2l8 AMERICAN FARMS. 



Granted that there may have been a necessity in prim- 

 itive times for a portion of the human family to gain 

 opportunities for thought, have not the conditions 

 changed, when cunning must be resorted to to effect 

 this object ? Is it true that workers cannot think, and 

 that thinkers cannot work ? Is not the outcome of such a 

 condition to create, on one side, indolent, enervated 

 thinkers ; and on the other side, only working machines, 

 who have bartered away their right to think — they who 

 should be in mind, as well as in body, as great as any of 

 God's creatures ? 



It is well that we should have our mental giants ; but 

 those who have become the greatest in this way have 

 been self-supporting, self-sacrificing men. There is 

 danger in the sweeping away of the grand opportunities 

 for a union of the mental and physical forces which rural 

 life offers. Shall our cities, like the rotted-out civiliza- 

 tions of old, swell to overflowing with the indigent, the 

 idle, and the voluptuous ? Shall the edict again go forth 

 — " You kill while I eat ; you work while I think," — and 

 the freemen again depend upon martial exercise and the 

 slaughtering of men for the stimulation of physical de- 

 velopment ? 



With all that is being done through inventions for the 

 saving of labor and the utilization of natural forces, there 

 should be an ever increasing margin for mental exercise. 

 It is only a true condition which favors this, and it is 

 only a true condition which finds these necessary proofs 

 of progress dispersed through the whole people ; and it 

 is only a true condition where all who are able bear some- 

 thing of labor for their physical benefit, if for no other. 

 Emerson thought the ideal condition one in which man 

 was enabled to have the detachment and the individuality 



