The following letter was written by Peter Cooper to Mr. E. F. Gladwin, of Brooklyn, not long before the aged philanthropist's death:
"Mankind will improve and better their condition just in proportion as they come to see, know and understand that what a man, a community, a State or nation soweth, that must they also reap somewhere, somehow and at some time, and that by the operation of a reign of beneficent laws, designed in infinite wisdom for the use and the elevation of mankind. Man without knowledge is a soulless body: without science he is a straying wanderer. Science is knowledge demonstrated by the actual experience of mankind."
