I have to remind you thafc those sacred lamps of faith, virtue, morality, and philosopliy, preserved to us by the best traditions of the world—those holy fires unextinguished through so many ages, and as we believe inextinguishable—have been reverently and faithfully handed down to you by this University. Whatever changes may be gradually introduced into other parts of our teaching, this part will, we trust, remain unchanged and unchangeable.
This ethical and philosophical teaching has greatly affected already, and will still more affect in future, the conduct, through- out life, of those who pass through the University. Allowing for failures and disappointments, we still see that there is a greatly improved standard of conduct, a higher ideal of rectitude, among those Natives who have received our ethical instruction, and have been in daily contact with the European professors. In the higher branches of the public service, both executive and judicial—more especially in the judicial—the Natives evince an integrity and a trustworthiness for which we are heartily thankful. The improvement which has occurred in these respects is remarkable, and can be best appreciated by us who remember the tone and standard which prevailed in times past, before the introduction of a system of State education into India. And the Natives themselves, as I understand, attribute it mainly to English education, to the moral instruction which is included in that education, and to companionship and association with European teachers.
For the theoretical part of philosophy the Native youth in our Universities have always evinced an excellent aptitude. This, indeed, is to be expected, inasmuch as philosophy has been cultivated by the races of India from the time of a remote antiquity, in all respects with wonderful diligence and in many respects with much success. The high mental qualities thus engendered, have been transmitted through many generations of men to you, the representatives of the present time.
But, gentlemen, the exclusive devotion to mental and moral philosophy as contradistinguished from physical science, Exclusive devotion to Philosophy. and without sufficient subjection to the discipline of severer studies, such as logic, mathematics and science—is apt to develop the very faults to which your mental constitution is prone. The imaginative faculties rise and spread so as to overshadow the reason; the idealistic power flourishes so excessively as to draw the vigour away from the realistic faculties. Consequently, our University students are but too often addicted to rhetorical