# Convocation Addresses of the Universities of Bombay and Madras/Part 2/D. Duncan. Esq., M.A., D.Sc.

THIRTY-FOURTH CONVOCATION.
(By Dr. Duncan.)
When Lord Connemara appointed me to deliver the customary address on this occasion, it was with mixed feelings that I undertook the duty. And the more I have thought of it, the more divided have my feelings become. On the one hand, I feel gratified to be associated with the distinguished men who in years gone by have stood in the place I occupy to-day. On the other hand, I cannot but reflect that this high privilege brings with it great responsibility. My predecessors have on behalf of the University, offered to graduates of former years a cordial welcome to the world of letters and science. It is for me to see to it that the welcome offered to you shall not be less warm and sincere. An ideal of duty, pure and lofty, has year after year been presented to graduates on their admission as members of the University. It is for me to give earnest heed that, in presenting this ideal to you to-day, it shall not be lowered or tarnished.
I am reminded to-day of twenty years ago, when for the first time I attended as a spectator at a Convocation of this University. However much this graduation ceremony may, by reason of repetition, lose in attractiveness to a superficial on-looker, it has an abiding charm for the man who retains through life his sympathy with the struggles and triumphs of the youthful seeker after knowledge. I can recall as if it had been but yesterday the eloquent words in which your predecessors of twenty years ago were addressed by one who was even then coming to be recognized as a power for good in Southern India; though at that time he had not secured the hold on the affectionate esteem and gratitude of your countrymen which his great abilities, his liberality, his self-sacrificing devotion have now deservedly won for him. On that occasion the Rev. Dr. Miller sought to instil something of his own enthusiasm into the breasts of the young men just admitted to be members of the University, appealing ​to tliem with all the power which eloquence and sympathy can give to prove themselves worthy sons of an ancient people. In tlje years that have come and gone since then, the newly admit- ted giaduntes have had the privilege of listening to addresses some of them aglow with the fire of eloquence, some of them laden with that practical wisdom which the observation and reflection of years briug to the philosophic mind. If my remarks are characterized neither by the eloquence of the orator, nor by the wisdom of the sage, I may at least hope that they will afford you some encouragement, stimulus, and guidance at this impor- tant period of your lives.
I am charged, ladies and gentlemen, with the pleasing duty of offering you, in the name of the Chancellor, Vice-Chancellor, and Fellows, a cordial welcome as members of the University of Madras. We hold out to you the right hand of fellowship in no grudging spirit. The dignity you have this day attained unto has been honourably won after long-continued and arduous toil. It has been won in a field in which wealth and birth confer no privileges, where each man has to depend on himself, where intellectual force, controlled by a resolute will and a lofty conception of duty is the principal factor of success. Looking back on the years of study that have had their fitting consummation to-day, many of you will think with regret of much that has been left undone, of mistakes made, of precious hours and days wasted, of energies misapplied. And it is most fitting that you should at this important stage of your lives lay to heart the lessons of experience. But do not allow regrets for the past to shut out from your view the possibilities of the future. Brooding too much over past failures is apt to weaken the knees of action, leading one to the fatal conclusion that, because the best has not been made of the years gone by, it is useless to prolong the contest. At no time of life should men, reflecting on the past, give way to despair, and least of all when, like you, they have just got beyond the threshold of it. If, notwithstanding mistakes and failures, yon have been able to secure the position you occupy for the first time to-day, let that be to you a ground of hope that your future achievements will be honourable to yourselves, beneficial to your fellow-countrymen, and a source of pride to the University which this day receives you into its membership.
