THE LEHIGH UNIVERSITY, 
 
 ASA PACKER, FOUNDER. 
 
 | " 2-0 
 
 -* 
 
 Origins and Destiny 
 
 AN ADDRESS 
 
 DELIVERED ON 
 
 FOUNDER’S DAY, 
 
 9 ( 
 
 OCTOBER 13, 1898, 
 
 BY 
 
 LANGDON C. STEYVARDSON, 
 
 CHAPLAIN OF THE UNIVERSITY. 
 
 PUBLISHED BY THE UNIVERSITY, 
 South Bethlehem, Pa. 
 
 1898. 
 
The New Era Printing Company 
 
 LANCASTER, PA. 
 
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 ORIGINS AND DESTINY. 
 
 The institution of Founder’s Day carries our minds back 
 by inevitable necessity to the origin of this University. It 
 recalls the infant “ School of Science’’ and its large-hearted 
 father. It reminds us whence we came and by whom we 
 were begotten. To-day we are all present at the birth of 
 Lehigh University. The class rooms and laboratories of 
 1898 are for the moment deserted. We have gathered 
 about our common cradle. We have gone back to our 
 beginnings. 
 
 Such an occasion has, therefore, seemed to me a fitting 
 one for the discussion, in some of its bearings, of a subject 
 which I have entitled “ Origins and Destiny.” It involves, 
 as you have immediately divined, the old questions of 
 “ whence and whither”—the past and the future of life. 
 But old as these questions are they have never lost the 
 glamour which has surrounded them from the beginning, 
 neither has the fascination which they have always pos¬ 
 sessed grown less with time. If, then, what I have to say 
 to-day is dull and leaves you listless and uninterested the 
 fault must rest with me and not with my subject. The only 
 merit, indeed, to which I can lay claim is that of having 
 chosen a good text. 
 
 Turning, first of all, to “ origins,” we find them every¬ 
 where shrouded in mist and night. Darkness is upon the 
 face of the earth and in it are enveloped primitive man 
 and primitive religion, primitive language, primitive cus¬ 
 toms, primitive life. Dark and mysterious, however, as 
 this land of the beginnings is, the human mind, whether by 
 speculation or research, has sought in all ages to explore 
 and reveal its secrets. Even the “ Australian Blacks,” as 
 we are told by Mr. Palmer—one who lived among them 
 
4 — 
 
 and knew them intimately—are by no means indifferent to 
 
 •J 
 
 the future and the past. “They wonder,” he says, 
 “ among themselves and talk at night about these things, 
 and the past existence of their race and how they came 
 here.” In truth, the problem of the beginnings of things is 
 possessed of irresistible attractions for the children of men ; a 
 fact for which we have a mass of evidence. In prehistoric 
 ages, for example, men were confronted with the marvel of 
 fire and sought forthwith to explain its advent by the myth 
 of Prometheus. They were brought face to face with the 
 wonders of the universe and framed among others the 
 legendary theory of their origin we find in Genesis. The 
 varieties of language also were a mystery to them and so 
 they constructed the story of the Tower of Babel to account 
 for their beginnings. 
 
 Passing from the mythical to the philosophical era of de¬ 
 velopment the question of “ Origins” still maintains its 
 outstanding character. Homer and Hesiod had indeed 
 ascribed to Oceanus and Tethys the origin of all things, 
 but the first Greek philosophers, emancipating themselves 
 from mythical conceptions, sought to interpret nature by 
 tracing her phenomena to some natural source. One found 
 it, as we all remember, in water; another in air; while a 
 third, the most famous of them all, carried the sum of 
 phenomenal existence back to primitive atoms—alike in 
 quality but differing in weight and size and shape. 
 
 Again, in endeavoring to account for religion and the 
 .gods, Euhemerus, anticipating Mr. Spencer, traced their 
 •origin to the worship of kings and heroes; while Lucre¬ 
 tius, forestalling the doctrine of animism, announced that 
 “the dreams of men peopled the heavens with gods.” 
 Such are a few examples, and thousands more might be 
 cited, of the wide and early interest in origins. 
 
 Of late years, owing to the multiplicity of conflicting 
 theories, the varied and sometimes bizarre reconstructions 
 of primitive man, together with much unlicensed dogma- 
 
- 0 - 
 
 tism about “ first causes,” it has become the habit of many 
 writers to affirm that we know nothing at all about first 
 causes and primitive man and the like; assertions which 
 are indeed almost, if not quite literally, true, but which for 
 all that are likely^ to convey a false impression if they 
 beget the idea that the whole search for beginnings is a 
 futile and time-wasting operation. Professor Brinton is 
 for his part more than justified in reminding us that “ we 
 know little, if anything, about the earliest men,” and that 
 “their religion would make a short chapter;” and again 
 “that primitive to the ethnologist means the earliest of a 
 given race or tribe of whom he has trusty information.” 
 Cautious language such as this is far from likely to arouse 
 the suspicion that the anthropologist is a fool for his pains 
 or that ethnology^ is a wild-goose chase, foreordained to 
 failure and confusion. But when a brilliant and versatile 
 writer like Mr. Andrew Lang declares “ that the origin of 
 a belief in God is beyond the ken of history and of specu¬ 
 lation,” he seems to give as his opinion that all research in 
 this direction is vain and that human effort had best be 
 switched off into other channels. And yet, notwithstand¬ 
 ing the implied distrust of the search for origins contained 
 in the above quotation, coupled as it is in Mi*. Lang’s writ¬ 
 ings with endless jeers and flings at the science of an¬ 
 thropology, we find our author, in his latest work “The 
 Making of Religion,” endeavoring with much zeal and 
 increased information to solve the problem of primitive 
 faith—“cutting a path” as he himself expresses it, 
 “ through the jungles of early religions.” 
 
