Page:The Message and Ministrations of Dewan Bahadur R. Venkata Ratnam, volume 2.djvu/56

 life is the animal; to subdue pleasure to the purpose of life is the man. That follows the lead of instinct, this guides instinct with reason. Thus the animal is the creature of the day; but man is the pilgrim of eternity. This distinguishing prerogative makes, in man's case, pleasure the hand-maid to progress — not an alien to be rejected, but a servant to be managed; not a disease to be rooted out, but an impulse to be regulated. "Temperance" — wise moderation in the legitimate, cheerful abstinence from the forbidden — is, accordingly, the only law befitting man; and purity is temperance in that supreme relation of the sexes which, as ordering the joys of home, prescribing the ideals of society and linking generation to generation, sways the destinies of our race.* Thus social purity is the