Eastern civilization

“ With a sort of periodic regularity it is the scene of a great movement, and from age to age the destinies of the race have seemed to hang upon its possession; and from time to time the attention of the world is concentrated upon this water-street between two continents. Under whatever name, the Oriental civilization has been a misfortune, and the Western a blessing to the border-land; and how narrowly has Europe, more than once, from Xerxes to Chosroes, from Omar to the Osmanlis, seemed to escape the torrent of Eastern slavery. ”

“ It is too often forgotten that civilization, like religion, originally came from the East. Long before Europe and America were civilized, yea while they were still in a state of barbarism, there were nations in the East, including China, superior to them in manners, in education, and in government; possessed of a literature equal to any, and of arts and sciences totally unknown in the West. Self-preservation and self-interest make all men restless, and so Eastern peoples gradually moved to the West taking their knowledge with them ”

“ The ancient civilization of the East, ages old, strong in development, the one ideal of the millions of Western Asia, came into contact through its most western off-shoot with a civilization which, whatever its origin, and whatever the influences to which it had been exposed, was in striking contrast to it. On the eastern shores of the Ægean the two first met. ”

“ After long centuries of isolation East and West had met, and fusion of thought and speech had begun. On the one hand stood western civilization, with its latest scientific inventions, its latest literary achievements and its latest artistic triumphs on the other stood eastern culture, effete and decaying, strangled in the grip of custom and tradition. The full force of modern thought had been let loose about the old ideals and the old beliefs, threatening to overwhelm them in its first impetuous rush. ”

“ As a traveler from the West, on reaching some Eastern land, finds it difficult at first to distinguish between the faces of different individuals, his mind being focused on the likeness pervading them all, so the Occidental student of Oriental thought is impressed with the remarkable similarity that pervades the entire Oriental civilization, modes of thought, and philosophy, finding it difficult to discover the differences which distinguish the various Oriental races. ”

“ Scientific research seems to find good evidence that all our European civilization, which of course means American too, may have been brought over by Eastern immigrants from central Asia long ages ago, Asia coming into Europe. Perhaps we Westerners would not despise the Easterners so contemptuously and patronizingly if we knew how much we are probably indebted to them for our civilization as well as for our Hebrew and Christian faith, our Bible, and the Christian restraining bulwarks of our common life. ”

“ As this became more difficult, or its produce scarcer, they betook themselves to herding, a culture in itself, the first step in civilization, and the first expedient to support an increasing population. In this respect the inhabitants of the Eastern plains were far in advance of their Western contemporaries; the Asiatic herdsman was more favorably situated than the huntsman in the forests of primeval Europe, and hence we find both culture and population first evolved in the East and flowing thence by natural sequence towards the West. ”

“ Possibly the Orientals will not suddenly become progressive to the degree here anticipated, though Russia’s eastern march has fairly rivalled our western march; and it must be borne in mind that to develop the appliances of western civilization we had all the experiments to make, all the crude preliminary work to do in creating the system, which the Orient will receive from us in its present perfected form, and be able to go on without any mistakes, and thus enable them to adopt within a very brief time that which we gave the labors of several generations to discover, develop, and apply. ”

“ Professor Freeman defines European society as progressive, legal, monogamous, and, for the last fifteen hundred years, a Christian society; the East he defines as stationary, arbitrary, polygamous, and Mahometan.719 The dominant note of Oriental history is sameness; a monotony which enables us to read in the story of to-day that which took place amongst Eastern peoples a thousand years ago. The history of a single city of Europe is of infinitely greater interest to the student of humanity and the history of civilization than that of a whole nation of the East. ”

“ Its art, its religion, its way of life, all hang together with its economic and technical development. I doubt whether a nation can pick and choose; whether, for instance, the East can say, 'We will take from the West its battleships, its factories, its medical science; we will not take its social confusion, its hurry and fatigue, its ugliness, its over-emphasis on activity.'... So I expect the East to follow us, whether it like it or no, into all these excesses, and to go right through, not round, all that we have been through on its way to a higher phase of civilization. ”

“ When we endeavour to ascertain the probable date of the first invention of the operation in the East, the fog of uncertainty closes down over us, obliterates all trace of our quest, and drives us to fall back on inference. Those who have spent their lives in an Eastern land know the unbending force of tradition, the hereditary character of occupations, and the intense conservatism of Oriental peoples. ”

“ Although I had had the opportunity, for some years past, of studying the contrast between European and Asiatic modes of life, and the critical position in which I found myself made it incumbent upon me ever to be strictly on my guard, nevertheless, I could not avoid committing many glaring mistakes. The difference between Eastern and Western society does not consist merely in language, physiognomy, and dress. We Europeans eat, drink, sleep, sit, and stand, nay, I feel inclined to say, laugh, weep, sigh, and gesticulate otherwise than Eastern people. ”

“ There is this difference, however, between the Oriental and Occidental nations: the first allow their traditions to grow to seed, to run wild and impoverish the soil, while the latter seldom neglect its cultivation. In other words, the Eastern people allow their traditions to accumulate throughout the centuries, without ever attempting to reduce or overhaul the pile, while the Western people seldom hesitate to abandon what has become more or less effete in the process of acquiring or creating new traditions. ”

“ We are told on all sides that the East is rapidly awakening from its torpid slumbers—even to the extent of forgetting that characteristically Oriental habit of thought embodied in the Arabic proverb, "Slowness is from God, hurry from the Devil." If this be so, we must expect that, year by year, problems of ever-increasing complexity will arise which will tax to the utmost the statesmanship of those Western nations who are most brought in contact with Eastern peoples. ”

