Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies - DUBOIS, Abbé Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies, Dubois | Page 361

ENERVATED TEMPERAMENTS
321
It is true that the four elements seem to conspire together
for the purpose of weakening everything that matures or
vegetates in this portion of the globe.
The soil itself is
generally light, sandy, and wanting in substance
it re-
quires a great deal of skilled labour to make it fertile.
The air is almost everywhere unhealthy, damp, and enervat-
ing
the water in the wells and tanks is usually brackish
and unpleasant to the taste indeed, the excessive heat
of the sun dries up everything, animal and vegetable.
The mental faculties of the Hindus appear to be as feeble
as their physique.
I should say that no other nation in
the world could boast of as many idiots and imbeciles.
There are, of course, very many sensible, capable persons
amongst the Hindus, who possess marked abilities and
talents, and who by education have developed the gifts
with which nature has endowed them but during the
three hundred years or so that Europeans have been
established in the country no Hindu, so far as I know,
has ever been found to possess really transcendent genius.
Their want of courage almost amounts to absolute
cowardice. Neither have they that strength of character
which resists temptation and leaves men unshaken by
threats or seductive promises, content to pursue the course
that reason dictates. Flatter them adroitly and take them
on their weak side, and there is nothing you cannot get out
;
;
:
;
of them.
The prudent forethought which prompts men to take
heed to their future as well as to their present wants seems
almost an unknown quality among the majority of Hindus.
They take no thought for the morrow, and all they care
about is to gratify their vanity and their extravagant
whims for the moment. They are so taken up with the
pleasures and enjoyments of the present that they never
think of looking beyond to the possible misery and priva-
may await them in the future.
This want of forethought is in a great measure responsible
for those reverses of fortune which so frequently happen to
them, and by which they pass from the greatest wealth
and luxury to the bitterest poverty. It is true they bear
these sudden transitions from comfort to misery with the
most marvellous resignation but then this resignation is not
tions that
;
DUBOIS
M