i L A 
 
 1153 
 I W4 
 
 UC-NRLF 
 
 SB 2T2 727 
 
 i 
 
 IlKllIKi: EDUCATION IN [NDIi 
 
 ITS POSITION AND CLAIMS. 
 
 Sir RAYMOND WEST, 
 
 PRESIDENT OP TTIF TN'THAN SECTION* 
 
 
GIFT OF 
 

 
Vl/V- 
 
 HIGHER EDUCATION IN INDIA : 
 
 ITS POSITION AND CLAIMS. 
 
 Ladies and Gentlemen, 
 
 I feel very deeply the honour you have done 
 me in electing me President of the Indian Section of 
 this Congress of Oriental Scholars. In thanking you 
 for the distinction you have conferred upon me, I 
 could have wished to mark my appreciation of it, and, 
 if possible, justify your choice, by some definite and 
 original contribution to your proceedings, as the 
 result of research in some hitherto unworked field. 
 But the notice I received was very brief, and my 
 books and papers, recently arrived from India, are 
 not yet so arranged as to be readily available for 
 reference and citation. Under these circumstances I 
 have resolved to take as the subject of my address to 
 you a topic with which my daily life, as an official 
 in India, has made me more or less familiar. In 
 offering some observations on the position of the 
 Higher Education in India I shall dwell on a topic 
 which, though not of a recondite nature, is yet of 
 
 % B 
 
 dR1378 
 
. 
 
 great importance, and must have a special interest 
 for scholars like yourselves, zealous for the cultiva- 
 tion of solid and fruitful learning amongst a people 
 upon whose history and literature your attention has 
 heen fixed through many studious years. India 
 holds a place, and a not inconsiderable one, in the 
 history of human thought. It may have much still 
 to contribute to the ideas and the impulses, to the 
 longings, hopes, and sympathies, which are the 
 moving forces of mankind. That its intellectual 
 wealth should be developed and directed aright is a 
 matter that concerns all men, but especially the sub- 
 jects of Her Majesty the Queen-Empress who are 
 immediately responsible for the welfare and honour 
 of this great dependency. These considerations may, 
 perhaps, be held to excuse me for endeavouring to 
 bring about something like a general consensus of 
 opinion in appreciating what has Leen accomplished 
 already, in recognising defects in the existing system 
 of education, and in indicating the means by which 
 a further great and continuous progress may be 
 ensured. 
 
 Seeing the extent of my subject in its modern and 
 practical aspect, I cannot at present dwell at any 
 length on the ancient learning of the Hindus, on the 
 means by which it was nurtured and propagated, on 
 the schools of philosophy, the seminaries of Vedantic 
 study, the rivalries of the orthodox and the ascetics, 
 or the patronage of scholars by the princes and 
 
chiefs, who thus hoped both to gain a divine guid- 
 ance in their undertakings, and to win an eternal 
 commemoration of their great deeds. Our attention 
 will no doubt be drawn to these subjects in some of 
 the learned papers that will be read before us. 1 
 propose only to glance at one or two points as a 
 necessary introduction to the remarks which are to 
 follow. 
 
 A distribution of functions and division of labour 
 have from the earliest times been recognised in the 
 Brahminical system as part of the ordination of 
 Providence. The Brahmins gave a sacred import to 
 what was merely a convenient arrangement, an 
 absolute unqualified value to virtues and capacities 
 ol conditional and limited utility. What we call 
 principles are generally rules or propositions which, 
 though just and true as applied to facts within a cer- 
 tain range, become erroneous when extended to a 
 wider application. The subtil ty of things exceeds ] 
 the subtilty of words, and the phrase or formula 
 which was highly valuable as a summation or a 
 symbol of actual observation or experience, becomes 
 misleading when it is assigned an independent value 
 and made to control facts instead of representing 
 them. Thus, as particular qualities and capacities 
 are closely connected with particular avocations, the 
 Brahmins conceived virtues and mental perfections 
 as the specific characteristics of castes rather than 
 as the attributes of developed and cultivated 
 
 B 2 
 
humanity. The common background of identical 
 mutual needs, of duties and rights, subject only to 
 modal variations, was too much overlooked, just as 
 in Europe until recent times the dominance of one 
 or another set of human perfections was exclusively 
 accepted by one or another class as all-important. 
 In India no man, it was thought, could be expected 
 to fill out the whole sphere of moral and intellectual 
 greatness ; in Europe that sphere itself was contracted 
 according to the needs or narrow experience of this 
 or that class ; and virtue for all mankind was, accord- 
 ing to different theories, to be based on different 
 ideals. This involved a clashing and contradiction 
 which the Brahmin avoided by his distribution of 
 moral obligations, but it led by degrees to higher 
 and higher conceptions of what was possible and 
 desirable for the progress and perfection of the 
 human race on a footing of substantial moral 
 equality. It allowed for that final adjustment of 
 each individual to his proper place in the thinking 
 and acting world by which the greatest economy of 
 moral and material forces was to be secured, while 
 caste and its consequences bound men down by ever- 
 multiplied restrictions to narrowness, stagnation, and 
 timidity in thought and action. 
 
 The higher education of Ancient India was, in 
 substance, the education of the Brahminical class con- 
 ceived as the sole and sacred depositaries of enlarged 
 thought and elevated morality. The attempt, nay, 
 
the mere desire, to scale the heights of learning was 
 deemed a grievous offence in one belonging to an 
 inferior caste. The Brahmins, by renouncing all 
 ideas of military prowess and dominion, as incon- 
 sistent with the proper attributes of their caste, 
 extinguished the jealousy of the Kshatriya princes 
 who then, on account both of the mental superiority 
 and of the sacred character of the unwarlike " lords 
 of the earth," became their generous patrons and 
 pupils. The Brahmins were comparatively in- 
 sensible to the stimulus of power, honours, and 
 fortune, which in these days operate not less strongly 
 on them than on others ; but the love of learning, 
 and of intellectual activity for their own sakes, ruled 
 amongst them, with not less force than afterwards 
 prevailed amongst some of the monastic orders of 
 Europe. Their experience in the conduct of human 
 affairs being very limited, and the pictures of 
 Governments they looked on being rather those of 
 individual caprices than of the conflicts of political 
 ideas, and the movement of masses or parties with 
 desires and aims wrought by mutual reaction to 
 this or that resultant force, they could not and did 
 not write history. From their placid standpoint of 
 immeasurable religious superiority they looked on 
 with real or affected indifference. But in the 
 other chief spheres of mental activity, such as 
 mathematics, philosophy, and poetry, they made a 
 progress in many cases exceeding that of their 
 
European contemporaries. The contact of mind 
 with mind, the minute familiarity with the most 
 captivating thoughts of the past, acquired by long 
 years of rote learning and verbal analysis, kept the 
 intellectual liie in existence, vigorous within its 
 limits, if not progressive, as under the rule of the 
 schoolmen and of Avenoes's Aristotelism was after- 
 wards the case in Europe. But the capacity for 
 expansion and growth had evidently been lost even 
 before the irruption of the Mahomed ans. The 
 far-ranging conquests and conversions of Islam in 
 India narrowed the field for the chance growth of 
 individual genius ; but the culminating point of 
 Brahminical learning had already been reached, and 
 it seems highly improbable that any Galileo or 
 Bacon would have arisen to break down old ideas 
 and force the acceptance of a new world of light on 
 recipients triply enveloped in learned misconceptions 
 and prejudices, without rivals or enemies, and re- 
 garding as abominable anything which should touch 
 their cherished traditions and beliefs. 
 
 Amid the sea of Mahomedan conquest there were 
 always some islands of Hindu independence. In 
 the territories of the Rajput princes, and in the 
 chiefships which arose on the decay of the Mogul 
 dynasties, Brahminical learning circled round and 
 round in a barren sphere of commentary exigesis 
 and verbal controversy. Learning was kept alive, 
 and the valuable treasures of the past were in part 
 
preserved, but with no fresh gifts to human thought 
 of appreciable value. For .centuries the case of 
 India was as the case of Greece during its long 
 domination by the Romans. The capacity to acquire, 
 to imitate, to work on ground already prepared, 
 existed ; the capacity to create and produce, to 
 estimate with penetrating judgment and a just sense 
 of proportion, had fallen into a state of trance or 
 torpor amid its vaporous environment of unsubstan- 
 tial learning. Yet the hereditary intellectual 
 faculty had not perished. It only awaited contact 
 with a living, vigorous, growing organism, to itself 
 awaken again into new activity. The right point of 
 view from which to look out on the problems of 
 human nature and life had been lost. The slavish 
 submission to authority, and to the dead-letter of 
 the sacred writings, deepened from age to age. It 
 required a mighty shock to break these bonds 
 asunder. This shock was given by the British con- 
 quests, and by the energy with which European 
 ideas in every sphere were forced on the attention 
 of Hindu scholars and thinkers in the last century. 
 Had the new light been as gladly welcomed as that 
 which spread over Europe at the revival of learning, 
 we might ere now have witnessed a complete rena- 
 scence of the native intellect. The variety of life, 
 the infiuite conflict ol contending interests, which in 
 Europe remoulded the boons of antiquity to the 
 uses of modern society, were in a great measure 
 
wanting in India. The severance of learning and 
 speculative power from the pursuits and the endless 
 suggest iveness of practical life was almost complete. 
 Religion everywhere stood forth with menacing 
 mien to guard the traditional learning and philo- 
 sophy from intrusion, examination, and improve- 
 ment. Hence it is that the culture of Europe 
 was for long so churlishly and grudgingly ac- 
 cepted. Even now men are not wanting and 
 scholars, too who affect to find in the out-worn 
 shastras a complete satisfaction for the spiritual 
 needs of humanity. The change which has to he 
 effected, which is slowly going on, needs for its 
 achievement the earnest, enthusiastic toil of a host 
 of many-sided men, who can ahsorb the modern 
 spirit without casting off their nationality. The 
 new must be w T edded to the old, blended with it ID 
 one existence, before the plastic force which is to 
 enrich the future can find complete development. 
 To bring about such a consummation, it is manifest 
 that much more must be done than merely to draw 
 or press larger numbers along in the traditional 
 grooves. A mere increase of numbers without an 
 enlargement of thought rather adds to the mass of 
 prejudice through which a path has to be made 
 towards the li^ht. Provision must be made, and 
 made ever more effective, for affording the appro- 
 pi iate nurture to the natural leaders of mental 
 progress. It is they who, equally with the great 
 