And this reminds me that I must put yon on your guard against the too common misconception that the crowning of graduation ceremonial is the crowning of the edifice the edifice of knowledge and culture. Hitherto you have only been laying the foundation, to-morrow you begin ​to rear the superstructure. Your admission to the University to-day is merely the seal and token that, in the opinion of the Senate, the foundation stone of learning and culture has been well and truly laid. Do not deceive yourselves, therefore, by the thought that the years to come will be years of mental indulgence, in which you will have nothing to do but reap the reward of your past exertions. Your future may be a life of ease if you deliberately will it to be so. But in that case you must be prepared for the sure and certain penalty—the loss of that intellectual and moral power you now possess. The only way to preserve the knowledge and culture you have acquired is to endeavour to deepen, extend, and apply the one, and to perfect the other. As the foundations of a palatial structure gradually crumble to ruin, unless by being built upon they are protected from the disintegrating action of the elements; so the grasp of principles you have acquired and the studious habits you have formed will slowly but surely decay, unless you diligently cultivate and strengthen them. How often is the bright promise of youth obscured long before middle age! The greatest happiness of the teacher is day by day to watch the expansion of the faculties and capacities of his pupil, and to forecast that brilliant future when those powers shall have reached maturity. Sometimes, alas! it is his most poignant sorrow to see the eager questioning spirit settle down into slothful acquiescence, the keen edge of the subtle intellect become blunted, the high aspirations of youth, with clipped wings, sink into the stagnant waters of dreary commonplace. Let not your teachers have any cause to say of you: "Surely we have laboured in vain." If you have acquired any love for books, bear in mind that that love will give place first to indifference, and then to distaste, unless it be sedulously cultivated. If you have gained any insight into the wonderful works of nature, do not lull yourselves to sleep by the easy-going reflection that all you have to do in future is to hold fast by what you now possess. Unless you earnestly extend and cherish your acquaintance with and love for nature, depend upon it she will in time become a sealed book to you. If you have acquired any power of sustained flight in the rarified atmosphere of speculative philosophy, do not imagine that you will be able to maintain the power of living in these higher regions of thought, unless ever and anon you give yourselves up to lofty meditation, and leaving sordid cares behind, live
"In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars."
In accordance with the regulations of the University, it is my duty to exhort you to conduct yourselves suitably unto the ​position to which, by the degrees conferred upon you, you have attained. This implies that you give due heed to the cultivation of your intellectual and moral character for their own sakes. Self-culture is, moreover, an indispensable pre-requisite for the fulfilment of those other duties incumbent on you as graduates of this University. You have now become members of a body corporate, and can no longer as individuals live for yourselves. Your aims and pursuits must henceforward be in harmony with those of the society into which you have been admitted. And what are those aims? They are the advancement of learning, and the promotion of morality and human welfare. Freely ye have received of the gift of knowledge, freely give. Strive not only to increase the stock of human knowledge, but also to spread it among the ignorant. Be it your aim not only to elevate and purify the ideal of duty, but also to encourage and help your fellow-men in their endeavours to live a better life. Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honourable, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, what-soever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report: these things it must be your ceaseless endeavour to realize in your own lives and in those of your fellow-men.
If our graduates would earnestly strive to promote the cause of morality and sound learning, and to advance the welfare of their fellow-countrymen, there would, I am fain to believe, be less of adverse public criticism at their expense. The opinion is widespread that the manufacture of graduates—for in this disparaging way is the course you have gone through referred to—that the manufacture of graduates is both harmful in itself and far in excess of the requirements of the country. This is a serious charge, and it is for you and your fellow-graduates to enquire into the truth of it.
Manufacture of Graduates
On the 31st March last there were on the rolls of the University 2,169 graduates in Arts, 351 graduates in Law, 78 graduates in Medicine, and 47 graduates in Engineering. Now, taking into account only the graduates in Arts, I would ask whether 2,169 is an excessively large number among a population of some forty millions. Compared with the audience assembled in this hall, you, the newly-admitted graduates in Arts, may seem to be a large body; and should your names appear in to-morrow's newspapers, the list will not be a short one. This year, as in former years, the question will be asked : What is to become of you ? People forget that before twenty-four hours are over you will have begun to scatter yourselves over the enormous area embraced by Southern ​India. South Indian society must be in a hopeless condition if useful work cannot be found for one graduate in every 18,441 of the population.
