BOOK I. I. 15-18 



you are to call into consultation before you make 

 any contract with agriculture, yet not with any 

 thought that you will attain perfection in the whole 

 subject through their maxims; for the treatises of 

 such writers instruct rather than create the crafts- 

 man. It is practice and experience that hold 16 

 supremacy in the crafts, and there is no branch of 

 learning in which one is not taught by his own 

 mistakes. For when a venture turns out unsuccess- 

 fully through wrong management, one avoids the 

 mistake that he had made, and the instructions of 

 a teacher cast a light upon the right course. Hence 17 

 these precepts of ours promise, not to bring the 

 science to perfection, but to lend a helping hand. 

 And no man will immediately become a master of 

 agriculture by the reading of these doctrines, unless 

 he has the will and the resources to put them into 

 practice. We set them forth, therefore, in the 

 nature of supports to those who wish to learn, not 

 intended to be beneficial by themselves alone, but 

 in conjunction with other requirements. 



And, as I have stated, not even those aids, nor 18 

 the constant toil and experience of the farm overseer, 

 nor the means and the willingness to spend money, 

 avail as much as the mere presence of the master ;* 

 for if his presence does not frequently attend the 

 work, all business comes to a standstill, just as in an 

 army when the commander is absent. And I believe 

 that Mago the Carthaginian was pointing this out 

 most particularly when he began his Avritings with 

 such sentiments as these : " One who has bought 

 land should sell his town house, so that he will have 

 no desire to worship the household gods of the city 

 rather than those of the country ; the man who takes 



37 



