146 SELECTIONS FROM ADDRESSES. 



Agriculture, rightly pursued, is eminently conducive to men- 

 tal enlargement. 



No sentiment of mankind is more erroneous than that (and it 

 is by no means uncommon), which supposes, not only that the 

 practice of agriculture is unfriendly to intellectual culture, but 

 that to the cultivator of the soil such culture is unnecessary. In 

 opposition to this sentiment, so dishonorable to the farmer, I de- 

 clare it as my settled conviction, that in no occupation of life is 

 knowledge so varied and extensively demanded, and that in no 

 other profession, — those, perhaps, excepted, which make the ac- 

 quisition of knowledge their exclusive object of pursuit, — are 

 there presented so great advantages and so strong inducements 

 for the intellectual cultivation of the higher faculties. True it 

 is, that to all other classes of men, the sources of knowledge are 

 equally open ; but, while this is true, it is not to be supposed 

 that men will devote themselves to the attainment of knowledge 

 which is not to be of practical utility in the pursuit of their 

 chosen avocations. And in this respect the cultivator of the soil 

 has a manifest advantage over the tradesman, the artificer, and 

 the professional man ; for, while the knowledge requisite in 

 their pursuits is in general confined to particular subjects, lim- 

 ited in number, the knowledge applicable to the business of the 

 farmer is varied as are the objects of his pursuit, and the cir- 

 cumstances of nature on which the successful prosecution of 

 those objects depends. So that, in addition to the fact, that to v 

 him, as well as to others, every common source of knowledge is 

 open, he has a stimulus unknown to other men to urge him on 

 to the pursuit of universal science, and especially to make him 

 at the oracle of Nature an universal inquirer. 



But why should it, by any one, be thought absurd that agri- 

 culture should admit of improvement ; that such improvement 

 should result from the adoption of certain fixed principles ; and 

 that for those principles we should be indebted to science, or a 

 true knowledge of nature ? We believe the universe to have 

 been established by an Infinite Intelligence, and we know that 

 every portion of it is subjected to order and system. The world 

 in which we live is a world of laws ; of laws so extensive, and 

 yet so minute in their application, that not a particle of matter 



