The Baltimore County union. [volume] (Towsontown, Md.) 1865-1909, 1907-05-18
THE FIRST MAN A FARMER.
American Farmer.

All of the ancient races, as soon as they
emerged from barbarism and began to reflect,
developed legends as to the origin of man.
Long before literature was invented the patri-
archal head of the family told his offspring of
the golden age of innocence before man had
fallen into devious ways. Invariably these
myths located the first man in a garden and
made him a farmer. The Hindoos placed
their terrestrial paradise in an island of the
ocean, where fruits and flowers grew in ahund- !.
ance and all needed sustenance was supplied
by nature without work. The Assyrians fol-
lowed the same general line, only their abode
of bliss was in the valley of the Euphrates,
where wheat and barley grew spontaneously,
where clusters of grapes were in easy reach,
where nut trees abounded and every prospect
was pleasing. The Jews many years later
adopted the came story, with additions and
variations, but all agreed in making the first
man a farmer and gardener. The Aeonian
MUSES., somewhat later and under different
environment, emb0dies substantially the same
conception, and sang of primeval man in an
Arcadia whose inhabitants were distinguished
for contentment and rural happiness.
Not in steam-heated apartment, furnished
with hundred needless luxuries and arrayed
in q swallow-tailed coat, shining shirt with
high collar and patent-leather shoes, was the
first man started out in life. He was far better
equipped-with nothing. Hapless and bewil-
dered as the original man would be, logged
out in our modern aummery, equally helpless
is the present city man in the primitive condi-
tions which constitute paradise. There is
whole sermon on the simple life in the state
. ment that the first man was farmer He
took his name from the earth to which he
lived 30 close. All that was considered indis-
pensable to happiness was found in the first
gardens created by the untutored imagination
Of infant races. As further sign of the sim
plicity of this life, which the creator in each Of
the versions of the legend is represented as
pronouncing very good, is the fact that prl-
meval man was restricted to vegetarian diet.
Even for the lower creation no food seems to
have been provided except that which springs
from the earth. Civilization is suffering seri-
ously from indigestion and it well may bark
back to its first forbears for lesson in alb
seriousness. While it was never meant for
man to be an ascetic, neither was it intended
for him to be aglutton. implesurroundings,
simple food and work constituted the program
for the first man, and it takes no philosopher
to see that they are also the best conditions for
the last man. Nowadays every important
function is preceded by big dinner; even
church socials will not "go" without some
thing to eat.
Thus it will be seen that, though great out
ward changes have been wrought in the con-
ditions glori6ed by the ancient sybil and min.
nesingers, at heart they remain tie same. The
nature that the best results come from follow
ing her laws, that the good things are those
furnished 10 hand out of her abundance. The
fundamental fact is not altered by the gloss of
what is called civilization, by the acquired
arts, by any of the artifcialities of scientific
age. The real paradise is to be sought under
all these things it was there before they
came, like the grass under the snow, and has
not been helped by any of the meretricious
additions. Modern man, like his primordial
prototype, must find happiness if at all, in the
cultivation of the earth and conteutment with
what the earth affords. In the original scheme
no arrangement was made for the professions,
for lawyers, doctors or preachers; manufac-
lures, corporations and the thousand and one
modern adjuncts were left out. Only the far
mer was 10 it; and only the farmer still re-
mains in it, at the bottom and at the heart.
The problem of civilization is to SO adjust
the two as not to destroy the original plan, not
to submerge the paradise under mountains of
artificial creations in an effort to improve on
the natural order Every departure from the
simple life leads to the wrong road and the
multiplication of complex net works of mans
making but tend in the last analysia to stran-
gle the infant Hercules in his cradle.