Convocation Addresses of the Universities of Bombay and Madras/Part 2/Lieut. Col. W. Hughes-Hallet
THIRTY-FIRST CONVOCATION.
(By Lieut.-Colonel W. Hughes Hallet.)
Graduates of the Year,—In accordance with the laws of the University an address is now to be delivered to you by one of the Senate, and I have been chosen for this honourable office. It is impossible to put aside the feeling that there are here present many far worthier than myself, far better able to perform this important task — but a glance at the list of those who have year after year spoken to your predecessors suggests a reason for my selection. That list comprises Governours, Administrators, Clergymen, Doctors, Educationalists, Lawyers; it is full of names familiar in our mouths as household words; it begins in 1857 with the then Director of Public Instruction, and it ends last year with the veteran Statesman who after a long and distinguished career is now spending the twilight of life in your midst. But with the exception of one who at the time in civil employment connected with education spoke in virtue of that employment, it contains no military officer. It may well be then that the reason for my standing before you to-day is a wish that the Army should in turn be represented. The honour is none the less, is indeed by much the greater.
First, on behalf of the University to congratulate you on your success—which I do most heartily. You have toiled and have found the reward. The long course of academic work will now be followed by the work of life. One education you have done with, the other and more important you have yet to begin. Success in this new path will much depend upon the nature of your previous training, for it is not what you have learnt but how you have learnt it that must now stand you in stead. You may practice for a quarter of a century in the Law Courts, you may sit decade after decade in a Revenue office, without finding an opportunity of edging in the date of the battle of Marathon or the formula of the binomial theorem, but the habits yon have acquired at school or college will for good or evil be of hourly importance. A scientific course is specially useful in this connection. No training is so good. Science not only gives a never-ceasing interest to the humblest life, making all Nature an open book more beautiful than is to be found in libraries, but it inculcates habits of observation, method and accuracy which are simply invaluable.
And, in parenthesis, to you others who have not succeeded let a word of counsel be said. Do not make idle excuses. Do not go about saying that you ought to have passed, that you answered all the questions right, and that the examiner must have made some mistake in the marks. Ask your teachers, ever ready to help, for a plain unvarnished opinion as to the cause of failure, as to whether it is permanent or removable. Do not shirk the truth. It may be you are not up to the peculiar mental standard—then best retire gracefully from the contest and go about other business. There is no disgrace in wanting this modern knack of packing away thousands of facts in memory's pigeon holes and producing them neatly tied up in bundles at 10 A.M. on a certain day. Many great minds would have broken down under this test. The milestones of history have mostly been put up by men who would have cut a poor figure in the examination room. If, on the other hand, the evil is pronounced curable, try hard to cure it. Failure is often owing less to want of knowledge than to carelessness. Instead of first studying the question to see exactly what is wanted, then thinking out the answer, then putting your ideas roughly on paper, and lastly writing out clearly and concisely the information asked for and nothing else—a very large number of you glance hurriedly at the question without taking any pains to ascertain its drift, and then scribble pages on pages more or less connected with the subject to which it refers, but in no real sense answering it. Six pages of well expressed and pertinent matter do more towards success than a hundred pages of undigested rigmarole. And not only is your knowledge thus clumsily marshalled, but it is villainously set down. Only a small proportion of answer papers are decently written: a very large portion are disgracefully written. Now bad writing is more often due to affectation or laziness than to inability, and few of us who sin in this respect but can, with a little trouble, write at least legibly. You would take this trouble in drawing up an application for employment, then why not take it at examination? Bad writing can however be forgiven, slovenliness and dirt are more serious offences. Lines running at all kinds of angles with the horizontal, blots, smudges, and smears in profusion, erasures and alterations countless; these are characteristics of at least half your papers, and they might all be avoided with care and thought. This is an intolerable fault—reform it altogether.
