THE HUMAN HARVEST. 



By DAVID STARR JORDAN. 

 (.Read April i8, 1906.) 



Science is wisdom set in order. It is known as science by its 

 orderly arrangement, but above and beyond all matters of arrange- 

 ment the wisdom itself must take rank. Wisdom is the essence of 

 human experience, the contact of mind with the order of nature. 

 Of all men of his time, Benjamin Franklin was preeminently a 

 man of wisdom. By the same token the first leader in science in 

 America, he still takes rank with the greatest. 



So in this time of historic recognition, it is proper that a speaker 

 of to-day should find his message in the words of Benjamin Franklin, 

 and the message I choose is one for which this City of Philadelphia 

 has always stood and from which it has taken its Greek name, the 

 name which in classical phrase says with a single word that men are 

 brothers worthy of our love. It is a message for which the State 

 of Pennsylvania has always stood, for the same principle was em- 

 bodied in the life of William Penn. This has always been a Quaker 

 City, and the Quakers, the Friends, have been our best apostles of 

 the gospel of " peace on earth, good will towards men," the culmina- 

 tion of social and political wisdom. 



Benjamin Franklin once said, " All war is bad ; some wars worse 

 than others." Then, once again, in more explicit terms, referring to 

 the dark shadow of war cast over scenes of peace, the evil of the 

 standing army, Franklin said to Baynes : 



*' If one power singly were to reduce its standing army it would 

 be instantly overrun by other nations. Yet I think there is one 

 effect of a standing army which must in time be felt so as to bring 

 about the abolition of the system. A standing army not only 

 diminishes the population of a country, but even the size and breed of 

 the human species. For an army is the flower of the nation. All 



^ Parton's " Life of Franklin," II, p. 572. 



