Page:Convocation Addresses of the Universities of Bombay and Madras.djvu/20

 their mother's knee, and it must be through such language mainly that you can impart to them all that you would communicate of European learning and science.

Remember, too, that not only the character of the University, but the character of your whole people, is to great extent in your hands. You have two classes of objectors to meet. One is to be found chiefly among Europeans, not, I trust, among those who have lived long in this country, but still so common among those who are not practically familiar with your countrymen, as to deserve your earnest exertions to remove it. They will tell you that the oriental intellect is worn out ; that it may possess great capacity to receive and retain knowledge, but that it has no power to analyse or combine; that it is no longer capable of producing those results of a high order of intellect of which your ancient literature contains such abundant evidence. I trust that no one connected with the Senate of this University, or who is really able to judge what native intellect is now capable of, will endorse this opinion; but yet you well know it is widely prevalent, and it rests with you to disprove it. Again, you will find among members of your own communities a widespread and deep-rooted conviction that an education such as you have received, tends to sap the foundation of social morality, that it tends to make you presumptuous and self-sufficient despisers of parental and all other authority.

The conduct which will be the best answer to both classes of objectors is shadowed forth in a superstition almost Universally prevalent in the wild mountains of Germany and Scandinavia as well as in every nation in the East. The legend runs of a magic mirror in which may be imaged all things of the visible or invisible world, but the secrets which are there revealed are not visible to every enquirer; they are not to be seen by the seer himself, they are only visible to the eyes of a simple teachable innocent child. It always seemed to me that this old and prevalent superstition shadowed forth a great truth applicable to knowledge of every kind: you will find it taught by the philosophers of Greece, of Persia, and of China—in your own Shasters as well as by the example of all the great intellects of Modern Europe. It is this—that if you would seek the knowledge of Newton or Bacon, or hope to wield the intellectual weapons of Locke, you must learn in their spirit, lowly and reverently with a pure as well as with a humble and teachable heart. Remember the