Science has its competition, as keen as
that which is the life of commerce. But its rivalries are over the
question who shall contribute the most and the best to the sum
total of knowledge; who shall give the most, not who shall take
the most. Its animating spirit is love of truth. Its pride is to
do the greatest good to the greatest number. It embraces not only
the whole human race but all nature in its scope. The public
spirit of which this city is the focus has made the desert blossom
as the rose, and benefited humanity by the diffusion of the
material products of the earth. Should you ask me how it is in the
future to use its influence for the benefit of humanity at large,
I would say, look at the work now going on in these precincts, and
study its spirit. Here are the agencies which will make "the voice
of law the harmony of the world." Here is the love of country
blended with love of the race. Here the love of knowledge is as
unconfined as your commercial enterprise. Let not your youth come
hither merely to learn the forms of vertebrates and the properties
of oxides, but rather to imbibe that catholic spirit which,
animating their growing energies, shall make the power they are to
wield an agent of beneficence to all mankind.
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