Dugald Mackichan

“ Youth should be awed, religiously possessed With a conviction of the power that waits On knowledge, when sincerely sought and prized For its own sake: on glory and on praise If but by labour won, and fit to endure The passing day. Another evil inherent in any such system of study is the destruction of independent original thinking. In an overcrowded curriculum the aim of the student is apt to be reduced simply to the mastering of a given number of ideas and opinions in the most convenient manner and the briefest possible time. ”

“ On all of you, as representing the educated men and women of Western India, let me press the thought which is uppermost in my own heart to-day, of the high tasks, the solemn responsibilities which are laid upon you. The new birth of a nation cannot be accomplished without sacrifice and suffering, and you who ought to be in the van of your people's life will be called, if you are found worthy, to suffer and to sacrifice most. ”

“ Some of you have sought to become the interpreters of these higher ideas to your countrymen, and are striving in the spirit of true enlightenment to remove by example and influence that which is repugnant to your highest convictions of truth and duty. But to how many does the presence of these special trials prove a temptation, a ground for standing aloof from all earnest effort to grapple with existing evils? As intellectual culture in its truest forms is the most broadening of influences, so in its spurious forms it has often proved most narrowing. ”

“ The Rao Saheb Vishvanath Narayan Mandlik who was so long one of the chief ornaments of the Senate, has passed away amid the regrets of the whole community. We miss to-day the intellectual presence which has often lent dignity to these assemblages and strength and character to our academic debates. Himself a man of learning and a patron of learning, he has left to the students of this University the example of a life devoted to the pursuit of higher aims than mere worldly success, of high intellectual gifts consecrated to the advancement of true learning. ”

“ I have already emphasised what I consider to be the specific character of University education, namely, the comprehensive view of knowledge which it places before its true followers, its antipathy to all one-sidedness and incompleteness, its constant effort to gather the vast variety of human knowledge into a unity born of that higher spirit which it is its great mission to inspire. ”

“ Far be it from me to ward off from a career of self-denying study those who feel within them an impulse which stirs them to such noble effort. The Universities of my own country are a perpetual witness to the existence of this impulse in many of the noble poor; but it behoves us to see that we do not by influences, which are independent of the existence of any such impulse, produce a state of things which may prove injurious to the community as a whole, and detrimental to the interests of that higher education of which we are the custodians. ”

“ But how to make this influence a continuous influence in the life of our graduates and undergraduates, how to develop that sense of responsibility which attaches to membership in such an intellectual communion, is a problem to which as a University we have yet to address ourselves. I do not believe that we shall ever be able to reap the best fruits of a University culture until this consciousness of organic union has been established, and all are made to feel that they have an interest wider than that of their individual College, wider than that of the Faculty under which they are enrolled. ”

“ The conflicts of those who have been the heralds of a new illumination in every age have been many, even when their lot has been cast amongst those in whose minds the same light has been secretly diffusing itself; much greater may you expect them to be when the light in which you profess to walk is that which has reached you through your contact with the life and culture of another nation, while as yet the great masses of your countrymen are untouched by it. ”

“ Whether it be due to a want of the means of instruction or to the national preference for a literary curriculum, the degree in science still fails to attract a large proportion of our students. It is a matter for regret that this department of our University studies is not more enthusiastically cultivated. I am one of those who thought, and still think, that scientific culture is destined to exert a healthful influence upon the mind of India. ”

“ It is not the main function of a University to facilitate the attainment of a degree, but to uphold the standard of intellectual culture and to improve the methods by which that standard may be reached. Now the change which has so strongly recommended itself to the Senate has sprung from a conviction that both the standard and the method of study called for revision. ”

“ If the condition of your country presents to the enlightened men among you a path strewn with so many difficulties and trials, it is on this account all the richer in noble opportunity. You do not need to travel beyond your own homes, or beyond the circle of your daily social life, to find a vocation worthy of the high position to which your education has raised you. ”

“ Do not stand aloof from tasks so sacred and so holy, however much the doing of them may bring you of the scorn and contempt of the selfish and uneducated among you and around you. Examples are not wanting among you of those who have felt the power of this supreme obligation. Ask them and they will tell you with one voice that in this the highest use of the education which they have gained as students of the University, they have reaped its richest fruit and its best reward. ”

“ It is this which should distinguish University culture from mere professional training, and this we have not in any true sense as a constant element in the influence of the University. Is there not wanting something in our organization which would help to unite the lives of all our undergraduates by some bond of common responsibility and common interest? On an occasion like the present we realize for a brief season something of what this fellow-ship means, and the University has for its students something of the influence of a felt reality. ”

“ If the life of the nation requires it, so long as Universities are in touch with that life they will be bound to respond to this demand. A recent writer has well said: "The University may be described as the higher knowledge of the nation, concentrated and organized for the purposes of extension and communication with a view to the perfecting of the truth and the better formation of men. So considered it must be a living and ever-augmenting body—growth in the sciences taught and in the faculties teaching them is necessary to its very idea. ”

