Convocation Addresses of the Universities of Bombay and Madras/Part 2/Rt. Hon. Mountstuart Elphinstone Grant Duff
TWENTY-NINTH CONVOCATION.
(By The Right Honorable Mountstuart Elphinstone Grant Duff, C.I.E., F.R,S.)
Ladies and Gentlemen,—My first duty is to congratulate upon their degrees those students who have just been admitted to them, and to express a hope that they will keep the promises which they have this day made.
My second duty is, in accordance with custom, to address some observations to them and to this assembly. The Educated Indians. I have, however, a very great deal to say. It is the only opportunity I have had, or shall have, before I bid farewell to India, of directly addressing a class which, although at present far from numerous, only 46 out of a million*[1] in the population of this, the most educated of the Presidencies, is growing, and ought steadily to grow, in importance,—a class which nothing but mistakes on its own part, aided by amentia and dementia in some other quarters, can prevent being an instrument of infinite good to Southern India.
Having then a very great deal to say, I cannot possibly put it into the brief limits of an address, to which even the most indulgent of you could listen on a hot March afternoon.
I will accordingly merely read a paragraph or two for form's sake, and let my reflections find their way to you, not by the ear, but by the eye. And first I would ask, — Now that you have got your degrees, what do you propose to do? Some of you will go into the service of Government. The service of Government is a very creditable calling, and we to whom the administration is at present confided have given practical proofs of our desire to see the number of graduates in the service of Government considerably increased.
Still, Government employment can only absorb a very limited number of you. Few things are more disastrous for a country, and few more flagitious in a Government, than to create places wholesale, to meet the wishes of aspirants to an income.
But some of you will say 'some places already existing but virtually closed to natives, will be opened to them.' Undoubtedly they will. The policy as to that was laid down by your, and my, masters long ago. We hear much childish chatter in favour of going faster, and not less unwise, though happily, fewer, utterances in favour of going more slowy in that direction, but all such have not the slightest effect upon the progress of events. The thoughtful opinions of thoughtful men who have studied the subject, and whose characters guarantee their good faith, are and always will be treated very differently—as you may have gathered from the Viceroy's speech at the Pier— the other day.
The main object of the Indian, as of every other civilized Government, must be to get for the country which it governs the best possible administration at the cheapest rate. To that object all minor considerations, such as questions of race or colour, must be subordinated.
But the problem in this country is an infinitely difficult one, and we have got a very little way towards solving it when we have merely made general allegations to the effect that native labour is cheaper than European, or that many more natives are fitted to take some considerable part in the Government than was the case thirty years ago, nor do we get a bit further by declaiming about the excellent work which the old Haileybury Civil Service, and the new Competitive Civil Service have done for this country. We must have many more good natives in office, and we must have a far higher average of statesmanlike acquirement than we have ever yet had in the Covenanted Civil Service, though we may very possibly a good deal diminish its numbers. But if you want men of mature, trained, ability, and of a much higher order of merit than the very fair average of merit we have got, what you want must be paid for, and it is a costly article. These, and a thousand other considerations, which cross each other, and complicate the problem, will have to engage the anxious attention, first of the joint Committee of the Lords and Commons, secondly of the Executive and Legislative authorities in England and in India.
We may assume, however, quite safely that more appointments, and, especially, more of the better appointments will be gradually opened to natives, but, after all, the number of good appointments in this country or continent is, and will continue to be, surprisingly few. The overwhelming majority of appointments under Government is already in the possession of natives, and I do not think the rapid infiltration of natives, even into the Civil Service, has yet attracted sufficiently the attention of the public. If you deduct from the small balance of offices practically closed to natives those which must belong to Europeans, not in virtue of their being the descendants of conquerors, but in virtue of that education of ages, which has made the Aryan of the West what he is, the number of new appointments to be opened will be as nothing to those, who will desire to occupy them. I know there are people who say—"No doubt for the time, every race in India including the Aryans of the East, requires the guidance of the Aryans of the West, but a day will soon come when that will not be so." I think the best answer I ever knew made to that statement, was made by a very remarkable man, himself a native of India, and belonging to one of your most ancient religions, who observed to me: "I often hear talk of that kind among my countrymen, but when I remark how short are the strides in advance, which are made by the East, compared to those which are made simultaneously by the West, I am reminded of the man who said:—'In two years I shall be as old as my elder brother!' "
Even, however, if this were not so, if one could see dimly on the horizon a time when India could obtain almost any of its present advantages, without importing into its administration a large proportion of trained ability from Europe, the numbers of those of you who could find valuable Government situations would be not very enormous.
It will be interesting to observe what proportion of the appointments vacated by the Aryans of the West, passes into the hands of the Aryans of the East, and what proportion falls to the natives of the country properly so-called—men whose ancestors were here, as it would seem, before the two branches of the Aryan race parted on the highlands of Central Asia.
Before I pass from the subject of Government employment, I should like to observe that there is a branch of the lower education, in which you, gentlemen, who represent the higher education are not quite so proficient as could be desired. One of your Examiners lately informed me that, out of ninety-three papers recently sent up to him, ninety would have been rejected at South Kensington, as being too badly written. To candidates for Government employment, this is a matter of life and death. We don't want men in our offices, however good their degrees may be, who do not write large, clear, legible hands. In England, ever since the days of Lord Palmerston, this accomplishment has been considered one of first-rate importance in our public offices, and it is mere common sense that it should be so considered.
But what is to become of the unsuccessful candidates for Government employment? Education will absorb a respectable, and an ever-increasing, contingent, while the Bar will also absorb a good many.
Many of you seem to have a quite peculiar turn for law, and, as law in this country tends to conform itself always more and more, not only to written reason, but to intelligibly expressed written reason, the greater becomes its educative power over the community. The calm pressure of our Codes will do, I think, much for India, which saints and sages have failed to do. "Quid leges sine moribus?" said the Latin poet, but there is a sense in which the converse is true: "Quid mores sine legihus?"
I should like to see many more of you turn your attention to civil engineering, and, especially, as I think my predecessor, the Duke of Buckingham, advised you, to hydraulic engineering. If ever there was a region of the world, in which it was expedient to manage to perfection the supply of that element, which pardons no mistakes, it is the Presidency of Madras, and the adjoining Province of Mysore. I have heard it estimated by one entitled to speak with authority, that there are some ninety thousand tanks in Southern India, and, as we know well here, a tank in this country often means what a lake does in the language of the West. We have tanks, which recall the Virgilian phrase:
"Fluctibus et fremitu assurgens, Benace, marino."
That seems strange to Englishmen who have not visited India, and who, remembering a saying of Lord Beaconsfield's, think of a tank as a little reservoir to supply a cottage with drinking water !
Then it is impossible to urge too strongly the claims upon you of the Medical sciences, and of the Medical art. When Surgeon-General Furnell spoke wise words on that subject in this pLice eight years ago, there was not a single Brahmin practising Medicine in Southern India. It is gratifying to know that there are now seven, of whom three are graduates, while four have passed their examinations, so that a beginning has been made; but we want the present numbers multiplied over and over again. We ought indeed to have many hundred trained men, and women, doctors, in this Presidency. That however is a "Counsel of perfection." It may well be that the times are not ripe for adding very hugely to our highly trained Medical practitioners; but a class is wanted imperatively wanted—of men and women, who have a certain tincture of European science, and who, accepting the methods of the Vythians, wherever they are sensible, and even wherever they are harmless, should push them aside only when they are distinctly and obviously mischievous. Who but you can, if you do not furnish, at least promote, the creation of this most useful band of intermediaries, and who has a right to advise you so to do, if not the grandson of the author of the Materia Indica?
