Francis Napier

“ Strive against one another with a friendly jealousy. Let every one be ashamed to do wrong before the face of those who have shared the same lessons of knowledge and virtue. If knowledge is not virtue as well as power, it is a bad power, the power of doing evil with greater energy, subtlety, and success. Animate yourselves with a passion for the public good. Resist deceit and covetousness. Be firm and frank but respectful and dutiful to those who are in power. Be long-suffering to the poor and weak. The cause of the higher European learning is entrusted to your keeping. ”

“ England not only thinks and writes and works, but expands and multiplies unceasingly, embracing all the waste and empty places on the earth, filling them with a free healthy progressive population, rude it is true, at present, and absorbed in the conflict with material nature, but possessing all the slumbering instincts and elements of the highest culture. If India had received its European education from France, it would have remained attached to France, in contact and communion with France alone. ”

“ In this way Universities in India are destined to a larger duty than they have exercised elsewhere, they are not only the nursing mothers of learning and virtue and intellectual delights, they are nursing mothers of a new Commonwealth.
European culture will help you to conceive and create a common country, but in directing your hopes to a new and better India in the future, do I ask you to despise and forget India as it was? ”

“ We need the native to reach the native. Remember then, gentlemen, that you, the adopted children of European civilization, are the interpreters between the stranger and the Indian, between the Government and the subject, between the great and the small, between the strong and the weak ; that you walk armed with a two-fold knowledge between two nations that do not know each other, that cannot know each other, except through you. ”

“ The imagination and the heart of the Hindu will probably remain oriental, however much his reason may become European. But for the reason, gentlemen, how ample is the intellectual circle into which you are now admitted! The natural and abstract sciences, history, political, literary, social, and aesthetic, the study and practice of the fine arts, law and physic, the principles of agriculture, sanitary, penal and economic enquiries, all claim your attention, and all bear upon the phenomena and the interests of your own country. ”

“ Few valuable books are now written in those languages, and few foreigners make those languages their study. The Dutch and Spaniards learn other languages to make themselves understood and to gain a knowledge of what is going on. I wish to speak of the French with respect and even with admiration. They strove with fluctuating fortunes for the mastery of India, and at length on the humble field of Wandewash, Colonel Coote made you English subjects and English students. I contend that you have no reason to regret it. French is still the common language for men of culture in all countries. ”

“ Standing on the vantage ground of distance and comprehensive knowledge, we know the Greeks and Romans better than they knew themselves. To learn Latin and Greek in order to understand them would be like learning the art of weaving to make a coat, when you can buy a better coat ready made. ”

“ But it is a fact that, by the mere force of numerical procession and propagation, the future world must belong to the English race which possesses a preponderant share in it already. India might have become the prey of some other sea-faring and exploring people. The Dutch were a glorious and are still a respectable nation. They might have subdued and held India, and they would have taught you science and politics in Dutch. The Spaniards might have added India to America, and they would have taught you the same things through the Society of Jesus. ”

“ It amuses one to hear the boys in an Indian school repeating verses which celebrate the beauty of the snow drop, the comfort of the fireside, the affecting associations of the country church-yard, and the virtues of the ant. It does not seem probable that Shakespear, Scott, Byron, or Tennyson are destined to supersede in the affections of the educated Hindu the legendary epics, which contain the sources of national religion and history, or the fables, apophthegms, and tales in which popular humour and wisdom are condensed. ”

“ I do not say that in all times and in all places these principles have been uniformly respected, but I believe it may be deliberately asserted that in the management of her colonies and dependencies England has in the long run admitted the aborigines and the conquered to a larger share of political liberty, commercial equality, and public rights than any other State. In periods of tranquillity and social development there is, indeed, in the minds of the English people a kindly, almost a precipitate desire to raise the subjugated nations to like privileges with themselves. ”