In order to account for the low estimation in which graduates are often held by the public, we must, I think, take into account other considerations than their absolute or relative numbers. It is just possible, for example, that it has its origin in the conviction that the graduates admitted year by year are not of the right kind. This is a matter deserving of the most earnest consideration. For it implies either that the young men who receive a University education are not of the right class, or that the education given is defective, or that our graduates do not live up to the expectations formed of them by others and the promises made by themselves. It must, I think, be admitted that there is an element of truth in each of those implied charges. It is to be regretted that the aristocracy of native society holds itself aloof from University culture, notwithstanding the example set by the Princes of some of the reigning families of Southern India, who enter the arena of intellectual competition, to have their ability and knowledge tested on equal terms with the lowliest in the land. On political and social grounds it is eminently desirable that those whom the masses of the people have been accustomed to look up to as the leaders of the society should be brought within the influence of the highest culture. The tendency of modern society is to attach less and less value to birth and wealth, unless accompanied by a cultivated mind. The conservative instincts of the people of India are, probably, still strong enough to cause the aristocracy of birth and wealth to be looked up to, even though it be steeped in ignorance and prejudice. But the democrative wave which is spreading over the world will sooner or later change the aspect of affairs in India also, and it is for the high-born and the wealthy to show by superiority in knowledge and intelligence that they are entitled to be regarded as men of light and leading. In all this I do not for one moment mean to imply that opportunity should not be given to the son of the poorest and humblest in the land to receive the benefits of University education. It is in the interests of society that intellectual ability and moral worth, by whomsoever possessed, should be allowed every opportunity of developing themselves. This the colleges of South India have done and should continue to do, without, however, leaving the other undone. As to the charge, so often made, that our University education is defective, none will ​admit that more readily than those who are chiefly responsible for it. But for these defects, whatever they are and whether remediable, or irremediable, you, ladies and gentlemen, cannot be held responsible. But the opinion that graduates are too numerous has, probably, its main support not in the consideration that the right class of young men do not attend our colleges, nor in a conviction that the system of the higher education is defective, but in the fact that so many graduates fail to realize the expectations formed of them, forgetting the promises they made on graduation day to support and promote the cause of morality and sound learning, to advance social order and the well-being of their fellow-men. It is for you to help to remove this reproach. In advising you how you will best justify before your fellow-men the education you have received, it is impossible to lay down hard and fast rules. Much will depend on your own peculiar bent, much on the circumstances in which you may be placed.
As regards the support and promotion of sound learning, each of you will probably best achieve that end by continuing to prosecute the particular branch of study to which you have mainly devoted yourselves during your University career. It is not unusual on occasions like the one which has called us together this afternoon, for the speaker to take the opportunity of pressing upon young graduates the claims of the science to which he is himself devoted. And there is much to be said in favour of the practice. Were I to follow it, I would remind you that the proper study of mankind is man, and I would strive to impress on you the paramount claims of Psychology and the cognate sciences. But I shall not abuse the position I occupy to-day to advertize my own wares to the prejudice of those of others. On the contrary my advice to you is: Follow the line of study you have been pursuing during the past years. If your collegiate training is worth anything, that is the sphere in which, other things equal, you will be most likely to succeed. It may be your happy lot to extend the boundaries of your science ever so little into the illimitable region of the unknown. If you cannot accomplish this, the crowning achievement of the man of science, the effort put forth will, nevertheless, strengthen your reasoning powers, will give you a firmer grasp of known principles, and will thus render you better fitted to help your fellow-men to participate in the treasures of wisdom which, unlike other treasures, are not diminished to the individual by any increase, however great, in the number of those who share them.
