A  Aug^t  ?92airm' \       The  Significance  of  Education.  531 
It  is  the  province  of  education  to  point  out  the  direction  of  the 
quest  for  knowledge  and  for  the  truth  that  ages  ago  it  was  said  "shall 
make  you  free" — free  to  discriminate  between  the  true  and  the 
false  wherever  they  may  appear,  in  the  narrower  ethics  of  the  practice 
of  a  particular  profession  as  well  as  in  the  broader  affairs  of  civic 
and  national  life ;  free  to  discover  and  to  understand  the  false  claims 
of  charlatanism  in  all  phases  of  life  and  in  whatsoever  guise,  or  dis- 
guise, they  may  clothe  themselves  for  the  befoolment  of  the  crowd; 
free  to  value  at  their  real  worth  the  passing  fads  and  foibles  of  the 
moment  that  are  but  the  froth  borne  along  on  the  top  of  the  wave 
that  presently  will  recede  and  leave  the  wider  surface  unruffled  as . 
before ;  in  other  words,  free  to  recognize  that  truth,  and  truth  only, 
is  eternal,  and  that  all  else  sooner  or  later  in  God's  good  time  dis- 
appears wholly  from  the  sight  of  men,  that  it  ultimately  vanishes — 
an  intangible  shadow  without  substance  or  reality — back  into  the  in- 
finite space  from  which  it  momentarily  has  emerged  and  is  forgot- 
ten! 
There  has  been  no  greater  need  at  any  time  of  the  educated  man, 
and  no  time  like  the  present  time  to  keep  these  things  in  mind.  I 
have  always  remembered  a  phrase  used  by  President  Butler  in  the 
address  delivered  at  the  Columbia  Commencement  of  1917.  At  that 
time,  the  Great  War  was  still  in  its  throes  of  death  and  destruction, 
but  it  was  pointed  out  by  the  speaker  that  the  world  was  more  than 
a  world  at  war,  it  was  a  world  in  ferment.  What  he  meant  was  that 
the  political  and  social  conditions  that  always  follow  in  the  wake  of 
war,  and  as  a  consequence  of  it,  were  like  the  chemical  decomposi- 
tion of  an  organic  compound,  and  veritably  were  in  a  state  of  fer- 
mentation. 
What  was  said  then  in  the  midst  of  the  mighty  struggle  that 
was  still  going  on  is  unfc^rtunately  as  true  today  as  upon  the  day  on 
which  it  was  spoken.  The  world  is  still  in  ferment.  Old  standards 
of  conduct  have  been  obscured,  and  sometimes  forgotten.  Old  ideas 
of  duty  have  apparently  been  laid  aside.  Old  traditions  of  righteous- 
ness have  been  displaced  in  high  places.  New  ideas  of  individualism 
and  self-determination  have  swept  away  the  multitude,  and  a  new 
world,  in  many  respects  unlike  the  old,  has  taken  its  place.  In  spite, 
however,  of  all  that  is  new  and  disturbing  in  conditions  of  the  present 
which  have  followed  as  a  natural  consequence  the  destructive  forces 
of  the  war,  destructive  to  human  conditions  as  well  as  to  human  life, 
