David Duncan

“ Strive not only to increase the stock of human knowledge, but also to spread it among the ignorant. Be it your aim not only to elevate and purify the ideal of duty, but also to encourage and help your fellow-men in their endeavours to live a better life. Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honourable, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, what-soever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report: these things it must be your ceaseless endeavour to realize in your own lives and in those of your fellow-men. ”

“ Let the good name of your University be one of your most cherished possessions. Except as affiliated to that world-wide University, which embraces all the schools that, through the ages, have kept alive the sacred flame of knowledge, your Alma Mater cannot boast of a hoary antiquity. But, though the traditions you have to maintain may not claim the sanction of centuries, yet, young as they are, they deserve to be held in reverence. To cherish the lofty traditions of a long bye-gone past is a worthy task ”

“ This scientific bias, if unchecked, may lead to the other sciences being ignored altogether, the favourite science being looked upon as affording a complete account of the universe—as embracing the alpha and the omega of knowledge. Against this tendency—a tendency favoured by the training you have received—you must ever be on your guard. If the several sciences give only the final deliverances that can be made for the time being in their respective spheres, something more is needed before we can be said to possess a genuine and comprehensive conception of the universe. ”

“ Go forth now to your allotted walks in life, clear in intelligence, resolute in purpose, pure in heart; carrying with you the inspiriting and sustaining thought that you have this day been admitted as citizens of no mean city—as citizens of that catholic Universitas, or republic of letters, which knows no distinctions of race or creed, and on the burgess-roll of which are inscribed in undying fame the names of the wisest and the best of every age and clime. ”

“ It is most meet that a modern University like this should open its doors to the one sex as well as to the other; so that women, who possess the means and the mental endowments, may receive the highest education, both general and professional. But I do not advocate that all your women should be educated up to this high standard. I do not ask that in every household there shall be a blue-stocking; though amid the manifold interests of the complex society of the nineteenth century, even the blue-stocking may find her appropriate sphere and function. ”

“ How can an illiterate, uncultivated, perhaps infantile mother watch over the opening faculties of her child and mould its character for good? One cannot trust to maternal instinct and common sense alone in such an important matter. Maternal instinct is a sorry substitute for intelligent judgment, and common sense is very uncommon in an uncultivated mind. There is no more reason why the moulding of the characters of the young should be entrusted to the instinct and common sense of uneducated people, than there is for entrusting any other human pursuit to such guidance. ”

“ I do not say that their lives are joyless lives, but I do say that they are denied the means of experiencing some of the keenest and purest enjoyments a human being is capable of. This selfishness, which practically shuts out one-half of society from the pleasure-giving and refining influences of literature, science, and art, is a reproach to educated men. And think, gentlemen, how much you yourselves lose in being deprived of the sympathetic companionship of your wives and sisters. ”

“ Brooding too much over past failures is apt to weaken the knees of action, leading one to the fatal conclusion that, because the best has not been made of the years gone by, it is useless to prolong the contest. At no time of life should men, reflecting on the past, give way to despair, and least of all when, like you, they have just got beyond the threshold of it. ”

“ And reflect, gentlemen, on the future of your society? Unless you earnestly, and manfully, and successfully grapple with this question of female education, there can be no lasting social development, and in the absence of development there must come decay. If hereditary transmission be true at all, it applies to mind as well as to body. We may not yet have discovered, we may never discover, the intermediate links in the chain of causation by which the intellectual and moral qualities of parents are transmitted to their children. ”

“ It is to be regretted that the aristocracy of native society holds itself aloof from University culture, notwithstanding the example set by the Princes of some of the reigning families of Southern India, who enter the arena of intellectual competition, to have their ability and knowledge tested on equal terms with the lowliest in the land. On political and social grounds it is eminently desirable that those whom the masses of the people have been accustomed to look up to as the leaders of the society should be brought within the influence of the highest culture. ”

“ A society composed of educated men and uneducated women can never be a progressive society." Do you regard knowledge as a priceless possession tor yourselves, but a useless encumbrance or a curse to your mothers and your wives, your sisters and your daughters? You are prepared to make many sacrifices for the education of your boys, is that of your girls not worthy of equal sacrifices? ”

“ But, while counselling you to pursue, with all the earnestness and assiduity of which you are capable, the particular branch of knowledge which natural inclination and aptitude, strengthened and methodized by academic discipline, may urge you to follow, and which the circumstances of your future life may render practicable, I should fail in my duty were I to abstain from inviting your special attention to the claims of one department of thought. It may not be the fashion now-a-days to profess a high regard for speculative philosophy and metaphysics. ”

“ The evil is not merely that their education makes no further advance, but that the very little they learnt at school rapidly fades away, and along with it there vanishes the taste for reading and culture, the seeds of which had begun to germinate when they were withdrawn by social custom to the comparative seclusion of the domestic circle. The male members of the family, if they happen themselves to be educated, do occasionally strive to keep the last traces of school life from being effaced from the minds of the girls of the household. ”

