# Convocation Addresses of the Universities of Bombay and Madras/Part 2/H. B. Grigg, Esq., M.A., C.I.E.

THIRTY-FIFTH CONVOCATION.
(By H. B. Grigg, Esq., M.A., C.I.E.)
Mr. Chancellor,—I rise by your appointment to exhort the newly made graduates to conduct themselves suitably in the position to which they have attained by means of the degrees conferred upon them. Sir, by your hand.
But, gentlemen, before I proceed to touch on matters, the consideration of which will form the substance of my remarks this evening, it is, I think, well to invite you, to recall for a few minutes the names of those Fellows of this University who have passed away during the year which ends to-day. They laboured loyally and honourably for many years either in the administration of public affairs, or in the pursuit of knowledge, or in the dissemination of higher moral religious and political ideas: and one and all in furtherance of the best interests and happiness of the people of this country. Two of them, Sir Thomas Pycroft and Sir Madava Rau, made for themselves names, as administrators, which will live in the annals of Madras. The former appears in the Act of Incorporation, among the first Fellows of this University, and on him in his capacity of Chief Secretary and subsequently as Member of Council, must have devolved a considerable share in the organisation of public instruction in this Presidency. As an administrator, Madras has seldom, if ever, had his equal: and his unwearied industry, his high sense of responsibility and his fairness of mind have helped to produce these virtues in all ​branches of the Service of which he was one of the highest ornaments. Mr. Maltby had placed the administration of the ancient States of Travancore and Cochin on a basis calculated to ensure solid progress in every branch of public life. His policy would however have proved for a time at least comparatively barren of good results had it not been grasped by the powerful and cultivated mind of Sir Madhava Rau, the most capable Hindu administrator of modern days. He organised the administration of Travancore, and later that of Baroda, on lines which combined many of the political and administrative ideas of Europe with those of an oriental country, and shewed to the "Rulers of this Empire that to an Indian administrator may safely be entrusted a portion of the fateful task of re-casting the administrative and political machinery of Native States, so that law may take the place of arbitrary power and the public weal be substituted for the advantage of the favoured classes. In Mr. Pogson the University has lost an Astronomer whose name will always be famous as the discoverer of several asteroids, as a patient and untiring worker in the fields of astral observation and as a faithful and discerning recorder of astronomical facts. Gentlemen, I would that his example might inspire some of you to make the study of the heavens the study of your lives—and that Madras may yet have the honor of giving to India the first scientific astronomer, a native of the laud, as it has already given to her the best Statesman of recent days. In Bishop Caldwell and Doctor Hay the country has lost two ripe Dravidian scholars, and two men who led noble lives—lives worthy of imitation. They showed to you that the true religious spirit is not egotistic and narrow, but altruistic and catholic. The work that these enlightened men have done for the modern Tamil and Telugu literatures is not their least claim to your gratitude, for they with other men of their school, European and Native, have done for these languages, probably more than their natural custodians. In Mr. Hanna the University mourns a scientific engineer whose counsel was of great value in the recent movements in the direction of improved engineering and industrial education, and this country a public-spirited citizen. Whilst in Dr. Mohideen Sheriff we have lost an experienced student of Medicine who did good work in bringing to light what was worthy of record in the indigenous systems of Medicine and in helping his coreligionists to understand that modern scientific Medicine is the true development of that art of healing, which their forefathers have the undying honour of having been the first to cultivate; for though crude and in its infancy, it was still in a manner scientific. It is also my sad duty to commemorate two Fellows, ​Rai Bahadur S. Ramaswami Mudalliar and the Rev.W.T.Satthianadhan, who have gone from amongst us in the last few weeks. The former was a distinguished student of this University, and a helpful counsellor in its affairs. He was a warm but judicious and moderate advocate of political progress, and thus afforded an excellent model to you of how you can conduct your-selves loyally and yet independently in public matters. Mr. Satthianadhan, who was among the first students to matriculate in this University, has left to the Native Christians of Madras a beautiful example of simplicity of life, of pastoral efficiency and of devotion; and he has shown to you that a change in faith does not involve the abandonment of what is best in your native traditions and feelings. Gentlemen, I have asked you to commemorate these worthies because I feel that it is as true of corporations as of individuals that "he who lacks time to mourn, lacks time to mend" — that
We reject one means towards leading worthy lives as members of this great corporation if we fail to meditate upon our honoured dead. Would that in this grand hall we had fitting memorials on canvas and in marble of those who being members of the University did yeoman's work in their day for the people, more especially in that branch of national life of which this University is the highest expression and exponent—that thus the immortal dead might live again
Gentlemen, having reminded you of the dead whose memory does you honour, I would now briefly trace to you the history of the University to which you have just been admitted as members.
You have promised to conduct yourselves in your daily life and conversation "as becomes members of the same," and I would have you learn to feel an honourable pride in being such, recognising the potentialities of the organisation to which you henceforth belong, and understanding your duty in connection with the progress of your country through educational means.
This University is but new. It has no antiquity to endow it with a wealth of venerable associations "dear and gracious"—associations which might mellow what is young and crude blending with it that which is beautiful and good in the past. Its life does not ​extend over even five and thirty years, the Act of Incorporation with which it began having only been passed on the 8th September 1857. The three first Universities of India, those of Madras, Bombay and Calcutta, were the immediate outcome of the Educational despatch of 1854. But the educational conditions of India which that great state paper sought to regulate were due to the labours of many eminent men, statesmen, lawyers, missionaries; and of others, natives of the soil, such as Raja Ram Mohun Roy, who had been quickened by the first breath of the dawn of Western knowledge in India. All decisive changes in the world take place in the intellect. These men saw that the literature of India, beautiful and varied as it was in the earlier periods of its growth, had been reduced to sterility and decay by the idea-strangling and cast-iron systems of control elaborated by commentators and grammarians of a later age. They saw that the ancient educational systems of the country were powerless to work a change in the Indian peoples towards a higher life, and towards material well-being, and they strenuously fought for the introduction of a system of education under which the free thoughts and noble intents of the heart of the peoples of the West might be conveyed on scientific methods to these Eastern peoples: seeking thus also to re-invigorate and restore to their proper place in the mind-building of the people their ancient poetry, vedic, epic and dramatic, their books of law and the philosophical speculations of their sages. That conflict was waged and won. But it lasted through nearly two generations of men and, though partially decided in 1835, it did not end until the issue of Lord Halifax's despatch. Then came the last year of the East India Company's rule — the year 1857— the most terrible year in the annals of our Empire in the East. You may remember how in 1574, the people of Holland, on the raising of the siege of Leyden, nothing daunted by the horrors of a life and death struggle with the Spaniard, preferred the promotion of knowledge and the education of their children to their own present advantage, and founded in that city a University, the first in the Netherlands, in the time of their direst need. But, gentlemen, the act of your rulers was nobler by far—for they, when the mutiny was at the flood, with a splendid faith in their divine right to regenerate the people of India and to rule them that they might regenerate them, with an exalted charity and an unexampled liberality, founded, not for their own sons, but for the benefit of the very people whose soldiery were waging a cruel rebellion against them, not one University but three. It has well been called our annus tristis, but, gentlemen, not tristis only but mirabilis, — to be gratefully ​admired, I trust, by succeeding generations of enlightened men, the graduates of our Universities.
