Orient

“ The first sight of the colored, pictured, lounging, waiting Orient is enough to drive an impressionable person wild; so much that is novel and picturesque is crowded into a few minutes; so many colors and flying robes, such a display of bare legs and swarthy figures. ”

“ The light of the Orient has been preserved by the wise men of the east, in symbols and allegorical language, and when the time arrives, which is not far distant, someone possessing the key, which is the Word, will unlock its mysteries and bring it forth in its divine purity, to enlighten the present and future generations. ”

“ 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. ”

“ From our coast the mind’s eye takes its gaze and sees on the other shores of that great ocean the teeming millions of the Orient, with its institutions running their roots into the most venerable antiquity, its own inherited philosophy and standards of life, its own peculiar races and colors. ”

“ The primitive cultural folk of the Orient, dwellers in its great plateau regions, its fertile valleys, and its desert stretches were wont, as we are told, to watch the stars rise nightly in the east, sweep across the great vaulted space above, and set in the west as if controlled in their apparent movement by living spirits. ”

“ 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 Orient and Occident, the male and female of the Spirit, the two great streams in which the body 246 and soul of man are refreshed, invigorated, purified––of both I sing, in both I glory, to both I consecrate my life, for both I shall work and suffer and die. My Brothers, the most highly developed being is neither European nor Oriental ”

“ Say that in thee again the prophet doth arise,
⁠Say, an thou wilt, thou'rt of the gods elect;
But, empress of the east! in native eyes
⁠No sway imperial shall thy claim reflect.
There in the Orient, rooted in the soil,
⁠Live prophecies and very old traditions,
Which round the hearts of men like serpents coil
⁠And nestle in the strangest superstitions. ”

“ And it is as free to the West as to the East though I own it lies nearer to the surface in the Orient where the spiritual genius of the people makes it possible and the greater and more faithful teachers are found. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Books Which Help One to Understand the Orient and Its People In this bibliography no attempt has been made to cover the field of books about the leading countries of the Orient. The aim has been to mention the books which the tourist will find most helpful. Guide books are indispensable, but they give the imagination no stimulus. ”

“ It is partly owing to this fact, and partly to that curious approach of extremes which we observe in nature no less than in humanity, that all suggestive traits of resemblance in these regions point to the Orient rather than to Europe. ”

“ It is from the spiritual hierarchy that come all the religions of the world. There the question may arise, "Then why do they differ so greatly?" Because the peoples to whom they are given differ greatly. The difference of temperament and viewpoint between the Orient and the Occident is enormous. We are evolving along the outer, the objective, and our civilization represents the material conquest of nature. They are evolving the inner, the subjective. In the Orient the common trend of conversation is philosophical, just as [210] in the Occident it is commercial. ”

“ And had our missions in the East been established and conducted by the Orient instead of the Occident they would have had adequate patience to pursue the method of self-support ab initio. But as we are of the West, Western, our missions must partake of the characteristics of our nature; and be imbued with that energy, push, impatience for results which distinguish us in everything. ”

“ There again, those who cannot go on to the Orient with the decorators who need to study customs and periods in the Far East, may say good-by to us and watch us go west, while they go east back to business. ”

“ The tourist naturally concludes that the unity characterizing the Orient is fundamental; that Oriental civilization is due to Oriental race brain, and Occidental civilization is due to Occidental race brain. ”

“ This is a law of great significance. The Orient is becoming Occidentalized to a degree and at a rate little realized by travelers and not fully appreciated by the Orientals themselves. They know that mighty changes have taken place, and are now taking place, but they do not fully recognize their nature, and the multitudes do not know the source of these changes. ”

“ The part of the world lying west (or east) of the Orient. It is largely inhabited by Christians, a powerful subtribe of the Hypocrites, whose principal industries are murder and cheating, which they are pleased to call "war" and "commerce." These, also, are the principal industries of the Orient. ”

“ To see a camel train laden with the spices of Arabia and the rare fabrics of Persia come marching through the narrow alleys of the bazaar, among porters with their burdens, money-changers, lamp-merchants, Al-naschars in the glassware business, portly cross-legged Turks smoking the famous narghili; and the crowds drifting to and fro in the fanciful costumes of the East, is a genuine revelation of the Orient. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A considerable correspondence with various centers throughout the Orient was initiated, and grew steadily in scope and importance. Brief histories of the Faith, books and pamphlets written in its defence, articles for the press, accounts of travels and pilgrimages, eulogies and poems, were likewise published and widely disseminated. ”

