are so convinced that it gives an accurate measure of human moral and material advancement that we experience a shock on hearing that there are large numbers of even highly educated human beings who hold that the standard is altogether false.  Yet that, Lyall would argue, is generally the Oriental frame of mind.  Fatalism, natural conservatism and ignorance lead the uneducated to reject our ideas, while the highly educated often hold that our standard of progress is too material to be a true measure, and that consequently, far from advancing, we are standing still or even retrograding.  Lyall, personifying a Brahmin, said, “Politics I cannot help regarding as the superficial aspect of deeper problems; and for progress, the latest incarnation of European materialism, I have an incurable distrust.”  These subtle intellectuals, in fact, as Surendranath Banerjee, one of the leaders of the Swadeshi movement, told Dr. Wegener,[48] hold that the English are “stupid and ignorant,” and, therefore, wholly unfit to govern India.

I remember Lyall, who, as Sir Mortimer Durand says, had a very keen sense of humour, telling me an anecdote which is what Bacon would have called “luciferous,” as an illustration of the views held by the uneducated classes in India on the subject of Western reforms.  The officer in charge of a district either in Bengal or the North-West Provinces got up a cattle-show, with a view to improving the breed of cattle.  Shortly afterwards, an Englishman, whilst out shooting, entered into conversation with a peasant who happened to be passing by.  He asked the man what he thought of the cattle-show, and added that he supposed it had done a great deal of good.  “Yes,” the native, who was probably a Moslem, replied after some reflection, “last year there was cholera.  This year there was Cattle Show.  We have to bear these afflictions with what patience we may.  Are they not all sent by God?”

But it was naturally the opinions entertained by the intellectual classes which most interested Lyall, and which he endeavoured to interpret to his countrymen.  The East is asymmetrical in all things.  I remember Lyall saying to me, “Accuracy is abhorrent to the Oriental mind.”  The West, on the other hand, delights beyond all things in symmetry and accuracy.  Moreover, it would almost seem as if in the most trivial incidents in life some unseen influence generally impels the Eastern to do the exact opposite to the Western—­a point, I may observe, which Lyall was never tired of illustrating by all kinds of quaint examples.  A shepherd in Perthshire will walk behind his sheep and drive them.  In the Deccan he will walk in front of his flock.  A European will generally place his umbrella point downwards against the wall.  An Oriental will, with far greater reason, do exactly the reverse.