Western farmers who raise
and sell hogs and cattle, feeding them grain instead of selling it, are
sure to acquire a competence. The farmers who sell grain are the ones
who do not pay off their mortgages."

Says Humboldt:

"Here on the sides of these towering and forbidding mountains we find
the most fertile and beautiful miniature farms, nestling in little
valleys or on plateaus.

"Indeed, I heard today of a man falling out of his farm and being
seriously injured. He ventured too near the edge.

"These Swiss gardens with their prosperous and intelligent owners are
only possible through the fact that the owners keep all the cows and
poultry that can comfortably exist on the acres. The peasants sell
butter, cheese and eggs, instead of grain and vegetables exclusively.

"They give back to the earth all that they take from it, so in the
course of a hundred years a fine soil evolves that supports valuable
animals, including valuable men; choice fruit, flowers and birds appear,
and we have what we are pleased to call Christian civilization. It is
not for me to quibble about terms, but civilization is not necessarily
Christian, since it is more a matter of economics and natural science
than religion."

Where the climate is fairly propitious, but not so much so but that it
compels watchfulness, economy and effort, man will work, and to aid him
in his work he utilizes domestic animals. And the very act of
domesticating the animal domesticates the man. As man improves the
animal, he improves himself. One reason why the American Indian did not
progress was because he had neither horses, camels, oxen, swine nor
poultry. He had his dog, and the dog is a wolf, and always remains one,
in that his intent is on prey. This fitted the mood of the Indian, and
he continued to live his predaceous career without a particle of
evolution. To stand still is to retreat, and there is evidence that long
before the year Fourteen Hundred Ninety-two, there was a North American
Indian that was a better Indian than the Indians who watched the
approach of Columbus and exclaimed, "Alas! we are discovered!"

In crossing the Alps, Humboldt was impressed with the truth that man was
a necessary factor in working out "creation," just as much as the
earthworm. When men stir the soil so as to make it produce grain that
the family may be fed, and utilize animals in this work, civilization is
surely at hand.

Nations with a controlling desire to absorb,