f 



220 LIFE AND WORK OF SIR JAGADIS C. BOSF 



He had no patience with the easy talk about inter- 

 nationalism or about the virtues of renunciation. For 

 about the former they had no right to talk of inter- 

 nationalism until their own country had won recognition as a 

 nation ; and of the latter he thought ' the weakling who has 

 refused the conflict has acquired nothing, and has nothing 

 to renounce ; only he who has striven and won can enrich 

 the world by giving away the fruits of his victorious 

 experience.' He felt that the strong must bear the 

 burden and deliberately choose the difficult in preference 

 to the easy path ; to him this was the true function of 

 nationality. With this conviction there mingled another 

 no less imperative. His studies had revealed to him the 

 workings of a strange Cyclic Law how inertness passed 

 into climax of activity and how that climax was perilously 

 near its antithetic decline. When we have raised ourselves 

 to the highest pinnacle, through some oversight we fall 

 over the precipice. Men have offered their lives for the 

 establishment of truth ; a climax is reached after which 

 the custodians of knowledge themselves bar further 

 advance. Those who have fought for liberty impose on 

 others and on themselves the bond of slavery, and patriotism 

 often degenerates into the worst form of tyranny. He 

 resolved that his love for India should never stand in the 

 way of his wider love for humanity ; and two great friend- 

 ships came to him at this phase of life which laid his 

 misgiving to rest, and enabled him to realise fully the unity 

 of all human efforts. 



In 1899 Mrs. Ole Bull and Miss Margaret Noble (Sister 

 Nivedita), having heard much of Bose's discoveries, came 

 to see him in his Calcutta laboratory and to learn what 

 they could. The mutual interest awakened that day 

 ripened into a deep friendship only interrupted by death. 

 Mrs. Ole Bull, an American, was the widow of the great 

 Norse violinist who inspired a generation of writers and 

 musicians Ibsen, Bjornson, Grieg and others to win 

 European eminence for their country as well as for them- 



