Inspite of the high theoretic value claimed by the several authors for their respective theories, based on one or other of the above nuclei, one regrets to say that on close examination they are nothing more than filling illustrations—what Matthew Arnold means by “the grand name without the grand thing in it.” Such are the various theories of caste advanced by Sir Denzil Ibbetson, Mr. Nesfield, M. Senart and Sir H. Risley. To criticise them in a lump would be to say that they are a disguised form of the _Petitio Principii_ of formal logic. To illustrate: Mr. Nesfield says that “function and function only … was the foundation upon which the whole system of castes in India was built up.” But he may rightly be reminded that he does not very much advance our thought by making the above statement, which practically amounts to saying that castes in India are functional or occupational, which is a very poor discovery! We have yet to know from Mr. Nesfield why is it that an occupational group turned into an occupational caste? I would very cheerfully have undertaken the task of dwelling on the [pg 91] theories of other ethnologists, had it not been for the fact that Mr. Nesfield’s is a typical one. Without stopping to criticize those theories that explain the caste system as a natural phenomenon occurring in obedience to the law of disintegration, as explained by Herbert Spencer in his formula of evolution, or as natural as “the structural differentiation within an organism”—to employ the phraseology of orthodox apologists—, or as an early attempt to test the laws of eugenics—as all belonging to the same class of fallacy which regards the caste system as inevitable, or as being consciously imposed in anticipation of these laws on a helpless and humble population, I will now lay before you my own view on the subject.