rishis of the past, will give its peculiar stamp to the 
 native character. The weaker men must follow in 
 their train. Thus, to afford to native students of 
 superior abilities the means of growing truly learned 
 and wise, is the noblest gift that England can bestow 
 on India when peace and order have once been 
 secured. There is, no doubt, a great advantage in 
 raising the general level of low intelligence by 
 means of diffused primary instruction. Mere skill 
 in arithmetic is a great economical benefit. But 
 the bonds of affinity which link the genius of one 
 nation to another, are not to be found in the ideas 
 and feelings of a mass of mediocrities. It is in the 
 higher regions of thought that the points of union 
 are found ; there it is that the powers are disciplined, 
 the judgments formed, the inspirations caught, which 
 afterwards the crowd instinctively, almost uncon- 
 sciously, obey. It is by associating with the master- 
 minds of our own and former generations that 
 individual genius takes the bent which fits it to be 
 the exponent of what is eternal in the thoughts that 
 surround it. Thus, and thus only, can be formed 
 and perfected the fit interpreters between the long- 
 severed branches of the Aryan family. 
 
 It cannot perhaps be said with exact truth that 
 far-reaching aims, extending to an ultimate fusion of 
 the civilisation of the East and the West, animated 
 the eminent men who laid the foundations of 
 modern State education in India. But being them- 
 
10 
 
 selves in some degree scholars, they sympathised 
 with learning, and desired to enter into alliance with 
 it. Looking on native society as they did, in the 
 condition it had reached unaffected by European 
 influences, the importance of the higher education was 
 more strongly and immediately evident to them than 
 that of primary instruction, which has since some- 
 times been made to stand in the way of vital pro- 
 gress. Warren Hastings, a man whose real greatness 
 comes out the clearer from every fresh investigation, 
 founded the Madresa, a Mahomedan college, at 
 Calcutta in 1781. Jonathan Duncan founded the 
 Sanskrit College at Benares in 1791. Mountstuart 
 Elphinstone held large and liberal views about 
 education, to which he was prepared to give effect 
 notwithstanding the risks which might attend such 
 a policy. His immediate successor as Commissioner 
 of the Dekkan, Mr. Chaplin, founded the Sanskrit 
 College at Poona in 1821. This institution was 
 abolished, and the materials were recast in 1851. 
 It had proved useless and barren, if not worse ; and 
 but little more could be said of the colleges at 
 Benares and Calcutta. So long as such institutions 
 worked on a traditional and purely indigenous basis 
 they could but maintain an inert existence. They 
 needed communion with the learning and philosophy 
 of Europe, with a new science, a different history, 
 and a different social theory, before the dry bones 
 could live again. More recent experience has shown 
 
11 
 
 that a revival was quite possible, and is gradually 
 teaching how the renewed life may become wise and 
 fruitful for India and for mankind. 
 
 The small beginnings to which I have pointed still 
 went farther than the State in England, in the last 
 century, was inclined to go. Yet the sense of public 
 responsibility for the education of the people v/as 
 gradually gathering force. It was easier to spend 
 Indian than English money on an experiment in 
 State education ; and thus it came about that India 
 took the lead of England, by almost a generation, in 
 providing pecuniarily, to some extent, for public 
 instruction. By the Charter Act of 1813 the 
 Governor-General was authorised to spend an annual 
 sum of not less than a lakh of rupees, out of the 
 surplus territorial revenue, on the revival and im- 
 provement of literature, the encouragement of the 
 learned natives of India, and on M the introduction 
 and promotion of a knowledge of the sciences among 
 the inhabitants of the British territories in India." 
 The aim was a generous one, but it was vaguely 
 conceived. The true nature and extent of the obli- 
 gation and of the burdens it imposed had to be 
 learned from experience. For many years, in 
 Bengal, the initiative in extending education was 
 left wholly to private efforts. 
 
 Mountstuart Elphinstone, as Governor of Bombay, 
 laid down his interpretation of the duty cast on the 
 Indian Government in terms which involved the 
 
12 
 
 principles of the present system. The Government 
 was, by means of its subsidies, to improve the teach- 
 ing in native schools, to supply school-books, to 
 encourage the lower and poorer classes to accept 
 instruction, to establish schools for imparting Euro- 
 pean science and higher education, to provide for the 
 publication of books on moral and physical science 
 in the vernacular, to establish schools for teaching 
 English as a discipline, and as a means of acquiring 
 a knowledge of European science and learning ; in 
 the study of which the natives were to be encou- 
 raged. A beginning had already been made, and on 
 Elphinstone's retirement a fitting memorial was 
 raised to him in the shape of the institution out of 
 which have since grown the Elphinstone College and 
 School. At Poona, meanwhile, a charity fund of 
 Rs. 35,000 a year was expended on the Sanskrit 
 College, an institution of purely indigenous type, 
 and from which European literature and science 
 were jealously excluded. 
 
 In the Bombay Presidency State education pro- 
 ceeded for a generation on the foundation thus laid 
 by Elphinstone. But the higher learning, being 
 virtually left to the care of the Sanskrit College and 
 of native scholars languished, and with it the 
 initiatory studies to which it should have afforded a 
 standard and stimulus. Much was done to diffuse 
 business knowledge, and the missionary volunteers 
 who stepped into the field of education were pro- 
 
13 
 
 tected and encouraged, but the mental centre of the 
 native community remained almost unchanged, no 
 communion was established between cultivated 
 Hindu minds and those of European scholars. The 
 Sanskrit College, it was found after a long trial, 
 "had failed of its object, had fulfilled no purpose 
 but that of perpetuating prejudices and false systems 
 of opinion ; " without abandoning the old ruts, true 
 progress was impossible. 
 
 In Bengal, meanwhile, arose the famous con- 
 troversy on the proper basis of teaching as Oriental 
 or English, in which the last word was for long and 
 by many supposed to have been pronounced by 
 Macaulay in his Minute of 1836. This is full of its 
 author's one-sidedness and rhetorical exaggeration. 
 But in advocating English rather than Sanskrit or 
 Arabic he was right even in the interests of these 
 languages and of those learned in them. What 
 those languages contain of positive learning, science, 
 and philosophy, though valuable for the history of 
 the human mind, for comparison and for suggestion, 
 yet rests on a narrow aud defective view of men's 
 mutual relations, and on a distorted and erroneous 
 observation of physical facts. A science accepting 
 grotesque contradictions of established truths and 
 history, everywhere defaced by crude fable, had 
 necessarily to be discarded. The rich grains of 
 thought embedded in so much rubbish could be 
 severed and saved only by the application of new 
 
14 
 
 standards and a newly-developed faculty of dis- 
 crimination. 
 
 Still the acceptance and the spread of European 
 thought was a slow process. One great reason for 
 this was the indifference or dislike of the higher 
 official class to literary culture in the natives. Even 
 in 1852 we find Sir G. Campbell saying 
 
 "Lord Hardinge distinguished himself by a 
 declaration, for the encouragement of education in 
 the Government colleges, that proficiency should 
 lead to employment in the service of Government, 
 which has not been and cannot be carried out, 
 mainly because a business education is not given 
 in those colleges, and the efficient service of Govern- 
 ment cannot be sacrificed to the gratification 
 of literary fancies. A young Hindu may know 
 Milton by heart, and yet not be fit for the charge of 
 a police station." l 
 
 The writer of such a passage as this evidently 
 failed not only in sympathy with the cravings of 
 able natives for an enlarged mental horizon, but in 
 appreciation of the marked superiority of a well- 
 cultivated mind even for the practical work of 
 every-day life. It has since been discovered that as 
 the work of administration grows more refined and 
 difficult, the graduates of a University make the 
 best judges and executive officers in all but the 
 lowest grades. As to education for purposes out- 
 1 Campbell, 'Modem India,' p. 198. 
 
15 
 
 side this narrow circle, Sir A. Lyall has expressed 
 the general conviction of thinking Englishmen 
 
 * England's prime function in India is at present 
 this : to superintend the tranquil elevation of the 
 whole moral and intellectual standard." 1 
 
 The wide diffusion of a colloquial knowledge of 
 English, and a general movement of thought in 
 matters educational, at last prepared the way for 
 a further great advance. The Dispatch of 1884, 3 
 dictated by Sir Charles Wood, was the foundation 
 of the existing system of public education in India. 
 The Court of Directors said : " The education w T e 
 desire to see extended is that which has for its object 
 the diffusion of the improvements, science, philo- 
 sophy, and literature of Europe in short, of Euro- 
 pean knowledge." They ordered that a graduated 
 series of schools and colleges should be established, 
 crowned in each Presidency hy a University. The 
 time was ripe for a great step in advance. The 
 new system was introduced, and the Acts of the 
 Legislature creating the Universities, passed in the 
 year of the great Mutiny, subsist as monuments of 
 the coolness and persistent energy of the English 
 race. 
 
