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I know that your duties are as arduous and youi labors as exhaustive- 

 as your intentions are earnest and your aspirations pure. I will 

 turn, rather, and address those whom I feel more competent to 

 counsel the first matriculates of this College. 



Young gentlemen, I suppose that you are all familiar with the 

 aphorism that "knowledge is power;" but have you ever considered 

 it critically ? Have you ever thought how or wherein knowledge 

 constituted an element of power ? All learning is not knowledge, 

 nor yet is all knowledge power. The world is full of learned fools 

 and helpless wiseacres. Knowledge is power only when utilized. 

 It is the kr. owing how to use and apply what we have acquired that 

 gives us control of men and matter. This is the sovereign test of 

 ability, whatever may be oui acquirements or sphere in life. You 

 may cram your heads full of the most abstruse knowledge; you may 

 garner into them all the learning of all the ages and generations 

 that have preceded you; you may even make of your minds vast 

 store-houses of knowledge; and yet what will it avail you unless 

 along with it yon are possessed with the power to twe it ? Do you 

 ask me what the power or ability is which enables us to utilize 

 whatever is taught by experience, by books and the schools? I 

 answer that it is thought, and that knowledge is power only as it 

 incites, suggests and furnishes forth the materials for thought. As 

 the corn which the farmer sows upon the ground prepared for it& 

 reception must needs have the warm and genial rays of the sun to 

 quicken it into life and develop it to maturity, so knowledge must 

 be fructified by thought to germinate and expand to useful results. 

 The corn, however, M'ill produce only its kind, while knowledge is 

 not only reproductive, but it is also creative. 



As in our own minds one thought suggests or begets another, so- 

 the thoughts of others which comprehend all knowledge, save our 

 own individual experience, quickens and incites our minds to new 

 thoughts and new creations. One achievement of one human intel- 

 lect starts into activity perhaps an hundred others, each working out 

 some new success, some further advancement and improvement. In 

 this way one discovery or invention becomes the parent of numer- 

 ous others, and in this way are the boundaries of human knowledge 

 expanded and the civilization of man secured. 



What a brood of inventions of the highest importance and the 

 greatest usefulness followed the discovery of the nature and proper- 

 ties of steam ! When James Watt was experimenting with his tea 

 kettle and solving the problem of condensation, how little did he 

 dream of the mighty revolution he was inaugurating. When 



