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?

* * * * *

"Upon the unsteady flower that rocks in the breeze the bee makes her
perch and gathers her honey: thus man enjoys the fleeting things of
earthly life, while all things rock under his feet.

* * * * *

"(At the Beech-Pond.) A drop from the sky falls into the pond, forms a
little bubble for a while, then bursts, and mingles with the morass;
another falls into the stream and becomes a part of the living billow.
Is my existence like that of such a rain-drop? Then let me be resolved
into a living stream: it must be so.