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University of Madras.
pursue a like course of intellectual cultivation. Having been one of the examiners to test your qualifications as candidates, it has been to me a special satisfaction to witness your admission to your respective degrees; and now, as a member of the Senate appointed to address you as graduates, I call upon you to consider well the position which by the virtue of these degrees, you now occupy. That position is to be looked at under a twofold aspect; one, bearing upon yourselves, the other, upon your fellow-men. Attain moral excellence. In respect of the first, the conferring of these degrees pledges you to aim at all intellectual and moral excellency; as to the second, it lays you under obligation to a course of practical usefulness. Rise then, gentlemen, to the true dignity of the position to which you have this day attained and recognise and fulfil the responsibility it imposes. Do you ask me to define more exactly wherein that dignity and responsibility consists? I refer you to the Questions which just now were proposed to you and to which you severally made response. Those questions were put to you by His Excellency the Chancellor in the name of this University, and they were answered by you, I trust, in all sincerity with a clear appreciation of their import and design. Review those questions for a moment, and ponder over their nature and significance. Those questions, you will observe, are purely of a moral character, and in putting them, before a degree was conferred upon you, the University clearly intimated that it looks not for intellectual superiority only, as the condition of a Degree, but for moral excellence also. In the ordeal to which you had been previously subjected by its duly appointed examiners, the University had obtained assurance that in point of learning and ability you were worthy of the honour to which you aspired; yet, before it would confer that honour, it demanded and received from you a pledge of moral rectitude, as men and as citizens. It asked you whether, as candidates for your respective degrees, you would promise, 1st, to fashion your daily life and conversation as becomes the members of this University; 2nd, to support and promote, to the utmost of your opportunity and ability, the cause of morality and sound learning; 3rd, to uphold and advance, as far as in you lies, social order and the well-being of your fellow-men. Gentlemen, these questions are of a momentous character; they were solemnly put and, I doubt not, seriously answered. Import of promises made. Note then, to what, by your own deliberate act and declaration, you this day stand pledged, and therein see what is your true dignity, your proper responsibility as graduates of this University. You are pledged to eschew every
