Page:Convocation Addresses of the Universities of Bombay and Madras.djvu/327



proved or are proving themselves benefactors of their country, she fails in her mission. The tree can only be judged by its fruits, and the University must be judged by the character and conduct of her sons. In vain she assumes to raise the standard of education to a high level; in vain she strives to promote sound learning and to cultivate the growth of public and private virtue, if her graduates do not stand forth conspicuous amongst their fellow-countrymen both for learning and for virtue, living epistles read and known of all men, wherein the good effects of their early training are written in most legible characters.

As to yourselves, gentlemen, you have now reached a critical period of life, a critical point in your career. You are now exposed to some temptations which will probably never again attack you with so much force as now, and against which we call upon you to struggle with all your might. Perhaps the worst and strongest of these is the temptation to rest from your labours, satisfied with what you have already done.

It is often said that these educational honours are sought by the youth of this country not for the honour of them, nor from any love of learning, but for the sake of the appointments and the rupees which are supposed to follow pretty fast and with tolerable certainty upon the acquisition of a degree; in fact, that the love of money is the moving cause which stimulates the intellectual activity of Hindu youth. Many hard things are said about the love of money; and when it is a form of mere selfishness, nothing too hard can be said of it, for all mere selfishness is very hateful; but the desire of wealth, if not too eager, may be rendered blameless or laudable by the motives from which, and the purposes for which wealth is sought; and so, as to the desire for employment, whether in the service of the Government or in any other honourable and useful career, far be it from me to condemn it as a motive of exertion.

But, of course, gentlemen, it would be lamentable indeed, a very lame and impotent conclusion of all the exertions made on your behalf, if the ambition and the patriotism of the native youth of this country should end at this point, and should be limited to such objects as the possession of subordinate appointments in the service of Government; for then the University would have practically dwindled into an Institution for providing clerks for Government offices. Gentlemen, the University looks to its graduates to refute this aspersion by their conduct. We trust to them to show that they have acquired at least such a taste for learning that the