THE RENAISSANCE IN INDIA
middle-class pseudo-democracy of nine-teeuth-century England, would have revolutionised Indian society by introduc-ing into it all the social ideas and main features of the European form. What-ever value for the future there may be in the things they grasped at with this eager conviction, their method was, as we now recognise, a false method,—an angli-cised India is a thing we can no longer view as either possible or desirable,— and it could only, if pursued to the end, have made us painful copyists, clumsy fol-lowers always stumbling in the wake of European evolution and always fifty years behind it. This movement of thought did not and could not endure ; something of it still continues, but its engrossing power has passed away beyond any chance of vigorous revival.
Nevertheless, this earliest period of crude reception left behind it results that were of value and indeed indispensable to a powerful renaissance. We may single
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