July 29.
Mr. Mereprru 'TOWNSEND in tus book entitled "Europe and Asia' built an argument on Rudyard Kipling's text, "O East is Bast and West is West, and never the twain shall meet."' His argument marched on these two feet, first his deductions from ancient history, and second his experience of modern India. But both his feet appear to be lame. One reviewer, not venturing to question the history of Mr. Townsend, corrected his observations of India. And now another Daniel has come to judgement in Mr. Edwyn Bevan, who withholds an opinion on modern India but declares that Mr. Townsend's history is quite at fault. The question at issue is worth considering because it is of enormous importance for modern polities as well as for the future of the world. Let us follow then the contention of Mr. Bevan in his recently published book on "Hellenism and Christianity,'' that. this antagonism of East and West instead of being fundamental is purely a factitious gulf.
What do we mean by the West? It is a scheme of thought and life that originated among the Greeks as @ spirit of rational inquiry. What distinguished the Hellenic mind was its power of questioning as to causes and consequences, whereby the unexplained was driven out from thought, the uncouth from art and the unjustified from politics, until at last man became '"'the measure of all things."" By the way it should be said that it was not all the Greeks who made reason their Lord, any more than it was all the Hebrews who made character their God, but this was the genius that presided over their destinies.
This spirit or scheme of life went east with Alexander and west with Rome. It remains in the West but disappeared in the East. Why? Does that mean that Kipling and Townsend were right after all and East and West are fundamentally incommensurate with each other? By no means: there is a pei.ectly sane explanation in the course of events that followed. In both directions Hellenism was submerged by a tide of ignorance, first Pagan then Mohammedan, and the night of barbarism reigned from Syria to Spain, from India to England. Curiously it was the Bast that kept touch longest with the spirit that we now speak of as "Western." It was Arabs who carried on the traditions of Hellenic science and scepticism. Arabic was known in Oxford through Arabic versions (translated into Latin), and while England could produce nothing better than knights in armour, the lands now subject to her mandate produced doctors and savants, But one event reversed the roles played by East and West in Plantagenet times namely, the incussion of the Turkish hordes who formed the bottom layer of the barbarian volcano in Central Asia that had so often flung destruction on the world. From that day a blight fell on the lands north and east of the Levant, while at the same time a boon was granted to the countries north and west of the Adriatic. For the treasures of Hellenism rescued from Constantinople became the inheritance of a half-awakened Europe, beginning with Italy. The pearl of reasonable inquiry which was trampled under the foot of the Turks became the jewel of the Renaissance and gave distinction to the forehead of Western Europe.
Why, then, should we suppose there is an insuperable barrier between Bast and West when we know the history of the mental and moral difference that at present obtains? It is true that TAELa 12 PER Awwom.
Europe has for a second time fallen under the spell of the Hel-ionic genius, but it is only by virtue of a contact that has been denied to the East. New opportunities of contact are being established to-day: telegraphs and telephones are abolishing distant ces. And there is no reason whatever why the Chinese should not imbibe the same spirit of inquiry that has dominated Europe, or rather half of it, during the last four or five centuries. We cannot forget that the downfall of Russia began at the hands of Japan. Russia had not surrendered to the spirit of rational inquiry as Japan chose to do.
It is not a question of race so much as of education. Part of China's millions have received this education. Only a minute fragment it is true. But there is the less reason for contempt when we remember that vast numbers in Europe also, especially in south Italy and west Treland, not to speak again of Russia, are outside this 'Western' influence still. "If the Chinese peasant can believe that Huropeans capture children to extract photographic chemicals from their corpses, the peasantry of the south of France were capable of believing that Queen Victoria owed the singular vigour of her later years to a secret consump-~ tion of the blood of babies."
There is in fact no such great gulf fixed as the popular prejudice supposes. And perhaps China will even yet make as good a job of her politics as Ireland seems capable of doing.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.