European philosophy

“ If we are to deliver the European Union of peace and prosperity that the founders envisaged, and that I believe the citizens of Europe yearn for beyond the understandable fear of present circumstances, a strategy that draws on the research, scholarship and world views of all of the social sciences, and ethics and philosophy is required. ”

“ To be thus vivid and convincing about any phase of life is not easy; to make intimate to the European a life in the world’s remotest outskirts, of whose terms the European has no conception, in which he has no natural interest, whose actors are of a different race, color, and psychology from his own, is a feat bristling [94] with difficulties. ”

“ What the Europeans shared with each other, which in their own eyes distinguished them from everyone else and made them capable of ‘discovering’ and ‘civilising’ the rest of the world, was a distinctive kind of consciousness or conscience. ”

“ Wherever we have gone, we have carried Europe with us; wherever we have gone, we have never got beyond the power of the two influences which, mingling into one, have made Europe all that it has been. The whole of European history is embodied in the formula which couples together the ‘rule of Christ and Cæsar;’ and that joint rule still goes on, in the shape of moral influence, wherever the tongues and the culture of Europe win new realms for themselves in the continents of the western or in the islands of the southern Ocean. ”

“ These diverse elements, for all their conflict, cannot any one of them extinguish any other; each has to dwell with the rest, make a compromise with the rest. The outcome, then, of this diversity and struggle is liberty; and here is the grand and true superiority of the European over the other civilisations. European civilisation, if I may say so, has entered into eternal truth; it advances in the ways of God. ”

“ There is so much that is lovable in my people, such charm in their simple naïve beliefs. It may sound strange, but it is, nevertheless, a fact, that you Europeans have taught me to love my own land and people. Instead of estranging us from our native land, our European education has brought us nearer to it; has opened our hearts to its beauties, and also to the needs of our people and to their weaknesses. ”

“ But which, under the influence of European genius, have reached a degree of excellence, that has wrought an important change in the constitution of society.
Far from looking back, and forming itself slavishly on the past, it is characteristic of the European intellect to be ever on the advance. Old discoveries become the basis of new ones. ”

“ They recoiled, at last, before the reviving might of the superior race, and the last and grandest era of Indo-European supremacy began, the era in the midst of which we now live. For the past few centuries, the European nations have stood foremost, without a rival, in the world's history. They are the enlightened and the enlighteners of mankind. They alone are extending the sphere of human knowledge, investigating the nature of matter and of mind, and tracing out their exhibition in the past history and present condition of the earth and its inhabitants. ”

“ The Latin, followed at an interval by the Greek, Renaissance laid the foundations of comparative reflection in the mind of modern Europe. Meanwhile the rise of European nationalities was creating new standpoints, new materials, for comparison in modern institutions and modes of thought or sentiment. The discovery of the New World brought this new European civilisation face to face with primitive life, and awakened men to contrasts with their own associations more striking than Byzantine or even Saracen could offer. ”

“ We are too prone, when we think of the problems of the future peace, to fix our attention almost wholly upon Europe, and, if we think of the non-European world at all, to assume either that the problem is merely one of power, or that the principles which will guide us in the settlement of Europe can be equally applied outside of Europe. ”

“ In the meantime, it is necessary for them to distinguish themselves in all departments of European distinction and to stand in the front rank: until they shall have advanced so far as to determine themselves what distinction shall mean. Then they will be called the pioneers and guides of the Europeans whose modesty they will no longer offend. ”

“ But, aside from the fact that in Europe this political and social evolution had taken centuries, there was also the working of the law of the survival of the fittest. In European nations it had been the element, always composite, which deserved to live, that formed the nucleus of a nationality. ”

“ The forces of regionalism, nationalism, and separatism still dominate European life. But the ideology and techniques of Europeanization are widely recognized, accepted and put into practice. The development of worldism seems to be following a parallel course. ”

“ We constantly refer each other’s manners, doctrines, and principles to those which are current in Europe; but, when an European ventures to imitate our example, we cannot contain our wrath at his impertinence. We do not object to the standard of comparison, but to the comparison itself; because we claim for ourselves the exclusive faculty of arriving at just conclusions. Our best society is but a sorry caricature of that of Europe, and yet we get angry when an European attempts to depict it. Our fate is indeed the most singular. No one can understand us ”

“ On the other hand, the benefits of the movement to European civilization were varied and positive. The classical revival gave to Europe, not only faultless literary models, but large stores of valuable knowledge. ”

“ And the European, proud in his might, in his strength, in his civilization and his humanity, rules arrogantly, blindly, selfishly, egoistically, amidst all the intricate cog-wheels of [151] his authority, which he slips into gear with the certainty of clockwork, controlling its every movement, till to the foreigner, the outside observer, this overlordship of tangible things, this colonizing of territory alien in race and mind, appears a masterpiece, a very world created. ”

“ They were to produce an intense and active civilization of their own; a civilization which was undoubtedly the highest and the best our race has known, conformable to the instincts of the European, fulfilling his nature, giving him that happiness which is the end of men.
As we also know, Europe on this great experiment of the Middle Ages, after four hundred years of high vitality, was rising to still greater heights when it suffered shipwreck. ”

“ How came there to be also nations exterior to the Empire; old nations like Ireland, new nations like Poland? We must be able to answer this question if we are to understand, not only that European civilization has been continuous (that is, one in time as well as one in spirit and in place) , but also if we are to know why and how that continuity was preserved. For one we are and will be, all Europeans. The moment something threatens our common morals from within, we face it, however tardily. ”

