illuminates an estranging sea of thought, more light on which is thrown in those essays in which Lyall compels us to realise what has been the greatest mystery for the non-Europeanised Hindus in the attitude of the British Government-its seeming religious indifference or impartiality.*

The ideal and utilitarian motives in the British struggle for freedom have been inseparably interwoven ; and the idealism of the various movements for the extension of the franchise has hardly been less lofty, whatever the immediate grievance which had goaded men to the demand. A people's idea of liberty is deeply set in its imagination of life and man's main business in this world. Is it possible that the Western idea will be transmuted by the racial genius of the Indian peoples, ultimately to take on a new form? Such speculations may seem to ignore the general conclusion of modern political philosophy, that certain political categories belong universally to that higher stage of social development which is reached when civilised man 'consciously chooses his own laws and forms of government according to expediency and logic't-a condition first approached by the Greeks, and analogous in the practical sphere to the substitution of science for myth in the sphere of thought. According to this view, it is through a certain kind of political relationship only, or that form of association of which the State is the crown, that the best possibilities of man can have scope and his true nature be realised. That the State is man's nature' has often been asserted in various ways; and in our own times, though we may not be clearly conscious of it, there has developed, concerning the sort of state which is most natural to rational man, a fixed doctrine, to depart from which is heresy.

6

The cardinal feature in the organisation of this State may be described as the direction of functions by the composite mind rather than the individual-a feature in which certain dangers lurk. These dangers have not yet wrought much mischief in British history, because of the

'Our Religious Policy in India,' Asiatic Studies, 1, viii. Cf. 'The Religious Situation in India,' 1, ix.

On the Formation of Some Clans and Castes in India': 'Asiatic Studies,' Vol. 1, cap. vi.

abundant supply of individual force in the people, through which an individual mind arises to dominate the whole whenever great need calls for it, and is suffered to dominate by the practical instinct of the race. The risk, however, of transplanting the Western system of politics into a different intellectual, moral, and historical climate is that this system-which does not crush the individuality of peoples possessing native political genius, and a force of character developed in political conflict-may, in a people whose interest in government it is intended to awaken, be subversive of that very liberty it aims at fostering. In the sub-conscious mentality of the [Indian] people bureaucracy holds the place which selfgovernment occupies with us.' Government from above is the natural and traditional way of doing things, as familiar to Asoka as to Akbar,' observes a writer with reference to the danger that the co-operative movement in India may be blighted by State tutelage; and it must be remembered that the functions discharged by the Government in India cover vast areas of the life of the people, to an extent which the outside observer finds it difficult to appraise.' †

The moment when India appears about to be conquered by Western political ideas-a conquest more fateful for her destiny than any military subjugation— is one of those when History itself might seem to perform for nations that work of political education which the study of History performs for the student. The circumstances of the day are now forcing the majority of us to examine afresh our received political categories and maxims, as Lyall's writings criticise these formulæ for the few. It is at this very moment that his evidence of the illumination which the study of politically undeveloped communities may cast upon the problems of more advanced societies should be found most valuable; and his work, while doing an inestimable service to the people to whom it was so intimately related, may also be a guide to statesmen at other difficult points.

The grave difficulty which statesmanship has recently

'Times Literary Supplement' (July 3, 1919) on Sir H. Wolff's 'Cooperative Movement in India.'

† 'Views of the Government of India upon the Reports of Lord Southborough's Committee, 1919 (No. 2).'.

experienced in defining the conditions qualifying a community for nationhood suggests the need of fresh consideration of the basic ideas of communities, and of the problem, which of these gives to society its rational bond. Orthodox political philosophy is unwilling to allow that much light can be thrown on this question by an analysis of the formless or multiform conditions of societies politically undeveloped. Various causes have, however, to-day combined to shake the belief that the only evolution of political institutions informed by practical reason is that which has been followed by a few modern states; or that the way of the 'primitive man, whose social and political customs are almost as much a part of his species as the inherited habits of an animal,' is as sharply separated from that of man in the highly evolved state as is unreason from reason. We have recently witnessed illustrations of materialistic theories of brute passions, masking under rational descriptions, and of biological forces driving a race to expansion, veiled under doctrines of the divine right of the most cultured State. We can conceive that, conversely, the non-rational customs blindly followed by an under-civilised community may be the outcome of an unconscious reason serving the interest of the race at that stage of its evolution.