Now, gentlemen, what is this University which they founded? The first thing which strikes me in trying to answer this query for you is that its founders avoided the question as to whether an University has simply to do with preparing its students by a liberal and humanistic education to become right-thinking men able to take clear views in regard to the daily problems of life which they will have to solve, or also with the imparting of professional knowledge. Nor do they seem to have touched the question whether an University, which has not within it the potentialities of becoming a local habitation for a permanent congregation of learned men, can ever concentrate within it the educational side of a people's life. Their thoughts seem not to have wandered back to the ancient Universities of Paris or Bologna, or to Oxford or Cambridge, or even to Universities of the German type; but they took for their model, an University, that of London, which confined itself. Medicine excepted, to the modest work of prescribing courses of study, for its students, and of effectively testing such students. They departed from that model in only one important matter to which I am about to refer, viz., the restricting of the study of Matriculated students to affiliated colleges. Their ends were essentially practical. They sought to form not a centre of instruction for all, but a centre for testing the instruction of all, and by this system of public examinations, to give "full development to the highest course of education to which the Natives of India, or of any other country, can aspire," and besides, by the division of University degrees and distinctions into different branches, to direct "the exertions of highly educated men to the studies which are necessary to success in the various active professions of life," and thus to diffuse useful knowledge, and to confer upon the Natives of India "vast moral and material blessings." Thus the practical ends in view in establishing the University are clear. But there are two matters in connection with it to which I would invite your attention. The first concerns the development of the organization of the University; the second, the supplementing by subsequent self-culture the courses of study which it encourages. I do this because I feel that you should think of these things and of how you can help to establish and settle your University system on lines which will better promote good and useful learning, and secure for its graduates as great an influence in the educational development of South India, as public ​expediency permits, making good your claim to the franchise in the republic of Letters and Science by continued study, and helping to maintain a high standard of culture among those who constitute the academic class in the country. Now, gentlemen, it seems to me but sound policy that gradually this University should seek to gather within it at Madras a congregation of learned and scientific men as the centre of its corporate life. Without such a heart I do not believe that the body can ever become the centre of light and knowledge, and without such a centre I cannot believe that scientific thought will ever be established on a true basis in this country. The University must be more than an abstraction, it must be a body of living men. Now, how can this end be attained in a natural process of evolution, and how can you help in that process? I have drawn your attention to the fact that this University, differing from that of London, requires its students to have passed through affiliated colleges; but so far it has not provided that they, in their life as graduates, shall continue, in communion with their colleges. Now it is in and through the college that I believe this congregation of learned and scientific men, may best be obtained. I would therefore exhort you to keep through life close to the college from which you obtained your degree. If you will do this, I doubt not means will be found in due course to enable you to become incorporate with your college, and with the University through it. Thus the practical solution partly depends upon yourselves.
In the ancient English Universities the college forms the basis of the University system. At Oxford the administration practically vests in "the Congregation" which consists of all the great officers of the University, the Heads of Colleges, the Professors, other important functionaries, and resident Masters of Arts, whilst the final legislative power rests with "the house of Convocation" which consists of "all Masters of Arts and all Doctors of the three superior faculties, who have their names on the books of some College or Hall." Madras is becoming more and more a University town, more and more the focus of the great educational movement. It now possesses three First grade and four Professional colleges, and I cannot doubt that the tendency of the great educational agencies will be to locate their First grade colleges in or near Madras. It has resident in it already nearly eighteen hundred collegiate students, a number which greatly exceeds the number of students in the University of Oxford five and twenty years ago. It will thus possess colleges 37 ​on which to build such a scheme. I have therefore observed with unmixed pleasure the recent movement of the ex-students of the Madras Christian College to reunite themselves with that college—their true Alma Mater,—inspired by grateful devotion to that eminent man, the Rev.William Miller, who gives his life to the glorious work of educating and elevating South India. It seems to me a laudable ambition for the graduates in Arts of this University, who have attained to the dignity of the Master's degree, or to that of Master of Laws or Doctor of Medicine, to seek to have a voice in the administration of the University; but it is also a laudable ambition that the Heads and Professors of its superior colleges should seek to become more potent factors therein. Such ambitions need not be in conflict, but should be in harmony, the influence of the college being strengthened through its graduates. Such a gathering together of educational forces will, I would fain believe, raise this University to a far higher sphere of usefulness than that which it now occupies—confer on it uniqueness and individuality, and tend to give to the Professors of its colleges University rank. It needs the friction of mind against mind to kindle the heat which generates thought; the sharp strokes of wit on wit to strike out the sparks which fanned become the unquenchable fire of knowledge. To one small people was it given to be the fountain head of progressive thought in the world. "Except the blind forces of nature," says Sir Henry Maine, "nothing moves in this world which is not Greek in its "origin. *** A ferment spreading from that source has vitalised "all the great progressive races of mankind, penetrating from "one to another and producing in each results accordant with "its hidden and latent genius, and results often far greater than "any exhibited in Greece itself." But would, I ask, this new creation have ever dawned upon the world had not Athens centred in herself the mind of Greece?
The next way in which I think the University organisation can hereafter be improved is by providing means, directly or through its affiliated colleges, by which you who have obtained your degrees, and other students. Matriculated or not, may carry on the work of self-culture, or obtain knowledge in subjects which do not fall within the college or school curricula. Many of you probably know how great has been the influence of the schemes of University Extension Lectures and of Local Examinations in obtaining for the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge a truly national character. A similar scheme to the latter has, as you know, been instituted in this ​Presidency by your Government, and even if such work could be undertaken by this University, it is probably wiser to leave it in the hands of Government. Little objection can, however, I think, be taken to a scheme of University Extension Lectures. Already in some of our colleges assistance is being afforded to students who are studying for the Master of Arts Degree, but not as yet by means of special lectures. But nothing has as yet been done to provide the means of acquiring extended knowledge, except in the arts, to students otherwise than through the regular curricula of affiliated institutions. This is not the place to discuss the practical difficulties of such a scheme, but it is the place in which to say that provision for imparting knowledge in this way is gradually becoming a necessity of higher education in this Presidency and to invite attention to the subject. The revenues of the University will be ample. I cannot conceive a more appropriate way of spending the surplus of money derived from examination fees than in providing means for the further education of the examinees outside the beaten paths of the University, through lectures, be they in connection with a University course or in subjects not as yet included in the University curricula. By such a measure students of this University might from time to time hear courses of lectures by distinguished scholars and scientists of Europe. I feel the necessity for keeping the tests in branches of knowledge outside the University courses under the immediate control of Government, but I am also persuaded that that system is in part only a provisional system as regards higher knowledge, and that if education in such subjects is ultimately to be placed on a sure basis, the University must, in the fulness of time, provide the means of testing such students by examinations and of honoring those who distinguish themselves therein by Degrees or Licenses—in other words that this University should in time confer Degrees or Licenses on such specialists as Chemists, Agriculturalists, Musicians, as well as on Lawyers, Physicians, Engineers, and Schoolmasters.
