Page:The Life of Lokamanya Tilak.djvu/354

 CHAPTER XXIII

TILAK THE SCHOLAR

To me it {i e. The Arctic Home in the Vedas) is significant because it appeared in the midst of the author's direst persecu tion when money reputation, influence and everything were at stake, and few men would have had the courage to spare a thought either for sacred books or Arctic Circles. H. W. Nevinson.

THE scholar in politics is either a remarkable faillure or an extraordinary success. In the scholar's temperament, hesitency, lack of strong will-power, impatience and petulance usually form the chief ingredients. His knowledge of men is limited; his grasp of actualities is imperfect. He has no resourcefulness, very little courage or presence of mind. His personality is weak and he is very rarely a ruler of men. The failure as an administrator of M. Guizot, the celebrated philosopher-historian is a striking illustration of the danger of appointing men of letters at the helm of affairs. Mr. Tilak however was primarily a man of action. His wonderful and luminous scholarship and his versatile and comprehensive genius formed merely the back-ground of a strong-willed, fiery, masterful, soldierly personality. His scholarship illuminated his political leadership with a lustre as rare as it was dazzling ; his political leadership gave his scholarl37 work a prestige and a significance totally absent in the efforts