Fruitless ATTEMPTS

In considering the idea of a renewal of intellectual relations between the East and the West, we have not the slightest pretension of putting forward an idea that is new, which, moreover, is in no way necessary to make it interesting; the love of novelty, which is nothing else but the need for change, and the cultivation of originality, resulting from an intellectual individualism that borders on anarchy, are characteristics that belong exclusively to the modern mentality, being the outward signs of its anti-traditional tendencies. In fact, this idea of renewal may already have occurred to many people in the West, which does not rob it of any of its value or importance. But we must face the fact that so far it has had no result, and that the opposition has even grown more and more marked, which was the inevitable consequence of the West's going along her divergent course. It is, indeed, the West alone that must be held responsible for this widening distance, since the East, in her essence, has never varied; and all the attempts which did not take this fact into consideration were bound to fail. The great fault of these attempts is that they were always carried out along lines that were the inverse of those that alone could have made for success: it is for the West to approach the East, since it is the West that has gone astray, and her efforts to persuade the East to do the approaching will be in vain, for the East does not feel that it has any better reasons for changing today than it had during the last centuries. Of course, there has never been any question, for the Easterners, of excluding those adaptations which are compatible with the traditional outlook, but if someone comes and suggests a change that amounts to a subversion of the whole established order, they can only meet this suggestion with a flat refusal; and the spectacle offered them by the West is very far from being an eloquent reason why they should let themselves be persuaded. Even if the Easterners feel bound to accept material progress to a certain extent, their doing so will never amount to a radical change, because, as we have already said, they will not be interested in it; they will undergo it simply as a necessity, and they will find nothing in it except an additional motive for resentment against those who have obliged them to submit to it. Far from giving up what is for them the whole point of their existence, they will keep it more rigidly locked within themselves than ever, and they will make themselves more remote and more inaccessible. Besides, as the Western civilization is by far the youngest of all, the rules of the most elementary politeness, if accepted as valid in relations between peoples or races as they are between individuals, should be enough to show the West that it is for her, and not for the others who are her elders, to take the first steps. True, it is indeed the West that went to seek out the Easterners, but with quite contrary intentions: it was not to learn from them, as behoves youths in the presence of old men, but to strive, by brutal or insidious means, to convert them to their own way of thinking, and to preach to them all sorts of things which are pointless so far as they are concerned, or which they have no desire to hear about. The Easterners, who have all a great regard for politeness, are shocked at this unseasonable proselytism as at something grossly vulgar; coming, as it does, to make itself felt in their own country, it amounts even to what is still more serious in their eyes, a breach of the laws of hospitality; and Eastern politeness, let it be well understood, is no vain formalism such as the keeping of the entirely outward customs to which Westerners give the same name: it has, underlying it, far deeper reasons, since it reflects the whole of a traditional civilization, whereas, in the West, these reasons having disappeared with the tradition, what remains is strictly speaking no more than superstition, quite apart from the innovations simply due to 'fashion' and to its unjustifiable whims, which amount to mere parody. But, to revert to proselytism, it is nothing for the Easterners, apart from all question of politeness, but a proof of ignorance and incomprehension, a token of the absence of intellectuality, because it essentially implies and presupposes sentimentality: propaganda can only be made for an idea if there is attached to it some sentimental interest, to the detriment of its purity; as for pure ideas, all that can be done is to expound them for those who are capable of understanding them, without the least anxiety to carry the convictions of anyone whatever. This unfavorable judgment, which proselytism calls down upon itself, is confirmed by everything that Westerners say and do; all those facts which they believe to be proofs of their superiority are for the Easterners just so many marks of inferiority. Anyone who takes up an attitude outside all prejudice must indeed resign himself to admitting that the West has nothing to teach the East, except in the purely material domain, in which the East, we repeat, can find no interest, having at her disposal things besides which material considerations scarcely count, things which she is not disposed to sacrifice in return for vain and futile contingencies. Besides, industrial and economic development, as we have already said, can only provoke rivalry and strife between peoples; thus it could not possibly provide a ground upon which close relations might be re-established, unless it be maintained that at least one way of bringing them together is to make them fight against each other; but that is not how we understand it, and indeed it would be nothing but a very poor play on words. For