Sanitas sanitatum, omnia sanitas, the admirable saying two hundred years ago of Menage to Balzac, would, if it were taken to heart, do more good to India, aye, and to England, than half the winged words, which the most distinguished orators have uttered in our days.
There are a thousand ways in which your co-operation might aid the Government to do things which no Government can do by itself . The annual mortality in this Presidency, for example, from fever alone, is very considerably over two hundred thousand. It distances the mortality from cholera, even in the worst cholera years.
Well, a great many of these lives could be quite certainly The virtue of saved by the use of the cinchona alkaloids, and what is more, a prodigious number of other lives, which are not absolutely destroyed by fever, might be made much happier and more useful, if only you would devote yourselves, when occasion serves, to spreading a knowledge of the virtues of the cinchona alkaloids amongst your less educated neighbours. The Government will soon be in a position to furnish the most admirable febrifuge at a fabulously cheap rate, but who is to persuade the people? Who but you?
Then there is conservancy and its kindred practices. There are numbers of you who understand why we Europeans are so anxious to improve the town and village sanitation of India, but improvement walks with lagging feet, for want of non-official missionaries of sanitation, up and down the land. What greater benefit could its most educated class confer, than to spread the elementary principles of sound views on these questions which are vital in more senses than one?
But to return to my inquiry—What is to become of those of you, who do not get employment under Government? Well, there is agriculture.
I am glad to see many indirect results of the expenditure at Saidapet beginning to show themselves; but I should like to see a much larger portion of the educated intelligence of South India directed towards the land, and engaged in what is, alike from its historical associations and from the nature of things, one of the most dignified of all occupations, far more dignified, for example, than all but the higher grades of scriptory labour. Speaking the other day at Shiyali, I said: "I am particularly glad to have made to-day the acquaintance of Mr. Krishnasawmy Mudaliyar, with whose name and good work I have long been familiar. I only wish we had two or three such men in every taluk in the Madras Presidency."
How then do we stand? There is Government employment, Education, the Bar, Civil Engineering, the Medical profession. Agriculture. All these are admirable things; but a country in which its educated class does not devote itself to a vast number of other callings, is quite unfit to keep its place abreast of other countries. It is with a view partly to draw into the stream of progress classes not now reached by almost any of our educational agencies, and partly to direct into profitable channels a considerable amount of activity and intelligence, which now strains forward to a University degree, and finds it, when acquired, the barrenest of barren honours, that my honorable colleagues and I have set on foot the large scheme of technical and industrial education, which has lately been brought before the notice of the South Indian public. Putting aside the sciences and their various sub-divisions, upon which there will be examinations as a matter of course, there will be examinations on such practical subjects as earth-work, road- work and railway work, bridge-making, drawing, painting and design, modelling, wood, and copper-plate, engraving and etching, carriage-building, boot, and shoe-making, jeweller's work, tobacco-manufacturing, dress-making, lace-making, bread-making, and a great variety of other subjects. For every one of these—sixty-six, or thereabouts in all, —a most careful syllabus, explaining what has to be studied and how to study it, has been drawn up by experienced persons, the greatest care being taken that both the theory and practice of each subject shall be mastered. In the cookery examination, for example, not only will a knowledge of the theory be fully tested by written papers, and vivâ voce, but the candidate will be obliged to prepare, cook, dish-up, and serve, a complete dinner for four persons, under the immediate supervision of the Examiners. In instituting these examinations, we have not been thinking of the extension of knowledge and the enlargement of the mind. That belongs to the University. We have been thinking of science viewed in its application to manufactures and industries. We do not want, however, to go to the other extreme, and to train up mere rule-of-thumb workers. We desire that every art, however humble, shall be exercised in due subordination to the particular science, or sciences, within whose domain it falls. Certificates of various kinds, diplomas, prizes and scholarships will be assigned to the successful candidates in the various examinations, according to the rules laid down in the official notification.
It is to be hoped that the students of all the higher branches —such as applied mechanics, chemistry, geology, mineralogy, forestry—will possess that amount of general education which is implied by passing at least the Matriculation Examination of this University, not to say the First in Arts, but a great many youths whom nature never meant for University studies, will, it is hoped, turn aside from a road that can lead to nothing but grievous disappointment, and devote themselves to highly honourable and lucrative careers. I could wish that this scheme, and the commercial teaching inaugurated by Mr.Adam of Patcheappa's College, while being useful to every class of the community, might be specially useful to the Mahommedans, who, while they shew in this Presidency, a considerable turn for trade, show also a curious indisposition to book-learning. Of the 1,349 Bachelors of Arts, whom we had in 1884, Dr. Cornish told us. some of you will remember, that 899 were Brahmins, whilst our large Mahommedan population, nearly two millions strong, gave us only seven graduates. And yet the Brahmins are a mere fraction, one twenty-sixth part of the Hindu population of the Presidency, about 1,122,000 in all !
What this country wants above all things is material prosperity—the mother of all other prosperity in our imperfect world. The Government, over which I preside, has steadily pushed in this direction. How well the real leaders of the people, the clear-headed practical men of business know it, was made clear to me during my first two years here, when I visited every district, from Tinnevelly to the Chilka lake, and heard their own ideas from their own lips. But even in a country which has had such a history as this, and where the sphere of Government is so wide, it is very little that a Government can do towards creating material prosperity. It can show the way to wealth. It can strike the fetters off industry. It can improve communications. It can educate. It can set its face, as a flint, against all the impostors, who would derogate from the sacred simplicity of Free Trade, "the international law of the Almighty," as it has been well called.
It is, however, the educated, or relatively educated, people of the land, that must drag South India, as they have dragged England, originally an incomparably poorer country, out of the slough of poverty.
Less and less, I am afraid, must you look to the English Capitalist. The persons who write and declaim in favour of large political changes in India, produce no effect upon the Government, but they do produce, and, I fear, they will evermore and more produce, an effect upon the English Capitalist, who, if he once were to get into his head that the real opinion of India is represented by some persons, who profess to represent it, would as soon think of lending to her as to Honduras.
This is a danger which you will have to face. I am sorry for it, for India sorely needs great supplies of capital, borrowed in the cheapest market. Yet if the chatter about the "tribute," paid by India to England, gets loud enough really to catch the ear of the British investor, adieu to cheap capital for India. She will then have to do everything she wants out of her own poor savings.
That is one of the many reasons for which I would urge more and more of you to become manufacturers; agriculturists and producers of exchangeable articles, to devote yourselves in short to careers, by which men and countries grow rich.
