ns.

As there is no need to legislate that Hindus, being generally supposed
to have a natural incapacity for field sports, shall not betake
themselves to them--for, if they have no capacity, they will fail; and,
as in spite of the Hindus' supposed general incapacity for sport, it is
possible for an individual Hindu to become the noted batsman of his age;
so, also, there is no need to legislate that women should be restricted
in her choice of fields of labour; for the organic incapacity of the
individual, if it exist, will legislate far more powerfully than any
artificial, legal, or social obstruction can do; and it may be that the
one individual in ten thousand who selects a field not generally sought
by his fellows will enrich humanity by the result of an especial genius.
Allowing all to start from the one point in the world of intellectual
culture and labour, with our ancient Mother Nature sitting as umpire,
distributing the prizes and scratching from the lists the incompetent,
is all we demand, but we demand it determinedly. Throw the puppy into
the water: if it swims, well; if it sinks, well; but do not tie a
rope round its throat and weight it with a brick, and then assert its
incapacity to keep afloat.

For the present our cry is, "We take all labour for our province!"

From the judge's seat to the legislator's chair; from the statesman's
closet to the merchant's office; from the chemist's laboratory to the
astronomer's tower, there is no post or form of toil for which it is not
our intention to attempt to fit ourselves; and there is no closed door
we do not intend to force open; and there is no fruit in the garden of
knowledge it is not our determination to eat. Acting in us, and through
us, nature we know will mercilessly expose to us our deficiencies in
the field of human toil, and reveal to us our powers. And, for today, we
take all labour for our province!

But, it may then be said: "What of war, that struggle of the human
creature to attain its ends by physical force and at the price of the
life of others: will you take part in that also?" We reply: Yes; more
particularly in that field we intend to play our part. We have always
borne part of the weight of war, and the major part. It is not merely
that in primitive times we suffered from the destruction of the fields
we tilled and the houses we built; or that in later times as domestic
labourers and producers, though unwaged, we, in taxes and material loss