“ The mind of the Oriental has ever delighted to wander in the mystic realm of parable and allegory. His sacred books, from the Zendavesta to the Koran, abound with examples of this method of impressing important truths, and even the lighter productions destined to beguile his leisure are not free from it. ”

“ There 16are branches of knowledge and art in which the East is deficient, and which she must learn from foreign sources. But there are other things all her own, and even your enlightened countrymen may turn with pleasure and profit to a leaf or two out of the books of the East to learn something new, to get a glimpse of vistas of thought with which they are not familiar. And you, Sir, have done not a little to open out before the world treasures of Oriental wisdom which only the diligence of scholars like you could unfold. ”

“ With it awoke strange, dim images from the superstitiously imaginative East. He let himself seem to be upon that middle ground of the Oriental tales where the supernatural mingles with the natural at will. ”

“ Oriental positions, and those in the ascendant, especially if made by planets in their proper faces, [201] make men liberal, frank, self-confident, brave, ingenious, unreserved, yet acute. Oriental stations, and positions on the mid-heaven, or culminations, make men reflective, constant, of good memory, firm, prudent, magnanimous, successful in pursuing their desires, inflexible, powerful in intellect, strict, not easily imposed upon, judicious, active, hostile to crime, and skilful in science. ”

“ It was after receiving such contributions as these from the Orient, that Europe went forward to the develop- ment of a higher civilization, and in order to understand the further course of European history, we must turn to the Orient whence came these things by which the life of our European ancestors entered upon a new epoch. Let us remember as we go to the Orient that the age of man's Summary prehistoric career^ lasted some fifty thousand years,. ”

“ In a few days we have become quite Oriental. To confess the truth, there are some things here in the East that are not at all disagreeable to the natural man, especially the devices for coolness and comfort, and the extreme deference to Europeans, which we begin to accept as naturally belonging to us. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Again the answer carries us back to the East. Nothing is more striking to a Western traveller than the dignified gravity of the superior Oriental races. In public they rarely smile, almost never laugh, and hardly ever express surprise. ”

“ 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 ”

“ But here are effects beyond the artist, forms the architect has not hinted at; and yet everything reminds us of man's work. And the explorers have tried by the use of Oriental nomenclature to bring it within our comprehension, the East being the land of the imagination. ”

“ The Oriental character of the Scriptural books causes them to abound with metaphors and symbols, taken from the common life of the time. They embrace the barren precipitous rocks alternating with the green and fertile valleys, the trees, flowers, and herbage, the creeping things of the earth, the fishes of the sea, the birds of the air, and the beasts which abode with man or dwelt in the deserts and forests. ”

“ As we have said, there is an orientalism in the most restless pioneer, and the farthest west is but the farthest east. While we are reading these sentences, this fair modern world seems only a reprint of the Laws of Menu with the gloss of Culluca. ”

“ We who have been accustomed to the great poets of the nineteenth century seeking their best inspiration in the climate and manners of the East; who are familiar with the land of the Sun from the isles of Ionia to the vales of Cashmere; can scarcely appreciate the literary originality of a writer who, fifty years ago, dared to devise a real Eastern story, and seeking inspiration in the pages of Oriental literature, compose it with reference to the Eastern mind, and customs, and landscape. ”

“ Fiftly, That Learning, Civility and Arts had their beginning in the East, it is not imputable either to the action of the Sun, or its Orientality, but the first plantation of Man in those parts, which unto Europe do carry the respect of East. ”

“ The fitting of Western thought to an Oriental race, while it must be chiefly left to the race itself, needs clearly the help of those who are conversant with the best aspects {327} of that Western thought and of its history. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Scarcely changed by the lapse of centuries, the Oriental of the present day retains most of the peculiarities which distinguished him throughout the long series of years during which the books of sacred Scripture were given to the world. In many of these characteristics he differs essentially from Europeans of the present day, and exhibits a tone of mind which seems to be not merely owing to education, but to be innate and inherent in the race. ”

“ I have been told by men who have resided long in the East, and have had good opportunities for knowing the people well, that the facts of life there have conformed [382] themselves to this anticipation. The houris of earth are the end-all and be-all of oriental life. Unlike anything amongst ourselves, it is with a view to them that even the arrangements of oriental houses are designed. ”