Convocation Addresses of the Universities of Bombay and Madras/Part 2/George Smith, Esq., M.D., L.R.C.S.E.

by George Smith

THIRTEENTH CONVOCATION.

(By George Smith, M.D., L.R.C.S.E.)

"But chiefly the mould of a Man's Fortune
is in his own hands."—Lord Bacon.

Graduates in Arts and Law,—Gentlemen, it is said that in the practice of some ancient Continental Universities, Practice of Continental Universities. it was at one time the custom to present the Medical Graduate, on the day in which he took his degree, with a ring, a barette, an open and a shut book. The ring typified the solemn espousals of the young Graduate to his profession. The barette or cap indicated his consecration as a priest of science. The open book symbolised the things already taught him, and the closed volume was the significant emblem of that larger extent of knowledge which, thenceforward, it was to be the business and labour of his life to acquire.

Not in types and symbols, however significant, but by solemn promises have you this day accepted the responsibilities of your present position; promises which espouse you to your profession; which consecrate you priests of science; and which pledge you to a "daily life and conversation" befitting your position as the members of this University.

To each of the questions put to you by the noble Chancellor of this University you have replied, this assembly being witness, "I do promise." May I entreat of you to realise the extent of the obligations you have taken upon you, and often in after-life to pause and reconsider their terms of solemn import.

The position which you have now attained as members of this University is one, which, with distinguished honors carries correlative duties and responsibilities, and I stand here before you this day as the representative of the Senate of the University, to impress that fact upon your minds, and to encourage as well as advise you to conduct yourselves henceforward "suitably unto the position to which, by the degrees conferred upon you, you have attained." In fulfilling the duty confided to me, I would more especially address those of you who, having gained the higher honors of this University, are about to enter upon the practical duties of life; though the remarks made will be found, I trust, more or less applicable to you all.

The open book of the past is in your hands, and all can read in it how arduously and how well you have pursued the task set before you. You have fought and won. Your success this day is a source of gratification to the Senate, of honest pride to yourselves and of satisfaction to your parents and friends. In the name of the Senate I congratulate you. May the honorable and successful past be the omen of an honourable and successful future.

At this important crisis of your lives your Alma Mater would give you her parting advice. Action and duty the guides of life. She would speak to you not so much of the past or even of the present as of the future. She would stand as a monitor athwart your pathway, not to obstruct the sunshine, but to moderate its glare; not to damp your joy, but to give it a noble aim by pointing out to you a future of action and of duty. Gently would she take the closed volume from your hands, and opening it inscribe on its earliest page the significant words "the path to happiness is the path of action and duty." The rest of that solemn volume, the record of a useful and well-spent or of a useless and mis-spent life, each of you must con for himself. Often in joy, often in sorrow, often in hope, often in fear, often in perplexity, often in disappointment will the leaves of that book be turned over. Heaven grant that the closing page may be found to bear the assuring words "Action and duty were the guides of his life," and now—

"After life's fitful fever he sleeps well."

Your future career and character will be mainly of your own making, for the mould of a man's fortune is in his own hands; pause therefore and reflect how and after what pattern you will mould yourselves. Your mental training has fitted you more or less as Athletes to run the race of life with fair prospect of success. But the race itself is yet before you, and he alone in that Isthmian struggle will win the nobler than pine-leaf crown, who, to culture and discipline of the mind adds culture and discipline of the heart.

Your true education, that is to say the education of yourself by yourself and your true life-work begin to-day. To-day you leave the Gymnasium and step into the wide arena of the Stadium. Are you surprised that I speak of this day as the true commencement of your studies, rather than as the day of their true consummation? Do you point significantly to your Master's Diploma and Hood as if these honorable insignia constituted you literally Masters of Arts and Masters of Law. No idea could be more erroneous ; no idea could be more groundless and dangerous. Not thus are the Masters of Arts of the ancient University of Oxford taught to regard the standpoint of their graduation day, when, in the old Latin phrase, the Vice-Chancellor confers upon them the right of " commencing in the Faculty of Arts." You are tyros, not proficients. Masters in posse, not Masters in esse. Much of what you have acquired may be compared to "the crops which are raised, not for the sake of the harvest, but to be ploughed in as a dressing to the land."