“ But there is no region, which nature appears to have designed by physical conformation for political union or cohesion, which is more deficient in the elements of harmony than India. You have two capital religions, each commanding a hearty support on the part of its adherents. The Mussulman religion moulds its own disciples to a general equality within, but without it is intolerant and aggressive, and its characteristic dogmas are directly repugnant to the Hindu. ”

“ The first result of the introduction of a new learning, in a country possessing an indigenous and stationary civilization, is sometimes to breed a superficial contempt for what is old and past. But the maturer effect is quite different. ”

“ Halls and Colleges, Chapels and Libraries, Museums and Galleries would stand around, some touched with the traces of a cherished decay, some in the sober hues of maturity, some where the noise of the builders had scarcely ceased, but all testifying to an incessant inheritance of human attachment. ”

“ The higher education will teach you to undervalue nothing but to admire with discernment. If it dispels some illusions, it will unseal your eyes to a variety of interests and pleasures to which you are now insensible. Many familiar objects will gain significance and charm, the dullest thing will quicken with vitality and meaning. In fact there is much in the ancient polity, art, literature, and manners of the Indians that Indians alone, armed with the powerful keys of European criticism, can f ally open to the Western world. ”

“ The means I know of prosecuting sustained and independent studies are still defective, but the least manifestation of a desire on your part to enter upon this course, the least exhibition of a liberal spirit in the native community in the pursuit of knowledge, for the sake of knowledge, would be met by the State with generous sympathy. ”

“ Then patriots, politicians, artists, prosecutors of useful science, of industrial inventions, of improved laws, of public liberty, in splendid array down to the fathers of the living and listening crowd. ”

“ To what aims and ends does the road conduct on which you have planted your footsteps, I trust, with constancy and ardour, on which you have reached to-day a memorable stage, and which you are prepared to follow out to a higher issue. ”

“ Men who believe in antagonistic religions, who speak different languages, who betray different descents, cannot have much community of affections; all have had their vicissitudes of prosperity and suffering, and for the most part the ascendancy and glory of one race have been the oppression and shame of another. ”

“ What amount of satisfaction the educated Indians may derive from the perusal of works of imagination in modern languages, it is difficult to anticipate. So much in poetry and fiction depends on nature, manners, traditions, and religion, that we may doubt whether the generality of men will ever find much real enjoyment in productions of the fancy belonging to a distant and different people. ”

“ Thus the hearers would be made to feel that they are at most an equal link between the generations that are gone and those that are to come, the present would scarcely appear of like value with the past ”

“ I need not enlarge on the difference of origin which the numerous races of the land discover, and which are manifested not only by complexion, features, and physical constitution, but also by moral and intellectual inclinations and aptitude. ”

“ E^/ch religion has a sacred language that no one understands. Over the whole surface of the Peninsula there prevails a variety and mixture of exotic and indigenous languages which are respectively the depositaries and instruments of polite literature, of written correspondence, of public or commercial business, of popular intercourse. ”

“ I wish I could see public functionaries and persons of independent means in this country devoting their leisure to local history and archaeology, to the collection and preservation of manuscripts, coins and other relics of past ages, to an analysis of native science, treated from a critical European point of view, in fact to securing and placing on record many things of the highest moment which are rushing fast to oblivion and decay. Why should there not be, even now, in every province native gentlemen doing from motives of intelligent patriotism all that Mr. ”

“ Cochin, Travancore, Mysore, and Hyderabad, with fifteen millions of inhabitants, are open to the educated youths of Madras, who by strength and knowledge and enterprise are enabled to reach them and rule them. ”

“ Places, which were once valued as a convenient refuge for tarnished reputations and broken fortunes, will afford a conspicuous theatre for the superabundant intelligence and energies which the ancient Presidencies may throw off. ”

“ It is still used in my opinion with increasing beauty and power, and France vies with Germany and England in sending every^ year to the press works of science, fancy, criticism, and research. The springs of national genius and power are unimpaired. ”