124 ESSAYS IN NATIONAL IDEALTSM.

"tion of character. Amongst the Buddhists in Ceylon, the
place of the epics has been taken by the stories of the life
•of Buddha and the legends that have clustered^ round his
name. The value of the epics in Education is partly in
this, that they are for all alike, the literate and the
illiterate, men, women or children; all are united in a
-conimon. culture, however varying the extent of their
knowledge. It is this common culture which the modern
English education ignores and destroys. The memorising
of great national literature was the vehicle of this cul-
ture ; and hence the tremendous importance of memory
in education. For great literature of this kind does not
yield its message to the casual or unsympathetic reader at
once, it must be part of the life of men, as the Greeks
made Homer a part of their life, or the Puritans the
Bible. It is no use to prescribe some one or two books oŁ
the B-amayana or the Mahabharata, or a Jataka for an
-examination course. No, the great stories in their com-
pleteness must be a means of the development of the
imagination—a faculty generally ignored and sometimes
deliberately crushed by present-day educators. The great
heroic figures must express to us still the deepest, most
religious things. For all purity is included in the purity
• of Sita, all service in the devotion of Hanuman, all knight-
hood in the chivalry of Bhiahmn. " Such are some of the
< characters who form the ideal world of the Hindu home.
Absorbed in her ' worship of the feet of the Lord,' the
little girl sits for hours in her corner, praying, * Make
me a wife like Sita ! Give me a husband like Rama !*
Each act or speech of the untrained boy rushing in from
: school, may remind some one, half-laughing, half-admiring^
of Yudhishtira or Lakshmana, of Kama or Arjuna, and the
•name is sure to be recalled. It is expected that each