Thus in the old days the embryo official came out young, free from prejudices, full of enthusiasms, ready to learn, to read, to mark, learn, and inwardly digest all phases of Oriental life about him. Even thirty years ago when I first went to India there were many of this type still left. They thought it their duty, as it was their pleasure, to study the people in order to understand what lay beneath their customs. It must be thirty years ago that an old civilian turned on me sharply when I made some ignorant remark about some Malabar custom and said: "The custom has arisen out of the circumstances of life and no peculiarity of nature in the people. All peoples are much alike in fundamentals, and great apparent differences are but superficial, and arise from environment." The absurd doctrine of the "Oriental mind" had not then arisen to be an excuse for ignorance and want of understanding. Nowadays it is supposed to be the mark of culture to talk of it; to the old officials it would have been the mark of a fool; they thought it their duty to study the people. But it is not so now. Young civilians come out with their minds already closed, and, as a rule, closed they remain. The harm is done in England before they start. Let me give instances. It is a custom when a young civilian joins to send him to a district head-quarters for six months first, to learn his way about before posting him to any specified work. One such was sent to me ten years ago, and if I give an account of him it will do for all. For nowadays they are all turned out of the same mill, have all the same habits of mind and thought, and their personalities are submerged. If anything, he of whom I speak was above the average in all ways. He was a very nice young fellow, with charming manners, and I greatly liked him. He became an officer of great promise, and would have risen high, but he is dead now, and therefore what I say now cannot offend anyone. Besides, I have nothing to say that would offend. He was, I think, twenty-three years of age, of good people, educated at a public school and Oxford, and was as nice a boy as could be found. He had passed high in the examinations. He was said to be clever, and as regards assimilating paper knowledge, he was able, but his mind was an old curiosity shop. He had fixed ideas in nearly everything. He was full of prejudices he called principles, of "facts" that were not true. He had learnt a great deal, he knew nothing; and worse--he did not know how to obtain knowledge. He wanted his opinions ready-made and absolute first, and only sought for such facts as would support those principles. He had no notion how to make knowledge by himself. He wanted authority before he would think. Give him "authority," and he would disregard or deny fact in order to cling to it. I will take a concrete instance.