Part 2
Although the Agricultural Department at Washington spent eight million dollars in the study of seeds and their growth by sending experts to roam over the world for investigations, yet the observations of Luther Burbank and many like investigators in the agricultural colleges throughout the country have made many more important discoveries. Their observations have brought about a greater increase of production to the acre than all the results of those who roamed the earth for the Government, and no one would say that their work was not a fair investment for the nation.
Observation convinces us that the sooner we get down to the simplicities of life, the longer and healthier and nobler shall life become. The healthiest are those with one loaf and a natural hunger along with it. The noblest lives are those who are anxious to become as divine as it is possible for them to be, are ever alert for little deeds of kindness. How much richer life the poet lives who can sympathize with the field-mouse, like Burns! Who is lifted heavenward by the fringed gentian, like Bryant? Who gets the messages of peace from the frosted pumpkin, like Riley? Like Shakespeare, we too may "find tongues in trees, books in running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything," if we will but use our eyes for seeing, our ears for hearing, our heads for understanding, and our hearts for feeling. The Poor Man's University gives its courses everywhere, and no entrance examination is requisite other than a mind willing to concentrate upon the sublime objects which, by the million, lie within our vision.
III
THE BOTTOM RUNG
Almost every day of his life an American is reminded that "necessity is the mother of invention." It needs only a little reflection and observation to realize how much American youth are blessed in the examples of their countrymen who have come from the humblest stations in life and have risen through sheer pluck and perseverance to honor and helpfulness.
We are indebted mainly to the genius and the observation of poor men for the great inventions which have so much contributed to the comfort, the convenience, the cheerfulness, and the power of life. They have given us steam as a motive power, the locomotive, the telegraph, the typewriter, the telephone, the automobile, the victrola, the airship. The great advances that have been made in agriculture through mowers, reapers, planters, and special seeds and fruits are entirely the results of their steadfast perseverance. Nobody ever earnestly reaches out for a thing until he feels that he needs it, consequently, the sons and daughters of the rich are seldom the benefactors of humanity in the way so many poor men and women have been through the inventions which have lightened the drudgery of millions of homes, as well as increased marvelously the productions of the soil and of the factory. Had the talents of the rich been put to the test by hunger or cold or the many other incentives to vigorous thought and action which impel the poor, they also might have many inventions to their credit, for the longing of the normal soul furnishes the basis of all the worthy activities of life.
The greatest drawback for rich men's sons and daughters is in having all their wants supplied from the bank-account of indulgent parents. They are taught neither industry, economy, nor self-control, which often makes them a social menace. They lack appreciation for so many of the things in life which help to brighten the path of the poor, solely because they have never needed them. A hungry boy who has stood on the outside of a bakery, clinging to a nickel and fighting a battle with himself whether to invest it in a bit of bread or to take it home to his mother, who has had neither breakfast nor dinner, fully understands the value of a dollar.
The superintendent of the Patent Office at Washington has confirmed the official report of the French Patent Office--that there has been no invention of especial value which has not been either found or improved upon by some poor man. The best life-preserver was invented by a sailor who had fallen overboard and had been nearly drowned. An obscure native of a duchy bordered on three sides by powerful nations invented the quick-firing gun, which can fire six hundred shots while the ordinary gun is being loaded. It was a poor Cambridge machinist, whose family often suffered from lack of food, who invented the sewing-machine, which has changed the condition of home life throughout the world, and relieved women of one of their great household burdens. The ship's chronometer was made practical for navigation by a man who had been lost at sea and despaired of ever again reaching the shore. The locomotive, which has contributed more than any other one thing to the spread of our people over our vast country, was given to the world by an Englishman, Stephenson, who in early life had been so poor that he had little schooling.
More than eight hundred agricultural inventions were patented in 1905 and 1906, and every one of them is the invention of some poor man or woman.
As inventors, women have in recent years become close competitors of men, and from kitchen utensils to floor covering have added much to home comfort and home furnishing. All the household articles exhibited lately in a large shop in Chicago were either invented or improved by women. They have invented many things for agriculture, for manufacturing, and for school furnishings--and not a few of the great patents which have been issued to men should have been issued to their wives. Women have often awaked an idea which men have wrought out for practical purposes. The majority of the benefactors of the world made their discoveries to relieve some necessity which oppressed them personally. This is especially true of stock-breeding, where the improvements of observant men have so greatly increased the value of domestic animals.
