Different states or societies at different times have built 

 monuments to the principles they worshipped; to express 

 their faiths or to point their hopes. A mystic race built 

 the Pyramids. Today these stand, lonesome sentinels in 

 the desert, typifying nothing save that races not soundly 

 founded will perish. Tamerlane built a structure of skulls 

 in testimony of his faith in war and its all-conquering 

 power. It crumbled scarcely as fast as his leadership, his 

 empire, his people, and his race ; as the false principles upon 

 which he had based the success of his efforts. The Pagan 

 races erected temples to earth-made gods, but these people 

 banished, their gods are forgotten, their temples have dis- 

 appeared, or their fragments remain in proof that what is 

 not true cannot be perpetuated. The triumphal arches 

 of the Eomans serve only to remind us that the judgment 

 which called them such was mistaken, and that a race 

 devoted to conquest and oppression will disappear. The 

 monuments upon the torture fields of Smithfield and Salem 

 are the tombstones of dead institutions. 



The monument we have built here was built in another 

 spirit. It was built in submission to an all-prevading law, 

 built in harmony with nature. It was built to serve human 

 need and not the greed or vanity of privilege. It was built 

 in devotion to knowledge and industry, the everlasting 

 things. It will survive, in the things it stands for, while 

 the world lasts. Tens of millions of people will come to 

 this fair land, to live here a more involved and elaborated 

 life than the world has elsewhere known. If they keep 

 their eyes upon this temple and walk in its shadow, if they 

 practice the truths for which it stands, their society will 

 live as long. 



Today we reaffirm that faith. Let us rededicate our- 

 selves to the efforts which have brought about this hour. 

 Let us build this structure higher and broader until its 

 spirit is in every heart and until every hearthstone in our 

 country becomes part of its foundation. 



