stormy years of European history, uncertainly lighted by the unattainable purity of the Christian ideal, went to the making of the Kantian principle, the noblest deliverance of man upon the will: Nothing can be conceived either in the world or even out of it as good without qualification, except a good will.' But this principle appeared in its development too abstract and ascetic, insufficiently practical for the Western conception of life, incapable of yielding all the ideas required for that complete social and political activity for which European man builds his cities to-day, as did the Greek of Aristotle's time. The highest freedom must be conceived as attainable through social relationships; and the free man must feel that his will is concerned in the laws he agrees to obey. To all the evolution herein involved through Christian thought, allied with Greek, working upon very active peoples, the Hindu is a stranger.

Freedom, in the thought truly native to the Hindu, has meant the escape from the servitude to sense, from 'the sensual curse of man's nature.' This is the goal of individual absorption in the divine essence; and the way to this is an asceticism which, as Vamadeo Shastri observes, is just the quality you English least understand.' This circle of ideas may appear very far from the ideal indispensable to the moral fabric of Western civilisation at the present time; though some of our transcendental philosophers are striving to perform the impossible feat of conceding to the individual a permanent self-identity in their Absolute. But further reflexion, under Lyall's guidance, will make us beware of misconceiving the points at which the two modes of thought are distant, and the points at which they are near to each other. His view as to the effect of human personality on the mind of the Hindu and the position it fills in his spiritual universe is best learnt from the chapter on the 'Origin of Divine Myths in India.' It is probably well known to students of Comparative Religion, that, as a result of observation in India, he dissented from the theory that leaves no place for the deification of mortals in the development of the myth; and in this connexion the intense effect of the impressive personality is eminently revealed. But even the longing for release

from personal existence testifies, through the extraordinary difficulty which the Hindu finds in conceiving a way of escape,' to the 'very strong impression made upon him by individual personality and character.'

Moreover, the part taken by remarkable personalities in Indian history is shown by Lyall to be no small one. Towards the close of the essay on 'The Rajput States of India' he makes an earnest plea for the preservation of institutions which appear occasionally to stand right in the path of reforms which to an European appear of prime and peremptory necessity.' What is the reason for this appeal? It is hardly necessary to say that it is not made in any antiquarian interest. For Lyall's large humanity and practical purpose are apparent, throughout these studies, in the perfect balance between the understanding of what belongs to the past, and the appreciation of that which is the growth of the present or the need of the future. The warning not to hasten 'the tendency of modern officialism' to place these troublesome halfbarbarous communities' under a 'strong centralised government,' or 'melt down' their institutions in the 'crucible of civilisation,' is the culmination of a description of the Rajput organism, in which all the wilder and ruder features are scientifically laid bare. For the text of the appeal we may take the words: If plants are to be hardy, we must give them time to grow.' We are made to realise the possible effect upon the Rajput society of the conditions of security introduced by the British Government in sapping its native strength.

·

In the passage referred to, the conception of many possible roads to freedom becomes a thing of vivid imagery, with the idea of personal force as its centre. If the Letters of Vamadeo Shastri awaken the consciousness that there is more than one kind of freedom set before man, and that political activity may seem of small concern to him who is straining after the highest freedom of the mind, the analysis of conditions in Rajputana instils the thought that political freedom itself may take diverse shapes at any stage short of the complete political evolution of a people. Lyall's recognition of the place of personalities in social development has a close bearing on this question of the growth of a society to the condition of a genuine political freedom in which, for the

great mass of its members, liberty is not merely an opportunity but an active exercise and practice of the will, and demands in all, if it is to be kept bright, some measure of personal energy. The warning, in fact, which we may venture to read between the lines that close this chapter is to beware of extinguishing personal force where it is present, actually in the few and perhaps potentially in the many, before these people have learned a better way of nurturing it.*

The way in which the Imperial democratic reformer of to-day would foster Indian freedom is set forth in many passages of the Montagu-Chelmsford Report. It is clearly brought out, for instance, that the people, about ninetyfive per cent. of whom have not yet openly asked for self-government, are to be stirred 'out of their peaceful conservatism,' and are to receive the gift, so far as possible, in the form in which it is known amongst Anglo-Saxon nations. For, if the crucial modifications in the character of English parliamentary institutions introduced into the scheme conceived for application to India are examined, they will be found to proceed either, as in the system of dyarchy and the limitations of the electorate, from the necessity of fostering a rapid artificial evolution in a society where the historical conditions of natural evolution are absent, or from recognition, on political grounds, of the subdivisions of races, religions, and castes, as in the communal system of representation. To bring about the production by the Indian people itself, out of its own spirit, of the political ideas and forms appropriate to it, is beyond the reach of statesmanship, however enlightened and creative. It can but present to them the Western idea in forms adapted to meet the most salient differences in the conditions.

