Now this idea, so universal, so identical in millions of minds, springing with such spontaneity in the midst of infinitely varied circumstances, abiding with such tenacity in every soul, can have its basis nowhere save in a Divine intention and a human possibility.  The cultivation of the farm is the natural employment of man.  It is upon the farm that virtue should thrive the best, that the body and the mind should be developed the most healthfully, that temptations should be the weakest, that social intercourse should be the simplest and sweetest, that beauty should thrill the soul with the finest raptures, and that life should be tranquillest in its flow, longest in its period, and happiest in its passage and its issues.  This is the general and the first ideal of the farmer’s life, based upon the nature of the farmer’s calling and a universally recognized human want.  Why does the actual differ so widely from the ideal?  It is not because the farmer’s labor is hard and constant, alone.  There is no fact better established than that it is through the habitual use both of the physical and mental powers that the soul achieves, or receives, its most healthful enjoyment, and acquires that tone which responds most musically to the touch of the opportunities of leisure.  Why, then, we repeat, does the actual differ so widely from the ideal?

A general answer to this question is, that that is made an end of life which should be but an incident or a means.  Life is confounded with labor, and thrift with progress; and material success is the aim to which all other aims are made subordinate.  There is no fact in physiology better established than that hard labor, followed from day to day and year to year, absorbing every thought and every physical energy, has the direct tendency to depress the intellect, blunt the sensibilities, and animalize the man.  In such a life, all the energies of the brain and nervous system are directed to the support of nutrition and the stimulation of the muscular system.  Man thus becomes a beast of burden,—­the creature of his calling; and though he may add barn to barn and acre to acre, he does not lead a life which rises in dignity above that of the beasts which drag his plough.  He eats, he works, he sleeps.  Surely, there is no dignity in a life like this; there is nothing attractive and beautiful and good in it.  It is a mean and contemptible life; and all its maxims, economies, associations, and objects are repulsive to a mind which apprehends life’s true enjoyments and ends.  We say that it is a pestilent perversion.  We say that it is the sale of the soul to the body; it is turning the back upon life, upon growth, upon God, and descending into animalism.

The true ideal of the farmer’s life—­of any life—­contemplates something outside of, and above, the calling which is its instrument.  The farmer’s life is no better than the life of a street-sweeper, if it rise no higher than the farmer’s work.  If the farmer, standing under the broad sky, breathing the pure air, listening to the song of birds, watching the progress of