138 ESSAYS IN NATIONAL IDEALISM.

moment to whab part of the 'mission field* the teacher
is to be sent. In any case she is not prepared for her
work of education by a sympathetic study of local ideas,,
culture and traditions; if she studies the heathen religion
at all, it is mainly in books written by those who do not
sympathize with, and therefore do not fully understand it,.
Upon arrival, she finds herself in an altogether unfamiliar
mental atmosphere; and she has only her Christian dogma
and at the best a good English education on classical lines,,
as her resources. Unless she is to be a preaching mission-
ary, which as a teacher she is not proposing to do, she will
probably learn no more of the mother-tongue of har pupils
than suffices to direct her servants; the mission is short-
handed, and she has to devote her whole time to class work"
and management.

But suppose that by a rare chance (how rare I need*
not say) she belongs to the microscopic percentage of
Europeans in India for whom Indian culture, litera-
ture, philosophy, art and music have a real fascination..
The more she knows of Indian culture, the less can she-
found her scheme of education upon it, that is, so long as-
she remains bound by honour and inclination to prosely-
tize. For all Indian culture is essentially religious; the-
aim of art is to interpret God to man through the medium
of the heathen mythology she has been sent out to destroy-
music is most often the expression of man's love for Godr
expressed in the same terms; the epics, the fundamental5
moulding agencies of national character, are practically
heathen Bibles; and Indian philosophy and religion a,re*
inseparable. So that, however keen her educational instinct,,
she has but one course to follow,—to create a spiritual1
desert in which to plant the Christian dogma. The greater*
part of the educational work of a mission is thus destine-