Page:Independence, Rectorial address delivered at St Andrews October 10 1923.pdf/22

INDEPENDENCE fed, taught, amused, and comforted—not to say preached at—by others, and at the same time to practise towards them a savage and thorny independence.

I imagine that you, perhaps, may have assisted at domestic conferences on these lines; but I maintain that we are not the unthinking asses that our elders called us. Our self-expression may have been a trifle crude, but the instinct that prompted it was that primal instinct of independence which antedates the social one, and makes the young at times a little difficult. It comes down from the dumb and dreadful epoch when all that Man knew was that he was himself, and not another, and therefore the loneliest of created beings; and you know that there is no loneliness to equal the loneliness of youth at war with its surroundings in a world that does not care. [10]