Norwich bulletin., 1910-01-08

it's hundred. Here's @ plain question: Do you really know as much about " now as you thought you knew the nf1t year you tackled it2 Probably you ace tually know more than you did fheni that isn't the question. Didn't yous then, think you knew good many things which now you know you never fnew2
 If you've got to that state wherein you can say "f don't know" just an bravely and frankly as, in some other case, you can say "I do know" then you've qualified as a philosopher in the first degree. At present, it's the only qualification l feel like asserting for
 myself. I wish I knew lots of thingas as, for instance, why that quaci5- grass is quack grass, or why COW Isn't @ sheep, or why wigglera make mosaui- toes. ] know qIaclS- grass and, nE ' think told you once. how to kill it, i1 you want to take trouble enough. also know that it won't pay to shear Old Brindle under any delusion thai she is a wool bearer, and that muat cover over my wiggler-infested water barrel if I don't want mosquitoes tO swarm from 1t. But that sort of prac- tical knowledge is mighty small Do- tatoes, after ali. compared with my iE- norance of the real reasons and causes of the things.
 Perhaps you may think I'm advo- eating an apathetic acceptance Of nd- mitted ignorance. as true philosophy- Not by a long shotl The fact that ho doesn't know everything and isn't lilce- ly to- is no bar to the real philoso- pher's search after knowledge no quencher of his burning thirst for it.
 He accepts defeat when it is assured, and immediately attacks some other problem, which seems to offer possible conquest. He wouldn't be philogo- pher if he didn't do both. Where can you find more problems to attack than the farm. where must reckon with pretty nearly all tho elemental forces of universal naturel
 Where Is there more need of, more call for, more satisfaction in philoaophyT Where are there more opportunities
 for its exercise, its cultivation, its de- velopment?'
 One Of the noblest fieIds for tho en-
 ployment of human knowledge is in tho
 arching heavens above us. Yet our
 whole vast science of astronomy traces it's origins to the prehistoric farmers
 of Chaldea, who. while shepherdinE
 their nocks on its spreading plainas
 wandered and speculated and then be-
 gan really to observe and chronicle
 were hardly educated men, aa we un- derstand the term; certainly not train ed scholars. Yet with no Instruments. no telescopes, no knowledge of tho higher mathematics, they came 10 know and predict the movements of sun and | moon; to recognize the planeta-au | those KlElDie to the Itiktu GYE-Ht or h | separate order from the fixed stars, and | 10 plot orbits for them. I wonder how many farmers of New England today. if deprived of all astronomical teach ing and with no almanac, could tell
 Mars and Jupiter and Saturn from the distant fixed stars, and predict, from year to year, their paths in the track
 less skies2 Yet that is exactly what
 these old farmer philosophers of Chal-
 dea did And we owe to them the sole i'd foundations of the science which haa since filled the world with observator- les; upon whose intricnte computations the navigator depends fo find hia way across the oceans, and Peary relied Co
 know when he had reached the North Pole.
 The farmer who should spend all hia
 time star gazing. or lying under an | apple tree and vaguely wondering why
 n potato bug is a potato bug, would be | likely to rnu short of fodder fin the winter. Likewise, the farmer who new
 CT stops grubbing from dewy morn Co starlit eve; who never gives his mind
 a chance to have a little exercise or ite oWn is likely to deteriOrate towards | the animal. l have as much respect Tor | "The Man With the Hoe as for "rho
 Man With the Telescope" or "'rhe Man | little of all three7 For one, I own up i frankly, I like to mix my farming with | philosophy. And I think it would be | good thing for bodily health, anyway. | IT some or lht DIE bIoWtu AFtltNllhAA | philosophers I've occasionally seen had
 mixed a little farming with their phil- | osophizings.
 We're all of US leading double liVeg-- | the physical and the mental. Each ia | necessary to the other. The best liv-
 ing is that which most equitably bal- | ances the two. We are given feet to
 walk on the earth with. and our heads | are raised some cubits higher. SO they | need not also. be on the dirt A man who was all head would be as mon | strous as one who was all feet There | is need of both and we fail if we don't
 use both as they were made to be used.
 Let's all try A judicious mixture of | Farming and Philosophy, and sec if | they don't make a good team to pull 1 the year through with
 THE FARMER.