We have studied the skeleton of
agriculture but have failed to endow it with life. We must keep before
our eyes the picture of the little girl. We must feel that the
quintessence and spirit of agriculture throbs through all the arteries
of life. Here lies the field in which imagination can do its perfect
work. Here is a subject in which the vitalized school may find its
highest and best justification. By no means is it the only study that
fitly exemplifies life, but, in this respect, it is typical, and
therefore a worthy study. On the side of analysis the teacher finds the
blade of grass to be a thing of life; on the side of synthesis she finds
the blade of grass to be a life-giving thing. And the synthesis is no
less in accord with science than the analysis.
=The element of faith.=--Then again agriculture and life meet and merge
on the plane of faith. The element of faith fertilizes life and causes
it to bring forth in abundance. Man must have faith in himself, faith in
the people about him, and faith in his own plans and purposes to make
his life potent and pleasurable. By faith he attaches the truths of
science to his plans and thus to the processes of life; for without the
faith of man these truths of science are but static. Faith gives them
their working qualities. There is faith in the plowing of each furrow,
faith in the sowing of the seed, faith in the planting of each tree, and
faith in the purchase of each machine.
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