 The system of public instruction thus set on foot 
 
 imitates in its outlines the English system. But it is 
 
 more complete and connected in its parts, and it 
 
 recognises more than the English system the duty of 
 
 1 Sir A. Lyall, ' Asiatic Studies,' p. 305. 
 
V 
 
 16 
 
 the State to support education in all its stages as 
 equally important to the public welfare. The 
 boons* held out by the Government have been 
 eagerly grasped by the people. The burden of 
 educating a nation, though shared by the voluntary 
 bodies, grew heavier year by year. The demand 
 for secondary and higher education, given now in a 
 far more effective way than formerly, continually 
 increased. Some alarm was felt at the vast numbers 
 of youths passing through the secondary schools to 
 the Universities. A reaction of feeling set in 
 amongst the European community ; and it is not too 
 much to say that now for several years any extension 
 of higher education has by many been looked on 
 with comparative coldness, if not positive disfavour, 
 except when it took the shape of technical instruc- 
 tion. Primary education, which no doubt deserves 
 all possible encouragement, has, it may be feared, in 
 some instances been cried up only to cry a higher 
 education down. Some native writers even have 
 joined in the cry. Thus Mr. Nanjoshi, writing 
 in 1890, says, " In the 'Self-Government Acts' 
 adequate provision is made for elementary educa- 
 tion, but the machinery by which the adequacy 
 has to be judged has not been working. Hundreds 
 of villages have yet got no schools ; higher and 
 secondary schools yet continue to be the white 
 elephants in the department, and primary education 
 is being starved." 
 
17 
 
 There are no doubt remote villages, and there are 
 half-savage tribes to which education has hardly 
 penetrated; but primary instruction is now so 
 diffused as to confer an average of three or four years' 
 schooling on every available boy of the school-going 
 age. The education of girls has lagged far behind, 
 but its progress in numbers is now not less rapid 
 than that of boys. 
 
 It is unquestionably an evil when secondary edu- 
 cation, still more when University education, so to 
 speak, outruns primary instruction. Improved 
 faculty, enlarged productiveness, in the lower strata 
 of society ought to furnish the material on which its 
 higher members work. There is no great need for 
 a large multiplication of secondary schools and of 
 colleges affiliated to the Universities, but there is 
 need for access to them being made easy to ability, 
 and great need for their teaching being raised and 
 widened, if those who pass through them and be- 
 come the intellectual leaders of India are to be equal 
 to their high calling, and are to take a part honour- 
 able to themselves and their nation in the creation of 
 an imperial spirit which shall supersede all ideas of 
 severance, and further that fusion of the philo- 
 sophies of the East and West to which we may now 
 look most hopefully for the moral and intellectual 
 advance of mankind. 
 
 The means at the disposal of Government for 
 purposes of education in a country where the material 
 
 
 
18 
 
 edifice of modern civilisation has to be built up in 
 one or two generations are necessarily scanty. In the 
 Bombay Presidency, where, perhaps, public educa- 
 tion has been the most earnestly pushed forward, 
 one-sixteenth of the land-tax is handed over to the 
 local boards, and these are required to expend one- 
 third of the amount on elementary education. Muni- 
 cipalities must provide for primary instruction, and 
 may provide middle and higher schools. The 
 Government, several years ago, engaged, to the 
 extent of its means, to pay one-third of the cost of 
 the schools which should be thus established; but 
 the hunger for education has exceeded the resources 
 available to satisfy it. The municipalities are so 
 alive to the advantages of a comparatively advanced 
 education that they desire to set up secondary 
 schools, to which the Government is unable to 
 contribute. The primary schools are treated 
 as a first charge on the public resources, whether 
 local or provincial ; and secondary schools have in 
 some cases even been suppressed. Where they 
 gave but a meagre feast of " cram " without true 
 enlargement or elevation, the result is not perhaps 
 much to be deplored; but the money thus saved 
 would be best expended on making the higher 
 education in all its stages more worthy of that 
 name. The tests for admission to the secondary 
 schools and classes should be more strict. The 
 teaching should be more individual and formative, 
 
19 
 
 the leaving examinations qualifying for appearance 
 at the entrance examinations of the University should 
 be far more exacting than they are. Not more than 
 half of those pronounced fit by the schoolmasters 
 succeed in the entrance examination, which, how- 
 ever, itself still admits many whom Nature will never 
 allow to be scholars. The supply of professional men 
 will not fail, and a mass of dull graduates crammed / 
 with formulus which they cannot assimilate, are a 
 mere dead-weight on the community. The eagerness 
 which everywhere subsists for secondary education 
 should be satisfied in another way, the duty of the 
 local bodies should be fulfilled in another way, than 
 by an indiscriminate establishment of new schools 
 which, being ill-supported, must needs be inefficient. 
 Every town community qualified for municipal rank, 
 say of 5,000 inhabitants or upwards, should be 
 required to provide by a small rate for the subsis- 
 tence by stipends of one student at a central secon- 
 dary school for each 2,000 of its population, and for 
 one student at an Arts College or a professional 
 college for each 4,000 of the population. The 
 students sent up should be subject to proper tests, 
 and the fees should be payable whether students 
 were provided or not. This would be a great and 
 systematic extension of the scheme of stipends 
 already acted on by some municipalities. It could 
 readily be extended to the rural local boards. The 
 increase of individual local burdens would be 
 
 c 2 
 
20 
 
 almost imperceptible, and the high schools and 
 colleges, enriched by additional contributions, could 
 enlarge and improve their standards of education 
 and their teaching staff. 
 
 Sir Richard Temple, writing in 1880/ said 
 
 "The fact that the Government in India main- 
 tains colleges of its own at all is the subject of 
 complaint in some quarters. It is urged that the 
 efforts of the State in this direction should be con- 
 fined to making grants-in-aid to the colleges belong- 
 ing to private societies; that these private colleges 
 are suffering from the competition of the Govern- 
 ment colleges; and that the Government colleges at 
 the Presidency cities of Calcutta, Madras, and 
 Bombay ought to be closed." 
 
 Yet, as he further observes 
 
 " The authorities at the Presidency colleges do not 
 attempt to undermine the missionary colleges by 
 charging town fees; on the contrary, they charge 
 somewhat higher fees than those of any private 
 institutions." 
 
 The fact is, that the greatly increased energy of 
 teaching in the Government institutions, and the 
 attraction of Government scholarships, had begun 
 to draw off a large proportion of the promising 
 pupils from the institutions of the missionary bodies. 
 It may be true also that the now highly-organised 
 and compact Educational Departments looked with 
 1 India in 1880, p. 147. 
 
21 
 
 some dislike or disdain on their humbler rivals; but 
 that any unfairness was shown in the dispensation of 
 the Government grants was never proved. The 
 Government had, in truth, grown only too anxious 
 to shift the burden of education as much as possible 
 from its own shoulders. It set on foot the Educa- 
 tional Commission, which, after an elaborate enquiry 
 in all parts of India, presented its Report in 1882. 
 This recommended a far-reaching transfer of edu- 
 cation from the Government to private control. 
 Secondary education, the Commission said, ought 
 to be gradually transferred to native management; 
 it should no longer be the concern of Government 
 when once Government could withdraw without 
 lowering the standards. Thus the managing bodies 
 which had proved unequal to compete with the 
 Government schools on equal terms were to super- 
 sede them, with all their chances of lax manage- 
 ment, defective teaching, and the impossibility of 
 personal adaptation which attends small organisa- 
 tions as compared with great ones. Outside the 
 Government schools and colleges the higher education 
 of India was virtually in the hands of the various 
 missionary bodies ; and to them first-rate teaching 
 of secular subjects could not, perhaps ought not, to 
 be the principal object. In spite of ability, devo- 
 tion, and force of character in individual cases, it is 
 even more true for India than for a European state, 
 that "a public system of schools is indispensable in 
 
22 
 
 modern communities/' if only for this, that " of 
 public schools you can take guarantees, of private 
 schools you cannot." You can examine the pupils, 
 and regulate your grant-in-aid according to the 
 results ; but you cannot maintain the same scientific 
 methods, the same ideal of attainments, the same 
 superiority in the body of teachers, as where they 
 are chosen purely on grounds of scholarship and 
 competence, are independent of the pupils and their 
 parents, and animated with the emulous spirit of a 
 great body free to strive, and always striving from 
 good to better in system and practice. 
 
 The recommendations of the Educational Com- 
 L mission pointed to a considerable saving to the 
 Government. Private effort was ready to take up 
 high education, and the Government wished as far 
 as possible to transfer it. Even " Board schools and 
 municipal schools," the Government of India said, 
 " are not private institutions in the sense contem- 
 plated by the Commission. What is meant is a 
 transfer of the Government schools and Board 
 schools to the hands of trustees in order to set free 
 funds for the extension of education in other 
 directions." In giving effect to the principles thus 
 indicated, the Educational Department have "retired 
 in a somewhat wholesale manner from the conduct 
 of secondary schools," in spite of the grave objections 
 already noted, and others arising from the necessity 
 of preserving a balance amongst opposing races and 
 
23 
 
 sects. When private bodies of natives take up the 
 work of education there is the further danger of its 
 being perverted to stimulate separatist sentiments 
 and foster national pride in forms that may prove 
 politically mischievous. Free criticism is what 
 every Government, founded in any degree on British 
 principies, must be content to submit to, but the 
 function of public censors does not afford a safe and 
 wholesome exercise for schoolboys, or even for their 
 teachers. A uniform acceptance of the system under 
 which they live, loyalty to the Throne, and proud 
 satisfaction in forming part of a great progressive 
 empire, are highly favourable, by the lofty calm 
 which they tend to produce, to both mental and 
 moral enlargement. Indolence on the part of 
 Government, or a short-sighted indifference to the 
 great opportunities it enjoys, may well prove the 
 source of infinite troubles in a not distant future. 
 
 Between 1883 and 1886 there was a diminution 
 from 282 to 230 of the English secondary schools 
 under State management in British India, while 
 those under Local Boards and municipalities in- 
 creased from 281 to 342. " Private trustees " have 
 as yet barely come into the field. The missionary 
 schools and colleges only are growing in number and 
 usefulness. The somewhat precipitate course that 
 secondary education was taking was pointed out to 
 the Government of India, but the result was only to 
 draw from it a declaration in 1888 that, " In educa- 
 
f 
 
 24 
 
 tional, as in all other matters, it is the policy of the 
 Government of India to avoid entering into competi- 
 tion with private enterprise." Its activity was, 
 therefore, to be limited u to helping, by reasonable 
 subventions, the operation of independent institu- 
 tions." It would " maintain but a few schools," in 
 order " to afford a standard." It was laid down that 
 "expenditure on Government educational institu- 
 tions should be a constantly diminishing quantity, 
 provided there is the assurance that the ground 
 abandoned by Government will be occupied by local 
 effort." There was even to be " a contraction in the 
 numbers educated, especially in the high schools 
 and colleges still maintained by Government." 
 
