LIFE'S DEEPER MEANINGS.
BACCALAUREATE ADDRESS DELIVERED AT CLARK
UNIVERSITY, MAY 19, 1895.
Tell me not in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream!
—Longfellow.
Life is a mystery, the profouudest mystery that
confronts, or has ever confronted, the human under¬
standing. What is it ? Whence is it ? Where is the
goal of this fitful and fretful and feverish existence ?
Man knoweth not. The untutored savage, and the most
highly cultivated intellect of all the ages stand equally
mute in the presence of this ever-inviting, this ever-
recurring question, What is life? Plato has reasoned,
Darwin has investigated, Tyndall has experimented;
vet the answrer that comes back to our inquiry is but
the faintest reverberation of the echo, What is life?
Baffling in its lower as in its higher forms, it leaves
no clue, it furnishes no thread by which the mind
guiding its steps may arrive at the hidden mystery -
On the body of the fabled hero there was at least one
spot whereby the flying arrow might effect an en-
(L7)
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