Page:The Message and Ministrations of Dewan Bahadur R. Venkata Ratnam, volume 2.djvu/150



It would be plain to every one of us here that these three addresses merge into one whole — self-culture the effective method, ideals the r uplifting force, and character the resultant blessing. Through arduous self-culture, inspired and impelled by lofty ideals, we are enabled to build up that solid moral character which is the end and fulfilment of life. Man has been vouchsafed life, neither for narrow physical enjoyment nor for limitless, now-complaining, now-hurrying ambition, but for the slow, steady development of concretised, realised principles to which we give the name of character.

The key-note of character is the quickening, passionate sense of the ought — of the rights of the proper, of the obligatory, of