Page:Calcutta Review Vol. II (Oct. - Dec. 1844).pdf/369

364 is an equal amount of ignorance with that which has been shown to exist in this district.” And when a more enlarged experience forced on his mind the appalling fact that this was not a solitary district, but only an average specimen of all the districts and provinces of Bengal and Behar, he thus embodies his confirmed impressions and quickened aspirations:—“While ignorance is so extensive, can it be matter of wonder that poverty is extreme, that industry languishes, that crime prevails, and that, in the adoption of measures of policy, however salutary or ameliorating their tendency, government cannot reckon with confidence on the moral support of an intelligent and instructed community? Is it possible that a benevolent, a wise, a just government can allow this state of things any longer to continue?”

Thus to look down on an expanse of absolute ignorance—a sheer intellectual and moral waste—would be sufficiently painful. But, alas, there is something more painful still—and that is, to look down on a region that is not merely sterile of all that is useful or wholesome, but spontaneously prolific of all that is unprofitable and noxious. Now that is precisely what truth and reality—justice to the great cause we advocate and justice to the people of India—imperatively demand of us. Mr. Adam was too much disposed to view the whole case negatively—in other words, to treat it simply as a question of ignorance. Even then, as we have seen, on his own showing and in accordance with his own clear admissions, the contemplation is a harrowing one. But how much more so does it become when we reflect that, as regards the overwhelming majority of the juvenile and adult population, there is not merely a total absence of school-instruction of any kind for good, but the positive presence and ever-active energy of an education of circumstances for all manner of evil?

As regards actual innate ideas or impressions, the mind of man may be truly allowed, agreeably to the phraseology of, to come into the world as unvaried a blank as “a sheet of white paper.” But then all sound philosophy, backed by Scripture and experience to boot, must convince us that, though destitute of actual innate ideas or impressions, the mind does come into the world endowed with various innate powers, susceptibilities, or tendencies, which only await the presentation of their appropriate objects to insure their various and fitting development. In this truer aspect of the case, the mind may be said rather to resemble “a sheet of white paper,” which has been written all over with divers chemical solutions—the letters, words, and sentences remaining wholly invisible, until brought in contact with heat or any other exciting cause, fitted to reveal them in perceptible legible forms. The mind of man, somewhat