68 
WISCONSIN STATE AG HI CULTURAL SOCIETY. 
ANNUAL ADDRESSES. 
[Delivered on the Fair Grounds, September 14, 1876, by Hon. Harlow S. 
Orton and His Excellency, Harrison Ltjdington, Governor of the state.] 
RELATIONS OF BUSINESS. 
BY HON. HARLOW S. ORTON. 
Man is developed, improved and elevated by the use of all his 
powers and capacities in the relations of society and in the dis¬ 
charge of those practical duties required by that bond by which 
society is formed and preserved, by which “ all gain to guard what 
each desires to gain.” We cannot contemplate man as an individ¬ 
ual, solitary and secluded from the intercourse and habits of his 
race, and speculate and philosophize about him as a separate iden¬ 
tity, any more than upon some strange animal whose native haunts 
and habits with his kind are unknown. We can only comprehend 
in some degree our mysterious existence, purpose and destiny as 
we are affected by the regulations, inducements, motives, duties 
and obligations of society, and this is the respect only in which 
“ the proper study of mankind is man.” His relations and obliga¬ 
tions to his fellows are intimately associated with and dependent 
upon his relations and obligations to his God, and in both, he is 
subordinate and a relative part and a mere factor, of that grand 
and sublime place and order in the physical and mental universe, 
“ whose body nature is and God the soul.” 
“ God never made an independent man; 
’Twould jar the concord of his general plan.” 
Dependent and correlative particles and forces constitute the 
world of organic and inorganic matter, in all its everchanging va¬ 
riety of forms, in constant and eternal motion, by natural affinity 
and repulsion, marshaling properties and ingredients into propor¬ 
tionate and nicely balanced combinations, each part essential, and 
