SCIENTIFIC EDUCATION OF MECHANICS AND ARTISANS. 195 



a good lawyer or physician, merchant, mechanic, or farmer. This, how- 

 ever important, is bnt a secondary pnrpose. You might better be, my 

 young friend, a beaver or a sparrow, if skill as an artisan or a fabricator 

 seems to you the great aim and end of life. Over and above your pro- 

 fession, exceeding it, mastering it, should be your selfhood, your man- 

 hood, your being as a thinker, a knower, a member of human society, a 

 child of God, an immortal soul. Your course of instruction here has its 

 highest value iu giving you real knowledge, materials for thought, 

 stimulants to mental activity, and, withal, food for your moral, spiritual 

 nature. In the laws of the material universe, and especially iu the 

 necessary and eternal laws that underlie all mathematical science, you 

 enter into close contact — I would that you might ever know and feel 

 it — with the Infinite mind ; you become conversant with forces which 

 are but the multiform, yet undivided, Omnipotence. In the study of 

 physical science you are within temple gates and on holy ground. Let 

 then these pursuits into which you are here initiated for a life-long self- 

 training, vindicate their claim to be regarded as liberal studies by the 

 breadth and depth of thought, sentiment, and character which they 

 inspire and cherish, by the high type of manhood which they foster, by 

 the noble lives to which they give the impulse. 



Remember, above all, that your ultimate success depends on charac- 

 ter. Genius and skill, unsustained by character, will but glitter and 

 vanish. Industry, probity, chastity, sober habits, a quick and healthy 

 conscience, are worth fully as much in the mere material interests of a 

 life of average duration as they are iu the judgment of God and in the 

 esteem of good men. Young persons are very apt to discriminate be- 

 tween prei)aration for this world and preparation for tlie world to come. 

 To one who has lived as long as I have, the two seem identical. CouUl I 

 start at your age with the fruits of my three score years of observation 

 and experience, I should take precisely the same route to the surest and 

 highest earthly success, emolument, and honor, which I would take as 

 the nearest way to heaven. 



