ADDRESS. X¢CVll 
ought to know the environment which, with or without your consent, is rapidly 
surrounding you, and in relation to which some adjustment on your part may be 
necessary. A hint of Hamlet’s, however, teaches us all how the troubles of 
common life may be ended ; and it is perfectly possible for you and me to pur- 
chase intellectual peace at the price of intellectual death. The world is not 
without refuges of this description ; nor is it wanting in persons who seek their 
shelter and try to persuade others to do the same. The unstable and the 
weak have yielded, and will yield to this persuasion, and they to whom 
repose is sweeter than the truth. But I would exhort you to refuse the 
offered shelter, and to scorn the base repose—to accept, if the choice be 
forced upon you, commotion before stagnation, the leap of the torrent before 
the stillness of the swamp. In the course of this address I have touched on 
debatable questions, and led you over what will be deemed dangerous ground 
—and this partly with the view of telling you that as regards these questions 
science claims unrestricted right of search. It is not to the point to say that 
the views of Lucretius and Bruno, of Darwin and Spencer, may be wrong. 
Here I should agree with you, deeming it indeed certain that these views 
will undergo modification. But the point is, that, whether right or wrong, 
we claim the right to discuss them. For science, however, no exclusive 
claim is here made ; you are not urged to erect it into an idol. . Inexorable 
advance of man’s understanding in the path of knowledge, and those un- 
quenchable claims of his moral and emotional nature which the understanding 
can never satisfy, are here equally set forth The world embraces not onlya 
Newton, but a Shakspeare—not only a Boyle, but a Raphael—not only a 
Kant, but a Beethoven—not only a Darwin, but a Carlyle. Not in each of 
these, but in all, is human nature whole. They are not opposed, but supple- 
mentary—not mutually exclusive, but reconcilable. And if, unsatisfied with 
them all, the hnman mind, with the yearning of a pilgrim for his distant 
home, will still turn to the Mystery from which it has emerged, seeking so 
to fashion it as to give unity to thought and faith, so long as this is done, not 
only without intolerance or bigotry of any kind, but with the enlightened 
recognition that ultimate fixity of conception is here unattainable, and that 
each succeeding age must be held free to fashion the mystery in accordance 
with its own needs—then, casting aside all the restrictions of Materialism, I 
would affirm this to be a field forthe noblest exercise of what, in contrast 
with the knowing faculties, may be called the creative faculties of man. 
Here, however, I touch a theme too great for me to handle, but which will 
assuredly be handled by the loftiest minds when you and I, like streaks of 
morning cloud, shall have melted into the infinite azure of the past. 
