Western knowledge

“ Conclusions on the deep and final things are to be reached not by predicating constants but by studying differentiæ and developing the organic logic of differences. The comparative morphology of knowledge forms is a domain which Western thought has still to attack. ”

“ Europe was best described, to his mind, as an elaborate engine for dissociating the confined American from that indispensable knowledge, and was accordingly only rendered bearable by these occasional stations of relief, traps for the arrest of wandering western airs. ”

“ If therefore we are to discover in what form the destiny of the Western Culture will be accomplished, we must first be clear as to what culture is, what its relations are to visible history, to life, to soul, to nature, to intellect, what the forms of its manifestation are and how far these forms—peoples, tongues 4and epochs, battles and ideas, states and gods, arts and craft-works, sciences, laws, economic types and world-ideas, great men and great events—may be accepted and pointed to as symbols. ”

“ Recalling the history of knowledge and history per se, we can say that the European Occident achieved the meaning of knowledge and world control, while the Orient achieved self-knowledge and self-control. ”

“ He should know the history of every country he visits, the character of its people, and their institutions and language, its natural productions and natural history,—indeed, no knowledge will come amiss to him. ”

“ This contest, between the mightiest of Western powers and a people that began to study Western science only within the recollection of many persons still in vigorous life, is, on one side at least, a struggle for national existence. ”

“ Is there to be seen that knowledge of human nature, and especially that peculiar kind of science, most necessary in these affairs—an acquaintance with the character of foreign countries and of the chief actors in the scene? ”

“ Western civilization, from its earliest beginnings in foreign business relations and ideological adventures like the Crusades, has spilled across national frontiers in its search for adventure, for experience, for information, for pelf and power. ”

“ During that period the intellectual life of western Europe was stimulated by the influx of hitherto unknown works of that philosopher, and weighty additions were made to the list of available studies. ”

“ 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. ”

“ While engaged in these scholarly pursuits, our variant of the pattern--western civilization--has been passing through the customary life cycle. If we read the signs correctly, western civilization reached the high point in its cycle toward the end of the last century. ”

“ The "simplifiers,"—whose aims were wholly moral and whose methods were purely pacific—felt that their ideas could be realized on any plane of civilization. Hence, what profiteth knowledge and science? ”

“ Catching something of the new eighteenth-century western spirit, these rulers tried to introduce some western enlightenment into their as yet almost barbarous land. Each tried earnestly to lift their people to a higher level of living, and to start them on the road toward civilization and learning. ”

“ There are types within types, worlds within worlds, and what we call Western civilization is one of these. That is to say, it is at the present day a family or group of nations sharing in common certain things which distinguish it from the rest of the world, such things, for instance, as a certain degree of social order, a certain outlook upon life, certain fundamentals of religion and ethics, and an industrial organization based on applied science. ”

“ He spoke energetically of the powers of the human mind, and the advantages of study and scientific research, and alluded with great feeling to the past history of the East, its grandeur, its scientific attainments, and its intellectual and moral influence over the world at large. ”

“ The eleventh and twelfth centuries were turning-points of great significance in the history of our western civilization, and with the opening of the wonderful thirteenth century the western world is well headed toward a new life and modern ways of thinking. ”

“ If the field of enquiry be narrowed from History as a whole to that branch of it which is here called Culture, the history, not of tribes or nations, but of the condition of knowledge, religion, art, custom, and the like among them, the task of investigation proves to lie within far more moderate compass. ”

“ Each hour brings fresh insight into [246] the mysterious workings of the minds and hearts of that very human section of our race, which ignorant Europeans calmly class as 'niggers.' All these things come to possess a charm for him, the power of which grows apace, and eats into the very marrow of the bones of the man who has once tasted this particular fruit of the great Tree of Knowledge. ”

“ I also propose to analyze the facts and generalize them in such a way that the results of the study may provide an understanding of the human social past, together with some guide-lines that will prove useful in the formulation and implementation of the present-day policy and procedure of civilized peoples, nations, empires and of the western civilization. ”

“ The prestige of Western arts and science may assist the diffusion of Western morals, as it assists the diffusion of Western languages, or Western clothes. Conquests by Mahommedan or Christian States may substitute a higher for a lower ethical creed in this or that region of the world. ”

“ The central coordinating theme for Liberal Studies courses up to this point has been the deliberately ambiguous phrase Issues in Western Culture, and while this has never meant or led to the exclusion of anything from elsewhere, it has meant that, for the most part, our attention is focused on works obviously relevant to the history and development of what we call Western Culture, loosely defied. ”

“ May we take it for granted that western civilization has turned its corner or may we assume that it is still replete with the possibilities of further maneuver, development and expansion? Perhaps the best way to approach the problem would be to ask three questions: What contribution has western civilization made to human nature, to human society and to mother nature, and what further contribution can it make in the foreseeable future? ”

“ The greatest changes of which we have had experience as yet are due to our increasing knowledge of history and nature. They have been produced by a few minds appearing in three or four favoured nations, in comparatively a short period of time. ”