In the terms of the by-law providing for this address, it is my duty to exhort you to conduct yourselves suitably unto the position to which, by the degrees conferred upon you, you have attained. The closer these lines are followed, the better. They seem to preclude anything in the shape of a disquisition on education, and indeed elaborate argument would in present circumstances be quite out of place. A tropical afternoon, this vast hall the acoustic difficulties of which are almost insurmountable, in which modulation of the voice is impossible, and in which the slightest movement or noise prevents your neighbours from hearing the speaker, the sea-breeze blowing strong through open casements, and the league long roller murmuring sullen a few yards to windward, these are conditions that demand plain words plainly spoken. I shall therefore merely give you from the vantage ground of age and experience some practical advice as to the conduct of your lives—advice much needed m these days, not only because various forces are at work to unsettle your minds and to fill them with false ideas, but also because you have as a class been lately placed in a difficult position, one that craves wary walking. You have book learning, your presence here to-day proves it: perseverance you have, your presence here to-day proves it: but you have also faults, and it is only fair to say that they are partly due to the treatment you have received these many years past. Ever since the higher education began in this Presidency, (and probably the remark applies equally to other parts of India), you have out of mistaken kindness been allowed your own way to an injudicious extent, notably in such matters as absence from school, promotion to forms for which you are not yet ripe, leaving one master for another out of petty whim, and it has been the fashion in certain quarters to ignore, and deprecate criticism on, your shortcomings. The natural result is that faults which might have been and should have been nipped in the bud have developed and flourished: and now of a sadden hard things are said of you, and these faults are pointed at and commented upon with a shaking of the head as though they were a new growth, as though their existence had not all along been perfectly well known. Had the educated youth of India been from the first subjected to the kindly but firm discipline under which English boys in England are brought up, not omitting a moderate use of that invaluable botanical aid to education the common birch, there would have been no occasion for this outcry. These faults are not however serious, they are much less than might have been expected in the circumstances, and if you but have the sense to listen to the truth, to accept honest advice, and to turn a deaf ear to pernicious flattery, they will soon be things of the past.
Now the subject of first interest to young men about to start in life is naturally the choice of a career, but on this we will not linger. The general arguments respecting the different professions are too familiar to need repetition, and it must lie with each one of you who has not already made up his mind to consider how far those general arguments are modified by the particular circumstances of his own case. All sources of information are open to you—friends and relatives are at hand to consult—think the matter well over—and then decide. The counsel of a stranger can be of little use. But without running the risk of recommending this or that profession which might, for reasons only known to yourselves, be unsuitable, there is one point which I would urge. Do not choose a calling solely on pecuniary grounds. This is a very common but a very fatal mistake. The great majority of people judge of a profession entirely by the income it affords. Of course the money element is not to be ignored, especially by a man without private means, give it the first place in the calculation if you like, but do not lose sight of other factors. Think also whether the profession suits you. Money is not the only object in life, there is also happiness; and how can a man be happy if his days are spent in an uncongenial occupation? For instance, picture the life of a doctor who has a distaste for his work—few dooms can be more terrible. I say not this to dissuade you from the medical profession, to my mind the noblest of the professions, but as a warning: precisely because it is noble it should not be entered lightly. This is of course an extreme case, but the truth holds good always. A man is fond of the open air and out-door exercise —what salary can compensate him for thirty years of office drudgery in a close room? Again, think whether your work will, in addition to giving you a livelihood, do good to others. This may seem too quixotic a consideration for everyday life, but it is not. An entirely selfish existence can rarely be happy. Now all kinds of work are capable of doing good to others, directly or indirectly, but those which act directly will give you the greatest satisfaction.
Now let it be supposed that you have made your choice among the professions—on two of them I would briefly remark, because they are exposed to peculiar temptations by the fierce competition of the times.