I take it for granted that you have already selected, or that you purpose soon to select, Choice of a profession. a profession in life. Let the profession of your choice be emphatically your life-work. Direct to its study the best powers of your mind. In your professional career propose to yourself an exalted aim and put in its service a persevering fidelity. Strive with sustained effort and by every honorable means to succeed in it. Let all knowledge which bears upon it directly or indirectly claim your closest attention, and thus prove to the world, by acts as well as by words, that you are earnest men engaged in an earnest work, and that you are resolved to ground your claims to advancement, not on smiles and favors, not on patrons and friends, but on the extent and value to the community of your professional acquirements. Let your professional character, in short, be the real patron to which you manfully and confidently look for ultimate success in life. Every one knows full well that the busiest men, if methodical, have always leisure time for studies and pursuits other than those directly connected with their profession ; and as I anticipate that you will all be busy men, economical of time, picking up its fragments that nothing be lost, I may benefit you by a few practical hints as to the manner in which your horce subsecivce may be spent with profit and advantage to yourselves.

Gentlemen, a serious duty bearing alike on your professional studies and on the pursuits of your leisure moments is the due and progressive training of your intellectual powers. A serious duty. This training, no longer cribb'd. cabin'd and confin'd by the imperious requirements of examination standards, involves not only the discipline of those faculties whose powers have been cultivated, but also, and more especially of those which are weak or which have been overlooked and neglected. To secure, so to speak, the symmetric development of the mind, the due balance and training of its several powers should be aimed at. By careful observation alike of the strong and of the weak points of your mental organisation, you will be able to select such lines of study as shall tend to develop the weak and to corroborate the strong. Whatever of mental training your antecedent studies may have effected for you, you may rest assured that you have intellectual faculties which stand in need of further exercise and discipline. In the earnest effort to "know thyself" you may find, for example, that the faculty of imagination is stronger than that of reasoning; that the power of association is greater than that of generalisation; or that the faculty of memory is developed out of all proportion to that of judgment. And here I may be permitted to observe that the remarkable power of memory which most native students undoubtedly possess is frequently rather a hindrance than a help to them in making the results of study their own. Materials of thought collected and recalled by memory alone too frequently fail to pass further into the mind. They are consequently neither digested nor assimilated. The bare materials of knowledge may be accumulated, but it is thinking alone which makes what we read ours. The philosophic Locke puts this truth forcibly thus,—"We are of the ruminating kind, and it is not enough to cram ourselves with a great load of collections; unless we chew them over again, they will not give us strength and nourishment." Development of the will. Above all, you may find that your mental training is defective, not from lack of capacity, but from some remediable or irremediable weakness of the will which robs you of the power of controlling your own minds. Never let it be forgotten that with steady effort, aided by the cumulative power of habit, the processes of the intellect can be brought under the control of the will. Set out, then, with a determination not only to comprehend but also to master your own minds. Many an educated man passes through life the possessor of a mind of more than average power, which, because unmastered by the will, is useless and dangerous in proportion to its power and impulse. The frivolous, the wandering, the prejudiced, the uncertain, the impulsive, and the vitiated, not to speak of the diseased, are examples among many of minds which have escaped from the necessary autocracy of the will. "This due regulation and stern control of the processes of the mind," says a well-known author, "is indeed the foundation of all that is high and excellent in the formation of character. He who does not earnestly exercise it, but who allows his mind to wander, as it may be led by its own incidental images or casual associations, or by the influence of external things to which he is continually exposed, endangers his highest interests both as an intellectual and moral being."

Gentlemen, the broad fields of thought lie before you all unfenced, and the golden time of youth is yours. Choose your plot of ground with nice discrimination, let its tillage be within the compass of your strength; plough, sow, reap, and fill your arms with the sheaves of an abundant harvest. Be not dismayed at obstacles. The vinegar of perseverance will soften the Alps of difficulty. "With labour and patience," says the Eastern Proverb, "the mulberry leaf becomes satin."

Man and Mind are noble subjects of study.

"On Earth there is nothing great but Man,
In Man there is nothing great but Mind."

