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SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XVIII. No. 449. 



portant to his little circle a student may- 

 have been as an undergraduate, he is likely 

 to meet with a chilly reception unless he 

 is well qualified for arduous service in the 

 work of the world. Those who have thus 

 qualified, however, may go forth with con- 

 fidence ; for as ours is preeminently the age 

 of educational opportunity, so is it pre- 

 eminently the age of professional and 

 business opportunity. There never was 

 a time when talent, energy and enter- 

 prise in young men Avere so much in 

 demand as at present. Men who can 

 plan and execxite; men who can work out 

 knotty problems in engineering, in trans- 

 portation, in sanitation and in finance ; and 

 men who can study aright the mighty 

 questions of industrial and social economy 

 now confronting us, are everywhere needed. 

 Above all, there is a demand for men who 

 can see straight, and who can live lives free 

 from moral obliquity; men who can expose 

 the frauds of politicians and the tricks of 

 boodlers and grafters; and men who can 

 demonstrate, by example as well as by pre- 

 cept, that the homely virtues of honesty, 

 industry and sobriety are not dying out in 

 our land. 



The world demands men who are not 

 afraid of hard labor; those who would 

 work during a portion, only, df their leisure 

 time, need not apply. The world demands 

 men who are patient and enduring; those 

 who can not find pleasure in business, but 

 who would make a business of pleasure, are 

 not wanted. The world demands men of 

 courage and convictions; those who vacil- 

 late and temporize are sure to be beaten in 

 the race of life. 



Young men often wonder why they get 

 on so slowly and why the world puts so 

 low an estimate on their abilities. While 

 the element of chance is not wholly negli- 

 gible in these matters, and while 'influence' 

 and 'pull,' especially in politics, sometimes 



interfere with 'natural selection,' the rea- 

 son is generally plain in any individual 

 case. The simple fact is that the world 

 sets severely high requirements for the 

 competent and the trustworthy, and in nine 

 cases out of ten the men who are rejected 

 have failed to pass in these requirements. 



Along with the great advantages now 

 afforded for education, and along with the 

 inspiring fields of work now open to edu- 

 cated men there should go a correspondingly 

 high sense of duty on the part of our col- 

 lege graduates. They are in no sense aris- 

 tocrats, and they would become ridiculous 

 in the assumption of any unproved superi- 

 ority. Nevertheless, if they are too sensi- 

 tively possessed of that modesty which is 

 born of a knowledge of things, we may say 

 for them noblesse oblige without imdue 

 hesitancy. You who go forth to-day, 

 therefore, must assume, if you bear well 

 your responsibilities, new and increasing 

 obligations, obligations to your college, ob- 

 ligations to your country and obligations 

 to j'-our fellow men of the world. 



Those of you who have caught the spirit 

 of progress which animates modern sci- 

 ence have a special duty to perform. Ours 

 is the epoch of imparalleled improvements 

 and advances. In all that makes for the 

 permanent progress of humanity, the con- 

 tributions of science in the nineteenth cen- 

 tury alone are held by competent judges 

 to compare favorably with those from all 

 other sources throughout historic time. 

 You are among the heirs of these contribu- 

 tions, and it rests with you, in part, to 

 determine what use may be made of them. 

 A flood of light is available, but it would 

 appear to illuminate the intelligence of 

 only a small fraction of our race. When 

 we consider to what extent superstition and 

 error prevail at the present day with the 

 most enlightened peoples of the world, it 

 is plain that the scientific habit of mind is 