But, while counselling you to pursue, with all the earnestness ​and assiduity of which you are capable, the particular branch of knowledge which natural inclination and aptitude, strengthened and methodized by academic discipline, may urge you to follow, and which the circumstances of your future life may render practicable, I should fail in my duty were I to abstain from inviting your special attention to the claims of one department of thought. It may not be the fashion now-a-days to profess a high regard for speculative philosophy and metaphysics. Metaphysics may have deservedly become a by-word and a reproach, and Michelet may have rightly defined it as the art of bewildering one's self methodically. I am not concerned with defending the speculations which under the name of metaphysics, or ontology, or theology, have engrossed the minds of men since the dawn of reflection. But I am deeply interested in getting you to understand and appreciate the spirit of enquiry, of which metaphysical speculations, however erroneous they may be, are the outward expressions. The ever-increasing volume and the ever-multiplying ramifications of knowledge render specialization a more and more pressing necessity for each succeeding generation. To few men is it permitted to gain a minute acquaintance with more than one science. And what is true of the man of science is true also of the college student. The tendency of modern academic regulations is to confine the student to a comparatively small number of subjects. But this specialization, necessary though it be, has its disadvantages both in respect to the training of the faculties and in its bearing on that adequate knowledge of the universe which is the aim of the highest scientific thought. Each science professes to give the last word that can for the time being be said, not on the universe as a whole, but on that particular part of it with which it is concerned. Chemistry gives us the final conclusions of the chemist with regard to the phenomena and laws of chemical combination. Biology systematizes the latest conclusions with respect to the phenomena and laws of life. Psychology confines itself to the domain of consciousness. Each science presents, therefore, only a partial view of nature; and this fact should never be lost sight of. For partial or one-sided views become harmful when, for-getting their real character, we treat them as complete and all-sided. Now, this is precisely what the specialist is in danger of doing. The more the mind is engrossed with a particular branch of knowledge, the greater is the tendency to treat all other branches as of less importance and, therefore, as less deserving of study. This scientific bias, if unchecked, may lead to the other sciences being ignored altogether, the favourite ​science being looked upon as affording a complete account of the universe—as embracing the alpha and the omega of knowledge. Against this tendency—a tendency favoured by the training you have received—you must ever be on your guard. If the several sciences give only the final deliverances that can be made for the time being in their respective spheres, something more is needed before we can be said to possess a genuine and comprehensive conception of the universe. What is that something more? It is included in what Aristotle calls the 'First Philosophy' it is the undercurrent in all metaphysical speculation, it finds its highest expression in theology. Each science, in its search after unity of cause and law, ultimately arrives at certain laws of the highest generality as far as that science goes. It is the business of the First Philosophy to gather together these general laws, with a view to their being combined into a few still more general principles. And it is only when the final utterances of all the sciences have been thus co-ordinated and, if possible, subordinated to higher generalizations, that we can be said to have an adequate conception of the universe as a whole. To reach this lofty point of view, a minute acquaintance with all the special sciences is not necessary. The branches of knowledge are many, but the intellectual faculties employed and the operations carried on in scientific investigation are comparatively few. A mind thoroughly trained in habits of observation, experiment, comparison, abstraction, generalization, and inference, possesses all the fundamental qualifications for undertaking the task of discovering those higher generalizations which unite the different and often seemingly-conflicting conclusions of the several sciences. Cultivate, therefore, this habit of bringing the conclusions of the special sciences face to face, of comparing them one with another, of seeking for some higher or more general principle or law of which they are the specialized forms. This is the genuine breadth of culture. This it is that shows us the special sciences in their true proportions, as parts of one stupendous whole, and gives us a conception of the universe at once comprehensive and satisfying. It is doubtless true that in striving after this comprehensive view of the universe, men have often ignored altogether what the special sciences have had to say, and thus have been led into the wildest extravagances, peopling the universe with meaningless abstractions. But if you follow the course I am recommending, you will not fall into this snare, for in every step you take you will tread on the solid ground of nature as presented to you by the respective sciences. Nor will this habit of mind, which seeks to co-ordinate and unify the ​manifold results of human experience by means of higher laws, prove in any way antagonistic to successful investigation in some one of the special departments of enquiry. Let it be your endeavour, therefore, to combine devotion to one branch of study with that more general outlook on the wide domain of knowledge, which enables one to see things in their true proportions and relations, instead of looking at them through a distorting medium, in which their intrinsic harmony too often appears a discord.