us, when we speak of a re-establishment of close relations, it means agreement and not rivalry; besides, the sole purpose for which certain Easterners will tolerate economic development in their country, as we have explained, admits of no hope on this score. It is not the conveniences added by mechanical inventions to the outward relations between peoples which will ever give them the means of better mutual understanding; such conveniences can only bring about, in every field of activity, more frequent jars and wider conflicts; as for the agreements based on purely commercial interests, one should know only too well how high they are to be rated. Matter is, by its nature, a principle of division and separation; nothing that comes from it could possibly serve as a basis for a real and lasting union, and moreover, in the realm of matter, it is ceaseless change which is law. We do not mean that there should be no attention paid at all to economic interests; but, as we repeat again and again, one must know how to put each thing in its place, and the place that normally belongs to such interests is rather the last than the first. This is not to say, either, that they should make way for sentimental utopias in the form of a 'League of Nations'; such concerns are still less stable if that be possible, not even being founded on that gross and brutish reality which at least cannot be denied to things of the purely sensible order; and sentiment, in itself, is no less variable and inconstant than what belongs to the strictly material domain. Moreover, humanitarianism, with all its dreams, is very often nothing but a mask to cloak material interests, a mask that is imposed by 'moralist' hypocrisy. We are not inclined to believe in the disinterestedness of the apostles of 'civilization', and furthermore, if the truth be told, disinterestedness is not a political virtue. In fact, it is neither in economics nor in politics that the means of an agreement could ever be found, and it is only after the event and as a minor consideration that economic and political activity will be invited to share the benefits of this agreement; these means, if they exist, do not spring from the realm of matter nor from that of sentiment, but from a far deeper and firmer realm, which can only be that of intelligence. Only, we mean here intelligence in its true and complete sense; we are not referring to those counterfeits of intellectuality which the West unfortunately persists in presenting to the East, and which are, moreover, all that she can present, knowing no other and, even for her own use, having nothing else at her disposal; what is enough to satisfy the West in this respect is entirely unfitted to give the East the slightest intellectual satisfaction since it lacks everything that is essential. Western science, even when not purely and simply confused with industry, even when considered apart from all practical applications, is still, in the eyes of the Easterners, nothing but this 'ignorant knowledge' that we have spoken of, because it is not attached to any principle of a higher order. Since it is limited to the sensible world, which it takes for its sole object, it has not, properly speaking, a speculative value of itself; even so, if it were a preparatory means for attaining to a knowledge of a higher order, the Easterners would be much inclined to respect it, though they would think this means a very roundabout one, noticing especially how little it was adapted to their own mentality; but it is not such a means. This science, on the contrary, is fated, by its very constitution, to produce a state of mind that culminates in the denial of all other knowledge, and that we have named 'scientism'. Either it is taken for an end in itself, or else its only results are in the realm of practical applications, that is, in the lowest order of all, where the very word 'knowledge', with the fullness of meaning which the Easterners attach to it, can no longer be used except by the most illegitimate of extensions. The theoretic results of analytical science, however considerable they may seem to Westerners, loom only very small in the eyes of the Easterners, on whom it all makes the impression of childish pastimes, unworthy to retain for long the attention of those who are capable of applying their intelligence to other objects, or, in other words, of those who possess true intelligence, for everything else is only a more or less dim reflection of it. So much for the 'high idea' which the Easterners, according to Westerners (Leibnitz, for example, whom we have already mentioned in this connection), may come to have of European science. The same applies even if they are presented with its most authentic and complete products, and not merely with the rudiments of 'popularization'; it is not that they are incapable of understanding and appreciating it, but on the contrary because they rate it at its true value, with the help of a term of comparison which Westerners lack. European science, in fact, because there is no depth to it, and because it is really nothing more than it seems, is easily accessible to anyone who will take the trouble to study it. Every science, no doubt, is specially fitted to the mentality of the people that produced it, but in this particular case there is not the least equivalent of the difficulties encountered by those Westerners who wish to penetrate the 'traditional sciences' of the East, difficulties which arise from the fact that these sciences spring from principles that these would-be students have no idea of, and that they use means of investigation which are wholly foreign to the West, because they go beyond the narrow bounds that limit its outlook. The lack of adaptation, if