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represent a standing protest against our more conservative com- munity. I have, however, never been able to make up my mind to follow the advanced principles of the Brahmo Samaj. They are the goal to be reached, and, to my mind, they should be reached by progressive stages. There is no such thing as a principle in public affairs, but every principle has to be determined by the circum- stances of its application. This is a maxim which Edmund Burke is never tired of repeating, and in India its most illustrious advocate was Raja Ram Mohun Roy, the founder of the Brahmo Samaj. He was the inaugurator of the new faith, but he kept up his touch with the old, by his persistence in wearing the Brahminical thread to the end. Maharshi Debendranath Tagore followed him in this respect, and the Adi Brahmo Samaj have taken their lead from the saintly Maharshi.

I feel that, if we have to advance in social matters, we must, so far as practicable, take the community with us, by a process of steady and gradual uplift, so that there may be no sudden distur- bance or dislocation, the new being adapted to the old, and the old assimilated to the new. That has been the normal path of progress in Hindu society through the long centuries. It would be idle to contend that Hindu society is to-day where it was two hundred years ago. It moves slowly, perhaps more slowly than many would wish, but in the words of Galileo 'it does move', more or less according to the lines of adaptation that I have indicated. The question of sea-voyage, or child-marriage, or even enforced widow- hood, is not to-day where it was in the latter part of the last century. Fifty years ago I was an outcaste (being an England-returned Brahmin) in the village where I live. To-day I am an honoured member of the community. My public services have, perhaps, partly contributed to the result. But they would have been impotent, as in the case of Raja Ram Mohun Roy for many long years after his death, if they were not backed by the slow, the silent, the majestic forces of progress, working noiselessly but irresistibly in the bosom of society, helping on the fruition of those ideas which have been sown in the public mind. Remarkable indeed have been, in many respects, the relaxations and the removal of restrictions of caste. Dining with non-Hindus, which was an abomination no many years ago, is now connived at, if not openly countenanced. A still more forward step towards loosening the bonds of caste has been taken within the last few years. The barriers of marriage between some sub-castes have been relaxed, and marriages between hitherto