Graduates in law, your ancient and honourable profession stands second to none in the demands that it makes upon intellect and perseverance and m the dignities and rewards that it offers to the successful. Your daily work will be of the widest interest, the studies connected with that work of endless variety. You will become familiar with master minds of many ages and of many countries. Words spoken 2000 years back in the Forum of some and words spoken last month amid the busy hum of London traffic will alike claim your attention. The study will doubtless fascinate you as it has fascinated others. Many men have found it so engrossing that it has become the one subject of their lives whether in the Court House or at home—they have thought and spoken nothing but law, they have taken law as their familiar communing with it day and night, they have parted with it only at their latest breath. You will soon find yourselves brought face to face with that curious ethical problem which has staggered the best and the wisest, and which every lawyer must solve for himself. How far is an advocate justified in pleading, or bound to plead, a cause which he believes or knows to be wrong? You will find plenty of contradiction in the authorities, from Cicero to Erskine, from Quintilian to Brougham. The line has to be drawn, and each must draw it for himself according to his own lights and his own conscience: it is a matter to be decided by personal conviction rather than by argument. When engaged in the actual conduct of a case you are not likely to forget the duty owing to a client, but do not forget that there is a duty owing to witnesses also. Remember that the attendance of a witness in a Court of Law is often against his own inclination, often takes him away from important private business, and not seldom puts him to serious money loss. Remember that he is called upon by Justice to assist Justice, and that he is for the time being an unpaid servant of the public. Remember that he is presumably as honest as yourself, and that till this presumption is negatived by apparent prevarication or falsehood you have no right to treat him as a rogue because his evidence happens to be against your side. By all means test to the utmost his accuracy of observation and his memory, and if reasonable occasion arise test also his veracity and shake his credit — this you must do in the interests of your client — but do not unnecessarily injure or insult him. He comes into Court for the purpose of speaking to the matter in dispute, and not for the purpose of having the secrets of his life laid bare to the common gnze. Above all, when addressing the Court on the evidence do not draw unwarrantable inferences from his words, and then vilify him for what he has neither said nor suggested. In a word, follow faithfully the principles laid down in our admirable Indian Law of Evidence. A violation of these principles may buy a cheap notoriety in the least desirable quarters — but in the minds of all whose opinion is worth having it grievously besmirches that professional purity which you have to-day promised to maintain, and it seriously interferes with the ends of Justice by making the very name of cross-examination a terror, by making honest folk afraid to enter the witness box.
Many of you will doubtless enlist in the ranks of journalism, a yearly increasing force—you will find the life creasing force arduous and exacting. It is a service which makes no allowance for private convenience. You are the master, but at the same time the slave, of the public. You must be ready at any moment to give an ex cathedra opinion on any subject, familiar or unfamiliar. Nothing is too great for your attention, nothing too small. You are the Nasmyth hammer of literature. You must work in season and out of season. Are you sick? —rise from bed and dash off a leading article on the latest political telegram. Are you in domestic trouble? —put grief on one side while you review in appropriate style the new book of comic stories. But to compensate for this life of endless work and worry you will power—godlike power. The influence of a newspaper in England is enormous, incalculable, and even in India where there is sometimes an affectation of poohpoohing the Press it is very great. Question it who will, the Press is a great power for good— it is also unfortunately a great power for evil. It can expose and insist upon the remedy of wrong —it can also do wrong. Reflect on this fact—that your first essential is to interest the public. No amount of industry or cleverness can avail without this. You must interest. Now reflect on this other fact—that nothing interests the majority of people so much as adverse criticism, 31 especially if they are acquainted with the subject of it. A scathing account of a man or of a measure is read with the greatest eagerness, a favourable account is passed over with indiiference. A sad confession for poor humanity; but so it is. And lastly reflect on this third fact—that nothing is so easy as to find fault. Combine these facts, and it is evident that the journalist is under constant temptation to write sarcasm and abuse, especially the journalist whose lines are cast in a small society. Yet to its great credit be it spoken the better part of the Press steadily resists this temptation. Do you resist it also. Consider this matter seriously for it is of the gravest moment. The line which costs you nothing to write may cost the victim much to read. Do not unlace a reputation in mere wantonness. It is no doubt excellent to have a giant's strength, but remember that it is tyrannous to use it like a giant. By no means refrain from lashing when the lash is deserved, but make sure that it is deserved. Be at the greatest pains to understand the actions and motives of the man you attack. And on this point let me refer you to a wise writer. Dr. Holmes happily says that when two persons are talking it is only natural there should be misunderstandings among the six; and in explanation he points out that when Thomas and John are together there is first Thomas as he really is, then Thomas as he exists in his own imagination, and lastly Thomas as John thinks him to be, all three very different persons—and that similarly there are three Johns, making a total of six. So when you, Journalist John, propose to scarify Thomas, remember that there are three of him and be quite sure you get hold of the right one; and if Thomas is an official remember also that there are behind him, unseen by you, other officials Peter and Paul pulling him different ways and that he is not a free agent.