it exists on both sides, takes very different forms: for the Westerners who study Eastern science, it shows itself as an almost irremediable failure to understand, however much they apply themselves to the task, and though individual exceptions are always possible, in this case they are very rare; for the Easterners who study Western science, it is simply a question of lack of interest, which is no bar to understanding, but which naturally makes them little inclined to devote to this study energies that might be better employed. Thus there must be no counting on scientific propaganda, nor on any other kind of propaganda either, for the bringing together of East and West; the very importance that Westerners attach to these methods and sciences gives the Easterners a poor enough opinion of their mentality, and, if they consider such things intellectual, it is because intellectuality has not the same meaning for them as for the Easterners. All that we say about Western science can be said also about philosophy, and the plight of the latter is still more serious in that, while its speculative value is neither greater nor more real, it has not even that practical value which, however relative and secondary it may be, is still nonetheless something; and from this point of view we can couple with philosophy everything which, in science itself, has only a purely hypothetical character. Besides, in modern thought there can be no deep gulf between scientific and philosophic knowledge; the former has come to embrace everything which this thought has access to, and the latter, so far as it remains valid, is no more than a portion or mode of it, which is only given a place apart as a result of habit, and for reasons that are on the whole more historical than logical. If philosophy has the greater pretensions, so much the worse for it, since these pretensions can be founded on nothing; within the limits of the present state of the Western mentality, the only legitimate conception is the positivist one, which is the normal culmination of 'scientistic' rationalism, or else the pragmatist one, which definitely sets aside all speculation so as to keep to a utilitarian sentimentality: here we are face to face once again with these two tendencies between which the whole of modern civilization oscillates. For the Easterners, on the contrary, the alternative thus expressed has no meaning, because what really and essentially interests them is far beyond these two terms, just as their conceptions are beyond all the artificial problems of philosophy, and as their traditional doctrines are beyond all systems, those purely human inventions in the narrowest sense of the word human, invented, that is, by an individual reason, which, failing to understand its limitations, believes itself capable of embracing all the Universe or of reconstructing it at its fancy's whim, and which on 'principle'-to crown all-absolutely denies everything that goes beyond it. This amounts to denying metaphysical knowledge, which is supra-rational, and which is pure intellectual knowledge, knowledge at its highest. Modern philosophy cannot admit the existence of true metaphysics without destroying itself, and as for 'pseudometaphysics' which it incorporates, it is merely a more or less clever assemblage of exclusively rational hypotheses, which are therefore scientific in reality, and which are generally not based on anything very serious. In any case, the range of these hypotheses is always extremely limited; the few valid elements that may help to make up the mixture never go much further than the domain of ordinary science, and their close association with the most deplorable fantasies, no less than the systematic form given to the whole, can only invalidate them altogether in the eyes of the East. Easterners have not that special manner of thought which is generally known as philosophy: it is not among them that the systematic spirit and intellectual individualism are to be met with; but, if they have not the disadvantages of philosophy, they have, unadulterated by any alloy, the equivalent of all that may be interesting in it, which, in their 'traditional sciences', even takes on a much higher significance; and they have, besides this, immeasurably more, since they have, as principle of all the rest, metaphysical knowledge, whose domain is absolutely unlimited. That is why philosophy, with its attempts at explanation, its arbitrary demarcations, its useless subtleties, its ceaseless confusions, its aimless discussions, and its inconsistent verbiage, seems to them like a particularly puerile game; we have mentioned elsewhere the appreciation of the Hindu who, on hearing expounded for the first time the conceptions of certain European philosophers, declared that the ideas in them would only do credit, at the most, to a child of eight. Thus philosophy is still less to be counted on than ordinary science for inspiring the Easterners with admiration, or even for impressing them favorably, and it should not be imagined that they will ever adopt these ways of thinking, whose absence in a civilization is nothing to be sorry for, and whose characteristic narrowness is one of intelligence's greatest dangers; for the Easterners, as we were saying, it is all no more than a mere counterfeit of intellectuality, for the exclusive use of those who, through incapacity to see higher and further, are condemned, by their own mental constitution or by the effects of their education, to be forever ignorant of what true intellectuality is. We have still a little more to say as regards in particular the 'philosophies of action': these theories really do nothing but sanction the complete overthrow of intelligence. Perhaps it is better in one sense