Page:Convocation Addresses of the Universities of Bombay and Madras.djvu/363

 you have attained" It is but natural that before you pass finally from beneath her fostering care, your Alma Mater should wish to address to you some parting words of counsel. Some of you, it is true, are not yet to sever the tie that has so long bound you to her. Some of you—and I hope not a very few—will endeavour to obtain still higher honours at her hand after another period of submission to her guidance; but most of you in any case have completed the portion of your lives that you can afford to devote to academic pursuits, and even those who seek for a higher place in the rolls of the University must henceforth be much less than hitherto under her direct control. They must journey on, not indeed unguided but at least unwatched by her or by any of her delegates.

In greater or smaller measure, therefore, you all stand from this day forward in a new position. You pass from the toils of learning to those of life, from the acquisition of knowledge to the higher task of working into the texture of your history on earth, the knowledge that has been acquired, from being recipients of the influence of others to positions where your own influence must largely tell upon the generation to which you belong, and through it upon all the generations that shall follow. It is well becoming that, at such a stage, this University should tell you how she expects those to live whom she has stamped with her approval, and who are now her representatives to the world. And, therefore, as you listen to what I say, regard it not as the words of one who has little title to speak with authority in virtue of age, or experience, or learning. Kather in so far, but in so far only, as my words approve themselves to be words of truth and wisdom, regard them. I entreat you, as spoken to you by that University which has conferred on you so many benefits already, and towards which I trust that you will cherish while you live, feelings of mingled love and veneration.

The obligations of many kinds under which you lie are almost infinite in number; but great though the desire of this University is that you should be in all respects noble-hearted and well-conducted men, it is not of the whole round of duty that she calls me now to speak. Inasmuch as you are subjects, inasmuch as you are citizens, inasmuch as you are men, there are countless claims upon you such as you cannot safely or honourably neglect; but these lie beyond the scope of my present task, except in so far as all duty is from its very nature linked indissolubly together. It is the duties arising from your present position that I have to impress upon you—your duties as the sons of science—as those to whom has been entrusted the