“ From this has come the philosophic breadth of men of true University culture, who have enjoyed the benefits of that illumination which has reached them in reflection from the many-sided body of truth. It has saved them from a narrowness, one-sidedness of thought from which their contemporaries of equal or greater distinction have not been free. There is only one department in which attempts at reform have apparently failed, and to these I shall only refer in order to point out that the failure is apparent only. I refer to the Medical curriculum and the Medical degree. ”

“ At a time when the means of scientific instruction in the Medical College have been improved to so high a degree of efficiency (we welcome with satisfaction to the membership of the Senate to-night some of the Professors on its staff, gentlemen of high academic distinction) any proposal that does not contemplate some elevation of the standard of scientific requirement must be regarded as out of harmony with the progressive spirit of the time. ”

“ But the conditions under which University education is pursued among us are most unfavourable to the realization of this idea. The student in Arts moves on his separate way, having little communion with his brotherstudent in Medicine, and still less perhaps with his fellow-under-graduates in Engineering. In each department knowledge is pursued as if the others had no existence, and thus one of the great liberalizing influences of University life is absent. ”

“ If we would institute a just comparison we should compare the élite of the many who now crowd the class rooms of our Colleges with those who were the pioneers of the new movement. If the comparison be thus fairly made, I believe we may justly claim that the standard of attainment possible in this University has risen with the general progress, and that a deeper and broader culture is now offered to the alumni of our University, deeper and broader because it rests upon the achievements of their predecessors in the same high pursuit. ”

“ He cannot hope to master all the problems of human knowledge in a three years' course, nor in one of four; but this at least we are entitled to expect that he shall have learned what many of those problems are, that he shall have learned to look at them from many sides, and shall have some grasp of the principles which must be applied for their solution as they present themselves amid the varied experiences of after-life. The University has simply introduced him to fields of study which it will be his life-work to cultivate. ”

“ I need not tell you how potent for good is the working of a sympathy thus widened and elevated, and how especially important in this land, unhappily too familiar with separation, is everything which tends to unite and harmonize. Without propounding any plan I place this subject before you in the hope that the consciousness of our need once truly awakened may lead to some earnest effort to supply it; nor with a rising culture, with well chosen and well-sifted materials to work upon, is it too much to expect that this hope will be in some measure realized. ”

“ The life of a student with the shadow of an annual examination overhanging it invited our sympathy, and it was felt that if we would raise the tone of University education by redeeming it from the charge of being simply a pursuit of examinations and making it in reality a scholarly pursuit of knowledge, the time allowed for the study of the higher and more important subjects must be extended so that not in the stifling atmosphere of preparation for examination, but in the cooler, calmer air of academic contemplation, our stu- dents should pursue a higher aim. ”

“ What teacher of our youth has not felt this, has not seen it in the apathy which suddenly falls upon a class when he is led to enter into what may often be the most interesting and most fruitful parts of a subject, the secret of which is only revealed when he learns that tradition has settled that such lines of inquiry do not lie within the area of profitable study? ”

“ It has also been accepted as a true principle in education that culture is more advanced when a smaller number are furnished with the highest means of training, than when it is shared by an excessive number, who necessarily lower the level of collective achievement, because the highest training cannot be placed within the reach of all. This University and its Colleges have never prided themselves on numbers, but they have been rightly jealous of the quality of their results. ”

“ There is perhaps no profession in which the same designation is susceptible of a greater variety of meaning, and in expressing my hearty sympathy with the aims of the medical graduates of the University, I venture to hope that the meaning which they will seek to attach to the degree which they desire the University to institute will be worthy of the high position of their College as one of the foremost medical schools in India, and of the progressive character of the science which they represent. ”

“ Experiment and observation, contact with facts and laws independent of our subjectivity, and marked by all the features of a commanding reality, are calculated to correct this one-sidedness, to awaken deeper convictions with regard to the absoluteness of truth and with this strengthened love of truth and reverence for truth to help forward the development of the moral and higher side of man's intellectual life. ”

“ It is no part of the aim of University culture as thus conceived to stimulate any particular study at the expense of others equally important in the general scheme. Specializing is a feature of our time in all departments of life, but it seems to me that in education there is much danger in its Danger of premature introduction. ”

“ Justice Telang, a brilliant example of what our Indian countrymen are able to achieve in the field of law, and recognising the special aptitudes which have been displayed by the students and graduates of this University in this department of academic study, we may well predict a time of high achievement for those who will be privileged to enjoy the fuller opportunities which I trust a not distant future has in store for them. ”

“ If you thus regard it you will not fear the temptation which lies so near, to isolate yourselves in selfish satisfaction from the ignorance and darkness which surrounds you; rather will you feel that your education has placed at your disposal the knowledge by which this ignorance may be helped, the light which may lessen this darkness. And surely there is no lack of high enterprise to tempt the nobler spirits among you. ”