ADDRESS OF WELCOME 63 
representatives of our twin sister, the Metropoliton Museum of Art, of our 
younger companions, the Public Library, the Brooklyn Museum, the Zodlogi- 
cal Park, the Aquarium and the Botanical Garden,— all animated by the 
same purpose, all under a similar government, and together forming a chain 
of free educational institutions of which the City may well be proud. 
We are honored by the presence of delegates from the President of the 
United States, from the Governor of this State, from several of the great 
American untyersities and from national institutions of scientific research. 
We welcome the leading officers of the City government and of the Board 
of Education. His Honor, the Mayor, the President of the Park Department 
and the Comptroller are with us as members of our Board. It is significant 
that these heads of the second great municipality of the world are uniting 
to play the part of hosts in this celebration, because the City and the ‘Trustees 
have enjoyed from the first a free and cordial union. From their entire 
community of purpose there is no reason why they should ever disagree. 
Through the original application of the Museum for land, this institution is 
legally under the Department of Parks, but while the relation is amicable 
and effective, the museums are less a part of public recreation than of the 
great civic system of education. 
A few words may be said as to our future, as to the kind of educational 
spirit which has been developed under past administrations and will be 
increasingly developed in the coming years in other branches of science. 
We believe that we are only on the threshold of the applications of science, 
or knowledge of the laws of Nature as they bear on human morals, welfare 
and happiness. If there is one new direction which this Museum shall take, 
it is in the applications of science to human life. Here people shall have a 
vision not only of the beauty, the romance, the wonder of Nature, but of man’s 
place in Nature, of laws as inexorable as the moral commands of God 
handed down by great religious teachers. Over the portals of our new Hall 
of Public Health we may well place the inscription, “ Learn the Natural 
Commandments of God and Obey Them.” If Nature is stern and holds in 
one hand the penalty for violation of her laws, she is also gertle and bene- 
ficent and holds in the other hand the remedy, which it is the duty of science 
to discover and make known. 
What is the part the Museum exhibition halls should play in this educa- 
tion? An ideal museum is a mute school, a speechless university, a yoice- 
less pulpit; its sermons are written in stones, its books in the life of the 
running books; every specimen, every exhibition, every well-arranged hall 
speaks for itself. In this sense, in its appeal to the eye, in its journeys for 
those who cannot travel, the Museum is not the rival but is the ally of all 
other methods of instruction within its own walls and throughout the great city. 
