of them like a blind man among
colors, or a deaf man among sounds. The Romans carried their aqueducts
from hill-top to hill-top, on lofty arches erected at immense
expenditure of time and money. One idea--that is, a knowledge of the law
of the equilibrium of fluids; a knowledge of the fact that water in a
tube will rise to the level of the fountain--would have enabled a
_single individual_ to do with ease what, _without that knowledge_, it
required the _wealth of an empire to accomplish_.

It is in ways similar to this--that is, by accomplishing greater results
with less means; by creating products at once cheaper, better, and by
more expeditious methods; and by doing a vast variety of things
otherwise impossible--that the cultivation of mind may be truly said to
yield the highest pecuniary requital.

_Intelligence is the great money-maker, not by extortion_, but by
PRODUCTION. There are ten thousand things in every department of life
which, if done in season, can be done in a minute, but which, if not
seasonably done, will require hours, perhaps days or weeks for their
performance. An awakened mind will see and seize the critical juncture;
the perceptions of the sluggish one will come too late, if they come at
all.

A general culture of the faculties, also, gives versatility of talent,
so that, if the customary business of the laborer is superseded by
improvements, he can readily betake himself to another kind of
employment. But an uncultivated mind is like an automaton, which can do
only the thing for which its wheels or springs were made. Brute force
expends itself unproductively. It is ignorant of the manner in which
Nature works, and hence it can not avail itself of her mighty agencies.
Often, indeed, it attempts to oppose Nature. It throws itself across the
track where her resistless car is moving. But knowledge enables its
possessor to employ her agencies in his own service, and he thereby
obtains an amount of power, without fee or reward, which thousands of
slaves could not give.

Every man who consumes a single article in whose production or
transportation the power of steam is used, has it delivered to him
cheaper than he could otherwise have obtained it. Every man who can
avail himself of this power in traveling, can perform the business of
three days in one, and so far add two hundred per cent. to the length of
his life as a business man. What innumerable millions has the invention
of the cotton-gin, b