Norwich bulletin., 1910-01-08
A FARMERS TALK TO FARMERS
hosophy and Farming-WhiIe They Do Not Seem to be Allied They Might Go Hand in Hand-Ihe Farm May Improve by PhilosoPhizing and the Phiioso- ph by Farmng-Phiosophy and Farming Together Made Strong Pulling Team.

(Written Specially for The Bulletin)
 I had a little discussion with neighbor the other day. about no mat ter what. We didn't agree, we usual ly do not; couldn't come to any work ing basis of mutual acceptance, and so gave it up. We had differed good naturedly, as sensible people always do, and so we separated with a little Jocose chahing of each other, and no broken bones or hurt feelings. Said he. as a final shot: "Old man, I don't see but that you know as little of philosophy as you do of farming"
 We both laughed at the remark, which was uttered in a tone that de- prived it of anything personal or of fensive, and let him have the last word. But ever since the phrase has Philosophy" philosophy and Farm ing" The aIliteration tends to make the words run easily together; do the things themselves run together Or are they as widely separated as the poles? As unlike each other as the outward appearance of the average farmer and the average professional philosopher?
 We'll, that depends a good deal on what we mean by philosophy and what our ideas are of farming. Sir w. Hamilton once collected the various QeDIllLlOIS or ODnNf made by the philosophers of greatest fame-thirteen of them, a very unlucky number. So he promptly added another, to make it fourteen. And every one of the lot needs definition as much as the original word does. Most of them. indeed, have been the texts for big books, devoted to explaining at great length what the definitions mean. The dictionary tells me that our English word philosophy comes from two Greek words the first of which means Hove" and the second wisdom" So that the word itself means love of wisdom. And I'm in- clined to take that as the best and most understandable definition of philosophy can get hold of. Love of wisdom" The philosopher, then, would
 be a man who is fond of wisdom. And I'm blamed if I see what there is in fondness for wisdom uncongenial to farming. Or what there is in farming to prevent a man from being fond of wisdom.
 Perhaps you'll "tree" me, even now, by asking: ''Yes, but what is wisdom ?'' i To that question must answer much | as children sometimes do: "I know, but can't tell" The Continent of Wis
 dom is very i'll to bound. It's margins | are strangely elusive and it's frontiers
 can hardly be laid down on a map with pencil and ruler. It isn't like Green | last circumnavigated and shown to be
 an island, with definite shores. Rather it is like the aurora borealis. which. | when at it's fullest development, fills | the whole heavens with radiating, pulsating, shifting waves of wonderful | light; now sweeping maJesttcally up to | the very zenith; now rolling downward | as a curtain slowly falls to the stage {; | glowing here for an instant with un- | earthly splendor, then suddenly ap-
 bearing in an entirely different diree- | tion where had been simply the dark. | You could no more bound it or limit ! fhan-URI rErfa- | dom. If you have the love of it in you, | you know what it is, though you can not put this knowledge into words.
 Certainly, wisdom isn't merely
 knowledge. It must include knowledge,
 but it must also include the conscious
 ness of ignorance. You observe I'm | talking about human wisdom. Of course, Divine wisdom is perfect in | knowledge, as in everything else. But
 we finite fellows are notable rather for | the things We do not know than for
 those which we do. There isn't a man | on earth who can tell why quack grass | is quack-grass, and not a pine tree. 1 Lots of us know that 1t is quack- grass
 and what quack grass is, but not one | of us can tell the great mysterious | secret WHY it is quac<zgras and not
 something else. Wisdom requires that we obtain and assimilate knowledge
 from every possible quarter. It also requires when we bring up, plunk,
 against an impenetrable and an un-
 scalable wall, that we stop trying to
 scratch a hole through the unscratch- l able and either go round or off side
 ways. Wisdom isn't likely to exhibit
 the pint pot of its knowledge in com
 parison with the Atlantic of its ignor- 1 ance. That is a sort of conduct left to
 seIf-conceited superfciality.
 If wisdom consists partly in knowing
 that we don't know it all, then, seems | to me, the love of wisdom and the love | of farming ought to march as close to- | eether as twin brothers. For ] don't | believe there is any other thing in the | universe which is more certain to show
 a man what a helpless sort of ignora-
 mus he is than the attempt to run a
 plain, simple, everyday New England
 farm for. about twenty years That s | do. I've been at it about twenty years perhaps you who read this have been
 at it for forty or fifty. don't care if