The economic problems of India with its rapidly increasing population and the absolute certainty, that although, here and there, savings might be made by the use of less costly agencies, and so forth, there is very little after all to be done in that way, are of the very gravest kind. They can only be solved by largely increased receipts, and whence are the largely increased receipts to come, if the most educated men of the country do not put their shoulder to the wheel, and add greatly to the wealth out of which the people are to be supported. Tinker and fidget as much as you will over forms of administration, the elementary truth remains that you can't get blood out of a stone. If India, or any other country under heaven, is to be really well-governed, it must be rich.
But to proceed on our quest of occupation for graduates—Politics, in their journalistic form, may give occupation to a few of you, but you are too far removed from the great centres of the world, to treat with much advantage of general politics. To one who has lived in the midst of them, it is indeed astounding to see the sort of heroism, with which some people charge into the middle of the most difficult and complicated subjects, on the authority of a telegram, which does not even pretend to do more than reflect the morning's gossip of this, or that, European capital, thousands and thousands of miles away. "Oh!" but some will observe, "there are Indian politics." The answer to that observation is, that there is in India but scant material for any politics, worthy of the name.
What has given its great importance to political life in England and some other countries, is that they have been the pioneers of the world's progress in a great many matters of vast importance, connected with men's daily lives. They have had by endless debate, sometimes in the Council chamber, sometimes in Parliaments, often in the field, to work out the solution of a thousand puzzles, one more difficult than the other.
You might easily have had to do the same, if no Europeans had ever landed upon these shores. In that case you would probably have had a long period of ever-increasing turbulence, then a slow process of re-construction, which would have gone on, say, a thousand years, and brought you at last very possibly to about the same position, with regard to a variety of things, at which you have arrived now, —having been transported thither by an enchanter's wand. There are some who think that it would be better for India, in the end, if that had been so, and if, to para-phrase the famous words of Medea, the trees had been never felled, which were formed into the bark of Vasco da Gama. Possibly, they are right: at least, I cannot contradict them, being no proficient in the terribly difficult, and not very profitable, science of Hypothetics. Mark this, however, that if the rough hand of the conqueror had never intervened, at least the present generation would not now be thinking the thoughts, which fill the minds of the graduates of this University.
The British Government in India for the last two generations has been mainly engaged in giving to you, readymade, nearly every result of our long political struggles and experiments. It has only been restrained from giving you more, by a consideration for your own feelings and ideas.
There is nothing you can ask from your rulers, in the way of such results, that I can think of, which they would not willingly give you to-morrow. Already, in some ways, they have given you more than they have ever given themselves. I need only point to your Codes.
All the wisest men in England would give such as these to England to-morrow; but the force of prejudice and interest in certain quarters has been always too strong. The highest intelligence of the nation has not yet been able to lift the question of codification out of the field of politics; the field, that is, of clamour and of strife.
Few profounder remarks have ever been made about politics, than one which was made by an eminent American, a citizen of the Great Republic: "We shall one day learn to supersede politics by education."
All sane persons in England rejoice, as one subject after another passes out of politics, and becomes the common property of both political parties. The glory of what is known as the Liberal party in that country is, that so very many things, which it has championed at various times, have now passed from being contested truths, into accepted truisms. The glory of the Conservative party is that, although it has again and again opposed those truths, "including" in its opposition to them every argument that could reasonably be adduced, and marshalling against them every interest that could possibly be alarmed, it has hardly ever dreamt of seriously questioning them, when they had once become embodied in Acts of Parliament.
When some misguided persons, however, insist that instead of obtaining every result of our long political struggles for the asking, —nay, not for the asking, we don't insist upon that but for the hinting a wish to have them, —you should be quite gratuitously cursed with all the clumsy machinery, which grim necessity, not choice, has obliged us to use, we may be permitted to smile, and to say to ourselves: "Is this all that these gentlemen have learned from the history taught in our colleges and schools?" Is he to be called advanced, and intelligent, who says "What we want, is not the meal but the mill?"
I am the last person to undervalue politics. I have lived amidst the exciting struggles of politics all my days, but politics are only a dignified pursuit, as long as great questions of principle are open for discussion. When all these are settled, they cease to be dignified.
England is the classic land of Parliamentary discussion, but even there, Parliament has only shown itself an admirable instrument, when broad issues were before the country. No one who has had his finger on the pulse of the machine, will say that it is a good, or anything but a detestable, instrument for the working out of schemes, which are good or bad, not according to the general conceptions, on which they are based, but according to the applicability to circumstances of a thousand detailed provisions.
Parliaments in fact are splendid instruments to remove mountains, but of very imperfect utility for the picking up of pins.
There is, however, outside the sphere of anything that can properly be called politics, a perfect world of labour, deeply exciting and interesting, lying ready for you.
Your foreign rulers have wisely shrunk from interfering, except on the rarest occasions, with your religious or with your social customs, but I am assured that the new ideas, which you are acquiring, have rendered many of you much dissatisfied with not a few of your time-honoured institutions. It has indeed been urged upon me by some fervent reformers that I should espouse their side upon this or that question, relating to marriage, and so forth. I have taken uncommonly good care to do nothing of the sort. That immense field, that world of labour, is for you, and not for us. There you have gigantic questions to debate and settle, while 26 we look on sympathetically and respectfully, but leaving you absolutely to yourselves, so long as you do not appeal to the "arm of flesh." When you do that, I hope we shall always let it be seen very clearly, that we do not mean to permit any one, small or great, to disturb with impunity the Pax Britannica. So long, however, as there is no physical violence, nor infliction of civil inconveniences, we shall watch all the changes that may occur—and they may well be immense—in the same spirit in which we read of the gradual supersession of paganism by Christianity, of serfage by freedom, of blind ecclesiastical authority by the liberty of intellect, having our own opinions about it all, but by no means inclined, even if it were possible, to rush into the fight.
The first sphere of labour then, outside the professions and other money-getting pursuits, which I would venture to suggest to you, is the bringing into harmony of your new thoughts, derived from us, and your old thoughts, derived from your ancestors, or from the non-European conquerors who have, at various times, settled down in India. In that field, you may become great and original. If I ventured to express an opinion on a matter quite small, when compared with many others you have to settle, I would say that he who could persuade his countrymen to give up their, to us, astounding expenditure on marriages, would do more for South India than any Government could do in a decade, but these questions are, as I said, for you. In the field of social reform, you may produce men as great as some of our political reformers of the West, but you will never produce anything great, by learning our political phraseology, and then applying it to circumstances entirely different.
I can quite understand those who say: "You Europeans should never have come to pour your new wine into our old bottles." I can well understand those who say "Pour away, the sooner our old bad bottles burst, the better."
I wish as a British official to be absolutely neutral between these parties, but I cannot understand how any one who wishes for the good of India, should dream of desiring that any portion of the intelligence of the country should go dancing after this or that pseudo-political will-o'-the-wisp, while the mightiest social and religious questions, that have been debated for the last fifteen hundred years, are asking more and more loudly for an answer.
I re-read recently the grave and wise address, which was delivered to you four years ago by Mr. Muttuswami Aiyar. We hear much talk about "leading the people of India" and all manner of crack-brained or interested quacks, European and others, will be increasingly ready to "lead" them by books, speeches, and anonymous articles.
