Page:Convocation Addresses of the Universities of Bombay and Madras.djvu/439

 should develop a healthy rivalry, not in magnitude of works or in expenditure, but in their substantial nature, aptness of design, and economy of cost. Such should ere long produce efficient engineers, and although as in the most advanced Euro- pean countries, special talent or special experience will be ever sought for some great works in which a false step cannot be risked, yet all ordinary work should fall to the people of the country and may, I believe, do so with efficiency and economy if they only seek to qualify for the duty.

Now I come to the duties which yon owe to the University and to the State. First, To the University which has fostered your education and stamped you with the mark of learning, you owe every support that you can give. From the graduates must hereafter be sought members of the Senate of the future. To some of you therefore must in time be entrusted the guidance of Univer- sity matters, in fact the maintenance of its influence. Recollect then this feature in your studies, ever bear in mind that everything which tends to exalt the status, to increase the influence of the University, increases also the value of the degrees, you have yourselves this day obtained. To society, to the State you owe the duty of making the best use of your acquired knowledge, and of the various positions in which your degrees may place you. For the doctor to heal the sick, the lawyer to win his client's case, the engineer to bring to a successful end the work entrusted to him, no doubt may seem plain andsimple duties, but each in your several faculties will find other and important duties to be performed before you can really say with truth that you have given to the State the best use of your talents, and each will find that he may and will frequently be required by his duty to act at variance with that which may seem his apparent interest. The doctor's duty in a fever-stricken village is not merely to cure disease in a stricken patient. He has a higher duty yet which will bring no pecuniary reward, to prevent the healthy from being stricken, to seek out, to remove or to eradi- cate the causes of disease, and take as much or greater pride in the continued health and good sanitary condition of his station or village as in the number of his cures. His preventive duties are due to the State as well his curative duty to his patients. Then if we turn to the young lawyer struggling through with difficulties to attain a practice. Let him remember while his duty to his client to argue the case entrusted to him to the best of his ability and to do his utmost to win his cause, yet his duty to the State and to society requires that he shall set himself