Eastern philosophy

“ The direction of human evolution need not remain always the same. The movement, in fact, of civilization from East to West has now clearly completed itself. The globe has been circled, and we cannot go any FARTHER to the West without coming round to the East again. It is a commonplace to say that our psychology, our philosophy and our religious sense are already taking on an Eastern color ”

“ We say no longer vaguely and poetically Ex Oriente Lux, but we know that all the most vital elements of our knowledge and civilization,—our languages, our alphabets, our figures, our weights and measures, our art, our religion, our traditions, our very nursery stories, come to us from the East; and we must confess that but for the rays of Eastern light, whether Aryan or Semitic or Hamitic, that called forth the hidden germs of the dark and dreary West, Europe, now the very light of the world, might 326 have remained forever a barren and forgotten promontory of the primeval Asiatic continent. ”

“ How can someone appreciate someone else’s cultural values if he does not know their content, language or their origin? The answer is, no one can; and the West will not appreciate Eastern spirituality. ”

“ PRINCIPLES AND METHODS OF PSYCHOLOGY APPLIED TO ARCHÆOLOGICAL RESEARCH
It has been said that the great distinction between East and West in the matter of learning has been that whilst Western science deals with phenomena and builds upon deductions from observation of external things, Eastern wisdom looks always inwardly, seeking to find the answer to all enigmas of creation in the mind of man. The one develops the logical faculty, often, perhaps, at the sacrifice of the imaginative functions ”

“ 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. ”

“ Both are what Eastern faiths and Eastern training have ever been,-both are eminently adapted for the Oriental mind. When the people learn to appreciate ethics, and to understand psychics and aesthetics, the demand will create a supply. ”

“ Since scholarship has opened the stores of the East to Western culture, there has been a natural awakening of popular interest in Eastern directions. While that lasts, people discussing each other’s souls will continue to sprinkle their remarks, harmlessly enough, with those mingled jargons which make a true Orientalist smile. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Look at any of the important works published during the last twenty years, not only on language, but on literature, mythology, law, religion, and philosophy, and you will see on every page the working of a new spirit. I do not say that the East can ever teach us new things, but it can place before us old things, and leave us to draw from them lessons more strange and startling than anything dreamt of in our philosophy. ”

“ I would even go further, and say that the man who wishes to fit out the Oriental with a complete equipment of Western ideals proves thereby that he has either no understanding of or no true sympathy with Eastern peoples and Eastern modes of thought: and that if he tries to give practical effect to his theories he will prove himself that most dangerous of foes—the mischief-maker who comes in the guise of a smiling friend. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I know of men who could not construe a line of Sanskrit, and who speak and write of your ancient literature, religion, and philosophy as if they knew a great deal more than any of your best Srotriyas. How often you must have smiled on reading such books! The idea that anything could come from the East equal to European thought, or even superior, never enters the mind of these writers, and hence their utter inability to understand and appreciate what is really valuable in Oriental literature. ”

“ When the hard iron crust of Islam is broken up, and the elements begin to melt with fervent heat, the Eastern world may be moulded into new forms. Then will the Oriental mind be brought into an impressible state, in which argument and persuasion can act upon it; and it may yield to the combined influence of civilization and Christianity. ”

“ They desire above all things that, in their humble way, these books shall be the ambassadors of good-will and understanding between East and West—the old world of Thought and the new of Action. In this endeavour, and in their own sphere, they are but followers of the highest example in the land. They are confident that a deeper knowledge of the great ideals and lofty philosophy of Oriental thought may help to a revival of that true spirit of Charity which neither despises nor fears the nations of another creed and colour. ”

“ Whatever the outcome of the negotiations for peace, one thing is sure: for better, for worse, and whether we will or no, the West must know the East, and the East must know the West. With that knowledge will inevitably come an interchange of potent influences, of influences that will affect profoundly the religion and morals, the philosophy, the literature, the art, in short, all the elements that make up the civilizations of the two hemispheres. ”

“ There are no unbridgeable gulfs between the Eastern and the Western mind. If the modern Westernising movements in China or India should fully succeed, they will but demonstrate anew what was proved long ago in Asia Minor during the three critical{94} centuries before Christ. ”

