Page:Convocation Addresses of the Universities of Bombay and Madras.djvu/356

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its gradual transformation into the noble German tongue, the language emphatically of thought and philosophy, of poetry and of taste.

Gentlemen, whatever may be lacking in these and other sciences of Mind to give extension and intension to the intellectual faculties, you will not fail to find in one or other of the remaining classes under which the sciences and arts are grouped.

And here I may be allowed to solicit your attention to the importance of Physical Science as a means of intellectual culture, and I do so, more especially because no sufficient provision for instruction in the sciences of Physics, Chemistry and Life has as yet been made in connection with the University itself, or with any of its affiliated institutions.

The groups of Science now alluded to deal, not so much with abstractions, as with external and sensible objects ; their study quickens the faculty of observation, the powers of comparison and generalization, and the mental habit of method and arrangement. They familiarize the mind with the deeper philosophies of seeing, hearing and touch, and, in the close interrogation of Nature by actual experiment, they shew the value of the processes of analysis and synthesis. In these sciences reason guides observation, observation corrects theory, and truth can be proved by means cognizable by the senses. "To unite observation and reason, not to lose sight of the ideal of science to which man aspires, and to search for it and find it by the route of experience,—such," according to Victor Cousin, "is the problem of philosophy."

These sciences are valuable not only as training grounds for the intellect, but as store-houses of necessary information on matters of practical importance in life; matters which so underlie the political, scientific, literary and social demands of the present time, that no man with any pretension to a liberal education can afford to be ignorant of them. They constitute, moreover, the best correctives of that cramping of the mind which professional studies, ardently pursued, are so apt to induce.

Physical Science holds bold and not unsuccessful competition with the sciences of Mind to secure for its service the highest intellect of the time. In an age when knowledge, no longer satisfied with merely flowering into ideas is fruiting into the practical on every side, it behoves those who are training for the