 The Administration Report of 1888-89 shows that 
 this resolution of the Government of India was 
 generally disapproved by the organs of public 
 opinion. They condemned as a retrograde step the 
 transfer of the higher education to private bodies, 
 not accepting the principle that the education of a 
 people was like a manufacturing business, in which 
 Government ought not to compete with private 
 enterprise, or not seeing the enterprise with which 
 it was to compete. They agreed rather with the 
 views of Macaulay, so vigorously expressed on a 
 similar subject in 1847. 
 
 " We have just come victorious out of a long and 
 fierce contest for the liberty of trade. While that 
 contest was undecided, much was said and written 
 
25 
 
 about the advantages of free competition, and about 
 the danger of suffering the State to regulate matters 
 which should be left to individuals. There has con- 
 sequently arisen in the minds of persons who are 
 led by words, and who are little in the habit of 
 making distinctions, a disposition to apply to poli- 
 titical questions and moral questions principles 
 which are sound only when applied tj commercial 
 questions. These people, not content with having 
 forced the Government to surrender a province 
 wrongfully usurped, now wish to wrest from the 
 Government a domain held by a right which was 
 never before questioned, and which cannot be ques- 
 tioned with the smallest show of reason. " If," they 
 say, " free competition is a good thing in trade, it must 
 surely be a good thing in education. The supply of 
 other commodities of sugar, for example is left 
 to adjust itself to the demand ; and the consequence 
 is that we are better supplied with sugar than if 
 the Government undertook to supply us. Why then 
 should we doubt that the supply of instruction 
 will, without the intervention of the Government, 
 be found equal to the demand ? " Never was there 
 a more false analogy." 
 
 The policy of withdrawal, however, has been 
 steadily pursued. In Madras, in 1888-89, there were 
 147 upper secondary schools, but of these only four 
 remained, which were directly supported and con- 
 trolled by Government. la other provinces a similar 
 
26 
 
 process has gone on, though on a less sweeping scale. 
 There has been a vast extension of secondary education 
 in the last ten years, but the charge to Government 
 has decreased, the augmented expenses being de- 
 frayed chiefly by increased fees. Nothing could 
 testify more strongly than this to the eagerness of 
 the people for advanced education. They desire 
 English education in preference to vernacular ; but, 
 judging by numbers, they desire instruction in the 
 
 ^ classical languages, and especially in Sanskrit, still 
 fifty per cent, more than in English. It is evident 
 that there is room now for an enlargement of the 
 basis of Sanskrit study ; it should no longer remain 
 isolated, but should be taught and learned in 
 connection with all that may be gained through 
 English of the European ways of lacing the same 
 problems which Sanskrit literature presents and 
 strives to splve. It is not unworthy of the most 
 powerful Government that it should respond to the 
 nobler cravings of its subjects, and the expansion of 
 the classical teaching need not involve any such 
 expense as would materially disturb the balance 
 between the outlay on secondary and on primary 
 education. The youths receiving secondary education 
 amount, after all, to only some five per cent, of the 
 
 \j whole number recorded as under instruction in 
 India. The students in colleges amount to no more 
 than one per cent. In England the proportion is twice 
 as great ; in a German State four or five times as 
 
27 
 
 great, of youths under secondary instruction. In a 
 German town, indeed, from a third to a half of the 
 children are in the higher schools; but in Germany 
 it is everywhere recognised, in direct opposition to 
 the principle announced by the Government of India, 
 that the State is more especially interested in the- 
 higher education, the town or locality in the lower. 
 The contributions of Government are regulated ac- 
 cordingly. 
 
 In 1890-91 the expenditure of the Government 
 of Bombay in aid of secondary schools is set down 
 as Rs. 10,230 on secondary schools under municipali- 
 ties against Rs. 27,403 contributed by the municipal 
 funds, and Rs. 27,348 obtained from fees. This is, of 
 course, far from representing the whole case, since 
 Rs. 125,000 were expended on secondary schools 
 managed directly by Government. But even here 
 fees were levied to the amount of Rs. 183,000. For 
 aided secondary schools under private management 
 Government contributed Ks. 190,000 towards an 
 aggregate expenditure of Rs. 700,000. The fees 
 produced Rs. 275,000, and the endowments about 
 Rs. 228,000. To secondary schools managed by Dis- 
 trict Local Boards the Government contributed but 
 Rs. 391 out of about Rs. 5,000. To the Government 
 secondary schools the municipalities contributed but 
 Rs. 6,700 and the Local Boards nothing. These 
 figures show that the Bombay Government has not 
 indeed wholly withdrawn from its care of secondary 
 
28 
 
 education, but they show too that the municipalities 
 are but little encouraged in their efforts to maintain 
 higher education, and that the public contributions 
 all round are meagre and insufficient. So far from 
 being pampered, secondary education is starved, 
 except in so far as it is sustained by tbe payments of 
 fees, and these in r India are extracted mainly from a 
 needy, half-famished class, having as strong a claim 
 as any to the public aid in qualifying their children 
 for their future callings. In the native States under 
 Bombay the total expenditure on secondary educa- 
 tion was lis. 190,000, and of this the States contri- 
 buted Rs. 134,000. Admitting then the claims of 
 primary instruction, it may fairly be contended that 
 even in] Bombay secondary education, so greedily 
 sought and readily paid for by the people, may pro- 
 perly ask such support from the State as shall raise 
 it to the highest efficiency, and by means of bur- 
 saries bring it within reach of every boy of ade- 
 quate capacity and promise. If all India is taken 
 into view the case is no better, perhaps worse than 
 in Bombay. Between 1881 and 1885 the total 
 cost of secondary instruction for boys rose from 
 forty-four to sixty-four lakhs of rupees, while the 
 Government contributions actually diminished from 
 Rs. 1,590,000 to Rs. 1,518,000. In Madras in 1888- 
 89 there were 147 high schools, with some 26,000 
 pupils. But of these forty-seven were unaided, and, 
 of course, uncontrolled ; sixty-eight were aided ; 
 
29 
 
 twenty-eight were Local Board schools, and only four 
 directly supj)orted and controlled by Government. 
 
 In University education the retrogression of 
 Government has been marked in 1889-90 by 
 reducing the staff of European professors at the 
 Hooghley College, and by placing the Krishnagur 
 and Rajashaha Colleges under a European principal 
 of the subordinate educational service, assisted by 
 graduates of the Calcutta University. The education 
 at these institutions may possibly not be seriously 
 and immediately impaired by the changes in the 
 staff; but there is, at least, a risk of deterioration. 
 The students in the Bengal Colleges went on mean- 
 while increasing, while the cost of each to Govern- i 
 ment fell by about twenty per cent. Economy was 
 further attained by refusing grants-in-aid to 413 
 secondary schools in 1889-90, which was followed 
 in 1890-91 by a decline of 2,000 in the number of 
 pupils in these establishments, though the number of 
 schools increased. In the Panjab, of six colleges, 
 only one remained under Government control in 
 1890-91. The control of University education, 
 of which the Government is divesting itself, is not 
 as yet passing in any large measure into native hands. 
 In Madras in 1887-88, of eleven first-class colleges 
 teaching the course up to the B.A. degree, seven 
 were aided colleges, six maintained by missionary 
 bodies, and one the Doveton (Protestant) College. 
 Three high schools, it is said, became second-grade 
 
I 
 
 I 
 
 V 
 
 30 
 
 colleges, teaching up to the first examination in 
 arts, and three, it is further said, are under native 
 committees. There is one college of higher rank, 
 founded by the Maharajah of Vizianagram ; but the 
 most completely developed, and perhaps the only 
 fully developed college under purely native manage- 
 ment in India, is the Fergusson College at Poona. 
 The college at Aligarh is a native foundation, but 
 it is under a European principal. It is the mis- 
 sionaries who thus far are taking the place of 
 Government, and the readiness with which their 
 teaching is accepted proves the intense desire of 
 the people for high education. There is no reason 
 to doubt that the missionary colleges do their work 
 efficiently ; their students take honours in the Uni- 
 versity examinations. Yet secular instruction is not 
 the aim of their being, and Sir A. Croft remarks of 
 Bengal, in 1888-89, that the superiority of the 
 Government colleges was fully maintained. 
 
 The institution of the science degrees in the 
 Indian Universities, or the introduction of the 
 science subjects into the course for B.A., produced 
 a certain movement from the literary to the science 
 course. In Madras, in 1887-8, there was a transfer 
 of about thirty per cent, of candidates from lan- 
 guages to the various " optional " or selected 
 subjects. The extension of professional openings 
 and professional studies will, it may be hoped, con- 
 tinue to attract many students to physical science; 
 
31 
 
 but, in spite oi" the general success of the candidates 
 for degrees taking up the optional subjects, they 
 have of late declined in numbers from year to year. 
 Sir A. Croft observes that in the unaided colleges 
 science is virtually no longer taught. The st rong 
 natural bent of the people of Bengal has prevailed 
 against all inducements. 
 
