Page:Convocation Addresses of the Universities of Bombay and Madras.djvu/600

bility of such a system of education may to some of you seem visionary, but I believe if you will consider the fact that the spread of knowledge is beginning to stir up some of the best spirits in the caste, or labour organizations of this country, and to make them see, that if they will not educate their children, if they will not take in new mechanical ideas, they must inevitably sink lower and lower, you will not regard the task as hopeless; but will acknowledge that if these organizations once recognise that general and special education is necessary for their own protection, they will adopt such a system, and develop it in a way that will astonish the world. Take for example Drawing, which is the basis of industrial education. Five years ago the children throughout the Presidency learning Drawing could be numbered by tens; now they may be numbered by scores, and ere long they will be numbered by hundreds. And what is more noteworthy is that a large portion of those who learn belong to the artizan classes. This movement has now a solid basis in the growing belief that Drawing, and a knowledge of better forms of articles of commerce, such as metal vessels, have a better sale if they are better designed and of greater variety. Your task is to fan this smoking flax into a flame, and thus like true lovers of your people to seek through scientific instruction, however humble, to do for the ancient industries of India, what scientific scholars are doing for its literature. And I doubt not with the marvellous manual dexterity, and patient industry of your workers, who love like true artists to linger over details which would weary the artizan of the West, that India may regain her place as the mother of the finer textile, and of other minor arts. But not only must you promote this departure in the lower industrial regions, the regions of the artizan, but you must also do what in you lies to promote the same movement by bringing all classes within it, more especially the mercantile and the substantial landholders — and you must thus bridge over the great gap which lies between the artizan classes and the Science graduates of the University. The movement towards industrial development and the application of scientific knowledge to every branch of activity connected with the material interests of the country must, to be really effective, permeate every class in the community—and people of every calling. Your counsel to your countrymen must be, get wealth, not by the devices of the usurer but by those of the prudent farmer, who will leave no clod unturned, no spot unplanted, no subterranean spring untapped, no labour-saving or labour-supplementing machine untried, if from such labour, such outlay he may hope to add to the productiveness of his