among the most important and useful, as well as honorable, vocations 

 of man was reserved to our day. And should our age go down, in 

 history with no other, distinguishing mark of its progress and en- 

 lightenment, this one achievement alone will command for it the 

 respect and admiration of future generations. 



Not only have these industries been raised to the position which 

 their inherent worth entitles them to occupy, but another advanced 

 step has been taken. The conviction has slowly but surely fastened 

 itself upon the public mind that ignorance is as incompatible with 

 success in these as in other pursuits, and that experience, education 

 and special training are relatively as fundamental conditions of 

 success to the mechanic and agriculturist as to the lawyer and 

 physician. 



And from this conviction sprang the desire Munich has ripened 

 into a demand that such opportunities and facilities shall be afforded 

 those designing to engage in these special branches of industry as 

 will enable them to become thoroughly educated and skilled in 

 whatever of practical experience, applied science, or other useful 

 knowledge appertains to them. 



To meet this demand and to promote this kind of education is 

 the primary object of this- Institution. Its curriculum embraces a 

 course of training ample to secure the accomplishment of these 

 objects, and he who shall have thoroughly mastered all will go forth 

 to the great battle of life more serviceably panoplied than Achilles, 

 more powerfully armed than Richard Co&ur-de-Leon. He will be 

 able to hew his pathway to success with a battle-axe of his own 

 fashioning and move on to the goal of his ambition, invulnerable 

 alike to the arrows of ignorance or of prejudice. He will be quali- 

 fied to engage successfully in one of the noblest and most beneficial 

 occupations of man the cultivation of mother earth; and as he 

 watches the wonderful processes of nature, the germination, growth 

 and maturity of vegetable life, his soul will be quickened and ex- 

 panded to new investigations and a broader comprehension of the 

 great fundamental laws which regulate and control all things, from 

 the minutest particle to revolving spheres. His knowledge of Draw- 

 ing, Mechanics, Architecture and Natural History will enable him 

 not only to build a house and plan a palace, construct a railroad and 

 locomotive engine, and manage the one or run the other, but also to 

 investigate the sources of organic life and trace its successive stages 

 of growth, its various and distinctive origin and development up to 

 a conclusive demonstration that his ancestors were not apes, as Dar- 