to give up frankly all appearance of intellectuality than to go on deluding oneself indefinitely with mock speculations, but then why persist in wanting to evolve theories any longer? To claim that action must be put above all, through the incapacity to reach pure speculation, is an attitude which is really a little too like that of the fox in the fable... However that may be, there can be no self-delusion about converting Easterners to such doctrines, for whom speculation is incomparably superior to action; moreover, the taste for outward action and research after material progress go closely together, and there would be no need to revert to the question if our contemporaries did not feel that they must 'philosophize' on this subject, which shows clearly that philosophy, as they understand it, may in reality be anything but true wisdom and pure intellectual knowledge. Since this opportunity presents itself, we will take advantage of it to dispel at once a possible misunderstanding: to say that speculation is superior to action is not the same as saying that everyone ought equally to cease all interest in the latter; in a human society organized hierarchically each one must have assigned to him the function that suits his own individual nature, and that is the principle which essentially underlies, in India, the institution of the castes. If, then, the West ever comes again to have a hierarchic and traditional constitution, that is, a constitution founded on true principles, we do not in the least maintain that the Western masses will become as a result exclusively contemplative, nor even that they will have any obligation to be so to the degree that the Eastern masses are. Such a state might in fact be reached in the East, but there are, in the West, special conditions of climate and temperament which go against it and which always will. Intellectual aptitude will no doubt be much more widespread than it is today, but-what is still more important-speculation will be the normal occupation of the elite, and it will even be inconceivable that a true elite can be anything but intellectual. This alone, moreover, is enough to ensure a state of affairs that would be the entire opposite of what we see today, when material wealth almost totally replaces all genuine superiority, chiefly because it corresponds directly to the concerns and ambitions of the modern Westerner, with his outlook wholly confined to this earth, and secondly because it is the only kind of superiority (if indeed it can be called one at all) that the mediocrity of the democratic mind can adapt itself to. Such a reversal makes it possible to gauge the full extent of the transformation that must take place in the Western civilization for it to become normal again and comparable to other civilizations, and for it to cease being a cause of trouble and disorder in the world. It is not unintentionally that we have so far refrained from mentioning religion among the different things which the West has to offer the East; it is because, though religion is also something Western, it is by no means modern, and, furthermore, it is a target for all the concentrated animosity of the modern mind, being the sole element in the West that has kept a traditional character. We are, of course, only speaking of religion in the proper sense of the word, and not of the deformations or imitations which, on the contrary, come to birth under the influence of the modern outlook, and which bear its mark so plainly that there is practically no difference between them and philosophical 'moralism'. As for religion proper, the Easterners can have nothing but respect for it, precisely because of its traditional character; furthermore, if Westerners were more attached to their religion than they usually are, they would certainly be much better thought of in the East. But an important point to remember is that tradition does not take on the specifically religious form among the Easterners, with the exception of the Muslims, and the Muslims, it must be remembered, have something of the West about them. Now the difference of outward forms is only a question of adaptation to the different mentalities, and where the tradition has not spontaneously taken the religious form, it is because it had definitely no need to do so. The error consists here in wanting to make the Easterners adopt forms that were not made for them, and that do not correspond to the requirements of their mentality, although they acknowledge how excellent such forms are for Westerners: that is why Hindus may be sometimes seen encouraging Europeans to return to Catholicism, and even helping them to understand it, without being in the least drawn to it on their own account. The traditional forms are no doubt not entirely equivalent, because they correspond to points of view which really differ; but, insofar as they are equivalent, the substitution of one for the other would be clearly useless; and, insofar as they are different otherwise than in expression (which does not in the least mean that they may be opposed or contradictory), this substitution could only be harmful, because it could only lead to faulty adaptation. If the Easterners have no religion in the Western sense of the word, they have as much of it as is fitted for them; at the same time, they have more from the intellectual point of view, since they have pure metaphysics, of which theology, all told, is merely a partial translation, tinged with the sentiment that is inherent in religious thought as such; if they have less on another side, it is only from the standpoint of sentiment, and because they can well do without it. What we have just said shows also why, in our eyes, the most satisfactory solution for the West