"
"Can you explain this lack of interest?" said Pagett, putting aside the rest
of Orde's remarks.
"You may find a ward of the key in the fact that only one in every thousand of
our population can spell. Then they are infinitely more interested in religion
and caste questions than in any sort of politics. When the business of mere
existence is over, their minds are occupied by a series of interests,
pleasures, rituals, superstitions, and the like, based on centuries of
tradition and usage. You, perhaps, find it hard to conceive of people
absolutely devoid of curiosity, to whom the book, the daily paper, and the
printed speech are unknown, and you would describe their life as blank. That's
a profound mistake. You are in another land, another century, down on the bed-
rock of society, where the family merely, and not the community, is all-
important. The average Oriental cannot be brought to look beyond his clan. His
life, too, is more complete and self-sufficing, and less sordid and low-
thoughted than you might imagine. It is bovine and slow in some respects, but
it is never empty. You and I are inclined to put the cart before the horse,
and to forget that it is the man that is elemental, not the book. 'The corn
and the cattle are all my care, And the rest is the will of God.
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