Page:Convocation Addresses of the Universities of Bombay and Madras.djvu/598

 unless it can be corrected it demands the faith of an optimist to believe strongly in the future of your country, because unless the leaders of the great branches of public activity are capable of pursuing each activity at the expense of selfish or monetary interests, that activity or department of public life can fulfil but indifferently its special work. Whosoever would save his life shall lose it, and whosoever loseth it shall find it. It is true with prominent exceptions that generally professions attract candidates in proportion to their lucrativeness, but with all noble minds the stipend is regarded as a "due and necessary adjunct only and not as the great object of life." All true men have "a work to be done irrespective of fee, or even at any cost, or for quite the contrary of fee." Such minds, I fear, are as yet far more rare here than in the West. But, gentlemen, it is such minds that are especially needed now, and I would fain hope that in some of you there is this mind. Every day the world is recognising more fully that the education of the rising generation is the chiefest among duties, that "the child is father of the man," that that work is the most difficult problem society has to solve, and that its solution depends rather on those to whom you actually entrust the teaching, than upon the literary knowledge imparted. Your profession is not therefore one that can remain ill-esteemed. It must, as knowledge advances, be held in greater honour. With you is the future. Prepare yourselves for it, by learning, by virtue, by industry, by sympathy, by unselfishness; and seek to win for yourselves that place in public esteem, which is now held amongst the great mass of the people by the Guru. It must come unless you as teachers are untrue to yourselves and to your calling. Few things will hasten its coming like the gaining for yourselves the reputation of men of knowledge, and of men also who love to impart knowledge, apart from pecuniary rewards. It was this unselfish spirit that won for your Guru ancestors so high a place in the people's affection. It will, as new things become old, be yours also if you work in this spirit.

But, Graduates in all Faculties, you have duties in connection with education beyond the limits to which your University is by the nature of things confined. It is to these external activities that I would invite your attention. The first concerns the education of the great masses of the people. It has been the fault of most academic societies and classes that they fail to recognise that their real honor, their true function, is to be the natural leaders of an educated people, i.e., of a society each member of which has in childhood had his moral and intellectual faculties and his hands trained to do his life's work, however humble, as efficiently and 39