Greek wise men once expressed the wish that kings should be chosen from among the philosophers.That may possibly be an unrealisable hope, but I do not believe that a ruler who has a contempt for philosophy will ever properly fulfil the high duties of his station.A policy without philosophy is, like an unphilosophical religion, not established on firmer ground than those houses there on the river Ravi, whose existence is not safe for a single day, because the river at times takes it into its head to change its course.A government that does not understand how to honour the religious feelings of its people, does not stand more securely than one of those huts.The fate that has now overtaken the English is the best proof of what I say.We are the only power in Asia that has not founded its political sway upon the religion of the people.
In our folly we have destroyed the habitual simplicity of a nation, which, until our coming, had been content with the barest necessities of life, because for thousands of years past it cared more about the life after death than for its earthly existence.We have incited the slumbering passions of this people, and by offering to their eyes the sight of European luxury and European over-civilisation, have aroused in them desires to which they were formerly strangers.Our system of public instruction is calculated to disseminate among all classes of the Indian race the worthless materialistic popular education of our own nation.Of all the governors and inspectors of schools who have been sent hither by England not a single one has taken the trouble to penetrate beneath the surface of the life of the Indian people and to fathom the soul of this religious and transcendentally gifted race.What contrasts are not the result! Here a holy river, priests, ascetics, yogis, fakirs, temples, shrines, mysterious doctrines, a manifold ritual;while side by side, without any transition, are schools wherein homely English elementary instruction is provided, a State-supported university with a medical school and Christian churches of the most varied confessions.""But how would it have been possible to combine in a school modern scientific education with Indian fanaticism?"A superior smile flitted across the professor's intellectual face.
"Compare, I pray you, the tiresome trivialities of English missionary tracts with the immortal masterpieces of Indian literature! Then you will understand that the Indian, even when he approves Christianity as a system of morals, demands a deeper and wider basis of these morals, and inquires as to the origin of the Christian doctrine; and then he very soon finds that all light which has come to Europe started from Asia.Ex oriente lux.""I am not sufficiently well informed to be able to answer you on this point.It may very well be that even Christianity was not the offspring of Judaism alone, but of Buddhism.It may also be the case that the teachings of our missionaries of to-day are too insipid for the Indians.But the metaphysical needs of a people have, after all, little to do with sound policy and good laws.
