602 
INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS. 
life, perform their steady revolution from age to age : and 
you might think that one year, or even one century, was like 
another, and that the claims of duty remain the same for all 
generations. But a deeper study of the elements of which 
life and science consist, will show you that a most rapid 
movement is going on ; that every branch of knowledge is 
pressing forward to some new goal ; and that, even if we 
could sit still and do nothing, by the inertia of matter 
we should be rapidly carried along, only perhaps to find 
our neglect of duty a fresh source of our unhappiness. In 
our own age, the boy of sixteen has already seen changes 
so great, that, with his still limited experience, he can speak 
of things and employ phrases which used to belong to 
gray-headed men or to past epochs. In his time, the 
small and remote country town has been connected by a 
telegraphic wire with the capital cities of all Europe, and 
which, like a nerve makes it to thrill and sympathise with 
the rest of the world and in all that concerns trade and 
commerce, life and death, war and peace. In his time, the 
same isolated spot has become planted on a railroad, and its 
population now rock and sway with their new chances and 
possibilities, as a ship when it leaves the stocks and is for the 
first time launched on the briny and ever-rolling wave. In 
his time, great wars have burst upon the world, which, unlike 
former wars, have had as their issue, civilisation, humanity, 
progress, freedom, the advance of the industrial arts and the 
development of mind. In his time, the public offices have 
been opened to meritorious youths of all classes; and talent 
and efficiency have been recognised as the true claimants for 
promotion in the State. In short, the youth of sixteen has 
seen changes as surprising as could be recorded as belonging 
to several past centuries. The progress of the mind of every 
youth, and also every man, is therefore one of increased 
velocity ; and we may rest assured, from the nature of the 
force which is put upon us, and which is indeed a Divine 
force, that we are advancing to finer and ampler conditions 
of the understanding of nature, to greater powers of 
practical usefulness, to more fearful responsibilities attend- 
ing our more enlarged knowledge and wider field of use- 
fulness. 
Every one is indeed under the pressure of these new con- 
ditions, and lives, if I may so speak, in a moral and scientific 
climate charged with these forces ; but it may be asked, are 
all participating in the glories and the benefits which belong 
to them ? 
By no means every one ! and consequently the picture has 
