Page:The Message and Ministrations of Dewan Bahadur R. Venkata Ratnam, volume 1.djvu/443

 moral greatness consists, but in a comprehensive, all-inclusive development of the various cardinal virtues. It is in this many-sided moral development that the moral greatness of an admirable human being lies. Though it may sound paradoxical, yet it is true that in Subbarayadu’s character the chief and most distinguishable point is the reconciliation of apparent contraries. How to be stem and yet sympathetic, how to be just and yet merciful, how to be keen and yet forgiving, how to be honest and yet recognise human weakness—it is in the reconciliation of these contraries that a man’s greatness lies. One may be stern as duty and tender as sympathy, both simultaneously. That is the enviable privilege of a chosen few in whom shines a ray of the central Luminary of all souls. There are really some in whom the Divine dwells. They serve not merely as towering pinnacles of admiration to lower natures but as examples that provoke imitation and emulation.

My dear old pupil and friend had a wonderful combination of keen intellect.