I am aware that current opinion puts down the failure of the educated young Indian to his want of religion. He has been educated out of his own faith and not accepted into any other; hence his want of character. Of all the wild shibboleths about India and the Indians this is, I think, the wildest. That a man is injured by being brought to see the foolishness of caste, of infant marriage, of harems and zenanas, of all the forms and ceremonies with which all religions are covered, seems to me a triumph of illogic. Only the "Occidental mind" at its best could conceive such an idea. In so far as education destroys these ideas it does good. Wherein it harms him is by taking him apart from his people, rendering him not desirous to help them but to disown them. He is taught that to be an Englishman should be his ideal--that he "should cultivate English habits of thought"--as if true thought had any habits--so that, finally, he can't think at all. He is directed to wrong ideals; he is rendered unhappy; he is _dépaysé_; he is useless for any work, except being a clerk or lawyer; he has no more character than a jelly-fish. Instead of wishing to lead his people he wishes to identify himself with the English Government, be a civilian, and rule his people. He should be filled with a boundless confidence in the future of his people, and that it is his duty to help that future to be realised. He is discouraged and rendered hopeless. Instead of being a help he is the greatest danger his own people will have to meet when they move forward. He is a danger to all. The Education Department of the Government of India is the new Frankenstein, and the Higher Education is its monster. The students have sunk under their "education," and in consequence they are unhappy. Who wonders? But, in fact, an alien Power cannot introduce or work any real system of education. It must be indigenous--something of the soil, and not exotic. It, like self-government, must begin with small things in the village and gradually rise. Like all things, if it is to live and prosper and extend it must have a soul. And the soul of education, like the soul of life, is an emotion tending towards a _desired_ end. The desired end of education is the rise and progress not merely of the individual but of the nation. That has been the soul of the progress of Japan; that must be the soul of the progress of any people; and education will only be enthusiastically taken up when it is seen to be a means to that end. Such an education cannot be given by Englishmen. Any Education Department must be Provincial and draw its vigour from below. It must not be a machine governed from Simla with text-books as thumbscrews and manuals as beds of Procrustes.