Page:The Message and Ministrations of Dewan Bahadur R. Venkata Ratnam, volume 3.djvu/77

32 search-light of the soul turned on the face of the world. Dark recesses are radiated; new avenues of thought are opened out ; new springs of pure happiness are discovered. Wisdom is sublimated into illumination, vignana till each single object shines as a 'theophany’—a suggestive sample of the one Eternal Idea'. My meaning I may seek to elucidate with a humorous but instructive example borrowed from a well-known British journal. There is the familiar primrose. We pity the Peter Bells of the unthinking world to whom the primrose is nothing more than a yellow primrose. Out of their ignorance we have emerged into scientific knowledge : we have discovered the primrose to be a dicotyledon, and we have classified it as a rhododendron. Indeed, we have proved our practical sagacity by adopting it as the badge of a political party in the Primrose League. Nevertheless, have we been initiated into the secret of it? Why does the inspired bard name it the ‘rathe primrose’? Can it be for the reason that it is the first smile of the incoming year—the messenger of resuscitated life—the bearer of the ‘good tidings’ that