Superphysics
The Importance of Agriculture
3 minutes • 449 words
Your words command my entire sympathy, when you bid us endeavour to begin each work with heaven’s help, (1) seeing that the gods hold in their hands the issues alike of peace and war.
Should 2 business partners run through their accounts without dispute, so now as partners in an argument it will be no less agreeable to sum up the points under discussion, as you say, with unanimity.
We agreed that “economy” was the proper title of a branch of knowledge whereby men are enabled to enhance the value of their houses or estates.
“House or estate” means all of a man’s possessions.
“Possessions” means those things which are advantageous for life to the possessor.
“Advantageous things” mean all that a man knows how to use and quantify .
It is impossible for a man to learn all branches of knowledge.
The civil communities rejected the base mechanic arts because they destroy the bodies of the artisans and crush their spirits. And so we reject such arts.
This is proven by comparing the husbandmen and the artisans. Ask each group: ‘Is it better to defend our country districts, or to retire from the fields and guard the walls?’
The husbandmen and farmers would vote to defend the soil. The artisans would vote not to fight. They will instead sit with folded hands neither expending toil nor venturing their lives.
A gentleman’s best employment is husbandry as it lets human beings procure the necessaries of life.
It is the easiest to learn and the pleasantest to follow since it gives beauty and hardihood to the limbs whilst permitting to the soul leisure to satisfy the claims of friendship and of civic duty.
Husbandry spurs bravery of those who till the fields, inasmuch as the necessaries of life, vegetable and animal, under her auspices spring up and are reared outside the fortified defences of the city.
This is why this way of life stood in the highest repute in the eyes of statesmen and commonwealths, as furnishing the best citizens.
Yes, I am convinced in making agriculture the basis of life. It is the noblest, best, and pleasantest to do so.
But how can husbandry make one wealthy and not poor?
I will tell you about Ischomachus. It did not take me long to go the round of various good carpenters, good bronze-workers, painters, sculptors, and so forth.
I tried to find which occupation was really “beautiful and good.” So I talked to each one of them.
I heard that Ischomachus was called “beautiful and good” (14) by all the world, both men and women, foreigners and citizens alike. So I met up with him.
