King_, common text-books in colleges, the steady pressure of Acts of the
British Government in India, like that raising the marriage age of
girls; the example of men in authority like Lord Curzon, during whose
vice-regal tour in South India there were no nautch entertainments; the
necessity of understanding expressions like "general election" and
"public spirit," and of comprehending in some measure the working of
local self-government--all such constant pressure must effect a change
in the mental standpoint. The army of Britain in India, representative
of the imperial sceptre, has now for many years been gathered into
cantonments, and its work is no longer to quell hostilities within
India, but only to repel invaders from without. Other British forces,
however, penetrating far deeper, working silently and for the most part
unobserved, are still in the field all over India, effecting a grander
change than the change of outward sovereignty. "Ideas rule the world,"
and he who impresses his ideas is the real ruler of men.

[Sidenote: Indian conservatism overpowered otherwise.]

Telling against Indian conservatism or inertia are other things also
besides persistent Western influences. Many things Western appeal to the
natural desire for advancement and comfort, and the adoption of these
has often as corollary a change of idea. To take examples without
further explanation. The desire for education, the key to advancement in
life, has quietly ignored the old orthodox idea that education in
Sanscrit and the Sacred Scriptures, _i.e._ higher education as formerly
understood, is the exclusive privilege of certain castes. The very
expression "higher education" has come to mean a modern English
education, not as formerly an education in Sanscrit lore. Had the
British Government allowed things to take their course, the still
surviving institutions of the old kind for Oriental learning would have