New Orleans Republican. [volume] (New Orleans, La) 1867-1878, 1874-08-30

/ port him well, or to enter on his studies for
one of the learned professions
| have now detained you longer time to
say what had to say than l would have
done if | could have taken more time to
| prepare it.
| look upon 1t as an important event for
| Louisiana that such school as have indi-
| Gated as the school wanted by our time has
been successfully inaugurated here and
manned by so able and laborious "a corps
OF professors, and so Unexpectedly largely
| attended by students.
Your worthy president and his eminent
assistants deserve the praise and congratu-
iatlon or all the people of the State. They
may not have ''builded wiser than they
Knew" but they have certainly, in an
nnostentatious and honest way, builded
something better than those around them
knew. They have erected a monument
more enduring than brass" which will
grow with years and be the pride and bless
ing OF generations.
Let Inc say to you. young gentlemen, that
the field OF yoGr own Stale oifers speedy
lanreis and renown to the first corps of
scientific lnquirers your college shall send
out.
Let me name at random some matters
urgently waiting investigation. We want
some young Southern scientist TO 90 into the
cotton fields as NJ. Planchon went into tAe
vineyards of France, and lind out what the
army worm is and what will destroy it.
We want some inventor to frame the new
cotton harvester. We want some person to
throw away books and theories and find
out for us what the yellow fever is We
want some one to find for us one or two
new staple products for our sugar lands.
We want come ono to find out a sure and
speedy method of eXtinguishing fires, be-
i
city.
We want some one to tell Us how a city
with large river on one side and a lake on
the other, both higher than it is. and run
ming around it like the rim of q saucer
around the bowl, can be so beautifully sup.
piled with water that you can get drink
without paying for it and wash your face at
every corner and have water to put out
fires and TOR the boys to battle in, and at
the same time be decently and thoroughly
drained
You will not go far, young gentlemen, in
the study of nature before you will become
~ Ofoun0ly impressed with truth that
forced itself strongly upon my mind when
as student was pursuing some chemical
experiments. That the mysterious force
which you will find confronting you every
where you turn in your experiments is
living force. That al these apparently sep
Guilty related. That the fierce which draws
the stone TO the earth, the earth to the sun,
the rivers to the clouds, the clouds to the
rivers. and the rivers to the sea; the force
that EXPANDS and contracts with the oper
atoms Of heat and cold; tho force which
weds two atoms Of matter III chemical union,
and drives them apart; the force that
travels through the air by "a path which
no fowl knoweth," shifting the earth with
flames, girdling it with messages, or as the
steel strikes tire from the flint, striking
sparks OF lite from the oxygen Of the air;
the force which draws the filings to the
magnet; which arranges the molecules OF
the crystal in shapes of startling symmetry
and beauty, and which shakes the quivering
jeliy-like ether in which our globe swims,
and causes that ''sliver of the stars which
we call light, are all the cons tant, active
manifest ations OF life.
And 20 borrow the words of one OF Amer
lea S foremost orators and deepest thinkers,
whose genius honOrs and illumineS our own
city of New Orleans. you WILL perhaps.
come 10 see that "There is no force out
there is Will behind it, But you will also
learn that that force eiudes your touch. and
that you can never grasp-neyer ind-it
This very solid wood and stone on which
we stand-divide 1t IN two; divide those
parts il two; divide those, and divide those,
and 90 on dividing, with the aid of micro
scope and micrometor. till you come to the
limit of the solid: then convert your last
lniinitesimal particle into a gas, and divide
that; expand and divide that half; and
thus 60 on expanding and dividing, until
ven have exhausted the last known means
of analysis, and seem TO come to nothing;
there is yet something left. You have
simply touched intinity. 1t is-and it is
there. but we can not see or hear, or feel i.
Look ont int the sky. Your eye meets
the blue and awful space. 1t goes beyond
the orbits OF the earth. of Jupitur, of Sat
urn, of the farthest planets; out farther,
beyond the orbit Of the sun itself; out
farther, beyond the orbits Of other sans,
beside whose immensely the sun, with the
orbits of ali its mighty planets is
, twinkling point; OuC farther, beyond the
widest orbit of the tarthest sun-where!
You have touched the infinite again and
can not find it.
Our eyes look out into one infnity, the
awful space that reaches TO eternity, and
they feel that SILVER of the universe which
trayeIses that space and which we call light.
Our feet stand on another infinity, thin
shell. the foam of wave, rocking and
breaking on sea of motion. and we feel the
restless tides OF that ocean beneath, which
we call force. Thus, in the solemn mystery
of life, we stand between two minutes,
touching both vet finding neither. Beware,
therefore. Of thinking that the only real
Things in this world are science and the
things o. science.