Pennsylvania College of Optometry - Iris Yearbook (Philadelphia, PA)

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more cheerful for it. lt is tiherefore essential that you avoid the insidiousness of complacency and that you maintain an active and constructive curiosity toward all newer developments. You may at first feel that progress in the sciences fundamental to optometry is so great as to be bewilderingg you may feel the same witrh regard to Optometry itself, but l venture to predict that before very long you will discover for yourselves that tihe multiplicity of contributions to the archives of any profession, far from confusing it, serve paradoxically enough, to actually clarify it, idiopathic conditions, always a bane to the practi- tioner and a misfortune of the patient, diminish in number, the qualitative becomes quantitative, the speculative becomes specific. A carefully-followed plan of building an extensive library is perhaps the most desirable and practicable means of realiz- ing this, and therefore I recommend it to you with the confi- dence tihat it will enable you to do your part in helping Optom- etry to fulfill its sacred and indispensable mission to mankind, Several years ago l greeted you as students, and my asso- ciations with you have been pleasant in the extreme, today l welcome you as colleagues to whom l am, more closely than ever before, bound by a common heritage, a common purpose and common ideals.

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To The Class ol 19341 n consideration of the careful, time-tried guidance wfhiclh you have formally received in the matter of personal and professional conduct you will no doubt appreciate how difficult it becomes for me to avoid being anticlimactic in an effort to say to you something which could properly be construed as really new. Sooner or later you will have arrived at some more or less definite conception of the nature and of the solution of the problems which you indi- vidually will meet, just as many young men and young women have met in the past, within all the fields of human occupation. lt was not very long ago that I faced mine, and for tlhat reason they are still fresh in my mind. My solution of these has as- sumed the proportions of personal convictions, which I beg to present some of them to you. Perlhaps the most important question is the intimately per- sonal one of self-confidence, consistently and appropriately humble. Your college days are past, but your status as students must continue, for it is only in the conviction that your knowl- edge and understanding are at least the equal of any reasonable situation which may present itself that you will ever make a permanent acquisition of this quality. Having it you will un- knowingly reflect it, and tihus inspire, on the part of others, confidence in you, all aspects of your lives will be richer and

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The noblest motive is the public good. -Virgil