THE BIRTH OF AGRICULTURE 5 



civilised country to-day, for never a season comes round that 

 men do not lay the first fruits of earth on the altars of their 

 God. In every Christian country, and in nearly every Christian 

 church, do Christian worshippers hold their harvest festivals 

 and offer up their prayers to a beneficent Creator, and tlius 

 throuoh the ceons of time do we find that the human race has 

 never ceased to gratefully and honourably acknowledge the 

 supreme part that agriculture plays in man's earthly existence. 

 Tlie earth and the fulness thereof were, then, intended for 

 man's enjoyment, and this supreme fact has been gratefully 

 recognised by the peoples of alt times. It is essential to man's 

 existence, for without it he cannot live, and he natvirally 

 regards it as his most cherished inheritance, since it furnishes 

 him with every want of his physical existence. It supplies 

 him with every necessary of life and with every luxury, with 

 food and raiment, and wine and oil. It gives him his light 

 and fuel and dwelling-place, and it furnishes the latter for him, 

 either with the scant belongings of a poor man's cottage or the 

 sumptuous deckings of a king's palace. It gives him his books 

 and music, his pictures and his ohjets d'art ; and all his many 

 material possessions ; his railways, telegraphs, telephones ; his 

 theatres and concert halls, his public buildings and his palaces. 

 It supplies him with a multitude of occupations, and ahbrds 

 him the means of enjoying all his pleasures. Man himself is 

 of the earth, earthy. From it he is taken ; to it he must 

 return. 



Bread the "Staff of Life" 



Man cau live, and live well, without his costly palaces, his 

 sumptuous raiment, his paintings, hric-a-hrac, and the thousand 

 and one luxuries which wealth enables him to gather together, 

 but he cannot live without food. Bread is the staff of life, and 

 man must have it or — die. 



Tiie only possible deduction from all this is that, as food 

 is man's most pressing want, the production of food is the 

 primary use that he should make of the earth, while the 

 secondary aim of his life sliould be to work it so that it may 

 yield all else tliat he re(j[uires for his subsistence, as also for 

 liis profit, or for the purpose of amassing wealth. 



The logical conclusion of this reasoning is that so long as 

 man inhabits the earth, food and the production of food should 

 be his first consideration ; that the proper cultivation of the 

 soil should form tlie chief industry, and that all others siiould 

 be regarded as subsidiary industries arising out of the primal 

 industry — agriculture. 