 In Bombay the impetus given under Lord Reay's 
 administration to technical teaching has not yet 
 lost any of its force. It is maintained with libe- 
 rality, the expenditure in 1890-91 having risen 
 from 89,000 rupees to 123,000 rupees contributed 
 by Government. Literary education and technical 
 training go on pari passu, though pursued gene- 
 rally by quite different classes of students. But 
 training for practical ends is sought in the Victoria 
 Jubilee Technical Institute, and in the classes of the 
 Poona College of Science. In the University the 
 old order of studies still maintains its predominance. 
 The number of students taking up the classical 
 languages does not decline, and the general interest 
 of native society in the Sanskrit literature grows 
 more pronounced as it grows more enlightened. 
 But while the demand for a higher and more 
 complete teaching is thus growing, the means of 
 teaching, even where they have not been lessened, 
 have not been allowed to increase. There would 
 seem, as Sir A. Croft reported in 1888, to be "room 
 for a great development of the highest form of educa- 
 
32 
 
 tion, of the value of which to its possessors and to the 
 State there can be little doubt ;" but the Government 
 colleges, which could best impart the highest instruc- 
 tion, are bound down to tasks of a lower order by 
 the insufficiency of their staffs. Mr. Wordsworth, 
 the Principal of the Elphinstone College, reports : 
 4< If no additions are to be made, the work of 
 preparing youths for the previous examinations 
 should be carried on in the high schools or 
 provincial colleges, and this college be open 
 only to students preparing for the higher examina- 
 tions. With our existing staff we could teach these 
 pretty effectually, and include in our course some 
 lectures for those reading for the degree of M.A " 
 It is evident, then, that, as at present constituted 
 and manned, the Government colleges fall short of 
 giving that highest instruction without which all 
 the lower teaching must more or less fail to produce 
 a creative, reproductive intelligence. It is only to 
 Government agency that we can look for this highest 
 teaching; and for a due balance of effort and deve- 
 lopment amongst the several classes of instruction 
 it is indispensable. 
 
 It has already been pointed out, in the inaugural 
 address of the eminent President of this Congress, 
 how the study of Sanskrit has, in the past generation, 
 added to the history of the human mind and of 
 human institutions. It is taking an ever-widening 
 place in the field of literature and history, and the 
 
33 
 
 facts and thoughts which it presents claim more and 
 more an equal place beside those furnished by the 
 more familiar literature of ancient and modern 
 Europe. For India a correct appreciation of the 
 teachings of its literature is of inestimable import- 
 ance. In no other country is the present so deeply 
 rooted in the past ; in none are existing institutions, 
 beliefs, and manners so unintelligible, except by 
 reference to their origin in a remote antiquity. The 
 search for what this far past has to reveal, the 
 interpretation of what it has to tell, ought to be, 
 must be in great part, the work of native scholars. 
 But just as the treasures of Sanskrit are now found 
 indispensable by the European scholar to a complete 
 survey of human progress, so must the native student 
 be furnished with an ample armament of general 
 culture, with European learning and European 
 methods of investigation, if he is to discover and 
 appreciate the golden ore in the Eastern mines of 
 learning. He must bear a torch of European criti- 
 cism if he is to draw from his native stores matter 
 that will be accepted as a true addition to the wealth 
 of mankind. He it is who has to take up those 
 elements of civilisation which Europe offers, and 
 present them in shapes which his countrymen can 
 assimilate, and through them find their way into the 
 great march of modern progress. A stunted and 
 merely Asiatic culture will for such a purpose be 
 almost useless. Of Sanskrit, as of many other 
 
 D 
 
 ^ 
 
34 
 
 things, it may be said that to know it alone is but 
 to half know it, and recent history demonstrates 
 that its study cannot really flourish except when it 
 grows side by side with a free and generous culture 
 in the widest sense. 
 
 The few purely Oriental colleges that have 
 survived in India have been described as "mere 
 remnants of old institutions, designed for the culti- 
 vation of the classical learning of the Hindus and 
 Mahomedans, especially as bearing on their religion, 
 laws, and customs." Only three of these colleges 
 survive : the Sanskrit department of the college at 
 Benares; the Oriental department of the Canning 
 College at Lucknow, and the Oriental college at 
 Lahore. There is also the Madrasa at Calcutta, but 
 this has become merely a second-grade college. Its 
 standard in Arabic is not prescribed by any Univer- 
 sity, and its literary energy stands almost at zero. 
 The Oriental department of the Canning College 
 has about ninety students, of whom the majority are 
 Mahomedans. They are examined by the Punjab 
 University for its Oriental titles, but not for ordinary 
 degrees. The Calcutta Sanskrit College now instructs 
 classes for the first examination in Arts. Some half- 
 dozen or so of students may be found reading 
 Sanskrit for the degree of M.A. The Sanskrit 
 department of the College at Benares presents a 
 much better figure. It has about 460 students. 
 Proficiency is rewarded by Oriental titles. In the 
 
35 
 
 Anglo-Sanskrit department there are about fifty- 
 students, mostly pundits of advanced years. The 
 crowd of Brahmins, who in former days taught 
 Sanskrit to thousands of disciples from all parts of 
 India, has vanished. The ancient interest in the 
 study has died out, the newer interest seeks other 
 ways of satisfaction. The Benares students, as may 
 well be supposed, devote themselves to learning 
 with great zeal and assiduity ; and the knowledge 
 they acquire is, in a narrow way, solid and complete. 
 Yet we learn that outside "mathematics and 
 astronomy, taught by translations from English, the 
 teaching moves entirely in the old grooves. What 
 we should call a critical knowledge of the language 
 is scarcely to be found." The Anglo-Sanskrit depart- 
 ment, opened, or reopened, in 1884, has not as yet 
 had time to produce any material effect. 
 
 We could not gather from these examples that 
 Sanskrit, standing alone and as a law unto itself, 
 was capable of doing much for the mental enrich- 
 ment of modern India, or even of long maintaining 
 itself as a subject of general serious study. The 
 Oriental College at Lahore was started with wider 
 aims and a more promising announcement of studies. 
 * It cultivates the Oriental classical languages along 
 with the higher branches of European knowledge 
 through the vernaculars. . . . Students are thus 
 prepared for examination in arts, medicine, and 
 engineering." . . . The chief object of the students 
 
 d 2 
 
36 
 
 is not the acquisition of general knowledge, but the 
 advanced study of the Eastern classics. . . . The 
 higher training in the classics enables us to attract 
 classes who have a desire for Eastern but none for 
 Western learning, and to insist on the acquisition 
 of a certain amount of more general knowledge 
 that required for the entrance examination of the 
 Oriental Faculty. . . . We hope gradually to lead 
 our students to follow the course for degrees rather 
 than that Tor titles." 
 
 The Punjab College was made a University 
 in 1882. It was intended to be Oriental in spirit 
 and character without being confined to the 
 study of Oriental learning and languages. The 
 examinations in Arts are held not onlv in English 
 but in the vernacular langmges, and an Oriental 
 Faculty examines for special degrees in Oriental 
 classics. An institution resting on such broad and 
 liberal ideas ought a priori to have achieved a 
 great success. It may be presumed to have done 
 for Sanskrit and Arabic all that could be done by 
 merely Oriental methods. These were carried so 
 far that astronomy was taught for some time accord- 
 ing to the Ptolemaic system, as adopted by the 
 Arabians. An investigation into the working of the 
 institution was held in 1885-86, and this " brought 
 to light the extraordinary condition, of affairs that 
 all the students who were attending the college 
 and school were stipendaries, with the exception 
 
37 
 
 of forty-six, who were in expectation of receiv- 
 ing stipends." This gave occasion to some very 
 caustic comments on the part of the Lieutenant- 
 Governor, who found that students' stipends had 
 been drawn for eight, ten, and even fourteen years. 
 " With regard to the scope of the pretensions and 
 the operations of the Oriental College and School," 
 the Sub-Committee found that they were "altogether 
 out of proportion to the available means, teaching 
 power, and appliances." The Sub-Committee state, 
 " There are, at present, no classes in Hindu and 
 Mahomedan law. As regards the medical classes, 
 it was found that the only instruction given was half 
 an hour a day in the study of ancient Sanskrit, or 
 Arabic medical books." Yet the Oriental classics, it 
 was reported, were taught up to a high standard, 
 and science and general knowledge were well con- 
 veyed through the vernacular. The purely artificial 
 character of the Institution was proved by the fact 
 that, as compared with an expenditure by Govern- 
 ment of Ks. 25,447, only Rs. 578 were realised from 
 fees. 
 
 It seems to result from this examination of all the 
 available instances, that Oriental education, on a 
 purely Oriental basis in India, has not quite suc- 
 ceeded, even when tried under the most favourable 
 conditions. It is equally evident that there is an 
 insufficient provision for high University education. 
 In 1885-6, as Sir Alfred Croft points out, only 
 
r, 
 
 I 
 
 38" 
 
 twelve colleges in all India prepared candidates 
 successfully for the degree of M.A. " If the instruc- 
 tion were provided, there would probably be no lack 
 of students to take advantage of it." It ought to be 
 provided, and especially in Sanskrit, as the comple- 
 tion and the crown of a thorough and comprehen- 
 sive course of general study linked closely on to 
 the whole body of University teaching. It is as im- 
 portant to the students of to-day, who are to be the 
 teachers of the future, as a knowledge of precedents 
 is to the English lawyer. It should be taught, if 
 necessary, more intensively rather than extensively. 
 It is dear to the people, the key by which the riddle 
 of their existence is solved, a means whereby the two 
 great masses of British subjects can at length meet 
 upon a common ground of thought. 
 
 I have pointed to the fact that the system of 
 public education in India was similar in its main 
 outlines to the English system. It was well to start 
 from a known platform, but the English plan was 
 obviously but a fragment of a complete system. It 
 provided only for the simplest rudimentary instruc- 
 tion as a public care. The State education of India 
 is in this respect immensely ahead of it, and yet this, 
 especially in recent years, has been obstructed and 
 embarrassed by a tangle of notions of British growth, 
 grown obsolete, in a great measure, even in the 
 United Kingdom, and wholly inapplicable to a 
 country of such widely different conditions as India. 
 
39 
 
 The statesman of India should be enlightened, not 
 enslaved, by the example of this country. 
 
