Page:Convocation Addresses of the Universities of Bombay and Madras.djvu/536

 is wrong. Be not you of them. Believe me there is nothing noble, there is certainly nothing sensible, in giving grudging obedience where unhesitating obedience is due. And how can you in turn expect to be obeyed when you have set a contrary example yourself? Be assured that those below you will closely watch your actions, and will when the time comes better your instruction. There is an old and very true saying, that he who has never learned to obey will never learn to command. But beyond your immediate superiors, be deferential to your social superiors also whoever they may be. This is a point on which there has been bad teaching. The times seethe with theories to the effect that all are equal and that therefore deference from one man to another is misplaced. This sorry nonsense is not new, it has been aired at many stages of the world's progress, it is unworthy of serious refutation, and you will have read history to little purpose if you do not see its hopeless impracticability; but still a word of warning may be useful. Face the world as it is, not as dreamers of bad dreams would make it. The man who is above us may owe his position to accident, to merit, to age, to interest, to wealth, nay even to demerit, it matters not. He is above us, and it is our duty to recognize him accordingly with the customary signs of deference. To do so costs nothing. To say "Sir" to a superior involves no loss of dignity or self-respect, but on the other hand to adopt a familiar tone and affect an equality which does not exist is a contemptible practice and shows a most pitiful ambition in the fool that uses it. No, in this sense men are not and cannot be all on one level, the whole scheme of the Universe repudiates the idea, and even the preachers of the doctrine do not usually carry it about in every-day life; let an inferior apply it practically to themselves and he will soon find that the latter end of their commonwealth forgets the beginning. But there is another sense in which men may be equal. If you do your work in life honestly and diligently, owing no man anything, then you may in a very high sense be the equal of every one, King or Kaiser. Equally with superior and inferior cultivate a pleasant manner, which is by no means the same thing as a servile manner. A young man may wrap himself in no better cloak for life's journey. And be modest. In an age of charlatanism and self-advertisement this may seem a suicidal policy: but you have in this town, among your own countrymen, a living proof that the greatest abilities and the greatest industry may go hand in hand with extreme modesty, and may yet win not only the highest personal esteem, but also the highest official rewards.