106 ESSAYS IN" NATIONAL IDEALISM.

example set, by Englishmen. They with pain and labour
have destroyed and are still endeavouring to destroy the*
caste idea of the dignity and duty of the heaven-ordained-
work, whether clerical or manual, to which a man is born ;
they in their educational system have ignored the Indian
Gospel, wherein a well-known text declares, " Better is one's-
own duty, albeit insignificant, than even the well-execut-
ed duty of another." It is childish to be surprised at the-
result of a deliberate policy.

However convinced the English or Anglicised Indian*
educator may be of the superior value of European
ideals, he must even then as an educator realise that
you can only educate by means of ideals accepted by
the,taught. Ideals are not .to be transferred from one-
people to another as easily as furniture from house to house^
It is only too easy to ridicule and to disparage, but when-
you have destroyed belief in one ideal it is not easy to
secure acceptance of another. Not only, then, are the-
ideals of Indian civilization, actually higher than those of"
any other, at least in our view; but, were it not so, it-
would still be true that only by means of those ideals can
the Indian people be educated.

The aim of education in India must be no longer the
the cultivation of the English point of view or an ability to-
use the English fonnula correctly. In the words of Sir-
Henry Craik, it is necessary to abandon :

" the senseless attempt to turn an Oriental into a bad imitation'
of a "Western mind. 5 . , » . It is not a triumph for our-
education—it is, on the contrary, a satire upon it—when we finct
the sons of: leading natives expressly discouraged by their parents

from acquiring any knowledge of the vernacular.....We-

must abandon the vain dream that we can reproduce the English
public school on Indian soil. We must recognise that it is a
mistake to insist that a man shall not be considered to be an-
educated man unless he can express his knowledge otherwise than.