Page:Convocation Addresses of the Universities of Bombay and Madras.djvu/44

 we cannot speak too highly, that there was something defective in our University system, because we did not educate Sanskrit scholars up to the standards of the old Shastris; and some fear was expressed of a supposed intention to substitute a comparatively easy classical language like Latin for the venerable mother of Indian tongues.

The answer to the first objection is that, in the words which I have heard used by our learned Vice-Chancellor, the object of this University, as in England, is to establish a standard for the education of men—not as mere means of teaching savants. I trust that the two objects are not entirely incompatible. I look to this University as a great means of arresting the lamentable decline in the knowledge of the ancient languages of India, and I trust that there are pupils of this University who will rival the profound learning of Shastris of old; but let us ever remember our primary object is to educate men, men fitted for every walk of life in which high education is needed, complete as far as the University can make them in every moral and intellectual faculty—and not to produce prodigies of learning in one particular branch, the especial cultivation of which renders them necessarily defective in general adaptation to the business of the world. So with the study of Latin. No one, I hope, would ever dream of comparing it as a language in completeness, in copiousness, or in all that constitutes the perfection of language, with Sanskrit; but while there is a large majority of Indian youths to whom the study of Sanskrit is natural as the classical language of their country and mother tongue, there are many for whom it has no special fitness, compared with a language like Latin, which has for centuries been the classic language of all the great nations of Europe. There are, I trust, many students in this University who will find in the study of Latin all the benefit that has been experienced by the great students of Europe for the last eighteen centuries; but it is no part of our object to purchase this benefit by the sacrifice of aught that is fairly due to Sanskrit.

In reviewing our losses and our gains during the past year, there is nothing of more permanent interest than the fluctuations of the governing body of Fellows. It is a necessity of our position that every year should give us cause to note the loss of several wheat our previous meetings were active and matured members of the University, some removed by death, some by the inevitable