Page:Convocation Addresses of the Universities of Bombay and Madras.djvu/330



lives; you may find more lucrative, you can find no nobler employment ; and in the interests of education it is much to be hoped that ere long the inducements to enter upon that career will be greater than they are at present, that the labours of the school-master will be more highly rewarded, and that both in public and private more heed will be given to the injunction of the poet—


 * "Respect, as is but rational and just,
 * The man deemed worthy of so dear a trust."

But, gentlemen, there are other ways also in which the University looks to you for aid in the work to which she is committed. By the excellence of your own lives you may be the teachers of your countrymen; and not only in the circle of your own families, but wherever your influence extends, you are called upon to maintain, by your words, as well as by your deeds, an uncompromising warfare against ignorance and vice, in whatever shape they may present themselves; you are bound to use the weapons, with which education has armed you honestly and consistently for the uprooting of prejudice and the correction of error, wherever and whenever you may encounter them. This is a great responsibility, but it is one from which you cannot escape. Your position as graduates of this University will give weight and influence to your opinions, whether you desire it or not; and it behoves you, therefore, to take care that your own opinions upon all the many questions of social and national importcance, which must come under your consideration, are formed with a due sense of the responsibility attaching to those who are guides and leaders of their fellow-men; but if you do act under this sense of responsibility, if you are ever ready to listen to the voice of reason, if you never shut out any light which you can get, if you resort to all the means within your reach for the solution of any difficulties which occur to you, and if you give the whole mind anxiously and unreservedly to the ascertainment of truth, you may justly hope to arrive at sound conclusions, and feel a reasonable confidence that your influence upon your fellow-countrymen will be honourable to you, and beneficial to them.

There is, no doubt, in native society and amongst the masses of the native population, an undercurrent of feelings and opinions about which we know little or nothing. Partially, and but partially, these feelings and opinions find expression through the medium of the Native Press, and thus occasionally they come to light. But the glimpses thus obtained are very far from satisfactory either as to the course or purity of the stream, which, nevertheless, is thus