When the National Council of Education was being founded in Bengal, I asked one of its enthusiastic workers whether he really believed that the great spreading tree of a University could come into being, with root and branch and foliage all complete, in a day. His reply was that if not, it would not succeed in capturing the imagination of the country; so that the complete thing must be held forth from the beginning. Well, it was duly held forth, the imagination of the country was captured, money flowed in, and nothing seemed to be wanting except just one casual factor - the truth - the truth which never disdains small beginnings, which is never ashamed to carry its immense future in a tiny frail package. And the imitation tree, after vainly trying to prove its fruitfulness, has shrunk and shrivelled to such fragile precariousness that it does not have material enough to deceive even itself. So let us repeat, it does not follow that by merely founding a University oneself, and keeping it under one's own control, it can be made one's own.
Let us, then, try to find out what is the hidden cause of dissatisfaction that is troubling our minds. The fact is, it was nearly a hundred years ago when we first entered our English school, and we have not even yet been able to get out of it; we have permanently remained school-boys. We have got the same kind of shelter in it as the mouse in the trap - it threatens to be so awkwardly everlasting.
No one has been able to give us a complete definition of life, because, at every moment, it transcends its parts and is mysteriously more than what we get from its analysis. What it gives out is far greater, in quality and value, than the materials it consumes. It is not a mere sum total of the carbon, nitrogen, and other ingredients which it takes in with its food. Our mind, also, in the fulness of its life, is infinitely greater than the information it appropriates, the training it acquires. That education is true, which acknowledges the mind to be a living thing, and therefore stimulates it to give out more in quality and quantity than is imparted to it from outside. And we are to judge our education by this standard.
Therefore the question is, whether, in our intellectual career in the modern time, we have given more than we have received, and created something which is our own. For when any race of men becomes a mere burden on the world, rendering no satisfactory account of the cost it imposes upon society, this, for it, is worse than death. For this is the intolerably mean situation of remaining under the charge of perpetual misappropriation.
As for us, far from having given our University more than we received, we have not even rendered back full measure. We have been repeating great words, learning great truths, looking on great examples, but in return we have simply become clerks, deputy magistrates, pleaders, or physicians.
Not that it is a small thing to be, for instance, a physician. But though our physicians are now practising in every town and village and hamlet of the country, and though many of them are of good repute and making money, all this extensive experience of theirs has not resulted in any new theory, or great fact, being added to the science of medicine. Like good school-boys, they have only applied with over-cautious precision just what they have learnt. And who shall make good the vital thing that is lost when students never become masters?
Yet I cannot admit that this is due to any inherent defect in our natural powers. There was a long period in the past, during which the science of healing with us was a living growth, spreading its different offshoots and branches all over our country. That teaches us at least this much that in those days our mind was in living connection with its acquirements; that then, we did not merely learn by rote, but made our own observations and experiments; that we tried to discover principles and build hypotheses and apply them to life.
Where has this initiative and courage of ours departed? Why do we tread so carefully, so fearfully, under the load of our learning? Is it because we were born to be serfs, permanently bending under the burden of another's intellectual acquisitions? Never!
For even in spite of the scarceness of opportunities and narrowness of prospects, in spite of our present defective education, which has been starved of all life elements, a few great men of science like Jagadischandra and Praphullachandra, and a great scholar and thinker like Brajendranath, have made their appearance in our country, proving that the power of true originality is not lacking among our people, only it is trampled down under the dead pressure of a mechanical method and the callousness of contemptuous discouragement.
Let us, then, try to find out what is the hidden cause of dissatisfaction that is troubling our minds. The fact is, it was nearly a hundred years ago when we first entered our English school, and we have not even yet been able to get out of it; we have permanently remained school-boys. We have got the same kind of shelter in it as the mouse in the trap - it threatens to be so awkwardly everlasting.
No one has been able to give us a complete definition of life, because, at every moment, it transcends its parts and is mysteriously more than what we get from its analysis. What it gives out is far greater, in quality and value, than the materials it consumes. It is not a mere sum total of the carbon, nitrogen, and other ingredients which it takes in with its food. Our mind, also, in the fulness of its life, is infinitely greater than the information it appropriates, the training it acquires. That education is true, which acknowledges the mind to be a living thing, and therefore stimulates it to give out more in quality and quantity than is imparted to it from outside. And we are to judge our education by this standard.
Therefore the question is, whether, in our intellectual career in the modern time, we have given more than we have received, and created something which is our own. For when any race of men becomes a mere burden on the world, rendering no satisfactory account of the cost it imposes upon society, this, for it, is worse than death. For this is the intolerably mean situation of remaining under the charge of perpetual misappropriation.
As for us, far from having given our University more than we received, we have not even rendered back full measure. We have been repeating great words, learning great truths, looking on great examples, but in return we have simply become clerks, deputy magistrates, pleaders, or physicians.
Not that it is a small thing to be, for instance, a physician. But though our physicians are now practising in every town and village and hamlet of the country, and though many of them are of good repute and making money, all this extensive experience of theirs has not resulted in any new theory, or great fact, being added to the science of medicine. Like good school-boys, they have only applied with over-cautious precision just what they have learnt. And who shall make good the vital thing that is lost when students never become masters?
Yet I cannot admit that this is due to any inherent defect in our natural powers. There was a long period in the past, during which the science of healing with us was a living growth, spreading its different offshoots and branches all over our country. That teaches us at least this much that in those days our mind was in living connection with its acquirements; that then, we did not merely learn by rote, but made our own observations and experiments; that we tried to discover principles and build hypotheses and apply them to life.
Where has this initiative and courage of ours departed? Why do we tread so carefully, so fearfully, under the load of our learning? Is it because we were born to be serfs, permanently bending under the burden of another's intellectual acquisitions? Never!
For even in spite of the scarceness of opportunities and narrowness of prospects, in spite of our present defective education, which has been starved of all life elements, a few great men of science like Jagadischandra and Praphullachandra, and a great scholar and thinker like Brajendranath, have made their appearance in our country, proving that the power of true originality is not lacking among our people, only it is trampled down under the dead pressure of a mechanical method and the callousness of contemptuous discouragement.
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