Page:The Message and Ministrations of Dewan Bahadur R. Venkata Ratnam, volume 3.djvu/72

 cilable and, therefore, mutually extinguishing. Antagonisms, the twin words we are now considering denote not divergences but parallels, not contraries but complements. Rights and duties are inseparable concomitants, inalienable allies. It would be a fatal mistake to think of rights as the bribe for duties or of duties as the penalty for rights. Rights and duties are two aspects of one concept, two directions of one energy, two results of one function. They form the inlet and the outlet of one fountain of life—the inlet of power and the outlet of service. Rights without duties would bean idle boast; duties without rights, a surly growl. Rights and duties are welded into the undivided serene strength of self-realisation through self-reliance and self-expansion. Is it right or is it duty that prompts the stream to flow, the seed to grow, the bird to sing, the heart to beat? Withhold from the heart the right to pulsate, it is numbed; withdraw from the heart the duty to purvey, it is clogged. Nor is it irrelevant that we ponder over this fact for a moment. Our Alma Mater prescribes to us Culture as the supreme end of our being;