The colored American., 1903-06-27
To Howard Graduates
Continued from first page.

serious admOn1tlOn, seems uQklnU.
But, since l come to greet you not only
at the closing of your instruction here,
but in the beginning of the real battle
of life, you will permit me to talk of
those practical things which the world
so seriously demands.
| told you in the beginning that the
super-structure which you will rear
in the future will bear some proper
tion of the foundation here laid. I
do not mean by that that the greatness
which you may may possibly achieve
in the future will be measured by the
number of studies you have had. the
books you have read or the curricu-
lum you have pursued. Nay, l dare
say that your instruction here will be
void OF much real worth unless you
have acquired something more than
memoriZed facts, or supposed facts;
something more than the knowledge
of rules and exceptions, of historical
incidents and dates, of words and def
nitions, of places and names, of diVi-
sions and subdivisions, of epochs and
battles, of the earth and its formation
of the universe and its worlds. These
things are good and it is we'll that you
know them; but merely to know them
is not culture, it may pass for learn
Jag, but it is not education. You per-
haps know better than | do that the
word education derives its meaning
from two words which when COM
pounded means the drawing out of or
from. To be educated, then, by the
means of acquiring facts and princi-
pies; facts and principles must draw
out the mind; not only draw out the
mind but, out from the mind its latent
pOtentialities and possibilities. Your
dormant faculties, weak no doubt in
some ways when you came here,
should be stronger now by reason of
the contact and vigorous exercise to
which you have been made to subject
them. Your minds capacity, let me
assume, is broader by the constant
stretching, and the intricate machine
for thinking responds to the will with
a deftness, a precision and conStancy
not yet heretofore experienced. This
thinking apparatus is not you, it is
yours and you must master it. You
supply it with facts, principles and
data; order it's motion and it must
supply you with ideas, arguments,
judgments. resolves and purposes; it
must unmix the real from the fanci-
full, the false from the true, and you
should take your place in the world
an effective living potentiality, an edu-
Gated man.
l will not venture out of my limits
hHOW Il am SAFE III saying IIldI InG
greatest lawyer is not always the one
who knows the greatest number of
cases or who can repeat the most legal
dicta; it is the lawyer whose mind
has been trained to accurate, concen-
trated thinking, who becomes the lead
er at the bar, who dictates legal opin-
ions from his brief, and chains jurors
to his point of view. You live in an
age when men speak in vain, who
speak TO no purpose, and delve in
facts and not in reason. 1t is better
that you have acquired here only a
few facts and learned to reason well
upon them, than that you have stored
in your mind a whole College curric-
ulun, yet lacking the faculty to make
them your aids in the practical affairs
of life Mighty as truth is, one man
and one truth is worth a thousand
truths without a man.
Mere knowledge has given no man
passport to the higher realm Of
thought and action. Those who have
trod the highest peaks of human ac-
complishment and died like Moses
upon Mt Nebo, close TO the radiant
splendor of God, alone and solitary
upon some high peak of unrivalled
excellence, leaving the world and man
kind debtor forever for what they did
and spoke, were those who added to