You, as amongst the earlier graduates of this University, will doubtless have great influence upon your countrymen for good or evil; they will look to you for the fruits of Western learning, and by your lives will they judge of its results. Your literary
exertions have been rewarded this day by your admission to a
University degree, but remember that with this new position you have incurred new responsibilities—not only in the promise and declaration you have made, but in the fact that you have received, as a trust, the setting forth before the world's eye in your own persons the advantages of a liberal education.
In times gone by the treasures of the East were carried towards the West in so great profusion that Eastern wealth became proverbial; What the University offers. but as the merchant sends forth his ship from port laden with a rich cargo, in faith that she shall cross the seas and traverse them again and enter once more the port bringing higher freight to repay him for his lengthened waiting, so now the day has come, when, your waiting being ended, your vessel has returned to port, and the treasures of the West are laid at your feet. We offer to you, as we think, a literature unsurpassed in the world's history for extent, variety, and elevated thought; science, mental, moral and physical, true, because it is derived from a careful induction of facts and phenomena, subjective and objective, and is not the crude invention of mere theorists; art, refined and elevated, because it is the truthful expression of conceptions gained from nature, rather than the grotesque fancies of a distorted imagination. This is our merchandise; your position here to-day bears witness that you have tested its value, and we call upon you still to buy the truth and sell it not.
I say the truth rather than knowledge, for knowledge is but the instrument, truth is the object to be sought. It is not enough to know the theories of men; you must carefully test them and examine for yourselves, separating the wheaten grain of truth from the chaff of doubtful speculations. You must try and gain something worth believing and cherishing, something that you can weave into the texture of your own mental being, and something that you can hold by in practice, as a guide in action—a power within you.
The title you now assume suggests a figure. The title—a comparison. Borrowed from chivalry, it speaks to you of loyalty and honour. You are the bachelors, you have come to the age of manhood, and, after refined investigation, have been deemed worthy, and have been this day