Page:The Message and Ministrations of Dewan Bahadur R. Venkata Ratnam, volume 2.djvu/43

 Thus judged, there is a distinct scale of values — a vital difference of moral worth — in the hierarchy of rights and duties, on account of the sanction they appeal to. The activity and the authority of legislation necessarily confine themselves, for the most part, to those rights and duties which constitute what Carlyle terms "inferior criminality." Public opinion addresses itself to the one end of postponing personal taste to the general tendency. Individual responsibility, winding into the inmost springs of motive, aim and method, seeks to evolve what the same sage calls "superior morality." To this sacred class belong those personal virtues and private graces — veracity and honesty, chastity and sobriety, those eternal verities whose possession alone exalts man as the master-piece of creation. They are thus divinely ordained to the place of honour among virtues claiming our homage. Hence the importance and the authority of

II.— THE PLEA FOR SOCIAL PURITY.

Providence reveals its wisdom and mani-