254 LIFE AND WORK OF SIR JAGADIS C. BOSE 



high cause of the intelligence or the social spirit. It is 

 possible that, looking upon the triumph of the end and 

 knowing nothing of the long uphill road, the slow costly 

 attainment of ends, they may think that a fine laboratory 

 or other material endowment the antecedent condition of 

 successful achievement in intellectual creation. The truth, 

 indeed, is far otherwise. The countless obstacles which 

 had to be surmounted only called forth in Bose all the en- 

 durance and all the effort which are latent in manly natures, 

 welding them to the fullest strength of character and 

 intensity of thought by which alone a great life-task can be 

 accomplished. In contemplating the great career of his 

 countryman, the young Indian will be stimulated to put 

 brain and hand to fine tasks, nothing fearing. Thus will 

 he be inspired not only to recover the noble intellectual 

 traditions of the Indian past, but to restate these traditions 

 in modern terms, and find the greatest challenge for mind 

 and soul in achieving their vital relation with the coming age. 

 By impassioned inquiry and research, by resolute and un- 

 fearing work, by direct and personal action on positive lines 

 and in the constructive spirit by these things, and by 

 nothing short of these, can India or Europe or the vast 

 enduring brotherhood of mankind be carried further along 

 the road to their deeply needed and long awaited recon- 

 struction. 



But now the question may be asked many indeed will 

 find themselves impelled to ask it What of the teeming 

 and toiling millions of India : what part have they in these 

 great schemes of science, and what can such schemes do for 

 them ? Of course, with only too great readiness the same 

 question may be asked in respect of the millions of Europe and 

 America for it is clear that their full awakening to science 

 is still far off, their incorporation into the best that 

 civilisation has to offer. The answer in both cases must 

 be essentially the same : the arousal and incorporation 

 must in the end come, unless our modern world of know- 

 ledge and society is to go down in tragic failure. 



