THE AUTHORITY OF SCIENCE 



WHITMAN H. JORDAN 



As a prologue to the subject that I have assigned myself, 

 permit me to present to the officers and students of the institu- 

 tion whose guests we are, my greetings and felicitations. This is, 

 indeed, an occasion for well-deserved congratulation and praise. 

 We are assembled within the borders of an institution that for 

 fifty years has rendered distinguished service in a new field of 

 education, and there are some features of this service which 

 merit generous and grateful recognition. 



To the trustees and faculty of this College, I would say that 

 it is a notable achievement to have taken a leading part in build- 

 ing new avenues along which knowledge has approached more 

 closely to human needs, especially when to do this in the face of 

 unbeHef or of dogmatic opposition has required on your part a 

 tenacious faith and an abiding courage. At the same time you 

 and your predecessors have manifested a spirit of rational and 

 safe conservatism. While your College has departed widely 

 from the curricula of the older institutions, it has held fast to the 

 great truth, the soundness of which can never be successfully 

 assailed, that the only way to uplift any industry is to develop 

 among those who are engaged in it not only technical knowledge 

 and skill, but intellectual and moral force. To this end the 

 vagaries and educational poverty of extreme specialization have 

 not been allowed to seize upon your courses of study. Evidently 

 you have not believed that "intensive knowledge" of one subject 

 compensates for "extensive ignorance" of everything else. It is 

 clear that you have not been willing wholly to subordinate to his 

 vocational skill a man's intellectual and social well-being. This 



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