The President's Address. 295 



for scientific and literary purposes, is a distinct step towards 

 its triumph. Our private institutions have, in reality, as- 

 sumed the transition phase, and it requires only an electric 

 spark from a sagacious and patriotic statesman to combine 

 in one noble phalanx the scattered elements of our intellec- 

 tual greatness, and guide to lofty achievements and glorious 

 triumphs the talents and genius of the nation. But yfhen 

 such an institution has been completed, the duties of the 

 State to science are not exhausted. It has appreciated know- 

 ledge, but in its abstract and utilitarian phase. It would be 

 of little avail to the peace and happiness of society if the 

 great truths of the material world were confined to the edu- 

 cated and the wise. The organization of science thus limited 

 would cease to be a blessing. Knowledge secular and know- 

 ledge divine, the double current of the intellectual life-blood 

 of man, must not merely descend through the great arteries 

 of the social frame. It must be taken up by the minutest 

 capillaries before it can nourish and purify society. Know- 

 ledge is at once the manna and the medicine of our moral 

 being. When crime is the bane, knowledge is the antidote. 

 Society may escape from the pestilence, and may survive the 

 famine, but the demon of ignorance, with his grim adjutants 

 of vice and riot, will pursue her into her most peaceful haunts, 

 destroying our institutions, and converting into a wilderness 

 the paradise of social and domestic life. The State has, 

 therefore, a great duty to perform. As it punishes crime, it 

 is bound to prevent it. As it subjects us to laws, it must 

 teach us to read them ; and while it thus teaches, it must 

 teach also the ennobling truths which display the power and 

 the wisdom of the great lawgiver, thus diffusing knowledge 

 while it is extending education ; and thus making men con- 

 tented, and happy, and humble, while it makes them quiet 

 and obedient subjects. It is a great problem yet to be solved 

 to determine what will be the state of society when man's 

 physical powers are highly exalted, and his physical condition 

 highly ameliorated, without any corresponding change in his 

 moral habits and position. There is much reason to fear that 

 every great advance in material civilization requires some 

 moral and compensatory antagonism ; but however this may 



