EDGAR EVERHART—THE EDUCATIONAL NEED OF THE SOUTH. 31 
for their proper prosecution amounts far in excess of what is required 
for any other studies. Our laboratories and workshops should be 
thoroughly equipped and maintained. We must have no niggardly 
appropriations for the maintenance of these laboratories. 
Our people should be trained to see these things in the proper light, 
and the place where this training must be acquired is at the universi¬ 
ties. 
We want liberality and not narrow-mindness ; we want a liberal 
education and not a narrow one. Those institutions that to-day are 
doing the most good in arts, in letters and in science are the ones that 
pay the most attention to the last. Unfortunately none of these are in 
the South. 
Finally, I wish to call to your attention for a few moments the rela¬ 
tion between the State universities and the States themselves. These 
institutions of learning have been founded and are maintained by the 
State. The State, it seems to me, has the right to expect that most 
prominence should be given to those branches of knowledge that will 
be most productive of good to its citizens. For this reason the uni¬ 
versity should put a premium upon professional studies of all kinds 
and upon the natural sciences, for to these must th*e State lock for a 
direct return of its outlays. Every first class lawyer, physician, geol¬ 
ogist, engineer, physicist or chemist educated by the State can and will, 
repay the cost of his education many fold to the State. 
Our institutions of learning, however, should not only afford oppor¬ 
tunities for acquiring a knowledge of the practical applications of the 
various sciences; they should much more foster the pursuit of these 
sciences for the sake of the sciences themselves. They should en¬ 
courage their students to devote their lives to those nobler pursuits 
which look for their reward only in the discovery of truths. 
I trust that Texas, the newest of the Southern States, will be the first 
to realize the importance of the cultivation of the sciences. If she will 
then will she be the first to reap the benefit of her wisdom. 
I conclude with the same words with which I concluded my address 
on the opening of the Academy of Science. We should encourage by 
every means in our power the study and prosecution of the exact and 
natural sciences, because on them rest our comfort, our welfare, our 
progress, physically, mentally and morally. 