 All of which goes to show that, although the beginnings 
 of things are unknown and involved in mystery, the en¬ 
 deavor to clear up the mystery is inevitable. As a matter 
 of fact nothing can quench the interest of the human heart 
 in cosmical or human origins, and nothing can successfully 
 obstruct the slow but certain delineation of that sequence 
 of events by which the earth was shaped and living things 
 
— 6 — 
 
 appeared and man emerged to run his fateful course. In 
 like manner, nothing can prevent that gradual extension 
 of human history by which the darkness which covers man’s 
 early life upon this planet is being pushed yet further back 
 towards the beginning. Efforts archaeological, efforts eth¬ 
 nological, efforts philological, efforts palaeontological and 
 many more are constantly in operation to achieve this end ; 
 and if, as we have already seen, the past showed interest in 
 the origins of things, the present is even yet more zealous 
 in their pursuit. Last summer, while browsing about 
 among the new books displayed upon the shelves of a 
 London bookstore, my eye was attracted by a certain re¬ 
 markable similarity in their titles. There was one book 
 called the “ Origin and Growth of the United States,” 
 there was another entitled the “ Origin and Growth of 
 Plato’s Republic” and there again a third bearing in great 
 gilt letters upon its blue cover the attractive inscription 
 “ Origin and Growth of the Moral Instinct.” Wherever 
 I looked, in fact, the word “Origin” started into view; 
 and this experience, trivial though it was, impressed me as 
 a striking testimony to the prominence which origins or 
 beginnings occupy in current thought. Mr. Darwin, above 
 all others, is of course responsible for this unquestionable 
 prominence. He has given to the struggle towards begin¬ 
 nings not only the impetus of a fresh inspiration, but the 
 guidance of a new light; and, however wide may be the 
 gaps in our knowledge of cosmic development, and no 
 matter how numerous the missing links, the conviction has 
 taken root that the course of this universe, with all its ca¬ 
 tastrophes, stagnations, retrogressions and advances has 
 been and is an ordered sequence—that events precede and 
 follow each other according to law—that pervading the 
 whole vast reach of progress from the nebula to man, there 
 is a principle of continuity. 
 
 Hence, not in one department alone, but in all, we find 
 the search for origins in course of vigorous prosecution. 
 
— 7 — 
 
 The philosopher probes for first principles, the chemist an¬ 
 alyzes for elements, the philologist digs for roots. Biology, 
 for more reasons than one, is busy with the earliest and 
 simplest forms of life, while ethnology is profoundly con¬ 
 cerned with primitive peoples—their language, religion, 
 laws. Again, astronomy has, to all intents and purposes, 
 demonstrated the nebulous origin of our planetary system, 
 while geology has traced in great outlines and through vast 
 and bewildering reaches of time, the history of the earth. 
 Never, in fact, has the search for origins been more earnest 
 and widespread than at the present day. 
 
 On the other hand, there are not a few people who look 
 upon the whole effort as a waste of time, a futile grubbing 
 in the past, a culpable desertion of the present, a need¬ 
 less and gratuitous return to Adam. To which it may be 
 replied first of all that past and present cannot be separated 
 by any hard and fast line, and that he alone is able to un¬ 
 lock the secrets of departed days, who is familiar with the 
 living world. “ By these researches into the state of the 
 earth and its inhabitants at former periods,” says Sir 
 Charles Lyell, “ we acquire a more perfect knowledge of 
 its present condition and more comprehensive views con¬ 
 cerning the laws now governing its animate and inanimate 
 productions. * * * If we would enlarge our experi¬ 
 
 ence of the present economy of nature, we must investigate 
 the effects of her operations in former epochs.” Again, it 
 was only by an examination of volcanoes now active and by 
 comparing their structure and the composition of their lavas 
 with the ancient trap rocks that geologists were able to as¬ 
 certain the igneous origin of certain primitive formations. 
 In like manner it is only by knowledge of the folk-lore of 
 existing peoples and by careful study of the customs and 
 beliefs of living savages that we can obtain an insight into 
 the life of primitive man ; while he who would discover the 
 origin of religion can find it only at its psychical source— 
 the soul that liveth now. 
 
— 8 — 
 
 And so we see that the past is by no means dead and 
 gone. The forces of nature that were at work in the be¬ 
 ginning are operative still, while the thoughts and customs 
 of extinct peoples survive not merely in savage lands, but 
 in the very bosom of our boasted civilization. 
 
 Now it is this last fact which shows us that the search 
 for origins does not necessarily mean retreating to the 
 earliest ages or camping out with palaeolithic man. The 
 endeavor to ascertain the causes of social corruption and 
 advancement is occupying the heads of our political reform¬ 
 ers, and everywhere throughout the laboratories of Europe 
 and America thoughtful students are investigating the 
 germs of disease, the beginnings of evil. Here it is that 
 the practical consequences of the search for origins 
 “ spring into the eyes,” to use a German idiom, of the 
 veriest Philistine. Pasteur and Koch, by ascertaining the 
 origin of certain maladies, have been able to prevent or 
 cure them. The science of sanitation and hygiene discov¬ 
 ered the beginnings of plague and 1 pestilence in human 
 filth. And what have been the consequences? Not only 
 have we cleaner and more sightly streets, but cholera, 
 which in former ages swept the land like a scourge, is little 
 feared, while typhus, once so dreadful in its ravages, is 
 only seldom heard of. Again, by finding out the real 
 cause of insanity, by learning it was not due to demoniacal 
 possession but to bodily disease, many a poor distracted 
 soul has been spared the torture of an unmerited sorrow, 
 while from the heart of judge and care-taker alike, has been 
 lifted the curse of an uncalled-for cruelty. Once more, 
 researches in chemistry and physics, researches which 
 traced the origin of phenomena to natural antecedents in¬ 
 stead of to magic or satanic compact, have produced not 
 only all those marvelous discoveries from Roger Bacon to 
 Rontgen, but have led to most of those inventions by which 
 business has been enlarged and civilization promoted. In 
 fine it was the search for the natural origins of the phe- 
 
