The Revolt of the East O N a recent voya g e across
the Pacific I was greatly impressed by a Chinese delegation to Washington who were my fellow-travellers. They were solemn, inscrutable, dignified, although dressed in what seemed like night-shirts. They were affable when spoken to, but remained utterly aloof from the affairs of the other passengers, reminding me rather of a family of Pekinese among a pack of prairie dogs. I felt then that China would probably be the next Oriental nation to emancipate herself .rom the West.
With our immediate difficulties in China it is not the purpose of this article to deal. Shanghai is a symptom of a disease whose origin is deeper than any local disturbance. We are no worse, perhaps indeed we arc more enlightened, than other Western nations, but our whole attitude of mind with regard to the East needs clarification and revision. Our interests there are greater than those of any other nation. Our need of comprehension is therefore also greater. Yet we persist in our own belief that we are bearing a white man's burden, whereas the truth—as it appears to others at any rate—is that our load is weighted with ignorance and conceit. We of all the peoples of the earth should be the first to further the extension of the freedom of mankind by building a superstructure and laying a crown on our good work in China, India, Burma and Africa. But sometimes we do not seem sure of our own powers. We could give away far more in trust and be repaid a thousandfold in present gratitude to say nothing of future trade.
Alas! concessions are interpreted as a " policy of scuttle." There can be no greater error. It is the " die-hards " who have to scuttle when popular feeling grows too strong for them. There can be no greater loss of prestige than to concede to clamour what was refused to common sense.
Nations, like individuals, have periods of activity and periods of sleep. India, for instance, is just awakening after a nap of some three hundred years. She is stretching herself in a strength and security that we have painfully but profitably achieved for her by patrolling her shores with warships, by ringing her frontiers with British bayonets, and keeping the peace within them. Without our help, the new forces awakening might easily spend themselves in internal faction as they did in the past. Nothing great would be added to life. But under our protection there are vast potentialities in this stirring from slumber of three hundred million people ; this reaching out towards the light of some of the subtlest thinkers of the world, backed by the immense population.
To be the foster-parent of India's spiritual growth may indeed be one of the greatest achievements of our Empire. But we shall need a more intimate under- standing of the mentality of the East and some knowledge of and reverence for the culture of the Aryans. Who wrote the first amusing book of animal stories ? Pilpai, Whom Aesop copied. Who were the earliest psycho- logists on earth ? The Brahmins, whose mantras preceded Cone by twenty centuries and who have still something to teach Professors Freud, Jung and Adler. Who invented Swedish exercises ? The Yogis did, millenniums before we emerged from woad and ritual dances, and their system is still the best. Where did Loyola get his spiritual exercises ? Probably from the Aryan East, for the Moors who gave us arithmetic no doubt brought to Spain the methods of mysticism which have been practised for thousands of years by the Ganges. We are too arrogant in our belief that Western civilization is the coming world-culture ; and it is the arrogance of children who cannot see beyond what they grasp and hold at the moment. Because India did not invent quantity-production and modern plumbing and the ballot box, it is thought that she is not civilized. It is not true. India has a mental life on as high a plane as ours. Our emphasis in the West has been on externals. In India and China the stress is different, the rhythm is strange to us, and our senses, deafened and deadened by the clamour and poisons of our civilization, are not attuned to those harmonies. It is easy to set up cheap standards and show that the East cannot attain to them. But one need not have one's ear very close to the ground to hear the stirring of a new spirit among more than six hundred million people. A change is impending—.Japan woke first—now Turkey, Egypt, Persia, China, India will demand new liberties and a larger life. Not for a moment do I suggest an immediate withdrawal from our conunitments in the East. But who arc we to say that the blessings of our civilization must be shared by all the world ? Our own civilization, our religion -also, have grown out of Eastern origins. As to philosophy, the achievements of the Aryans arc lauded by experts, but neglected by the reading public. Sir John Woodroffe has written in his The World as Power :--" An examina- tion of Vedic doctrine shows that it is, in important respects, in conformity with the most advanced philosophic and scientific thought of the West, and that where this is not so, it is science that will go to the Vedanta and not the reverse." Sehopen hailer said : " In the whole world there has been no study so beneficial and so elevating as that of the Vedas. It has been the comfort of my life and will he the solace of my death." Victor Cousin said : " We are constrained to bow the knee before the philosophy of the East, and to see in this cradle of the human race the native land of the highest philosophy." and Max Midler, the greatest Orientalist of his time, wrote : " The early Indians possessed a knowledge of the true God ; all their writings are replete with sentiments and expressions noble, clear and severely grand." We have much to give the East in a material sense. But we have also much to learn, and knowledge of the Vedas might he of importance to us in this restless age. From them we might gain fresh light on the • secrets of poise and peace. Doubtless there are ninny avenues to the one truth. Krishna said this as well as Christ. That is the greater reason why in dealing with races of other colour and ancestry we should expect that their development will be along lines dissimilar from our own. Our own political institutions may suit us exactly, but is that any reason why they should suit peoples of different pigmentation, constitution and outlook ?
Let us not be fogged with the pride of our material achievements. Splendid as they are, they have tudolded many new complications and liberated many mechanical Molochs. We have curbed space and bridled the aether, but one thing we shall never harness, one thing we shall never control—the questing spirit of man. Let us make sure that the East does not think we are attempting such an absurdity.
F. YE.1TS-Raowx.
Previous page
