highest good that can accrue to
a State for the expenditure of its money is the raising up of a
population less responsive to cash than to some other stimuli. The good
physical support is indeed essential, but it is only the beginning of a
process. I am conscious of a peculiar hardness in some of the
agriculture-enterprise, with little real uplook; I hope that we may soon
pass this cruder phase.

Undoubtedly we are in the beginning of an epoch in rural affairs. We are
at a formative period. We begin to consider the rural problem
increasingly in terms of social groups. The attitudes that these groups
assume, the way in which they react to their problems, will be
determined in the broader aspects for some time to come by the character
of the young leadership that is now taking the field.

_The spiritual contact with nature_

A useful contact with the earth places man not as superior to nature but
as a superior intelligence working in nature as a conscious and
therefore as a responsible part in a plan of evolution, which is a
continuing creation. It distinguishes the elemental virtues as against
the acquired, factitious, and pampered virtues. These strong and simple
traits may be brought out easily and naturally if we incorporate into
our schemes of education the solid experiences of tramping, camping,
scouting, farming, handcraft, and other activities that are not mere
refinements of subjective processes.

Lack of training in the realities drives us to find satisfaction in all
sorts of make-believes and in play-lives. The "movies" and many other
developments of our time make an appeal wholly beyond their merits, and
they challenge the methods and intentions of education.

There are more fundamental satisfactions than "thrills." There is more
heart-ease in frugality than in surfeit. There is no real relish except
when the appetite is keen. We are now provided with all sorts of things
that nobody ever should want.

The good spiritual reaction to nature is not a form of dogmatism or
impressionism. It results normally from objective experience, when the
person is ready for it and has good digestion. It should be the natural
emotion of the man who knows his objects and does not merely dream about
them. There is no hallucination in it. The remedy for some of the
erratic "futurism" and other forms of illusion is to put the man hard
against the facts: he might be set to studying bugs or soils or placed
between the