“ The truth is completely the opposite: The West has yet to find the East. The East, which provided the foundation of contemporary Western civilization, literacy and Christianity, still hibernates within its traditional values as an essential element of the endurance of the people and perhaps as the unique salvation of mankind. The West has to burst into the wisdom of the East to keep the very roots of life, the wisdom to live in peace and in harmony with God and with nature. ”

“ Europe may and probably will prevail there again; but since it must be by virtue of a civilization in whose making a religion born of Asia has been the paramount indispensable factor, will the West even then be more creditor than debtor of the East? ”

“ III. Oriental History.—We here set aside the earlier tangle of legend and fact which is called Oriental History, and for these reasons: (1) instead of promoting the solution of chronological problems, Oriental history is itself the most perplexing of those problems; (2) the perpetual straining after a high fabulous antiquity amongst the nations of the east, vitiates all the records; (3) the vast empires into which the plains of Asia moulded the eastern nations, allowed of no such rivalship as could serve to check their legends by collateral statements ”

“ Of late, a number of European and American scholars have begun to study Oriental civilization and they realize that, while materially the Orient is far behind the Occident, morally the Orient is superior to the Occident. ”

“ In fact, it seems not improbable that the nation which, having from ancient times imbibed and assimilated the elements of Oriental civilization, has been swallowing and digesting Occidental civilization, may produce a new and strong tissue. ”

“ To judge the East aright, we must know not only what she is, but also how she has become what she is; know, in short, some of the principal phases of her spiritual history as they are reflected in her ancient literature, especially that of India. To interpret to the West the thought of the East, to bring her best and noblest achievements to bear upon our life,—that is today the problem of Oriental philology. ”

“ Talk went on with the ease and decorum characteristic of good Eastern society, without the flippancy and excitement which occasionally mars it in some countries, no less than over-silence does in others. To my mind the Easterns are generally superior in the science of conversation to the inhabitants of the West ”

“ Beyond question the future of the Far East is the gravest matter before the civilized world to-day. For many generations the Eastern Question caused Sovereigns to turn restlessly in their beds and diplomatists to start at a footfall ”

“ From the central plateau came the invaders, who spurred on the coast dwellers to put forth their strongest efforts. Communication by sea and along the great highways that run across the land from east to west brought to these maritime city states the culture of the East and the West. Under these conditions there naturally sprang up an exotic civilization, not unified, but gathered about different civic centres; not independent, but a brilliant fusion of native elements with Semitic and Hellenic culture. ”

“ On the other hand, it has to be admitted that the relationship of the West with the East, growing more and more complex and widespread for over two centuries, far from attaining its true fulfilment, has given rise to a universal spirit of conflict. The consequent strain and unrest have profoundly disturbed Asia, and antipathetic forces have been accumulating for years in the depth of the Eastern mind. ”

“ It was the amassing of a great population for manual labour and the creation 44 of new centres of civilization and trade. Thus it was that the peoples of Western Asia—Egyptians, Israelites, Jews, Phœnicians, Assyrians, Babylonians, and even Greeks—were transported over vast distances by land, and a movement given to the human race in that part of the world which has infinitely complicated the science of ethnology. ”

“ Think what we should have been had Europe become an Asiatic province, and the Eastern principles of power and stagnation should have become deeply infused into her population, so that no process ever after could have thrown it out again! ”

“ But when the separation of East and West became wider, and the Latin-speaking Western Empire began to live with an intellectual life of its own, its deference to the East was all at once exchanged for the agitation of a number of questions entirely foreign to Eastern speculation. ”

“ But an Oriental has usually a good reason at the back of his mind for everything that he does; if only the Western can have the patience to find it, and to remember that European lines are not the only ones on which the human intellect can work. ”

“ So also each epoch in the development of humanity has had its separate sphere and its new conditions, first in Asia proper, next in Palestine, on the borders of the Mediterranean Sea, then on the peninsula of Greece, then in Italy, and lastly in Continental Europe, England, and America.
1. Asia, as we have seen, was the cradle of the race. Here, in the infancy of humanity, Oriental Civilization dawns. Amid the extended plains and lofty mountains of Asia, those stupendous and massive forms of Oriental nature, man felt himself absolutely dependent. ”

“ The analytical-based, deductive West increases its diversity, tendency for devolution and multiculturalism and is thus profiting from Eastern ‘overproduction’ of human capital that is required to keep Western culture breathing, while the integration-based East increases its ethnic dominance and geopolitical reach, forcing ever greater levels of peace, tolerance and harmoniousness upon the West. ”

“ Despite the evidences of the “other humanity”, a civilization that went down the inductive path, ship after ship of enthusiastic but ignorant Western scholars set their sails for Asia, their eyes set on analyzing and deconstructing the hype and propaganda of ‘the exotic Other’, denying the existence of the East-West dichotomy, ignoring all warnings, only to discover the same old truth all over again: The East constitutes an entirely different type of humanity: it is holistic, non-analytic and spiritual – it is integration-based. ”

“ One might affirm with more truth that our intercourse with the civilisation of the East tends to our own stagnation. We do impart to the natives, it is true, some smattering of the semi-barbaric, obsolete ways we possess ourselves, but standing aside and trying to look upon matters with the eye of a rational man, it is really difficult to say whether what we teach and how we teach it does really improve the Eastern people or not. Personally, with a long experience of natives all over Asia, it appears to me that it does not. ”