The value of any study depends entirely upon what it has done for us and what we are doing with it. Lowell says that mere learning is as insignificant as the collection of old postage-stamps. Professor Virchow was obliged to try various foods in his experiments with his own cats, before he discovered what has ever since been of such benefit to all breeders of animals throughout the world. From the earliest days the bee has offered a store of the most useful information, but it would never have been known had it not been for such patient observers as Huber, who, although blind, discovered more about bees than the world had ever known before his day, through the patient service of his wife and valet. The mouse in the field, the squirrel in the tree, the eagle in her nest, the fish in the brook, all have taught us valuable lessons in conduct. They have doubtless given hints which have enabled observant men to give mankind many a useful invention.
When we consider the many thousands of useful inventions which have added so much to the convenience and the happiness of life, and when we bring to mind how almost all of these have come from the humblest of the sons of men with none of the advantages of the so-called higher education, of which we hear so much to-day, we are forced to agree with Sir Walter Scott that the best part of every man's education is that which he gives himself independent of text-books other than the Book of Life. Every real man and woman attends a school or college, not to learn, but to learn how to learn. This is the best work that schools of any description can do. It lays a firm foundation upon which the man who has learned how to learn can build his own superstructure. The men who have achieved success in the march of the ages are those who have been the architects of their own life. Nobody cares a fig where we get our educational tools. The world is interested only in what we are doing with them. _We_ must be _self-made_ or _never-made_, whether we go to college or work in the fields. One teacher can be serviceable to a thousand of the sort who intend to make themselves, but a thousand teachers cannot help one of the other sort. Heredity and environment and will are the great deciding factors in every life.
Investigations as to the food values of meats, grains, fruits, vegetables, and other foods are now being made by the Government, by colleges, and other investigators. This is the movement of _supreme_ importance for the uplift of humanity. But the most of this kind of investigating has been done in household kitchens. It is probable that many of the greatest discoveries as to food will hereafter be made in the same places by those who are inclined to observe. The need of closer scientific knowledge of the chemistry of digestion and the chemistry of food is vital; it should call forth the most self-sacrificing investigation.
It is said by those who have carefully studied the subject that ninety-one per cent. of all disease is attributable directly or indirectly to the stomach. Our ailments come mainly from our aliments. Nourishing food is an essential of a noble life. The stomach is the master of the house, and must be respected. A proper diet and a sound head are closely allied, and those who will rightly exercise their soul-powers must be watchful of the stomach.
Those who would rule and lead must have chest and stomach as well as head and will.
Nobody else has such opportunities for observing the effects of food, and for studying the happy results of nutritious food, as those have who prepare the meals in the kitchen. Proper nourishment is something which touches humanity on every side, and deserves the closest attention of the greatest minds. We can better afford to dispense with scientific experts in every other line which now engages them than to dispense with those who investigate the food question. The idea among the myriads of American housekeepers, that it is ignoble drudgery to spend some of their time in their kitchens ministering to the health of those who are nearest and dearest to them and removing diseases from them through well-selected and well-cooked food, is being gradually overcome by many schools and colleges. The sciences connected with food are now placed among the most important subjects in the curricula of these schools. It takes a master mind to handle the chemical combinations of the kitchen, which make hale and happy men and women, boys and girls.
Health is symmetry; disease is deformity; both are mainly the result of what we eat.
Food has killed more than the sword in every age, and is perhaps killing more to-day than ever before. Achievement in soul-growth and material-growth is involved in the question of proper food. If women forsake the throne that rightly belongs to the cook, men must assume it or Christian civilization shall cease. To-day nobody can become so supreme a benefactor of humanity as the man or the woman who devotes intellect and all other power to the study of scientific eating. When we come rightly to understand all the vital questions that are involved in nutrition, we shall feel that the kings among men and the queens among women are to be sought in no higher place than in kitchens.
We are forever searching among the stars to discover kings, when they are far oftener found in cottages in the valley.
If universities fail to make the knowledge of the right nutrition practical and fail to bring it down where humble men and women may get it and apply it, the fault is their own. Some day a people grateful for the health they enjoy may elect a man to the Presidency of our nation, or set him upon some throne, because he is the best scientific cook in the land. Doctor Agnew of Philadelphia said that he had gained his most important knowledge of hospital work as an adviser of the dietitians while feeding his dog and his cat.