“ Before all, a study of the East has taught us the same lesson which the Northern nations once learnt in Rome and Athens, that there are other worlds beside our own, that there are other religions, other 327 mythologies, other laws, and that the history of philosophy from Thales to Hegel is not the whole history of human thought. In all these subjects the East has supplied us with parallels, and with all that is implied in parallels, viz., the possibility of comparing, measuring, and understanding. The comparative spirit is the truly scientific spirit of our age, nay of all ages. ”

“ It is, on the contrary, compatible with an amount of European culture and experience that people acquainted merely with the commonplace aspects of Eastern life will be surprised to find possible in the case of a man of Oriental birth. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The East has instinctively felt, even through her aversion, that she has a great deal to learn from Europe, not merely about the materials of power, but about its inner source, which is of mind and of the moral nature of man. ”

“ Or again, our drawing-rooms will be full of the praises of Indian renunciation and Indian unworldliness, as if no Christians had been saints, or as if all Buddhists had been. But if the first injustice is to think of human virtues as peculiarly Eastern, the other injustice is a failure to appreciate what really is peculiarly Eastern. It is too much taken for granted that the Eastern sort of idealism is certainly superior and convincing ”

“ But the charge is brought against us that the ideals we cherish in the East are static, that they have not the impetus in them to move, to open out new vistas of knowledge and power, that the systems of philosophy which are the mainstays of the time-worn civilizations of the East despise all outward proofs, remaining stolidly satisfied in their subjective certainty. ”

“ An explanation has been sometimes sought in the life of the harem and in the desire of eastern sovereigns to withdraw themselves from the eyes of their subjects. The idleness, almost amounting to lethargy, of the present masters of the East has also been much insisted on. ”

“ 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 ”

“ It is a pity that it is not more often so, but the zeal of the West mars as well as mends, and in imparting Western beliefs and Western learning carelessly and needlessly destroys Eastern ideals of conduct and manner, often more reasonable and more attractive than our own. ”

“ From what has already been said on the subject of spiritual intuition in relation to these races, one is prepared to find that all the Eastern literature that has any value is hermetic writing, and therefore, in so far, proper for children. But the incorrigible subtlety of the Oriental intellect has vitiated much of their symbology, and the sentiment of sheer wonder is stimulated rather than that of orderly imagination. ”

“ Western modernity is to be overcome by the Eastern religious mind.
While the vigorous deductive West had to occupy foreign terrain, build churches and spread the Gospel, the inductive East entertained certain passivity, albeit with a long-term holistic world view: We firmly believe, no matter how long it requires, the day will be with us when universal peace and the world of oneness will finally come true. ”

“ The higher types of Orientals are endowed with an extremely subtle intelligence, so subtle as to be wholly unintelligible to the ordinary Westerner. It is said that Pythagoras and Plato travelled in the East and were initiated into Eastern mysticism. ”

“ A better statement of the difference suggested by the above characterization is that Western civilization is an expression of Will, whereas Eastern civilization is an expression of subordination to the superior—to Fate. This feature of Oriental character is due to the fact that the Orient is still as a whole communal in its social order, whereas the Occident is individualistic. ”

“ 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. ”

“ So, founding on all these data, only assuming—as we are entitled to assume—that the East was well connected with the West by the sea routes from Arabia and by the land route through Persia, and remembering that there is nothing so volatile and permeating as thought, is the speculation so very extravagant that old Indian philosophy and religion, though following their own course, may have been modified and purified by contact with the thoughts of the West? ”

“ In using, what may seem to some of my fellow-workers, this very strong and almost irreverent language with regard to the ancient Sacred Books of the East, I have not neglected to make full allowance for that very important intellectual parallax which, no doubt, renders it most difficult for a Western observer to see things and thoughts under exactly the same angle and in the same light as they would appear to an Eastern eye. There are Western expressions which offend Eastern taste as much as Eastern expressions are apt to offend Western taste. ”

“ If science has shone with a bright light in the East, this was due solely to the introduction of a more human philosophy, born among another race, and conveyed there by the works of Aristotle and the neo-Platonists. The East was inspired for an instant with these foreign doctrines, which it would have been incapable of originating itself. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Extension of these views to the nature of the world.This difference between the Oriental and European ideas respecting the nature of man reappears in their ideas respecting the nature of the world. The one sees in it only a gigantic engine, in which stars and orbs are diffusing power and running through predestined mutations. The other, with better philosophy and a higher science, asserts a personal God, who considers and orders events in a vast panorama before him. ”