“ The cause which I earnestly commend to your sympathy and cooperation is the bringing about of such modifications in your social customs as shall render it possible for young women to obtain an amount of education sufficient to call into exercise and harmonious development those faculties and capacities which in their present condition lie dormant, or reach only a dwarfed and stunted growth. Their well-being and your own well-being, the well-being of your children and future growth of your society, depend on the manner in which you perform this primary duty of educated men. ”

“ For partial or one-sided views become harmful when, for-getting their real character, we treat them as complete and all-sided. Now, this is precisely what the specialist is in danger of doing. The more the mind is engrossed with a particular branch of knowledge, the greater is the tendency to treat all other branches as of less importance and, therefore, as less deserving of study. ”

“ Each science professes to give the last word that can for the time being be said, not on the universe as a whole, but on that particular part of it with which it is concerned. Chemistry gives us the final conclusions of the chemist with regard to the phenomena and laws of chemical combination. Biology systematizes the latest conclusions with respect to the phenomena and laws of life. Psychology confines itself to the domain of consciousness. Each science presents, therefore, only a partial view of nature ”

“ I am not concerned with defending the speculations which under the name of metaphysics, or ontology, or theology, have engrossed the minds of men since the dawn of reflection. But I am deeply interested in getting you to understand and appreciate the spirit of enquiry, of which metaphysical speculations, however erroneous they may be, are the outward expressions. The ever-increasing volume and the ever-multiplying ramifications of knowledge render specialization a more and more pressing necessity for each succeeding generation. ”

“ If our graduates would earnestly strive to promote the cause of morality and sound learning, and to advance the welfare of their fellow-countrymen, there would, I am fain to believe, be less of adverse public criticism at their expense. The opinion is widespread that the manufacture of graduates—for in this disparaging way is the course you have gone through referred to—that the manufacture of graduates is both harmful in itself and far in excess of the requirements of the country. ”

“ But even this is rare; and I believe I am correct in saying that in the majority of households no attempt is made to continue the education of girls after they leave school, and that, consequently, within a few years their minds are in much the same condition as are those of girls who have not been to school at all. You profess to have received pleasure and profit from the education you yourselves have received. Try to imagine the knowledge you have gained, and the tastes you have acquired, during your school and college life, obliterated. ”

“ But the opinion that graduates are too numerous has, probably, its main support not in the consideration that the right class of young men do not attend our colleges, nor in a conviction that the system of the higher education is defective, but in the fact that so many graduates fail to realize the expectations formed of them, forgetting the promises they made on graduation day to support and promote the cause of morality and sound learning, to advance social order and the well-being of their fellow-men. ”

“ Sometimes, alas! it is his most poignant sorrow to see the eager questioning spirit settle down into slothful acquiescence, the keen edge of the subtle intellect become blunted, the high aspirations of youth, with clipped wings, sink into the stagnant waters of dreary commonplace. ”

“ The only way to preserve the knowledge and culture you have acquired is to endeavour to deepen, extend, and apply the one, and to perfect the other. As the foundations of a palatial structure gradually crumble to ruin, unless by being built upon they are protected from the disintegrating action of the elements ”

“ Let it be your endeavour, therefore, to combine devotion to one branch of study with that more general outlook on the wide domain of knowledge, which enables one to see things in their true proportions and relations, instead of looking at them through a distorting medium, in which their intrinsic harmony too often appears a discord. ”

“ Let the spread of knowledge among your ignorant fellow-countrymen be also an object of constant solicitude to you. When you leave this hall to go to your appointed labours in different parts of the country, carry with you the firm resolve that in whatever sphere of life you are placed, you will regard it as your bounden duty to help to dissipate the gloom of ignorance and superstition which prevents your fellow-countrymen from entering into full possession of "man's beautiful heritage, the earth." ”

“ It is now three and thirty years since this University was founded. During that period the advance in the education of the male population has been remarkable. Not less remarkable has been the slow progress in the education of the female population. Intense eagerness to educate your boys, and almost complete indifference towards the education of your girls, this is a phenomenon of Indian society which strikes the foreigner with amazement. I am not unmindful of the steady increase that has taken place in recent years in the number of girls attending school. ”

“ Let it be your earnest endeavour so to conduct yourselves that those traditions shall in the years to come tend to the highest good of this ancient land. Your University while laying upon you grave responsibilities, does not demand impossible achievements. You are not called upon to forego your own private advancement, nor the well-being of those with whom you are connected by ties of kindred. In common with your less favoured fellow-countrymen you will engage in the ordinary duties of life, pursuing the same ends as other men. ”

“ Would life appear in such circumstance to be worth living? Would it not, to say the least, have lost one of its greatest charms? Yet this is the condition to which social custom condemns the majority of your women. ”

“ How often is the bright promise of youth obscured long before middle age! The greatest happiness of the teacher is day by day to watch the expansion of the faculties and capacities of his pupil, and to forecast that brilliant future when those powers shall have reached maturity. ”

“ But to all of you, if you abide by the promises you have made to-day, there will come, whatever else may fail, the sweet consciousness that you have striven with all the strength that was in you to live up to a high ideal. ”