XVII.


That a labourer in the fields should stand very much on the level of the
beast that toils with him, can be neither desirable nor necessary. He
does so, as a matter of fact, and one hears that only the dullest-witted
peasant will nowadays consent to the peasant life; his children, taught
to read the newspaper, make what haste they can to the land of
promise--where newspapers are printed. That here is something altogether
wrong it needs no evangelist to tell us; the remedy no prophet has as yet
even indicated. Husbandry has in our time been glorified in eloquence
which for the most part is vain, endeavouring, as it does, to prove a
falsity--that the agricultural life is, in itself, favourable to gentle
emotions, to sweet thoughtfulness, and to all the human virtues.
Agriculture is one of the most exhausting forms of toil, and, in itself,
by no means conducive to spiritual development; that it played a
civilizing part in the history of the world is merely due to the fact
that, by creating wealth, it freed a portion of mankind from the labour
of the plough. Enthusiasts have tried the experiment of turning
husbandman; one of them writes of his experience in notable phrase.

"Oh, labour is the curse of the world, and nobody can meddle with it
without becoming proportionately brutified. Is it a praiseworthy matter
that I have spent five golden months in providing food for cows and
horses? It is not so."

Thus Nathaniel Hawthorne, at Brook Farm. In the bitterness of his
disillusion he went too far. Labour may be, and very often is, an
accursed and a brutalizing thing, but assuredly, it is not the curse of
the world; nay, it is the world's supreme blessing. Hawthorne had