— 9 
 
 nomen a of chemistry and physics which brought about the 
 overthrow of the revolting superstitions of sorcery and 
 magic. In doing this it gave to the world increased 
 knowledge and better instruments of investigation, created 
 new industries and opened up untrodden paths of enter¬ 
 prise and happiness. 
 
 Bearing in mind, therefore, that the search for origins 
 means not merely going back towards the first beginnings 
 in time, but also the observation- of present phenomena and 
 the reduction of them to their simplest and most elementary 
 forms, let us now notice, in addition to the eminently 
 practical results just mentioned, some of the other impor¬ 
 tant consequences of this process of research. 
 
 And the first consequence that I shall ask you to observe 
 is that of intellectual unity. By means of the search for 
 origins we find a practical opportunity for the satisfaction 
 of our intellectual needs. Our minds, for example, are 
 stormed by a perfect chaos of heterogeneous impressions. 
 All is in confusion. But then we begin to reduce this 
 chaos to order. We take the impressions and compare 
 them. We observe certain likenesses and differences 
 among them. We arrange them in series ; grasp them as 
 things of a kind, pervaded by a common principle or 
 quality; call them sights, smells, sounds, animals and 
 vegetables, organic and inorganic. Then we enlarge or 
 develop the series by fact or inference. New similarities, 
 not evident at first, begin to appear. Series which 
 formerly dwelt apart—separate sciences for example—are 
 brought into relation with each other. Generalization 
 broadens—rational synthesis becomes more comprehen¬ 
 sive—and with it the effort is made to find the ultimate un¬ 
 changing causes of the processes of nature and mind. 
 
 Thus we see that the postulate or presupposition of this 
 whole search for origins is the rationality of things. As 
 the mind faces nature or itself its belief is that whatever is 
 is rational, intelligible; that the chaos of impressions, the 
 
-IO 
 
 multitude of heterogeneous phenomena—the countless 
 worlds of space and the untold events of time—can all be 
 brought into relation—be unified within the synthesis of 
 thought. It is this belief in the rationality of things which 
 is the parent alike of science and philosophy and which 
 spurs men on to renewed intellectual exertions. Many in¬ 
 deed are the unsolved problems, vast are the tracts of 
 tangled and confused experience which seem to know no 
 law, innumerable have been the errors and failures of hu¬ 
 man thinkers and investigators ; but still the faith abides 
 that “ the Author of this Universe will not put us to perma¬ 
 nent intellectual confusion.” The result is that with this 
 undying postulate of the rationality of things the search for 
 origins goes on ; and although the first causes have not 
 been reached, although the beginnings of things remain in 
 darkness, nevertheless the effort itself has within certain 
 areas succeeded in bringing unity out of chaos and turn¬ 
 ing darkness into light. 
 
 Starting thus with the postulate of rationality the human 
 mind, by tracing complex or highly organized phenomena 
 back to their simplest observable forms, is able to discover 
 a certain “ continuum ” throughout the whole of any given 
 series. The simpler the forms the more readily, in many 
 cases, the fundamental elements characteristic of any class 
 of phenomena reveal themselves. In protoplasm the bi¬ 
 ologist can study the basic activities which pervade all life ; 
 in the roots of speech the philologist can observe the ele¬ 
 ments which run through all the higher and more compli¬ 
 cated forms of language ; in the faiths of primitive peoples 
 the anthropologist can discern the common rudiments of all 
 religion. Thus it is that a certain identity or sameness is 
 discernible among the most diverse phenomena. Hydro¬ 
 gen remains identical with itself through all the many 
 forms of combination in which it appears. Tongues so 
 diverse as to be incomprehensible to each other are found 
 to belong to the same family. Light, heat, electricity and 
 
—II— 
 
 
 nerve force are seen to be but unlike modes of motion. 
 Religions as dissimilar as those of the Fuegians and 
 Christians reveal a common faith in a divine power. By 
 means of these fundamental likenesses, unity emerges out 
 of the very bosom of diversity and the riotous multitude of 
 phenomena are marshalled into coherent and continuous 
 ranks. 
 
 Furthermore, by means of the search for origins not 
 only is there revealed a common principle or element 
 which unites all the members of a given series, but also an 
 order of sequence. In the flow or succession of things 
 there are recurrences, rhythms, harmonies. The ranks 
 keep time as they march by, their evolutions are according 
 to law. And, although our attention may be distracted by 
 the endless diversities of the procession, diversities of 
 dress and stature, physiognomy and color, we may yet 
 catch, if we listen for it, the step to which they move. 
 The light that issues from the distant suns and the light 
 that comes from the end of your cigar are both transmitted 
 and reflected according to the same formulas, and by the 
 law of gravity the wandering comet, the solid earth and 
 the falling stone drop into line. 
 
 There are also laws of mind as well as laws of nature. 
 Wonderful as are the varieties of mind, it is still more 
 wonderful to note its similarities, its laws of permanent re¬ 
 action. In countries widely separated it has framed sim¬ 
 ilar cults, developed similar superstitions and beliefs, made 
 also the same discoveries and inventions. Even the vaga¬ 
 ries of its fancy and the flights of its imagination are not 
 beyond the reach of law, and nowhere perhaps does the 
 unity of the human mind display itself more clearly than 
 in the likenesses between the myths and fairy tales of many 
 peoples. 
 
