" 1

for public service is the most direct fulfilment of the original aim and purpose, it is by no means the whole achievement, or even the greatest part of it. Trevelyan writes in the monograph, "On the Education of the People of India," from which quotation has already been made: "The same means which will secure for the Government a body of intelligent and upright native servants will stimulate the mental activity and improve the morals of the people at large. The Government cannot make public employment the reward of distinguished merit without encouraging merit in all who look forward to public employ; it cannot open schools for educating its servants, without diffusing knowledge among all classes of its subjects." These predictions also have been abundantly fulfilled. The renewed productivity of half a dozen literatures, the revival of art and letters, alert and critical interest in the past history and literature of Indian races (voiced as it was, for instance, eloquently but with unflinching recognition of present "shortcomings," by Dr. Ashutosh Mukhopadhyaya, ViceChancellor of Calcutta University, at this year's Convocation) bear witness to the stimulation of mental activity. The capacity for combination shown by numerous associations for social, literary and recreative purposes is a moral endowment. All these new capacities and powers education has conferred on the classes who have been able to profit by it. The bounds of legitimate aspiration are also herein clearly settled. This education was instituted by the British Government to enable the peoples of India to take a larger and more important share in the work of administration. This larger share of responsibility and employment has been accorded to them. The process is in mid-career. That there should be differences of opinion as to the ultimate

1 "On the Education of the People of India," p. 159.

limits of the process and as to the extent which is the due limit at any given time, is only natural. The aspiration for a larger share than that already gained is perfectly legitimate, and Indians may combine to secure this larger share by constitutional means; it is equally legitimate to hold the contrary view and oppose further extension. The bounds of legitimate aspiration are the limits consistent with the stability of British rule.

But what then of the bugbear of anarchism and unrest? Measured by this standard it shrinks marvellously. These intellectual and moral results are the direct product of higher education; discontent and conspiracy, if to be called products of education at all, are indirect products, like some harmful by-product of a useful chemical process. The causes of unrest in the sinister sense are foreign domination, racial prejudice, ignorance, misunderstanding, narrowness, want of education, lack of sympathy. Education is not directly a cause at all: indirectly it may, perhaps, be called a cause as putting these latent forces into activity. Education could never in any sound sense of the term lead to anarchist crime. A depraved and perverted nature may use the powers that education gives to evil purpose. A radically unsound education might help to produce criminals, but even so it must rather be from failure to supply deterrents than from positively supplying incentives. The education being given in Indian schools and colleges only contributes to the morbid condition of things that has produced political conspiracy and crime by its defects, by its unwholesome surroundings, by its failure to educate in any true sense at all. For want of foresight in allowing education to spread beyond the limits of effective control those in various degrees responsible for its organization must bear the blame. But the education itself must not be blamed only the failure to make it effective. For the

direct purpose of education in primary schools, in secondary schools, and in colleges alike, has been to train the will in obedience and in good habits, as well as to train the intellect. So far as the schools and colleges have failed in this, the purpose of education has been missed. All violence and breach of law are contrary to the very idea of education. The higher the education the greater the incompatibility of its influences with cruelty, treachery, physical violence and secret murder. Enlightenment must and does hate these things, and must still do so, even if it proclaimed the ultimate right of insurrection for national freedom. But in India enlightenment cannot proclaim the right of insurrection at all. For that enlightenment itself comes from the central power which holds together the congeries of races and creeds and peoples which make up modern India and alone gives unity alike to education and to political aspiration. The aim to destroy that central power would be not murder only but suicide as well. Success in that aim would inevitably throw back all the advance towards liberty made in the last hundred years, to which even the revolutionary aim itself owes such life and power as it has. It is just because all hopes of peaceful development and prosperity really are bound up with the maintenance of the one strong and stable government, that education must in proportion as it is true and thorough strengthen the forces that made for cohesion, not for disruption. The greater the independence of judgment, the deeper the insight that education gives, the clearer must be the perception of these truths.

It is not meant in anything that has been said to question that the political developments of the last twenty years have given grave cause for anxiety and that their association with higher education in any

sense is deeply to be regretted. We can no longer speak with the confidence of Sir Roper Lethbridge in defending "High Education in India" in 1882, when he wrote: "And for contradiction of the vague and unauthenticated aspersions on the character of the highlyeducated section of the Indian community for loyalty, for morality, for religion generally, we need only look to the tone and character of that portion of the periodical press that is conducted and written by such men." This we certainly can no longer say: but here in the rapid depravation of an uncontrolled press, we have (as I think Mr. Chirol himself shows) the real propagating agency of the gathering mischief, and not in education and the regulation of the press, now that it has been firmly taken in hand, is already working a remedy.

XVI

CONCLUSIONS

THE endeavour has now been made to follow the history of the educational system established in India from its beginnings, and the verdict on the whole, with plain and specific deductions, is favourable. At every critical stage weight has been given to opposing considerations, and the conclusion at every stage is that practically no other course was possible than that which was taken. When enlightened Bengali gentlemen started the Hindu College and a little later on asked for the help and support of Government, Government did rightly in giving the financial aid asked for and could not consistently with its position and responsibilities have done otherwise. When the question was raised whether it was more expedient for higher education that the study of English should be encouraged or whether State aid should be confined to Arabic and Sanskrit, the decision given in 1835 in favour of English was the right decision. When twenty-two years later universities were founded, though plausible reasons were given at the time for considering such a high enterprise premature, the practical economic success of the universities and the effects produced intellectually and morally in the course of a generation prove that the fears expressed before 1857 were mistaken, that universities met a real want, and that the progress attained justified their institution. A more doubtful judgment must be passed on the adoption of one of the