It was Lyall's opinion that the modern tendency to disregard those primordial forces that unite and divide men has sometimes produced disastrous consequences for European statesmanship, as notably in the case of the Armenian massacres following on intervention based on insufficient knowledge (1895). The operation of these forces-'the grouping of men by their folk and their faith'-in an organisation of society into which the ideas of nation and state have barely penetrated is diagnosed in his masterly way as a fact observed in the studies of Rajputana and of other parts of India. In the address on 'Race and Religion,' the stratification of political societies from Western Europe to Middle Asia, and from the dawn of Christianity to the 20th century, is so surveyed as to disclose the presence of these facts below all other attractive and repulsive forces, mingling with them in an endless variety of ways, and from time to time causing eruptions and explosions in the midst of an order superimposed upon

that which they had constituted. His opinion that the strength of racial and religious sentiments is rather increasing than diminishing' in many parts of the world may possibly be questioned. Yet, as he would himself have warned us not to take it as necessarily final, so ought we to learn from him not to judge hastily that the point to which any movement in the associations of peoples appears to be tending is the last point it will reach in that tendency. In this sphere perhaps, as much as in any field of human affairs, the dictum of the Father of History holds good : γένοιο δ ̓ ἄν πᾶν ἐν τῷ μακρῷ χρόνῳ.

Such at least is the impression made by a perusal of this and other studies of Lyall. In 'Race and Religion' we have, as it were, an Act of the historic drama in which the persons are those idées forces that join and sunder human beings, the primal powers of kinship and religious faith. We are shown the parts played by the Roman Empire in fusing races together in one vast political organisation, by the Christian Church beneath whose canopy the jumble of races and tribes continued,' and by the formation of nationalities when the 'great territorial kingdoms were definitely marked off' and the 'paramount distinction' of languages began. The significance and source of each distinction become clearer in the light of its historic action. The tendency to depreciate the dividing power of race and religion is in part due to the influence of the French Encyclopædist ideal (inherited by the English Utilitarians) of a common civilisation and intellectual citizenship which are to overcome all these barriers. In spite of, or as a reaction against, the spirit of the French Revolution, the national idea has emerged with new force in the West; but it may yet be brought into harmony with the ideal of a common civilisation, developing, like dialects of a common language, through separate national channels or cultures. When we pass, with Lyall, to the present era, nationality appears as bringing about concentration in the West of Europe, disintegration in the East. It is impossible to reproduce in a summary the impression of the brilliant analysis of conditions under the Austrian Empire and in South-Eastern Europe, not less interesting because of the march of history since 1902, and the unfolding of processes and results in States already threatened by

conditions which Lyall's piercing gaze saw into and beyond. The real subdivisions of peoples are here, as of old, race and religion, especially under the domination of the Turks, whose policy it was to preserve as in a museum the strange medley that they found.' Comparing the importance of the ideas of Race and Religion in Central and South-Eastern Europe and in Asia, Lyall observes that in Europe race has a tendency to mastery, in Asia religion; and, knowing his view of the deeper religious feeling of the East, we may note that, in the conclusion of this essay, he describes race 'as often the bond of union and base of society, religion as the embodiment of its spiritual instincts and imagination.'

Neither here nor on other occasions when he dwelt upon the necessity, for right thinking and wise action, of opening our eyes to the cords that tie human beings together, did Lyall care to dwell upon the conclusions that may follow, and the bearing of these stubborn facts upon special cases. The thoughts that his genius arouses in our minds lead to caution in generalisation, and to a recognition of the need of direct observation, lest overindulgence in book-reading and too implicit reliance on authorities' produce an atrophy of the observing faculties.' If, after standing with him at the historic point of view, we feel the frame-work of our ordinary political categories to be somewhat loosened, and the dividing line between the organic societies of reasonable men and the looser associations formed by fundamental impulses of attraction grow less clear, in what guise do the Western theories of the State now present themselves? The result of European experience in the last few centuries may on the whole suggest that the nation-state possesses some kind of spiritual being, that it carries, if we may so put it, a torch in the march of progress, and that the horrors and calamities proceeding from national enmities and rivalries in recent generations signify the degradation of a spiritual being, illustrating the law corruptio optimi pessima. Nor does anything in Lyall's treatment of Race and Religion appear to conflict with this view. On the peculiar sentiment of the native-land' which is essential to the modern national idea, though not to the bonds of religion or race, he has not (so far as we can recall) dwelt in his