104 ESSAYS IN NATIONAL IDEALISM.

"The conscientious professor does not merely desire to
impart knowledge, but to impart useful knowledge, which will
elevate the lives of his pupils ; and he ma-y perhaps wish to- help
them ,to apply it. Is there any prospect of his assisting this task ?
I suppose many teachers ccme to India with the hope of doing so ;
I should like to ask each of them, in the hour of his final depar-
ture, when he gave it up, and why. Possibly he would answer,
when he candidly admitted to himself the impossibility of knowing
much about India."

For the English Professor is debarred by ignorance
of the language (very rarely adequately overcome),
and by exclusion from familiarity with the home life
of Indians, from ever really understanding them.

The English Prof essor who arrives in India at the age,
let us say, of twenty-five, is generally qualified to teach
one or more special subjects, such as Chemistry, English
Literature, or Greek. Ten years of sympathetic study of
Indian religious philosophy, Sanskrit or Pali, some verna-
cular language, Indian history,* art, music, literature and
etiquette might enable him to understand the problem of
Indian education, probably would do so, prejudice apart ;
but the more he thus understood, the less would he wish
to interfere, for he would either be Indianised at heart, or
would have long realised the hopeless divergence between
his own and Indian ideals; he would have learnt that true
reforms come only from within, and slowly. But English
teachers have neither the time nor the inclination to spend
ten years, or even two, in such a study of Indian culture ;
and so when, as often happens, they rise to a position of
power, the Fellowship of some University, the Headship
of a College, or even of a Department of Public Instruc-
tion, they cheerfully apply the solutions suited (or unsuited
as the case may be) to an English environment, to problems

* Not merely recent history, but especially the periods in
which the ideals of Indian civilisation were partly realised—Asoka*
the Guptas, Akbar.