We expect young countries to sow
their wild oats, to have a few revolutions before they settle down to
national housekeeping; but we are not moved by these troubles--the
result of excessive energy--as we are by symptoms of premature decay.
No nation can be regarded as unhealthy when a virile peasantry,
contented with rural employments, however discontented with other
things, exists on its soil. The disease which has attacked our great
populations here and in America is a discontent with rural life.
Nothing which has been done hitherto seems able to promote content. It
is true, indeed, that science has gone out into the fields, but the
labors of the chemist, the bacteriologist, and the mechanical engineer
are not enough to ensure health. What is required is the art of the
political thinker, the imagination which creates a social order and
adjusts it to human needs. The physician who understands the general
laws of human health is of more importance to us here than the
specialist. The genius of rural life has not yet appeared. We have no
fundamental philosophy concerning it, but we have treasures of political
wisdom dealing with humanity as a social organism in the city States or
as great nationalities.
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