Let the spread of knowledge among your ignorant fellow-countrymen be also an object of constant solicitude to you. When you leave this hall to go to your appointed labours in different parts of the country, carry with you the firm resolve that in whatever sphere of life you are placed, you will regard it as your bounden duty to help to dissipate the gloom of ignorance and superstition which prevents your fellow-countrymen from entering into full possession of "man's beautiful heritage, the earth." Each of you can do a little, some of you may do much, to spread the light of knowledge. There is, I fear, too much truth in the popular verdict that, with the exception of those who have adopted teaching as a profession, the graduates of this University have hitherto done little towards the spread of education. The neglect of this duty is, I doubt not, one of the reasons for the small esteem in which they are held by the public.
There is one aspect of this duty to which I would draw your special and earnest attention. And here I address myself to Hindus and Mahomedans. It is now three and thirty years since this University was founded. During that period the advance in the education of the male population has been remarkable. Not less remarkable has been the slow progress in the education of the female population. Intense eagerness to educate your boys, and almost complete indifference towards the education of your girls, this is a phenomenon of Indian society which strikes the foreigner with amazement. I am not unmindful of the steady increase that has taken place in recent years in the number of girls attending school. In one respect this increase is the most melancholy part of the business. During the year ending 31st March 1890 the number of girls attending school in this Presidency increased from 69,873 to 78,344, or by 12.1 per cent. The increase in the year previous had been 6.6 per cent. This you will think belies my assertion that there has been little progress, and you will wonder how such a goodly increase can in any aspect be regarded as a cause ​of dissatisfaction. But, look at the state of things a little more closely. Almost all the Hindu and Muhammadan girls attending school are in Primary schools, and most of them in the lower standards of these schools. In Upper Secondary schools for girls there was, on the 31st March last, not a single Muhammadan pupil. Brahmans and Sudras were also entirely absent; and the whole Hindu community throughout the Presidency was represented by five girls! Is this as it should be? In Lower Secondary schools for girls there were 23 Muhammadans, 53 Brahmans, 32 Vaisyas, 338 Sudras, and 16 belonging to other classes. Out of 2,113 girls reading in these schools, 1,651 were Europeans, Eurasians, or Native Christians; while only 462 were Muhammadans or Hindus. Again I ask, is this as it should be!
A few months ago the attention of the public was directed by one who is now a Fellow of the University to the evils consequent on early marriage. On that occasion Dr. Smyth dwelt more on the bodily than on the mental aspect of the question. But in whichever of these aspects it is viewed, it is closely connected with the subject I am now considering, namely, the early withdrawal of girls from school. I am not here as a censor of your time-honoured customs, which, if changed at all, must be changed of your own deliberate choice. But it is my duty to impress on you two truths: firstly, the absolute necessity of educating your women, if you are to hold your own among the nations of the earth; and, secondly, the utter impossibility of this being done so long as custom withdraws girls from school soon after they have passed beyond the age of infancy. As I have said elsewhere; "Hindu and Muhammadan parents must be brought to face the vital issues that are bound up with this question. If Native society, in full view of all the circumstances, deliberately allows itself to fall behind in the march of progress, there is not another word to be said. But if it desires to take its place among the foremost peoples of the earth—to be a progressive instead of a stagnating or decaying society—it must gird up its loins and resolve at whatever cost to emancipate its women from the thraldom of ignorance. A society composed of educated men and uneducated women can never be a progressive society." Do you regard knowledge as a priceless possession tor yourselves, but a useless encumbrance or a curse to your mothers and your wives, your sisters and your daughters? You are prepared to make many sacrifices for the education of your boys, is that of your girls ​not worthy of equal sacrifices? Are you doing your duty by your daughters in sending them to school only during infancy and the two or three years that follow it, removing them from instruction when their minds are just beginning to find pleasure in the acquisition of knowledge? The evil is not merely that their education makes no further advance, but that the very little they learnt at school rapidly fades away, and along with it there vanishes the taste for reading and culture, the seeds of which had begun to germinate when they were withdrawn by social custom to the comparative seclusion of the domestic circle. The male members of the family, if they happen themselves to be educated, do occasionally strive to keep the last traces of school life from being effaced from the minds of the girls of the household. But even this is rare; and I believe I am correct in saying that in the majority of households no attempt is made to continue the education of girls after they leave school, and that, consequently, within a few years their minds are