Mr. Bukhsh deplores the current wave of extravagance, due to the wholesale adoption of European customs and modes of living. "What," he asks, "has happened here in India? We have adopted European costume, European ways of living, even the European vices of drinking and gambling, but none of their virtues. This must be remedied. We must learn at the feet of Europe, but not at the sacrifice of our Eastern individuality. But this is precisely what we have not done. We have dabbled a little in English and European history, and we have commenced to despise our religion, our literature, our history, our traditions. We have unlearned the lessons of our history and our civilization, and in their place we have secured nothing solid and substantial to hold society fast in the midst of endless changes." In fine: "Destruction has done its work, but the work of construction has not yet begun."[245] Like Vambery, Bukhsh lays strong emphasis on the increasing emancipation of women. No longer regarded as mere "child-bearing machines," the Mohammedan women of India "are getting educated day by day, and now assert their rights. Though the purdah system[246] still prevails, it is no longer that severe, stringent, and unreasonable seclusion of women which existed fifty years ago. It is gradually relaxing, and women are getting, step by step, rights and liberties which must in course of time end in the complete emancipation of Eastern womanhood. Forty years ago women meekly submitted to neglect, indifference, and even harsh treatment from their husbands, but such is the case no longer."[247] These two descriptions of social conditions in the Near and Middle East respectively enable one to get a fair idea of the process of change which is going on. Of course it must not be forgotten that both writers deal primarily with the educated upper classes of the large towns. Nevertheless, the leaven is working steadily downward, and with every decade is affecting wider strata of the native populations. The spread of Western education in the East during the past few decades has been truly astonishing, because it is the exact antithesis of the Oriental educational system. The traditional "education" of the entire Orient, from Morocco to China, was a mere memorizing of sacred texts combined with exercises of religious devotion. The Mohammedan or Hindu student spent long years reciting to his master (a "holy man") interminable passages from books which, being written in classic Arabic or Sanskrit, were unintelligible to him, so that he usually did not understand a word of what he was saying. No more deadening system for the intellect could possibly have been devised. Every part of the brain except the memory atrophied, and the wonder is that any intellectual initiative or original thinking ever appeared.