Graduations

Graduation address given by the Vice-Chancellor, Dr Henry Normand MacLaurin

Dr Henry Normand MacLaurin, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Sydney, gave the address at the dual Annual Commemoration of Benefactors and Conferring of Degrees ceremony held on Saturday 18 April 1896.

The following is a report on the address published in the Brisbane Courier on 23 April 1896.

Graduation address

At the annual commemoration of the University of Sydney, held on Saturday 18 April 1896, the Vice-Chancellor, Dr. MacLaurin, delivered a thoughtful address:

Prominence therein was given to the benefaction of the year, the gift by Mr. T. N. Russell, a well-known retired ironmaster, of the sum of £50,000 for the purpose of establishing an engineering school within the University. The University of Sydney has been enriched by many noble donations, the aggregate of which cannot now fall far short of half-a-million sterling. Add to these the splendid grounds and buildings bestowed by the wise liberality of the State, the affiliated colleges partly built at the cost of the great denominations, and the handsome yearly Parliamentary grant, and it will be seen that this institution has already attained to a remarkably strong position. If the stream of private benefactions in the future should equal that of the past, it will not be long before the institution is independent of further Parliamentary assistance. Perhaps as much may also be said of the University of Melbourne. It is to the credit of our civilisation that these two educational institutions have so soon reached the degree of development and the high and far-reaching usefulness which they exhibit to-day, and that both have been assisted in their progress by colonists who have had a disposable surplus of wealth. It is easy to forgive the passion "for making money when the money is devoted to noble objects”. One feature of the Russell benefaction is that it reached the University during the benefactor's lifetime. It is a living man's generosity and not a dead man's bequest. "Let me," said Dr. MacLaurin on Saturday, "quote the words' of a wiseman of business in addressing his counsels to persons of fortune." These are the wise man's words:

Further accumulations only add to your cares, they encourage the demoralising habit of hoarding and the love of money, and they involve the necessity of some day having to hand over your accumulations to some one else, over whose expenditure of the
same you have no control, who, whether an individual or a society, is very likely to expend them in a manner of which, if living, you would not have approved. It is well, therefore, to spend or give surplus money in your lifetime, and you will now, and again, find that a considerable sum may be bestowed on some excellent object, which can, at the worst, hardly do harm, and which may confer a great benefit on your fellow-creatures.

The wisdom in these words reports and commends itself to every intelligent man who reads them. The pity is that there are so few persons amongst us who have the power of acting upon them. Better that religious, charitable, and educational institutions should get legacies than be altogether forgotten ; but how good it would be for these communities if the persons of fortune in them delighted during their lifetime in founding, expanding, and endowing perpetually beneficient sources of light and love! A purer pleasure is unimaginable. A better destiny for the surplus accumulations of individual wealth is unimaginable. It is in the power of persons of fortune now amongst us to create a University of Queensland. Without making one real personal sacrifice, devoting to so noble an object only what is literally their surplus wealth, wealth that can do absolutely nothing for them if attempted to be spent selfishly or if continued to be hoarded selfishly, for Nature has rigidly fixed the selfish pleasure-giving power of wealth within narrow limits, they could "bring into existence a University of Queensland which in the course of time would be the honourable and magnificent rival of the Universities of Sydney and Melbourne.

Dr. MacLaurin discussed the aim and scope of a university. We always know what in a general way to expect when a university dignitary announces this theme. For there is a universal consensus of opinion about the work of these institutions. "Can it be conceived," asked Dr. MacLaurin, ''that the liberality of Parliament and the beneficence of private founders had no further aim than to enable a few fortunate, clever persons to acquire a legal right to tack some letters of the alphabet on to their names ? Surely no such paltry motive was the wellspring of the splendid munificence which has in so short a time enriched this Institution. Without doubt there was a higher object in view - the advantage and welfare of the community at large." It is impossible to banish paltry and sordid motive from universities. It may even be contended that so excellent a thing is knowledge in itself that to admit students who are only animated by a paltry motive is better than, if that were possible, to exclude them. "We must put up," said Dr. MacLaurin regretfully, " with the ambition for a degree which plays such an important part in our system of education, and is, I suppose, not to be dispensed with. After all, a degree has some meaning, and, when properly given, it signifies that the recipient is a scholar or a person of culture." Yes, upon the whole a degree has a lot of meaning, of meaning constantly changing for the better as the effect of university instruction and discipline tells upon the graduate's life. University students are young in years, and only in rare cases adequately appreciate the advantage of constant association with a great seat of learning while they are still attending lectures. It is in the after life of the students, in their character and work in the world, that we must look for the justification of the private benefactions and Parliamentary grants in aid of university education. Thus looking, we shall find what we seek for. More and more do knowledge and wisdom become their own reward, and do those who pursue them outgrow the paltriness of their early intellectual motives and ambitions. The great problem of a university, according to Dr. MacLaurin, is "to benefit the community by training the select youth of the country to the acquisition of skill to bring themselves under the dominion of Reason, and to bring the powers of external Nature, so far as it may be possible, under the same subjection : to subdue, restrain, and control the irrational propensities which, if unchecked, spring up naturally, like poisonous weeds, in every man's breast ; to trim, order, and bring into a cosmos the chaos of the unrealised possibilities which exist in such profusion in this country." As to the first of these aims, Dr. MacLaurin said : The University is to be, above all things, a school of conduct, in which its alumni may be trained to become good men and good subjects of the Queen, so that their private lives may be an example of uprightness and virtue, and if they be called to public affairs they shall evince a steadfast enthusiasm for the public good, avoid all tortuous and devious paths of self-seeking, shun the facile cruelty of savage invective, and abstain from the all too common error of attributing base motives to those who may be of a different opinion. This is true and well put, but we must not expect that the student will emerge from this school of conduct a perfect man or perfect woman. The university is and can be only a school of conduct. Invaluable lessons may be learned in it. Foundations of imperishable character may be laid while students are amenable to its powerful influence. But it is in the after life that we must look for the great results. Let the university atmosphere be rich in noble and penetrating power, and the few years spent in the university will purify and elevate the comparatively many years of the afterlife. Of course, as Dr. MacLaurin insisted, a university has a wonderful value to the community in the other aspect and direction of its work, the subjection of natural forces to human reason and control. The practical utilities of science are daily enriching all mankind. Universities are centres of research and fountains of knowledge. But it is as the school of conduct, of culture, of mental discipline, of breadth of sympathy, of intellectual tolerance, of unselfish aims, of reasonable patriotism, of reverence for wisdom and goodness, of intelligent enthusiasm, of chivalrous devotion to duty, that the university answers the greatest end of its existence. It is in what in the course of life they help to make of the student himself or herself, and not in the material benefits, professional or other, to which they may be a guide, though these are not to be forgotten or despised, that we find the highest service and justification of these magnificent educational institutions.