"Every patch of ground has its history. Could any one unravel the mutations which transferred it from hand to hand, and the fortunes and sentiments of those who tilled it, he would understand the history of the human race; while its geological structure, traced to the centre of the earth, would unfold all the developments of the earth's formation.
"Every thing on earth becomes the food, or in some way the consumption, of something else: man alone appropriates all things, himself remaining free and unsubdued until the earth opens and swallows up his body. This brings me, by a way of my own, to the commonplace remark that man is the lord of the earth. But there is really no other truth but that self-acquired knowledge which we attain by the labor of our own spirits.
"I once heard, or read, that it is only where the number of domestic animals exceeds that of human beings that a state of society obtains in which all may be comfortable and none need be wretched.
"Is there a parallel truth,--that the number of irrational men must always be greater than that of men of reason?
"A dreadful thing to think of! And yet----
"It is clear that agriculture was the beginning and the first occasion of civilization. As long as men depended on hunting and fishing, they were but like the beasts, who seek their subsistence. It was when they began to prepare their food, by observing and directing the natural laws of vegetation, planting and nursing, that they first attached themselves to particular spots, and were impelled to study the elements and their combinations, and to exert an influence upon the world without and the world within them.
"Agriculture is the root of all civilization; and yet the agriculturists of the known world have never tasted but a small portion of its fruits. Is this unavoidable?