“ In studying the phenomena of knowledge and art, religion and mythology, law and custom, and the rest of the complex whole which we call Civilization, it is not enough to have in view the more advanced races, and to know their history so far as direct records have preserved it for us. ”

“ In order to understand our situation today we must note that in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the educated section of western Europe inherited the results of about five centuries of intense speculative activity. ”

“ With the advent of western civilization a culture pattern is being put together which differs widely from its predecessors.
All civilized peoples seem to have developed from simple beginnings and experimented with broader and more complicated life styles. ”

“ The knowledge more particularly useful and necessary for you, considering your destination, consists of modern languages, modern history, chronology, and geography, the laws of nations, and the ‘jus publicum Imperii’. You must absolutely speak all the modern Languages, as purely and correctly as the natives of the respective countries: for whoever does not speak a language perfectly and easily, will never appear to advantage in conversation, nor treat with others in it upon equal terms. ”

“ The time was when our countrymen speculated, certainly to as great an extent as any other people, on all those high questions which present themselves to the human intellect; and, indeed, a glance at the systems of philosophy that are or have been current on the Continent, suffices to show how much other nations owe to the discoveries of our ancestors. ”

“ If we wish to explain our actual modern states, we must study ancient states, and also the inferior contemporary groups which they resemble in so many particulars. It is only by exact knowledge of the past that we can interpret the present and look into the future. ”

“ Of these two literatures, as of the intellect of Europe in general, the main effort, for now many years, has been a 68critical effort; the endeavour, in all branches of knowledge, theology, philosophy, history, art, science,—to see the object as in itself it really is. ”

“ All these sources of knowledge have been poured into the lap of geography and ethnography, and given us a far better and truer knowledge of the character, resources, and position of the nations of the world. ”

“ Western nations, with their growing civilisations, conjured up monsters of benign or baneful influence, or engrafted and expanded the older ideas in a manner suited to their genius and national characteristics. ”

“ Though until now no traces of this ancient nation were known to exist, yet there survived the names of certain great men it produced—one a poet whose range of imagination and depth of insight are said to have exceeded those of all who went before him; the other, a man of science, of whom, profound as we may suppose in many other respects, we know definitely this, that to all nations then living, and that have since lived, he taught how the Universe is balanced. What kind of people the English were, and what kind of civilization they had, have thus always been questions exciting curiosity. ”

“ We are all yet in various experimental stages of social progress. It may be that if Western theories and ideals have soared to greater heights, Eastern theories and ideals have aimed at producing a greater fundamental solidity ”

“ In spite of overwhelming evidence, it is most difficult for a citizen of western Europe to bring thoroughly home to himself the truth that the civilisation which surrounds him is a rare exception in the history of the world. ”

“ It seemed to me that Western life had got into a confusion and complication from which nothing could deliver it. The principles now incorporated with the very existence of the most influential men in it seemed to me to be radically erroneous, and the disposition of the Western mind is of a kind which augments with indefinite rapidity the strength of any prevalent idea. ”

“ As the twentieth century opened, Western civilization was reaping the fruits of a philosophical culture that was rapidly liberating the energies of its populations, and whose influence would soon produce a revolutionary impact throughout the entire world. ”

“ Western civilisation, or rather Western ideas, and education had brought the natives of the Eastern Empire to such a degree of culture and enlightenment that the subjugated ones realised that they had become the equal of their masters long before the dawn of the twenty-first century. ”

“ Now that we have seen mankind divided and split into a plurality of nations, our next task, in the period which follows, is to discover the most remarkable and most civilized nations, and to observe what peculiar form the Word, whether innate in man, or communicated to him—the word which may be considered as the essence of all the high prerogatives and characteristic qualities of man; to observe, we say, what peculiar form the word assumed among each of those nations, in their language and writing, in their religious traditions, their historical Sagas, their poetry, art, and science. ”

“ Of course it ought not to be disregarded that the application of scientific principles and methods to human and social facts was made possible by the growth of knowledge in regard to savage and half-civilized nations called forth by the increased activity of European and American business men, administrators and explorers. ”

“ And we add, as a new and farther limitation, that we shall confine ourselves to the simple and obvious traces of civilization which have come down to us; employing only our own History,—that of civilized Europe, as the existing domain of Culture ”

“ Through long ages this birth of nations has been going on, each learning for itself the lessons of life. And each of those nations, whether ancient or modern, has attached itself in a peculiar manner to some one of the many forms of truth, carrying it to greater perfection than the other sections of the race. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In beginning a series of observations and comments upon Western life it is proper to say that the reader is not to expect exhaustive statistical statements of growth or development, nor descriptions, except such as will illustrate the point of view taken of the making of the Great West. ”

“ And for this reason, that independently of the civilizing effects of Christianity, Science has knit the modern nations into one: whereas each nation of antiquity had to work out its own problems of social and political life, and come to its own conclusions. ”