The study of human nature on the large scale is as grand and elevating as the study of it on the small scale is petty and debasing. The science of man's nature; Psychology. the science of his physical peculiarities and geographical distribution; and the sciences which indicate the laws that govern men when grouped in cities and nations deserve your careful study. History, too, "a quarry well worth the hawk," offers to you philosophy illustrated by examples, and the wondrous lessons of mind which moves the mass, of ideas more potent than bayonets. It speaks to you of the justice of an Aristides, the simple life of a Cincinnatus, the respect of a Regulus for his plighted word, the chastity of a Scipio and the virtues of a Cato, and it invites you to a standpoint above the din and excitement of battle, of revolution and of contending human interests, in order that from that vantage ground you may calmly read the mighty lessons of the world's infancy and manhood, and from them gain a clue to the real aim and end of humanity itself. Or, is your bent towards the science of Language? Comparative Philology. The classification of Languages is the classification of mankind. A scientific analysis of language proves the unity of the human race. "One blood"! What a wealth of brotherhood and kindness lies hid in that short phrase. The Chevalier Bunsen, an able writer and clear thinker on this subject, gives a classification of the languages of men, and, after stating the two possible hypotheses which have been advanced, first of several independent origins, and second o£ one sole origin of Language, continues as follows:—"If the first supposition be true, the different tribes or families of languages, however analogous they may be, as being the produce of the same human mind upon the same outward world, by the same organic means, will, nevertheless, offer scarcely any affinity to each other in the skill displayed in their formation, and in the mode of it ; but their very roots, full or empty ones, and all their words, monosyllabic or polysyllabic, must needs be entirely different. There may be some similar expressions in those inarticulate bursts of feeling, not reacted on by the mind, which grammarians call interjections. There are, besides, some graphic imitations of external sounds, called Onomatopoetica—words the formation of which indicates the, relatively, greatest passivity of the mind. There may be, besides, some casual coincidences in real words; but the law of combination, applied to the elements of sound, gives a mathematical proof that with all allowances, such a chance is less than one in a million for the same combination of sounds, signifiying the same precise object. If there be entirely different beginnings of speech, as philosophical inquiry is allowed to assume, and as the great philosophers of antiquity have assumed, there can be none but stray coincidences between words of a different origin. Referring to what has already been stated as the result of the most accurate linguistic inquiries, such a coincidence does exist between three great families spreading from the north of Europe to the tropic Lands of Asia and Africa. If there exists, not only in radical words, but even in what may appear as the work of an exclusively peculiar coinage—the formative words and inflections which pervade the whole structure of certain families of languages—and are interwoven, as it were, with every sentence pronounced in every one of their branches. All nations which, from the dawn of history to our days, have been the leaders of civilization, in Asia, Europe, and Africa, must consequently have had one beginning." The remarks of the learned writer refer more especially to the Semitic, Japetic, and Chametic languages, but the same conclusions equally apply to the Turanian, which is a branch of the Japetic. What could be more interesting to you as students of philology and natives of this land, than to trace, for example, your ancient Indian stock—more or less closely allied to the Sanskrit—with its polysyllabic words and store of inflectional forms through nearly all the languages of the West; to note its development into splendour and precision in the classic tongues of Greece and Rome, and following, let us suppose, one of the most remarkable of its branches into Central Europe, to observe its gradual transformation into the noble German tongue, the language emphatically of thought and philosophy, of poetry and of taste.

Gentlemen, whatever may be lacking in these and other sciences of Mind to give extension and intension to the intellectual faculties, you will not fail to find in one or other of the remaining classes under which the sciences and arts are grouped.

And here I may be allowed to solicit your attention to the importance of Physical Science as a means of intellectual culture, Physical Science. and I do so, more especially because no sufficient provision for instruction in the sciences of Physics, Chemistry and Life has as yet been made in connection with the University itself, or with any of its affiliated institutions.

The groups of Science now alluded to deal, not so much with abstractions, as with external and sensible objects ; their study quickens the faculty of observation, the powers of comparison and generalization, and the mental habit of method and arrangement. They familiarize the mind with the deeper philosophies of seeing, hearing and touch, and, in the close interrogation of Nature by actual experiment, they shew the value of the processes of analysis and synthesis. In these sciences reason guides observation, observation corrects theory, and truth can be proved by means cognizable by the senses. "To unite observation and reason, not to lose sight of the ideal of science to which man aspires, and to search for it and find it by the route of experience,—such," according to Victor Cousin, "is the problem of philosophy."

