Page:Convocation Addresses of the Universities of Bombay and Madras.djvu/432

 recommended to you. But why were you taught the theory of obligation? Not surely for the gratification of your curiosity merely, but that you might be enabled to realise the loftiness of the position occupied in the economy of human nature by Duty and the fitness of following where Duty calls. Man's highest duty to man— his highest moral obligation—is the duty of beneficence—the duty of doing good to others. The obligation not to do evil belongs to a lower stage of morals than the obligation to do good. "Thou shalt not." is only introductory to "Thou shalt." There is much high moral teaching—not unmixed with teaching of a different character — in the books with which some of you probably were familiar before you came in contact with the moral teaching of Europe? In particular, with regard to the highest development of beneficence—doing good to others though it be to our own hurt, doing good to those who do us evil—Indian literature is rich in maxims and illustrations of the highest excellence. There are two great defects, however, in Indian teaching on this subject. The first defect is the absence of an adequate motive. The second is one which I trust the educated Natives of our time will do their best to remedy. That is, the absence, or at least the extreme paucity, of real, not mythical, examples of this justly-lauded devotedness in doing good—the absence in India of anything corresponding to that long list of philanthropists whose names have made the annals of England so illustrious. I now return to that branch of beneficence with which I commenced—the education of the lower classes, especially the lower classes in the rural districts, and I think I may say without exaggeration that the world does not present a finer sphere for turning theories of doing good into practice than that which educated Natives will find opening before them in every direction, if they set themselves to help forward the education and elevation of the hitherto neglected masses. It may safely be said that one-fourth of the rural population in this part of India belongs to classes for whose improvement nothing has ever yet been done, except by Europeans. One set of rulers after another has arisen and fallen, but the condition of the labouring classes has remained unchanged. They themselves did not care for education. Even the wish to become wiser or happier than they were at length died out. And if by any chance any of them did entertain a wish to rise they were precluded from rising by the prejudices of the upper classes. I ask now what nobler object educated Hindus can propose to themselves than that of teaching these myriads of "dumb, driven cattle," that after all they are men. Dispel their ignorance, strike off their fetters, allow them to entertain some