The exercise of wisdom marked him off from the lower order of beings, and he was fulfilling the distinctively human function only when living a rational life.
If nature is a congeries of metaphors arranged in a system of relations and constituting a sublime allegory, and we, being the offspring of God, may interpret this allegory and thereby come to a consciousness of verities, if there is a spiritual sense that may feel the presence of great truths and of a personal God—then man pursues his supreme calling when through the laws of physical nature, when through the beauty of its forms, when through knowledge of self, when through the world's history and literature and philosophy he aims at a further acquaintance with truth. If knowledge and the power that comes through knowledge enhance our material civilization and make more favorable conditions for the body and more leisure for the mind and more refinement for the spirit, if to create material things brings us more in accord with the creative spirit of the universe, then we have the highest incentives to gain knowledge toward so-called practical ends.
The universities are not always the first discoverers of wisdom, but they are the storehouses of the wisdom of the ages, and the distributing points. They are not a substitute for nature and real life, but they help to interpret both. They are not a substitute for practical experience, but they bestow the instruments with which to do better the work of practical experience. They do not create power, but they develop power.
A few geniuses have in strong degree the intellectual impulse and follow it until they become