is the return to its own tradition, with any gaps in the domain of pure intellectuality to be filled in as the occasion arises (which, moreover, only concerns the elite); religion cannot fill the place of metaphysics, but the two are not in the least incompatible, and the proof of this lies in the Islamic world, with the two complementary aspects of its traditional doctrine. Let us add that even if the West repudiates sentimentalism (and we mean by that the predominance of feeling over intelligence), the Western masses will retain nonetheless a need for satisfactions derived from sentiment, which the religious form alone can give them, just as they will retain a need for outward activity which the Easterners do not feel at all. Each race has its own temperament, and, though it is true that these are mere contingencies, it is, notwithstanding, only a fairly limited elite that can afford to disregard them. But, as for the satisfactions in question, it is in religion proper that Westerners in the normal course can and should find them, and not in those more or less extravagant makeshifts where men are preyed upon by the 'pseudomysticism' of some of our contemporaries, which is nothing more nor less than troubled and perverted religiosity, being yet another symptom of the mental anarchy which the modern world is suffering from, and which it may even die of, if effective remedies are not applied before it is too late. Thus, among the manifestations of Western thought, some are simply ridiculous in the eyes of the Easterners, and these are all the ones that are specifically modern; the others are respectable, but they are exclusively suited to the West alone, although modern Westerners have a tendency to depreciate or reject them, no doubt because they are the surviving representatives of something too high for them. It is, then, quite out of the question, from whatever side one likes to look at it, that true relations should be re-established to the detriment of the Eastern mentality; as we have already said, it is for the West to approach the East; but for the approach to be effective, even good will would not be enough, and what is needed above all is understanding. So far those Westerners who have striven to understand the East, with more or less seriousness and sincerity, have only arrived in general at the most lamentable results, because they have brought into their studies all the prejudices that their minds were encumbered with, the more so because they were 'specialists', having inevitably acquired beforehand certain mental habits which they could not get rid of. To be sure, among the Europeans who have lived in direct contact with the Easterners, there are one or two who have been able to understand and assimilate certain things, just because, not being 'specialists', they were freer from preconceived ideas; but, as a rule, these people have not written; what they have learnt they have kept to themselves, and besides, the lack of understanding shown by any other Westerners whom they may have spoken to about it was well calculated to discourage them and lead them to be as reserved as the Easterners. The West, as a whole, has never been able to benefit from certain individual exceptions; and, as for the works that have been produced about the East and its doctrines, it would in most cases be better not to know of their existence, for ignorance pure and simple is far preferable to false ideas. We do not want to repeat all that we have already said elsewhere about the productions of the orientalists: their chief effect is, on the one hand, to mislead the Westerners who have recourse to them without having from other sources the means of correcting their mistakes, and, on the other hand, to give the Easterners, by the misunderstanding there displayed, the most unfavorable idea of Western intellectuality. In this latter respect, these productions merely confirm the opinion which everything else that the Easterners know of the West has already inclined them to hold, and accentuate their attitude of reserve that we were speaking of just now; but the former inconvenience is even more serious, especially if it is the West that must take the initiative in re-establishing intellectual relations. Actually, anyone who has a direct knowledge of the East can, when reading the worst translation or the most fantastic commentary, quite well extract the particles of truth that remain after all, unknown to the author who has merely transcribed without understanding, and who has only lighted on the correct word by a sort of fluke (this happens chiefly in the English translations, which are done conscientiously and without too much systematic bias, but also without any concern for true understanding); he can often even restore the meaning where it has been disfigured, and in any case he can consult works of this kind with impunity, even if he gains nothing from them; but for other people it is quite different. The ordinary reader, who has no means of checking their accuracy, can only take up one of two attitudes: either he honestly believes that the Eastern conceptions are in fact what they are made out to be, and feels a very understandable distaste for them-which serves meanwhile to strengthen all his Western prejudices-or else he realizes that these conceptions cannot, in actual fact, be so absurd or so devoid of sense, and feels more or less confusedly that there must be something else in them, but does not know what that something can be, and, in despair of ever knowing it, loses all interest in the matter, and will not even give it another thought. In this way, the final result is always a widening, and not a narrowing, of the gulf. We are only referring, of course, to people who are