still or even retrograding. Lyall, personifying a Brahmin, said,
"Politics I cannot help regarding as the superficial aspect of deeper
problems; and for progress, the latest incarnation of European
materialism, I have an incurable distrust." These subtle intellectuals,
in fact, as Surendranath Banerjee, one of the leaders of the Swadeshi
movement, told Dr. Wegener,[48] hold that the English are "stupid and
ignorant," and, therefore, wholly unfit to govern India.

I remember Lyall, who, as Sir Mortimer Durand says, had a very keen
sense of humour, telling me an anecdote which is what Bacon would have
called "luciferous," as an illustration of the views held by the
uneducated classes in India on the subject of Western reforms. The
officer in charge of a district either in Bengal or the North-West
Provinces got up a cattle-show, with a view to improving the breed of
cattle. Shortly afterwards, an Englishman, whilst out shooting, entered
into conversation with a peasant who happened to be passing by. He asked
the man what he thought of the cattle-show, and added that he supposed
it had done a great deal of good. "Yes," the native, who was probably a
Moslem, replied after some reflection, "last year there was cholera.
This year there was Cattle Show. We have to bear these afflictions with
what patience we may. Are they not all sent by God?"

But it was naturally the opinions entertained by the intellectual
classes which most interested Lyall, and which he endeavoured to
interpret to his countrymen. The East is asymmetrical in all things. I
remember Lyall saying to me, "Accuracy is abhorrent to the Oriental
mind." The West, on the other hand, delights beyond all things in
symmetry and accuracy. Moreover, it would almost seem as if in the most
trivial incidents in life some unseen influence generally impels the
Eastern to do the exact opposite to the Western--a point, I may observe,