These sciences are valuable not only as training grounds for the intellect, but as store-houses of necessary information on matters of practical importance in life; matters which so underlie the political, scientific, literary and social demands of the present time, that no man with any pretension to a liberal education can afford to be ignorant of them. They constitute, moreover, the best correctives of that cramping of the mind which professional studies, ardently pursued, are so apt to induce.

Physical Science holds bold and not unsuccessful competition with the sciences of Mind to secure for its service the highest intellect of the time. In an age when knowledge, no longer satisfied with merely flowering into ideas is fruiting into the practical on every side, it behoves those who are training for the actualities of life to comprehend the demands of the day, if they would have their high and honorable degrees to represent realities, not anachronisms.

Daily is it becoming more and more apparent that the position of nations in the scale of civilization depends, mainly, upon their greater or less acquaintance with, and employment of, natural forces as aids to production, and, if this be true, then how deep must be the interest felt by all classes of society in understanding the laws and facts of Physics. The Statesman in Parliament, the Judge on the Bench, the Educationist, the Man of Letters, the Lawyer, the Soldier, the Sailor, the Merchant, the Manufacturer, and the Farmer have, each in his own sphere, a special interest in the momentous questions emerging from or colligated with Physical Science.

Gentlemen, whatever choice of congenial studies you may make, enter on the quest of truth with earnestness and modesty. Quest of truth. Truth is ever young ; she ages not though the world gets wrinkled. There are truths of beauty and of grace which grow along the wayside of life; there are truths bearing richer fruit which grow among the briers and thorns by little frequented paths; there are truths, the most priceless of all, which grow on slippery and rocky places, whose golden fruit can be plucked by those alone who search for it by sweat and toil. Around you lies an ocean of truth, in which the bravest diver may plunge with the certainty of bringing up goodly pearls.

It is true that this world is full of errors, but it is equally true that it is full of the correctives of error. Modestly, therefore, but firmly and faithfully set out on the holy quest of truth. Use aright the reason which has been given you, and honestly exercise your birthright, the inalienable birthright of every man, to prove all things.

Truth will not always be found on the side of the world's majorities. The sheep principle is strong in humanity, and it is not every combatant who has the courage, even if he have the will, to ally himself with the world's minorities in upholding the good and true. In saying this I have no desire to see you angular men, erratic in your opinions, needlessly running counter to the views of all around you, but I do desire that you should shew to the world that you are not merely smooth pebbles of the brook with every angle and prominence flattened down by attrition till all individuality is lost, but that you are men who possess, and desire to maintain a distinct individuality, a thoughtful steadiness of purpose, and a power of moral resistance which shall prevent your being helplessly swept away by the prevailing floods of fashion, of opinion, of frivolity and of mis-judgment.

Be careful in forming your opinions. An erroneous principle once assumed has the power of misleading even the strongest and best informed minds, and of binding them in chains of iron. All history and experience prove this. Beware especially of the tyranny of prejudice, than which nothing is more certain to warp and distort the mind. Prejudice is the very cancer of the soul.

Rest not, however, in mere knowledge polished, selfish and sterile, but gird your loins like men to translate that knowledge into action, Translate knowledge into action. alike for your own good and for the weal of your brother-man. Life demands of us not knowledge only, but action. Appreciate then your position as the teachers of India of the future, and fulfil as well as recognize the responsibilities which that position involves. Be zealous, wise and humble. The greatest philosophers the world has ever seen have spoken of the pursuit of knowledge as but a course between two ignorances, and the acceptance of this truth is itself an evidence of true knowledge, and true knowledge is the parent of humility and of wisdom. "The bough fruit-laden," says Sadi, the Persian poet, "lays its head upon the ground"; and, as a beautiful sonnet from the "Memories of Merton" hath it—

"Knowledge is like an errant knight of old,

Vaunting his prowess; eager for the fray;

Arm'd cap-á-pie; with peacock plumage gay;

Self-confident; adventure seeking; bold;

He roams throughout the world, ready to hold

Tournay against all comers day by day;

He enters magic caves without dismay,

And views strange sights which others ne'er behold.

