is conversant;
and while he may be convinced by arguments which prove its cruelty and
its many evils, he still clings to it as the only system under which
he knows how to live and which he cares to obey.

As we have already seen, the ramifications of caste are more numerous
and its authority more general to-day than at any former time. Many
Hindu reformers, especially of the Vishnu sects, have followed in the
steps of the great Buddha, by denouncing caste, root and branch, and
have established their own sects during the last ten centuries on a
non-caste basis. But they have all succumbed to the demon which they
antagonized and now generally observe caste rules with the same
devotion as other Hindus.

The lower the caste spirit has descended to the "submerged tenth" of
the land, the more vehemently have they become inoculated with its
virus. The outcast Pariah is not to be outdone in this matter; and so
we have Pariahs and Pariahs. Many divisions are found among this
wretched class, and they are more exclusive in their divisions and
more rigid in their narrowness than are many of the high castes.

Even those who have abandoned the Hindu faith and professed another,
do not leave behind them this divisive spirit. Perhaps the converts
from Mohammedanism have eschewed Hindu caste more than converts to
other faiths.

Among Christian converts, though caste is professedly abandoned, it
clings with vital tenacity and almost unconquerable persistence to
their sense of the fitness of things. Their deepest prejudices and
unconscious tendencies, even against their intellectual convictions
and sincere professions, unceasingly sway the vast majority of them
and lead them into affiliations and narrow sympathies which are Hindu
and not Christian. It is true that the oldest Christian community in
India, the Syrian Church of Malabar, has long abandoned the Hindu
caste organization, with even its mean remnant of caste titles. And
yet that community settled down for many centuries into the
conviction that it was merely one caste among the many of that region
and must keep itself aloof from and untainted by the surrounding
castes. Roman Catholicism, which has still the most numerous Native
Christian community in India, has largely adopted the Hindu system and
tries to utilize it in the furtherance of Christianity in the land! No
greater mistake was ever made than this of trying to uphold and
promulgate the meekness, the humility, the lo