Improved schemes of University study.
Gentlemen, I have told you that your organisation as an University is capable of a beneficent evolution, and such an evolution has already affected the courses of study, which were laid down for you at the beginning. But you should be for ever grateful that the scheme of higher education marked out for you was at once modelled on more scientific lines than those which till then prevailed in some of the leading Universities of Great Britain, Your fathers were not limited to instruction in ancient Languages, and Letters, or in Mathematics, but they were at ​once given a course which compelled them to study not only Language or Mathematics, but also History and Moral Philosophy, with an option of either Natural Philosophy, Physical Science, or Logic and Mental Philosophy. It is true that from the number of subjects, and the necessarily limited pro-vision for teaching, the result was, perhaps, in too many cases, an imperfect knowledge of several, in place of a more commanding grasp of one or two great subjects, but notwithstanding these defects it gave a thorough grasp of leading principles and not a mere superficial acquaintance with details, and thus imparted to some of the early students, what is one of the best outcomes of our system of education, a bent of mind not to see things as they appear through the darkened and distorted glass of prejudice and popular opinion, but with the naked eye of the mind, illumined by the clear beams of true literary and scientific knowledge. That course of study had its defects, many of which have now been removed—and with the organisation of the improved schemes the name of Dr. David Duncan will ever be remembered. You have now a better grounding in general knowledge, that is of things which a cultivated man ought to know. The number of subjects in the final stage has been reduced and the courses of study have been fixed on scientific lines. Moreover a vast improvement has taken place in quite recent years in the supply of Professorial teaching. Your fathers had teachers of high merit and noble character, whose names, as I speak, will flash into your minds, but these distinguished men would have been the first to admit that their work suffered because there was not enough division of labour. Through the liberality of your Government as regards both Departmental and Aided Colleges that defect has been in a great measure removed, and 1 trust this century will not close before at least in two colleges of this Presidency, there will be adequate Professorial teaching in each great branch in which this University examines. Thus, gentlemen, you will see that your opportunities of training yourselves are greatly superior to those your fathers enjoyed, except in one matter only, namely, in the facilities which existed for intercourse with your teachers. That loss has been unavoidable, because as in a large family of children the father and mother must substitute general for individual leading and guidance, so with a large body of students the professor must rest on the words spoken to the class as a whole, with an occasional word in season to the individual student, instead of the loving personal leading which we so often hear was characteristic of some of the men who taught your fathers. But my experience ​tells me that it is oftenest the thought, which comes fresh with warm life from the brain of a teacher as he deals at lecture with some great subject, "striking across the mind and flushing all the face" that is indelibly fixed in our minds and moulds our future life. You have all had these opportunities in whatever Faculty you have been studying, and I would hope that one and all of you are carrying away some such life-giving thoughts, some such grains of gold which you may treasure in the store-houses of your memories, some such seeds of wisdom which may grow up in the good soil of your minds and yield fruit an hundred-fold.
Now as to supplementing the courses of study through which you have passed for your degree. Gentlemen, Bachelors of Arts, if you have during your University course disciplined and strengthened your understanding, if you have acquired a knowledge of things which an educated man in South India must know to be a useful citizen, supplemented by a fairly thorough knowledge of some one science, if you have added to this a sound knowledge of the English tongue and through its literature have grasped in some degree the genius of that people, if you have along with all this cultivated a truth-loving spirit, a spirit which "abhors idols," be they of the tribe, of the cave, of the market place or of the theatre, you will be fitted for preparing yourselves by special study for the branch of activity by which you will hereafter seek to earn your livelihood and live the life of a cultivated being. You have laid the foundation in the schools of this University for the school of life. It is but the foundation. I know full well that temptations to a vain spirit are many and peculiar. You have come, many of you, from what you now regard as ignorant homes and you are surrounded too often by unenlightened relatives and friends, whilst a graduate in Europe would live amongst those whose knowledge and experience of life he cannot for a moment afford to disparage or dispute. But this condition of things is not one which should make you self-complacent. It should rather fill you with the spirit of meekness and of fear—of meekness because your superior knowledge should make you know that after all what you have learnt is but little of the sum of knowledge, and of fear, for you must see that you, even more than the English graduate, have need to supplement that knowledge. If you arrest your development in knowledge, says Sir Henry Maine, conceit and scepticism must be cultivation must the result, "intellectual cultivation should be constantly progressive." First then, you in a way require a more thorough knowledge of the English ​tongue than perhaps any people on the face of the globe. Without the power to comprehend clearly the thoughts conveyed therein, your progress in the course of intellectual and social amendment is impossible. Remember, that words often confuse ideas, and that the inharmonious use of a word may often lead to great and permanent divisions and estrangements in thought, estrangements so great that whole societies of men may be led thereby in different ways. Words like coin become devalued by use. This is the special danger which besets a spoken language, and still more a language, used by a people for all its public necessities, which is not the language of their homes or of their own literature. In Madras it is an ever-increasing danger. English, if you are not careful, may degenerate into a patois, hard to be understood, and thus the language will cease to be a great unifying influence in the Empire. If then you would be in sympathy with the great thinkers of the world, whose ideas must reach you through English, keep up your knowledge of that language, read the best books, books which contain the clearest, the noblest the purest, the most beautiful thoughts that the mind and heart of man has yet evolved—the thoughts of Homer and of Plato, of Virgil and of Tacitus, of Dante, of Pascal, of Groethe, of Shakespear and of Bacon.
English is the language which opens to you the realms of knowledge and through it you must have breathed. in, in some measure at least, the modern spirit; which after all was the spirit of Pythagoras—to seek truth and to do good— ΤΌ Τε aλη ενεω κal to ενεpyeTνεω. You are presumed to have acquired over English a sufficient mastery to pursue knowledge through that language, and through study of its literature to understand the people who are your rulers. But after all the breadth of ground covered by your studies has been limited and the quantity of its literature which you have studied has been small, in consequence of the habit of most students to confine their reading to prescribed text-books and the notes of commentators. My advice to you is to keep the authors you have studied with the notes you have made always near you, and do not, as I know so many of your predecessors have done, dispose of them to the first book-seller. If you have imbibed any true love of English literature, and is there a soul among you so dead that it has not been stirred to its depths by some of the works you have studied, —you cannot part with these books without a sigh. If you will keep only those which have taken the greatest hold upon your ​mind, even this is better than a wholesale passing by the plank of all the words and thoughts of the men, whose minds during the past few years you have sought to understand. Unless you continue your study of the language and its literature, your English education will prove of little use beyond providing means of earning your daily bread. I do not despise this use, but you will indeed be poor in soul if you reap no greater riches therefrom than what can be tied up in a money bag. Let it not be said of you that you have sought to obtain a degree only and not also to raise yourselves to a higher life of thought and action.