in much the same condition as are those of girls who have not been to school at all. You profess to have received pleasure and profit from the education you yourselves have received. Try to imagine the knowledge you have gained, and the tastes you have acquired, during your school and college life, obliterated. Would life appear in such circumstance to be worth living? Would it not, to say the least, have lost one of its greatest charms? Yet this is the condition to which social custom condemns the majority of your women. I do not say that their lives are joyless lives, but I do say that they are denied the means of experiencing some of the keenest and purest enjoyments a human being is capable of. This selfishness, which practically shuts out one-half of society from the pleasure-giving and refining influences of literature, science, and art, is a reproach to educated men. And think, gentlemen, how much you yourselves lose in being deprived of the sympathetic companionship of your wives and sisters. The intellectual pursuits which have occupied your time during these past years being entirely foreign to them, they cannot share with you that supreme satisfaction which the victories of the intellect bestow, nor can they help you to bear the trials and disappointments that attend the steps of the seeker after knowledge.
And what about your children? If you wish your women to be something more than the physical mothers of your children, you must see to it that they are educated. The influence of the mother's character on her children during infancy is admitted by everybody. Yet how few realize what that means! How can an ​illiterate, uncultivated, perhaps infantile mother watch over the opening faculties of her child and mould its character for good? One cannot trust to maternal instinct and common sense alone in such an important matter. Maternal instinct is a sorry substitute for intelligent judgment, and common sense is very uncommon in an uncultivated mind. There is no more reason why the moulding of the characters of the young should be entrusted to the instinct and common sense of uneducated people, than there is for entrusting any other human pursuit to such guidance. There are, on the contrary, very powerful reasons why the first years of life should be placed under the most highly trained intelligence, the experiences of these years being those that exert the most lasting influence for good or evil in afterlife.
And reflect, gentlemen, on the future of your society? Unless you earnestly, and manfully, and successfully grapple with this question of female education, there can be no lasting social development, and in the absence of development there must come decay. If hereditary transmission be true at all, it applies to mind as well as to body. We may not yet have discovered, we may never discover, the intermediate links in the chain of causation by which the intellectual and moral qualities of parents are transmitted to their children. The fact is, nevertheless, indisputable. And if there be any truth in the belief that intellectual endowments take more after the mother than after the father, the question becomes all the more serious. The child of parents possessing well-developed bodies and minds begins life with faculties and capacities, which, in proper conditions and in due course, grow up to the maturity of manhood or womanhood. Not so with the offspring of a mother whose faculties are infantile and undeveloped. The mental development of the child is speedily arrested, the faculties retaining to the last the inherent weakness of their maternal source—a weakness which will prevent them from ever growing unto a vigorous maturity. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? Can the plenitude of intellectual and moral power be reaped as an inheritance from a mother, perhaps a child-mother whose faculties have lain dormant, or, if at all roused to activity, have been arrested in their development almost at the outset? For the sake of posterity, therefore, I entreat you to do what you can to remove one of the greatest blots on your social system.
Let me not be misunderstood. Do not imagine that I mean ​to point the moral that may be drawn from the appearance amongst you of four representatives of the gentler sex. For the second time in the history of the University a lady has been admitted to the degree of Licentiate in Medicine and Surgery, and for the first time ladies have been admitted to the degrees of Bachelor of Medicine and Master in Surgery and Bachelor of Arts. It is most meet that a modern University like this should open its doors to the one sex as well as to the other; so that women, who possess the means and the mental endowments, may receive the highest education, both general and professional. But I do not advocate that all your women should be educated up to this high standard. I do not ask that in every household there shall be a blue-stocking; though amid the manifold interests of the complex society of the nineteenth century, even the blue-stocking may find her appropriate sphere and function. The cause which I earnestly commend to your sympathy and cooperation is the bringing about of such modifications in your social customs as shall render it possible for young women to obtain an amount of education sufficient to call into exercise and harmonious development those faculties and capacities which in their present condition lie dormant, or reach only a dwarfed and stunted growth. Their well-being and your own well-being, the well-being of your children and future growth of your society, depend on the manner in which you perform this primary duty of educated men.