 " Not clinging to an ancient saw, 
 Not mastered by a modern term. 5 * 
 
 Piercing through circumstances to principles he 
 should discern that the higher and the highest 
 education he can bestow is the perpetual want of 
 India until it be satisfied, and that the interest of 
 England is beyond all measure concerned in the 
 shape and direction given to the growing and aspir- 
 ing intellect of the great dependency. ^ 
 
 The secondary schools in India have this advantage 
 over the endowed schools in England, that they are 
 subject to regular and searching examination. They 
 form a part of the system inspected and controlled 
 by the Education Department. In England, on the 
 other hand, when the Charity Commissioners have 
 once framed a scheme for a school, and set it going, 
 it is thenceforward left very much to itself. It does 
 not come within the visitations of the Inspectors of 
 Schools, because it is not a primary aided school ; the 
 Charity Commissioners have no authority to appoint 
 inspectors or exercise superintendence. Hence they 
 have no official means of testing either the soundness 
 of their schemes or the intelligence and zeal with 
 which they are carried out by the governing bodies. 
 Nor can the Charity Commissioners find out with any 
 certainty where a want of secondary education is most 
 
felt, and how for each locality it may best be supplied. 
 Wales and Scotland are in this respect distinctly in 
 advance of England. In England the State does not 
 found high schools or help, or even inspect them. 
 They are found in some places where they are 
 almost thrown away. In others they exist not where 
 they are most needed, or exist only through private 
 enterprise or benevolence. There are some scholar- 
 ships linking the primary to the secondary schools, 
 and this is a point at which the Charity Commis- 
 sioners aim in their schemes for reorganising educa- 
 tional foundations ; but there is an absolute want of 
 continuity and system as between the lower and the 
 higher education. The State looks after the former ; 
 the latter, equally important, is left almost to chance. 
 India, in the outline, at least, of its educational 
 system, approaches the completeness of Germany. 
 There is a regular gradation of schools and of studies 
 from the lowest to the highest, and to the University. 
 Voluntary bodies who have established schools and 
 colleges receive grants in aid on terms which place 
 them on an equality with the Government institu- 
 tions, and which are perfectly satisfactory to them. 
 They provide instruction in many cases at lower 
 rates and with more consideration for individual 
 cases than the purely public institutions. A poor 
 boy of unusual ability knows exactly what oppor- 
 tunities are open to him, what line he has to take 
 in order to make his way to a University degree ; 
 
41 
 
 and there are aids enough on the way in the shape 
 of Government and municipal scholarships to en- 
 courage him in diligence. The plan of Indian 
 public education is not ill laid down. What it 
 wants is enrichment, enlargement, the capacity and 
 means to cultivate the best abilities, to turn out 
 and preserve to learning a larger a much larger 
 proportion of distinguished men among the host 
 of mediocrites. But it needs, too, a recognition 
 of the principle thoroughly accepted in Germany, 
 that the higher the scale of education the wider 
 the region instructed in it. Thus the State should 
 contribute a larger proportion to the secondary 
 than to the primary school. In India it is gene- 
 rally just the reverse. In England secondary edu- 
 cation is left to take care of itself. The very 
 wealth of endowments with which the community 
 has been enriched by the munificence of past 
 generations has in recent years stood in the way of 
 a systematic progress of scholars from the lowest to 
 the highest rung of the educational ladder. Many 
 of our great foundations date from an earlier period, 
 but the sixteenth century was particularly fruitful 
 in grammar-schools. It was a time when men's 
 minds were greatly and nobly stirred, a time of 
 rising prices, of prosperity for the middle classes, 
 and of confidence in the future. The endowments 
 took generally the form of dedications of land, which 
 were specially appropriate for large towns, because 
 
V 
 
 42 
 
 the value of the land would increase with the growth 
 of population, and of children needing instruction. 
 The stream of benevolence, though lessened in 
 proportion to the nation's wealth, has never ceased to 
 flow, but many new objects have arisen, and new 
 means of elementary education have come into 
 existence on lines different from those of earlier 
 times. A generous education was in the times 
 following the revival of learning recognised as the 
 only education. Instruction aimed at learning, as 
 learning was then conceived ; but the practical needs 
 of active life were little cared for by the grammar- 
 school master, and the demand for immediately useful 
 instruction, even on a very low level, gave rise to 
 the private adventure schools in which the mass of 
 middle-class Englishmen have been brought up. 
 
 No country shows more than England the im- 
 poverishment which the lower everyday studies 
 suffer through a divorce from the higher. While 
 classical and philosophical learning has kept on the 
 old lines, sharing fairly in the general movement of 
 European thought, though suffering by its partial 
 severance from the great active interests of the nation, 
 the exigencies of daily life amongst a lower, rougher 
 class have been met by a rude rule-oi-thumb educa- 
 tion, or rather instruction, supplying in a fragmentary 
 unorganised way such scraps of practical accomplish- 
 ments as were indispensable for purposes of business. 
 There is neither the systematic discipline imposed on 
 
43 
 
 the teachers and learners of the classical languages nor 
 is teaching based on a thorough study of human facul- 
 ties and human growth, and working on this founda- 
 tion towards a gymnastic of the mind, which shall 
 open wider and strengthen it in such a sequence of 
 training as may produce the maximum of energy and 
 flexibility in the whole sphere of effort and invention 
 within which the intended occupations are embraced. 
 Individual genius of course triumphs in England, 
 as everywhere, over the obstacle of unfavourable 
 surroundings, but in England perhaps more than 
 anywhere capacity goes to waste through want of 
 cultivation. Recent years no doubt have seen great 
 efforts made by the Charity Commissioners to make 
 the educational endowments which abound in some 
 parts of the country available for carrying on youths 
 of exceptional promise from one stage to another of 
 education. The existence even of such possibilities for 
 ability and diligence is not generally known. There 
 is a complete absence of a system connecting the 
 lower with the higher schools, and with the Univer- 
 sities. There may incidentally and occasionally be 
 some gain in leaving a leaven of high intelligence,-*^ 
 even though uncultivated, to work amongst the 
 masses ; but this is not to be compared in value, 
 socially or politically, with a continuous and regular 
 movement upwards, bringing home to the poor and 
 ignorant, that for them as for others for their sons, at 
 any rate there is a free career open to ability. A 
 
" 
 
 
 chain of common intellectual interests, binding the 
 different orders of the community together, is not 
 less important in view of the rising problems of the 
 future, than the political and religious connections 
 which counteract the severing influence of differences 
 of means. Now, in the matter of gradation and 
 co-ordination in its educational system, India is dis- 
 tinctly in advance of England. Scotland and Wales 
 will bear comparison with India, as they take greatly 
 the lead of England, but in any criticism of the 
 Indian Educational Department, it must be borne in 
 mind that, with limited means, and with enormous 
 difficulties to contend against, the Government has 
 placed instruction, and the highest instruction, fairly 
 within the reach of every youth of ability who 
 chooses to strive for it. 
 
 By the Welsh Intermediate Education Act of 
 1889, provision is made for an Education Committee 
 for each county. The Committee is to submit to 
 the Charity Commissioners a scheme for the inter- 
 mediary and technical education of the country, and 
 for the use of existing endowments. The County 
 Council may provide for the scheme out of the 
 county rate, with a condition for its own representa- 
 tion on the governing board. The scheme has to be 
 dealt with and put in operation by the Charity 
 Commissioners, like one for an endowed school. 
 Provision is thus made for a complete scheme of 
 secondary schools if only the County Councils will 
 
45 
 
 vote the requisite funds The extra rate for this 
 purpose must not exceed a halfpenny in the pound. 
 To the sum thus raised may be added an equal sum 
 from the Treasury, on condition of the schools being 
 maintained in an efficient state. The schemes pro- 
 posed must be approved by the Charity Commis- 
 sioners, which it may be hoped will prevent any 
 degradation of the existing means, slender as they 
 are, of higher instruction. 
 
 In Scotland, secondary education has in some 
 way been provided for in the ordinary schools during 
 the last two centuries. There are many more en- 
 dowments than in Wales, though not so many as in 
 England. A power oi rating not only for lower but 
 for higher class schools, was given by the legislation 
 of twenty years ago. It was found by experience 
 that enough had not been done for secondary educa- 
 tion, and further arrangements had to be made, but 
 the problem presented itself under far more favour- 
 able conditions than elsewhere. 
 
 By a recent order of the Scottish Education Com- 
 mission of the Privy Council, a representative Com- 
 mittee will be formed for every county. 
 
 It will report on the existing means of higher 
 education in each county in Scotland. 
 
 It will name the schools fitted for an additional 
 provision, and the school districts where new schools 
 are needed. It will say whether any secondary 
 school, not being a higher-class public school under 
 
46 
 
 the Act of 1872, is eligible for a share in the 
 grant. 
 
 It will consider any proposal submitted by the 
 County Council for promoting technical education 
 in connection with secondary education by means of 
 funds at its disposal. 
 
 There are similar provisions for the great burghs 
 of Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen, and Dundee. 
 
 The allowances are 3 a head for average of boys 
 above 13 who have passed Standard VI. ; 6 a head 
 for children who, having been for three years in a 
 public or State-aided school, have passed Standard 
 VI., and such further examination as may be 
 prescribed to test their fitness for secondary education; 
 2 a head for those under 13 who have passed 
 Standard VI. ; to State-aided schools making pro- 
 vision for higher education, 1 a head for each pupil 
 passing the third stage of a special subject deemed 
 secondary, and 3 for each who then remains a year 
 learning secondary subjects. 
 
 Suitable buildings must be provided and the 
 curriculum must be approved as conditions of the 
 aforesaid grants. 
 
 The continuation of the grant is conditional on 
 annual approval by the County Committee or 
 Burgh Committee and Scottish Education Depart- 
 ment of the work of the schools. 
 
