out for development elsewhere usually in the city. 



As a consequence the rural community is in constant danger 

 of stagnation of settling down into the easy chairs of satisfac- 

 tion. Rural life needs constant stimulus of imported ideas a 

 stimulus of suggestion apart from its daily routine. 



Moreover, rural ideals sometimes lack breadth and variety. 

 Life in the country easily becomes monotonous, humdrum. It 

 needs broadening, as well as elevating. It needs variety, gaiety. 

 But these changes can find their proper stimulus only in motives 

 that are high and worthy. Hence an appeal must be made for 

 the cultivation of ideals of personal development and neighbor- 

 hood advancement. 



When ideals do come into country life, they are apt to be not 

 indigenous, but urban notions transplanted bodily. Urban ideals 

 may often be grafted onto some strong rural stock. Transplan- 

 tation is dangerous. Some one must be at work in the country 

 neighborhoods breeding a new species of aspirations out of the 

 common hardy varieties that have proved their worth. 



Lack of ideals is in a sense responsible for the drift away 

 from the farm. Some people leave the country because they can 

 not realize their ideals in the existing rural atmosphere. Others 

 go because they have no thought of the possibilities of country 

 life. 



In a former chapter attention was called to the fact that rural 

 life is more full of poetry than any other. But rural romance is 

 often stifled in the atmosphere of drudgery and isolation. This 

 high sentiment is of the soul and can come only as the soul ex- 

 pands. It is not merely an enjoyment of trees, crops, and ani- 

 mals. It is in part a, sense of exaltation born of contact with 

 God at work. It has in it an element of triumph because great 

 powers are being harnessed for man's bidding. It has in it 

 somewhat of the air of freedom, because of dealing with forces 

 free and wild except as they are held in leash by an unseen Mas- 

 ter driver. It has in it much of worship, because of all the deep 