And now to all of you, whatever your profession, a few words of homely counsel. Be independent. The plan of reaching the top of a hill by hanging on to the coat tails of a stronger brother is no doubt often successful, but it is never dignified. More satisfactory to climb to a lower level by your own unaided exertions. Go your own way in life. Respect yourself, and that you may do so respect others. Be ever courteous to inferiors and deferential to superiors. Be cheerfully submissive to those set over you in your work. One of the worst signs of the present age is impatience of Constituted authority. A large class of ill-conditioned persons take for their motto— Whatever is. is wrong. Be not you of them. Believe me there is nothing noble, there is certainly nothing sensible, in giving grudging obedience where unhesitating obedience is due. And how can you in turn expect to be obeyed when you have set a contrary example yourself? Be assured that those below you will closely watch your actions, and will when the time comes better your instruction. There is an old and very true saying, that he who has never learned to obey will never learn to command. But beyond your immediate superiors, be deferential to your social superiors also whoever they may be. This is a point on which there has been bad teaching. The times seethe with theories to the effect that all are equal and that therefore deference from one man to another is misplaced. This sorry nonsense is not new, it has been aired at many stages of the world's progress, it is unworthy of serious refutation, and you will have read history to little purpose if you do not see its hopeless impracticability; but still a word of warning may be useful. Face the world as it is, not as dreamers of bad dreams would make it. The man who is above us may owe his position to accident, to merit, to age, to interest, to wealth, nay even to demerit, it matters not. He is above us, and it is our duty to recognize him accordingly with the customary signs of deference. To do so costs nothing. To say "Sir" to a superior involves no loss of dignity or self-respect, but on the other hand to adopt a familiar tone and affect an equality which does not exist is a contemptible practice and shows a most pitiful ambition in the fool that uses it. No, in this sense men are not and cannot be all on one level, the whole scheme of the Universe repudiates the idea, and even the preachers of the doctrine do not usually carry it about in every-day life; let an inferior apply it practically to themselves and he will soon find that the latter end of their commonwealth forgets the beginning. But there is another sense in which men may be equal. If you do your work in life honestly and diligently, owing no man anything, then you may in a very high sense be the equal of every one, King or Kaiser. Equally with superior and inferior cultivate a pleasant manner, which is by no means the same thing as a servile manner. A young man may wrap himself in no better cloak for life's journey. And be modest. In an age of charlatanism and self-advertisement this may seem a suicidal policy: but you have in this town, among your own countrymen, a living proof that the greatest abilities and the greatest industry may go hand in hand with extreme modesty, and may yet win not only the highest personal esteem, but also the highest official rewards. Be manly. Book-learning alone never yet made a nation and never will. Be manly. Thanks to the untiring efforts o£ Certain gentlemen to whom the youth of Southern India can never be sufficiently grateful, at the head of whom is now His Excellency the Governor, you have ample opportunity for athletics and gymnastics, and for all games from cricket down to epicene lawn tennis, opportunity of which may take advantage. The reproach cast in the teeth of your brother of the Ganges would be idle in your case. But even though you should cultivate the body till it reaches the perfection aimed at in Greece that would not be enough. There would then be the machine and the brain to direct the machine, but the motive power would still be wanting. You must have the manly spirit. Look for noble examples, and follow in their footsteps; they may be found in the living world, in history, in art. Both by precept and practice discourage petty squabbling and quarrelling. Discourage appeals to the Police Court on every trifling occasion. Possibly the very excellence of the Penal Code does harm in this direction. Its provisions are so elastic and so easy of application that they must often present irresistible temptation to an aggrieved person. This was put very nicely by a candidate at a law examination some years back. I had asked what safeguard there is against the excessive litigation that would arise if the provisions of the Code were literally enforced, and the young man replied "there is no safeguard so long as one lives in society, the only way is to retire from the world and become a hermit." So melancholy a solution of the difficulty suggests much unhappy experience.
