Page:Convocation Addresses of the Universities of Bombay and Madras.djvu/150

 what part it can play in the liberal education which is the proper object of a University. But when we say "liberal," apart, at any rate, of the right answer is suggested by the interrogation. A liberal education, as a great science-teacher has said, aims at "the making of men;" it is not to be "diverted into a process of manufacturing human tools wonderfully adroit in the exercise of some technical industry, but good for nothing else." It must equally in the sphere of science as of literature enlarge the mind, give it an organizing power and a philosophic habit by which each new acquirement is measured in relation to the whole, and made to take its place in a system. It must give a love of knowledge for its own sake, and the loftiness and independence of character which extensive knowledge should produce. But more especially a truly scientific culture furnishes the mind not only with a mastery of the main facts of outward nature and a readiness to conform to her laws and so turn them to human uses, but with a method of inquiry, a mode of facing the facts of the universe which cannot be acquired in any other way so well. The science student duly disciplined takes all nature for his province. To his trained perceptions there is nothing common or unclean, no creature is unworthy of investigation by a man which has been deemed worthy of existence by God. He sees as others cannot see the prevalence of law amongst the infinite variety of phenomena, and evolution working to its ends in ordered harmony through millions of years. The mind thus trained is borne without an effort along the main current of progressive thought. It has a rich store of ideas in which to bathe each new problem in manifold lights; and as the various activities of the human mind are intimately connected, sciences repay to literature in its analysis the debt of inspiration by which its own infant energies were first awakened to consciousness and exercise.

I cannot justify these observations by their novelty. The same things have been said before and with all the requisite effects. The worth and dignity of scientific pursuits in not in itself any longer a subject of controversy. My purpose has been rather to call the attention of my younger hearers to the spirit in which those of them who are choosing a career based on science ought to prepare for it and to pursue it. It should not be looked on as a mere source of pelf. Their best energies should not be solely concentrated on what pays best. Gain and getting on are not to be disdained; the effort to win them calls forth in many men resources of energy