INDEPENDENCE
INDEPENDENCE
RECTORIAL ADDRESS
DELIVERED AT ST. ANDREWS
OCTOBER 10, 1923
BY
RUDYARD KIPLING
GARDEN CITY NEW YORK
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
1924
COPYRIGHT, 1923, BY
RUDYARD KIPLING
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES
AT
THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY. N. Y.
INDEPENDENCE
INDEPENDENCE
The sole revenge that Maturity can take upon Youth for the sin ofbeing young, is to preach at it. When I was young I sat and sufferedunder that dispensation. Now that I am older I purpose, if you, myconstituents, will permit me, to hand on the Sacred Torch of Boredom.
In the First Volume, then, of the Pickering Edition of the works of thelate Robert Burns, on the 171st page, you will find this stanza:
At first sight it may seem superfluous to speak of thrift andindependence to men of your race, and in a University that producedDuncan of Ruthwell and Chalmers. I admit it. No man carries coals toNewcastle—to sell; but if he wishes to discuss coal in the abstract,as the Deacon of Dumfries discussed love, he will find Newcastle knowssomething about it. And so, too, with you here. May I take it that you,for the most part, come, as I did, from households conversant witha certain strictness—let us call it a decent and wary economy—indomestic matters, which has taught us to look at both sides of thefamily shilling; that we belong to stock[Pg 3] where present sacrifice forfuture ends (our own education may have been among them) was accepted,in principle and practice, as part of life? I ask this, because talkingto people who for any cause have been denied these experiences is liketrying to tell a neutral of our life between 1914 and 1918.
Independence means, “Let every herring hang by its own head.” Itsignifies the blessed state of hanging on to as few persons and thingsas possible; and it leads up to the singular privilege of a man owninghimself.
The desire for independence has been, up to the present, anineradicable human instinct, antedating even the social instinct. Letus trace it back to its beginnings, so that we may not be surprised atour own virtue to-day.
Science tells us that Man did not begin...