Page:Independence, Rectorial address delivered at St Andrews October 10 1923.pdf/15

INDEPENDENCE where present sacrifice for future ends (our own education may have been among them) was accepted, in principle and practice, as part of life? I ask this, because talking to people who for any cause have been denied these experiences is like trying to tell a neutral of our life between 1914 and 1918.

Independence means, "Let every herring hang by its own head." It signifies the blessed state of hanging on to as few persons and things as possible; and it leads up to the, singular privilege of a man owning himself.

The desire for independence has been, up to the present, an ineradicable human instinct, antedating even the social instinct. Let us trace it back to its beginnings, so that we may not be surprised at our own virtue to-day.

Science tells us that Man did not begin [3]