schools and colleges.

It may be said that such cases are extreme cases, but extreme as they
are, they are not exceptional. The exceptions must be sought rather
amongst the small minority, who, in spite of all these drawbacks,
display such a wonderful gift of assimilation, or, it might perhaps be
more correctly termed, of intuition, that they are able to transport
themselves into a new world of thought, or at any rate to see into it,
as it were, through a glass darkly. But the number of those who possess
this gift has probably always been small, and smaller still, with the
reduction of the European element in the teaching staff, is the number
growing of those who have a fair chance of developing that gift, even if
nature has endowed them with it. A comparison of the Census Report of
1901 with the figures given in the Educational Statistics for 1901-2
shows that the total number of Europeans then engaged in Indian
educational work was barely, 500, of whom less than half were employed
by Government, whilst that of the Indians engaged in similar work in
colleges and secondary schools alone was about 27,500. As the number of
Indian students and scholars receiving higher education amounts to
three-quarters of a million, it is obvious that so slight a European
leaven, whatever its quality--and its quality is not always what it
should be--can produce but little impression upon so huge a mass.

Our present system of Indian education in fact presents in an
exaggerated form, from the point of view of the cultivation of the
intellect, most of the defects alleged against a classical education by
its bitterest opponents in Western countries, where, after all, the
classics form only a part, however important, of the curriculum, and
neither Latin nor Greek is the only medium for the teaching of every
subject. From the point of view of the formation of character according
to Western standards, and even from that of physical improvement, the
case is even worse. In Western countries the education given in our
schools, from the Board school to the University, is always more or
less on the same plane as that of the class from which the boys who
attend them are drawn. It is merely the continuation and the complement
of the education our children receive in their own homes from the moment
of their birth, and it moves on the same lines as the world in which
they live and move and have their being. In India, with rare exceptions,
it is not s