Ester

“ The West has witnessed more changes than has the East. The common impression, and one to which all Americans are bred, leaves paleface Western occupation to a modern day. Whenever one’s thought wanders to what is old in this country one inevitably sets his face towards the East. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But why do I ask for any intelligence in you, any learning, you who are not endowed with any ability, with any knowledge of letters, who say “lights” for lamps, and “be transferred in the regions of the east” instead of “be transferred to the regions of the east,” as it should be? And what next? Are these “quarters” of yours really the four quarters of the world? What do you count as eastern? Thrace? It lies to the north, as I have said. Judea? It looks rather toward the south, for it is next to Egypt. And what do you count as western? ”

“ By new immigration we mean broadly all the aliens from southeastern Europe—the Italians, Hungarians, Slavs, Hebrews, Greeks, and Syrians—as distinguished from the northwestern Europeans—the English, Scotch, Welsh, Irish, French, Germans, and Scandinavians. ”

“ On the one side, we see the Westerner haughty, unyielding and unwilling to conciliate; on the other we behold the Oriental willing to be trampled upon when it seems necessary, and to smile with apparent gratitude under the process ”

“ Emigrants from Europe have brought the peculiarities of the nations and countries from whence they have originated, but are fast losing their national manners, and feelings, and, to use a provincial term, will soon become "westernized." ”

“ Of one thing I felt certain during my travels in Europe, that a genuine interest has been roused there in the philosophy and the arts of the East, from which the Western mind seeks fresh inspiration of truth and beauty. Once the East had her reputation of fabulous wealth, and the seekers were attracted from across the sea. ”

“ 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. ”

“ As is well known the East has its various sects and schools of philosophy, with subtle discriminations of qualities, essences, god-heads, devilhoods, etc., into which I do not propose to go, and which I should feel myself quite incompetent to deal with. Leaving all these aside, I will keep simply to these two rough Western terms, and try to consider further the question of the methods by which the Eastern student sets himself to obtain the cosmic state, or such higher order of consciousness as he does encompass. ”

“ Then, because of the lusty strength incidental to the vigorous youth of the junior members of our commonwealth, Western ideas and influences began to be felt in the East and to modify the conditions that existed in Eastern society. ”

“ The West had turned back towards the East, and, although the intent was hostile, the minds of the western men had been fecundated, their imagination fired by contact with the mother of all religions and all cultures. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But instead of being matured and improved, as it was in the Western society, there is reason to think that in the East, under various influences which may partly be traced, it has gradually been reduced to dimensions and importance far inferior to those which originally belonged to it. ”

“ They expanded the knowledge--the experience--the ideas--of the whole body of those who visited the East and who survived the adventurous expedition; made them acquainted with civilizations at least more polished than their own; taught them many things which they could only learn in those days by actual sight, and sent them back to their homes throughout Europe, to be instructors and missionaries, who did much to prepare Western Christendom for the Renaissance or new birth of a later time. ”

“ Chairman and Gentlemen:—It is never too late to learn, and since I have been here I have learned that my ancient country, which has always been known as an Eastern country, has now turned to be a Western country. I do not regret to hear this, because Western countries have always been looked on as very powerful nations. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The above summary of the political, economic, social, and racial differences between East and West gives us a fair idea of the numerous cross-currents which complicate the relations of the two worlds and which hinder Westernization. ”

“ Every sunset which I witness inspires me with the desire to go to a West as distant and as fair as that into which the sun goes down. He appears to migrate westward daily, and tempt us to follow him. He is the Great Western Pioneer whom the nations follow. We dream all night of those mountain ridges in the horizon, though they may be of vapor only, which were last gilded by his rays. ”

“ The western nations of Europe, who now so immeasurably surpass their former savage progenitors, and stand at the summit of civilisation, owe little or none of their superiority to direct inheritance from the old Greeks, though they owe much to the written works of that wonderful people. ”

