Convocation Addresses of the Universities of Bombay and Madras/Part 2/W. A. Porter, Esq., M.A.
SIXTEENTH CONVOCATION.
(By W. A. Porter, Esq., M.A.)
Gentlemen,—It is now my duty, at the request of His Excellency our Chancellor, Virtues of a real student. to congratulate you on the honors you have achieved, and to remind you that the position you have gained in the University raises some expectations as to your future career. I think these expectations are not without solid grounds. You have learned more than others of your countrymen, and you have gone through a severer training, and therefore more is expected from you. And, I confess that, in anticipating for you an honorable and useful career, it is chiefly on the discipline you have undergone that my hopes are grounded. He who has led the real life of a student has practised no mean virtues. He has pursued with devotion a single worthy end. Self-denial has been his daily companion. He has closed his ears against siren voices on every side. To use words that have become famous, he has scorned delights and lived laborious days. And this moulding and pressure has been continued for many of the most impressionable years of life. It will be strange indeed if a person came out from this process unimproved and unstrengthened. I have described a real student. But I have a right to assume that you have to some extent practised these virtues, or you would not be standing here. Those of your companions who have made no approach to this character do not appear among you to-day. For them the race has been too severe and they have dropped from your ranks.
I have now to mention for your encouragement that the same qualities, Student, the father of man. mental and moral, which give success at College, will in general be attended with a like result in the severer struggle on which you are now entering. And, though alas! there are cases in which the future contradicts the past and a blight comes over the promise oli youth, the ordinary rule is otherwise. The student, if I may parody the words of the poet, is the father of the public man. The habits of ten years are not forgotten in a day. He that is diligent at College will probably be diligent still. Neither on the other hand, are lower qualities suddenly elevated. If the spirit of manliness that triumphs over obstacles be wanting at College, it will be wanting in manhood. The student of many excuses will be a man of small performance. If a cold or a headache was always at hand to keep him away from his class, the same convenient maladies will attend him through life.
The present year is in some respects a marked one. Progress of 16 years. Important changes affecting the studies and the length of the course come into operation next year, and the present is the last under the old regulations. You conclude what may be called the first period in the history of this University. In this space of 16 years, the progress, if we judge by the numbers that have passed the various University examinations, has been surprising. The advance has been one triumphant progress without a check; and the diminished numbers of graduates in the present year are no contradiction to the statement. For the Bachelors of Arts of this year are not the representatives of the students who Matriculated three years ago, but consist of stray students of various years, who, from one cause or another, did not proceed to their degree at the usual time. Are there equal grounds for congratulation when we look not at the numbers but at the Qualities of the students. Such critical enquiries are natural at a time which is marked however slightly as an epoch, and they are moreover in a manner forced upon us by a hostile tone of opinion which, for some time past, has been very marked. Opposition to Higher Education. The policy of establishing Colleges and conferring Opposition to degrees, the policy in fact of the higher education has lately been a good deal called in question. The cost, it is said, is very great, and the results are of little value. Nay—for to this length the opposition sometimes goes, the effects, it is said, are often mischievous. Morally it produces conceit and politically it is a blunder. Sometime ago when criticisms of this kind were more than usually rife, a friend of mine who held these views asked me if Educational officers had nothing to say in their defence. I replied that I did not think the attack very dangerous. When a policy is new it may be necessary to defend it against attack. Its continuance may otherwise be in danger, and, to secure it a fair trial, those who think it valuable, must array arguments in its defence. But in the present stage of education in India, I am willing to leave the matter to the silent testimony of facts which in my opinion, are steadily accumulating in its favor. The higher education has been now in operation in this Presidency for more than 20 years. The earlier pupils of our schools have reached or past their prime of life, and many of them now hold high posts in all the departments of public life. Among these are men whose names are widely known among their countrymen and who are honored where they are known. The pupils of later years have also in large numbers found employment in official life. Of these young men whose work is carried on in comparative obscurity, I am not in a position to speak with authority. That must be left to the officers who have the immediate supervision of their work. One thing, however, is clear to me. A great change has gradually come about in the feeling with which they are regarded by those who have charge of the administration. In opposition to much prejudice—a prejudice that to some extent, no doubt, was due to their own failings, among which may be reckoned an unwillingness to begin low enough on the official ladder—they have gradually made their way in the Courts and Cutcherries, and I believe it is generally admitted that especially in method and regularity, and I believe also, in the tone of morality, the public service has in recent years vastly improved. An educated man and an ignorant man. And this result is only what might have been expected. Method and system are the characteristic marks of intellectual training. You can see it in the simplest narrative as told by different men. The uneducated man is dominated by accidental circumstances of time and place, and follows every incident, however irrelevant it may be. The man of culture sees the relations of things and the art of arrangement is habitual to him. And it is impossible for a student to master anybody of reasoned truth without acquiring some tincture of method and orderly arrangement. Everyone has heard of the remark once made of Burke, that one could not stand under the same archway during a shower of rain without finding him out. The comment of Coleridge on this observation is not perhaps so commonly known. I gladly quote the substance of it, as it bears on the point I am seeking to enforce. That which strikes us, he says, in such a casual meeting with a man of superior mind or culture is not the weight or novelty of his remarks, for that is precluded by the shortness of the intercourse. Still less will it arise from any peculiarity of his words and phrases. For unusual words he would avoid as a rock. Only one point of distinction remains; and that is the habitual and unpremeditated arrangement of what he says. However desultory the talk, there is method in the fragments. This habit of mind is more needed at present in the public service of this country than at any previous time. The administration has become in recent years more elaborate, and it is certain that, for the working of our present system there are needed men who have received a somewhat extended course of intellectual training.
