Page:Indian Home Rule by Mohandas K. Gandhi.djvu/106

98 writing and arithmetic is called primary education. A peasant earns his bread honestly. He has ordinary knowledge of the world. He knows fairly well how he should behave towards his parents, his wife, his children and his fellow-villagers. He understands and observes the rules of morality. But he cannot write his own name. What do you propose to do by giving him a knowledge of letters? Will you add an inch to his happiness? Do you wish to make him discontented with his cottage or his lot? And even if you want to do that, he will not need such an education. Carried away by the flood of western thought, we came to the conclusion, without weighing pros and cons, that we should give this kind of education to the people.

Now let us take higher education. I have learned Geography, Astronomy, Algebra, Geometry, etc. What of that? In what way have I benefitted myself or those around me? Why have I learned these things? Professor Huxley has thus defined education:—“That man I think has had a liberal education who has been so trained in youth that his body is the ready servant of his will and does with ease and pleasure all the work that as a mechanism it is capable of, whose intellect is a clear, cold logic engine with all its parts of equal strength and in smooth working order whose mind is stored with a knowledge of the fundamental truths of nature whose passions are trained to come……whose mind is stored with a knowledge of the fundamental truths of nature…………whose passions are trained to come