EDUCATION IN AGRICULTURE. 29 



in the moral world ; and only a sufficient number of men are 

 endowed with genius to secure the discovery of nature's secrets, 

 in such order and with such rapidity as shall best subserve the 

 grand plan of the education of the human race. But these 

 men of rare genius accomplish their best work only when they 

 have the best opportunities for learning and for culture. The 

 trained muscle, bringing skill to direct its movement, is worth 

 vastly more than any amount of mere strength can be. In 

 order to have the horse valuable he must be broken to work, 

 cither in harness or under the saddle. In order that the inhabi- 

 tants of a country should enjoy the blessings of modern civili- 

 zation, and the nation be prosperous, the working-men of the 

 country must have been trained to skilled labor in all the 

 various arts of life, to make all the various articles of comfort 

 and refinement and elegance, of usefulness in all directions, 

 which can be needed in a cultivated community. 



In this training of the peculiar gifts and powers of all the 

 inhabitants it is, of course, essential to the prosperity of the 

 State that the minds of those gifted with rare intellectual or 

 inventive powers should be cultivated ; and it is above all 

 essential that the men of highest and rarest talent should 

 receive the highest and most thorough culture. The charac- 

 ter of the overseers in a factory, of a foreman in a shop or on 

 a farm, is vastly more important than tlie character of the 

 workmen ; — better an army of stags led by a lion than an 

 army of lions led by a stag. One man of genius, thoroughly 

 educated, may double the value of the labor of ten thousand 

 men applying his discoveries or adopting his improvements. 



Now, the difficulty in our country is that these men of rarer 

 gifts and industry and powers of endurance cannot find proper 

 facilities for study, nor proper instruction in this country, if 

 they wish to attain the highest culture and the highest results. 

 Our schools and colleges provide for teaching their pupils some 

 of the more prominent points in definitely acquired science, and 

 some of the more prominent doctrines of speculative philosophy ; 

 but not one of them makes any adequate provision for students 

 who wish to make extensive investigation, or to be guided in 

 pushing their inquiries into the realms of the unknown. Our 

 countrymen are too generally satisfied with themselves and 

 with their labors. They have an extensive system of schools 



