6
with intelligence. Your advantages are rare. Human knowledge is the aggregate of human experience; daily something is added to the general stock—every new principle, every fresh fact gathered from nature or her laws, is a link the more to the chain by which we hope to escape from the labyrinths of ignorance, and approach the gates of everlasting knowledge. With the clue thus lengthened and strengthened to guide them, and an increasing stock to draw from, these graduates have enjoyed advantages of education which none before them have ever possessed. Many of the theories which were taught to us in youth, have been exploded. The text books, which you and I, Mr. President, used at school, have become obsolete. New lights have dawned since then. The world is older and wiser now, than it was when we were young.
The youth here have had not only all the advantages of education which we had in our day, but they have had the benefits also of all the new lights, the discoveries and improvement that have since been made. They are the greybeards, we the striplings.
As knowledge increases, our views are enlarged, our wants multiplied, and our social condition improved; under the pressure of newly constituted wants, there has gone forth from the schools a spirit of philosophical research which gives new strength to the human mind, and imparts to the ingenuity of man energies whose compass cannot be measured. Ever urging on to fresh conquests of mind over matter, the achievements of this spirit are seen in the discoveries, the inventions, and improvements which mark the times. Almost daily we hear of some new thing, of some triumph of mind over matter, which those who witness it are ready to pronounce the ne plus ultra of human
