Near East

“ To occidental travellers the most vivid impression produced by a first contact with the Near East is the surprise of being in a country where the human element increases instead of diminishing the delight of the eye. ”

“ Wars have been fought over it, cabinets have wrestled with it, and still it holds its place in the first rank of living issues of today.
As every one knows, the Eastern Question involves the dominion or supremacy in the Near East. This region was a pivotal point in the struggles of the nations in ancient times—the meeting place of East and West. Maspero, historian of ancient empires, says of it:
"Some countries seem destined from their origin to become the battle fields of the contending nations.... ”

“ In the East everything is changed; the sky is for the most part mellow and shining from dawn till eventide, and in the lower latitudes of course the sun mounts higher towards the zenith. The first thing therefore that strikes [233] a stranger is the almost uniform pre-eminent brightness of the atmosphere, and warmth of the colour tints of almost every object around, whether distant or near. ”

“ Because the human geopolitical situation is a mere extension of our physical and cognitive systems inherent in each of us, we have reason to believe that our societies will continue to be predominantly dualistic in the near future, with an integration-based Eastern hemisphere and an analytically-based Western hemisphere. ”

“ They have been the cradle of the ancient civilisation and of rich and powerful empires. The shores of the Ægean Sea and of the Eastern Mediterranean were once the most populated, and their commerce and wealth were unrivalled. The vast fertile provinces of Asia Minor have been the granaries of the Roman and Byzantine empires; while the valleys of Euphrates and Tigris breathed abundance and luxury. History is eloquent testimony of their past splendour. ”

“ In the “Orient,” the old-fashioned coal-fire heating in every carriage is still in vogue, and consequently the person who is unfortunate enough to have a berth near the stove is half roasted, while he who is at the farther end is half frozen. The traveller who goes East would certainly welcome the up-to-date wagons-lits of the Mediterranean or Carlsbad Expresses.
I travelled in the “Orient” from Paris to Vienna, from Belgrade to Sofia, from Bucharest to Constantza, and from Nisch in Servia to Paris, and on each of the trains were the same defects in sleeping comfort, and often in food. ”

“ With what ease did he rule the elements of nature—heal the maladies and disorders produced by sin—recal the souls of the departed from the invisible world; while, with all the familiarity and compassion of a near and beloved friend, he mingles his tears of sympathy with the suffering mourner, and diffuses the peace of heaven over the heart oppressed with sorrow. ”

“ I no longer seek for religious impressions amidst the forms and ceremonies of an external devotion, but in the exercise of that faith which brings remote objects near, and which invests those which are unseen with a more attractive power than those which are visible. I no longer hover in a state of uncertainty respecting my final destiny, for I enjoy the bright beamings of that hope which is full of immortality; and can attest that now my mental happiness is more pure, elevated, and stable, than it was when I was a devotee to fashionable amusements. ”

“ And in very truth, a great principle lay in that rude and primitive division; it was in entire harmony with nature, and, up to the latest times and the opening of a new world, in entire harmony with history also. With Asia, the Orient, is connected indissolubly the development of the ancient world; with Europe, that of the modern. The contrast between these two great divisions is wonderfully analogous to that of morning and evening. The whole culture of the West had its root, its beginnings at the East. The East is not merely the place where the sun begins his daily course ”

“ The West has taken strength, thought, training, selected aptitudes out of the old treasures of the East,—as if out of a new Orient; while the East has itself been kept fresh, vital, alert, originative by the West, her blood quickened all the while, her youth through every age renewed. Who can say in a word, in a sentence, in a volume, what destinies have been variously wrought, with what new examples of growth and energy, while, upon this unexampled scale, community has passed beyond community across the vast reaches of this great continent! ”

“ 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 answer lies, I think, like the answer to all these questions of religion, in the varying instincts of the people. It is an idea with us in the West that the East is the land of enchantment, of mystery, of the unknown, of miracle and all that is akin to it. We are never tired of talking of the mysterious East; it seems to us one vast wonderland full of things we cannot understand, full of marvels of the unknowable, the very home of superstition; while the West is matter of fact, material and reasonable, and easily understood. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Orient is already feeling the thrill of renewed life. It is responding to the touch of the youth and vigor of the West and becoming rejuvenated; it is drawing closer and closer in its eagerness for the warmth of new interests. The West is no longer alone in seeking a union; the East is coming to the West. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It takes the mystery of a Sphinx to keep the world [29] gazing for thirty centuries. The East is full of secrets—no one understands their value better than the Oriental; and because she is full of secrets she is full of entrancing surprises. Many fine things there are upon the surface: brilliance of colour, splendour of light, solemn loneliness, clamorous activity; these are only the patterns upon the curtain which floats for ever before the recesses of Eastern life, its essential charm is of more subtle quality. ”

“ Oriental life and society, especially in the Southern nations, stand in violent contrast with the multitudinous detail, the secular stability, and the vast average of comfort of the Western nations. Life in the East is fierce, short, hazardous, and in extremes. ”

