Page:Convocation Addresses of the Universities of Bombay and Madras.djvu/149

 probably one day bless the necessity to which they have to bend, in going through a further course of tuition. Without drawing invidious comparisons I will say that I think there are special advantages in the system of teaching which the Bombay University enforces. The student must not only prepare himself for examinations, but he must attend stated courses of lectures in approved institutions. This implies residence in the neighbourhood, and a severance in many instances from embarrassing associates and associations, enabling him to devote his mind with more complete abandonment to the work set before it and to distinctly academical influences. He is subjected to a prolonged intellectual discipline and learns to bend his mind to the task which duty imposes, whether the inclination be present or not, and with patient attention to those minute details which are most irksome, but the mastery of which is essential to thorough and substantial scholarship either in literature or in science. Such a course of training seems to me to have great advantages over any system of mere examinations. The student does not merely cram; the examination is but an incident in his course. He abides with his learning, takes in its influence in every mood, and at an impressionable age is imbued with the best thoughts of the greatest men under the guidance of teachers who have steeped their own minds in the same sacred springs. This goes to make a manly character as well as a strong and versatile intellect; and I am proud to observe how generally institutions connected with this University have turned out men of a type combining some of the best characteristics of the West and of the East.

The paucity of candidates for science-teaching and for degrees in science was noticed by our Chancellor last year. The system of teaching is less organized, the teaching staff is less fully manned than in the older departments. There is some uncertainty, too, both as to the prospects of a degree and as to the prospects of finding employment for the graduate. What the University as such could do it has, as you have heard, been doing. B.Scs. who have in qualifying for that degree passed in such a subject as Chemistry, Botany or Zoology are exempted from it in the examination in Medicine when they seek the degree of M.D. The degree of B.Sc. has been made a gateway to the profession of the law as well as of medicine and engineering. We hope that with these practical advantages attending it the science course will soon be followed by numbers proportionate at least to the means of teaching. The questions are still sometimes put—and to the students and their friends they are of momentous importance—of what really is science-teaching, and