Page:Convocation Addresses of the Universities of Bombay and Madras.djvu/111

 will long continue to be, extremely small for a population of 22 millions. There are not more than 800 students in the Government Colleges in the Bombay Presidency and not more than 100 in the private Colleges; or 900 in all. From among the students at the high schools about 1,200 present themselves yearly for the University entrance examination, of whom about 300 pass on the average. But of those who thus enter the University only a few study for degrees. Now, I must remind you that this circumstance is opposed to the principle of those European Universities on the model of which this University has been established. In Europe, young men enter Universities, not merely for the sake of entering, but for the purpose of taking degrees. In this Presidency, as elsewhere in India, young Natives generally enter the University for the sake of entering merely, and without any thought of taking degrees. We must strive to correct this tendency which has arisen, contrary, indeed, to our wish and intention, but still under our own system. We must more and more make the possession of a University degree a necessary qualification for admission to the higher posts in the public service. Again, if students persist in regarding the entrance to the University as the goal of their ambition and the end of their studies, we must render the entrance examination gradually harder and harder.

Then there comes the question as to what is, and what ought to be, the subject-matter of our high education.

In this University the utmost attention has been, and I hope ever will be, given to mental and moral philosophy; relating to those duties of man towards God which are acknowledged by all mankind; to those abstract principles of right and wrong which always assert themselves in the conscience; to the power and functions of the moral sense; to the constitution of our mental faculties; to the domain of practical ethics; to the relations between man and man in the body politic; to the foundations of rights and of true liberty in the social state. These principles have not only been inculcated in the abstract with the strongest sanction and the highest authority, but have further been illustrated in the concrete, and have been applied to history, to law, to literature, to society, and to Government. Without this teaching you could never become really better or wiser from instruction in physical science. But I will show you presently that physical science, so far from being opposed to mental and moral philosophy (as may have been sometimes believed), does, if rightly taught and truly understood, conduce to the loftiest conceptions of philosophical thought. At this moment