Page:Convocation Addresses of the Universities of Bombay and Madras.djvu/304

Rh illness is, the chances are a hundred to one that he goes wrong. The point in which the student is excelled by the great master of his art, consists not in a superior knowledge of anything that may be learnt out of books, but in the intuitive skill with which that knowledge is adapted to new states of facts. This can only be acquired by patient study of the realities of life. And I tell you this not to discourage you, but to show you that you must not consider your education complete though you have mastered, everything that can be found in books : that you must summon up your energies for new, and at first, very disheartening labours, and must try to evolve mental qualities, of whose very existence you are as yet almost unconscious. Reading can only give one-half of your education. The remainder must be acquired by practice; and it is well that you should know this, as it will serve both to check that excessive confidence, which is always felt at first by a clever youth overflowing with book knowledge and to soften the disappointment and sense of failure which he will always experience, when he first comes into competition with the trained intellect of an experienced man.

But mental qualities alone are not sufficient without the moral qualities which give them stability and direction. All your talent, and learning and industry will be worthless, unless you can be trusted. And therefore I implore you first of all, and above all, to cultivate that principle of honor, without which all your intellectual powers will only be a snare to yourselves, and a source of danger to others. The more eminent you are in other respects, the greater will be your temptation in this, for you will be capable of being of more service to others who may wish to twist you to their own bad ends. Gentlemen, there is nothing so easy to preserve as your honor, as long as it is jealously watched. There is nothing so impossible to regain, if it is once lost or tainted. And therefore I would earnestly entreat you to guard against the first slight deviation from strict integrity, the first prevarication, which will inevitably have to be backed up by a lie—the first dishonest gain, which will be renewed till you become hopelessly corrupt. The dishonest man does a three-fold injury. He injures himself, and he injures the person whom he defrauds, and he injures every other honest man, by weakening that confidence which we are naturally disposed to place in the integrity of others. And while you are strengthening yourselves in the resolve to be honorable, let me warn you against taking that utilitarian maxim that "Honesty is the best policy," as an accurate