Page:Adam's reports on vernacular education in Bengal and Behar, submitted to Government in 1835, 1836 and 1838.djvu/63

Rh they have institutions among them both for the purposes of common education and for the propagation or rather preservation of the learning they possess. The institutions to which I refer will probably be found defective in their organization, narrow and contracted in their aim, and destitute of any principle of extension and improvement; but of their existence the large body of literature in the country, the large body of learned men who hand it down from age to age, and the large proportion of the population that can read and write, are proofs. Of course, I do not mean to intimate that their existence has been hitherto unknown, but that their number, their efficiency, their resources and the possibility of employing them as auxiliaries in the promotion of education have not been sufficiently considered.

4. To whatever extent such institutions may exist, and in whatever condition they may be found, stationary, advancing, or retrograding, they present the only true and sure foundations on which any scheme of general or national education can be established. We may deepen and extend the foundations, we may improve, enlarge and beautify the superstructure, but these are the foundations on which the building should be raised. All men, particularly uninstructed and half-instructed men, attach the same importance to forms as to substance, and as forms are merely conventional, it is desirable in the work of reform to disembarrass ourselves of opposition founded on the overthrow of ancient forms, and to enlist on our side the prepossessions in favor of their continued use. Besides, there is a probability that those forms, if not at the period of their original adoption, yet by long continued usage are suited to the manners, habits, and general character of the people whom we desire to benefit, and that any other forms which we might seek to establish would in reality be less fitted to supply their place. All schemes for the improvement of education, therefore, to be efficient and permanent, should be based upon the existing institutions of the country, transmitted from time immemorial, familiar to the conceptions of the people, and inspiring them with