 Such is a second most important result of the search for 
 origins and a third equally noticeable is that extension of 
 historical perspective as well as that broadening out of the 
 
whole mental horizon which this investigation bestows. It 
 not only furnishes us with a vaster historical retrospect in 
 time, but enriches the content of that retrospect from every 
 side. By it the stream of human thought is broadened as 
 well as lengthened. The search for the origin of species 
 sent Darwin off on the famous voyage of the Beagle; the 
 search for the origin of a religious legend carried Frazer 
 out among the peasant folk of England and the Continent. 
 Spurred by the same spirit of investigation Schliemann 
 betook himself to Asia Minor, Peters to Babylonia, Petrie 
 to Egypt. Such and many other similar endeavors disclose, 
 on the one hand, the vast reaches of time required for the 
 transformation of species and the development of man, 
 and, on the other, fill the ages with a multitude of new 
 events. So is our historical perspective carried back to 
 greater distances and the material of our field of vision en¬ 
 riched. 
 
 All this means the enlargement of the mental world in 
 which we live, increase of experience and of resource. It 
 is true, indeed, that imagination has often enough supplied 
 the defects of knowledge and that the thoughts of the 
 mightiest ancients, transcending their little world, are still 
 an inspiration and delight to the men of to-day. Unques¬ 
 tionable as these facts are and equally so that knowledge 
 and outlook alone in space and time can neither account 
 for all man is nor make him all he ought to be, yet it is 
 also quite as certain that the increase of historical per¬ 
 spective and the broadening of the field of vision are op¬ 
 portunities for insight and inspiration we dare not slur. 
 And it is these invaluable opportunities with which the 
 search for origins provides us. It provided them for the 
 men of long ago when it carried their minds back to the 
 beginning in which God created the heavens and the earth, 
 and it provides them in even richer measure for us of to¬ 
 day by means alike of the faith of the Old World and the 
 exact research of the New. 
 
—i3— 
 
 For after all it is the world of consciousness—the world 
 of thought and passion, insight and aspiration—which con¬ 
 stitutes our real world, the world in which we live. And 
 now think of how this world of consciousness has been en- 
 riched, even for thousands of ignorant people, since that 
 distant age when men believed themselves shut in by the 
 solid firmament above their heads and the whole earth 
 
 bounded bv the ocean that washed their shores. Think 
 •/ 
 
 how the mind’s horizon has been broadened since the dav 
 
 J 
 
 when human life upon this planet was supposed to have 
 had a duration of but a few thousand years, and when the 
 priests declared, as some of them do still, that the book of 
 divine revelation was complete and closed. 
 
 Not that every man who seeks for origins gets of neces¬ 
 sity the far-reaching retrospect and fuller perspective of 
 which I am speaking now. There are those who, buried 
 in their little holes of specialty, hardly succeed in seeing 
 farther than their own noses, and who, because of their 
 contracted outlook, compare unfavorably with the bigness 
 of mind which often showed itself in the smaller worlds 
 of long ago. All this is true ; but it is neither here nor 
 there, neither does it touch my point, which is that the 
 search for origins, especially as it has been prosecuted for 
 the past fifty years or more, has opened up vast perspec¬ 
 tives of history and disclosed a wealth of fact and sequence 
 before unseen and unsuspected. And this, I contend, is not 
 merely an opportunity which one may utilize if one will, 
 but a fact of consciousness beyond dispute. 
 
 Please observe also that metaphysical theories, such as 
 those of Hackel and Biichner do not here come into the 
 account. I am not speaking of metaphysics, but of the 
 positive results of research. It is only too true that these 
 have frightened the theologians and given occasion to a 
 few minds of atheistic temper to air their denials. But 
 such ancient history as this always repeats itself at every 
 great enlargement of the mental world. Copernicus dis- 
 
 ' 
 
placed the Ptolemaic astronomy, Newton formulated the 
 laws of motion ; and in each instance the theological world 
 trembled and the little, narrow, atheistic world enjoyed its 
 hard, small sneer. But in both cases time went on, the 
 light of the new world grew brighter, and, as the eye be¬ 
 came accustomed to its shining, religious fears evaporated 
 and atheistic arguments lost their point. Of late years we 
 have had a recrudescence of these self-same phenomena. 
 Some have inveighed against the hard and rigid mechan¬ 
 ism of natural law, and even so enlightened a writer as 
 James Martineau complains, in eloquent rhetoric, of that 
 new order of things which forces us to see “ the beauty 
 of the flower fade into a necessity.” But how much better 
 off should we be if we saw the beauty of this self-same 
 flower fade into accident or chance? For ages philoso¬ 
 phers have delighted in the possession of necessary truths; 
 for ages the religious consciousness has comforted itself 
 with the thought that “ every good gift and every perfect 
 gift is from above and cometh down from the Father of 
 lights, with whom is no variableness neither shadow of 
 turning .” If then we have welcomed the necessary laws 
 of mind which give reliability to thought and if we have 
 cherished the invariableness of God, which offers us 
 grounds for trust, why should we stand appalled before 
 those necessities of nature which yield us the basis for re¬ 
 search? 
 
