Page:Calcutta Review Vol. II (Oct. - Dec. 1844).pdf/370

Rh similarly endowed with latent and undeveloped powers, susceptibilities, and tendencies, is, immediately on its introduction on the actual stage of time, plunged, as it were, into an atmosphere of circumstances, which, calling these varied powers, susceptibilities, and tendencies into active exercise, impart unto them all their own peculiar tinge and colouring. It is thus that the intellectual and moral faculties are most influentially moulded, the future life and character most effectually shaped and formed. The manners, language, and pleasurable associations of earliest youth become the habits of maturer years. The feelings, prejudices, and predilections of the susceptible mind of the child become the predominant feelings, prejudices, and predilections of the indurated mind of the man. In this view of the case, we cannot but respond to the truth and accuracy of the sentiment expressed by a British journalist, when he exclaims,—“How infinitely small is the education which is obtained at school compared with that which is obtained at home! The formation of habits and the acquisition of rules of conduct, the most efficacious of all processes of education, take place outside the walls of schools, and are derived chiefly from example and association in infancy. It is, indeed, in the dwellings of the people that the mind and character of the people are formed, that their physical frames are matured, their moral natures educated, their judgments guided and directed, and that their future place in the scale of morality and intellect is determined.”

Such being the acknowledged potency of the education of external circumstances, let us consider, for a moment, the social atmosphere into which every Hindu is plunged from the very dawn of his palpable being! What sights and sounds encompass him all around, by night and by day—in printing the most vivid images of sense on the captive mind, and exciting the most carnal propensities of the unregenerate heart! The subject is too vast to be entered on here; we can only passingly and incidentally allude to it. It would require whole volumes to depict the endless round of shows, spectacles, and revelries,—the monotonous circle of mechanical forms, frivolous rites and ceremonial mummeries—which constitute the popular worship of Hinduism, and endow it with resistless fascinations to infantile minds, whether of earlier or of riper years. To prevent even the suspicion of misrepresentation on the subject we shall here quote the words of a celebrated native writer, who, though he never renounced Hinduism in its more refined form, was quite alive to the evils of the popular idolatry:—

“We often see the idolaters act in the most childish manner whilst engaged in what they call their religious worship. As children present food