ling to stint themselves in order
that their son may get a post under Government, send him to a secondary
school, let us say in the chief town of the district, or in a University
city. There again he boards with friends of his family, if they have
any, or in more or less reputable lodgings amidst the same purely Indian
surroundings, and his only contact with the Western world is through
school-books in a foreign tongue, of which it is difficult enough for
him to grasp even the literal meaning, let alone the spirit, which his
native teachers have themselves too often only, very partially imbibed
and are therefore quite unable to communicate[18]. From the secondary
school he passes for his University course, if he gets so far, in
precisely the same circumstances into a college which is merely a higher
form of school. Whilst attending college our student still continues to
live amidst the same purely Indian surroundings, and his contact with
the Western world is still limited to his text-books. Even the best
native teacher can hardly interpret that Western world to him as a
trained European can, and unless our student intends to become a doctor
or an engineer, and has to pass through the schools of medicine or
engineering, where he is bound to be a good deal under English teachers,
he may perfectly well, and very often does, go through his whole course
of studies in school and in college without ever coming into personal
contact with an Englishman. How can he be expected under such conditions
to assimilate Western knowledge or to form even a remote conception of
the customs and traditions, let alone the ideals, embodied in Western
knowledge?

Try and imagine for a moment, however absurd it may seem, what would
have been the effect upon the brains of the youth of our own country if
it had been subject to Chinese rule for the last 100 years, and the
Chinese, without interfering with our own social customs or with our
religious beliefs, had taken charge of higher education and insisted
upon conveying to our youth a course of purely Chinese instruction
imparted through Chinese text-books, and taught mainly by Englishmen,
for the most part only one degree more familiar than their pupils with
the inwardness of Chinese thought and Chinese ethics. The effect could
hardly have been more bewildering than the effect produced in many cases
similar to that which I have instanced on the brain of the Indian youth
when he emerges from our