Page:Convocation Addresses of the Universities of Bombay and Madras.djvu/352



leave the Gymnasium and step into the wide arena of the Stadium. Are you surprised that I speak of this day as the true commencement of your studies, rather than as the day of their true consummation? Do you point significantly to your Master's Diploma and Hood as if these honorable insignia constituted you literally Masters of Arts and Masters of Law. No idea could be more erroneous ; no idea could be more groundless and dangerous. Not thus are the Masters of Arts of the ancient University of Oxford taught to regard the standpoint of their graduation day, when, in the old Latin phrase, the Vice-Chancellor confers upon them the right of " commencing in the Faculty of Arts." You are tyros, not proficients. Masters in posse, not Masters in esse. Much of what you have acquired may be compared to "the crops which are raised, not for the sake of the harvest, but to be ploughed in as a dressing to the land."

I take it for granted that you have already selected, or that you purpose soon to select, a profession in life. Let the profession of your choice be emphatically your life-work. Direct to its study the best powers of your mind. In your professional career propose to yourself an exalted aim and put in its service a persevering fidelity. Strive with sustained effort and by every honorable means to succeed in it. Let all knowledge which bears upon it directly or indirectly claim your closest attention, and thus prove to the world, by acts as well as by words, that you are earnest men engaged in an earnest work, and that you are resolved to ground your claims to advancement, not on smiles and favors, not on patrons and friends, but on the extent and value to the community of your professional acquirements. Let your professional character, in short, be the real patron to which you manfully and confidently look for ultimate success in life. Every one knows full well that the busiest men, if methodical, have always leisure time for studies and pursuits other than those directly connected with their profession ; and as I anticipate that you will all be busy men, economical of time, picking up its fragments that nothing be lost, I may benefit you by a few practical hints as to the manner in which your horce subsecivce may be spent with profit and advantage to yourselves.

Gentlemen, a serious duty bearing alike on your professional studies and on the pursuits of your leisure moments is the due and progressive training of your intellectual powers. This training, no longer cribb'd.