interested in ideas, for it is only among such that there is a possibility of finding those who might understand if given the means; as for the others, who merely look at it from the standpoint of curiosity and scholarship, we need not bother about them. Moreover, most orientalists are not and do not wish to be anything but scholars; so long as they confine themselves to historical or philological works it does not matter very much; it is clear that such works cannot serve in the least toward the end that we have in view, but their only real danger is the one which is common to all the abuses of scholarship, and which consists in the spread of the 'intellectual short-sightedness' that limits all knowledge to research after details, and the frittering away of efforts that might in many cases be better employed. But much more serious in our eyes is the influence exerted by those of the orientalists who profess to understand and to interpret the doctrines, and who make the most incredible travesty of them, while asserting sometimes that they understand them better than the Easterners themselves do (just as Leibnitz imagined that he had recovered the true meaning of the characters of Fu Hsi), and without ever dreaming of accepting the opinion of the authorized representatives of the civilizations that they seek to study. This should be the first thing for them to do; instead they act as if called upon to reconstruct vanished civilizations. This incredible pretension merely betrays the Westerners' belief in their own superiority: even when they consent to take the ideas of others into consideration, they deem themselves so intelligent that they must needs understand these ideas much better than do the people who elaborated them: just a glance from the outside, and they know fully what to make of them; a man who has such confidence in himself generally lets slip all the opportunities that he might have of obtaining real instruction. Among the prejudices that go toward keeping up such a state of mind there is one that we have called the 'classical prejudice', and that we alluded to in connection with the belief in a single and absolute 'civilization', the prejudice being, in fact, nothing more than a particular form of this belief. Because the modern Western civilization considers itself the heir to the Greco-Roman civilization (which is only true up to a certain point), it is not thought desirable to know anything that lies beyond, ^[1] on the conviction that the remainder is not interesting or that it can only be the object of a sort of archaeological interest. The law is laid down that elsewhere there can be no valid ideas, or that at least, if one or two happen to occur, they must have existed also among the ancient Greeks and Romans. It is however something to be truly thankful for if this is all, and if they are not made out to be borrowings from classical sources. Even those who do not think expressly along these lines submit nonetheless to the influence of this prejudice: there are some who, while displaying a certain sympathy for Eastern conceptions, wish at all costs to make them fit into the frames of Western thought, which amounts to disfiguring them altogether, and which proves that in point of fact they understand nothing about them. Some, for example, will not see in the East anything but religion and philosophy, that is, just exactly what is not there, and as for what really is there they see nothing of it at all. No one has ever pushed these false assimilations further than have the German orientalists; it is precisely they whose pretensions are the greatest, and who have come to monopolize almost entirely the interpretation of the Eastern doctrines. With their narrowly systematic cast of mind, they have not merely made philosophy out of them, but something altogether like their own philosophy, whereas the things in question have nothing whatever to do with such conceptions. Evidently, they cannot resign themselves to not understanding, nor help reducing all things to the level of their own mentality, thinking the while to do great honor to those whom they are crediting with these ideas that would be 'good for children of eight.' Besides, in Germany, the philosophers themselves have had a direct hand in this work, and Schopenhauer in particular must certainly take a large share of responsibility for the way in which the East is interpreted. And how many people, even outside Germany, go about repeating, after him and his disciple Hartmann, trite sentences on 'Buddhist pessimism', which they readily suppose to be the basis of the Hindu doctrines! There are also a good number of Europeans who are so ignorant as to imagine moreover that India is Buddhist, and, as always happens in such cases, they do not fail to talk at random. Furthermore, if the public attributes an undue importance to the deviated form of Buddhism that developed in India, the mistake is owing to the incredible number of orientalists who have specialized in it, and who have, moreover, found the means of deforming even this deviation of the Eastern outlook. The truth is that no Eastern conception is 'pessimistic', and that even Buddhism is not. It is true that there is no 'optimism' there either, but that proves simply that these labels and classifications do not apply, any more than do all those others which are likewise made for European philosophy, and that things do not appear in this light to the Easterners. To look at things in terms of 'optimism' or 'pessimism' requires Western sentimentality (this same mentality which led Schopenhauer to look for 'consolations' in the Upanishads), and the deep serenity that the Hindus find in pure intellectual contemplation lies far beyond those contingencies. We