6 INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 



course for 1883-84. It occurred to me that Vassar 

 Brothers Institute might furnish a topic, whose discus- 

 sion would not be destitute of interest and might permit 

 some useful suggestions. 



Because the dedication address, as we will gratefully 

 remember ic, of Dr. T. Sterry Hunt, to which many of 

 us listened with so much delight and profit, was so ex- 

 clusively the masterly treatment of a strictly scientific 

 subject, the theme I have chosen, seemed thus to be left 

 for me. 



The genuine Institute, like the true poet, is born and 

 not made. And as, at its birth, it is a symbol of the 

 intellectual life of the community from which it springs, 

 so in all its growth and through the period of its maturity, 

 it is an index of the quality and quantity of that life. 

 It can come forth and exist and thrive amid most scanty, 

 defective and depressing material appointments, but it 

 is most fortunate when it can command, at once, an archi- 

 tectural expression and realization, every way confirma- 

 tive of its existence, helpful in its work and worthy as its 

 home and temple, to share its fame. 



The essential conditions of an Institute, with objects as 

 definite, varied and elevated as this has, as thoroughly 

 organized and established and as liberally endowed as 

 this already is, are rarely found in a city of the size of 

 ours. Mind and money in sufficient measure there may 

 be, but the will to consecrate both with adequate labor and 

 liberality to such cause, results from a combination of 

 unusual and harmonious influences. 



It might suffice the historian in his search for its origin, 

 to find the mind whose aggressive thought grew into the 

 first definite idea of its need and possibility. Yet that 

 mind, consciously, or unconsciously, felt the inspiration 

 of forces that were issuing from favoring facts. The 

 presence in our community of both literary and scientific 

 taste and ability cultured, organizing, persistent and 



