Page:Independence, Rectorial address delivered at St Andrews October 10 1923.pdf/21

INDEPENDENCE beasts, who can only act lies. Man knows that, at any moment, he can tell a lie which, for a while, will delay or divert the workings of cause and effect. Being an animal who is still learning to reason, he does not yet understand why with a little more, or a little louder, lying he should not be able permanently to break the chain of that law of cause and effect—the Justice without the Mercy—which he hates, and to have everything both ways in every relation of his life.

In other words, we want to be independent of facts, and the younger we are, the more intolerant are we of those who tell us that this is impossible. When I wished to claim my independence and to express myself according to the latest lights of my age (for there were lights even then), it was disheartening to be told that I could not expect to be clothed, [9]