Page:The Message and Ministrations of Dewan Bahadur R. Venkata Ratnam, volume 2.djvu/50

 devotion to gratify sacredotal sensuality; the community that places no legal limits upon a man's marrying capacity, but is not unwilling to visit with the persecution of law the woman who will not yield her person where her heart is not; the nation that hurries millions through a married life they are not equal to, and thrusts on millions of others a celibacy they dare not honourably set aside — India and the Indian nation cannot, for their very name and existence in the honoured circle of the civilised, afford to omit this question from a comprehensive programme of social reform and progress. In root-principle, it is of the same stock as temperance ; in main argument, it is kindred to the great problems relating to the position and function of women in home and society; in its direct aims, it touches closely the large questions of the right use of religious endowments, the great responsibilities of leaders and the proper training of the young; in its ultimate results, it has a distinct bearing upon what foreign travel is meant to achieve or the