I have already given the reason why I did not rise to the challenge of my anti-educational friend, and stated that I should be ready to leave the matter to the slowly gathering weight of opinion which seems to me unmistakably in its favor. At the same time, I do not wish to discourage our critics by treating them with apparent neglect. I trust they will persevere. The fault of our critics. Satire and ridicule have their uses. But, as they would be still more useful if they were guided by knowledge and sympathy, I will venture to make one or two remarks that The fault of more friendly and charitable view our of educational work m this country, ihe critics of the Hindu student set up too high a standard. They compare him not with the graduates of England or Scotland or Germany, but with an ideal man who loves culture purely for its own sake and into whose mind there never enters, in connection with his studies, any idea of personal aggrandizement in the shape either of money or of fame. This perfect character, of which perhaps rare specimens may be found, is not, I venture to say, the type of the ordinary graduate in any counti-y known to geographers. To find this high ideal, you must make a voyage to the kingdom of New Atlantis—that glorious dream of Bacon's where, as we are told, they trade not for silver and gold, nor for silk and spices, but for knowledge and light. One evil of this impossible standard is that with a want of logic which is not uncommon, people are apt to conclude that because there is a large balance of alloy, there is no precious metal whatever. The failure to reach the lofty ideal being conspicuous, it is argued that the nobler elements are altogether wanting. Thus it has happened that the commonest reproach that is flung at our students is that they have no real interest in knowledge for its own sake. Let us look at this matter fairly. It is perfectly true that the hope of advancement is the original motive which sends so many boys to our schools. It is equally certain that the majority of our students have to turn their knowledge to immediate use as a means of living. But after both these admissions, which I make in the frankest manner, I emphatically deny the inference commonly made from them that there is no love of knowledge. Knowledge must be gained before it is loved, and the fact, that it is turned to purposes of utility, is no proof that it is regarded in no higher aspect. I will put a parallel case. Most men who study law or medicine do so with a view of making a living by their profession. And, as soon as they are qualified, they are ready, may I say eager, to exchange their knowledge for money. The reason for the unfounded charge. Yet no one would say that in the rank of these two great professions there is no disinterested regard for their respective pursuits. How then has it happened that the injurious opinion I am combating is so widely spread? The reason is not far to seek. The contention tor place and profit is in public and all men can see it. The effort after knowledge and self-improvement is made in retirement and known only to their associates . That every avenue to office is painfully crowded with applicants, that the doors of every court and cutchery are besieged by youths who have passed examinations is a sight plain enough to every one. But the silent and studious hour is not passed in the public eye. Thus it has happened that one particular phase which happens to be prominent has been accepted for the whole character, and the voices of the few that knew better were too feeble to be heard amidst the. general chorus of depreciation. In fact, the character of our students has been painted by persons who had only a superficial acquaintance with them. And as in the absence of exact knowledge, there is plenty of room for the fancy to work, their delineators have in this instance imitated the spirit of the old geographers, who, in mapping the unknown interior of Africa, filled it with deserts. I refrain from making any sweeping assertion as to the genuine interest felt by our students in science and literature, Difficulty of solitary studies lest I should fall into an error on the other side as great as that I am combating. I content myself with pointing out that, whatever be its amount it is necessary in judging it to take account of any special circumstances that tend to diminish it. One of these is the recent introduction of English education. It has not yet been in existence even for a single generation, and, except in a few centres, there is not a sufficient number of educated men interested in the new studies to form an intellectual society. I lay great stress on this fact. Every one knows the difficulty of solitary studies, and, on the other hand, how powerfully we are attracted towards subjects which interest the society in which we move. I believe it explains, in a great degree, the practice too common I admit, but by no means so common as is often stated, of dropping English studies after the degree is obtained. Even in England, we do not find all our graduates solacing their leisure with the differential calculus or a Greek play, and it is not to be wondered at that the student in this country, with so much less in his surroundings to draw him to study, should show too much alacrity in dismissing his books.
