or its earthly existence. We have incited the
slumbering passions of this people, and by offering to their eyes the
sight of European luxury and European over-civilisation, have aroused in
them desires to which they were formerly strangers. Our system of public
instruction is calculated to disseminate among all classes of the Indian
race the worthless materialistic popular education of our own nation. Of
all the governors and inspectors of schools who have been sent hither by
England not a single one has taken the trouble to penetrate beneath the
surface of the life of the Indian people and to fathom the soul of this
religious and transcendentally gifted race. What contrasts are not the
result! Here a holy river, priests, ascetics, yogis, fakirs, temples,
shrines, mysterious doctrines, a manifold ritual; while side by side,
without any transition, are schools wherein homely English elementary
instruction is provided, a State-supported university with a medical
school and Christian churches of the most varied confessions."

"But how would it have been possible to combine in a school modern
scientific education with Indian fanaticism?"

A superior smile flitted across the professor's intellectual face.

"Compare, I pray you, the tiresome trivialities of English missionary
tracts with the immortal masterpieces of Indian literature! Then you
will understand that the Indian, even when he approves Christianity as a
system of morals, demands a deeper and wider basis of these morals, and
inquires as to the origin of the Christian doctrine; and then he very
soon finds that all light which has come to Europe started from Asia. Ex
oriente lux."

"I am not sufficiently well informed to be able to answer you on this
point. It may very well be that even Christianity was not the offspring
of Judaism alone, but of Buddhism. It may also be the case that the
teachings of our missionaries of to-day are too insipid for the Indians.
But the metaphysical needs of a people have, after all, little to do
with sound policy and good laws. Think of Rome! The Roman state had most
excellent laws, and a magnificent political force which for centuries
kept it in its predominant position among the nations of the world. But
what of religion and philosophy in Rome? There was no state religion
whatsoever; there was no priestly hierarchy, no strict theological
codex, but only a mythology and worship of gods, which was of an
eminently practical character