Convocation Addresses of the Universities of Bombay and Madras/Part 2/Geo. Thom, Esq., M.A.
EIGHTEENTH CONVOCATION.
(By Geo. Thom, Esq., M.A.)
Gentlemen,—You have now reached a most important stage in your journey through life, and may well pause for a little to look back on the difficulties you have surmounted and forward to the great world which you are about to enter. In the name of His Excellency the Chancellor and the Fellows of this University I congratulate you on the position you have attained, and trust that your past success may be an earnest of a future career, highly honorable to yourselves and useful to your country.
The University to which you have now the honor to belong has been in existence only some eighteen years. Nature of Indian University. We cannot, therefore, point to an Institution invested with the authority of antiquity, nor stimulate you to action by bringing forward the illustrious example of a brilliant array of men famous in the annals of their country. But we have no mean counterbalancing advantages. We have neither the difficult, the tedious, task of modifications and reform, nor, should change become desirable, have we, on the score of sentiment^ to retain any organization which is not the best of its kind. Your University has already expanded far beyond what could have been supposed possible even by those who were most sanguine of its success. It is a great power in the land. Its influence permeates every school and shapes the course of study in every college. Its honours are eagerly sought after by yearly increasing numbers. It is a centre of national life and of national unity. Whatever your difference of caste and creed, of mother-tongue and race, the higher education will form among you a bond of union for the great work of doing battle with ignorance and superstition, and disseminating light and knowledge throughout the length and breadth of the land.
And surely, gentlemen, you are well fitted for such a work. The English language. You have received many advantages denied to the majority of your countrymen. You have been trained to read, to speak and to think in one of the leading languages of the West—a language which possesses the richest and most varied literature in all departments of human thought, and which for you constitutes the only pathway to all that is best in Philosophy, in History and in Science. This is the greatest of your acquisitions. It introduces you to the society of the original thinkers of the age, and enables you to participate in the intellectual movements of your generation.
The importance of a scientific training in English was only recently recognized in England itself. There the reverence for Latin—legitimate enough as long as Latin was the language of educated men in all Europe—was handed down from generation to generation, and was strong enough to cloud the most vigorous intellects and to lead them to regard any education not founded on a classical basis as essentially false.
It would be presumption on my part to say much either for or against classical education. Classical literature. I venture, however, to express a hope that the day is not far distant when the classical students of this University may be counted by hundreds and not by tens; for there is much in classical literature which we cannot afford to lose and which cannot be had elsewhere. But the spirit in which classical studies have, until very recently, been pursued, and which even now has many advocates, is characterized as narrow by the most competent authorities. To get up endless rules and gigantic lists of exceptions by heart, to turn Latin and Sanscrit into English for the purpose of learning these languages, and to give little or no thought to the subject-matter or to the picture of human life presented, is surely not the system by which the classics can be rendered either attractive or instructive. If we are to have classical education, let us not perpetuate the "elegant trifling" of the English public schools in prose and verse composition. Let us learn Sanscrit for the purpose of being able to read it, and read it for the purpose of being impressed with its beauties and with the primitive form in which it presents to us the ever-interesting problems of human life. The question as to whether the study of a classical language should form part of our higher education was recently discussed by the Senate of this University, and, as was to be expected, elicited great diversity of opinion. Without presuming to say what should or should not be done at present, I may observe that in the University of London, on which ours is closely modelled, a competent knowledge in Latin, Greek, English, and either French or German is required in every candidate for the B.A. degree. No doubt, the educational machinery in England is far in advance of what it is now, or what it will be for some time, in India. Intellect of the average Hindu. But, in point of intellect, the average Hindu is not One whit behind the average Englishman, and what can now be reasonably expected from the latter may soon be looked for from the former. The time then, we trust, is not far distant when those who occupy the place which you do now shall have been taught a classical language as well as their own vernacular.