 I have pointed already to the earnest and widely- 
 spread desire for secondary education which prevails 
 
47 
 
 in India. In the great towns which are the centres 
 of industrial activity the craving for technical instruc- 
 tion is no less vigorous. The objects properly included 
 in secondary and in technical education are very 
 well indicated in Section 17 of the Welsh Act already 
 referred to. It is almost a disgrace to great cities of 
 the empire like Calcutta, Madras, and Bombay if 
 they do not profit by the examples which have been 
 set them by the chief towns of the United Kingdom, 
 and, with the aid which they may most reasonably 
 claim, establish secondary schools on a large and 
 liberal scale. If their inhabitants in the next genera- 
 tion are to retain their place in the world of intellect 
 and of material prosperity, learning and science and 
 the applications of science must be assiduously 
 studied. A truly corporate spirit ought to manifest 
 itself in all ways in which, as in this, combined and 
 co-ordinated action is immeasurably more efficient 
 than individual effort. Offers of private endowments 
 should be met in a generous spirit, and the Govern- 
 ment thus shamed, if necessary, into an equal 
 liberality. Every populous municipality in India 
 should strive to place itself en the level of Edinburgh 
 or Dundee, and make secondary instruction in learn- 
 ing and in industrial arts one of the main aims of its 
 corporate existence. In some of the municipalities 
 below the first rank the requisite spirit exists ; in 
 the greatest it may be feared a less noble ambition 
 or a greater stinginess prevails. But by one means 
 
48 
 
 or another, from one source or another, provision 
 must be made for keeping the Indian scholar and 
 the Indian artificer or captain of labour abreast of 
 the general line of progress if the gains of to day are 
 to be preserved, and positive retrogression is to be 
 avoided. 
 
 The mofussil or rural districts of India are now 
 almost everywhere brought under the control of 
 local boards established under the impulse given 
 by Lord Ripou's administration. These may, for 
 our present purpose, be compared with the County 
 Councils of the United Kingdom. Wherever, within 
 the bounds of a zilla, the want of secondary educa- 
 tion of either class has become distinctly felt, a way 
 should be provided on the Welsh or the Scottish 
 model for the constitution of a local educational 
 council or committee, and for the establishment of 
 such secondary schools on such a footing as may be 
 expedient. The local boards should be invested 
 with a power of rating within modest limits for this 
 special purpose, and the provincial Government 
 should be empowered or required to supplement the 
 rate in each case with an equal sum from the general 
 provincial revenues up to an aggregate settled quin- 
 quennially by the Imperial Government. The 
 schemes would differ materially for different dis- 
 tricts. It may be feared that in some apathy, or the 
 dread even of a slightly increased fiscal burden, 
 would prevent any universal demand for higher 
 
49 
 
 instruction from arising. In such cases it should be 
 open to any substantial portion of the community to 
 make the requisite demand, and to Government to 
 act on such demand. The contribution from the 
 provincial revenue would be a sufficient check on 
 hasty assent. The principle of a local provision, 
 compulsory for primary instruction, discretionary 
 for secondary education, is already embodied in the 
 law, but two further steps are necessary, or at least 
 desirable: (1) The constitution of an Educational 
 Commission on the Scottish system ; and (2) a power 
 to enforce action in favour of higher instruction 
 when necessary. Add to these a uniform con- 
 trihution by Government, and then the machinery 
 would be complete. At present the Government 
 in Bombay desires to help local boards to the 
 extent of one-third of the cost of elementary 
 education, but its means, like those of the local 
 boards, are insufficient. They could be found and 
 would be found in the quinquennial fiscal contract 
 between the provincial and the Imperial Governments 
 if a statutory duty were imposed on the former to 
 aid local communities commensurately with their 
 willingness to tax themselves both for primary and 
 for secondary education. In most municipalities of 
 Western India a special education rate would be 
 J east unpalatable when devoted to the purpose of 
 higher instruction, in a liberal sense, but with due 
 regard to the specific wants of the population. It 
 
 E 
 
50 
 
 has, indeed, been found necessary to check a munici- 
 pality's contribution, and official congratulations 
 have been uttered over municipalities' parsimony in 
 this direction, as leaving more available for primary 
 instruction. 
 
 Considering the position of England as the mis- 
 tress of India, and the fact that Her Majesty rules 
 over six Asiatics for one subject of European blood, 
 the provision made in England for the encourage- 
 ment of Oriental learning is of a mean and unworthy 
 kind. The able young men who crowd pur Univer- 
 sities, looking anxiously forward for a career, see 
 that, except by great good fortune, to turn to 
 Sanskrit or Arabic, instead of Greek and Latin, 
 would be to ruin their prospects, to place themselves 
 on a low level of means and comfort, for all their 
 I lives. India could afford something, England could 
 i. afford much, towards remedying this evil, and 
 making English Orientalists as numerous and pro- 
 ductive, let us say, as those of Germany. In the 
 disposal of offices that require Oriental learning, the 
 Universities and other learned bodies would do well 
 to give a preference to men who, by long residence 
 in India, have gained a living acquaintance with its 
 literature as it lives and works in the mind of the 
 people. Native scholars of distinguished erudition 
 should be invited and induced to take up their 
 residence, and to work and lecture for a longer or 
 shorter period in the United Kingdom. Some young 
 
51 
 
 Englishmen of unusual zeal and promise should be 
 sent to complete their studies at Benares. Such 
 supplementary measures as these would complete 
 and crown the improved development of learning 
 in India. They w 7 ould bring the metropolitan 
 country into closer relation with its great dependency; 
 they would do something to correct the super- 
 ciliousness which springs from ignorance, and to 
 promote that communion of thought and feeling, 
 without which a true and all-pervading unity of 
 imperial spirit is all but impossible. 
 
 In India, as has been done in Egypt, a large sum 
 might be obtained for Sanskrit education out of the 
 numerous religious endowments, without any de- 
 parture from their main purpose. In some cases 
 which have come into the Courts new schemes for 
 the administration of the charities have been framed, 
 and in the place of large additions to genuine places 
 and to the crowd of mendicants to be fed gratui- 
 tously, provision has been made for the establishment 
 and extension of schools. An Act was passed by 
 the legislation a couple of years ago under which 
 the Government can in many cases do even more 
 efficiently what the Courts have sometimes done. 
 In the present state of feeling of the native commu- 
 nity in India, no applications of charitable funds 
 would be more acceptable than those by whicj* 
 education should be extended ; and if this extension 
 should, even in part, take the shape of placing the 
 
 e 2 
 
52 
 
 study of Sanskrit and of Arabic on a high and 
 scholarly basis, it would everywhere be taken as a 
 sign of true interest and sympathy, and do much to 
 endear their rulers to the Hindu and Mahomedan 
 subjects of Her Majesty. Many opulent natives of 
 India chiefs and others feel a deep religious, as 
 well as a social and benevolent, interest in the higher 
 education of their countrymen. We have only to 
 look at the long list of endowments conferred on 
 the University of Bombay during its one generation 
 of existence, to see that a generous desire to aid 
 scholarship is very widely diffused. It is indeed 
 the opinion of some who know the University well, 
 that there are in proportion scholarships enough, 
 and that more good can now be done by adding to 
 the general fund of the University than by creating 
 additional prizes. But all will, I think, concur, 
 when I commend to the attention of wealthy and 
 patriotic men the founding of lectureships and 
 scholarships constituted specially for the pursuit of 
 original research, and for widening and deepening 
 the foundations on which the Indian, and especially 
 Sanskrit, learning of the future is to be built. The 
 aim should be to make native scholars not only 
 complete masters of their own sacred language, but 
 masters also of the general learning and philosophy, 
 without which their special acquirements must lose 
 half their value. 
 
 If the several means of governmental corporate 
 
53 
 
 and individual action which I have indicated should 
 be brought to bear energetically but judiciously on 
 Indian students, the result in a generation would be 
 a rise in the quality of native education as remark- 
 able as its wide extension during our own time. 
 Whether in those active pursuits which call for a 
 large share of physical energy the Hindus will ever 
 quite equal Europeans may reasonably be doubted ; 
 but in learning and speculation they may certainly 
 expect to produce some great masters from among 
 the multitude who are ready to become submissive 
 and earnest disciples. 
 
 In dwelling as I have done on the duty and the 
 means of enlarging and elevating the native learning 
 of India, I would not be understood as advocating 
 any indiscriminate multiplication of the mere pass- 
 men who take up Sanskrit or Persian as their 
 classical language for the bachelor's degree. The 
 aim should be rather to increase the depth and fulness 
 of learning than to add to the crowd of half-trained 
 scholars. The tasks and traditions of the Hindus tend 
 always to throw an excessive number of competitors 
 into the ranks of those who seek literary employ- 
 ment. Thousands become ill-educated scholars 
 merely because this is their hereditary calling, and 
 they have not energy to strike into a new career. 
 These numerous ineffectives lower the general level 
 of aspiration even amongst those who do better. 
 They should be to a large extent excluded from the 
 
54 
 
 career of learning by severer tests applied at an early- 
 stage, and, as far as possible, other careers should be 
 opened for them. The sluggish and incapable must 
 needs be comparative failures in any line whatever, 
 but many who have no literary gift might succeed 
 as engineers, as builders, carpenters and machinists. 
 The appliances of advanced mechanical art have as 
 yet been but little brought to bear on the construc- 
 tion of houses in Indian cities. Sanitation is in its 
 infancy ; sound and pure art is but little employed 
 by the wealthy commercial classes in the embellish- 
 ment of their dwellings. In every direction there 
 are calls for the increased application of science and 
 the industrial arts to improve the comfort and beauty 
 of human life. A somewhat severe code of building 
 laws and sanitary regulations would not only im- 
 prove the physical well-being of the people, but 
 would open out occupation for a multitude of 
 /-specialists and experts who would thus be drawn off 
 V from the too-crowded field of literary work. Thus 
 the material and the intellectual improvement of 
 the people would be directly advanced by the same 
 measures which would gradually break down the 
 anti-economical restrictions of such employments 
 and wasteful modes of production. 
 