In the course of your reading few of you will not have become conscious of the direction in which your taste or talent lies. Cultivate that taste by reading with especial care all that you find on the subject in the newspapers, the journals, and above all, in books—and make a real effort to economise and buy the books that give you special help and pleasure. Do not grudge this money. Such books are often more precious than rubies to the true learner. This taste for forming small libraries is I know here and there beginning to show itself, and it is all the more necessary in this country where at present not a single public library exists—though through the generous policy of your late Governor, Lord Connemara, that reproach will soon be removed from Madras. I have always felt a sincere sympathy for the young graduate who passes to up-country life, where he will rarely find good books available, notwithstanding that, the Government offers to help most liberally the formation of libraries. Do not be tempted to say "I have my work to do, and I would do that, with my might. What help will the continued study of literature be to me?" You can make no greater mistake in life than this, for the study of literature is in a sense the study of mankind. And you cannot be in sympathy with your kind, you cannot have a due sense of proportion with regard to your own special work, if you neglect to read, or rather to keep up your reading in general subjects as well as to pursue reading in connection with your special work in life. I do not say you should not have your favorite lines of reading or your favorite authors; by no means. Even in literature you should have your own department, your own book-case, so to speak, in the world's library. But do not narrow your sympathies. Most of you will make your living in the Public service. That service more and more needs cultivated men, men full of the thoughts of others as well ​as of their own. If you would be useful in your day and generation, if you would leave the world a little better than you found it, make the acquaintance of great men in their books and never tire of their friendship. Oh the marvellous inheritance which they have left! the right to communionship with them in thought and, aye, in action too. To you, isolated as necessarily you often must be from your fellows, how great is this boon, how inestimable the blessings of the great legacies of thought which they have left with you. "Their works," writes Wordsworth,
But although English is to you the gate of knowledge I would not have you rest on it alone. Your position is peculiar; it corresponds to that of the youth of the middle and renascent Ages who were taught in Latin only. But although this system has its disadvantages, it has this advantage that you have been taught to use this foreign tongue as the vehicle of all your reasoning processes—that is, it has been taught to you logically and accurately. You are therefore much less liable to mistake words for things.
But whilst English is all this to you remember that no cultivated man should rest content with a knowledge of one language only. The task of learning a language is much less to you than to an Englishman. Most of you know only English well, for your knowledge of your own Vernaculars from all accounts is but indifferent. Some few of you have passed in Sanscrit or in Latin. Three languages is the outside limit of your knowledge, whilst few English graduates do not possess a moderate knowledge of two classical and of at least one modern language besides their own. Your task in the way of learning languages seems to me always to have been overrated. Had the methods of instruction been good much more might have been required of you. Now I would urge each one of you, who has a facility for learning languages, to use some portion of your leisure in after-life in studying other languages besides English—especially modern European languages. It is true that you will rarely feel the need of French or German, as an Englishman feels it, for purposes of travel or of correspondence; but if you read, as I trust you will more and more English literature and English pamphlets and newspapers, I do not see how you are to appreciate such literature unless you know something of the languages ​which permeate it. It may be too late for any but a few of you to study Latin and Greek, but I would advise all of you who intend to take to the profession of Teaching, or of Law, or of Medicine, to study one at least of these languages. Remember that admirable as is English literature, and powerful as is English as a vehicle of thought, you can, unless you know Latin and Greek, only get the thoughts of the peoples who were our spiritual and social forefathers at second hand; you must, so to speak, depend on interpreters and reporters. You must see things through their eyes and hear the far-off articulate voices of the ages from their tongues. Most of you must rest content with this; but he who seeks to be a teacher and guide of men in a particular branch of knowledge, the fountains of which are in the Latin and Greek tongues, cannot escape from the task of studying these languages—especially the former. I have often, gentlemen, felt my heart fail me for the future of your people when I have observed how that not one teacher of English in a hundred has been sufficiently inspired with the love of know ledge to have armed himself for his life's work by studying the languages on which our composite tongue is built—but that instead they should be dreaming of passing examinations and tests which may bring to them a few more pitiful rupees.
Compare what your educated young men are doing in this way with what the youth of the cities of Great Britain are doing. Thousands of young men, often artizans and labourers, are attending the language courses in the various institutes, such as the Working Men's College and that of the London Society for the extension of University Teaching — many of them — not to better their material prospects in life, or even to fit themselves for the peculiar work they have to do, but to cultivate their minds so as to live better the lives of rational beings and to drink deeper of the stream of knowledge. Gentlemen, do not weaken your claim to rise in the scale of peoples, to have a more potential voice in shaping your destinies, by simply living on the honey you have stored up during your college life instead of ever adding industriously to that store which shall be intellectual food to you and to your children.
Now as regards your own Vernaculars. Your duty is not merely to add to your power of understanding the men whose books you read, but if you have a true desire to spread good and useful knowledge among the people, you must also obtain the power which so few of you, I fear, possess of expressing yourselves idiomati- 38 ​cally and vigorously in your own language, and of interpreting through it your new knowledge and your new ideas. 1 am not one of those who think that much can be done at present in the way of imparting scientific thoughts and facts to the people through the Vernaculars, because I believe you must educate the people first on Western methods through their own Vernaculars before you can rouse sufficient interest in what you have to tell to insure intelligent listeners,
"Charm you never so wisely."
But the number of those whose interest has been roused is increasing, perhaps rapidly, and such as these you must be prepared to address in the vulgar tongue. We may yet see an awakening similar to that which recast the whole social and ideal life of Europe, when the thoughts of men of "light and leading" of the ages past and of the then present were communicated to its people "in their own tongue wherein they were born." No one can feel more strongly than I do that, if the peoples of India with their numerous Vernaculars are ever to rise to a nobler life and to greater wealth, the proportion of those who know English must be ten, nay, twenty-fold of what it is, and be equally distributed amongst men and women; but no one more strongly believes that the great mass of people can never be truly regenerated until each Vernacular is made a fitting vehicle for carrying on that knowledge. Only those who have had to do with the translating of little works of a scientific character into one of these Vernaculars can appreciate how difficult the task of interpretation now is. But this interpretation must be done. For it is folly to imagine that the rapidly increasing millions of South India can ever be English-speaking or depend mainly on English literature. The growing circulation of Vernacular Journals and Leaflets show how rapidly this demand for something to read is spreading especially among the Tamil population. Gentlemen, to whatever Faculty you may belong, if you would spread abroad some rays from your own lamp of knowledge do not fail to gain such a command over your Vernacular that what you write may be read and understood.
So far I have spoken only of Language and Literature. 1 have brought these subjects into such special prominence, because I feel that in them "is hid what may be called the wisdom of life, the rich store of experience of human nature and of conduct," and that unless you acquire this wisdom of life, absorb into your nature the mental and moral conditions which have rendered progress possible, you cannot reap the full benefit ​of specialising in any branch of scientific knowledge, for know- ledge
"is the second, not the first, A higher hand must make her mild, If all be not in vain; and guide Her footsteps, moving side by side With wisdom, like the younger child."