Be brave. You come of a land that has bred brave men. The fables of antiquity tell of no nobler exploits than those performed by the Madras Army. Not alone Amboor, Arcot, Assaye, and such familiar instances; but numberless deeds of heroism, endurance, self-denial, done by knots of men all over the Presidency, deeds so common in their day as to pass almost unnoticed, and which now live only in obscure chronicles forgotten by all but the curious. These things should however find a place in your memories, for it is the Madras Army which has made your presence here to-day possible.
Be thorough. Whatever you are doing, do it with all your might. Strive to earn the character of always trying your best, and thus beget a confidence which no amount of mere cleverness can ever hope to win. Then if you fail, as all must fail sometimes, there will be no disgrace. Now to do thoroughly everything which you undertake it is plain that you must not undertake too much, and here comes opposing counsel. There is a maxim often quoted with approbation and held up for general guidance, "Know something of every-thing and everything of something," but I venture to think it a most dangerous piece of advice, especially to young men, even allowing that it is not meant to be taken literally. It has a fine antithetical ring, and is just the sort of phrase to catch the ear, but it will not bear scrutiny. No man, however gifted, can in these days know something of everything, and the attempt to do so will certainly result in knowing nothing of anything. The prodigy thrives in fiction no doubt. The muscular hero, who carelessly crumples up the fire irons with the finger and thumb of his left hand, is matched by the intellectual hero, who is ready at any moment to correct a bishop in a quotation from the less known patriotic writings or to give the details of the population of Turkestan according to the latest census. But he does not exist in fact. Then Bacon is held up as an example. Well it is not wise for a youth to start in life with the notion of rivalling Bacon. Ambition is a good spur, but like other spurs the inexperienced will find it safer when of moderate length. And after all what does Bacon's case prove? He was perhaps the most marvellous genius that ever lived. Perhaps no other man has mastered so large a share of the learning of his own age. But the times have marched. Discoveries, inventions, the accumulated labours of students, have immensely enlarged the field of learning. The area of possible human knowledge, the area of knowledge which it is open to one man to acquire, increases year by year—and it increases not in arithmetical progression, but in geometrical. He who could take all knowledge to be his province at the end of the 16th century would find that province occupy but a small corner of the map at the end of the 19th. If I persist in driving this nail home it is to save you from a very fatal error. Try a simple test. Take three subjects at haphazard from different branches of study—say, Hydraulics, Spanish Literature, the Botany of South America—and ask the best educated man of your acquaintance, not actually engaged in teaching these subjects, to pass an elementary examination in them. Yet here are only three, and all tolerably familiar. Instead of three take three hundred—double three hundred and then treble that—where will the man be who tries to know some-thing of all? That way madness lies.
To criticize is ever easier than to create, and while it is one thing to warn you against undertaking more than a reasonable amount it is quite another to lay down what the amount should be. But in any case, before all else devote yourself zealously to your profession. This is not a superfluous caution, for strange though it may seem there are men who spend much time and truble over other matters and yet leave the real work of their lives to take care of itself. Master your profession; be not a niggard of your labour. Go back to its beginnings, trace its development, see how its present form and features were arrived at. For example, if you are a lawyer spend days and nights over such books as Sir Henry Maine's Ancient Law and Village Communities. Then note how it works and the varying aspects it presents in other countries, and so escape contracting narrow views. By comparing the different existing legal systems, for instance, you would probably come to the conclusion that our own, especially as modified in India, is the best, but you would avoid the mistake of supposing it to be perfect. Then you will soon see that in order to know your own profession you must know something of many others also. You will find that it is like a tree in the midst of a dense forest, with other trees close around; that as you ascend and get further from the root the branches spread more and more, crossing and interlacing with the branches of the neighbouring trees, till it becomes necessary to learn the principle on which these other branches grow in order to rightly understand the directions of your own. To take the former example, a lawyer must be more or less acquainted with mercantile usage, the recognized methods of book-keeping, the agricultural system of the country, the general principles of anatomy, the nature of wounds, the actions of poisons, and a score of other matters, for otherwise he cannot grasp the bearings of a case and cannot appreciate or check the evidence of witnesses. A study of your profession on these broad and liberal lines will not leave many hours for other labour, but you must make it leave some. The next and only other necessary work is to keep yourselves fairly conversant with the questions of the day, to do which needs much discrimination in the choice of newspapers, magazines, and reviews, since a busy man has only time to read a small fraction of the vast amount written. Now let us suppose that after this there are still two or three hours remaining each day for what may be called optional work. How to employ these spare hours each must decide for himself, and on your decision will to a great extent depend the kind of man you become. One may take up general or special literature, another may turn to science, and so forth. And here it is worth consideration whether a short space each week might not be spared for one of the Arts. Personally, I believe that a life from which the love and practice of Art are wholly absent can never be other than an incomplete life. It may be music, singing, drawing in some one of its numerous branches, carving, modelling, or any of what are called the minor Arts; if the necessary conditions are obtainable, which in India is exceedingly rare, it may be acting; so long as it is a humble following of Art for the sake of Art and not merely a ministration to vanity the result must be good. Art takes one above the pettiness of the world as nothing else can.