 But the positive results of research have done far more 
 than evoke the fears of the timid and the applause of the 
 godless. They have, let me repeat, enlarged our mental 
 world and given it increased content. They have furnished 
 not dry statistics alone and tedious details, but added ma¬ 
 terial for philosophy, fresh themes for poetry, new and 
 nobler forms for a belief in God. It is all this and more 
 which the far-reaching perspective and the wealth of his¬ 
 torical event revealed by research have done for many a 
 man. Birth, then, into this larger world has had its en- 
 
—i5— 
 
 nobling effects—effects which must inevitably multiply as 
 time goes on. 
 
 Turn, first, if you will, to the moral effects. With the 
 extension of his historical perspective and the keeping of 
 written records man emerges from savagery. As the per¬ 
 spective deepens and the horizon of his mental world lifts 
 and widens he ascends in civilization. He becomes a 
 creature of far-reaching vision—the inhabitant of a larger 
 thought-world. He formulates those sequences and rhyth¬ 
 mical recurrences for which long periods of time are 
 required. It is said that the observations of the Egyptian 
 priesthood, which fixed the ancient year, covered a period 
 of fifteen centuries. In like manner the curve obtained by 
 every series of scientific observations is a sequence in time. 
 
 Confronting man rather than nature new sequences ap¬ 
 pear—a moral order emerges into view. Retributions 
 which isolated individuals seemed to escape are glaringly 
 visible among a whole community, while blessings and 
 rewards, apparently withheld from many a lonely com¬ 
 batant, descend at last upon the nation at large. Peoples 
 that sin against the moral order are seen to sink into de¬ 
 generacy ; peoples that obey it rise to influence and power. 
 Thus within the last few months has poor Spain suffered 
 the consequence and penalty of her corruption, cruelty 
 and pride. 
 
 Now it is the contemplation of this wide and distant 
 sweep of history—this vision of a world of growth and 
 decay, degeneration and ascent, which furnishes the mind 
 with fresh occasion for moral occupation and incentive. 
 Think, if you will, of the mind, in large part, empty of this 
 perspective—the mind whose time horizon is bounded al¬ 
 most by the rising and setting of the sun—that lives in the 
 present—in its immediate sensations of success or defeat, 
 elation or despair; and then compare its moral opportu¬ 
 nities with those of the man whose mental world has the 
 wide horizon I have just described. Such a man has 
 
16 
 
 resources, not of knowledge only, but of moral stimulus 
 and inspiration. He sees himself a part of a great whole, 
 the member of a moral order, the child of that intelligence 
 which shines in the resplendent face of nature and of that 
 righteousness which shows itself in human histories and 
 hearts. Yes, and as he views this world of large relations, 
 wide-reaching laws and vast perspectives, he is confirmed 
 in the belief that it is his duty also to make truth prevail 
 and justice triumphant—his duty to further those moral 
 ends revealed in consciousness, of which the course of 
 visible events reflects a vivid and dramatic picture. 
 
 Then again there are the aesthetic effects produced by 
 historic perspective ; a perspective to which the search for 
 origins has given such width and depth. The printed page 
 blurs when held too close to the eye and the effort to dis¬ 
 tinguish the characters upon it gives us pain. We may 
 sit too near the music to catch its true effect, and it is well 
 known that we cannot rightly estimate the proportions of a 
 man’s character and the value of his work until he has 
 passed into history. It is then, when far removed from the 
 hurlv burly of the hour—when the dust of the conflict has 
 cleared away—that he takes his true place. It is then his 
 proper relations to his compeers and competitors appear. 
 There is far more truth than cynicism in the old line “ ’Tis 
 distance lends enchantment to the view.” It is not that 
 distance distorts the object and throws about it the haze 
 of fable and the glamour of romance, but rather that it 
 brings out the important outlines and releases the har¬ 
 monies of color and relation which close proximity too 
 often hides. It is the beauty of these harmonies and out¬ 
 lines—these proportions, relations, unities—which the long 
 development of nature and the ascent of man reveal. 
 
 Once more there are the effects for the religious con¬ 
 sciousness evoked by the unfolding of the drama of the 
 Universe at the hands of research. The long and mighty 
 array of phenomenal sequences, the ascent from lower to 
 
—i7 
 
 higher forms of life, the dawn and growth of conscious¬ 
 ness, the vision of unity, the rhythmical pulse of law, the 
 tragedy of man’s moral struggle, the glory of his religious 
 hope—all these, surveyed within the ever-brightening per¬ 
 spective of the past, arouse the belief that there is a mean¬ 
 ing—a purpose in it all. Instinctively one feels that what 
 one sees cannot be the result of undesigned coincidence. 
 So much method cannot be the child of chance. And thus 
 the idea of design is born, but it is not in any sense the 
 idea that Paley cherished. Paley presented us with the 
 picture of a celestial mechanic who, in the beginning, made 
 and wound his cosmical clocks and then left them, except 
 for an occasional miraculous interference, to run on and 
 down. Not this, but quite another is the conception of de¬ 
 sign revealed in cosmic and human development. Here 
 we are brought face to face with an ever-present intelli¬ 
 gence without which the mere phenomenal successions in 
 time and space defy an ultimate explanation. In the 
 emergence of new and higher forms of force and law and 
 reason we behold not the disfigured traces of a heavenly 
 workshop nor the imprint of a divine hand long since re¬ 
 moved, but rather the abiding presence of an eternal mind 
 who lives and moves and guides the whole. It is not 
 Phillips Brooks, but Professor Brinton, who says: “The 
 teachings of the severest science tell us that matter is in its 
 last analysis motion and that motion is naught else than 
 mind ; and who dare deny that in their unconscious func¬ 
 tions our minds may catch some overtones, as it were, from 
 the harmonies of the Universal Intelligence, thus demon¬ 
 strated by inductive research and vibrate in harmony there¬ 
 with.” It is not the Archbishop of Canterbury, but Herbert 
 Spencer, who writes: “But one truth must grow ever 
 clearer—the truth that there is an inscrutable Existence 
 everywhere manifested to which he, i. e ., man, can neither 
 find nor conceive either beginning or end. Amid the 
 mysteries which become the more mysterious the more 
 
—18 
 
 they are thought about, there will remain the one absolute 
 certainty that he is ever in the presence of an Infinite and 
 Eternal energy from which all things proceed.” 
 