In speaking of the discovery of radium by Madame Curie, Professor Virchow said that he had often felt that our investigators had not taken sufficient notice of the force of animal electricity. The few experiments already made in applying to machinery electricity generated by the human body has opened up a field for observant scientists.
In many ways both birds and beasts contribute to the welfare of humanity, and the observing thinker will still find many more ways in which he can aid us. All forms of life can be harnessed to the car of civilization, and far more effective work shall be done than is being done to-day. As teachers and as subjects of practical investigation, animals supply a great university which almost every man and woman can attend.
IV
HOME READING
Carlyle says that a collection of books is a true university in these days. It might be added that often the smaller the collection the larger shall be the university.
Education derived from libraries is unsafe, for book-dissipation, as well as drunkenness, ends in debauchery. Toward the end of his long and wide-awake life Doctor Holmes advised a young correspondent to confine his reading to the Bible, Shakespeare, and a good dictionary. The list of men who have been lifted to higher regions of thought and feeling and action from reading any one of these three would be too long to be compressed within the covers of one book. Books are like two-edged swords--dangerous unless one knows how to use them; they either lead up or drag down, and we sink or rise to the level of the books we read. Every one reads, but how many read to advantage? Goethe, the greatest of all the very greatest Germans, said, "I have been learning how to read for the past fifty years, but have not yet succeeded."
The majority of readers resemble hour-glasses--their reading runs in and out, and leaves no traces; and some others are like housewives' jelly-bags--they pass all that is good, and retain only the refuse. At best, only a small percentage of our life is spent in school; the greater part of the remainder each must pass in the University of Daily Life, where our education is derived from experience gained through _close observation_ in daily contact with our fellows, and from the fellowship of books. Fellowship fits the relation perfectly, for there must be intimate intercourse such as this word implies, or _nothing_. It is with books as with life--a man profits little from being merely _acquainted_ with ten thousand, and he may be incalculably injured from his intercourse with them; but a few _choice_ friends--often the _fewer_ the better--bring a steady growth of higher spiritual power greater than can be had from all other influences combined.
So it is with books. Acquaintance with a thousand often renders a capable man impotent. But a few _choice_ friends with whom he frequently and earnestly communes lift him in strength of intellect and will and tenderness and sweetness of feeling to be the peer of the worthiest.
The beginning of New England was the golden age of scholarship in America, for many of the founders of these colonies had been reared in English universities. Such was the struggle in these bleak and barren colonies for existence during the first years, that in a few generations the majority of their posterity were strangers to almost all the books of _power_ and _knowledge_ with which their forefathers were acquainted, and were forced to glean all they harvested from the Bible and the almanac--especially the almanac. The almanac was eagerly perused by every member of the family from the dawn of the year to its setting. The reputed thrift of the plain people in this corner of the great world is largely attributable to the lessons of the almanac--mainly _Poor Richard's Almanac_, which the Bostonian, Franklin, annually edited in Philadelphia for over a quarter of a century. His chief purpose was to drive home forcibly many lessons which might encourage the colonists to get the most out of their hard and isolated lives.
Peabody, the successful man of business and munificent philanthropist, said that an almanac and a jack-knife were the foundation of the education through which he ultimately did so much good for multitudes of his countrymen. It should be interesting and instructive to know how many more, during the "jack-knife epoch" in New England and the generations since that time, have been indebted to one book for the pluck and perseverance by which they have carved out a place of honor for themselves. Never were books so eagerly, so often, and so carefully read as these poor almanacs. Never, perhaps, has any other book except the Bible been so potent an influence in shaping the life of a nation and shaping it to a _high place among the nations_, whose beneficent influences have humanized the world. Many a writer has reminded us that the almanac was the text-book studied by our ancestry in beginning the enormous agricultural, commercial, mercantile, manufacturing, and financial interests which in four generations have placed us in front of the richest nations of the earth.
Think of the many millions of dollars invested in library-buildings and the many millions more invested in the books they shelter! Think of the five hundred millions spent annually in public education, and the hundreds of millions that have been put into college buildings and college breeding! Still, from all this stupendous investment there will never come men and women who will make any more out of their learning than thousands of men and women of colonial days who knew the contents of no books other than the Bible and the almanac.