But wisdom is his meek-eyed lady-love,

Whom if he wins not he is nothing worth—

Now casting down, her modest eyes on earth,

Now heavenward, trustful, she herself doth try,

And broodeth o'er her own heart silently,

Timid, but constant, patient, as a dove."

Be students, then, all your lives. Never abandon that honorable title. Study all your life. Select with care not only your professional studies, but also the pursuits of your leisure hours. Love them and reduce their cultivation to a system. Diligently map out your time, and form with care your mental habits. Do everything at its proper season, and you will have time to do everything carefully and well. "Have a duty for every time, and you will have time for every duty." Avoid dream-land, and correct without mercy that habit of indolence which compels some men to float through life

"As idly as a painted ship upon a painted ocean."

Under this earnest cultivation and discipline of the mind labour itself will be transmuted to pleasure, and the symbol of the curse will become the secret of the blessing:—

"Labour is life! 'tis the still water faileth;

Idleness ever despaireth, bewaileth;

Keep the watch wound, for the dark night assaileth;

Flowers droop and die in the stillness of noon.

Labour is glory! The flying cloud lightens;

Only the waving wing changes and brightens;

Idle hearts only the dark future frightens;

Play the sweet keys, wouldst thou keep them in tune."

Apollo, however, as we are told in classic song does not always keep his bow bent, and you too will require intervals of relaxation from professional studies and kindred pursuits. What your recreations ought to be I cannot attempt to define, but this I may say, that they should be selected as carefully and with as much self-introspection as your graver studies.

I wish I could indicate to you some manly exercise, not altogether foreign to your habits and customs, Games. some noble game like that of cricket which elevates at once the moral and physical tone, which calls forth energy and promptitude, which, with muscular force develops judgment, watchfulness, endurance, courage, generous emulation, appreciation of the merits of others, manly acceptance of defeat and manly modesty of success. More battle fields than those of war have been gained on British cricket grounds. He who braces his muscles, braces his mind.

I gladly point out to you also the genuine pleasures which arise from the love and imitation of the beautiful in Nature and in Art. If we look abroad on this wondrous creation we cannot fail to recognize the beautiful in profusion around us. It is seen in the motions, forms and colours of the animal kingdom; in the variety, grace and delicacy of the vegetable world; in the massing, grouping and grandeur of the objects of inanimate creation. Beauty exists as an expression of the great Creator's mind and love, and would exist, even were there no human eye to welcome it.

Man, however, has been endowed with perceptions specially fitted for the contemplation, enjoyment and imitation of all this beauty; but as other powers of the mind require to be evoked and educated, so does the power of appreciating the beautiful. When evoked and trained, the contemplation of the beautiful in Nature and Art is one of the most elevating and pure of the pleasures enjoyable by man.

"Man," it has been well said, "is by nature and universally an artificer, an artizan, an artist"; West, daughter of the East. and no where can this fact be more abundantly illustrated than here in India. In this as in many other respects the West is but the daughter of the East, though each retains her own marked individuality. The mother, however, has charms of her own, charms of antiquity, originality, grace and harmony of colour, which the daughter strives in vain to equal. Look at the textile, manual and mechanical arts of India; the "webs of woven air" spun by Arachne herself; the embroidered fabrics unequalled for delicacy and design. Look at the skill of the workmen of Shemoogah in carving in sandalwood, of those of Travancore in ivory, of the goldsmiths of Trichinopoly, the silversmiths of Cuttack. These and many other of the manufactures of this land exhibit remarkably that instinctive— let me add hereditary—artistic taste, and that artistic eye for form, ornament and bloom of colour which have gained for Indian arts the admiration of the world.

Such national industries you, as sons of India, should learn to appreciate and to cherish, for if you do not, they are little likely to remain your inheritance, or to be improved by Western taste or by Western science.

Never forget that India was a civilized, an artistic and an industrial nation when Abraham left his native Ur of the Chaldees, The past condition of India. and that it is through you, gentlemen, and others deeply interested in this land, that the latent capabilities of its intelligent and teachable people are to be evoked, so that your native land may once more take her ancient and most distinguished position among the philosophic, the artistic and industrial nations of the world.