But however these extra hours are spent, remember still that the profession comes before all. Bear in mind the warning of Ulysses :
Keeps hononr bright: to have done is to hang
Quite out of fashion, like a rusty mail
In monumental mockery. Take the instant way,
For honour travels in a strait so narrow
Where one but goes abreast ; keep them the path,
For emulation hath a thousand sons
That one by one pursue : if you give way,
Or hedge aside from the direct forthright,
Like to an entered tide they all rush by
And leave you hindmost;
then what they do in present,
Though less than yours in past must o'ertop yours."
Heed well the warning. Whether you slacken speed from idleness or inability, or whether you merely diverge from the straight course in search of other attractions, the effect is the same. Others pass you. Therefore first do your work in life thoroughly, and then devote the leisure hours to other occupations or amusements but carrying them out thoroughly also. Do not attempt too much. If you do the professional career will be neglected and, no matter how superior your abilities, disappointment and failure will be your ultimate portion. Starting in the race of life with brilliant prospects you easily keep level with and even outstrip competitors, but the beautiful flowers by the wayside are alluring and you pause to gather them. What matters it? You can easily overtake the others. With an effort you do so. But again the temptation to stray, and this time further afield, and now to recover the lost ground is a harder task. And so each wandering from the path makes wider the gap between yourself and your sometime inferiors, and your efforts to reach them become more and more hopeless. Then in a flash your eyes are opened and the truth is seen—in attempting too much you have lost everything. Then comes dull despair. Then in the evening of days, sinking back wearied and exhausted with a life struggle after the impossible, echoing those melancholy words "too late, too late" you find when it is indeed too late that in striving to grasp universal knowledge you have been striving to grasp that which is intangible, that life, health, talents, opportunities, have been wasted in the pursuit of a chimera.
To this rough and necessarily very imperfect sketch of the leading principles which should regulate your conduct as individuals something must be added on your relation to the University. You have here in the full light of day, in the presence of the Senate and of several hundred spectators, undertaken a solemn obligation. Not only have you promised to be good citizens, promoting the cause of morality and upholding social order and the well-being of your fellowmen; you have also promised to con-duct yourselves in daily life as becomes members of the University and to promote the cause of learning. This pledge must not be lightly broken. Wherever you may be and whatever your occupation you must endeavour to help others in the quest after knowledge. In a huge city like this individual effort may not do much, you can but join with the throng, each doing his share; but in the smaller towns and villages a single example is of distinct value. Let that example be worthy of the University. Here is a glorious duty, glorious but still a duty. You have to hand the lamp of learning down the generations. Through all historic ages that lamp has burned, through all ages to come it will continue to burn, till this race shall be no more. Let the thoughts rest where they will on the memories of the past, there that flame is to be seen and ever moving onward. Back in the earliest recorded times, the sage of Egypt, of Chaldea, of India, takes his pupils to tower top and teaches them that fanciful lore of the heavens which has now given place to a truer science — from then onward to where in the groves of the academy the disciples walk with the master probing the dim depths of philosophy, by their side the blue Egean with smiles innumerable reflecting a cloudless heaven, and overhead the calm-browed goddess looking grave approval enshrined on her own Acropolis — onward again to the schools of Alexandria where the father of geometry thinks out the eternal problems, and Hipparchus and Eratos-thenes, grand in the audacity of their conceptions, grand even in their errours, struggle to compass the universe — onward to where under spreading oak and in stonehewn cloister a pale-faced priesthood treasures with loving care the priceless heirlooms of a dead age, the key to which it must never hope to possess—onward