In another point that is commonly made a ground of censure, Foreign Politics. there are special circumstances that ought to be kept in mind. I have heard it often imputed as a failing to the educated youth of this Presidency, that they take no liberal interest in the great transactions that are -taking place around them. And by great transactions is generally meant what is happening on the European stage. Let those who make this complaint consider in what degree we ourselves take an interest in the politics of foreign countries, I believe it is in the main limited to those questions to which there is something similar at home. Apart from war, which appeals to elementary passions and will be eternally interesting, I believe it is limited, as I have stated. A struggle between labour and capital in France interests us because it is a vital question in England. And it is much the same with the politics of ancient times. The history of (Greece owes much of its interest to the resemblance between the parties of Greece and the parties of our own time. A recent writer has called Mitford's history a party pamphlet, and of the same historian Mr. Arnold said "He described the popular party in Athens just as he would have described the Whigs in England. He was unjust to Demosthenes because he would have been unjust to Fox." It is plainly unreasonable to look for any vivid interest in European politics when the questions that agitate the Western nations are so different from those that present themselves in the East. If our students were not too polite to descend to so obvious a retort^ they might ask with some pertinence if educated Englishmen were in the habit of taking a deep interest in the land tenures of India.
While I urge these pleas for a more kindly spirit of criticism as regards the higher education in this country, Defects of Indian students. I concede that there are many imperfections which cannot escape the most friendly critic. Perhaps, it would have been better if I had directed attention to some of these. To do so would be useful both to you and to me, to you before whom there lie, I hope, many years of further progress, and to me whose duty it is, as one of the body of teachers, never to be satisfied with what it has already done if anything better is within reach. Permit me, though late, to refer to a single defect. Speaking then from my own experience, I believe it is true, looking to the great body of our students, that while there is plenty of industry there is too little thought. They are prone to satisfy themselves with words without realizing clearly to their own minds an exact image or picture of the thing, and, in a complicated group of facts, they are too often content with attending to the parts separately without studying their relation to each other or the whole. Of the latter defect illustrations are easily given. In examinations it is seen in the frequent mistakes as to the exact point of a question. It has been said that it requires some knowledge to ask a wise question. It is equally true that it requires a good deal of knowledge to understand the purport and drift of a question. Any body of reasoned truth or any group of connected facts is like a complicated machine and a knowledge of the bearing and connection of the parts is necessary for an intelligent comprehension of a question. From a want of this comes the charge of vagueness so frequently made against a particular paper. The vagueness for the most part is in the student's mind and not in the question. The same defect is seen in the want of power to separate material things from immaterial when a brief statement is required of a complicated story. A wise traveller, after visiting the points of interest in a foreign city seeks some lofty point, tower, or mina.ret, from which the whole lies before him; and the student by a mental effort, which may not inaptly be likened to the toilsome labour of climbing, should seek to get a wide survey of every subject he studies. Labour of this kind is painful, and this fact in some degree accounts for its being so little practised. The system of our teaching. But I believe there is something in our system which tends to encourage this kind of mental indolence. It has the defect of having been framed for an earlier stage of education. Our schools have gradually developed into colleges and as was natural enough, the system remained unaltered. The schoolboy was under instruction for six hours a day, and the student to the last day of his course attends his professors for the same number. For all these hours, he is listening to instruction and is left without sufficient time for preparation or subsequent reflection. We are now beginning to find our mistake, and the question has attracted the attention of the highest authority. What in fact is the lesson taught by this system? Is it not that the student's chief business is the passive one of receiving and not the active one of finding. We act as if his brain were an empty hull into which each professor in his turn was to tumble a science. By this system of overteaching, we deprive our students of the pleasures of search and leave them none of the spontaneity in the pursuit of their studies which springs from being left to themselves. I remember an apologue quoted by a distinguished literary man, at once novelist and orator, whom we have recently lost. A certain Greek writer tells us of some man who to save his bees a troublesome flight to Hymettus cut their wings and placed before them the finest flowers he could select. The poor bees made no honey. I think that by our system we imitate this foolish man. We cut the wings of our students and give them the flowers they should find for themselves.
Let me conclude by urging you to make use of the advantages which a knowledge of English offers you. It is the most valuable of your acquisitions. It opens to you a great literature. It places you in communication with modern thought. The treasures of a foreign tongue are guarded by difficulties as hard to be passed as the dragons of ancient story. You have made your way through them, and you are now within hearing of the great poets and sages whose writings adorn our tongue. These are now your inheritance. I wonder when I hear the strange limitation sometimes placed upon the moral power of what is called secular education. We have in our service that vast literature of power whose influence on the character by acting on the emotions none can measure. Who has not felt it?
A new current given to thethoughts, a new purpose implanted. It is often, as it was with the Anthony of our great dramatist when in the company of the Egyptian Queen he was giving a kingdom for pleasure.
A Roman thought struck him.
Thus often some noble thought, a note flung from the harp of some mighty singer, strikes across the pettiness of our lives and sets us on a path of a new endeavour.