Page:The Message and Ministrations of Dewan Bahadur R. Venkata Ratnam, volume 3.djvu/74

 obligation—the obligation of ceaseless self-development, the obligation of disinterested service to humanity, the obligation of reverent response to ‘ the Eternal Power, not ourselves, by which all things fulfil the law of their being’. These are the intellectual, moral and spiritual obligations of Culture. Genuine Culture is thus a composite of three elements—a beam commingling three rays, a strength woven of three strands. Will you be good enough to bear with me while I attempt a very short study of this very great subject?

Culture has been designated ‘‘the true philosopher’s stone’. The phrase is happy as an appreciation of the sublime results of self-cultivation. The actual process, however, is one of development, and not of transformation. According to Novalis, Culture aims at giving man ‘ a perfect knowledge and mastery of his own self’, by rendering the human consciousness ‘its own light and its own mirror’. In other words, the object of Culture is to fit man for his noblest achievement—namely, self-realisation. In the illuminating language of the