My advice to the people of India is, to be led by those of their own race, who, being men of ripe experience and proved ability, have imbibed what is best of the wisdom that Europe can teach, without breaking away from all their old moorings, and I could not mention any name which better illustrates the kind of leading, to which I should commend them, than that of the distinguished Judge I have just mentioned.
One of the many important subjects, to which he urged you to attend, addressing you with an authority to which no European could aspire, was the home teaching of women. "Without it," he said, "the education of the women of this country cannot be sufficiently liberal, for, from one cause or another, girls are withdrawn from schools a little too soon. All of you should endeavour to secure the benefit of home-teaching to such young women as may come under your protection and guardianship, and I have no doubt that the prejudice against it will wear away in the same manner in which it has worn away in relation to girls receiving any education at all." I remember walking one day with an eminent Italian in the streets of a European capital, when a very useless person, bearing a great historic name, who had had a distinguished father, and a bad mother, passed us: "Les races se feminisent"— Races tend to take after the women—said my companion. The late Surgeon-General, addressing you in 1884, made some suggestive remarks on this subject. There is, he said, considerable danger, if there is great disparity in mental development between the father and the mother, that the intellectual powers of the ofEspring will rather follow the mother's than the father's type.
I should like to see the educational advance of South India more uniform—I should like to see both female and primary education moving a little quicker. Nothing is more keenly interesting to those Europeans in this country, whose duty it is to think, not of gaining cheap applause by repeating favourite Shibboleths, but by doing the best they can for your welfare, than to see the way in which practices and ideas, which are separated in the evolution of humanity by thousands of years, jostle each other in your society. I have received, within a few hours, two documents, one setting forth the advantages of introducing into India the most brand-new political machinery, and the other a petition from a condemned criminal, who asked for mercy, on the ground that he had been persuaded by the banker of his village, the Sir John Lubbock, in fact, of the locality, that the wife of his victim was in the habit of turning into a tigress, had already eaten his sister, and was about to eat his buffaloes.
Such contrasts, and they are very numerous, coming in the ordinary course of business, are apt to make a man who acts under a sense of responsibility remember the saying, that the rulers here are like men bound to make their watches keep true time in two longitudes at once. "If they go too fast," says Sir Henry Maine in his famous Rede lecture, "there will be no security: if they go too slow, there will be no improvement."
Again, Mr. Muttuswami Aiyar advised you to travel in India, and, if possible, to, go to Europe. I may be permitted, without presumption, to do the same; but I would caution you against one mistaken opinion, which I have observed that some natives of India have picked up in England. They have been led to imagine that Englishmen at home were more kindly and friendly than Englishmen in this country: but you should recollect that, in England, a native of India is a rarity; in provincial circles one of the rarest of rarities. He comes only as a guest, and is treated as a guest. Here, whatever may be his merits, he is not a rarity, and he is not a guest.
Then, I have sometimes met with the idea that the English democracy would be more favourable to the native of India than the English aristocracy, or the English bourgeoise, which ruled from 1832 to 1868, had been.
I would not, if I were you, attach too much weight to that idea. Our English Demos has many virtues, but he is, when his path is crossed, about the most formidable personage on the surface of this planet.
India never crossed his path but once, and, even then, his attention was happily distracted by his being given the Great Company to toss. If he had quite understood that the movement of 1857 was directed, not against an institution, but against him, many things might have taken a worse turn than they did. However that may be, avoid touching our home political controversies, even with your little finger. Keep India sedulously away from any contact with English parties. "Have a care how you fan the flame," as a wise man said, in words that turned out to be too terribly prophetic; "have a care how you try to extinguish it, for it may easily burn your fingers!"
I have sometimes smiled to see sagacious advice given you by some of your own people outside this Presidency, as to the expediency of using both Conservatives and Liberals for the good of India, without allowing yourselves to be entangled in our contentions. Even so I have thought does the prudent and reflective moth propose to use the candle.
Though, however, I think that for you to meddle with our home politics is to reap the whirlwind, while to play at politics here is to Plough the sand, I trust that a great many of you will find most honorable and useful spheres of activity, in connection with the recent development of local self-government in this Presidency—the mother, I think, I may say, of local self-government in its modern Indian form . I cannot tell you how anxious I am to see this strike deep root amongst your people, but it can only do so if your most educated men bend their minds to the often tiresome, but always supremely important, tasks of multiplying roads and schools, spreading vaccination, seeing after rest-houses for travellers, planting avenue trees, or, to put all in one phrase, "in extending civilization," for it is in these and such things, not in the institutions that catch the eye, and get written about in the ordinary histories, that civilization consists. Large parts even of the island of Great Britain were hardly civilized in the year 1800, and even in our own time Mr, Disraeli wrote of civilization, as being confined to England, France, and the course of a single river, meaning, thereby, the Ehine. The remark required modification, but had much truth in if. The object of all who work local self-government should be to extend what he meant by civilization all over South India.
Let every man try to make his town or village the best drained, the best educated, the cleanest and the healthiest in the District, with the hardest and best shaded roads. Such work is not political in the sense in which that word is usually employed, but it is of untold importance to the Polis, the community.
Get wealth, get material civilization. These are the two maxims, which I wish to impress upon you in this part of my address. You will soon see that I do not consider that man lives by bread alone, or that even widely diffused physical well-being is the last word of human progress. There is probably no one who ever addressed you, who holds more distinctly an opposite opinion; but it is madness not to recognize the limitations of existence, or to try to leap over our own shadows. All schemes of world-bettering by raising the condition of the masses, and spreading property amongst them, will either lead to terrible disaster, or be inoperative, until the amount of property, that is, of desirable things in the world, is vastly, colossally, increased. To attempt to do that without strictly following the laws of political economy, the laws which deal with the wealth of nations, is like surveying, in defiance, or contempt, of the laws of geometry. It may well be that India, through all the ages, may possess a large number of philosophers, who do not concern themselves with material things at all, and that that spirit is widely extended amongst its people. Even in the bustling eager West we have had thousands of such in all the ages. We have thousands now, whose inmost aspirations could not be better expressed than in the words of St Augustine, I think, "O amare, O ire, O sibi perire, O ad Deum pervenire !"
In our countries such people are the very salt of the earth, and I am not at all concerned to deny that they may be the same in Asia; but few of you belong, I should think, to that category. You have for good or evil drunk the fevering wine of modern European thought, and understand what we, in the West, mean by progress. My appeal to you is in favour of your devoting yourselves to what is undoubtedly real progress, so far as it goes, not to its hollow counterfeit. But some of you have no turn for taking part in religious or social discussions, or for engaging in any form of active and stirring labour.
