THE ALUMNI JOURNAL 87 



eyes of men see more clearly into the infinite mist that clouds, human 

 comprehension and which only from time to time is torn away to reveal 

 the eternal light that shines beyond it. And at all times, since real 

 civilization began, there have been these apprehensions of real truth. 

 There has been truth in ethics, as the guide of human action; there 

 has been truth in literature, as the expression of human experience 

 and emotion; there has been truth in the art of the chisel and the 

 brush; there has been truth in architecture and in music. And all 

 along this line of human activity as I have enumerated it, there has 

 shone brightly at times this light of eternal truth. And it is the char- 

 acteristic of truth that it is eternal and that it only is eternal. All 

 else sooner or later disappears entirely from the sight of men ; it 

 vanishes back into the infinite space from which it momentarily 

 emerged and is then forgotten. The true things, and only the true 

 tilings, have lasted, and lived to succeeding generations. The litera- 

 ture and art, in whatever particular form has been its expression, 

 that has come dcnvn to us out of the past, and that attracts our atten- 

 tion or awakens our admiration to-day, owes its influence to the truth 

 which it contains. It may not be the whole truth that the day of its 

 production apprehended, but it was at least the grasping at the mo- 

 ment of a spark of the eternal fire and its retention in these things of 

 earth that has given them an immortal value. 



And so it has been at all times and so it is to-day. As it is only 

 that which has in it the element of truth that has survived through the 

 ages, so it is only that which is true that will survive out of this pres- 

 ent time into the future that is to follow it. Many things have per- 

 sisted in the past for a time because of the seeming grain of truth 

 in them that appeared at the moment to be real, but later on in the 

 light of new knowledge proved to be but an intangible shadow with- 

 out actual substance or reality. 



The beginning of all sciences is the search for truth, and their sub- 

 sequent development as they are broadened out and perfected is a 

 continual quest for the additional truth that still lies hidden. What 

 this truth actuallv is, is sometimes but dimly surmised and is only 

 gradually revealed as investigation — the search for truth — has uncov- 

 ered it. Your own science of Pharmacy is an instance of this. If 

 you take it back to the Alchemy of the Middle Ages, which is its 

 progenitor, as it is also the progenitor of modern chemistry, you will 

 find that the old Alchemists, mistaken as they were in their premises, 



