BERKSHIRE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



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and the mathematician solves his problem in his sleep ; the minis- 

 ter preaches -in his- sleep — and the next day his hearers listen to 

 him in their sleep. 



Part of this mysterious activity is involuntary and part volun- 

 tary ; but in both cases it is Think ! Think ! Think ! Man must 

 think. // is eternal thinking. Here man's responsibility begins. 

 He must take hold of the helm and guide his thoughts to the ac- 

 complishment of beneficial ends, and not let his thoughts haul 

 him over the sea of life, as a vessel without helm, pilot or captain 

 is driven into the chopped seas of some storm torn ocean. Mys- 

 terious though it is, yet man's work is buffeting the billows, row- 

 ing up against the tide. 



Naturally, then, man's greatest necessity is work, work in the 

 right direction to the right end ; a necessity to himself and a ne- 

 cessity to the race. It is work that keeps the race alive and per- 

 petuates it from generation to generation, from millenium to mil- 

 lenium, from age to age. This is a most sublime view of human 

 life ; the life of all the races depending on human exertion. 



You may clip the wings of commerce that whiten every sea and 

 scuttle the ships that carry the commerce of the world ; you may 

 stop the wheels of the manufactories of the world and reduce 

 them to ashes ; you may put out the fires of every steam engine 

 and wreck every railroad train ; you may level with the dust every 

 school-house, seminary, university and church ; you may annihi- 

 late governments which rule the nations ; you may turn the current 

 of progress back upon itself and put out the sun of science and 

 roll a wave of darkness over all the institutions of learning and 

 mercy ; and still after all this is swept away, man lives and will 

 live ; he will begin again the work of rebuilding ; make a new 

 genesis ; but wither the hand of toil and the brain of work, and 

 within a month disaster will spread from pole to pole, and within 

 a year the human race will have disappeared from the face of the 

 earth. 



Man is placed in the world in some such condition as the crimi- 

 nal was some times placed when he was chained in a tub reaching 

 above his head, while a stream of water was pouring in upon him; 

 at the same time a pump was furnished him with which he could 

 force the water out as fast as it came in. His condition was one 

 of self-preservation. His living depended on his exertion. He 

 in List pump or die. The criminal in the tub would not find much 

 pleasure in pumping. Work with him was a dire necessity; but 

 the necessity is related to himself alone. Man's work is no less a 



