Page:Convocation Addresses of the Universities of Bombay and Madras.djvu/594

 power, although it may seem temporarily against your interests. Scientilic knowledge is good, in itself, but it must have its own practical end, or it cannot flourish. A science cannot flourish in a country unless it has its corresponding art activity therein. The science of chemistry can make no permanent home for itself in Southern India, if there is no opening for it as an applied art. At present such activities hardly exist. You must help to create them.

Thus far to you. Graduates in Arts. To you, Graduates in Law, in Medicine and in Teaching, I will say but few words. Graduates in Law, the danger, which will chiefly beset you in applying the knowledge you have acquired to the active work of your profession is that of gradually ignoring the principles on which a sound system of Law is based. To avoid this you must remain always students of Law as the science of gradually perfecting the social relations of mankind. You must ever bear in mind what is the end of all Law, "the harmony of the world." Even in your daily practice remember that Law is the great schoolmaster which leads a people to perfection—that, whether you have to administer the Law, or to assist those who come within its operations, one of your duties is to endeavour so far as in you lies, that Law be the friend and not the enemy of man—that liberty be not sacrificed to order, though order be "heaven's first law." Law embodies the energies of social-life. By its operation the old civilization of India is giving way to the new, not so much as the result of the written laws of your legislators, as by the new ideas and new sympathies of those who administer justice, and of those who are directly or indirectly connected with that administration. How great then is the necessity that you, who will be in a way leaders in your profession, should by continued reading and studying of the best masters, fit yourselves for this beneficent work. Your preparation for this work, useful though it has no doubt been, has, I need hardly tell you, fallen far short of what a perfect system of law instruction demands. Medicine and Engineering and the Arts had independently organised institutions fitted to prepare their students for their life's work, whilst such an organization in Law is only now being created for you. Ere long, in your Law College, future students will find the means of a legal education sufficient to place the Law graduates of Madras on an equal footing with any lawyers in the world. Whilst you will find by attending special courses of lectures hereafter the means of aiding you in that after study of Law which is so essential to the beneficent exercise of your profession.