The quality of the literary attainment of those reared in a library may be higher--and perhaps not; but wider and deeper self-knowledge, self-respect, self-confidence, self-culture, self-control, are the supreme objects of all life-struggle and educational struggle. Where a man gets the educational tools with which to accomplish all this is not at all important. If an almanac can help one man to get the same life-result as another man gets from the polishing of the greatest universities in the world, the almanac is the peer of the university. Whether materials as insignificant as the almanac have been used to attain just such results, the history of our country and of several other countries can readily prove. Three books made up the library of Lincoln, the rail-splitter, of Edison and Carnegie, the telegraph operators; but no three men of the nation were ever more successful in reaching the goals they set for themselves.
Books are to-day the great universal means of _knowing_, and knowing them depends upon reading them rightly. It is not so important how _many_ books we read, but how we read them. A well-read fool is one of the most pestilential of blockheads. One book _read_ avails more than a thousand _skimmed_. Little reading and much thinking make a wise man; much reading and little thinking has bred the race which the _plain_ people call "learned fools," and these are mainly responsible for any ridicule that is put upon the work of school and college.
In these days when the printing-press has largely superseded the pulpit and the platform, it is vitally important that men shall be taught how to read rightly and shall be helped to habits of right reading; and no school or college that is decently interested in the welfare of the people can disregard this one duty of teachers _above all others_. Much of the best in thought and feeling and conduct shall depend hereafter upon the books which we read with careful observation. Every man who has read himself into higher realms is under bonds to make the source of so much bliss and blessedness as admirable and as desirable as possible to all who are strangers to the most pleasant and profitable paths of literature.
It is not the quantity of our reading, but the quality that makes it and us an influence for good to our fellows. A man who has read ten pages with real accuracy, says John Ruskin, is forevermore in some measure an educated person. You might read all the books in the British Museum, yet be an utterly illiterate and uneducated person. Our reading without digestion and assimilation is as useless as our food without them. Bacon says that reading makes a _full_ man; but fullness without digestion is dyspepsia. The books whose reading impels us to live nobly and do noble service for others, are _the_ books, and it is a wicked waste of time to read what is a negative quantity. Whoever masters _one vital_ book can never become commonplace.
_Thoroughness_ is the master-passion in reading, as in every other undertaking. Those who have accumulated wisdom, culture, power, riches, are always prominent for their indefatigable, painstaking thoroughness; nothing to them is a trifle, for "trifles make perfection, and perfection is no trifle." Those who have thought most and felt most and done most from their reading have brought this master passion to it.
When we begin to become acquainted with all the worthy men and women who trace the beginning of their worth to the careful reading of one book, it seems almost a loss to the world to have the libraries of the world so large. If they were all respectable occupants of their shelves, it might be condoned; but the copyright of millions of books is the only right, human or divine, for their existing at all. Many a country boy at the fireside during the long winter evenings has received inspiration from repeatedly reading one or two worthy books; these have spurred him on to fight his way valiantly through college, and from there to the heights in some worthy life-work.
If we are true to all that _manhood_ involves, there is no self-deception in the conviction that each one of us is born for kingship. Supreme kingship "consists in a stronger _moral_ state and a truer _thoughtful_ state than that of other men, which enables us to _guide_ and _raise_ the misguided and the illiterate." Every thoughtful man and woman ultimately discovers that "all _education_ and all _literature_ are useful only so far as they confirm this calm and beneficent kingly power." Emerson's "man-thinking" is the supreme among human beings.
The best that can be known and experienced lies asleep in books, and one of the chief purposes for getting an education is to give us the _well-made_ head and the _finer_ feeling to awake this best knowledge and experience in these sleeping princes.
De Quincey reminds us that all the greatest books may be divided into the literature of _knowledge_ and the literature of _power_. They have all been written in utmost sincerity by the _right_-minded and the _strong_-minded; they disclose boundless fields for soul-_refreshment_ and soul-_expansion_. In the march of civilization, the men and the nations that have forged farthest ahead since Gutenberg invented printing are the men and the nations that have had most to do with the few books of _knowledge_ and _power_ of the greatest and the wisest. There can be no better test of a man's thought and feelings and actions than the books he reads and the books he keeps around him; and there is none so desolate as the poor _rich_ man who lives in a great bookless house, and "has never fed upon the dainties that are bred in books," as John Milton says.