{95} The Great Resources

Feb 25

“Lieutenant Herndon, whom our government sent to explore the Amazon, and, it is said, to extend the area of slavery, observed that there was wanting there ‘an industrious and active population, who know what the comforts of life are, and who have artificial wants to draw out the great resources of the country.’

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“But what are the ‘artificial wants’ to be encouraged? Not the love of luxuries, like the tobacco and slaves of, I believe, his native Virginia, nor the ice and granite and other material wealth of our native New England; nor are ‘the great resources of a country’ that fertility or barrenness of soil which produces these.

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“The chief want, in every State that I have been into, was a high and earnest purpose in its inhabitants. This alone draws out ‘the great resources’ of Nature, and at last taxes her beyond her resources; for man naturally dies out of her.

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“When we want culture more than potatoes, and illumination more than sugar-plums, then the great resources of a world are taxed and drawn out, and the result, or staple production, is, not slaves, nor operatives, but men—those rare fruits called heroes, saints, poets, philosophers, and redeemers.” — Henry David Thoreau; Life Without Principle