Page:Convocation Addresses of the Universities of Bombay and Madras.djvu/303

10 apt to fall. As long as you are learners, reading is the end. When you come to be doers, reading is only the means. Hitherto your success has depended upon the extent to which you could remember what others have written. Henceforward your success will depend upon the extent to which you can apply it. Knowledge is like good food. It is always pleasant, but it will only make you able to work if you digest and assimilate it. Before it can be of any service to you, you must have made it your own, and learnt how to employ it. And this is the reason that men of great learning are often beaten, even in their own pursuits, by others of inferior acquisitions. The man who has only one weapon which he can use, will always conquer the man who has a dozen which, lie cannot use. And therefore I would warn you against trying to keep up your knowledge on too diffuse a scale. There have been men, like Pascal, Voltaire, Lord Brougham, and Lord Macaulay, who seemed capable of grasping and using every species of learning. But such, men are rare, and you can hardly expect to be of the number. Select that knowledge which will be of use to you, and make accuracy in that your first object. Take care not to be brilliant smatterers, just sufficiently acquainted with every subject to make mistakes in it.' Hitherto your education has been intended to fit you for every path of life, but you can only travel along one. Make up your minds which, that one is to be, and then sedulously collect every scrap of information which will fit you for it. Do not be content with reading, or even with remembering what you read, but think it into shape; so that when an emergency arrives, you may be found with principles of action, and not merely with a chaos of facts at your command.

But, gentlemen, a mere knowledge of principles is not sufficient without that skill in their application which is only to be acquired by experience. The daily problem of real life is how to produce some effect. For that purpose you require not only an acquaintance with the principle, but also with the subject-matter to which it is to be applied. The former can be obtained from books, the latter only from experience. You can acquire the theory of swimming to perfection, without seeing more water than would fill a basin. But if you were to rely solely upon this, you would be drowned the very first time you ventured out of your depth. And so it is in every profession. A Medical student may be acquainted with the use of every drug in the Pharmacopoeia. He may be perfect in describing the symptoms of every disease; but the first time he is taken to a sick bed, and told to ascertain from the languid eye, the feeble pulse and incoherent answers of the patient what his