268 THE GEOGRAPHY OF PLANTS. 



And we, who flatter ourselves that we are great agricul- 

 turalists, who plough, manure and sow with ingenious 

 machines, imagine that we have done great things when 

 we reap a twelve-fold harvest. Even this we do not owe 

 to our art, to which we might so readily ascribe it. The 

 worst-tilled soil produces a better harvest in a favourable 

 year, than we can extort from the best soil with all our 

 industry in an unfavourable season. Truly, only he who 

 looks no further than the clod, which his plough has thrown 

 up, can preserve the feeling of the importance of human 

 activity in his bosom. He who lets his free glance rove 

 over the earth's ball, and looks at large over the play of 

 active forces, laughs at the digging, dragging, bustling, 

 panting ant-hill, which we call Humanity, and which with 

 all its imagined wisdom is not able to alter the slightest 

 working of the laws which the tyrant giantess, Nature, has 

 prescribed to her slaves. 



