Page:Convocation Addresses of the Universities of Bombay and Madras.djvu/257

and you who ought to be in the van of your people's life will be called, if you are found worthy, to suffer and to sacrifice most. The conflicts of those who have been the heralds of a new illumination in every age have been many, even when their lot has been cast amongst those in whose minds the same light has been secretly diffusing itself; much greater may you expect them to be when the light in which you profess to walk is that which has reached you through your contact with the life and culture of another nation, while as yet the great masses of your countrymen are untouched by it. Of the antagonisms of thought and life which must spring from these conditions many of yon have had experience. Some of you have sought to become the interpreters of these higher ideas to your countrymen, and are striving in the spirit of true enlightenment to remove by example and influence that which is repugnant to your highest convictions of truth and duty. But to how many does the presence of these special trials prove a temptation, a ground for standing aloof from all earnest effort to grapple with existing evils? As intellectual culture in its truest forms is the most broadening of influences, so in its spurious forms it has often proved most narrowing. The man of intellect may live within a world of his own furnishing; his intellectual resources may build up a barrier between him and the outlying suffering world, instead of a wide channel for the outflowing of a rich and varied sympathy. And so you may use the culture which you here acquire. You may think of it selfishly as it increases the field of your enjoyments, as it opens up to you the prospect of personal success, or you may think of it as of all your material and spiritual possessions, as a sacred trust bestowed upon you for the good of your people and country. If you thus regard it you will not fear the temptation which lies so near, to isolate yourselves in selfish satisfaction from the ignorance and darkness which surrounds you; rather will you feel that your education has placed at your disposal the knowledge by which this ignorance may be helped, the light which may lessen this darkness. And surely there is no lack of high enterprise to tempt the nobler spirits among you. If the condition of your country presents to the enlightened men among you a path strewn with so many difficulties and trials, it is on this account all the richer in noble opportunity. You do not need to travel beyond your own homes, or beyond the circle of your daily social life, to find a vocation worthy of the high position to which your education has raised you. Do not stand aloof from tasks so sacred and so holy, however much the doing of them may bring you of the scorn and contempt of the selfish and uneducated among you and around you. Examples are not wanting among