But though an appreciative acquaintance with literature and a firm grasp of history, History. "treated not as a succession of battles and dynasties; not as a series of biographies; but as the development of men in times past and in other conditions than our own," are highly important elements in education, the culture got from these alone would be narrow and one-sided. And the defects can only in part be remedied by Mathematics.
In their own place Mathematics are invaluable. Mathematics. There is no better discipline for the mind than that close and continued thought, that strenuous and voluntary application, to which the distinguished Mathematician must have submitted. But his sphere of labour is after all a narrow one, and the symbolical language he uses is by no means calculated to promote acquaintance with his own vernacular.
The education cannot now be regarded as complete, unless natural knowledge has received a large share of attention. Value of Science. The great fact of our age is the advance of science. It numbers among its votaries many of the greatest intellects of the day. It leads to the possession of the most elevating ideas. It brings us face to face with physical nature and with the relations of cause to effect. It develops the powers of reason and observation, and enables the mind to draw accurate general conclusions from particular facts. ^^ It removes those superstitions, those fantastic persuasions and prepossessions, which are the fog and pestilence, the mist and malaria of the mind/' It is an indispensable preparation for the more complicated problems which meet us in the science of life. But not only is the knowledge gained in the pursuit of science wide and elevating, and excellent as a mental training, but it is also essential to success in life; and this, gentlemen, is what the most of us cannot afford to overlook, in spite of the objection which may be urged against it that it is a low standard to set up. Whatever your trade or your profession may be, you will encounter keen competition and will assuredly be left behind in the race, if you are not alive to the movements of the scientific world and ready to press scientific discovery into jour service.
You cannot expect to reach the lofty peak untrodden but by the foot of Newton, nor yet perhaps the lower level of a Faraday or a Kirchhoff. Search for truth But you can imitate these illustrious men in their earnest, their untiring, search for truth. The path will not always be smooth and level, sometimes it will be rough and angular, leading through dense jungle and over pathless and rocky mountains, but at every stage disclosing beauties which yield a lifelong pleasure. In words which do much more justice to the subject—"who can contemplate our globe in this orderly system of the universe with all the delicate adjustments that astronomy reveals, and all the splendid mechanism of the heavens; contemplate our atmosphere with all its mechanical, chemical, and physical properties—the distant sun darting its light and heat and power on the globe, and fostering all the varied and beautiful animal and vegetable life, giving rise to winds and showers and fruitful seasons, and beauties of form and richness of colour, filling our hearts with food and gladness; who can know something of the inexorable sequences, see something of the felicitous combination of the varied forces of nature that are employed,—and not feel awed and impressed by the view,
"To see in part,
That all as in some piece of art
Is toil, co-operant to an end,"
is to see that which he who sees it not is as incapable of estimating as the deaf man is of judging of music, or the blind of enjoying the glories of a sunset."
Do not be discouraged at difficulties. The value of the discovery will, in most cases, be commensurate with the difficulty of the search, and the difficulty itself, the healthful exercise of your mental powers, will form not a small portion of the pleasure.
Hitherto your course has been shaped and your education directed by others; 'now you must think and act for yourselves, and realize the rules and principles you have been taught. You are able to appreciate in some degree the merits and defects of the culture you have received. Your knowledge of the laws of matter, force and mind, rudimentary though it may be at present, is yet sufficient to place you on the ladder of intellectual progress, and your own efforts well directed, will enable you to ascend. Try to find out more of the mode of operation of these laws and to bring your whole life into harmony with them. This is the aim and end of all real education, and cannot be gained by desultory or intermittent efforts. Habits must be formed.
"For use almost can change the stamp of nature."
Let action ever be your watchword. Action. The man of energy and decision takes at the flood the tide which leads on to fortune. He seizes every opportunity to gain the end he may have in view, and not unfrequently is able to bend to his purpose the very accidents of life apparently
most calculated to defeat it. "Who breaks his birth's invidious bar
And grasps the skirts of happy chance,
And breasts the blows of circumstance,
And grapples with his evil star.
