VI SCIENCE AND CULTURE 157 



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extent, modify the practical manifestation of the 

 characters of men in their actions, by supplying 

 them with motives unknown to the ignorant. A 

 pleasure-loving character will have pleasure of some 

 sort ; but, if you give him the choice, he may pre- 

 fer pleasures which do not degrade him to those 

 which do. And this choice is offered to every man, 

 who possesses in literary or artistic culture a never- 

 failing source of pleasures, which are neither 

 withered by age, nor staled by custom, nor 

 embittered in the recollection by the pangs of 

 self-reproach. 



If the Institution opened to-day fulfils the 

 intention of its founder, the picked intelligences 

 among all classes of the population of this district 

 will pass through it. No child born in Birming- 

 ham, henceforward, if he have the capacity to profit 

 by the opportunities offered to him, first in the 

 primary and other schools, and afterwards in the 

 Scientific College, need fail to obtain, not merely 

 the instruction, but the culture most appropriate 

 to the conditions of his life. 



Within these walls, the future employer and the 

 future artisan may sojourn together for a while, 

 and carry, through all their lives, the stamp of the 

 influences then brought to bear upon them. Hence, 

 it is not beside the mark to remind you, that the 

 prosperity of industry depends not merely upon the 

 improvement of manufacturing processes, not 

 merely upon the ennobling of the individual char- 