 Such are the most important results of the search for 
 origins—practical, intellectual, moral, assthetic, religious. 
 
 Nevertheless, the treatment of my subject would be far 
 from complete if I failed at this point to notice the use to 
 which the search for origins has been put by those who are 
 hostile to religion. Here the effort has been to belittle and 
 discredit religion in the eyes of the world, by pointing out the 
 superstitions, errors and barbarities with which its begin¬ 
 nings are inevitably intermingled. The persons engaged 
 in this work in our own day and generation, are the legiti¬ 
 mate successors of those philosophers of the eighteenth 
 century, who vainly tried to show that religion was an in¬ 
 vention of the priests. It has now been amply proven that 
 religion begets the priest and not the priest religion; but 
 the assailants of religion, rising superior to all the discour¬ 
 agements of failure in this direction, are now intent on 
 pointing out its fetichistic origin or in tracing the idea of 
 God to dreams and ghosts. They do not all advocate the 
 same theory, but it seems fair to say that they are animated 
 by the same purpose. 
 
 Now, it is not my intention to catalogue these writers, 
 neither do I purpose making long quotations from their 
 works. I shall simply select one, M. Guyau, who has 
 stated his case most clearly in the opening sentences of 
 his now famous work “ L’Irreligion de L’Avenir.” “ The 
 genesis of religions,” says M. Guyau, “possesses a much 
 greater importance than any other historic question; it is 
 not merely the truth of the facts and of past events which 
 is here involved. It is the worth of our present ideas and 
 beliefs. Each of us has something at stake in this debate. 
 The reasons which have in times past produced a belief 
 are still most frequently those which maintain it in our own 
 day. To give an account of these reasons is then, with- 
 
- 19 - 
 
 out directly willing it, to render a favorable or unfavorable 
 judgment concerning the belief itself. History, if it were 
 ever complete, would here possess the power of effacing in 
 the future that which she has not justified in the past. To 
 fix absolutely the origin of religions, this would be, at one 
 stroke, either to condemn them or, on the contrary, to reaf¬ 
 firm and save them.” Put into a single sentence the con¬ 
 tention of this passage seems to be that the worth and truth 
 of religion depend upon the enduring validity of the form 
 in which it first appears. 
 
 In reply to this it may be said that if, by the origins of 
 religion, M. Guyau means, as it is quite evident he does 
 mean, its phenomenal origins or first manifestations (God 
 or the non-phenomenal source of religion not coming here 
 into the account), his argument proves far too much and 
 will be found to recoil upon his own head. Our author, 
 be it observed, is an ardent advocate of science and yet in 
 another place and apparently in entire forgetfulness of 
 what he has just said about the effect which the discovery 
 of the origin of religion must, in his opinion, have upon its 
 value and continuance, he adds, speaking of the fallacies 
 of primitive thought: “The belief in the influence of 
 phenomena successive or concomitant the one upon the 
 other and in the action of the present upon the future is at 
 once the germ of the superstitions about providence and 
 fate. From the idea of fate, of destiny, of necessity was 
 to emerge the scientific notion of universal reciprocal de¬ 
 terminism.” 
 
 Are we to conclude then that M. Guyau regards the 
 scientific notion of universal reciprocal determinism as in¬ 
 validated because of its origin in the superstitious notions 
 of fate? Not at all. Scientific determinism is, in his judg¬ 
 ment, to be held fast despite its errant beginnings. But 
 surely if the truth and worth of religion are overthrown by 
 the discovery of manifold fallacies and superstitions in 
 its primitive forms, the like should be also true of science; 
 
- 20 
 
 nay not of science only, but of art and jurisprudence. If, 
 in the words of M. Guyau, “to fix absolutely the origins 
 of religion would be at one stroke either to condemn them, 
 or on the contrary, to reaffirm and save them,” the self¬ 
 same method of procedure must be equally applicable to 
 every other branch of human thought. The scientific con¬ 
 ception of law, because it has arisen from the bosom of 
 false notions about fate and destiny must be cast aside. 
 The art of Michael Angelo, because it is an evolution from 
 those rude scratchings of the cave-men upon the antlers of 
 the reindeer, must be judged as worthless. The falseness 
 of initial conceptions and the badness of first beginnings 
 must determine the truth and beauty of all subsequent de¬ 
 velopments. 
 
 But this is manifestly the greatest of absurdities. No 
 reasonable man would ever dream of trying to discredit 
 chemistry by pointing to the foolish superstitions with which 
 its early pursuit was associated. No reasonable man would 
 seek to make modern astronomy appear contemptible by 
 proving its emergence from astrology. And yet it is ex¬ 
 actly this argument which M, Guyau, as well as many 
 others, employs to invalidate religion and make it look un¬ 
 tenable. It is to be judged by its youthful errors of thought 
 and by the poverty of its beginnings. Evidently he proves 
 too much, as I have just tried to show, and his argument 
 recoils upon his own head. 
 
