126 
STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
ingenuity and activity are required to meet their natural and 
artificial wants. 
Amid the many questions that press upon man’s attention 
as a social, moral and religious being, whose transitory exist¬ 
ence hei’e is fitting him for a great hereafter, there is none 
perhaps more intimately associated with all his wants and 
faculties than his right relation to the material world in which 
he is placed, On this depends his existence, his comfort and 
his capabilities; his daily bread, his clothing and his habita¬ 
tion, the very materials of which his body is composed, and 
the maintenance of that mysterious connection that subsists 
between the spirit of man and the tenement in which it dwells. 
The Omnipotent Creator has placed the material world en¬ 
tirely at his disposal, at least for the present, and if he does 
not draw from it all that it is capable of affording, let him 
consider his comparative indifference to the study ot its nature, 
as well as the vague and ill-defined but practical fear and 
apprehension so often haunting his imagination, that there is 
not enough for all on the face of the earth' and that if some 
are comfortable, others must be more or less miserable. 
All human actions are swayed by too great and ever-acting 
principles : The conservative, which leads us to accumulate 
power and production for our immediate use, defense and pres¬ 
ervation. The dispersive or benevolent, by which we are 
taught to feel for the wants of pur neighbors. 
The fear that the Creator has not made enough for all, too 
. often paralyses the best intentions. Despotism rises on one 
side, appropriating the labor of others, and greedily securing 
more than it needs. Want and penury on the other hand fall 
heavily on their victims, and throw a gloom on all the relations 
of life. Struggles arise all over the globe, and whether we 
look to Asia, Europe, Africa or America, material wants, ma¬ 
terial contentions, or material progress, occupying incessantly 
the hopes, the fears and the actions of men. 
Too seldom do they stop to inquire what it is that they 
really need, what it is they can enjoy, and whether the 
