Page:Convocation Addresses of the Universities of Bombay and Madras.djvu/397



in other conditions than our own," are highly important elements in education, the culture got from these alone would be narrow and one-sided. And the defects can only in part be remedied by Mathematics.

In their own place Mathematics are invaluable. There is no better discipline for the mind than that close and continued thought, that strenuous and voluntary application, to which the distinguished Mathematician must have submitted. But his sphere of labour is after all a narrow one, and the symbolical language he uses is by no means calculated to promote acquaintance with his own vernacular.

The education cannot now be regarded as complete, unless natural knowledge has received a large share of attention. The great fact of our age is the advance of science. It numbers among its votaries many of the greatest intellects of the day. It leads to the possession of the most elevating ideas. It brings us face to face with physical nature and with the relations of cause to effect. It develops the powers of reason and observation, and enables the mind to draw accurate general conclusions from particular facts. ^^ It removes those superstitions, those fantastic persuasions and prepossessions, which are the fog and pestilence, the mist and malaria of the mind/' It is an indispensable preparation for the more complicated problems which meet us in the science of life. But not only is the knowledge gained in the pursuit of science wide and elevating, and excellent as a mental training, but it is also essential to success in life; and this, gentlemen, is what the most of us cannot afford to overlook, in spite of the objection which may be urged against it that it is a low standard to set up. Whatever your trade or your profession may be, you will encounter keen competition and will assuredly be left behind in the race, if you are not alive to the movements of the scientific world and ready to press scientific discovery into jour service.

You cannot expect to reach the lofty peak untrodden but by the foot of Newton, nor yet perhaps the lower level of a Faraday or a Kirchhoff. But you can imitate these illustrious men in their earnest, their untiring, search for truth. The path will not always be smooth and level, sometimes it will be rough and angular, leading through dense jungle and over pathless and rocky mountains, but at every stage disclosing beauties which yield a lifelong pleasure. In words which do much more justice to the subject—"who can contemplate our globe in this orderly