“ "England may as well dam up the waters of the Nile with bulrushes, as to fetter the step of Freedom, more proud and firm in this youthful land, than where she treads the sequestered glens of Scotland, or couches herself among the magnificent mountains of Switzerland. ”

“ For everything that our present-day psychologist has to tell us—and here we refer not only to the systematic science but also in the wider sense to the physiognomic knowledge of men—relates to the present condition of the Western soul, and not, as hitherto gratuitously assumed, to “the human soul” at large. ”

“ His home!—the Western giant smiles,
And twirls the spotty globe to find it;
This little speck the British Isles?
'T is but a freckle,—never mind it! ”

“ These are lighted before sunset, and against the blaze of the western light are for some time completely invisible; but as twilight thickens, and the shadows deepen, and a gray pearly veil is drawn over the sky, the distant basilica begins to glow against it with a dull furnace-glow, as of a wondrous coal fanned by a constant wind; looking not so much lighted from without as reddening from an interior fire. Slowly this splendor grows, until the mighty building at last stands outlined against the dying twilight as if etched there with a fiery burin. ”

“ 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! ”

“ If you wish to know what the West has gained from contact with the East, even when they met sword in hand, look around you; most of the fruit trees that enrich your fields, the vine which gladdens the heart, the silk and cotton that adorn your houses and your persons, these are the spoils of your Eastern wars; sugar and coffee, the cultivation of which has changed the political balance of the world, were brought into Europe from the East, the one by yourselves, the other by the Arabs, when they made themselves masters of Spain. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We may, without impropriety, suggest all fair and honourable arguments, to convince the emigrants from the eastern states, and from Europe, that it is their interest to establish themselves here, rather than seek a residence in a distant country, to the west or the south. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ That, I incline to fancy, is the real difference that a man come from the west of Europe feels in the east of Europe, it is a gap or a void. It is the absence of the grotesque energy of Gothic, the absence of the experiments of parliament and popular representation, the absence of medieval chivalry, the absence of modern nationality. ”

“ I like to study pictures of the East, and of the earliest period of the cultivation of our race in opposition to the West—that promised land which I am approaching with a thousand questions in my soul. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ People will tell you, "Foreigners do this"; "Foreigners do that"; "Foreigners smoke so much"; "Foreigners always take coffee for breakfast." "Indeed," I love to answer; "I've never observed it myself in Central Asia." 'Tis Parson Adams and the Christian religion. Nine English people out of ten, when they talk of Abroad, mean what they call the Continent; and when they talk of the Continent, they mean France, Germany, Switzerland, Italy; in short, the places most visited by Englishmen when they consent now and again to go Abroad for a holiday. ”

“ But the absurdity of the West is the living reality of the East. There we may still find all the chief races which have ever occupied the country, still remaining distinct, still keeping separate tongues, and those for the most part, their own original tongues. ”

“ A catalyte must therefore always accelerate the reverse-reaction. If the velocity of formation of a body be increased by addition of some substance then its velocity of decomposition must likewise increase. We have an example of this in the well-known fact that the formation, and no less the saponification, of esters, proceeds with increased velocity in the presence of acids, while the observation that in absence of water-vapour neither gaseous ammonium chloride dissociates nor dry ammonia combines with hydrogen chloride becomes clear on the same grounds. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Every year a tide of emigration rolls westward, not from Europe only, but from the crowded eastern cities, forming a tangled web of races, manners, and religions which the hasty observer cannot attempt to disentangle. ”

“ The East is submissive, the West is creative; The East is conservative, the West is progressive; The East is intuition, the West is reason; The East is spiritual, the West is empirical; The East is humanistic, the West is scientific ”

“ 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 ”

“ But the news has reached me even here that in the West you seek a moral standard, and this quest always fills me with wonder. There are priests among you, I can see that, and soldiers, and fishermen, and artists and princes and folk who labor in the fields--now do you expect all these men, living in different conditions of life, to live under the same rule? I am afraid that the East and the West will never understand each other. ”