6 
power. No training or teaching will make men equal in bodily 
or mental ability; but all, even the weakest, may be made 
stronger by cultivation. 
Those who are best endowed by nature should be afforded su¬ 
perior opportunities of improvement. But no positive signs have 
yet been discovered in children which indicate absolutely that 
they possess the natural qualities requisite to enable them to 
stand, at mature age, among the foremost in intellectual rank. 
Examination or experiment alone enables us to select those who 
are qualified to receive a higher degree of cultivation than the 
primary schools can give. For these high-schools and colleges 
are provided. They, in their means of instruction, are better 
furnished than the primary schools, but the best of them only 
prepare youths for higher culture, and then leave them to their 
own resources. 
No means adequate to their requirements have yet been pro¬ 
vided in our great city to facilitate in their progress, on the high¬ 
ways of knowledge, those who leave high-schools and colleges im¬ 
bued with a keen appetite for learning,—men who labor to learn 
for the pleasure of knowing. Yet it will be generally admitted 
that from graduates of this character the most prominently use¬ 
ful men of a nation are formed. A few great leaders in science 
and art are vastly more difficult to produce than hosts of capable 
followers. The highest degree of culture of which the human 
mind is susceptible cannot be given without suitable means and 
appliances. Colleges do no more than qualify those best en¬ 
dowed by nature to pursue the upward course. To reach the 
highest point in mental culture they need great libraries, galleries 
of painting and sculpture, and great museums conveniently 
arranged and located for easy reference and study. To meet 
this necessity in some degree at least, various societies have been 
formed and incorporated, each for the cultivation of some branch 
of learning, but having been established with very slender means 
in widely separated localities, they fulfil only very imperfectly 
the purposes of their organization. 
• What sources exist in this city to which aspiring graduates 
may resort for aid in securing to themselves a higher degree of 
mental culture than they possessed on commencement day ? 
