134 O n ^e Campus 



life were but temporary things to be swept presently 

 from the earth in one dire catastrophe what sort of a 

 message had that been to the groping sons of men ? We 

 should be simply haunted by a perpetual expectation of 

 disaster, compared with which Mount Pelee's shaking 

 were but the falling of a leaf ; Mount Pelee *s shaking is 

 but the falling of a leaf, no more. The history of crea- 

 tion as revealed in sea and shore, in valley and in moun- 

 tain, in quarried rock, in furrowed plain, nor less in the 

 unfolding of every flower, teaches us ' Ho believe what the 

 years and centuries say as against the hours ;" "that 

 around every circle another can be drawn;" that there 

 is no end in nature, but every end is a beginning; that 

 there is always another dawn risen on each mid-noon. 



In view of gifts like these, those other benefits that 

 were mentioned first entirely disappear. We care no 

 more for iron or steel or even for the riches of the Home- 

 stake mine. Without the libraries of the past, here then 

 are philosophy and humanity far transcending the 

 dreams of poet or of seer. Without the plastic forms of 

 art, here are vistas of the natural world that tax imagina- 

 tion to the utmost and fill the mind with visions of a 

 tapestry wrought in the loom of time; without a formal 

 system of ethics, here is the shrine of truth; without a 

 formal system of faith, here is substantial basis for all 

 faith, and the sure foundation of unflinching hope. 



The famous phrase of Tyndall, as to the promise and 

 potency discoverable in matter, was something more than 

 an alliteration. Every form of matter possesses peculiar 

 potency; it is for science to solve its own especial prob- 

 lems, but in so doing it is this potency that we ever more 



