who, with best respect for those sages, are prepared to admit that those sages were men, and that they were liable as men to err, and that, if they have erred, it is neither a sin nor an impossibility to correct them.
The European scholars who study this question concentrate their attention on understanding the present. Some of them see the need of considering how this institution came into existence;- but they rarely care to consider what a thoughtful Hindu thinks about, namely, the future of caste and the possibilities of modifying it. Whether they consider this or not, it cannot be deemed unnecessary for them to think. As long as caste in India does exist, Hindus will hardly intermarry or have any social intercourse with outsiders; and if Hindus migrate to other regions on earth, Indian caste would become a world problem. An outsider going to India and staying there for centuries would remain an outsider and could never be assimilated. To the gradual unification of the world, one-fifth part of which is entangled by the caste system, there is no other single obstacle of equal magnitude. How great the problem before the Hindus is, is hard for the European to understand. The people of the United States, where two castes prevail, would be able to understand the magnitude of this problem to a slight degree. It would be a good thing for this republic if the scholars here would take a little more of scientific attitude toward the situation in India instead of joining with the European writers in censuring us for this institution, when we ourselves well understand it to be defective but do not know how to improve it.
