=India as Typical of the Orient.=--The other countries of the ancient Orient never fixed their social classes in so hard and fast a manner, and have never included so elaborate a philosophy among the products of their culture. But India may well be considered broadly typical of the stage of development in the Orient. Certain common features appear in the education of all the nations there. In the system of each, the classes below the sacerdotal or priestly are given little intellectual education, and the women none at all, but both are trained by apprenticeship in their vocations. Actual schools, both elementary and higher, have been instituted; and the latter, except in China, are conducted at temples or priestly colleges by members of the sacerdotal class. The educational content is naturally traditional. It is, for the most part, ensured against change by being embalmed in sacred books, such as the _Vedas_. The educational method consists largely in the memorizing of the test and imitation of the copy set, and little attempt is made to give a reason for the customs and traditional knowledge taught. Hence, while individuality has begun to emerge, it is suppressed by every agency possible; and, although these peoples have largely overcome the primitive enslavement to nature and the present, they are completely in bondage to the past. [Illustration: Fig. 1.--Elders explaining to young men of an Australian tribe at the ‘initiatory ceremonies.’ (Reproduced from Spencer and Gillen’s _Across Australia_.)] [Illustration: Fig. 2.--A Hindu school in the open air, with the village schoolmaster teaching boys to write on a strip of palm leaf with an iron stylus. Reproduced from _Things as They Are_ by Amy Wilson-Carmichael, by permission of the Fleming H. Revell Company.)] [Sidenote: Greater development of personality,] [Sidenote: but Oriental and non-progressive.]