“ I found it a great relief to be again on the sweet, blue sea, out of sight of land, and free from the tussle and worry and bustle for life which we are daily, hourly even, forced to gaze upon on land. Although the East is, in a very great measure, free from the dreadful crowding for life, still one is bound to see signs of it even among the most indolent of people. ”

“ No doubt glances are occasionally obtained, and on that gala day I saw a few good faces; but the popular idea of Eastern beauties is, in England, one of the many Oriental romances which a journey sadly dispels. The boys and very young girls have generally fine eyes; but, as in Egypt, most of the adult females looked as if they had sore eyes or squinted, while many of the men there as well as in Egypt seemed blind of one eye. ”

“ The new life of the West has reacted all the while—who shall say how powerfully?—upon the older life of the East; and yet the East has moulded the West as if she sent forward to it through every decade of the long process the chosen impulses and suggestions of history. ”

“ Attraction of the East.
What secret current of man's nature turns
Unto the golden East, with ceaseless flow?
Still, where the sunbeam at its fountain burns,
The pilgrim-spirit would adore and glow. ”

“ East, one of the four cardinal points, being the point in the heavens where the sun is seen to rise at the equinox, or the corresponding point on the earth; that point of the horizon lying on the right hand when one's face is turned towards the north pole. By the East, in an indefinite sense, is often meant Syria, Arabia, Persia, India, and the eastern part of the world generally. ”

“ The land from which I come did at one time strive to extend human knowledge, but that was many centuries ago. It is now the privilege of the West to lead in this work. I would fain hope, and I am sure I am echoing your sentiments, that a time may come when the East, too, will take her part in this glorious undertaking; and that at no distant time it shall neither be the West nor the East, but both the East and the West, that will work together, each taking her share in extending the boundaries of knowledge, and bringing out the manifold blessings that follow in its train. ”

“ BALLAD OF EAST AND WEST Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never
the twain shall meet,
Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God's great
Judgment Seat;
But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor
Breed, nor Birth,
When two strong men stand face to face, tho they
come from the ends of the earth!
Kamal is out with twenty men to raise the
Borderside,
And he has lifted the Colonel's mare that is the
Colonel's pride:
He has lifted her out of the stable-door between
the dawn and the day,
And turned the calkins upon her feet, and
ridden her far away. ”

“ Nothing could have been more natural than that, as the West hove in sight larger and richer, the cry for better means of communication between the East and the West should have grown louder and more incessant. ”

“ The East at its best has weighed conduct in delicate balances and traced the play of cause and effect in character far, far beyond the West; it has been content with simple things and found its true wealth in the inner life. ”

“ This pattern of the Western nations revolving around Asia makes me think that... it is the East who is at the core, one could say: the East, roughly since 1950, has not only become (again) the world greatest phenomenon, but has also, slowly, shifted to the center of gravity of World History. ”

“ And there was a sort of feeling of truth in the fancy after all. We talk of the changeless East; but in one sense the impression of it is really rather changing, with its wandering tribes and its shifting sands, in which the genii of the East might well build the palace or the paradise of a day. As I saw the low and solid English cottages rising around me amid damp delightful thickets under rainy skies, I felt that in a deeper sense it is rather we who build for permanence or at least for a sort of peace. ”

“ What shall my west hurt me? As west and east
In all flat maps (and I am one) are one,
So death doth touch the resurrection.
Is the Pacific Sea my home? Or are
The eastern riches? Is Jerusalem?
Anyan, and Magellan, and Gibraltar,
All straits, and none but straits, are ways to them,
Whether where Japhet dwelt, or Cham, or Shem. ”

“ Looking at ‘World History’ - on the one side the rational, incredible West who ends all other ‘histories’ and promotes the universal language, English, and on the other side the intuitive, incredible East who closes the historic circuit and integrates the universal language, English - in this century, the 21st, it is nevertheless the East who holds a considerable advantage: It is the bigger phenomenon. ”

“ Well, so when you have travelled for days and days over an Eastern desert without meeting the likeness of a human being, and then at last see an English shooting-jacket and his servant come listlessly slouching along from out of the forward horizon, you stare at the wide unproportion between this slender company and the boundless plains of sand through which they are keeping their way. ”

“ I seem to live in the heart of two distinct civilizations, those of the East and the West, but the East is my spirit's fatherland. My mind still turns for companionship to the great ones of the Past, the heroines of my country's history. ”

“ They exploit a view as they would a waterfall. The Oriental knows enough to flee from vast landscapes, where multifold aspects and divergent lines do not lend themselves to that exquisite co-ordination between the eye and the view which alone makes a sojourn possible for him. His home is not open to all the winds. Choosing a retreat in some peaceful valley, his care is to achieve a perfect location where his view [Pg 132] composes so harmonious a landscape that it is impossible to imagine seeing it otherwise. ”

“ The spiritual isolation of an Oriental at his prayers in any big city of the Far East is the most significant feature of this life—so alien to all the mental, moral, and religious training of the Occident. ”

“ I agree that there may be circumstances, prejudices, and feelings which render assistance in the East by the only country which can give it in the East a question of difficulty and doubt—a question which must be weighed in every balance and looked at from every point of view ”