To such, the first question I would put, is this: "Are you satisfied with what you are doing for your own literature? How many of you, whether speaking Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Canarese, Tulu, or any other tongue, are doing anything, or seriously proposing to do anything, to add to the literature of those languages, or any of them?" I do not refer to books of information that you may have published in those languages, books merely imparting a little of the knowledge of the West— they are good in their own way—but to books containing something that is at once new and striking, books adding, if it be only by one verse or one paragraph, to the things already existing in the world, which are acknowledged to be beautiful, or to be at once new, and true. Some of you, however, will object: "But who is sufficient for these things? How many are there, who can add even one sentence, worthy to live, to the literature of the world, or one new fact to the sum of human knowledge?" More, I suspect, than is generally believed. Who made your excellent Tamil proverbs? Who found out the virtues of many of your common weeds? But pass that by. Men may, however, lead most worthy, and honorable lives, devoted to science and to literature, without the making either of books or discoveries. There are few more dignified occupations than indulging to the uttermost what has been well called "la grande curiosite" : and no one can do that, however recluse may be his turn, without making himself a fountain-head of wisdom in his own immediate neighbourhood. This University will not have done anything like its fair share of work till South India too has many Actons. A native gentleman of position, at Vizagapatam, devotes himself to astronomy, and, much to his credit, supports an Observatory. The Maharajah of Vizianagram, forward in all good works, is, as one who bears his title well may be, an assiduous student of Sanskrit, but the great names of the land have not yet begun to take the place they should do, either in the accumulation, or in the encouragement, of learning. How many of you are seeking to obtain a large and scholarly knowledge of the vernaculars of South India? A distinguished European savant, intimately acquainted with Northern India, wrote to me lately : "I am going to the Orientalist Congress at Venice in September. Could you find me a Dravidian pundit, a man thoroughly individual and quite unlike an Aryan pundit?" I have made what enquiry I could, and I think I could as easily send to Venice a live Megatherium or a live Pterodactyl. Surely this should not be so. In the West, we have hundreds and hundreds of men, who are producing literature of a high order; and hundreds and hundreds more, who are great scholars, pundits of profound learning, German, French, English and what not, who do not produce much, but whose powers of acquisition are marvellous. I want to know whether there are many such, or any such, amongst you, and if not, whether you do not think it highly desirable that the class should be called into existence? This duty of doing something for your literature is doubly incumbent upon such of you, as are of pure Dravidian race—a race not nearly so numerously represented amongst our graduates as it should be, but comprising some twenty-nine millions of the inhabitants of this Presidency.
It seems probable that you Dravidians had already made very considerable advances in the arts of life and in government at a remote period, by your own strength. Then came the Aryans of the East. They gave you a great impulse. After a vast interval of time, these were followed by the Aryans of the West. These last are beginning to give, both to you and to the Aryans of the East, an infinitely greater impulse, but the last thing which any sensible man amongst them desires is, that you should cease to be yourselves. The fact is we cannot afford to forego the co-operation of any race, which is fit to take part in the work of civilized man.
Your remote connections, the aborigines of Australia, showed themselves incapable of doing so, and are disappearing fast.
You, on the other hand, increase, multiply, and prosper, in contact with the highest civilization known.
It is now as certain, as anything in the future can be, that,two hundred years hence, the race and language of Shakespeare, Burke and Byron will have beaten all other races and languages in the struggle for existence, but, good things as are our race and language, I, for one, should be very sorry to lose from the concert of humanity many other voices, and I should like to see the millions of Dravidians, who inhabit South India, taking all the good they can get from us, without ceasing to move on their old lines.
Like all Scotchmen, I am proud of my little country, of its history, and of the work it is doing in the world. But I should as soon wish you to look at the world through Scottish spectacles, or to desire for yourselves the things which Scotchmen desire for themselves, as, standing this March morning in the lovely gardens of Guindy, I should have wished to give you in exchange for your climate that "hunger of the North wind" which "bites our peaks into barrenness."
Mr. Foalkes, the Chaplain of Coimbatore, has drawn up a very instructive analysis of the Catalogue of books registered in Madras in 1 884. From this, we learn, amongst other things, that 744 books were registered during that period. Of these, 374 treated of religion, 189 were educational, and 181 miscellaneous. It would be interesting, though I fear impossible, to have a further analysis with a view to learn how far the higher education which our University has been promoting, has influenced this literature. The second field then, outside the professions and callings in which I wish to invite you to labour, is the field of literature. There are, however, many other fields.
There is for example the field of Art. It would be very gratifying to see more of you turn your attention in that direction. South India is not, and never has been, pre-eminently artistic. But one cannot go to the school presided over by Mr. Havell, any more than visit temples like Chidambaram or Madura, without seeing that there is a large amount of artistic ability here, which, under wise guidance, and I would add under wise restraint, may produce even more beautiful objects than your marvellous "pillared halls." In a speech delivered at St. Matthias' Schools last January, my wife called attention to the endless models for pictures and statues, which are to be seen in Madras every day, and else- where she urged the formation of a school for figure-drawing. The advantages which you have here over us Northerns, whose ghastly climate so often requires us to go about muffled to the chin, are very obvious, and I would fain hope that the day may come, when we shall see such a school arise.
About architecture, I am less hopeful. There was an epoch when, in India, as in Europe, architecture was the universal language. That was the time with us, which "lighted with white lines of cloister the glades of the Alpine pine, and raised into ordered spires the wild rocks of the Norman sea." As, however, Victor Hugo has admirably pointed out, the inoffensive looking art of printing killed all that.* Architecture has remained, and will, in the nature of things, ever remain, a useful and, in many of its applications, an elegant, art, but never again, amidst the complicated wants of modern life, can so expensive a method of rendering thought take anything like its old position in the world. Foolish Englishmen have often railed against their countrymen for not raising buildings in India like those of some of their predecessors, but I should like to know what would be said if any Indian ruler, even with the certainty of producing a building as beautiful as the Taj, suggested calling it into existence. Great works of that kind are amongst the most glorious possessions of Nations, but they imply, amidst many other things, either forced labour on the most gigantic scale, or the turning of almost all human energy towards the expression of thought in architecture. Shah Jehan was a very small ruler indeed, compared to the Viceroy of India in the year 1886, but just imagine Lord Bufferings proposing to spend three crores, seventeen lakhs, forty-eight thousand and twenty-six rupees upon another Taj!
I have very imperfect sympathy with the lamentations that are sometimes heard, as to the disappearance of some Indian arts and manufactures. They have often only disappeared because Manchester, or some other European town, can serve the Indian customer both cheaper and better, but I would wish to watch jealously over the preservation of all those Indian arts and manufactures, which are exceptionally good, and I would fain see wealthy English and native gentlemen forming them- selves into societies for the express purpose of keeping alive
• See the brilliant Chapter in Notre Damie de Paris entitled Ceci tuera Cela. 27 every single art, which Sir George Birdwood would say was thoroughly first-rate, thus fulfilling, and probably fulfilling much better, the function, which used to be performed more than it is now, by the various native courts.
A man who pays for the calling into existence of such a piece of ironwork as that elephant goad, which we have in the Museum here, does a positively virtuous action. In this field, as in many other fields, you have much to learn from other parts of India; above all from what is in some respects the most delightful part of a glorious country—Rajpootana.
I hope the time will come when there will be a great deal more migration within India, transfer of population from districts where it overflows to too-sparsely populated regions, transfer of customs and transfer of thought. These are all things which you should manage for yourselves without interference from Europeans, for you only can manage them well. All that the European can do is to point out where improvements can be made, where, for example, the graceful usages of one part of India may supersede with advantage the ungraceful usages of another, and so all advance by a process of indigenous growth, different from, but by no means necessarily inferior, nay often distinctly superior, to European works and ways.
