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on the education of
need any detail. The time has certainly arrived when the ancient debt of civilisation which Europe owes to Asia[1] is about to be repaid; and the sciences, cradled in the East and brought to maturity in the West, are now by a final effort about to overspread the world.[2]
- ↑ The early civilisation of Greece by settlers from Phoenicia and Egypt; the philosophical systems of Pythagoras and Plato; the knowledge of chemistry, medicine, and mathematics, which emanated in a later age from the Arabian schools of Cordova and Salerno, attest the obligations we are under to the Eastern world. The greatest boon of all, our admirable system of arithmetical notation, which has facilitated in an incalculable degree the improvement of the sciences and the transaction of every kind of business for which the use of numbers is requisite, is distinctly traceable through the Arabs to the Hindus: we call it the Arabian, the Arabs call it the Hindu system, and the Hindus attribute the invention of it to their gods. It has been practised in India from a period which precedes all written and traditionary memorials.
- ↑ It may be as well to mention some of the probable causes of the existing state of native feeling on this subject. The first is the same which gave rise to the revival of learning, and the cultivation of the vernacular languages in Europe, or the increase in the number and importance of the middle class of society. External peace, internal security of property, arising from a regular administration of justice, increased facilities to trade, the permanent settlement of the land revenue of the Lower, and a long settlement of that of the Upper Provinces, have all contributed to raise up a class between the nabob and the ryot, which derives its consequence from the exercise of industry and enterprise, which is possessed of the leisure necessary for literary pursuits, and which, being a creation of our won, is naturally inclined to imitate us, and to adopt our views. Secondly, The people feeling themselves safe in their persons and
