HOLIDAYS AND PILGRIMAGES 119 



experience of travel manifest in Bose's general outlook, 

 at once ranging over India and the West ; but it was 

 also of more than frequent scientific suggestiveness. One 

 cannot, of course, explain mental incidents like the 

 unexpected flash of this or that new physical or biological 

 insight, or fresh plan of investigation, amid some scene 

 of natural beauty or venerable antiquity, beyond the 

 emotional and mental stirring such scenes so readily give. 

 But Bose's ardent temperament could not but feel Asoka's 

 inscription of old as a vivid call and command to his own 

 life : ' Go forth and intermingle ; and bring them to the 

 righteousness which passe th knowledge. Go forth among 

 the terrible and powerful, both here and in foreign coun- 

 tries in kindred ties even of brotherhood and sisterhood 

 ... everywhere/ 



Nor is it to be wondered at that among the excava- 

 tions of Taxila, and again among the ruins of Nalanda, 

 he should feel that it was not only their old University 

 spirit thrilling within him, but the common spirit of 

 all Universities. These visitings peculiarly awoke and 

 strengthened in him the perception that his life-work was to 

 be more than one of personal purpose and scientific character 

 more even than the organisation of a physical laboratory, 

 even of the best ; and that what he must henceforth aim at, 

 and think out, and work for should be nothing less than 

 recreation of some yet fuller centre of intellectual quest 

 and diffusion, like those of old. First of all for India : 

 yet also, like those, with contacts and impulses to all the 

 world beyond. In this old pride of India as she was, and 

 hopes of her as she may be, on one hand, no less than in 

 his peculiarly full and wide participation in Western science 

 on the other, we see at once the two uniting forces which 

 found expression in the foundation of the Bose Research 

 Institute. 



And with this better understanding of the man, upon 

 his Indian side, and his ever-widening cultural sympathies 

 and outlooks, we may return to his scientific work. 