You will have work to do, not only in advancing and regulating progress, but in taking care that you do not lose precious possessions, which you have received from your ancestors. No intelligent European can study your society without seeing that you have a great many things which other, and in some respects, much more advanced, societies, may well envy. I may instance your simplicity of life, your charity, your domestic union which dispenses with the necessary but outrageously clumsy Poor-law of England, the healthful and charming costume of your women, and, in many parts of the country, of your men also. These are only a few of many points in which you are superior, and which may well one day be menaced by an injudicious following of European models. I would have you, as to many of these things, be third-thoughted, rather than second-thoughted, to use a happy phrase of Coleridge's ; I would have you "prove all things" in your ancient traditions, but by all means likewise "hold fast that which is good."
When History has become really studied amongst you, and it is, after all, the highest of studies, you will, while rejecting the exaggerations and dreams of those who claim for the ancestors of the Aryan conquerors, or colonizers of North India, a thousand virtues which they had not, be led to cling more and more to what is really good in your own past, and to rest wherever you do not see a proved necessity for change, "in the statutes of the land that gave you birth."
There is one argument for beginning to produce something valuable and distinctive, which the Chancellor of this University has a special right to urge. It is indeed his bounden duty to ask you to rescue your University from its critics.
We have a maxim in our sacred books which is in consonance with your own Ethics, a subject to which the Cooral shows that you gave attention in very remote times:" Freely ye have received, freely give."
You have been drinking now for a generation at the fountains of European knowledge. It is time you should begin to give Europe something in return. The very smallest additions to the stores of the Western men of learning, coming from the people of Southern India, will be, I am sure, not only thankfully, but rapturously, received.
At present, they say to us: "You show us your machinery-your University, your schools, and much else. You are obviously spending a great deal of money upon what you describe as the 'Higher education', but where are your results ? If you tell us, that you get better Government officials, and that you have even taught some young men to abuse you in very fair English, in the newspapers, we reply, that is all very well if it assists or amuses you, but how does it help us how does it add to the stock of the world's knowledge? We freely grant that your English Orientalists and other men of science have done much, but there must be something wrong in the turn you have given to your higher education, if you have not succeeded m creating a desire on the part of the people of South India to learn, and to tell, more about themselves, and the country in which they live."
I confess that, when criticisms of that kind are made upon our work, I know not what to answer, unless it be to plead the hideousness of the anarchy and misrule, which preceded the firm establishment of English power in this part of India. With every year, however, that plea gets less valid. Will you not begin to help us to meet our critics, by telling Europe something worth knowing, which it does not already know ?
Is that impossible? Has South India nothing of interest to tell? Surely the European workers have not exhausted all its material facts. I will not believe for a moment that they have. It is, indeed, perfectly manifest that they have not. "The fields are white to the harvest."
I will take only a few subjects, and first there is Ethnology.
Are yon Dravidians autochthones? Very certainly you have much more reason to call yourselves so, than any Greek ever had, but are you? and, if not, how otherwise? There is a great amount of knowledge concerning you, collected in Dr. Macleane's most remarkable Manual of the Administration of the Presidency—a book so valuable, that it is a gratification to me to think that its composition synchronized with my term of office in this country, but, again and again, the cables break off short. If any one can pick up those cables from the bottom of the sea of oblivion, surely it should be one of yourselves.
The Aryans of the West, by close study of the sacred languages of the Aryans of the East, have learned, not only a great deal about their own early history, but have been able to tell the Aryans of the East almost everything that these last know about their own history.
Why should not you, Dravidians, after learning the scientific methods of the West, apply them to your own languages ? Study your own languages comparatively, as Bishop Caldwell advised you years ago. He was a wise man who said: "There is perhaps more to be learned from human language than from anything that has been written in it."
Why again, if we want some one to decipher your own inscriptions, must we send thousands and thousands of miles away, and hunt up some scholar in the valley of the Danube ?
Then there is the question of the characters which you use in writing. Are you sure that you are giving your vernaculars a fair chance, supposing that is, you intend to retain them, as I presume you do ? Languages which have a frightfully difficult character, and one which is exceptionally expensive to print, are at a great disadvantage in the battle of life.
I suppose there is no insuperable difficulty in simplifying your characters. The Jesuits used, three hundred years ago, a form of Roman character for writing Concany, but now-a-days, these are changes which, if they are made at all, must be made by the people most concerned.
And if you do not take the lead, who will? Then, there are the Religions of Southern India. How little is known of these! I do not speak of those religions, which came to India with the races who dwelt behind the great range, nor of those religions which have been brought by conquerors or traders, from beyond the sea. There are numerous gaps in our knowledge, even of some of the most recently introduced of these, to be filled up, as, for instance, with regard to the so-called Syrian Christians of Malabar, and the Jews of Cochin. We have not even yet recovered the thread, by which they are to be connected with the great web of human history. Why do not some of our (christian Graduates, of whom we have so large a number, try to do this? Far more difficult, however, and much larger are the problems connected with the early religions of this part of India, which still form an important ingredient in the system of belief, even of many who have been greatly affected by Vedic, and other Aryan influences, but which, in many districts, have survived, I apprehend, with little alteration, for uncounted ages.
To the sciences of Comparative Philology and of Comparative Religion, one of the most gifted men who ever landed on the shores of India, I mean Sir Henry Maine, is on the way to add a third science, for which neither he nor any one else has exactly found a name, but which may be described as the early history of institutions as observed chiefly in India. I grudge, however, a little, though it is inevitable, that Aryan institutions, the institutions of early conquerors, should engross so much attention. I want the non-Aryan people of the South to tell us something about their institutions, which go back to a period, as compared with which the hoariest Indo-Aryan antiquity is as the news in Renter's latest telegram.
Has any one studied the Village Life of the South? Are there no facts to be collected from a careful examination of it, which would be useful to some future Sir Henry Maine? If there are, surely you should be the people to collect them.
It makes one who has a strong feeling for South India, a little sad to read such a book as Professor Max Miiller's India, what can it teach us? and to see how very little it has to do with India, south of the Vindhyan range. The Vedas, and all that is connected with them, belong to a world, not so far outside the limits of your India as is the literature of the Western Aryans; but, still, outside them. I should like to see the pre-Sanskrit element amongst you asserting itself rather more, and showing what it could do to help on the general work of humanity.
The constant putting forward of Sanskrit literature, as if it were pre-eminently Indian, should stir the national pride of some of you Tamil, Telugu, Canarese. You have less to do with Sanskrit than we English have. Ruffianly Europeans have sometimes been known to speak of natives of India as "Niggers," but they did not like the proud speakers, or writers, of Sanskrit speak of the people of the South as legions of monkeys. It was these Sanskrit speakers, not Europeans, who lumped up the Southern races as Rakshasas—demons. It was they who deliberately grounded all social distinctions upon Varna, colour.
Close observation, and Sir Henry Maine's method, may make your Dravidian institutions tell many a strange story.
Then, there are your old manuscripts. What great facilities you have for collecting these, which the European scholar, even with all the power of Government behind him, has not got.
But I hear certain of you, who have been drinking deep from the fountains of Mill, or Bain, or Herbert Spencer, murmur: "Why should we collect our old books? Your new books are better, our old books are trash."
