Page:On the education of the people of India (IA oneducationofpeo00trevrich).pdf/135

Rh purposes; to draw upon it for words as well as ideas; to concentrate the national energies on this single point? Otherwise it will be necessary for the same persons to make themselves good English scholars, in order that they may learn chemistry, geology, or mechanics; and good Sanskrit scholars, in order that they may get names to apply to what they have learned. Our main object is, to raise up a class of persons who will make the learning of Europe intelligible to the people of Asia in their own languages. An enlarged and accurate knowledge of the systems they will have to explain, such as can be derived only from a long course of study, will, at any rate, be necessary to qualify them for this important task. But, if they will then have to begin again, and to devote nine years more to the study of Sanskrit philology, we might as well at once abandon the attempt. Neither would it be possible for one set of persons to provide learning, and another words; and for every lecturer or writer on European subjects always to have his philologer at his elbow, to supply him with Sanskrit terms as they are required. Until the duration of human life is doubled, and means are found to maintain the literary class through twice the longest period now allotted to education, such complicated and cumbrous schemes of na-