certainly applicable to India. Of science I need only say that the question must arise whether it should not have a faculty of its own, combined with that of Civil Engineering. Science has of late attained such a distinctive character, embraces so many subjects, that it may well have a separate faculty all to itself and not only separate degrees. In the College of Science at Poona, this is virtually the case, and as science is sure to enlarge its sphere it will become impossible to consider it any longer as a division of the Arts Faculty. A special degree in agriculture should, I think, be given. In India the higher study of agriculture should be encouraged, and its distinctive character recognised by a special degree, although both Agriculture and Civil Engineering may very well be combined with Science in the same faculty, as they are combined at the College of Science in Poona, for the equipment of which Government accept the responsibility—a responsibility which is much lightened by the admirable manner in which the Principal of the College, Dr. Cooke, discharges his very heavy duties, and knows how to meet fresh demands for extension, the latest of which relates to Botany.
Indian Universities have a very complex part to play. A very wide field of operations inclusive of every intellectual aspiration of the various A complex function of Indian Universities. classes of their countrymen has to be occupied. The demands of Western as well as the time-honoured demands of Eastern civilisation must be met. For the latter your own resources suffice—for the former you rely on our assistance. It is our duty to give it ungrudgingly. Our illustrious predecessors have admitted the justice of your claim.England must give to India a due proportion of its best men, and I am not aware that for a British subject there is a more honourable profession than that of holding an appointment in the department of higher education in India. To fill it worthily he must give to it his full powers unreservedly. You have known such men, and they live in your grateful recollection.Unless Indian Universities receive the best representatives of English learning they must fail, and failure in this instance entails positive and not merely negative results. A University which ceases to impart higher knowledge, to encourage sobriety of thought, which has no hold over the hearts as well as over the minds of its students, becomes a destructive agency. It fosters the unwholesome growth of flippant tendencies. Instead of turning out well-disciplined scholars, it sends forth young men who are self-satisfied and unaware that they are barely beginning to realise the magnitude of problems which havePage:Convocation Addresses of the Universities of Bombay and Madras.djvu/235
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University of Bombay.