Who makes by force his merit known
And lives to clutch the golden keys,
To mould a raiffhty state's decrees,
And shape the whisper of the throne :
And moving up from higher to higher,
Becomes on fortune's crowning slope
The pillar of a people's hope,
The centre of a World's desire."
Whatever be your occupation, you will find in it ample scope for all your energies. The road to eminence. Your honest endeavour to master it and everything connected with it will open out for you a field of knowledge which is literally boundless. While thus aiming at complete mastery over the one thing which is to be your chief work in life, you should also endeavour to counteract the prejudicial influence of a narrow line of thought by acquiring a sound general knowledge of the leading subjects of human interest. "A man of the highest education knows something of every thing and every thing of something." It is by this combination alone that you can hope to become trustworthy leaders of public opinion in the great questions with which your generation will have to deal, or produce anything really great in any department of human thought. It is thus that great statesmen, great poets and great philosophers have attained their eminence.
In a University like ours, whose characteristic feature is its system of examinations, there is a danger, which such of you as adopt the profession of teaching should guard against, of subordinating learning to education. The teacher naturally directs every effort to secure the success of his pupils at the University examinations, and in training them for their battle with the examiner is in danger of sacrificing high learning and original research, and of leading the student to regard success in an examination as the chief aim of study. You will endeavour to correct these tendencies, to lead the student to value culture for its own sake as well as for what it brings, to despise mere position in University lists in comparison with his higher interests, and to look beyond the glittering and evanescent honours of a College, career to the requirements of after-life.
When the higher education is still in its infancy, When can we look for original research. we can scarcely look among you for the highest learning or for original research. But when your ranks are numbered by thousands, instead of hundreds, when the endowments of the University, largely increased by private munificence, are given in part to help the successful graduate to cultivate his favorite branch of knowledge, when the University itself is more of what every University should be—"A School of Universal Learning"—where the student finds a teacher in every department of knowledge,—then we may look, and look not in vain for a contingent from India to the intellectual benefactors of humanity.
We cannot, gentlemen, accept the view "that most of you are likely to find University distinction a disadvantage rather than an advantage in after-life." You cannot, of course, all expect to get situations under Government or rise to high worldly position. But what then? "I am certain," said the great Spinoza, "that the good of human life cannot lie in the possession of things which for one man to possess is for the rest to lose, but rather in things which we can all possess alike, and where one man's wealth promotes his neighbour's." In almost every part of the immense field of human labour, from the obscure corner in which toils the manual craftsman to the arena of the enlightened statesman, the highly educated man has incalculable advantages. The outlets for his ambition are numerous and are ever increasing. The immense machinery requisite for the purposes of primary education in Southern India must be provided by the University. Without the higher education the lower becomes impossible.
Gentlemen, on you and such as you depends the future of India. Stive to be true and enlightened patriots. In the bustle of professional life you may have little time or opportunity to give much thought to the higher concerns of humanity. But use your time well, and each of you without stepping out of his way to do so will find it in his power to increase in some degree the stock of human happiness and wisdom. The extent of the good you can accomplish will depend on your acquaintance with the momentous social changes ever going on around you, on your familiarity with the thoughts of the leading minds of the age, but mainly on your own energy of character. Never forget that your own work, however humble, forms a real part of that present from which the future is evolved. It will assuredly be your own fault if you fail to be recognized as centres of moral and intellectual life; as men who under all circumstances will stand up for what is right and true; as true and enlightened patriots who will not uphold the institutions of their country, right or wrong, but will develop to the uttermost what is good, eradicate what is bad, and borrow from abroad advantages which are not to be had at home.
"Self reverence, self knowledge, self control
These three alone lead life to sovereign power
Yet not for power (power of herself
Would come uncalled for), but to live by law,
Acting the law we live by without fear;
And, because right is right, to follow right
Were wisdom in the scorn of consequence."