The ground-work of all higher education must be the study of the noblest thoughts and of the noblest exemplars of mankind. But no society can advance unless it has in every branch of scientific knowledge an adequate number of persons possessing such knowledge. Now the branches of knowledge, which at present are necessary, so far as higher education is concerned, seem to me fairly well represented by the various branches of study in this University. It is true that the necessities of the people are as yet simple, in that nine-tenths of the population live by agriculture, on a small scale. The people, moreover, are generally simple in their habits, have little desire for the conveniences of a more highly civilised life, and seem to care little for accumulating wealth except on the old beaten paths. In such a society no doubt the first demand is for good men to regulate its public affairs. For such men it seems to me that Mathematics and History are the most important. Mathematics will fit them to deal logically and unerringly with all great social, revenue and industrial questions, the solution of which depends so greatly on their power of collecting accurate statistics and of applying to them the strictest methods of mathematical reasoning. I have only to refer you to the absence of data on which the Government can deal safely with such questions as Agricultural Economies, and Life Insurance, to illustrate my meaning. And yet how few graduates of this University possess any thorough knowledge of Mathematics. Only about five hundred graduates now living have specialised in it, and few of them have shown great ability. With such a supply how can the work of the country be perfectly done. Again, as regards History. It has only been studied in adequate breadth and depth and as an important Branch of Science during the last decade. Yet who can deal satisfactorily with finance, legislation, economics, commerce, politics, who has not studied History. Only about two hundred graduates of Madras have specialised therein, or have anything better than a smattering of historical knowledge. History, however, is the most generally attractive of all studies, —and one which you can pursue in after-life, with success, if during your University course you have grasped what are the true ends of historical study and the right method of ​pursuing them. Of all branches of study after Letters, this is that which is most necessary for a public man, more especially for those who are connected with the public Press. But besides such men your country needs more and more for its development, men possessed of a sound knowledge of Physical and Natural Science, partly in the role of teachers, partly as actual workers in industrial activities. They are required as teachers to give the mind of the people a more inquiring turn, a greater interest in Nature and its Laws, and some knowledge of the natural resources of their country. The industrial enterprise of Europeans may raise local interest and attract labour and capital, but it is only when the mind of the people is set in a new direction by the general spread of scientific knowledge that much result can be attained. Why is it that with but one or two solitary exceptions, which but prove the rule, every enterprise for developing the wealth of the country comes from Europeans? The reply generally is—the Natives are too poor, they have no capital for great or novel enterprises. There is truth in this, but it is not the whole truth, because your capitalists, as a rule, do nothing. The new energy of a people does not require great enterprises to test it. It may be shown as well in small things as in great; in the making of a brass-vessel, in the planting of a hedge, in the digging of a well, or in the introduction of a new seed or of a new plant. If intelligence and a love of progress are there a poor people can do much. The history of the world has shewn how poor and isolated peoples have risen high in the scale of peoples when fired by such a spirit. It is through an education, which teaches the child to use its hand, its eyes, its reason as well as its memory alone, that such a change can be wrought in the mental attitude and in the habits of a people. But you need the actual workers also, especially in the higher industries, for it will not do simply to teach. There is some reason to think that this decade may show a marked advance especially in the development of the mineral wealth of the country; and if you have not practical workers of your own people in the scientific departments of such industries their place must needs be taken by Europeans. You must push in and secure your place, or make a place for yourselves. But what is the course you usually pursue? You take to Law or to the Public Service, instead of seeking out a road, painful though it be, which will in the long run make you of as real service to the country. Men can in a way create their own destiny. The conditions of industrial life in Southern India require all the vitalizing power that you are able to afford. Prove yourselves true friends of your people, and furnish this ​power, although it may seem temporarily against your interests. Scientilic knowledge is good, in itself, but it must have its own practical end, or it cannot flourish. A science cannot flourish in a country unless it has its corresponding art activity therein. The science of chemistry can make no permanent home for itself in Southern India, if there is no opening for it as an applied art. At present such activities hardly exist. You must help to create them.
Thus far to you. Graduates in Arts. To you, Graduates in Law, in Medicine and in Teaching, I will say but few words. Graduates in Law, the danger, which will chiefly beset you in applying the knowledge you have acquired to the active work of your profession is that of gradually ignoring the principles on which a sound system of Law is based. To avoid this you must remain always students of Law as the science of gradually perfecting the social relations of mankind. You must ever bear in mind what is the end of all Law, "the harmony of the world." Even in your daily practice remember that Law is the great schoolmaster which leads a people to perfection—that, whether you have to administer the Law, or to assist those who come within its operations, one of your duties is to endeavour so far as in you lies, that Law be the friend and not the enemy of man—that liberty be not sacrificed to order, though order be "heaven's first law." Law embodies the energies of social-life. By its operation the old civilization of India is giving way to the new, not so much as the result of the written laws of your legislators, as by the new ideas and new sympathies of those who administer justice, and of those who are directly or indirectly connected with that administration. How great then is the necessity that you, who will be in a way leaders in your profession, should by continued reading and studying of the best masters, fit yourselves for this beneficent work. Your preparation for this work, useful though it has no doubt been, has, I need hardly tell you, fallen far short of what a perfect system of law instruction demands. Medicine and Engineering and the Arts had independently organised institutions fitted to prepare their students for their life's work, whilst such an organization in Law is only now being created for you. Ere long, in your Law College, future students will find the means of a legal education sufficient to place the Law graduates of Madras on an equal footing with any lawyers in the world. Whilst you will find by attending special courses of lectures hereafter the means of aiding you in that after study of Law which is so essential to the beneficent exercise of your profession. ​Gentlemen, I am sanguine enough to think that this College will yet perform a beneficent work for your people in providing not only for Law students proper, but for public servants generally, and also for citizens engaged in the ordinary avocations of life, opportunities for the study of Law and of social regulations and customs, as yet afforded by no institution in the Empire. It must also, I consider, become a society of Lawyers. An institution of this kind will help to maintain your noble profession in a thoroughly healthy condition. The courts as the final authority in matters of discipline may do much, but I am persuaded that you, Lawyers, must feel yourselves to be members of a society having its own sanctions, before you will in any true sense be members of a profession. Workers in one branch of activity must thus be linked together or society must suffer.
To you, Graduates in Medicine, I say—remember that you belong to a great profession by virtue of the vow you made this evening. You have no Medical Practitioners' Act in this country to bind you together, no legal sanctions peculiar to your profession. It therefore is all the more necessary that you should make that vow a bond of honour as strong as the Freemason's oath. The progress of your profession in this country depends in great measure upon your so holding together. Those of you who may enter the Medical Service will have its regulations to guide you—but an increasing number of the Medical Graduates of Madras will have no such support. Therefore in your calling voluntary obligations must take the place of legal. You will not, I trust, have only to look to a distinguished name, and to the monetary rewards which justly follow on such a reputation, but I trust that as time goes on the Schools of Medicine and the Hospitals of this city will afford you the opportunities of gaining public recognition for your work. The progress of scientific Medicine in this country cannot for ever depend upon work done through the Government, or Local Medical Services. It must, as in any other great department of life, depend partly upon private effort, that is, on the work of private practitioners. I have in my capacity of Director of Public Instruction, tried in a small way to bring such men forward, but as things now stand the opportunities are so few that they can have but little effect. I can only hope that the time may come when to such may be afforded the means of doing good and useful work in public institutions for the public. The change is beset with many difficulties, but it must come in time if those among you who take to private ​practice prove to the Government and to your brethren of the Service that you are worthy of such confidence.
