ogy, in Law, in certain Natural Sciences, individuals
have already done service to India and contributed to knowledge.
Glimpses of great regions, unexplored, in these domains are rousing
students to secure for themselves a province. "More copies of books of
poetry, philosophy, law, and religion now issue every year from the
press of British India than during any century of native rule."[8] Of
course it would be misleading to ignore the fact that reaction as well
as progress has its apostles among the awakened minds of India. Much of
the awakened mental activity, also, is spent--much wasted--on political
writing and discussion, which is often uninformed by knowledge of
present facts and of Indian history. The general poverty also, and the
so-called Western desire to "get on," prevent many from becoming in any
real sense students or thinkers or men of public spirit.

Indian conservatism, therefore, we contend, is not the insurmountable
obstacle to new ideas that many superficially deem it to be.

CHAPTER III

NEW SOCIAL IDEAS

[_Purusha, the One Spirit, embodied,_]

"Whom gods and holy men made their oblation.
With Purusha as victim, they performed
A sacrifice. When they divided him,
How did they cut him up? What was his mouth?
What were his arms? And what, his thighs and feet?
The Brahman was his mouth; the kingly soldier
Was made his arms; the husbandman, his thighs;
The servile Sudra issued from his feet."

From the _Rigveda_, Mandala x. 90,
translated by Sir M. MONIER WILLIAMS.

[Sidenote: Caste represses individuality.]

New ideas in the social sphere first claim our attention. The individual
and the community, each have rights, says a writer on the philosophy of
history, and it is hurtful when the balance is not preserved. If the
community be not securely established, the individuals will have no
opportunity to develop; if the individual be not free, the community can
have no real greatness. Speaking broadly, when Western social ideas meet
Indian, the conflict is between the rights of the individual as in
Western civilisation, and the rights of the community or society as in
the Indian. India stands for the statical _social_ forces, modern Europe
for the dynamical and _individualistic_. In India, as in France before
the Revolution, certain established usages are prejudicially affecting
the progress of the individual, fettering him in many ways. I refer to
caste, the deni