“ The tolerant spirit, characteristic to Europeans too, has to be preserved as absolutely necessary in a symbolic society, but it can turn against the society in fundamental problems.
The liberalism, spirit of adventure and desire of knowledge are basic components of the European spirituality, and they cannot be given-up, as long as Europe will exist. ”

“ No sooner does an European arrive, no matter of what condition, than his eyes are opened upon the fair prospect; he hears his language spoke, he retraces many of his own country manners, he perpetually hears the names of families and towns with which he is acquainted; he sees happiness and prosperity in all places disseminated; he meets with hospitality, kindness, and plenty everywhere; he beholds hardly any poor, he seldom hears of punishments and executions; and he wonders at the elegance of our towns, those miracles of industry and freedom. ”

“ Aristocracy.—This is pre-eminently a democratic age, and Western Europe with one voice approves of the increasing claims of the people as against the dominant sections of the European society. The lords have lost much of their ancient powers and privileges, but the spirit of the time shews that they have some more yet to lose. ”

“ Europe is to us the land of history, of mellow tradition, of the arts and graces of life, of the best that has been said and thought in the world. To Europe we are the land of crude racial chaos, of skyscrapers and bluff, of millionaires and “bosses.” A French philosopher visits us, and we are all eagerness to get from him an orientation in all that is moving in the world of thought across the seas. But does he ask about our philosophy, does he seek an orientation in the American thought of the day? ”

“ Sundry sturdy European ideas, transplanted into this western soil, have triumphed over all competitors and thriven so mightily as to react upon all parts of the Old World, some more, some less, and thus to modify the whole course of civilization. ”

“ If in 1878, when the European nations suddenly awoke to the importance of the non-European world, they had been able to agree upon some simple principle which would have secured equal treatment to all, how different would have been the fate of Europe and the world! ”

“ But on the other hand, the intelligent European is up against the unity of Europe problem night and day. Europe cannot go on. European civilization cannot go on, unless that net of boundaries which strangles her is dissolved away. The difficulties created by language differences, by bitter national traditions, by bad political habits and the like, are no doubt stupendous. ”

“ But what European consciousness really is, these poets rather vaguely suggest than master into clear and irresistible expression, into the supreme symbolism of perfectly adequate art. They still took European consciousness as an affair of geography and race rather than simply as a triumphant stage in the general progress of man's knowledge of himself. ”

“ One religion and one philosophy did for the fluctuant states what the Reformation, democracy, and “enlightenment” could only undo, and in this vanishing art, which, after all, is the truest history man can record, we find the dynamic force, the creative power, of a culture and a civilisation that took little count of artificial barriers between perfectly artificial nations, but included all in the greatest and most beneficent syntheses Europe has ever known. ”

“ What has made the European family of nations an improving, instead of a stationary portion of mankind? Not any superior excellence in them, which, when it exists, exists as the effect, not as the cause; but their remarkable diversity of character and culture. Individuals, classes, nations, have been extremely unlike one another: they have struck out a great variety of paths, each leading to something valuable ”

“ There are, in our shared intellectual heritage, upon which we could draw, and let us remember that in the energetic pursuit of new thought that – for example, characterised the European Enlightenment, itself formed from the thought of other ancient enlightenments – there are some powerful examples of dissident and radical thought. ”

“ But the chief impression was of that unity of existence, so opposite to the European, and, for a change, so pleasant, from its repose and gilded lightness. Their imperial majesties do really seem so "perfectly serene," that we fancy we might become so under their sway, if not "thoroughly virtuous," as they profess to be. ”

“ The old order and principles of Europe were to receive a new impress, and the decaying system of the middle age to be replaced by a polity of revolution, which should finally change the relations of nations, the types of European government, and the ideas of spiritual control. ”

“ The belief of the European in his own Kultur tends to be fanatical and ruthless, and for this reason as much as for any other the independence of extra-European civilization is of real importance to the world, for it is not by a dead uniformity that the world as a whole is most enriched. ”

“ The fact that I learned to know a declining form of culture has often made me unfair towards the whole phenomenon of European culture. The Germans always follow at some distance behind: they always go to the root of things, for instance: Dependance upon foreigners; Kant Rousseau, the sensualists, Hume, Swedenborg. ”

“ But what has no sense as an expression of the real may have some as the expression of certain tendencies. And it is easy to recognise in the ideology of the primitive the expression of the ethical and national tendencies, aspirations and pretensions of modern Germany. Up to the end of the eighteenth century Germany had felt herself and recognised herself to be a backwater of the traditional European culture of which the Latin nations received the direct heritage from Greece and Rome. ”

“ We must never forget that we are the inheritors of a profoundly important set of European values – Greek democracy, Roman law, the Judeo-Christian tradition, the Reformation, the Enlightenment, the great democratic revolution that began in France. ”

“ By ones or twos, men and women might be accepted into the established church, marry into the dominant race, rise to the governing class; but the exceptions proved nothing. The European believed in his station in life, his civil status, the standing of his family in the financial or social world. ”

“ Distinctions of class, profession, or nationality, entering so largely into European life, separating man from man, lose their hold upon Europeans meeting in the distant East. The great [Pg 288] West, seen at that distance, becomes their common country; they are drawn together by the bond of common views, feelings and modes of thought which obliterate the artificial lines of nationality—nay, they feel for, and treat each other as only blood relations and brothers would in Europe. ”