Page:Independence, Rectorial address delivered at St Andrews October 10 1923.pdf/44

INDEPENDENCE to do; and the principle is the same: "At any price that I can pay, let me own myself."

And the price is worth paying if you keep what you have bought. For the eternal question still is whether the profit of any concession that a man makes to his Tribe, against the Light that is in him, outweighs or justifies his disregard of that Light. A man may apply his independence to what is called worldly advantage, and discover too late that he laboriously has made himself dependent on a mass of external conditions, for the maintenance of which he has sacrificed himself. So he may be festooned with the whole haberdashery of success, and go to his grave a castaway.

Some men hold that this risk is worth taking. Others do not. It is to these that I have spoken. [32]