Page:On the education of the people of India (IA oneducationofpeo00trevrich).pdf/222

208 cancies as sub-assistant surgeons. A knowledge of the English language, we consider as a sine qua non, because that language combines within itself the circle of all the sciences, and incalculable wealth of printed works and illustrations; circumstances that give it obvious advantages over the oriental languages, in which are only to be found the crudest elements of science, or the most irrational substitutes for it.

Of the perfect feasibility of such a proposal, we do not entertain a doubt: nevertheless, like any other, it will be found to divide the opinions of men of talent and experience. These will divide into an Oriental and an English party. Mr. Tytler’s long replies have imposed upon us the necessity of entering at greater length into the argument respecting the feasibility of the contemplated plan, than we could have wished. We beg to apologise to your Lordship for this circumstance, but as Mr. Tytler, instead of giving brief and simple answers to our questions, preferred committing them to paper in the form of long minutes; it became incumbent upon us to offer something in the way of refutation. The determined Orientalist having himself acquired the Sanscrit and the Arabic, at the cost of much and severe application, as well as of pecuniary expense, will view with great repugnance a suggestion of teaching science in such a way as may cast his peculiar pursuits into the shade, and independent of a language which he reveres as classical. The advocate for the substitution of the English language, on the other hand, will doubt whether the whole stores of Eastern literature have enabled us to ascertain a single fact of the least consequence towards the history of the ancient world; whether they have tended to improve morality, or to extend science; or whether, with the exception of what the Arabian physicians derived from the Greeks, the Arabic contains a sufficient body of scientific information to reward the modern medical student for all the labour and attention that would be much more profitably bestowed on the study