Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1868 [PAGE 177]

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truth as well as a sower of seed, a scientific agriculturist as well as a sturdy, practical farmer; it will not be long till he appreciates the utter absurdity of the popular outcry against the study of abstract principles and pure science. Here, as elsewhere, it will be found that there is nothing like a little wholesome experience to take the conceit out of a man—provided always that he has sense enough to know when that operation has actually been performed upon him—for incorrigible fools are not confined to the ranks of school-masters and theorists, as some affirm; there may be farmers, perchance, worthy to divide with them the honors! Let the farmer who points to his own life-long and successful husbandry without the benefit of books and theories and so-called useless abstractions, as a justification of his contempt for the thorough and systematic training of youth for agricultural pursuits—let such an one be called upon to conduct any original investigation, to analyze a soil; detect the presence of the insidious foes to vegetable life which lurk in earth, air, water and food; in a word, to advance the boundaries of agricultural science in any direction, and he will invoke the aid of his boasted skill in mere handicraft, as vainly as the false prophets of old, in their utter helplessness, cried aloud to Baal to help them. The divine fire will only descend at the summons of the true Elijahs of science. It is no disgrace to be ignorant of abstruse knowledge, or of the subtle laws which pervade the universe of matter, from the atom to the continent—such knowledge can never, perhaps, be the inheritance of all. But to deride the study of abstract laws and principles, while boasting of the success which those very investigations have alone made possible, is the opposite of reasonable or honorable ; and if to derision be added active and wanton hostility, what was before only stupidity and folly, becomes a crime against the interests of humanity. I have spoken of the debt which successful husbandry, viewed only as a practical manual art, owes to scientific thinkers and pure philosophy. Go to your model farmer of this class, and inspect his estates, his methods of tillage, his selections and preparations of soils, the manures and fertilizers he uses, the rotation of crops that he practices, the breeds of animals he prefers, and how he rears and nurtures them—look at his machines and tools and implements of all sorts; his barns and other out-houses, his fences, gates, wagons and carts; his orchards, gardens, hotbeds and green-houses—and see what you will find. The latest and best improvements will characterize his outfit and equipments in every department. He will not have an old and defective machine or implement upon his place at any price, if a new and better one can be had. Every new and successful method and invention is eagerly sought for and applied. And yet, too often, after this unconscious homage to science, he will join in the chorus of disparagement of those very studies to the products of which he owes all of his pre-eminence ; and of the men, it may be, who seek to place these priceless treasures in the hands of the people. Oh, men of Illinois, these things ought not so to be. Thought rules the world, doubt it or deny it who may, and it will continue to do so to the end of time. Each and all of those marvelous machines, whose fingers of wood and iron spare those of flesh and bone, are the offspring of science—born of the patient vigils of the student, begotton of those same despised abstractions which lead down to the solemn laboratories of nature, and upward to the high cabinet of heaven where the Supreme Architect of the Universe presides. Those amazing displays of productive energy, which have quadrupled the value of the estate, are but the grand victories of Agricultural Chemistry. Those lordly herds that