Page:Convocation Addresses of the Universities of Bombay and Madras.djvu/445

 and many a blockhead cry, See- there — was ever worthy gentle- man so used/ Nor will any political panacea procure for man happiness. Man's unhappiness comes of his greatness. 'Will the whole Finance Ministers, upholsterers and confectioners in modern Europe, undertake in joint stock company to make one shoe-black happy ? They cannot accomplish it above an hour or two, for the shoe-black has a soul quite other than his stomach — the shoe-black is infinite/ ' But there is in man a higher than love of happiness, he can do without happiness, and in lieu thereof find blessedness/ To attain this, he must devote him- self to the service of truth and justice, substitute for every selfish motive benevolence, and apply himself to the work he finds at hand with manliness the Roman virtus. We cannot shut our eyes to the fact that great social changes are in progress in this country, 'The old order changeth, yielding place to new. The intercourse of Europeans and Hindus in official, commercial and public life, I would fain add also in social life, cannot but act and re-act on those who come within its influence, and that nationality will certainly be the most affected, which has least kept pace with the progress of ideas. Education too opens the literary stores of modern thought to a people who have been ever fertile of imagination and not timid in speculation. Though the past of each nationality precludes for many centuries what, were it possible, may not be desirable, a complete harmony of ideas, it is certain that, sooner or later, the conservatism of India must give ground at all those points of the battle-field where it cannot bring up to its support the eternal verities by which the fate of all civilizations must be decided. Men's minds are already stirred, some with apprehension, some with desire of change, and it may be there is even now preparing himself an Indian Carlyle who, with the like intolerance of the false, the like earnestness for the true, and with equal fertility of thought and power of expression, will persuade his countrymen to preserve all that is worthy of preservation in their principles and their institutions, and to yield without regret what- ever reason proves must sooner or later be surrendered. Modern India has proved, by examples that are known to and honoured by all in this assembly, that her sons can qualify themselves to hold their own with the best of European talent in the Council Chamber, on the Bench, at the Bar, and in the Mart ; the time cannot be far distant when she will produce her philosopher, her moralist, her reformer. Meanwhile, in the great social changes that are in progress, some of the lessons of Carlyle may be as useful to you as they were to your fellow-subjects, my