D1.8.19: Agricultural meetings

D1.8.19: Agricultural meetings

Newspaper Clippings

Bleek writes that theology's nature is uncertain and esoteric, and disharmony arises from incompatible diversity. In contrast, the sciences are formulaic, rational, and ultimately discernible to all. Universal truths provide certainty that trivialises a difference in method so long as the outcomes are equally desirable. Positive outcomes reinforce a common approach and engender harmony. Theology does not provide the same unanimous satisfaction. Religion belongs to individual self-consciousness, apart from the rational mind, and is intertextual and layered because each person superimposes unique associations over the general meaning of the words in scripture. The core data of agricultural science, its first principles, is indisputable, unlike theology. How can the imperfect languages of imperfect beings describe the perfection of divinity or Divine Nature? However, science is knowable and articulable with human languages. To that end, agricultural shows promote knowledge sharing that unifies farmers as the most indispensable colonial class.

Printed newsprint glued on paper

26 January 1865

Two cut-out columns of printed newsprint mounted on foolscap folio (warped). 'Agricultural Meetings' is the title Bleek wrote on the mount.

Agriculture (shows for), theology (denominational disharmony), religion (diversity of), human language (its limitations), Divine Nature (our attempt to describe it), farming (theories on)

Pressed clippings of Victorian current affairs opinion pieces by Wilhelm Bleek. Published in Het Volksblad on Thursday, January 26th, 1865. Bleek considers the main products of the Cape Colony in the mid-1860s to be grain, wine, wool, and horses.

Van de Sandt de Villiers & Co.