III

PHASES OF FARM LIFE

I have thought that a good test of civilization, perhaps one of the best, is country life.  Where country life is safe and enjoyable, where many of the conveniences and appliances of the town are joined to the large freedom and large benefits of the country, a high state of civilization prevails.  Is there any proper country life in Spain, in Mexico, in the South American States?  Man has always dwelt in cities, but he has not always in the same sense been a dweller in the country.  Rude and barbarous people build cities.  Hence, paradoxical as it may seem, the city is older than the country.  Truly, man made the city, and after he became sufficiently civilized, not afraid of solitude, and knew on what terms to live with nature, God promoted him to life in the country.  The necessities of defense, the fear of enemies, built the first city, built Athens, Rome, Carthage, Paris.  The weaker the law, the stronger the city.  After Cain slew Abel he went out and built a city, and murder or the fear of murder, robbery or the fear of robbery, have built most of the cities since.  Penetrate into the heart of Africa, and you will find the people, or tribes, all living in villages or little cities.  You step from the jungle or the forest into the town; there is no country.  The best and most hopeful feature in any people is undoubtedly the instinct that leads them to the country and to take root there, and not that which sends them flocking to the town and its distractions.

The lighter the snow, the more it drifts; and the more frivolous the people, the more they are blown by one wind or another into towns and cities.

The only notable exception I recall to city life preceding country life is furnished by the ancient Germans, of whom Tacitus says that they had no cities or contiguous settlements.  “They dwell scattered and separate, as a spring, a meadow, or a grove may chance to invite them.  Their villages are laid out, not like ours [the Romans] in rows of adjoining buildings, but every one surrounds his house with a vacant space, either by way of security, or against fire, or through ignorance of the art of building.”

These ancient Germans were indeed true countrymen.  Little wonder that they overran the empire of the city-loving Romans, and finally sacked Rome itself.  How hairy and hardy and virile they were!  In the same way is the more fresh and vigorous blood of the country always making eruptions into the city.  The Goths and Vandals from the woods and the farms,—­what would Rome do without them, after all?  The city rapidly uses men up; families run out, man becomes sophisticated and feeble.  A fresh stream of humanity is always setting from the country into the city; a stream not so fresh flows back again into the country, a stream for the most part of jaded and pale humanity.  It is arterial blood when it flows in, and venous blood when it comes back.