as by Mr. Ward, chiefly in their negative character, are sufficiently unproductive of good and prolific of evil. How much more so, when viewed in their positive character! Under the endless recurrence of a dull, monotonous, mechanical routine, the intellectual soil, light by nature and wholly unmanured by art, soon becomes impoverished altogether. Under the combined influences of an utterly vicious system of discipline, the forced initiation into deceptive and dishonest practices, the habitual inculcation of loose, grovelling, carnalizing maxims for the regulation of future conduct, the unceasing repetition of abominably filthy or grossly idolatrous legends,—the moral and religious soil is transformed into a fertile nursery of all manner of rank, unprofitable, and noxious weeds!
Nor is the aspect of things materially improved, when we turn aside to contemplate the nature, character, and influence of the education in the schools of learning, whether Muhammadan or Hindu. Besides the details already supplied, we may, instead of deducing any further inferences of our own, appeal to the well-weighed judgments of the most disinterested, impartial, and unsuspicious witnesses. The English translator of Schlegel’s work on the Philosophy of History, adduces, from the illustrious Goerres, the following passage as a brief summary of his estimate of the practical influence of the system so enthusiastically propounded by the prophet of Mecca, and, by his credulous followers, embraced and propagated with such resolute and inflexible zeal. “The rigid monotheism,” says he, “of his (the prophet’s) doctrine, which, by denying the Trinity and with it all personal manifestation of the Deity, limits its idea to the depths of eternity, without admitting any true or living communication of the Godhead with what appertains to time, naturally allures the metaphysical pride which in this abstraction hath made itself its own God. The ethical Pantheism which this religion professes, while it furnishes a pretext, a motive and a palliation to all the pretences of the mighty, to the ambition of usurpers, the violence of pride, and the arrogance of tyranny, and at the same time consoles and disarms the injured and the oppressed by the inevitableness of destiny, must draw to its preacher the men of the sword, of violence, and of blood, and links those once bound indissolubly to him. The sensual Eudaimonism, to which his creed opens so free a scope both in this world and the next, must rally round the apostle of lust the multitude that burns with all the passionate glow of that fervid zone, and place under his control all the wild fiery energies of that region.” With reference to the practical influence of Sanskrit learning, we have the recorded testimony of the equally illustrious Rammohan Roy. Being himself one
