Page:The Spoilt Child.djvu/129

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THE SPOILT CHILD.
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be brought into play and developed. After a time such comparisons will come easy to them; they will be able to reflect on the causes for the peculiarities of different objects, and will have no difficulty in perceiving the various classes into which they naturally fall. By instruction of this kind, assiduity in research is encouraged and the faculty of reasoning exercised. But in our country an education like this is hardly ever given, and as a natural consequence, our wits are muddled and run to waste: we have no instinctive perception of the essential and unessential features of any enquiry. When a question is under consideration, many of us have not even the requisite intelligence to know what kind of enquiries should be made in order that a conclusion may be arrived at; and it is no falsehood to say that the travels of a good many people are but idle and profitless. But considering the education you have had, I should imagine that travel would be of great advantage to you."

"Now if I do go abroad" said Ramlall, "I shall have to stay for some time in places where there is society: and with what classes, and with what kinds of people, should I chiefly associate?"

"That is no easy question," Barada Babu replied: "I must contrive though to give you some kind of an answer. In every rank in life there are people good and bad: any good people you may come across you may associate with; but you know by now how to recognise such: I need not tell you again. Association with Englishmen may make a man courageous, for they worship courage, and any Englishman committing a cowardly act is not admitted into good society. But it does not at all follow that a man is therefore virtuous because he happens to be courageous. Courage is very essential to everybody, I admit; but real courage is that which is the outcome of virtue. I have