It failed; yet it reads well. Time and again
theorists with highest purpose and broadest book wisdom have
formulated laws for the good of mankind which would not work.
Most statutes that live and operate have had their origins among men
of the soil as well as men of the study. The point I am making is that
learning and accomplishments will do no good if you do not connect
them with the people.
Is not this why so many reformers retire disappointed--men and women
of finest excellencies of purpose and practical and fruitful
thought--they have insisted in projecting their reforms from office or
parlor upon the masses without knowing those masses? It is as
impossible for the wisest man to be a statesman by confining himself
to his study and his weighty volumes and his careful abstract
thinking, as it is to be a chemist by reading about chemistry.
The laboratory, the test-tube, the actual contact with the real
materials and forces in nature, are essential to the scientist of
matter. This is much more true of the art of government. No man ever
lived so wise that association with the millions would not enrich his
wisdom mightily. And thus, page after page, we might go on pointing
out the value of contact with the people, whom, after all, it ought to
be your highest purpose to serve in some way.
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