We have improved our system of instruction in the college as fast as we could obtain the means, but we are persuaded that the best results can not be reached without the coöperation of the schools. We feel, therefore, that it is incumbent upon us, in the first place, to do everything in our power to prove to the teachers of this country how great is the educational value of the physical sciences, when properly taught; and secondly, to aid them in acquiring the best methods of teaching these subjects. It is with such aims that our summer courses have been instituted, and your presence here in such numbers is the best evidence that they have met a real want of the community. We welcome you to the university and to such advantages as it can afford, and we shall do all in our power to render your brief residence here fruitful, both in experience and in knowledge; hoping, also, that the university may become to you, as she has to so many others, a bright light shining calmly over the troubled sea of active life, ever suggesting lofty thoughts, encouraging noble endeavors, and inciting all her children to work together toward those great ends, the advancement of knowledge and the education of mankind.
II.
THE NOBILITY OF KNOWLEDGE.
An Address delivered before the Free Institute at Worcester, Massachusetts, July 28, 1874.
Within a comparatively few years schools for the instruction of artisans have become a prominent feature in the educational systems both of this country and of Europe, and seem destined to supersede the old system of apprenticeships. The establishment of these schools has been an important step in human progress, not because any great advantage has been gained in the cultivation of mechanical skill, but because here the future mechanic acquires culture of the mind as well as skill of the hand. Indeed, it may be doubted whether our utilitarian age can ever successfully compete with those "elder days of art" when
"Builders wrought with greatest care
Each minute and unseen part."
But, if our industrial schools do not make better mechanics than the workshops of the olden time, they certainly educate better men, and, by adding to skill, knowledge, they are elevating the mechanic and ennobling his calling.
If, therefore, these schools are the representatives in our age of the workshops with their bands of apprentices in the days of yore, then that by which the schools are distinguished, that which they have added to the old system, is not art but mental culture; and therefore, when asked to address you on this occasion, I could think of no more appropriate subject than the Nobility of Knowledge.
Identified with an institution in which mental culture is the chief aim, I felt that I was asked to address a body of cultivated working-men with whom, though employed in the mechanic arts, the acquisition of knowledge was also a privilege and a pride. I felt, moreover, that a proper appreciation of the true dignity of knowledge, in itself considered, and apart from all economical considerations, is one of the great wants of our age and of our country.