Page:Convocation Addresses of the Universities of Bombay and Madras.djvu/571

 manifold results of human experience by means of higher laws, prove in any way antagonistic to successful investigation in some one of the special departments of enquiry. Let it be your endeavour, therefore, to combine devotion to one branch of study with that more general outlook on the wide domain of knowledge, which enables one to see things in their true proportions and relations, instead of looking at them through a distorting medium, in which their intrinsic harmony too often appears a discord.

Let the spread of knowledge among your ignorant fellow-countrymen be also an object of constant solicitude to you. When you leave this hall to go to your appointed labours in different parts of the country, carry with you the firm resolve that in whatever sphere of life you are placed, you will regard it as your bounden duty to help to dissipate the gloom of ignorance and superstition which prevents your fellow-countrymen from entering into full possession of "man's beautiful heritage, the earth." Each of you can do a little, some of you may do much, to spread the light of knowledge. There is, I fear, too much truth in the popular verdict that, with the exception of those who have adopted teaching as a profession, the graduates of this University have hitherto done little towards the spread of education. The neglect of this duty is, I doubt not, one of the reasons for the small esteem in which they are held by the public. There is one aspect of this duty to which I would draw your special and earnest attention. And here I address myself to Hindus and Mahomedans. It is now three and thirty years since this University was founded. During that period the advance in the education of the male population has been remarkable. Not less remarkable has been the slow progress in the education of the female population. Intense eagerness to educate your boys, and almost complete indifference towards the education of your girls, this is a phenomenon of Indian society which strikes the foreigner with amazement. I am not unmindful of the steady increase that has taken place in recent years in the number of girls attending school. In one respect this increase is the most melancholy part of the business. During the year ending 31st March 1890 the number of girls attending school in this Presidency increased from 69,873 to 78,344, or by 12.1 per cent. The increase in the year previous had been 6.6 per cent. This you will think belies my assertion that there has been little progress, and you will wonder how such a goodly increase can in any aspect be regarded as a cause