AN ADDRESS TO STUDENTS 105 



all my consequent intellectual action is to be traced to 

 this purely moral source. To Carlyle and Emerson I 

 ought to add Fichte, the greatest representative of pure 

 idealism. These three unscientific men made me a prac- 

 tical scientific worker. They called out *'Actr' I heark- 

 ened to the summons, taking the liberty, however, of de- 

 termining for myself the direction which effort was to 

 take. 



And I may now cry "Act I" but the potency of action 

 must be yours. I may pull the trigger, but if the gun be 

 not charged there is no result. We are creators in the 

 intellectual world as little as in the physical. "We may 

 remove obstacles, and render latent capacities active, but 

 we cannot suddenly change the nature of man. The "new 

 birth'' itself implies the pre-existence of a character which 

 requires not to be created but brought forth. You cannot 

 by any amount of missionary labor suddenly transform the 

 savage into the civilized Christian. The improvement of 

 man is secular — not the work of an hour or of a day. But 

 though indubitably bound by our organizations, no man 

 knows what the potentialities of any human mind may be, 

 requiring only release to be brought into action. There are 

 in the mineral world certain crystals — certain forms, for 

 instance, of fluor-spar, which have lain darkly in the earth 

 for ages, but which nevertheless have a potency of light 

 locked up within them. In their case the potential has 

 never become actual — the light is in fact held back by a 

 molecular detent. When these crystals are warmed, the 

 detent is lifted, and an outflow of light immediately begins. 

 I know not how many of you may be in the condition of 

 this fluor-spar. For aught I know, every one of you may 

 be in this condition, requiring but the proper agent to be 



