Page:The Message and Ministrations of Dewan Bahadur R. Venkata Ratnam, volume 2.djvu/71

 tion given to social impurity by state or by society but this culpable prescription of inchastity? Closely related to this subject is the rather exciting question of (c) Social Purity and Public Life. If, as Carlyle holds, "society everywhere is some representation of a graduated worship of heroes," the life of a leader is a model to contemporaries and a heritage to posterity. That life embodies the moral ideal to be imitated by a thousand admirers; it maps out the moral path to be trodden by a thousand followers. When one of England's wisest politicians laid down that he who would be a statesman must first prove himself a gentleman, the demand really meant that the aspiration to be honoured with public confidence implied the covenant to be clean and pure beyond every insinuation, above every suspicion. If, as Lecky states, "pure domestic life" is amongst the 'strongest'