To that, I reply, first, "Who has a right to say that, till they have been examined?" and, secondly, by repeating a question which I remember hearing Panizzi, the great Librarian, ask, long years ago, in the bow window of Brooks's, not a little, I think, to the surprise of his audience "Trash; what is trash?" The idea was new to me then, but I have learnt since that there is nothing, or next-to-nothing, in the shape of literature, when it is dealt with by the chemistry of genius, which may not fill up some gap, and make light where, a moment before, there was darkness.
Then, there are coins. You will say, that the dynasties of Southern India have but little to do with the great drama of history. Well, it seems so, with our present knowledge, and it may always be so; but here it is, just as with your manuscripts, you cannot tell till they have been examined, and who have such facilities for collecting them, as you? There is hardly a bazaar in the country, where you could not come upon coins, which might be of real interest to the European student, which a European student himself might never be allowed to see. Such an one was lately in one of our towns, and found the greatest possible difficulty, although he was a man of importance, in seeing anything. At last he produced a Rama Tunka from his pocket, and it at once acted as a spell. Each one of you has, in his language and nationality, a Rama Tunka in his pocket. Then, to us who have been trained in that veneration for the past which we, bold innovators as we are, in our maturer years are all trained in, cannot understand the extraordinary ignorance which prevails in every corner of this country about its own objects of interest, its ancient buildings, ruins, pillars, and so forth.
Two instances of this have recently much amused me. I went to the great Jain temples on Mount Abu, and tried to extract from the people on the spot something about them, other than the two or three well-known facts. Then, still more recently, I went to the very remarkable Mahommedan shrine at Nagore, near Negapatam. The Jain temples were very old, the Nagore shrine was comparatively modern, but not one answer, which conveyed any certain idea, could I obtain at either, from the very courteous gentlemen who took care of them. Is not this all wrong? Should not the history and antiquities of your own country be one of your chief studies? In these researches, no reasonable man would wish to employ any one but a native of India, if only he could find an adequately instructed person who cared one anna about them.
I dare say, when your researches have been made, the result will not be very gigantic. There is not recoverable probably from the Dravidian past, anything as valuable as that which has been found in the East Aryan past, and the value of the literary performances which Sanskrit embalms, considered merely in themselves, and not as the key to much of human history that was till lately unknown, has perhaps been overrated by those who went through the toil that was necessary to secure the prize.
Still, it is your manifest duty to recover for the world all that is recoverable of your early days. The real golden age for you, as for others, is not in the past, but in the future. Yet it will be all the more golden, when it comes, if you exhume, for use in it, every scrap of buried treasure you can find in your long Past.
Another branch of Archaeology, the pre-historic, has hardly excited any attention in this residency, and yet the best authorities consider that there are many important secrets to be revealed by the surface deposits of your hills and plains.
The Madras Government, under the advice of Professor Huxley, and through the instrumentality of that very distinguished Geologist, Mr. Bruce Foote, assisted by his highly intelligent son, have made a commencement of researches in the Kurnoo] District, but I am assured by Mr. Bruce Foote that there are, in all directions, vestiges of the antique life of the inhabitants of South India, ready to reward the intelligent explorer.
Why should not some of you take a part in this work?
It might, amongst other things, lead you to the study of geology. True it is that a portion, though only a portion, of our districts has been surveyed by the geological experts of the Government of India, but there is room for a whole army of workers to follow in their track, and to glean much that is valuable, as well scientifically, as economically.
Then there is mineralogy. We know as yet next-to-nothing of the mineral resources of South India. Witness the crazy rush there was a few years ago into gold- mining speculations. Witness the very likely just as foolish sacrifice of properties, which had been acquired at absurd prices.
You ought to know all about the mineral contents of your soil, and who is to find this out except yourselves? All told, there may be 35,000* persons in this Presidency of all degrees, more or less of English birth, but the population of the Presidency is about 31,000,000.
We can do nothing but show you the way to begin. With a view to do this, the Government has just imported a mineralogical surveyor. We want, however, in order to get the work done properly, not units but legions.
Then the Fauna of the Presidency is still far from fully worked out, even in its higher orders. There are still discoveries to be made, if not among the mammals, certainly amongst the birds, the reptiles, and the fish, while, when you get below these, you pass gradually into less and less known regions. A serious study of the insects of South India would probably result in discoveries of very direct importance to its inhabitants, and the investigation of the humbler oceanic life around our coasts has been hardly commenced. I trust a great impulse to Natural History will be given by the recent importation of Mr. Thurston, Mr. Bourne, and Mr. Henderson. But they and other able Europeans, and scores and scores of educated natives, will have to work for a couple of generations, before the Madras University can be said to have done its duty in investigating its own special zoological province.
There is yet no handbook of the insects of South India, and
- We have four persons speaking our two Kolarian languages, Sowrah and
Gradabha, for every one who speaks English. sorely is such a handbook wanted. Researches amongst the lower forms of insect life will probably do much to add to the comfort of human life, as well as to the wealth of the country.
When Dr. Bidie pointed out that the coffee borer did not thrive in coffee cultivated under shade, he did what I should like to see some of you doing. He made the results of the higher education directly contributory to human well-being. What is true of the Fauna is true of the Flora. Most of the phanerogamic plants of the Presidency are doubtless known to science, but I remember Colonel Beddome telling me that he thought it quite possible that, even so near our summer capital as the Sispara forests, there might still be trees, which had not been examined.
A great many of you will be wanted to take part in the thorough scientific survey of the Flora of the Presidency, of which we are laying the foundation in the Botanical Department, recently established under the admirable guidance of Kew and of Mr. Lawson, and a great many more will be wanted for the economic survey, which must bring into notice every fact, concerning the uses of your plants, which the long experience of your ancestors has (amidst much that is not fact but imagination) hived carefully up.
When we remember, however, that, below the phanerogamic plants, there is another great vegetable world which has hardly been investigated here at all, and which has quite certainly secrets of great, not to say portentous, importance to reveal, especially in relation to disease, you will see how wide a field is opened to you in this one department of research. Nor must you forget that for those of you who have no special turn for original research, there is an honorable career open, in imparting to your countrymen what it concerns them to know, about the labours of their scientific men. The educated youth of South India will not even have begun to fulfil his proper function in this respect, till there are two or three ardent native naturalists in every corner of the country.
There is no want of aptitude amongst you for these studies, so dignified and so repaying in point of happiness. I could mention the names of several native friends of mine, who shew a great turn for them, but I do not think they are graduates.
The weakest part of our system of higher education has, up to this time, been that which is concerned with the science of observation, but the men I have just mentioned bring into the Presidency the latest methods and results of the most renowned schools in Europe. I doubt not that they will have a pretty tough battle to fight, before they get into the minds of the teachers, to say nothing of the pupils, that no science, which is not derived from direct contact with nature, is good for anything. What is wanted amongst our Indian youth is not a knowledge of what books or Professors say about natural objects, but what those natural objects say about themselves. In this, as in many other departments of life, the function of the middleman always tends to become disproportionately great. We want to bring your minds into the closest possible relations with the producers of impressions, that is to say, with the things, which you see and touch. No middleman should be employed, when the first difficulties are surmounted, but your own senses.