It is not for us to surmise what would have been Lyall's judgment on this most important historical document. In an address delivered in 1902 he laid stress on the very serious importance of race and religion politically in some Asiatic countries with which

On these and other reflexions contained in this article, Mr Gilchrist's valuable and interesting book, 'Indian Nationality,' published since the article was written, will be found to offer a highly useful commentary.— EDITOR.

England is closely connected and concerned.' What would have been his view as to the best method of eliminating the divisions resulting from these forces, or how far he would have agreed with the Report in suggesting that they will fade before the natural aspirations [to self-government] which fill the soul of every selfrespecting man,' we dare not conjecture. But, in whatever way he would have conceived the problem of the education of the Indian peoples in Western freedom, it may be unhesitatingly affirmed that he would have been amongst the first to perceive a new spirit in India, and the most eager to recognise the promise of a closer communion between British and Indian ideals. To him the circumstances in which new aspirations have been awakened in India by the war, the dawn of a sense of nationality shown in such unprecedented events as the coming together of Hindu and Moslem communities, would have been of extraordinary interest. He did not undervalue the place of war in history, its rough shaping of a people's soul for good or ill. The discipline for India in sending her sons to stand by those of England in the great defence of ideals she is beginning to share, would surely have seemed to him a finer school for the gaining of strength for political liberty than the elementary lessons of tribal conflict.

The impression, nevertheless, which we receive again and again from his writings is that the greatest contribution of India to spiritual progress, and her chief part in universal history, will lie in something which the West does not completely share, rather than in that which India can accept from Europe. While he would have agreed that she is a child in the use of representative institutions, he would have had us realise that in other things of value her experience is great and ancient. She shares in that 'deeper spiritualism of Asia' out of which the great religions have come. The Hindus (he says) are perhaps the most intensely religious people in the world.' Though less practical, this race is 'perhaps more delicate intellectually than the European.' He expresses through Vamadeo Shastri the anxiety lest, in assimilating all that Europe is lavishing upon her, she should lose that which is peculiarly her own.

In the reflexions attributed to the Hindu scholar, the

emphasis is of course laid on those aspects and points of view which are farthest removed from the Western atmosphere. Among these, and in connexion with the subject of political development, there is perhaps none of greater importance than the temperament and outlook to which the Western association of moral with material progress is strange-an association which we find ourselves regarding from the Oriental point of view in the Brahman's ironical analysis of Herbert Spencer's philosophy. The question of the relation of a people's ethical and spiritual character to its constitutional history is one of much interest, which does not appear to have received enough attention in this country. The principle, that what concerns all should be considered by all, presided over the beginnings of popular representation in the government of England. Now the growth of the people's share in control has been largely determined by the constant extension in the sphere of things regarded as their concern.' To a great extent, and especially in recent times, it has been questions of material well-being, and the citizen's interest in them, that have led him more and more to assert his rights in a State whose business it is to deal with these matters. But a people which has always been somewhat deficient in that impetus to improve material conditions is naturally deficient also in the sustained passion to obtain control over the agencies determining these conditions, both in nature and in the State.

The development of self-government amongst such a people must surely follow a route diverging at least at certain points, unless it is accompanied by a profound change in their practical spirit. The The Hindu,' says Vamádeo Shastri, 'is summoned to join a citizenship he has not inherited; neither has he obtained it by a great sum.' It might be added, from data also supplied in these Letters, that he must create for himself his own form of enthusiasm for the political freedom which is brought to him from the West, since the conviction that moral progress will follow upon material has not been a beacon in his spiritual history. It seems to me doubtful whether, according to the Blue-book interpretation, the words "material" and "moral" do not mean practically the same thing.' The Brahman rendering