The solution of this momentous question is, I grant, beset with difficulties, and it is not for me to say how of they are to be overcome. In this matter, gentlemen, the people of India must work out their own salvation. Do not, however, too readily acquiesce in the conclusion that the problem is absolutely insoluble, or that it cannot be solved within any measurable period of time. Was the settlement of any great social question ever arrived at by means of a policy of despair and non possumus? Let me remind you that several of the essential conditions of success are at present in your midst. If earnest and zealous men are needed to keep the question continually before the public, have you not amongst you many with the fervour of Dewan Bahadur Raghunatha Rao? If far-seeing statesmanlike views are required, have you not men endowed with the wide political sagacity of the venerable Raja Sir T. Madhava Rau? Are you afraid lest the good cause should make shipwreck at the outset by the intemperate advocacy of those whose zeal is apt to carry ​them beyond the bounds of prudence and legality? This difficulty can surely be met and overcome by a society which possesses men with the judicial acumen and calmness of the Honorable Mr. Justice Muttuswami Aiyar. If you wish the movement to be under the aegis of the highest academic culture of your Alma Mater, and to be presented to the public with all the charms of literary grace, have you not in men like Rai Bahadur Ranganatha Mudaliyar the embodiment of all that is best in the culture of the East and the West? If within the Senate of your University there are men with so many of the diverse and necessary qualifications for carrying to a successful issue a great social reformation, may you not assume that throughout the land there are many such, waiting merely for you to say: "Come over and help us"? The main thing required is to make you feel in its full force the urgency of the question. Need I repeat that we are not dealing with a matter of a little more or a little less of benefit to a small section of the community, but with the removal of an evil which is eating out the very vitals of your society?
I have endeavoured, ladies and gentlemen, to the best of my ability, to point out to you some of the ways in which you will best fulfil the promises you have made to promote the cause of morality and sound learning and the well-being of your fellow-men. The responsibility laid upon you is heavy, and I have not sought to lighten it. Let the good name of your University be one of your most cherished possessions. Except as affiliated to that world-wide University, which embraces all the schools that, through the ages, have kept alive the sacred flame of knowledge, your Alma Mater cannot boast of a hoary antiquity. But, though the traditions you have to maintain may not claim the sanction of centuries, yet, young as they are, they deserve to be held in reverence. To cherish the lofty traditions of a long bye-gone past is a worthy task; your task is a worthier one. For it devolves on you to formulate the principles and to work out the practices that will become in due course the traditions of future generations. Let it be your earnest endeavour so to conduct yourselves that those traditions shall in the years to come tend to the highest good of this ancient land. Your University while laying upon you grave responsibilities, does not demand impossible achievements. You are not called upon to forego your own private advancement, nor the well-being of those with whom you are connected by ties of kindred. In common with your less favoured fellow-countrymen you will engage in the ordinary duties of life, pur​suing the same ends as other men. In each and all of those duties let it appear that you are guided by those qualities of mind and heart which genuine culture imparts. To some of you more than to others there will come a large measure of what is called success in life. But to all of you, if you abide by the promises you have made to-day, there will come, whatever else may fail, the sweet consciousness that you have striven with all the strength that was in you to live up to a high ideal. Go forth now to your allotted walks in life, clear in intelligence, resolute in purpose, pure in heart; carrying with you the inspiriting and sustaining thought that you have this day been admitted as citizens of no mean city—as citizens of that catholic Universitas, or republic of letters, which knows no distinctions of race or creed, and on the burgess-roll of which are inscribed in undying fame the names of the wisest and the best of every age and clime.