should never finish if we wished to bring to light all the mistakes of this kind, a single one of which is enough to prove total lack of understanding; our intention is not to give here a catalogue of the setbacks, German or otherwise, which the study of the East, undertaken on faulty foundations and apart from any true principle, has culminated in. We have only mentioned Schopenhauer because he is a very 'representative' example. Among the orientalists proper we have already referred above to Deussen interpreting India by means of this same Schopenhauer's conceptions; we will call attention also to Max Müller's endeavoring to discover 'the germs of Buddhism', that is, of heterodoxy, even in the Vedic texts themselves, which are the essential foundations of traditional Hindu orthodoxy. We could go on like this almost indefinitely, even while only noting one or two features in the work of each; but we will confine ourselves to adding one last example, because it shows up clearly an altogether characteristic bias; it is that of Oldenberg sweeping aside a priori all the texts that speak of doings which seem miraculous and asserting that they must merely be considered as later additions, not only in the name of 'historical criticism', but under the pretext that the 'Indo-Germans' (sic) do not admit miracles. Let him speak, if he will, in the name of the modern Germans, who are not for nothing the inventors of the so-called 'science of religions'; but that he should have the effrontery to associate the Hindus with his negations, which are those of the anti-traditional outlook, is something that passes all bounds. We have already said elsewhere what is to be thought of the hypothesis of 'Indo-Germanism', which scarcely exists but for political reasons: the Germans' orientalism, like their philosophy, has become an instrument in the service of their national ambition, which, however, does not mean that its representatives are necessarily dishonest; it is not easy to see what limits there are to the blindness that is caused by the intrusion of sentiment into domains that should be reserved for the intelligence. As for the anti-traditional outlook, which is at the bottom of 'historical criticism' and of all that is connected with it more or less directly, it is purely Western and, in the West itself, purely modern. No amount of insistence here can be too much, since it is this anti-traditionalism that is particularly repellent to the Easterners, who are essentially traditionalists and who, if they were not, would no longer be anything at all, since everything that makes up their civilizations is rigidly traditional. It is, then, this outlook which must be got rid of before anything else if there is to be any hope of an understanding with them. ^[2] Apart from the more or less 'official' orientalists, who have at least in their favor, for want of other more intellectual qualities, an honesty that is generally indisputable, there is nothing, in the way of Western presentations of the Eastern doctrines, but the daydreams and vagaries of the Theosophists, which are nothing but a tissue of gross errors, made still worse by methods of the lowest charlatanism. To this subject in particular we have already devoted an entire work, ^[3] where, in order to give all the pretensions of these people their full deserts and to show that they have no right to claim any credentials from the East, but quite the contrary, we have simply had to appeal to the most rigorously established historical facts; so we do not wish to go into the question again, but we could not help calling to notice here their existence at least, since one of their claims is precisely the establishment, after their fashion, of relations between East and West. There again, even apart from the political undercurrents that play a considerable part in these organizations, it is the anti-traditional outlook which, under cover of a pseudo-tradition born of pure fancy, gives itself free rein in these inconsistent theories whose woof is spun from an evolutionist conception; beneath the bits and pieces borrowed from the most varied traditions, and behind the Sanskrit terminology, which is used almost always in diametrically the wrong sense, there is nothing but purely Western ideas. If these could contain the elements of a mutual approach, then it would have to be brought about, all things considered, entirely at the expense of the East: concessions as far as mere words go would be made, but the East would be asked to give up all of its essential ideas, and also all the institutions that it is attached to. However, the Easterners, above all the Hindus who are aimed at more particularly, are far from being duped and know perfectly well what to make of the real tendencies of such a movement; one cannot expect to seduce them by offering them a gross caricature of their doctrines, even supposing that they had no other motives for being distrustful and keeping their distance. As for those Westerners who, even without being truly intelligent, have a certain amount of common sense, they pay little heed to these extravagances, but the unfortunate part of it is that they let themselves be too easily persuaded that such things are Eastern, when they are nothing of the sort. Besides, even common sense is becoming strangely rare today in the West, and minds are becoming more and more unbalanced, which accounts for the present success of Theosophism and of all the other more or less analogous undertakings that we bring together under the general heading of 'Neo-Spiritualism'. While there is no trace of 'Eastern tradition' among the Theosophists, the occultists are equally lacking in authentic 'Western tradition'. Once again, there is nothing serious