' dans
l'Inde," _Revue du Mois_, July, 1913.

[233] Sir T. Morison, _The Economic Transition in India_, pp. 240-241.
Also see Sir Valentine Chirol, _Indian Unrest_, pp. 255-279; William
Archer, _India and the Future_, pp. 131-157.

[234] Syed Sirdar Ali Khan, _India of To-day_, p. 19 (Bombay, 1908).

[235] J. Ramsay Macdonald, _The Government of India_, p. 133 (London,
1920).

[236] In _The Hindustan Review_ (Calcutta), 1917.

[237] Good examples are found in the writings of Mukerjee and Lajpat
Rai, already quoted.

[238] G. Lowes Dickinson, _An Essay on the Civilizations of India,
China, and Japan_, pp. 84-85 (London, 1914).

CHAPTER VIII

SOCIAL CHANGE

The momentous nature of the contemporary transformation of the Orient is
nowhere better attested than by the changes effected in the lives of its
peoples. That dynamic influence of the West which is modifying
governmental forms, political concepts, religious beliefs, and economic
processes is proving equally potent in the range of social phenomena. In
the third chapter of this volume we attempted a general survey of
Western influence along all the above lines. In the present chapter we
shall attempt a detailed consideration of the social changes which are
to-day taking place.

These social changes are very great, albeit many of them may not be so
apparent as the changes in other fields. So firm is the hold of custom
and tradition on individual, family, and group life in the Orient that
superficial observers of the East are prone to assert that these matters
are still substantially unaltered, however pronounced may have been the
changes on the external, material side. Yet such is not the opinion of
the closest students of the Orient, and it is most emphatically not the
opinion of Orientals themselves. These generally stress the profound
social changes which are going on.

And it is their judgments which seem to be the more correct. To say that
the East is advancing "materially" but standing still "socially" is to
ignore the elemental truth that social systems are altered quite as much
by material things as by abstract ideas. Who that looks below the
surface can deny the social, moral, and civilizing power of railroads,
post-offices, and telegraph lines? Does it mean nothing socially as well
as materially that the East is adopting from the West a myriad
innovations, weighty and trivial, important and frivolous, useful and
baneful? Does it mean noth