100 ESSAYS IN NATIONAL IDEALISM.

but he is as lacking in philosophy as the average English-
man ; talk to him of Indian music—he will produce a
gramophone or a harmonium, and inflict upon you one-
or both ; talk to him of Indian dress or jewellery—he will
tell you that they are uncivilised and barbaric ; talk to
him of Indian art—it is news to him that such a thing
exists ; ask him to translate for you a letter written in his
own mother-tongue—he does not know it.* He is indeed
a stranger in his own land.

Yes, English educators of India, you do well to-
scorn the Babu graduate ; he is your own special pro-
duction, made in your own image ; he might be one of
your vei^y selves. Do you not recognize the likeness ?
Probably you do not ; for you are still hidebound in
that impervious skin of self-satisfaction that enabled
^your most pompous and self-important philistine, Lord
iMacaulay, to believe that a single shelf of a good Euro
mean library was worth all the literature of India, Arabia,,
jland Persia. Beware lest in a hundred years the judgment
be reversed, in the sense that Oriental culture will
occupy a place even in European estimation, ranking at-
least equally with Classic. Meanwhile you have done
well nigh all that could be done to eradicate it in the land
of its birth.

England, suddenly smitten with the great idea of'
* civilising' India, conceived that the way to do this was to-
make Indians like Englishmen. To this task England set-
herself with the best will'in the world, not at all realising
that, as has been so well said by the Abbe Dubois :

* I describe the extreme product of English education, as

8ee», for example, in Ceylon. Not all of these statements apply

equally to every part of India. The remarks on dress and music
are of universal application.