VI SCIENCE AND CULTURE 157 



extent, modify the practical manifestation of the 

 characters of men in their actions, by supplying 

 them with motives unknown to the ignorant. A 

 pleasure-loving character will have pleasure of 

 some sort; but, if you give him the choice, he may 

 prefer pleasures which do not degrade him to those 

 which do. And this choice is offered to every man, 

 who possesses in literary or artistic culture a never- 

 failing source of pleasures, which are neither 

 withered by age, nor staled by custom, nor 

 embittered in the recollection by the pangs of 

 self-reproach. 



If the Institution opened to-day fulfils the 

 intention of its founder, the picked intelligences 

 among all classes of the population of this district 

 will pass through it. No child born in Birming- 

 ham, henceforward, if he have the capacity to 

 profit by the opportunities offered to him, first in 

 the primary and other schools, and afterwards in 

 the Scientific CollegT?, need fail to obtain, not mere- 

 ly the instruction, but the culture most appropri- 

 ate to the conditions of his life. 



Within these walls, the future employer and 

 the future artisan may sojourn together for a 

 while, and carry, through all their lives, the stamp 

 of the influences then brought to bear upon them. 

 Hence, it is not beside the mark to remind you, 

 that the prosperity of industry depends not merely 

 upon the improvement of manufacturing pro- 

 cesses, not merely upon the ennobling of the indi- 