Graduates in Engineering. Your course has been, especially on the practical side, superior to that of most of those who preceded you. Advice to Graduates in Engineering. You have thus been enabled to begin your life's work on a vantage ground, and through your work in the field and in the workshop you have been able to test your real aptitude for your profession—and, if you have discovered this aptitude your profession will, I doubt not, become the passion of your lives. There are few vocations which call forth this passionate devotion like that of Engineering,—a bridge, a tower, an engine, becomes personified, an object of almost personal affection. I can well remember with what a sad heart, as of one parting from a loved child, Mr. Brassington, the designer of the noble edifice that is now rising to the north of the Fort, said farewell to that work but just begun, and I would that he may yet see its domes and minarets standing out as they now do against the rich glory of your evening skies. If you are to succeed in your profession you must not only continue the study of engineering and architectural literature, and of drawings of the noblest engineering and architectural work, but you must cultivate this enthusiastic and passionate feeling which will give you eyes to see, and a brain to imagine things, which would never strike across the brain of the uninspired engineer. To be a great engineer or a great architect you must have a powerful imagination, and that quality can be cultivated like any other of our mental gifts; you must have the power “to body forth the forms of things unknown” and then only can you by your pencil, and by your trowel give to these “airy nothings a local habitation and a name.” But remember these things only come to those who work with the hand as well as with the brain. This new feeling of the necessity of cultivating the working side of your profession is, I rejoice to think, beginning to extend to classes which have hitherto stood aloof; witness the excellent manner in which a Brahman student, the son of a distinguished member of this University, has gone through his course in Mechanical Engineering in the workshops of the Madras Railway. Only a few years have elapsed since Brahmans in Madras began to take to the profession of Medicine and Surgery, and not in a dilettante way, but with a determination to do the rough work as well as the agreeable, to regard nothing as “common or unclean,” of which their science demands a knowledge: and now, it must gladden the heart of every friend of ​India to see youths of the same race, filled with the same spirit, pursuing the study of engineering, like men who believe that the "drudgery" of a profession is also "divine," because by such pains alone can a mastery of its noblest branches be attained. One word more of advice I would give you. Try and establish a body of independent engineers outside the Public service. Your numbers are still few, but that is no reason why you should not draw together, and draw to you, as your coadjutors, the engineers of the service. Remember that such an association will add greatly to your weight and your usefulness in the country, and will help to direct the mind of the educated and wealthy classes towards the development of its vast resources through private enterprise. There is also one other duty I would urge on you—the encouragement by your advice, and co-operation of the small efforts which are being made here and there to give to education, through the teaching of Drawing and Carpentry and other industrial subjects a practical turn. These efforts often languish, and sometimes die, because there is no one possessing sufficient technical knowledge to guide and help. You can, if you choose, do much in this way, and you have in your Professor, Mr. Chattertou, an admirable example. Remember that such simple work is after all a humbler portion of your own work, and that your profession can never secure a firm and wide basis, independently of the State, unless the sympathy of the people tends towards the development of their industrial activities.
Graduates in Teaching. Yours is a new degree. It was Created with the intent not only to provide a course of study, which should prepare you adequately to fulfil your high calling, but also to add dignity to your noble profession. It is strange in a country in which the Guru is regarded with the greatest reverence and is not permitted by public sentiment to barter his knowledge for fee, that the teacher of knowledge on new and scientific methods should be so little esteemed; and that a profession, on which the future of India so greatly depends should attract to it but few of the best of the rising talents. Here is not the place to discuss the multifarious causes of this, but there is one characteristic of your people which seems to me to lie at the root of it, the absence of a love of any line of work apart from its pecuniary rewards. One would not have expected this in a country, which has a peculiar literary class, numbering one-thirtieth of the people, a class to whom literary callings are as congenial as is cultivation to the ryot, or trading to the Chetty. But it is none the less the case, and ​unless it can be corrected it demands the faith of an optimist to believe strongly in the future of your country, because unless the leaders of the great branches of public activity are capable of pursuing each activity at the expense of selfish or monetary interests, that activity or department of public life can fulfil but indifferently its special work. Whosoever would save his life shall lose it, and whosoever loseth it shall find it. It is true with prominent exceptions that generally professions attract candidates in proportion to their lucrativeness, but with all noble minds the stipend is regarded as a "due and necessary adjunct only and not as the great object of life." All true men have "a work to be done irrespective of fee, or even at any cost, or for quite the contrary of fee." Such minds, I fear, are as yet far more rare here than in the West. But, gentlemen, it is such minds that are especially needed now, and I would fain hope that in some of you there is this mind. Every day the world is recognising more fully that the education of the rising generation is the chiefest among duties, that "the child is father of the man," that that work is the most difficult problem society has to solve, and that its solution depends rather on those to whom you actually entrust the teaching, than upon the literary knowledge imparted. Your profession is not therefore one that can remain ill-esteemed. It must, as knowledge advances, be held in greater honour. With you is the future. Prepare yourselves for it, by learning, by virtue, by industry, by sympathy, by unselfishness; and seek to win for yourselves that place in public esteem, which is now held amongst the great mass of the people by the Guru. It must come unless you as teachers are untrue to yourselves and to your calling. Few things will hasten its coming like the gaining for yourselves the reputation of men of knowledge, and of men also who love to impart knowledge, apart from pecuniary rewards. It was this unselfish spirit that won for your Guru ancestors so high a place in the people's affection. It will, as new things become old, be yours also if you work in this spirit.