 At the same time the question arises, how can clever 
 men like M. Guyau—for M. Guyau is a very clever man 
 and his book is full of rare observations and stimulating 
 suggestions—how can such men be blind to the manifest 
 consequences of their own thought? Such an anomaly is, 
 I believe, in great part accounted for by the fact that the 
 world has been taught, and most erroneously taught, that 
 in the matter of religion, the pure truth of God was given to 
 man at the very beginning ; and hence any proper develop¬ 
 ment from lower to higher forms is inadmissible. It is this 
 
21 
 
 wholly unwarranted claim for the origins of religion which 
 M. Guyau and his kind have gladly accepted as a state¬ 
 ment of what religion must essentially be—a pure form of 
 truth revealed at the start. And since it has been easy for 
 him and others to show that the religions of primitive 
 peoples partake of the errors and barbarisms which dis¬ 
 color the history of all other forms of thought and practice 
 they have fel themselves entitled to conclude, that with 
 the disclosure of its early fallacies and superstitions, the case 
 ' religio s lost. And they are, be it remarked, fully en¬ 
 titled to come to this conclusion, if it be true, as the theo¬ 
 logical dogmatists affirm, that the value and verity of re¬ 
 ligion depend upon its hav ng been revealed in its purity 
 at the beginning. 
 
 Furthermore, having been also assured by the theological 
 dogmatist that religii thought is unlike other thought— 
 that it is neither conditioned by the quality of the brain nor 
 determined by the forms of knowledge—that it is, so to 
 speak, something that has been dropped into a man’s mind 
 from outside and can, therefore, be presented with equal 
 ease to the most primitive as well as the most developed of 
 the race—having received oracular assurances of this sort 
 from high authorities, it is no wonder that these assurances 
 have led to the isolation of religion in M. Guyau’s mind, 
 from art, philosophy and science. Having been taught that 
 religion is not in any sense comparable with these he has 
 never dreamed of associating them together; and as an in¬ 
 evitable consequence he has been blinded to the fact that if 
 humble beginnings pour contempt upon religion they must, 
 likewise, be equally discreditable to art and science. 
 
 But as Mr. Jevons wisely remarks in his Introduction 
 to the History of Religion “ it is fallacious to talk as both 
 friends and foes of religion do sometimes talk, as though 
 the application of the theory of evolution to religion would 
 reduce the higher forms of it to mere survivals of bar¬ 
 barism, animism and so on. * * * Religion as a form of 
 
- 22 - 
 
 thought is the perception of the invisible things of Him 
 through the things that are made; it is common both to 
 barbaric and civilized man, but it is not, therefore, a bar¬ 
 baric form of thought—rather it is a mode of cognition 
 which is part of human nature.” Here, as I believe, we 
 have the case truly stated. In tracing the origins of 
 religion we discover in its earliest forms a belief in God 
 together with the firm assurance that man is in communion 
 with Him. This belief is not, however, of the high spir¬ 
 itual character it subsequently assumes. It is not free from 
 the errors of the human understanding, neither can it rise 
 above the low morality and grovelling fears of savagery. 
 But it is not on that account either superstition or illusion. 
 It is rather a germ of truth that is to develop its content in 
 ever nobler or more perfect forms. It is a light in the 
 darkness that is to shine more steadily and brilliantly with 
 the progress of the years. 
 
 The effort, therefore, to discredit religion by pointing to 
 the false beliefs and savage customs with which its earliest 
 manifestations are associated fails of effect; and for the 
 simple reason that such an attempt, if admitted to be valid, 
 would also discredit every other form of human activity 
 and thought. Philosophy and science were cradled in 
 error and have been guilty of many mistakes, but they are 
 none the less the noble struggles of the mind for light and 
 truth. Art had its rude beginnings, but even there it 
 betrays that love for beauty for which mankind has 
 sought throughout the centuries a more complete and ade¬ 
 quate expression. Morals and religion are discolored by 
 imperfections and blotched with the dark stains of cruelty 
 and sin, and yet they remain for all this, the high and sub¬ 
 lime endeavors of the human spirit to embody the divine. 
 
 One other perverted use of the search for origins de¬ 
 mands attention before we close. 
 
 It is found in the assumption not that the lowest term of 
 a series contains a characteristic element of the whole, but 
 
23 
 
 that this lowest term is in itself the boiled-down essence of 
 everything that is to follow—the final residuum of which 
 all higher terms are but modified and elaborate expres¬ 
 sions. In psychology, for example, it goes back to sensa¬ 
 tion, as the ultimate element of consciousness and then 
 asserts that abstract thought and moral conflict are but 
 mere sensations—nothing more. In biology again it goes 
 back to protoplasm and then triumphantly declares, there 
 you are ! This is all that life comes to—just this glutinous, 
 sticky, mucilaginous, protoplasmic mass. In materialistic 
 metaphysics it goes back to the primitive atoms and then 
 affirms that all phenomena of life and mind are but the iri¬ 
 descent play and movement of these atomic elements. 
 
 Now here there are two important things to be said ; and 
 the first is that even the primitive atoms, supposing them 
 to exist, demand some adequate reason for being where 
 and what they are. In other words, “ the weight and bur¬ 
 den of the mystery of things” is not removed even by a 
 return to phenomenal beginnings. “It is not the rustic,” 
 says Herbert Spencer, nor the artisan, nor the trader, 
 who sees something more than a matter of course in the 
 hatching of a chick; but it is the biologist, who, pushing 
 to the uttermost his analysis of vital phenomena, reaches 
 his greatest perplexity when a speck of protoplasm under 
 the microscope shows him life in its simplest form and 
 makes him feel that, however he may formulate its proces¬ 
 ses, the actual play of forces remains unimaginable.” And 
 so we see that the reduction of things to their simplest phe¬ 
 nomenal expressions, useful as the process is, does not 
 bring us to the real source of existence. Hence it follows, 
 and this is the second thing there is to be said, that these 
 simplest phenomenal expressions fail to give us a satisfac¬ 
 tory explanation of all that succeeds them. 
 
