Page:Convocation Addresses of the Universities of Bombay and Madras.djvu/590

 which permeate it. It may be too late for any but a few of you to study Latin and Greek, but I would advise all of you who intend to take to the profession of Teaching, or of Law, or of Medicine, to study one at least of these languages. Remember that admirable as is English literature, and powerful as is English as a vehicle of thought, you can, unless you know Latin and Greek, only get the thoughts of the peoples who were our spiritual and social forefathers at second hand; you must, so to speak, depend on interpreters and reporters. You must see things through their eyes and hear the far-off articulate voices of the ages from their tongues. Most of you must rest content with this; but he who seeks to be a teacher and guide of men in a particular branch of knowledge, the fountains of which are in the Latin and Greek tongues, cannot escape from the task of studying these languages—especially the former. I have often, gentlemen, felt my heart fail me for the future of your people when I have observed how that not one teacher of English in a hundred has been sufficiently inspired with the love of know ledge to have armed himself for his life's work by studying the languages on which our composite tongue is built—but that instead they should be dreaming of passing examinations and tests which may bring to them a few more pitiful rupees.

Compare what your educated young men are doing in this way with what the youth of the cities of Great Britain are doing. Thousands of young men, often artizans and labourers, are attending the language courses in the various institutes, such as the Working Men's College and that of the London Society for the extension of University Teaching — many of them — not to better their material prospects in life, or even to fit themselves for the peculiar work they have to do, but to cultivate their minds so as to live better the lives of rational beings and to drink deeper of the stream of knowledge. Gentlemen, do not weaken your claim to rise in the scale of peoples, to have a more potential voice in shaping your destinies, by simply living on the honey you have stored up during your college life instead of ever adding industriously to that store which shall be intellectual food to you and to your children.

Now as regards your own Vernaculars. Your duty is not merely to add to your power of understanding the men whose books you read, but if you have a true desire to spread good and useful knowledge among the people, you must also obtain the power which so few of you, I fear, possess of expressing yourselves idiomati- 38