Cultivated lands are to quicken and mitigate
the sluggish, hostile atmosphere of the eternal forests, wildernesses,
and morasses. Well-ordered and diversified culture is to diffuse
through the air a new principle of life and fructification, and the
sun to send forth its most animating beams into that atmosphere which
is breathed by a healthy, industrious, and ingenious people. Science,
awakened, at first, by the pressure of necessity, shall hereafter
penetrate deliberately and calmly into the unchangeable laws of
Nature, overlook her whole power, and learn to calculate her possible
developments--shall form for itself a new Nature in idea, attach
itself closely to the living and active, and follow hard upon her
footsteps. And all knowledge which reason has wrung from Nature shall
be preserved in the course of the times and become the foundation
of further knowledge, for the common understanding of our race. Thus
shall Nature become ever more transparent and penetrable to
human perception, even to its innermost secrets. And human power,
enlightened and fortified with its inventions, shall rule her with
ease and peacefully maintain the conquest once effected. By degrees,
there shall be needed no greater outlay of mechanical labor than the
human body requires for its development, cultivation and health. And
this labor shall cease to be a burden; for the rational being is not
destined to be a bearer of burdens.
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