 When a man tells me that, in the last analysis, love and 
 hate are nothing more than molecular attractions and an¬ 
 tagonisms, I demur. The explanation is simplicity itself, 
 
— 2 4 — 
 
 but it is likewise inadequate. In like manner, when I am 
 pointed to the infant’s primitive acts of self-preservation in 
 proof of the assertion that human nature is wholly selfish , I 
 demur again. And why? Because it is impossible to 
 conceive that out of that which is wholly selfish the subse¬ 
 quent self-sacrifices of the human heart should be evolved. 
 Selfish as all life is in its first manifestations there must 
 exist at least a germ of self-effacement in it if history is 
 to become intelligible and great and noble lives accounted 
 for. And this case of the infant provides me with a simple 
 illustration of what I am trying to make clear. Admitting 
 not merely that its first instinctive acts are self-preserva¬ 
 tive, but also that its early years are selfish and self-cen¬ 
 tered, admitting all this, how are we to understand that 
 subsequent awakening of what is called the nobler self? 
 Is it but a differentiation of the baser self? Reason 
 rebels. Hence, we conclude that there is more in the 
 child than is at first expressed in those little, grasping, 
 self-appropriating hands. They give a true account of a 
 certain element of his nature; they do not manifest the 
 whole. Therefore, we cannot deduce the entire subse¬ 
 quent history of this nature from these first and imperfect 
 expressions. Behind these primitive utterances there is 
 something that has not shown itself or spoken. What 
 that something is, development alone can reveal. In con¬ 
 sequence, to understand this child or human nature any¬ 
 where we must watch it grow. It is not enough to sit 
 beside its cradle. We must go forth with it into the world. 
 There we shall observe the appearance of new forces, the 
 revelation of a larger being than ever the exacting tyrant 
 of the crib or nursery gave promise of. 
 
 The like is true of atoms, protoplasm, sensations. There 
 is that in the internal elaboration of received impressions 
 which testifies to something more in mental life than “ mere 
 sensation.” There is that in the moral and religious aspi¬ 
 rations of the race which goes beyond the power of atoms 
 
— 2 5 — 
 
 or of protoplasm to utter or explain. The result is that 
 having gone back to origins we cannot remain there; 
 neither can we rest content with any of these lowest terms 
 as adequate sources of mind. In the attempt to trace 
 things to their beginnings we have carried with us the ex- 
 J periences of our memorable journey and the disclosure of 
 a gradual development along the way. That with which 
 we are really confronted, therefore, as the outcome of our 
 search for origins is an ever-ascending series of phenomenal 
 sequence. Not the lowest terms alone, but the highest 
 are required for any true explanation of the source of 
 things. And it is these highest terms, as they become 
 articulate, which speak of an end or destiny to which the 
 whole is moving on. Thus are we forced to turn to the 
 future as well as the past. Science predicts what is to 
 come as well as conceives what has taken place. Art and 
 religion look upward to the world of unattained ideals as 
 well as at the world of actual achievement, while the mind, 
 which shines through the infinite series of ascending 
 change, bids us search for still more perfect revelations of 
 its nature—bids us express in deed and life its yet withheld 
 and unaccomplished destiny. 
 
 And what is true of the Universe at large is also true of 
 this University. Time was when Lehigh was but a dream 
 in the mind of a noble man. Time was when a few Trustees 
 assembled in the Sun Inn of Bethlehem were the only em¬ 
 bodiment the dream had found. There was no campus and 
 no president; there were no college buildings, no professors, 
 no students. Facts such as these we remember to-day. We 
 recall our origins with thankfulness and interest. With af¬ 
 fection and pride we trace the history of our University to 
 its beginnings. But having reached them, are we pre¬ 
 pared to say that Lehigh University consists of nothing but 
 a Board of Trustees? Are we prepared to say that it is 
 nothing more than the dream of Asa Packer? 
 
 If we were, we should be recreant to fact and history and 
 
- 2 6 - 
 
 wholly unworthy participants in this festival of Founder’s 
 Day. We should be disloyal to our beginnings by pre¬ 
 tending that they were all and everything. We should 
 dishonor our past if we forgot our future. The glory of 
 Founder’s Day is that in reminding us of our origin it calls 
 up our destiny. We are not and we dare not be satisfied 
 with the past. Proud as we are of what the University has 
 already accomplished, we cannot remain content with it, 
 neither can we say that it is all. There is a future before 
 us—there is a destiny to fulfil; and he does greatest honor 
 to the Founder who seeks so to develop the Lehigh of 
 to-day so as to make it equal to the larger demands and 
 new emergencies of to-morrow. 
 
 In this our common work we all have part and lot— 
 Trustees and Alumni, Friends, Faculty and Students, 
 and to them and to myself I say: “There is not only a 
 past to recall but a future to create ; our origin reminds us 
 of our destiny—the destiny of ushering in a brighter light 
 and a more perfect manhood.” 
 
 To achieve this destiny let every man who has the caus.e 
 of education at heart, every man who loves his flag and 
 country, every man who believes in the future of American 
 manhood, mind and character reconsecrate himself to-day 
 to truth and righteousness and the imperishable love of 
 both. Let the Founder’s Day of 1898 be the birthday of 
 wider mental interest and of profounder moral earnestness. 
 Let it be the beginning of years to us—the beginning of 
 clearer thought and harder work and brighter enthusiasm, 
 so that in the light and force of these beginnings we may 
 go forth more triumphantly than ever to realize our destiny.