The work already carried out in my laboratory on the response of matter,
and the unexpected revelations in plant life, foreshadowing the wonders
of the highest animal life, have opened out very extended regions of
inquiry in Physics, in physiology in Medicine, in Agriculture and even
in Psychology. Problems, hitherto regarded as insoluble, have now been
brought within the sphere of experimental investigation. These inquiries
are obviously more extensive than those customary either among
physicists or physiologists, since demanding interests and aptitudes
hitherto more or less divided between them. In the study of Nature,
there is a necessity of the dual view point, this alternating yet
rhythmically unified interaction of biological thought with physical
studies, and physical thought with biological studies. The future worker
with his freshened grasp of physics, his fuller conception of the
inorganic world, as indeed thrilling with "the promise and potency of
life" will redouble his former energies of work and thought. Thus he
will be in a position to win now the old knowledge with finer sieves, to
research it with new enthusiasm and subtler instruments. And
thus with thought and toil and time he may hope to bring fresher views
into the old problems. His handling of these will be at once more vital
and more kinetic, more comprehensive and unified.
The farther and fuller investigation of the many and ever-opening
problems of the nascent science which includes both Life and Non-Life
are among the main purposes of the Institute I am opening to-day; in
these fields I am already fortunate in having a devoted band of
disciples, whom I have been training for the last ten years. Their
number is very limited, but means may perhaps be forthcoming in the
future to increase them. An enlarging field of young ability may thus be
available, from which will emerge, with time and labour, individual
originality of research, productive invention and some day even creative
genius.
But high success is not to be obtained without corresponding
experimental exactitude, and this is needed to-day more than ever, and
to-morrow yet more again. Hence the long battery of supersensitive
instruments and apparatus, designed here, which stand before in their
cases in our entrance hall. They will tell you of the protracted
struggle to get behind the deceptive seeming into the reality that
remained unseen;--of the continuous toil and persistence and of
ingenuity called forth for overcoming human limitations. In these
directions through the ever-increasing ingenuity of device for advancing
science, I see at no distant future an advance of skill and of invention
among our workers; and if this skill be assured, practical applications
will not fail to follow in many fields of human activity.
The advance of science is the principal object of this Institute and
also the diffusion of knowledge. We are here in the largest of all the
many chambers of this House of Knowledge--its Lecture Room. In adding
this feature, and on a scale hitherto unprecedented in a Research
Institute, I have sought permanently to associate the advancement of
knowledge with the widest possible civic and public diffusion of it; and
this without any academic limitations, henceforth to all races and
languages, to both men and women alike, and for all time coming.
The lectures given here will not be mere repetitions of second-hand
knowledge. They will announce to an audience of some fifteen hundred
people, the new discoveries made here, which will be demonstrated for
the first time before the public. We shall thus maintain continuously
the highest aim of a great Seat of Learning by taking active part in the
_advancement_ and diffusion of knowledge. Through the regular
publication of the Transactions of the Institute, these Indian
contributions will reach the whole world. The discoveries made will thus
become public property. No patents will ever be taken. The spirit of our
national culture demands that we should for ever be free from the
desecration of utilising knowledge for personal gain. Besides the
regular staff there will be a selected number of scholars, who by their
work have shown special aptitude, and who would devote their whole life
to the pursuit of research. They will require personal training and
their number must necessarily be limited. But it is not the quantity
but quality that is of essential importance.
It is my further wish, that as far as the limited accommodation would
permit, the facilities of this Institute should be available to workers
from all countries. In this I am attempting to carry out the traditions
of my country, which so far back as twenty-five centuries ago, welcomed
all scholars from different parts of the world, within the precincts of
its ancient seats of learning, at Nalanda and at Taxilla.