Page:Calcutta University and Science.djvu/7

6 thing of all the great branches of modern learning, forgetting that such is not possible even to Englishmen, studying in their own language, and trained from their earliest days in the society of educated men and women, from whom they have unconsciously gathered a large substratum of facts and ideas, to serve as a foundation for their College education, and to furnish much of the material which the latter combines and arranges. The native has no advantage of this kind. He has to master a foreign and totally dissimilar language to his own, before he can pass the threshold of his University career ; the men with whom his childhood and youth are passed, are as a rule, ignorant of all that constitutes an European education, narrow-minded and unappreciative even of the nature of mental culture ; and even if of a higher class of native society, trained in Brahminical lore, and the philosophy of a bygone age, they can but implant that, much of which the first step of his University course will be to eradicate, or which will remain a confirmed obstacle to the introduction of more modern ideas.

The mistake which lies at the root of the misconception above spoken of, is the tacit assumption that a man who has simply passed through an University career should be what is popularly meant by a well-informed man. This is only exceptionally the result among the graduates of our English Universities, and it is certainly unreasonable, in the face of all the additional obstacles which the native student has to contend with, to expect that such a result should generally be attained here. If we wish to make well-informed men among the natives, i. e., men who possess a large amount of information on general topics, and who know how to apply and use that knowledge, we must not begin by giving them a slight and crude smattering of a number of heterogeneous subjects, and then launch them forth with an University degree in the hope that they will pursue a course of intellectual education for themselves in after-years. This will scarcely ever be the sequel. Such a taste for any kind of study as will lead a man to appreciate its pleasures, and follow it out for himself in his after-life, can only be engendered when he has so far mastered its elements as no longer to feel a sense of labour in its pursuit. No man can appreciate or enjoy any branch of knowledge until he has thoroughly familiarized himself with all its leading ideas, and gained such an acquaintance with it, as to have his interest awakened by the oft-recurring reminder of the existence of unknown fields beyond him. The commencement is always comparative drudgery. The first ideas gained stand strangely, and fixed as it were by an effort in the mind, and it is only by degrees that these become linked