The yearly Flower-show in Madras furnishes agreeable evidence that the taste for horticulture, if not for botany, has taken some hold amongst the wealthier natives. I trust this taste may go on spreading, for it is at once an indication of advancing civilization, and an agency for advancing it further.
I might go on to speak of other sciences and other pursuits, but I hope I have said enough to show you how many directions there are, in which our graduates may usefully employ themselves, not only may, but must, if South India is to prosper.
It is not by their political machinery that Western countries have prospered, even where that machinery has been well contrived. It has been much more by ten thousand influences, trade, mining, manufactures, inventions, universities, books, learned societies, and what not, combining, in one or two exceptionally favoured countries, with well-contrived political institutions. Before the knowledge, which we bring you ready-made, can have its perfect work, your national life must be enriched in a vast number of ways, of which I am afraid many of you have not even begun to think. I trust I may succeed in making you think about them, or some of them, for there is a great amount for the most educated class in Southern India to do, before they have got for their country that sort of recognition which they ought to get, for what is undoubtedly one of the oldest lands in the universe.
We have in the Madras Presidency very few rocks of even the secondary formations; for a large part of its surface is covered by masses of crystalline gneiss, which was looking very much as it does now, æons and æons before the greater part of England rose from beneath the waves.
And the immense majority of its inhabitants, although they certainly cannot say that they are as old as the rocks of the Nilgiris, would, at least, if they did so, come very much nearer the mark, than did the great French family, of whom it was said "noble as the Barrases, old as the rocks of Provence."
It is not only an ancient, but a lovely, land in which the lot of most of you is cast. There is hardly a district in the Presidency, which does not contain scenery which people in Europe would go hundreds of miles to see, and of which the globe-trotter, pursuing his way over "the bare stony wolds of the Deccan," and the monotonous plains so common in Northern India, little dreams. Such a land well deserves that the best efforts of its inhabitants should be given, first, to make the most of its resources, and, secondly, to illustrate it by leading therein lives which may be useful to the world at large.
Let me recapitulate. Some of those, who now enter the University, should not enter it at all. They can never be useful to themselves, their families, or their country, except through callings by which they can early, and speedily, accumulate money. Others should enter it, pass the Matriculation, and the First in Arts Examinations, but, after that, branch off to some of the more difficult money-getting pursuits.
There remain the graduates, to whom I have been chiefly addressing myself, and we have seen together how many employments there are, amongst which it is desirable that they should scatter themselves, instead of trusting to the fragile reed of Government employment.
So much for the lower functions of the University: for what the Germans well call its "bread-studies." I have shown you, however, that above these is a whole range of occupations, adapted to the leisure hours of the busy men amongst you, and all the hours of such of you, (a class which will, I trust, increase) as having this world's goods, need not trouble yourselves with money-getting.
I have further pointed out that these occupations are of two kinds: those suited to men whose disposition inclines them to the active, and those suited to men whose disposition inclines them to the studious, and contemplative, side of life.
But, beyond, and above, all these functions of the University, there is one far higher and more important still; that, namely, it should sow in all its worthier sons the seeds of that way of looking at life, which has never been so well described, as it has been by a living writer. "He was acquiring," says Mr. Pater, speaking of a Eoman youtli, the hero of his surpassingly beautiful book, 'Marius the Epicurean,'
"He was acquiring what is ever the chief function of all higher education to teach, —a system of art, viz., of so relieving the ideal or poetic traits, the elements of distinction in our every-day life—of so exclusively living in them that the unadorned remainder of it, the mere drift and debris of life, becomes as though it were not."
It would be a dangerous thing to say this if I were not addressing those whom I believe to be inspired, even perhaps, too much inspired, with the Western passion for "getting on," albeit they think too much of "getting on" by the poor enough ladder of Government employment; but it is necessary to say it in order to put before you the kernel of my thoughts about the University. The world's work must be done —woe to those by whom the hard prosaic inevitable side of life is ever neglected; but I would have each one of you have in your minds a sanctuary, into which it does not enter.
Till our University is doing all these things, from the lowest to the highest, I, for one, shall not be satisfied, but I confess that it is with no small pleasure that I observe how little she has got to throw away, how little rubbish there is, in her existing system.
My thoughts go back to the first time that it became my duty, officially, to address a University. It was just nineteen years ago, and I was then not Chancellor of the University of Madras, but Lord Rector of the University of Aberdeen, an ancient institution, which had been founded, partly in the evening of Catholic Scotland, partly in the stormy morning of her Protestant Reformation.
Then, as to-day, I directed my speech mainly to point out what I thought would be improvements, but, in the first case the whole ground around me was strewn with old-fashioned and semi-barbarous methods of teaching, the absurdity of which I had to bring into strong relief.
Hero there is nothing of that sort. The machine is an excellent machine. It will want, doubtless, every few years a change here, and a change there, but the great improvements wanted are not in the machine, but rather in the way in which our people use it.
I calculate that, when I was young, every English boy, who had enjoyed, or suffered, what was called a first-rate education. no matter what were his abilities, or his application, lost five clear years of life, before he entered on his profession, thanks to the hopeless idiotcy of the system through which we were all put. I have taken comparatively little interest in English educational questions for some years back, but, from 1861, when I got the then Government to appoint the first Commission to enquire into our Public Schools till within a year or two of my leaving home, I took a very active part in their discussion, in and out of Parliament. During that time there was a great deal of improvement; but still the old follies stood back to back, and sold their lives dearly.
Here, however, I find little in our system to criticize. It is filled with the modern spirit, and, whenever a change is wanted, and is likely to be acceptable to those concerned, a scratch of the pen does more than years of weary iteration and reiteration of common sense can do to break through, in the old country, the cake of custom, let alone to overpower the resistance of the craftsmen of Ephesus.
And now, gentlemen, I think I have said to you, and, through you, to the youth of Southern India, all that I had it in my mind to say. My days in this country are numbered, but I shall continue to watch with the greatest interest the future of the Madras University. It has done good service up to this time, but there has perhaps not been much in its work, very unlike the work of its sister Universities at Calcutta and Bombay. It has been mainly an institution for the testing by West Aryans of the intellectual powers and educational progress of Southern Brahmins, that is, of persons of pure or mixed East Aryan blood.
All this is highly commendable, and useful. No one has a greater respect than I have for our Brahmins. Of them that may be truly said, which was said so well of Pericles:
By Nature's first great title—mind,"
They must always occupy a most important place in a society, presided over by the Aryans of the West, because their place is indicated by their possession of a large share of those intellectual powers, in virtue of which the West Aryan himself holds paramount sway.
But to have a University merely to do what, in these Railway days, Bombay could do almost as well, would be a rather humble ambition. What must ever differentiate this University from all other Universities is, that it is placed in the midst of a huge Dravidian population. We can make a pretty good guess as to what the East Aryan can do, when he has had "all the chances." We can hardly make a guess as to what the Dravidian may do. Very likely he will never be able to do work as good as that of the East Aryan, but it is almost certain that tho best he does will be different in kind.
- ↑ * 38 out of a million of the population if we add Mysore and Travancore, from which States we draw a great number of our graduates.