to the domes and arches of Cordova where the sons of Arabia garner up the grain that the natives of Europe, purblind, would trample in the mire—onward to Tudor England where men breathe once more, raising their heads above the dark waters of repression and of ignorance that have stagnated heavy, thick, through so many weary centuries, and there is born into the world a new life, a new literature, a new humanity—aye and onward to our own time, when Science yielding at last to the importunity of man lets slowly fall the veil and discloses those charms so long and so jealously guarded—yes ever onward, sometimes over smooth and fruitful plain where the way is easy, and sometimes over scarped rock and through tangled briar where advance seems almost impossible, but ever onward, now with bright blaze illumining the firmament and anon with flicker feeble to the very verge of extinction, but still onward and ever onward that sacred lamp of learning is borne aloft by an eager band of votaries, a band of votaries who absorbed in their own passion pay no heed to the world about them, and for whom indeed surrounding events, thrones that totter, dynasties that dissolve, and republics that crumble away have no further interest than this, that they add yet another page to the studies of the future. Of that band you are now members.
Much has of late been written and spoken about certain of your social customs, and it has been urged that the higher education cannot be said to have borne fruit SO long as they exist. To my thinking however reform must in such matters come from within rather than from without; you must turn for guidance to the enlightened among your own country-men. But still there is one point on which I feel too strongly to remain altogether silent. How long do you intend your womankind to remain in ignorance? How long is to be before the education given you on such favourable terms filters through to them? Some little improvement has been effected during the last few years, but till female education ceases to be the exception and becomes the rule the reproach will not depart from you. Woman has occupied many positions in the world. In savage tribes merely an ill-used animal, in Greece a domestic drudge, in the purer days of chivalry an idealized being placed on a pedestal so high that she breathed a different atmosphere from that of the every-day world, in modern Western civilization a highly cultivated product rivalling man in the receptive faculty but still far 32 behind in the great creations of intellect and Art. Where the golden mean lies is a much vexed question, partly because people forget that the training proper for her who is to be a wife and mother differs both in degree and kind from that needed for her who is to gain an independent living. But this much may at least be said with confidence, that where the voice of woman is ever— I will not say hushed, for no system could effect that—but where the voice of woman comes ever muffled from behind a screen, there man deliberately denies himself invaluable help. There are many questions no doubt which can be well decided by man alone; there are indeed some which it is an abomination for woman even to touch; but in the great majority joint counsel is best. The cleverest man will always find much to learn from a woman. The female mind is before all things practical, and an effectual solvent for what—in lack of a more classical term—we call fads. Man sees many objects, but their very number causes them to be blurred; the eye of woman takes in a narrower field, but the outlines of what it does see are remarkably distinct. Woman dismisses the fringe of a subject with a wave of the hand or a curt depreciatory formula and concentrates herself on the main features, a method which gains in promptitude if it sometimes loses in abstract justice. And so it comes to pass that in the search after truth woman often finds the jewel while man is still lighting his lantern. How long will you refuse the assistance of her who is your natural ally? How long will you do injustice to your wives and daughters, and through that injustice injury to yourselves? And it is not only that you lose the counsellor, you lose the friend also. What true companionship can there be between two persons whose minds have nothing in common?
Can sort, what harmony, or true delight?
Which must be mutual, in proportion due
Given and received; but in disparity
The one intense, the other still remiss,
Cannot well suit with either, but soon prove
Tedious alike."
