Page:The Modern Review (July-December 1925).pdf/21

8 pope of growth j and for this very reason it □jeers with a certain amount of opposition when it crosses other life-currents. In may seem to others to be egoistic. But this ‘life tmpUse,’ that I speak of, belongs to a personality which is. beyond my ego. Its freedom is not the freedom of this self of mine. On the contrary, it is freed when the self is restored. I must own this Master in me, who is not a mere abstract ideal, but a Person. I must be true to it, even at the cost of what men call happiness, at the risk of being m^understood, forsaken and hated. I am sociable by nature, and I should like in­ tensely to enjoy the company of friends and the pleasures and advantages of friend­ ship. But I am not free to give myself away, even when it seems necessary and good. The somewhat wide expanse of time and space that I always try to keep in reserve about me is not mine to use as I wish. This loneliness often becomes hard tor me to bea~. But I have my ample compensation; and I dare say it bears fruit for those who kLow what to expect from it. _ feel sure that my case is not a singular

one. The human soul is God’s flower. It gives its best bloom and scent, not when shut up in eager palms to be squeezed, but when left alon e in the immense freedom of. light and air. But very unfortunately, ‘The world is too much with us'; late and y soon, Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers: Little we see in Nature that is onrs; We have given qjir hearts away, a sordid boon. My love is bare and reticent. It was gaudily coloured in its youthful flowering season. It was bulgitg with gifts in its fruitful maturity. But now that its seed­ time has come, it has burst its shell and is abroad in the air. Now it has thrown away all the extra burden of allurements, carrying in its minute sack the hidden destiny of its life. -So when you come and shake the bough for it, no answer comes; for it is not there. But if you can " believe it in its silence, and accept it in silence, you will not be disappointed. (to be continued)

who give anxious thought to the future of Bengal have been asking themselves whether the Calcutta University is any nearer reform and whether realities are asserting themselves in the counsels of its present Senate. But as only one year has passed since the death of Sir Ashutosh Mukherji and there have been during this short interval the sad breakdown and death of one Vice-Chancellor and the inauguration of a second Vice-Chancellor new to its inner working, it would not be wise to form any large hopes.

As is well known to the public, the problems of Calcutta University reform pressing with increasing seriousness during the last few years, are four, namely,—

(1) How to rehabilitate the reputation of the University’s examinations as a real test of knowledge.

(2) How to arrest the steady decline in the efficiency of the education given in the colleges,—which do the entire under-graduate teaching work,—so as to provide the indispensable reliable basis for that post-graduate teaching which is now the monopoly of the University staff, and also to turn out really educated graduates for life’s work.

(3) How to stabilize the post-graduate department, so as to save it from perpetual alarms and excursions, alarms of long unpaid salaries and impending bankruptcy and shady excursions into non-academic fields, such as party politics and speculation in German marks and Calcutta land values. How to secure a balanced budget for the department and at the same time keep the best teachers from going away elsewhere to a better paid (at least securer) service.

(4) How to secure in the administration