Page:On the education of the people of India (IA oneducationofpeo00trevrich).pdf/140

126 greater part of Europe were melted down into one people by the prevalence of the Roman language and arts. All that is required is, that we should not laboriously interpose an obstacle to the progress of this desirable change by the forced cultivation of the Sanskrit and Arabic languages.

The argument we have been considering is the last hold of the oriental party. Forced to admit that Sanskrit and Arabic are not worth teaching for the knowledge they contain, they would obtain a reprieve for them on the ground that their vocabularies are required to patch up the vernacular dialects for the reception of Western knowledge. Discarded as masters, they are to be retained as servants to another and a better system. Their spirit has fled, but their carcase must be preserved to supply the supposed deficiencies, and to impair the real energies, of the system which is growing up in their place.

But, specious as the argument is, I should not have dwelt on it so long, if it had not been closely connected with a most pernicious error. The time of the people of India has hitherto been wasted in learning languages as distinguished from knowledge—mere words as distinguished from things—to an extent almost inconceivable to Europeans. This has been in a great measure unavoidable.