a professional career. It is asserted that no
graduate of any of these institutions has ever distinguished
himself for scholarship or in science, that no native of India
educated in them has ever produced any original work of merit,
and that no problem of political or material importance has ever
been solved by a citizen of this empire. In 1902 Lord Curzon, who
has taken a deep interest in this subject and is an enthusiastic
advocate of public schools, appointed a commission to investigate
the conduct and efficiency of the universities of India. The
report was not enthusiastic or encouraging. It was entirely
noncommittal. At the same time it must be said that the universities
and colleges of India are a great deal better than nothing at
all, and as there is no other provision for higher education
they serve a very important purpose.

The deplorable illiteracy of the people of India is disclosed
by the recent census. Ninety-five per cent of the men and more
than 99 per cent of the women have never learned the first letter
of the alphabet, and would not recognize their own name it written
or printed. I have been told by ladies engaged in missionary and
educational work that grown people of the lower classes cannot
even distinguish one picture from another; that their mental
perceptions are entirely blank, and that signs and other objects
which usually excite the attention of children have no meaning
whatever for them. The total number of illiterates recorded is
246,546,176, leaving 47,814,180 of both sexes unaccounted for,
but of these only 12,097,530 are returned as able to read and
write. The latest statistics show that 3,195,220 of both sexes
are under instruction.

And even the percentages I have mentioned do not adequately represent
the ignorance of the masses of the people, because more than
half of those returned by the census enumerators as literates
cannot read understandingly a connected sentence in a book or
newspaper and can only write their own names. The other half are
largely composed of foreigners or belong to the Brahmin castes.
The latter are largely responsible for present conditions, because
their long-continued enjoyment of a hereditary supremacy over
the rest of the population has been due to their learning and
to the ignorance of the masses belonging to other castes. They
realize that they could never control any but an illiterate
population. Hence the priests, who should be leaders in education