Page:Independence, Rectorial address delivered at St Andrews October 10 1923.pdf/40

INDEPENDENCE week ahead. It is both sedative and anti-spasmodic—it makes for calm in the individual and forbearance towards the Tribe—to know that you hold even seven days' potential independence in reserve—and owed to no man. One is led on to stretch that painfully extorted time to one month if possible; and as one sees that this is possible, the possibilities grow. Bit by bit, one builds up and digs oneself into a base whence one can move in any direction, and fall back upon in any need. The need may be merely to sit still and consider, as did our first ancestors, what manner of animal we are; or it may be to cut loose at a minute's notice from a situation which has become intolerable or unworthy; but, whatever it may be, it is one's own need, and the opportunity of meeting it has been made by one's own self. [28]