knowledge. Some were enthusiastic students of English literature, and
especially of English poetry. They had their Wordsworth and their
Browning Societies. Others steeped themselves in English history and
loved to draw their political inspiration from Milton and Burke and John
Stuart Mill. Others, again, were the humble disciples of Kant and
Schlegel, of Herbert Spencer and Darwin. But whatever their special
talent bent might be, the vast majority professed allegiance to Western
ideals, and if they had not altogether-and often far too
hastily-abjured, or learned secretly to despise, the beliefs and customs
of their forefathers, they were at any rate anxious to modify and bring
them into harmony with those of their Western teachers. They may often
have disliked the Englishman, but they respected and admired him; if
they resented his frequent assumption of the unqualified superiority,
they were disposed to admit that it was not without justification. The
enthusiasm kindled in the first half of the last century by the great
missionaries, like Carey and Duff, who had made distinguished converts
among the highest classes of Hindu society, had begun to wane; but if
educated Hindus had grown more reluctant to accept the dogmas of
Christianity, they were still ready to acknowledge the superiority of
Western ethics, and the Brahmo Samaj in Bengal, the Prarthana Samaj in
Bombay, the Social Reform movement which found eloquent advocates all
over India, and not least in Madras, and other agencies of a similar
character for purging Hindu life of its more barbarous and superstitious
associations, bore witness to the ascendancy which Western standards of
morality exercised over the Hindu mind. Keshub Chunder Sen was not
perhaps cast in so fine a mould as Ram Mohan Roy or the more
conservative Dr. Tagore, but his ideals were the same, and his
life-dream was to find a common denominator for Hinduism and
Christianity which should secure a thorough reform of Hindu society
without denationalizing it.