THE NEW YORK JOURNAL OF PHARMACY 



NEW WATCHWORDS OF 



TO-DAY. 



(President Nicholas Murray Butler's 

 Commencement Address at Colum- 

 bia University, June 3rd, 1914.) 



It is a matter of no small concern to 

 those who leave this university to-day 

 for the purpose of entering upon the 

 active work of life, to realize what 

 ideas and purposes are just now domi- 

 nant in the minds of men and how 

 these differ from those that have gone 

 before. In the evolution of human 

 ideas a curious cycle is observable. Be- 

 liefs and tendencies that have once ap- 

 peared and that have been rejected or 

 outgrown tend to reappear, sometimes 

 in a new guise, with all the freshness 

 of youth, and they are then acclaimed 

 by those unfamiliar with their history 

 as symbols of an advancing civiliza- 

 tion. Probably the greatest waste re- 

 corded anywhere in human history is 

 that which results from the attempt to 

 do over again that which has once been 

 done and found disappointing or harm- 

 ful. If the study of history were more 

 real and more vital than it is ordina- 

 rily made, and if it showed ideas, ten- 

 dencies and institutions in their unfold- 

 ing and orderly development, and if 

 the lessons of history so studied were 

 really learned and hearkened to, the 

 world would be saved an almost infinite 

 amount of loss, of suffering, and of 

 discouragement. 



When this college was young the 

 word that rose oftenest and instinctive- 

 ly to the lips was liberty. Men were 

 then everywhere seeking for ways and 

 means to throw off trammels which 

 had been placed upon them by institu- 

 tions of long standing, but which were 



found to hamper them at every turn 

 and to hem them in on every side. 

 Liberty in those days meant not one 

 thing but many things. It meant free- 

 dom of conscience, of speech, and of 

 the press; it meant participation in the 

 acts of government and in the choice 

 of governing agents; it meant freedom 

 to move about over the world, to seek 

 one's own fortune under strange skies 

 and in foreign lands, there to live the 

 life that one's own mind and conscience 

 selected as most suitable. Liberty was 

 then the watchword, not in the New 

 World alone by any means, but in the 

 Old World as well, and particularly in 

 France, which has so often pointed the 

 way of advance in the march of ideas. 

 Standing in his place in the convention 

 during the fateful Spring of 1793, 

 Rol)espierre pronounced this definition 

 of liberty, which is almost the best of 

 its kind : "Liberty is the power which 

 of right belongs to every man to use 

 all his faculties as he ma)^ choose. Its 

 rule is justice; its limits are the rights 

 of others ; its principles are drawn from 

 Nature itself; its protector is the law." 

 Whatever judgment may be passed 

 upon Robespierre's conduct, certainly 

 his thought on this fundamental ques- 

 tion of liberty was clear and sound. 



But during the years that have 

 passed we have moved far away from 

 this view of what is important in life. 

 There has grown up, not alone in 

 America, but throughout the world, an 

 astonishingly widespread belief in the 

 value of regulation and restriction not 

 only as a substitute for liberty, but di- 

 rectly in opposition to it. That against 

 which the leaders of the race revolted 

 a century and more ago is now pressed 

 upon us in another form as a desirable 