But, Graduates in all Faculties, you have duties in connection with education beyond the limits to which your University is by the nature of things confined. It is to these external activities that I would invite your attention. The first concerns the education of the great masses of the people. It has been the fault of most academic societies and classes that they fail to recognise that their real honor, their true function, is to be the natural leaders of an educated people, i.e., of a society each member of which has in childhood had his moral and intellectual faculties and his hands trained to do his life's work, however humble, as efficiently and 39 ​as intelligently as a reasoning creature can. But your position, gentlemen, has hitherto been of a different kind. You are in a way exotics, foreign—you have in a measure been taken out of your people, and made peculiar. Now this is not a healthful condition of things, and it cannot be permitted to continue. No country can flourish with an academic class which is out of sympathy with the people from which it springs. Therefore I urge you to take your fitting place in the work of levelling down your knowledge, and of permeating all classes of the community, from the conservative temple Brahman, to the poor extern Pareiya, with this new leaven of light. Your duty seems to be clear, if you accept the doctrine that a people rightly taught is more industrious—more productive and happier than a people untaught, or wrongly taught; that the ryot, the artizan, the cooly, who can read and cipher, will, other things being equal, be a better ryot, a better artizan, a better cooly than he that can do neither. It is for you, wherever you are placed, to seek to establish schools, and to make these schools as efficient as possible, and to help by your example and by your work to make the people believe that what is being done for the education of their children is for their good, that school training sharpens the intellect, strengthens the reason, and produces better manners. This part of elementary education they will more easily apprehend, because from time immemorial certain classes of the community have in a defective way practised it, and thus your task is only that of bringing them gradually to see that the system of teaching and the matter taught are better than their own. But your task will not be so easy when you come to deal with the industrial classes, such as the Weavers, who regard education as their enemy, because they fear it will draw away their sons from their hereditary calling. Indeed it will be all the more difficult because the plea is too true, so far as it goes—a temporary evil which can only be over-come by the very means that cause it. You will have to show them that, though some may be led away, yet those who remain will become more effective workers, and by their increased intelligence and their increased knowledge be able to make good the loss. Your best plea for the education of their children must be that the elementary education we impart to them will not be confined to the three R's, but will gradually include a knowledge of the things they should know for the intelligent and progressive use of their art, the cultivation of the eye, the dexterity of the hand,—that in the school must be laid the basis of special knowledge, on which the efficiency of the individual worker can best be cultivated. Gentlemen, the possi​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 ​land, in other words, to his wealth, to the capital of the country. You are thrifty people in most respects, but it seems to me that you are too apt to wrap up your rupees in a napkin, when they might be judiciously expended in providing for some sound industrial enterprise. You need not imitate the wild speculations of the West, but you may well adopt that spirit which will not rest until it has wrung from nature all her secrets, and made the Earth-goddess grant to her worshipper her richest boons. In your Brahman community you have the passion for literary pursuits. As yet Western higher education has done little more than nourish this passion. Consequently it is the classes following clerkly callings that have chiefly responded to our educational efforts. Witness the occupation which you, graduates, chiefly affect. But there is nothing in the nature of things why the classes whose vocation is towards commercial and industrial callings should not respond with an equal enthsiasm, when the education of the State is recognised by them to be as much in their interests as the system heretofore in vogue has been in the interest of the literary classes. The changes which were begun, when Sir Mountstuart Grant Duff was Governor of this Presidency, had this object in view, and although the details of that great measure are in many respects still defective, although the outlay required to promote such a departure has been necessarily restricted, and although the public intelligence is generally as yet too uninformed to comprehend the necessity for this departure, still, thanks to the stimulus of public examinations, to the labours of the gentlemen who have conducted these examinations, to the efforts made by the Heads of such Institutions as the College of Engineering, the College of Agriculture, the School of Arts, Lee Chengalroya Naick's Commercial School, the London Mission High School, the Art Industrial Schools at Nazareth and Karur, and of other similar institutions under private management, and last of all of the Reformatory School,—people are beginning to seek knowledge of a more practical character connected with their vocations in life, and classes which till recently did not acknowledge that Western educations could do them aught but harm are beginning to turn an attentive ear to the teacher who tells them that Western education will bring to the farmer, and the artizan the material benefits it has brought to the literary classes, and that their own need of special as well as general knowledge is the anxious care of the State. But your duty is not simply to counsel your people, but to strengthen that counsel by example—and how so— by yourselves attending technical classes, by requiring young persons under your authority to attend such classes, more especially those in Drawing ​and Design, by promoting the establishment of such classes in the leading schools in your neighbourhood, by offering prizes, by encouraging the reading of books and journals treating of such subjects, and by illustrating by experiment, so far as your means admit, the knowledge you have acquired. Have you learnt a cheaper and more effective way of raising water? Test the mode by experiment. Have you seen a tree produce more fruit by special cultivation? Try the system. Do you know that certain sanitary regulations ensure the health of a household? Prove your faith by adopting these regulations. This experimental attitude of mind, spreading through the people,— will work changes in their economic and industrial proclivities, which will not only ensure vast increase and greater variety in India's productiveness of raw material, but also wonderfully develop her power of converting by the labour of her own people these products into manufactured articles of commerce.
I have spoken of the arts connected with the industrial side of life. I would now ask you not to ignore or undervalue the cultivation of the Beautiful in art, which is needful to the completeness of the human being. Remember that the Beautiful is very near akin to the Good—so near that one people, intellectually the foremost of races, had the same word to express both ideas—or rather they recognized in them but one idea, for they felt that the Beautiful must include the Good, and regarded the cultivation of what is beautiful as the cultivation of what is highest in the moral nature also. Of this Beautiful that part which comes to you through the sense of hearing you may cultivate in literature, especially in Poetry, and in Music; the other part is that which comes to you through the sense of sight in Architecture, Sculpture and Painting. Of the cultivation of the Beautiful through Literature I have already spoken. Bear with me whilst I urge on you to cultivate the other branches. The history of a people may be read in their arts as clearly as in their language. And no people can reach a high standard of culture, or fully develop the social and unselfish elements of its character, the aesthetic side of whose nature is left uncared for. In your history what do we find? The Beautiful has been cultivated chiefly through Poetry, through Architecture and Music in a lesser degree, but hardly at all through Sculpture and Painting. Take them in order. Architecture should appeal most directly to your sympathies. For what is it but the art of making the building in which you have to live and work, or to transact your public affairs, or to pray, as convenient and as beautiful as in ​the fitness of things it should be. At present it seems to me your energies are chiefly confined to making your houses of worship beautiful, and the houses in which you live comfortable. But even when you aim at the Beautiful, it is in mere imitation of old forms, which no doubt appealed to the heart of your ancestors, but which have little meaning to you. Now I would ask you to try and understand for yourselves through reading, and the study of drawings of the most beautiful buildings in the world, or by studying with your eyes any beautiful building that may be within your ken, what is beautiful, what is ennobling, what is delightful in such structures, what it is that makes you feel that you would like to see, or to pray in, or to live in the building you admire; and then apply the ideas you have conceived to the forms that meet you in your daily life; and when applying try to imagine how you, if you had the power, would remedy the defects you notice, or beautify, when only the beautiful is lacking. Picture to yourselves the perfect home, all local circumstances considered, in which to live, and the most beautiful temple in which to worship. Believe me, if you study architecture in this practical way, and cultivate your imagination in regard to convenient and beautiful forms of building, you will gain for yourselves a pleasure -giving faculty, and render yourselves, though