in any of it, but merely a confused and, on the whole, incoherent 'syncretism', in which the ancient conceptions are interpreted most falsely and quite arbitrarily, and which seems to be made simply to serve as a disguise for the most extreme modernism. If there are any 'archaisms' in it, they are merely in the outward forms, and both ancient and medieval Western conceptions meet with almost as total a lack of understanding there as the Eastern ones do in Theosophism. Certainly, it is not through occultism that the West will ever be able to recover its own tradition, any more than it will be able to rejoin Eastern intellectuality, and for the same reasons; here again, these two things are closely bound up one with another, whatever may be thought by certain people, who see oppositions and antagonisms where there cannot possibly be any. It is precisely the occultists who, some of them at any rate, believe themselves bound not to speak of the East, which they know absolutely nothing about, except with injurious epithets that betray a real hatred, and probably also spite caused by the feeling that the Easterners have knowledge which they will never succeed in penetrating. We are not reproaching either Theosophists or occultists with a lack of understanding which, after all, they are not responsible for; but let anyone who is Western (from the intellectual point of view, we mean) acknowledge it openly, and not put on an Eastern mask; let anyone who has the modern outlook at least have the courage to admit it (there are so many who glory in it), and not claim support from a tradition that is not his. In denouncing such pieces of hypocrisy we are of course only thinking of the leaders of the movements in question, not of their dupes; but it must be said that unconsciousness often goes with dishonesty, and that it may be difficult to determine exactly the part played by either-is not 'moralist' hypocrisy also as a rule unconscious? Moreover, it makes little difference to the results, which are all that we seek to guard against, and which this unconsciousness does not make any the less deplorable: the Western mentality becomes more and more warped in every way; it wanders and is scattered in all directions, a prey to a most obscure disquiet, haunted by the darkest nightmares of a delirious imagination. Is this really 'the beginning of the end' for modern civilization? We do not want to make any rash supposition, but at least there are many signs that should give food for reflection to those who are still capable of it. Will the West be able to regain control over herself in time? Keeping to what can be stated as actual facts, and not anticipating the future, we will say this much: all the attempts that have been made so far to bring East and West together again have been undertaken in the interests of the Western outlook, and that is why they have failed. This is true, not only of all propaganda openly Western (and that is the form which these attempts usually take), but also just as much of the ventures that claim to be based on a study of the East: there is far less effort to understand the Eastern doctrines in themselves than there is to reduce them to the level of Western conceptions, which amounts to mutilating them altogether. Even where there is no conscious and avowed bias toward depreciating the East, it is nonetheless implicitly assumed that whatever the East possesses is possessed also by the West as a matter of course; now that is utterly untrue, especially with regard to the West of today. Thus, through an incapacity for understanding which is largely due to their prejudices (for, while there are some who are born with this incapacity, there are others who acquire it only under the influence of preconceived ideas), Westerners do not attain in the slightest degree to Eastern intellectuality. Even when they imagine that they grasp it and that they are translating the writ that expresses it, they are simply making a caricature, and, in the texts or in the symbols they believe themselves to be explaining, they merely fish out again what they have put there themselves, that is, Western ideas: the fact is that the letter is nothing by itself, and that the spirit escapes them. In these conditions, the West cannot get outside the limits that hedge her round, and since, within these limits beyond which nothing really exists for her any longer, she goes on and on ceaselessly and simultaneously exploring material and sentimental paths that lead her always further and further away from intellectuality, it is clear that she can only grow more and more markedly divergent from the East. We have just seen why even the orientalist and pseudo-oriental attempts contribute to this themselves. Once again, it is the West that must take the initiative, but she must really be prepared to go toward the East, not merely seeking to draw the East toward herself, as she has tried to do so far. There is no reason why the East should take this initiative, and there would still be none, even if the Western world were not in such a state as to make any effort in this direction useless; but on the other hand, if a serious and fully conscious attempt were made starting from the West, the authorized representatives of all the Eastern civilizations could not fail to receive it very favorably. This chapter has taken into consideration what we had already said in the first part of the book, and it now remains for us to show how the West might attempt to approach the East. We have shown that it is specifically Western mental tendencies that make impossible all intellectual relations between the two; and without first reaching some mutual understanding on this intellectual ground, all else will be quite in vain.