Other rational enjoyments for leisure hours there are, many and varied, but these I cannot now stop to consider. Pleasures. Pleasures of harmony, imagination, taste and genius. Pleasures, too, of wit and humour. "The man who cannot laugh," says the quaint author of Sartor Resartus, "is not only fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils, but his whole life is already a treason and stratagem." Make not a business of mere recreation; enjoy it like men of sense and pass on:—

"Sicut canis ad Nilutn bibens et fugiens."

Gentlemen, man has a heart as well as a head, moral principles as well as intellectual powers, The heart and the head. and in forming the human character this fact ought never to be overlooked. Comment would only weaken the impression of the following suggestive passage from Bacon, which Lord Bolingbroke has pronounced to be one of the finest and deepest in his writings, and which Sir W. Hamilton has quoted with admiration; it is indeed full of significance and truth. "In forming the human character," remarks the great philosopher, "we must not proceed as a statuary does in forming a statue, who works sometimes on the face, sometimes on the limbs, sometimes on the folds of the drapery; but we must proceed (and it is in our power to proceed) as Nature does in forming a flower, or any other of her productions; she throws out altogether, and at once, the whole system of being, and the rudiments of all the parts."

I must conclude. Many are the temptations which are likely to beset your path in life; Guard against temptations. temptations from temptations from without, temptations from within, to resist which will require the energetic action of all the better elements of your character. Walk therefore the path of life warily, wisely; recognize the weakness of self, and never for a moment forget the golden saying of the brave Duke John of Saxony, "the straight line is the shortest road."

If your studies, imbued as they have been with high principles of honor and of truth, fail to make you men of honor, truthfulness and integrity, they have failed to influence for good your moral nature, however much they may have succeeded in sharpening your intellect, or in adding to the stores of your knowledge. Your Alma Mater will fail to recognize in you her own success, unless you exhibit to the world an incorruptible integrity, chivalrous honor, unswerving truth, genuine sympathy with your brother-man, and an enlarged mind free alike from pride, prejudice and selfishness.

Cultivate then a tender conscience, a conscience which shall have power to rule alike your thoughts and actions. Cultivate a tender conscience. In One word, be gentlemen in all the feelings, science. principles and chivalry of gentlehood. Let the world see that with informed heads you have reformed hearts, and that your intellectual training has been no one-sided system which has done all that is possible to be done for the mind, while it has left untended and untrained the heart, whence are the very issues of moral life. Good example is a language all can understand. There are footsteps and footsteps on the sea shore; footsteps which the returning tide sweeps away; footsteps which ocean's waves cannot efface. Let me point out to you the footprints on the sands of time of one who translated faithfully into daily life the "true and fest" of his princely shield; of one who lives alike in the hearts and memories of a grateful and sorrowing people, as the personification of all the courtesy, wisdom and nobleness of soul of the poet's ideal knight. Amid "that fierce light which beats upon a throne" he stood before a blot-seeking, blot-loving world, noble yet humble, wise yet gentle, learned yet modest, bearing on his breast "the white flower of a blameless life," and in his heart the love of all that is good, and true and beautiful. In your much narrower sphere of duty seek to imitate a gentle, true life like his; like him, strive to leave to your children that noblest of all burdens to carry, an unstained and honored name, and, above all, reverence, as he did, your conscience as your king.

In looking back, whether from the near or distant future, upon this eventful day of your lives, your satisfaction will be deepened by the reflection that your honors were conferred by one who bears a historic name, a name synonymous in the annals of Britain with promptitude and power, no less than with loyalty and duty; by the reflection also that your success has been witnessed by a sovereign Indian Prince, whose enlightened rule will be pointed to with admiration by generations unborn; and more than all, will your satisfaction be deepened by the remembrance that your much-coveted degrees have been proclaimed in the presence of a Prince of the Blood-Royal of England, whom with loyal hearts we welcome to our shores for his own sake, for the sake of Albert the Good, and for the sake of her, the gentle Lady, who reigns, not more by right of ancient descent over the persons, than by right of queenly love in the hearts of a free, a manly and a loyal people.

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