Whatever be the qualifications of your tutors, your improvement must chiefly depend upon yourselves. They cannot _think_ or _labour_ for you. They can only put you in the best way of thinking and labouring for yourselves. If, therefore, you get knowledge, you must acquire it by your own industry. You must form all conclusions, and all maxims, for yourselves, from premises and _data_ collected, and considered by yourselves. And it is the great object of this institution to remove every bias the mind can lie under, and give the greatest scope to true freedom of thinking and inquiry. And provided you be intelligent and virtuous men, and good citizens, it will be no cause of regret to the friends of this institution, if, with respect to _religion_, or _politics_, you adopt systems of principles, and maxims of conduct, very different from theirs.
Give me leave, now that I am addressing you as _young men_, and young _students_, to suggest a caution on a subject, of the importance of which it is hardly possible that you should be sufficiently aware, because it is only impressed by that _experience_ which you have not yet had. I mean that degree of vanity which generally accompanies the acquirements that diligent persons of your age make in places of liberal education, and the contempt they are too apt to entertain for those who have not made the same proficiency with themselves. And I assure you, that in the observations I shall make on this subject, I have no view whatever to any thing that I have observed, or heard, of any of you in particular. But I have been in your situation myself, and I know the importance of these observations to students in general.
You are now at an age in which young persons usually make the most sensible advances in knowledge, and in which the understanding appears to ripen the most rapid manner. You are able to say every year, every month, and almost every day, what particular advances you have made, and how much you know more than you did before. And being taught, and accustomed, to express your thoughts in writing, you find yourselves qualified to do this in a manner of which you had no idea, or expectation, but a little time ago. You also perfectly remember what you have so recently learned, and many respects may be more particular and exact than even your tutors themselves.