And now, in conclusion, as to your duty to the State, by no means the least important of your duties. You have first to smoothen the way in dealing with the millions whom we call the masses. Always a difficult task for a Government to get its recommendations and measures understood by these, it is especially difficult when rulers and ruled belong to different races and start with different traditions. Here you can, each in your own degree, be of real service. For example, you can urge upon the ryot the advantage of abandoning his primitive tools for those modern improvements which are now placed within his reach, and of carrying out scientific suggestions as to rotation of crops and dressing the soil; you can explain the object of sanitary regulations and the importance of obeying them; the necessity of precaution against infectious diseases; the benefits of vaccination; the advantages of resorting to the hospital when sick, especially in cases of epidemic. You can interpret between those who make the law and those who have to obey the law. Education and contact with educated minds and the ruled. enable you to understand matters which are a mystery to others not having your opportunities, and which as a mystery are feared. You must lull to rest those suspicions which the uneducated ever feel when something new and unfamiliar is proposed. You must carry that lamp of learning of which we spoke into the caves of superstition and ignorance, casting its beams into every cranny and crevice, and show to the peoples that the grim shapes which terrify them so much are nought but phantoms of their own imagining, things of darkness that fade away on the approach of light.
And while thus correcting misapprehension and error in others, do not fall into like error yourselves. Reflect that though matters which seem an enigma to the villager are by reason of education simple to you, there may yet be other matters beyond your grasp also. Therefore when some policy of Government runs counter to your wishes and ideas, pause before ascribing illiberal motives. You may see one side of a subject quite clearly and think you have mastered it; yet there may be other sides entirely hidden from your eye of which you dream not. Be cautious therefore in assuming a measure to be wrong because you can see no good in it, or right because you can see no harm in it. Do not fall into the dangerous mistake of looking with suspicion on the motives of people who hold opinions contrary to your own. Here again you suffer from bad advisers. From platform and magazine self-dubbed "friends of India" encourage you to ask for this or that concession, and to think yourselves ill-used if it is not immediately granted. But these persons are not your true friends. Seek your true friends rather among those who have proved their friendship by heaping on you material benefits and privileges, and when you feel inclined to murmur at a refusal to accept your views turn as a corrective to a consideration of what you already enjoy. Think of your material benefits—call up the India of a hundred years back, a hotbed of picturesque insanitation, the absence of communications, the constant wars, the gangs of freebooters, dacoits, thugs, the insecurity of life and property, the unchecked sweeping away of millions by pestilence and famine, in a word the state of danger, misery and discomfort, and then look upon the present. It is as though the good genius from one of your own Eastern tales had spread his wings over the land. Then think of your privileges, you can follow any religion, you can practise any profession, you can acquire any property, you can publish your, opinions on any subject, you can dwell where you please, come and go as you like, in a word shape your lives exactly as seems good to you, without let or hindrance. Is this nothing? Is this a small thing? How long have Englishmen in England enjoyed such privileges, how many nations in Europe enjoy such privileges now? These things you have not bought. They have been given you. You have paid nothing for them. Aye, but they have been bought and paid for by others, and would you know the price? Ask it of history. The blood that has enriched a hundred battle-fields, the heads that have fallen low upon a thousand, scaffolds, the smoke that has made murky the heavens from countless martyr pyres, this is the price paid by England for that which she has given you freely, fully, ungrudgingly. Trust then and be patient: all fitting things will come in fitting time. Trust the mother who has done so much for you, that she may do more and yet more: be patient that she may do it in due season, not with the ill-considered haste which breeds disaster. Trust and be patient. And if you and your fellows throughout this mighty land thus live—as individuals doing your work honestly, thoroughly, as citizens respecting your neighbours, as subjects co-operating, with and having confidence in the State, then there need be no misgiving as to the future of India. Then may we lift up a corner of the curtain that hides the great Shall-Be and look without fear on what lies beyond. There may the eye see that ■which shall make glad the heart. For the keen intellect of the East welded with the sturdy self-reliance and energy of the West shall together result in an Indian Empire indeed: an Indian Empire complete, one whole, flawless: an Indian Empire beyond the wildest dreams of a Darius, beyond the wildest hopes of an Akbar: an Indian Empire proof against traitor within and foe without: an Indian Empire ready and able to take her stand, shoulder to shoulder with her sisters of the great Anglo-Saxon federation, roekfirm against all comers, foursquare against the world.