Page:On the education of the people of India (IA oneducationofpeo00trevrich).pdf/217

Rh the people of India are, for all purposes of improvement, a new, and more than a new, people. Their appetite for knowledge has been whetted by their long-compelled fast; and aware of the superiority of the new learning, they devour it more greedily than they ever would have done Sanskrit lore, even if that lore had not been withheld from them: they bring to the task, vacant minds and excited curiosity, absence of prejudice, and an inextinguishable thirst for information. They cannot return under the dominion of the Brahmins. The spell has been for ever broken. Hinduism is not a religion which will bear examination. It is so entirely destitute of any thing like evidence, and is identified with so many gross immoralities and physical absurdities, that it gives way at once before the light of European science. Mahommedanism is made of tougher materials; yet, even a Mahommedan youth who has received an English education is a very different person from one who has been taught according to the perfect manner of the law of his fathers. As this change advances, India will become quite another country: nothing more will be heard of excitable religious feelings: priestcraft will no longer be able to work by ignorance: knowledge and power will pass from a dominant caste to the