Page:Report on public instruction in the lower provinces of the Bengal presidency (1850-51).djvu/23

Rh worlds, scattered through infinite space, are bound to follow the laws which their creator has imposed on them, than with the reflection that the same God who made this mighty universe, made also the intellect of man; instilled into him the wish, and endowed him with the power, to look with intelligent admiration on his Maker’s works. I know not how others may feel; but, for my part, I can hardly conceive any other study better calculated to lead to serious and improving thought. What am I, in the midst of these marvellous works, which I am permitted to observe and partly to understand? Why am I here? What is the fittest and best use I can make of those powers, of which I feel myself to be possessed, while my own consciousness, not less than my helplessness and insignificance among these majestic wonders, the mere contemplation of which almost appals and overpowers my imagination, is sufficient proof that I have them not of my own will; and, if so, that I shall probably be made responsible for their being rightly employed to him who gave them. If these evidences are worth anything it is only to mathematicians that they can appear in their full force. Others indeed may receive and repeat at second hand whatever they please to believe of them, but the conviction which belongs to the perception of demonstrated truth must be wanting.

"It is in this spirit I would have the study of mathematics pursued in our Colleges. First, I should wish to see them cultivated, in their abstract form, as far as is necessary to furnish rules and exercises in the art of reasoning: for which purpose I may say, by the way, that on the whole, I consider objective geometrical processes, as far as they can go, much more useful than dealing with the more compendious and more powerful formulas of algebraical analysis; and secondly, I would have the mathematical knowledge, so acquired, brought to bear upon the physical sciences, which together make up a knowledge of the material world by which we are surrounded: and the more complete is the view we thus obtain of its wondrous and consistent structure, of the obvious adaptation of means to an end, and of the excellent perfection of the means employed, the more constrained shall we become to feel and utter not only the old maxim that knowledge is power, but also that knowledge is humility; that knowledge is awe; that knowledge is adoration!

"I miss among you the intelligent countenance of one who last year was counted among the brightest ornaments of your College, and whose premature death, in the blossom of his youth, has excited the regret