THE PHYSICAL LABOKATOKY IN MODEKN EDUCATION 



ADDRESS FOR COMMEMORATION DAY OF THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY, 

 FEBRUARY 22, 1886 



[Johns Hopkins University Circulars, No. 50, pp. 103-105, 1886] 



From the moment we are born into this world down to the day when 

 we leave it, we are called upon every moment to exercise our judgment 

 with respect to matters pertaining to our welfare. While nature has 

 supplied us with instincts which take the place of reason in our infancy, 

 and which form the basis of action in very many persons through life, 

 yet, more and more as the world progresses and as we depart from the 

 age of childhood, we are forced to discriminate between right and wrong, 

 between truth and falsehood. No longer can we shelter ourselves behind 

 those in authority over us, but we must come to the front and each one 

 decide for himself what to believe and how to act in the daily routine 

 and the emergencies of life. This is not given to us as a duty which we 

 can neglect if we please, but it is that which every man or woman, con- 

 sciously or unconsciously, must go through with. 



Most persons cut this Gordian knot, which they cannot untangle, by 

 accepting the opinions which have been taught them and which appear 

 correct to their particular circle of friends and associates: others take 

 the opposite extreme and, with intellectual arrogance, seek to build up 

 their opinions and beliefs from the very foundation, individually and 

 alone, without help from others. Intermediate between these two ex- 

 tremes comes the man with full respect for the opinions of those around 

 him, and yet with such discrimination that he sees a chance of error 

 in all and most of all in himself. He has a longing for the truth and is 

 willing to test himself, to test others and to test nature until he finds it. 

 He has the courage of his opinions when thus carefully formed, and 

 is then, but not till then, willing to stand before the world and proclaim 

 what he considers the truth. Like Galileo and Copernicus, he inaugu- 

 rates a new era in science, or like Luther, in the religious belief of man- 

 kind. He neither shrinks within himself at the thought of having an 

 opinion of his own, nor yet believes it to be the only one worth consid- 

 ering in the world; he is neither crushed with intellectual humility, nor 

 yet exalted with intellectual pride; he sees that the problems of nature 

 and society can be solved, and yet he knows that this can only come 



