Page:On the education of the people of India (IA oneducationofpeo00trevrich).pdf/147

Rh system, we should have missed our European Reformation, both of philosophy and religion. Still less ought we to propagate the very systems, which it is our object to supplant, merely in the hope of being able to ingraft some shoots of European science upon them. Bacon did not educate schoolmen, nor Luther Roman Catholic priests, to become the instruments of their reforms. At this rate we should have been ever learning, and never able to come to a knowledge of the truth. The barren trunk and branches would have been always growing, while the exotic additions to this uncongenial stock, having no root in themselves, would have produced no fruit, however often they might have been renewed. Neither is it necessary or desirable to carry on war against the old system by direct attacks upon it, or by making offensive assertions of the superiority of our own. The ordinary effect of controversy is to excite hostility and bitterness of spirit. Ram Mohun Roy, who comes nearer to the idea of the reformed teacher of the orientalists than any body else who has appeared, was looked upon as an apostate by his party, and they were roused by his attacks to organise a regular opposition to his views.

What we have to do is, not to dispute, but to teach—not to prepossess the minds of the