Page:Convocation Addresses of the Universities of Bombay and Madras.djvu/116

 whom must thenceforth devote himself to his particular science. He must, therefore, not be unduly burdened with general education, lest he should be prevented from learning, during his Collegiate course, the science which is to be his means of livelihood. There are but five years within which a young man must learn all that is to be learnt at College for the purpose of his profession. If he is to be a chemist or a botanist, or a professor of art or science, or a medical man, or a forester, or a civil engineer, he ought to have as large a part, as possible, of the five years for acquiring his technical and special knowledge. For all such cases endeavour has been, and will be, made to lighten the weight of general education so as to give time and opportunity for the scientific pursuits.

We rejoice to Bee so many promising students qualifying themselves by general education for the public service, which offers an ever-widening field to your reasonable ambition, and in which you are likely to rise to higher spheres; for the judicial bench where Natives acquit themselves so honourably, also for the Native bar which is everywhere rising in repute and usefulness. But we hope that these professions may not become overstocked. Though the danger of such over-crowding does not seem to be so imminent here as elsewhere, yet even here it exists. On this account, as well as for other reasons, we are anxious that many of you should choose the other professions which the sciences so abundantly offer. Looking to the vigorous growth of European manufactures at this capital city and at other places in the Presidency; to the extension of railways; to the hydraulic engineering needed for works of irrigation; to the establishment of professional forestry; to the increasing demand for surgery and medicine;—to the incorporation of scientific teaching in our national education; looking to all these things, we hope that students will be attracted more and more in such directions. And the Senate and Syndicate of the University will be moved from time to time to consider amendments of the University standards of examination with this view.

I beg you to read the general evidence given in 1862 before the Royal Commission on the Public Schools in England, by such witnesses as Hooker, Faraday, Owen, Lyell, Acland, Carpenter. They declared that scientific pursuits by themselves afford an excellent general education, as training the mind to habits of method, order, observation, and classification, and that in the words of Faraday himself "the study of natural science is a glorious school for the mind."