 In pointing out the shortcomings of the Sanskrit 
 College at Benares, its principal. Dr. Thibaut, adds 
 that the English colleges have done very little for 
 the promotion of Sanskrit scholarship. This cannot 
 
55 
 
 be accepted as correct without a large qualification 
 as applied to the colleges of the Bombay Presidency. 
 These have produced men like Messrs. Bhandarkar, 
 Pandit, and Telang, who know well how to employ 
 the critical methods of European scholarship. They 
 are able to hold their own in contests with the most 
 advanced European scholars in matters controverted 
 amongst them. The Bombay Sanskrit Series is a 
 most creditable evidence in several of its productions 
 that native scholarship, 1 while characterised by all 
 
 1 Publications by Natives in Bombay. 
 
 I. S. P. Pandit : 
 
 (1) Edition of the Raghuvainsa,' 3 Nros. Bo. S. S. 
 
 (2) 'Edition of the Malavikagnimitra ' (No. 1, two editions). 
 
 Bo. S. S. 
 
 (3) ' Edition of the Vikramorve6i ' (No. 1, two editions). 
 
 Bo. S. S. 
 
 (4) ' Edition of the Gaudevaho ' (No. 1). Bo. S. S. 
 
 (5) ' Kuni&ragralacharita ' (in the Press, No. 1.). Bo. S. S. 
 
 (6) ' The Atharvaveda with Sayana's Com., discovered by Mr. 
 
 Pandit, and published for the Government of Bombay 
 (in the Press). 
 
 (7) ' Vedasthayatra,' not completed, a serial translation of the 
 
 R. V. into English and Hebrew. 
 
 II. K. T. Telang : 
 
 (8) 'Edition of Bhartrihari's Centuries' (No. 1, two editions). 
 
 Bo. S. S. 
 
 (9) ' Bhagavaddgita ' translated. Sacred Books of the East, 
 
 vol. xviii. 
 (10) ' Was the Rainayana copied from Homer? ' 
 
56 
 
 the minute thoroughness of the old indigenous 
 school, can yet in favoured instances quit the old 
 grooves and expatiate in the wider field opened to it 
 by the vigour and enterprise of European learning. 
 This tribute is due to the not inconsiderable group 
 of young native scholars who, in the Bombay 
 Presidency and the region subject to its influence, 
 have maintained and still maintain the national 
 honour in the beloved field of national learning, 
 while they accept and employ in a truly catholic 
 spirit all the resources placed at their disposal by the 
 great brotherhood of erudition throughout the world. 
 
 III. R. G. Bhandarkar : 
 
 (11) * Edition of Malatimadhava ' (one vol.). Bo. S. S. 
 
 (12) * Report on the Search for S. MSS.' 1882-3 (vol. 1). 
 
 Government Press. 
 
 (13) 'Report on the Search for S. MSS.M883-4 (vol. 1). 
 
 Government Press. 
 
 (14) 'History of the Dekhan for the Bombay Gazetteer.' 
 
 (15) 'Wilson Lectures on Indian languages' (published in the 
 
 Year). Bombay Brancb, Royal Asiatic Society. 
 
 IV. Apte. 
 
 (16) English-Sanskrit Dictionary. 
 
 (17) Sanskrit-English Dictionary. 
 
 (18) Guide to Sanskrit Composition. 
 V.-VI. Parab and Godbole. 
 
 The Dasakumaracharita with the Comm. of Kavindra Saiasvati 
 and Sivaram Tiwaro ; and many other editions, with Commentaries 
 for the Nirnayasagra Press. 
 
 e.g., Sakuntala, with the Arthadyotanika, Priyadarsika, by Sri 
 Harsha, Kathasaritsa Sagara, etc., etc. 
 
57 
 
 Yet if one without pretensions to be an expert 
 may hazard the observation, the general out-turn of 
 Sanskrit teaching, even in the Elphinstone and the 
 Dekhan Colleges of the Bombay Presidency is 
 stunted and meagre as compared with the needs of 
 the community and of the age. The ordinary 
 students just pass the examinations and obtain their 
 degrees on a very slender minimum of true critical 
 scholarship. A certain limited command of Sanskrit 
 is most easily acquired by those whose vernacular 
 language rests so largely on a Sanskrit foundation, 
 and whose daily converse teems with Sanskrit 
 phrases. But this kind of rote-knowledge need not 
 necessarily imply a more thorough scholarship than 
 a courier's acquaintance with French or Italian. 
 The B.A. who takes up Sanskrit as his classical 
 language does no doubt go a good deal further than 
 that, but still not far enough for a vivifying forma- 
 tive influence to be exercised over him, still less for 
 his powers to become in their turn productive and 
 add materially to the sum of human knowledge and 
 the volume of intellectual harmonics amongst man- 
 kind. T should even say, from observation, that 
 Sanskrit, studied with anything like exclusiveness 
 and made almost the sole ground of mental exertion 
 during those years in which a permanent stamp is 
 given to the intellectual and moral character, is apt 
 in ordinary cases to exercise a narrowing and self- 
 involving influence, to give acuteness and verbal 
 
58 
 
 skill, while hardening and confirming local and 
 national conceit and disinclination to receive in- 
 struction from without. It would be invidious to 
 cite particular evidences of this ; but they must be 
 manifest to anyone who closely observes the move- 
 ments of native society at such a place as Poona. 
 The position taken up by many Hindu scholars with 
 reference to women and their place in human society 
 shows that there may be genuine and extensive 
 learning of a kind with but little moral expansion, 
 and but slight enlargement of the capacity to appre- 
 ciate the means by which India and the Hindus may 
 contribute nobly to the future progress of the human 
 race. 
 
 There seems, then, to be needed, even for the full 
 appreciation of the Sanskrit literature and philo- 
 sophy, much more than a technical mastery, how- 
 ever perfect, of the mere language itself. A liberal 
 that is, a wide-reaching education is essential 
 to the Sanskritist in India as in Europe, if he would 
 make his learning fruitful and an element of human 
 progress. It should be informed with philosophy, 
 with the thoughts and emotions that have a universal 
 and eternal value. This liberal education means 
 for the Hindu (and indeed equally, or still more, 
 for the Musalman) a thorough immersion in Euro- 
 pean thought not in mathematical or physical 
 science, which has its high and separate value, but 
 in the thought which is concerned with the proper 
 
59 
 
 activities of men as individuals and as members of 
 society. Fertility, expansion, even a true conception 
 of what each system contains and can do for man, 
 must be got at by bringing the European and the 
 Asiatic systems into close contact and comparison. 
 For this the Indian scholar should resort to the 
 great fountain-heads of Western thought in the 
 Greek literature, and follow the stream down 
 through the philosophers and historians who have 
 pourtrayed, and partly made, the living progressive 
 world in its successive phases down to our own day. 
 The study of a literature or a philosophy the 
 one blends with the other thus pursued is as far as 
 possible from deserving a sneer or a reproach as 
 impractical. The favourite notion of fifty years ago, 
 that the world could be regenerated and human 
 happiness secured by the mere laissez-faire, and the 
 mechanical operation of barbaric self-acting laws of 
 supply and demand, has been discredited by ex-_y 
 perience. Human society, human welfare and pro- 
 gress, it is now seen, present ever new problems, 
 which demand for their solution a deeper insight 
 into man's nature, a larger and more generous 
 sympathy with his spiritual needs, than were 
 dreamed of in a past generation. After a long 
 fascination by the marvels of science, and the boons 
 it has bestowed on our material existence, men's 
 minds once more turn from the new standpoint thus 
 gained towards a corresponding advance in their 
 
60 
 
 intellectual and moral being. The air is full of an- 
 nouncements of schemes for giving men more leisure, 
 for making them more mutually helpful, for satis- 
 fying aspirations towards a beauty and completeness 
 of life in which the soul may find rest. The time has 
 once more arrived for the speculative and creative 
 faculty to do some great things for the relief of 
 man's estate. The more minds there are brought 
 to bear on this w T ork, and the better skilled and 
 furnished they are with various endowments and 
 experience, the greater will be the prospect of 
 success. It appears to be the scheme of Providence, 
 or a necessity of human nature, that many problems 
 of society should first be wrought out on a limited 
 scale, as amongst the Hebrews and the Greeks, before 
 the results become available to mankind at large. 
 Each nation stirred by great impulses may hope that 
 it will have its own definite contribution to give 
 towards the growth of our race in power, nobleness, 
 and moral beauty. The Hindu and the Musalman 
 have their contributions to make, but, in order to 
 present these in shapes that shall be effectual and 
 productive, they must gain a wide intellectual out- 
 look. They must qualify themselves to see and to 
 grasp those subtile links which bind human activi- 
 ties in a substantial unity amid endless phenomenal 
 diversities. Thus trained and disciplined, they may, 
 with their fine contemplative powers, become the 
 interpreters of the special experience of their own 
 
61 
 
 people of their specific message to mankind in 
 forms intelligible and acceptable to all nations. 
 They will thus repay their debt to England and to 
 Europe by a bounteous contribution to the sources of 
 our future welfare, to an enlarged philosophy, a 
 wider benevolence, and to " the mighty hopes that 
 make us men." 
 
LONDON: 
 PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, Limited, 
 
 8TAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS. 
 
THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE 
 STAMPED BELOW 
 
 AN INITIAL FINE OF 25 CENTS 
 
 WILL BE ASSESSED FOR FAILURE TO RETURN 
 THIS BOOK ON THE DATE DUE. THE PENALTY 
 WILL INCREASE TO 50 CENTS ON THE FOURTH 
 DAY AND TO $1.00 ON THE SEVENTH DAY 
 OVERDUE. 
 
 re B 13 . *5 . . 
 
 * WW 
 
 >.. 
 
 - i 
 
 
 w 
 
 ^m? 
 
 m- V66-5>M 
 
 A- - .; . , - 
 
 LOAN DEF T . 
 
 ^4- 
 
 m 
 
 7^ 
 
 it: * - 
 
 LD 21-100m-8,'34 
 
YB 27224 
 
 481378 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 
-v