Page:Sketches of some distinguished Indian women.djvu/84

72 Once again a great contest is being waged between two civilizations, between two schools of thought, two philosophies of life and conduct. Here once more have met two branches of the great Aryan race, one still in the vigour of manhood, full of life and abounding energy, furnished with all the newest discoveries of science and philosophy; the other showing signs of the decadence of age, and strong with the strength of immutability rather than of life; and it seems hardly possible that in such a contest the victory should again rest with the Brahmans.

The religion of the Hindus can boast an antiquity little less, perhaps, than that of ancient Egypt, and it can lay claim to a conservatism unequalled in any other part of the world. The unchanging custom of centuries has crystallized into social forms, which may be destroyed, but can scarcely be modified, and so closely bound up are the religious and social systems, that an attempt to alter the one must inevitably involve an attack upon the other.

The young Hindu who has studied under European teachers, and imbibed something of Western ideas, finds his belief in the religion of his fathers assailed from every point. Physical science pronounces many portions of the old-world system to be both grotesque and impossible. History lets in a flood of light, which reveals the hollowness and poverty of much that had previously appeared noble and worthy of