PHILADELPHIA COLLEGE OF PHARMACY. 85 
taken advantage of all the facilities presented to yon, for 
adequately preparing yourselves to fill your high office. 
You now go forth, trusting solely to the character you 
have earned, and are about to engage in a struggle for pre- 
ferment — a struggle which will call forth all the abilities of 
which you are possessed, and which will be arduous and 
protracted. Your training for the effort has ceased ; your 
starting point is from this place, and from this moment- 
With so auspicious an entrance upon the course before you, 
much will be expected from you, and undoubtedly much 
will be accomplished by you. 
A.second requisite of success, consists in the adaptation of 
the talents that may be possessed,, and knowledge that has 
been acquired, to thecircumstancesby which the individual 
is surrounded. No reasoning is necessary to be convinced, 
that the affairs of this world are not stationary. Demon- 
stration is given on every side, that its whole surface is 
mobile. Time moves on, and carries with it the mass ; not 
directing it into one channel, but breaking up and separat- 
ing it into a multitude of currents. Progression is insepa- 
rable from our condition, a wise provision of our Maker, 
by which in his scheme of direction and government, the 
state of mankind is improved and elevated ; and stagnation 
of all noble qualities prevented. The world as it was 
originally, and as it now is, presents aspects so diversified 
and so discrepant, that it would be impossible to under- 
stand the connexion, were we not familiar with this all 
powerful, eternally operative law of creation. It applies 
to every thing, and the idea of quiescence is not only un- 
philosophical, but unnatural. 
With this mutability in the events of life, the mind of 
man is wonderfully in unison ; active, restless, and unsettled, 
it perpetually seeks to expend its energy in new and unex- 
plored directions, To be passive is to retrograde. 
Among the older nations of the earth, the changes that 
are entailed are not as perceptible as they might be, because 
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