How difficalt it is for people ordinarily accustomed to one line of thought to realise & situation wherein different springs of action are involved, is constantly soon in English criticisms of Oriental matters. The British people can realise, for instance, the facts of an Eastern famine, but the peculiar cir cumstances which have led up to such an infliction is for the most part beyond their grasp. It is from such causes that much of the unmerited obloquy which it is the practice of a Jarge class of would-be politicians at home to pour out on the conduct of Englishmen in the East, is derived. With minds accustomed to work in certain grooves, they lack the energy required to move in different lines of thought; and, supposing that men in all parts of the world think alike and aot on precisely similar impulses, they attempt from their narrow standpoint to lay down laws for the whole of humanity, Even in Europe it is notorious that radical differences in thought exist between different nation. alities. It becomes constantly difficult to follow the argument of a French writer, or to render his precise meaning into English. Every German translator knows how many phases of thought, with familiar German words to express them, cannot be rendered even by periphrasis into English. Yet the diversity of thought in Europe is unity compared with what one meets in Asia, To understand s people we have to acquire familiarity with their modes of thought as well as with their enter actions. This familiarity only comes on us by degrees and almost unconsciously, and is a thing difficult or impossible to explain to third parties. Hence, we may assume the generally more or less unsatisfactory reception of explanations by people to whom the method of reasoning is unfamiliar. We hear constant complaints from imperfectly informed people, of the mise conduct of the British Government in India, Esch man has his panacea
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.