indirectly, the means of helping your people as they rise in civilization to make their habitations, their buildings of assembly, rise in the standard of beauty too. And I would not have you forget how great an educative effect the good and beautiful in buildings has upon the people who inhabit or frequent them. To this sentiment is chiefly due the erection of some of the noblest buildings in the world,—Churches, Palaces, Courts of Law and Houses of Convocation. Music you have cultivated from generation to generation, but as yet it has only reached the point at which the Greeks left it. And now it remains for you to add to melody harmony, without which Music can be but the art of the individual. Melody is the most perfect expression of emotion, for where words end music begins, but without harmony music can hardly be a great social cementing force. Who can say how great has been the influence of the German chorale in giving cohesion to the heterogeneous elements of the German people; or how great has been the moral, and social, yes, the political effect too in promoting the harmonious life of the English people, of the gathering together of men and women of all grades of society in rendering under one leader the great choruses of Handel, of Haydn or of Mendelssohn. In asking you therefore to develop on scientific lines your system of music, I am only asking you to add to your means of promoting ​the union and regeneration of your people, —and I would add of strengthening your human sympathies and your sense of order and proportion. By Sculpture and by Painting mankind is enabled to body forth and express its sense of what is highest—its ideal—of the Beautiful in the world around. No nation can rise high in civilization which does not cultivate this divine faculty —nor can any art be satisfactory which does not gather into itself and reproduce what is most refined and best in a people's life as in that of the individual artist. "The value of a work of art" says Veron, "depends entirely upon the degree of energy with which it manifests the intellectual character and æsthetic impressions of its author." Sculpture —the most sublime and most difficult of the arts —that which concentrates within itself more than any other power, passion, individuality and beauty—has been cultivated almost only in connection with religion, and even there how few of the forms which your sculptors have produced represent what is grand, beautiful or ennobling. In Painting, the faithful interpreter of nature in all her moods, you have done but little, although your power to become painters is shown by the promising productions of more than one living artist and in the great beauty of your textile designs and embroideries. In the early period of the history of your race you seem to have possessed a high sense of the Beautiful. Your ancestors were the worshippers of the Divine through the powers of nature. Otherwise you could not have produced the poets of your early literature. Will you not then train your eyes to see and your hearts to feel, that you may return, not to the broken idols of your youth as a nation, but to yield a more discerning and enlightened reverence to the beauties of the material world about you. If you do, believe me, you will find "books in the running brooks, sermons in stones and good in everything." And not only so, but the cultivation of these arts will bring your several peoples closer together—for art is an æsthetic language—and as a common language unites races different in stock, so will it bring you together who cultivate the same ideals. Whilst through that portion of it which relates to the portrayal of the beauties of nature —the sub-limity of your mountains, the grand progresses of your golden rivers, the smiling verdure of your fields of grain, the mysterious influences of your vales and groves—you may kindle to stronger flame your love of the beautiful country which gave you birth.
I have striven, feebly striven, to induce you in the life which now lies before you to cultivate every god-given faculty in your nature—to perfect your manhood—I had almost said your humanity. But "Humanity ​has two sides: one side in the strength and intellect of manhood; the other in the tenderness and faith and submissiveness of womanhood. Man and woman, not man alone, make up human nature." Gentlemen, will you whose lips have tasted of the "new joy ineffable" of the feast of knowledge, keep the nectar and ambrosia of that feast selfishly to yourselves and not invite to join you at the board the other half of your humanity—your wives, your sisters and your daughters? Remember if you will not bid them to share that feast with you, if you leave them to stand without, humbled and unsatisfied, you must pay the penalty. The laws of our nature are inexorable. You cannot split humanity in two and expect to attain for yourselves moral and intellectual completeness. That which God hath joined together let no man put asunder. No people recognises more fully, I might say more beautifully, than your own, so far as the family is concerned, this truth, the mutual dependence of the sexes,—but as yet you have not recognised this union in knowledge and culture as necessary for your social well-being and moral advance. But so it is. It is a law which science more and more acknowledges. If in man were collected all the excellencies of our many-sided nature and women only possessed them in a lower degree, something might be said for that view. But it is not so. In woman this aptitude for the perfection of some of the qualities of our nature is stronger and capable of a higher development than our own. To these virtues, the distinctive virtues of womanhood, how much does the world not owe? To the influence of woman is due in no small measure the exercise of those gentler virtues which have become characteristic of the most progressive races on this planet. To woman are they indebted for much of that reasonable spirit of self-sacrifice and obedience which is rendering the social, nay, the political, progress of mankind possible. But assuming that this is not so—that woman is but "undeveloped man" and feebler intellectually and morally. Are you even so acting wisely in not educating her, in not strengthening her intellect, in not substituting principles on which to base right conduct for moral rules of thumb? It is the boast of the people of Madras that they of India's peoples have been the first to welcome the rays of this new gospel—for of the two hundred and fifty thousand girls who are under instruction in India one-third appertain to Madras although its population is but a sixth of the total population. But this progress is after all but the twilight which precedes the dawn. It rests with you, gentlemen, by requiring for, and affording to your women the highest instruction in knowledge, especially in those branches which chiefly concern their side of humanity, to make these ​"hues of the rich unfolding morn" brighten into a glorious flood of sunlight which shall illumine the homes of the poorest and meanest of your people. It rests especially with you. Brahmans of South India, whose fathers brought much light and knowledge from the north to the south, and who have at least twice in your history given a mighty reformer of religion and morals to India, to follow the lead of Dewan Bahadur Raghanatha Rau and to render a more signal service to the people of this land by making it an accepted principle of all Indians that women shall be taught as well as men, in a word that education shall not be one-sided but complete.
I have pleaded with you for your women; and now I would pray you to do what in you lies to raise the condition of the Pareiya and other kindred races. No society can be in a wholesome condition, a large portion of which is by custom or prejudice deprived of its proper share in the work of the country and in its privileges; which has not in reality as well as in name the same facilities as its other members for ameliorating its condition or of contributing to the wealth of the community. These races form one-sixth of the population of Madras. Your Government many years ago set the prædial slaves free so far as the Law can do this and is now considering what measures will best elevate these races and remove their disabilities. But much remains to be done, and it rests with you, gentlemen, to supplement the liberal action of the Government and the work of benevolent societies, by helping to break down the conservatism of the large sections of society which at present form the great obstacle to the progress of these poor and unreasonably despised people. I say unreasonably because there is ample evidence, witness the Madras Sappers, that when given a fair chance in life they can prove themselves valuable members of society.
And now I wish you God-speed.
To you, Brahmans, the outcome of the self-denial and culture of three thousand years, I would say, "He is truly great that is great in charity." To you, Sudras, who have been the sharers in that culture and who have risen through your virtues to a higher social sphere than that assigned to you by your early Law-giver, "As you have received so give and more abundantly" To you, Mahommedans, the descendants of a courageous race, "Quit you like men—be strong—not with the sword, but with the pen, the spade, the hammer and the anvil." 40
​To you. Native Christians, who have broken with many of the religious ideals of your forefathers, be filled with the enthusiasm of humanity, and in keeping the letter forget not the spirit of your most catholic faith.
And to you, Europeans and Eurasians who claim the privileges of your fathers, be true to their best characteristics, and show by your actions that like them you believe that "all true work is sacred; that in all true work, were it but true hand-labour, there is something of divineness."
To one and all, I say, cultivate each heaven-given faculty, remembering too that the body cannot be divorced from the mind, that in the perfect man the body must be perfected as well as the soul, that the body should be not merely the setting of the soul but the expression of it. And above all, be just, be merciful, and humbly but with firm and onward-pressing foot pursue the highest, the noblest, the purest ideals that have risen or may yet arise upon your souls.