and not for
wealth. Very great wealth introduces too many intermediaries, too great
indirectness, too much that is extrinsic, too frequent hindrances and
superficialities. It builds a wall about the man, and too often does he
receive his impressions of the needs of the world from satellites and
sycophants. It is significant that great wealth, if it contributes much
to social service, usually accomplishes the result by endowing others to
work. The gift of the products of the earth was "for meat": nothing was
said about riches.

Yet the very appropriation or use of natural resources may be the means
of directing the mind of the people back to the native situations. We
have the opportunity to make the forthcoming development of
water-power, for example, such an agency for wholesome training.
Whenever we can appropriate without despoliation or loss, or without a
damaging monopoly, we tie the people to the backgrounds.

In the background is the countryman; and how is the countryman to make
use of the rain and the abounding soil, and the varied wonder of plant
and animal amidst which he lives, that he may arrive at kinship? We are
teaching him how to bring some of these things under the dominion of his
hands, how to measure and to weigh and to judge. This will give him the
essential physical mastery. But beyond this, how shall he take them into
himself, how shall he make them to be of his spirit, how shall he
complete his dominion? How shall he become the man that his natural
position requires of him? This will come slowly, ah, yes!--slowly. The
people--the great striving self-absorbed throng of the people--they do
not know what we mean when we talk like this, they hear only so many
fine words. The naturist knows that the time will come slowly,--not yet
are we ready for fulfilment; he knows that we cannot regulate the
cosmos, or even the natural history of the people, by enactments.
Slowly: by removing handicaps here and there; by selection of the folk
in a natural process, to eliminate the unresponsive; by teaching, by
suggestion; by a public recognition of the problem, even though not one
of us sees the end of it.

I hope my reader now sees where I am leading him. He sees that I am not
thinking merely of instructing the young in the names and habits of
birds and flowers and other pleasant knowledge, although this works
strongly toward the desired end; nor of any movement merely to have
gardens, or to own farms, although