THE

HARVARD GRADUATES' MAGAZINE.

VOL. XII.-DECEMBER, 1903. - No. 46.

CULTURE.1

Of course you all wish to be happy. This is what we all wish, and even think ourselves very ill used if we are unhappy. By a blessed provision of our nature there is a certain assured, inextinguishable share of happiness within the reach of every son of Adam. It lies in work, steady, unremitting work. "Man," says the Bible, "is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward," but kindly nature never wholly deserts her offspring; the shelter she provides against these inevitable troubles is work, work to the very last day of life.

With the knowledge that your happiness depends on work, you are strengthened for the decision which to-morrow thrusts upon you. Will you take the steerage of your own course, and, selecting the butt and sea-mark of your utmost sail, bend all your energies to reach it? Or will you aimlessly drift, the sport of wind and tide, and gain your final haven, water-logged, with tangle and bitter brine your only freight?

Ah me; if to choose were all that is needful! if, after the choice be made, the goal were as good as won! But, out in the world the winds and the currents are so strong, that even with the stoutest heart, we can barely outride the storms; and, should final wreck overwhelm us, where lies the fault? Is it in the ship, or in our sea-craft? If, with the bravest front, we are borne down in a fair battle, is it not that we are unskilled in the use of our weap

1 At the Editor's request, Dr. Furness has kindly consented to the publication of these extracts from the Commencement Oration delivered at the University of Pennsylvania, June 17, 1903.

ons? We have been attacked in quarters where we least expected, and alas! we are unprepared.

Clearly the answer is, our resources must be increased. What are our resources? They are the talents, the abilities with which nature has endowed us; and they are to be developed, like all things else, by cultivation; and, if we are wise, by cultivating them to the utmost extent in our power; not a square inch of our minds should lie fallow. The result of this cultivation is, if you will permit the tautology, CULTURE, which is strictly a process, but generally understood as a result. It is an object dearly sought by all. There cannot be a civilized man so brutish as to be willing to remain uncultivated. There is, moreover, a certain parable concerning talents which strikes home to us all.

Culture is generally supposed to be something reserved only for those whose time is free, and at their own disposal. On the stern, prosaic lines of our daily professional lives culture is assumed to be a superfluous arabesque, an ornamental flourish. Believe me; this is not so. Culture is an arabesque, but it is not superfluous. It is essential to our best success in life, and is of vital and infinite importance to every active mind.

Thus you stand to-day. To some one pursuit you are to devote your lives. To it you must bend all your energy. To grasp its highest rewards you must strain every nerve. In it, no thoroughness can be too exacting, or too minute. And, in addition to all this, you must be men of culture, the wider our culture, the greater are our chances of success in our chosen pursuit. Wherefore, in this aspect culture has actually a mercantile, a downright pecuniary value. It widens our horizon, opens new avenues of thought, quickens our perception, matures our judgment, and inspires that calm composure wherein lies the mastery of an untoward situation. Culture never slumbers, and never deserts us. When we are sore bestead, it suggests expedients, and summons to our side the sages of the past. Lo, these are some of the resources wherewith culture furnishes us.

Like the universal blessings of Nature, like light, like air, like the warm sun, culture is free to all. In varying degrees, it is within the reach of the humblest and highest. Like death, it may be found in the stately mansions of the rich, and in the dwellings of the poor.

Whatever the rank in life, whether young or old, whatever the calling or profession, whether lawyers, or doctors, merchants, presidents of corporations, there is no station that is not broadened by culture. No learning can be too multifarious for a lawyer; no fact in human ethics valueless to a physician; no widening of the scope of political economy a matter of indifference to the merchant; no breath, fresh from the fields of literature, uninvigorating to the country boy by a winter's fire. This liberal culture is to be gained by reading, reading, reading; for which the opportunities in this favored country are almost the birthright of all. By you, college-bred men, it is to be gained by building on the foundations here laid during your college course; and unless you do rear a fair structure on these foundations, the time expended here in laying them has been wasted; and let me tell you that, at the close of life, the reflection is not cheerful which reveals that some of its choicest very 't is a years are gone for naught, fine thorn for pillows, and I wish the luckless wretch who tries to sleep thereon, joy of it.

But some of you may say, "It's all very well to extol culture to the skies, and dazzle our eyes with its charms; but how, in the name of all the gods at once, are we to find time to acquire a thorough knowledge of all human learning?"

Fair and softly, young sir, when did I say that this same blessed culture must be thorough? I said it must be extensive; but I breathed no syllable that it must be thorough or profound. For, look you, in the youth of the world, what was the amount of the entire stock of all human knowledge? When the whole science of electricity was comprised in the solitary fact that if amber be rubbed it attracts straws; when all that astronomy revealed was that stars were exhalations which the rising sun dispersed ; when in all chemistry there were but four elements,-earth, air, fire, and water; and when no music was heard more ravishing than that extracted from three strings stretched across a tortoise shell, or than breath blown through a reed, then in that happy golden age, every man was an Encyclopaedia, and culture, thorough and profound, might be acquired in an hour, then any child could pluck up the whole tree of knowledge by the roots. But we have changed all that; we are now the heirs of forty centuries, and the heaven high Sequoias of Mariposa only very faintly symbolize the gigantic pro