Page:Adam's reports on vernacular education in Bengal and Behar, submitted to Government in 1835, 1836 and 1838.djvu/318

258 in successive generations. In the face of this palpable fact, the plan assumes that the country is to be indebted to us for schools, teachers, books—every thing necessary to its moral and intellectual improvement, and that in the prosecution of our views we are to reject all the aids which the ancient institutions of the country and the actual attainments of the people afford towards their advancement. “We have to deal in this country principally with Hindus and Mohammadans, the former one of the earliest civilized nations of the earth, the latter in some of the brightest periods of their history distinguished promoters of science; and both, even in their present retrograde stages of civilization, still preserving a profound love and veneration for learning nourished by those very institutions of which I have spoken, and which it would be equally improvident on our part and offensive to them to neglect.

Again, if the maxim that the tendency of knowledge is to descend, not to ascend, requires us to have first zillah, next pergunnah, and then village, schools, it follows that we ought not to have even zillah schools till we have provincial colleges, nor the latter till we have national universities, nor these till we have a cosmopolitan one. But this is an application of the maxim foreign to its spirit. Improvement begins with the individual and extends to the mass, and the individuals who give the stimulus to the mass are doubtless generally found in the upper, that is, the thinking, class of society which, especially in this country, is not composed exclusively, nor even principally, of those who are the highest in rank, or who possess the greatest wealth. The truth of the maxim does not require that the measures adopted should have reference first to large and then to small localities in progressive descent. On the contrary, the efficiency of every successive higher grade of institution cannot be secured except by drawing instructed pupils from the next lower grade which, consequently by the necessity of the case, demands prior attention. Children should not go to college to learn the alphabet. To make the superstructure lofty and firm, the foundations should be broad and deep; and, thus building from the foundation, all classes of institutions and every grade of instruction may be combined with harmonious and salutary effect.

The objections that apply to the plans brought under review in the preceding Section should at least make me diffident in proposing any other for adoption. The considerations I have suggested show that the subject has been viewed in various