1 MAIN DIVISIONS OF THE EASTERN WORLD

WE HAVE ALREADY SAID that though it is possible to contrast the Eastern mentality as a whole with that of the West, it would nevertheless be incorrect to speak of an Eastern civilization in the same way that one speaks of a Western one. There exist several quite distinct Eastern civilizations, each one of which possesses a principle of unity peculiar to itself and differing in essential respects from the corresponding principle governing each of the other civilizations, as we shall show presently; but however marked such differences may be, all the Eastern civilizations nonetheless exhibit certain characteristics in common, chiefly in regard to their ways of thinking, and it is this fact which allows of its being said, in a general way, that there exists a specifically Eastern mentality.

In undertaking any kind of study it always helps to make matters clearer if one starts off by establishing a classification based on the natural divisions into which the proposed subject of study falls. For this reason, it is necessary to explain before anything else how the various Eastern civilizations stand in relation to one another, keeping however to broad outlines and to the most general divisions, which are at least sufficient for a first approximation, since it is not our intention to enter here into a detailed survey of each of these civilizations taken separately.

With this end in view, the East may be divided into three great regions, described respectively, according to their geographical relation to Europe, as the Near East, the Middle East and the Far East. The Near East, from our point of view, comprises the whole of the Islamic world; the Middle East is essentially constituted by India; as for the Far East, it corresponds to the regions usually denoted by that name, that is to say to China and Indochina. It can be seen at a glance that these three general divisions do in fact correspond to three quite distinct and independent civilizations, which, even if they are not the only ones to be found in the East, are in any case the most important and cover the widest areas. Within each of these civilizations certain subdivisions are recognizable, with variations comparable to those which, in the European civilization, exist between different countries; only in this case it is not possible to assign national limits to these subdivisions, since the notion of nationality answers to a conception that is, generally speaking, foreign to the East.

The Near East, which begins at the frontiers of Europe, extends not only over the neighboring parts of Asia, but also over the whole of North Africa; indeed, it includes countries that geographically are situated just as far west as Europe itself. But Islamic civilization, despite the many directions in which it has spread, has nonetheless always preserved the essential characteristics that it owes to its Eastern origin, and it has imprinted its most typical features on many very different peoples, thus endowing them with a common outlook, though not to the point of depriving them of all originality. The Berber populations of Northern Africa have never fused with the Arabs inhabiting the same lands, and it is easy to distinguish them from the latter, not only by the special customs they have retained and by their physical appearance, but also by a kind of mental physiognomy which is peculiar to them; for instance it is quite obvious that a Kabyle [a Berber of Algeria or Tunisia] is in several respects more like a European than an Arab. But it nevertheless remains true to say that the civilization of North Africa, insofar as it possesses a unity of its own, is not only Muslim but even Arabian in essentials; and it should be pointed out here that, in the Islamic world, what may be termed the Arab group holds a position of primary importance, not only because it is the group that gave birth to Islam, but also because its language is the traditional language of all Muslim peoples, irrespective of origin or race.

Besides the Arab groups, two other important groups are distinguishable, which might be called respectively the Turkish and the Persian, though these epithets are perhaps not quite strictly exact. The first group includes chiefly peoples of Mongolian race, like the Turks and the Tartars; its mental as well as its physical traits distinguish it in a marked degree from the Arabs; but being endowed with comparatively little intellectual originality of its own, it is fundamentally dependent on the Arabs in an intellectual sense; moreover, even from the religious point of view, these two sections, the Arab and the Turkish, in spite of a few differences in respect of ritual and law, together form one single whole that can be opposed to the Persian group: and here we come to the deepest cleavage that exists in the Muslim world, a division usually expressed by saying that the Arabs and Turks are 'Sunnites' while the Persians are 'Shiites'; these descriptions, however, call for certain reservations, but this is not the place to enter into a discussion of them.

From the foregoing remarks it can be seen that geographical divisions do not always correspond exactly with the field of expansion of the corresponding civilizations, but only with their places of origin and their principal centers. In India, Muslim elements are to be found almost everywhere, and the same may be said of China; but we need not take them into account when speaking of the civilizations of these two lands, because the Islamic civilization is not native to them. On the other hand, Persia ought by rights to be joined, racially and even geographically, to what we have called the Middle East; if we have not so included it, this is because its present inhabitants are entirely Muslim. In the Middle East two distinct civilizations should really be recognized, which however have both clearly issued from a common source: the first is that of India and the second that of the ancient Iranians; but nowadays the sole surviving representatives of the latter are the Parsis, who form a number of small and scattered groups, some in India, chiefly round Bombay, and others in the Caucasus; it is sufficient here to draw attention to the fact of their existence.

All that remains to be considered therefore, in the second of our main divisions, is Indian civilization proper, or Hindu civilization to be more exact, which embraces within its unity peoples of several different races; between the various regions of India, and especially between the North and the South, there are ethnic differences at least as great as those to be found in the whole continent of Europe; nevertheless, all these peoples share one civilization, and also a common traditional language, which is Sanskrit. Indian civilization spread at certain periods further to the East and left clear traces of its influence in various parts of Indochina, such as Burma, Siam, and Cambodia, and even in some of the Oceanic islands, notably in Java.^[1] On the other hand, this same Hindu civilization gave birth to the Buddhist civilization, which spread, under its different forms, over a large part of Central and Eastern Asia; but the question of Buddhism calls for some additional explanations which will be given later on.

As for the civilization of the Far East, which is the only one where all the members really belong to the same race, it may properly be called the Chinese civilization; it extends, as we have seen, to Indochina, especially to Tongking and Annam, but the inhabitants of those regions are Chinese in race, either purely so, or else mixed with certain elements of Malay origin, which, however, are far from being preponderant. It must be stressed that the traditional language belonging to this civilization is essentially the written Chinese language, which is immune from the variations of the spoken tongue, whether these variations occur in time or in space; a Chinese from the North, a Southern Chinese, and an Annamite may be unable to understand one another in conversation, yet the use of the same ideographic characters, with all that this really implies, nonetheless establishes between them a bond the strength of which is quite unsuspected by Europeans.

As for Japan, which we left out of our general classification, it is attached to the Far East in the measure in which it has been affected by Chinese influence, although in addition it possesses in Shinto a tradition of its own endowed with a very different character. It would be interesting to find out to what extent these various traditional elements have succeeded in maintaining themselves in the face of the modernization, that is to say of the Westernization, that has been imposed on the Japanese people by its leaders; but that is too special a question for us to be able to dwell on it here.

To turn for a moment in another direction, it will be noticed that we have deliberately omitted all mention of the Tibetan civilization from our preceding survey, though it is very far from negligible, especially from the point of view that concerns us most. This civilization is connected in certain respects both with that of India and of China, while exhibiting many other characteristics that are entirely its own; but since it is far less familiar to Europeans than any of the other Eastern civilizations, it could not be discussed profitably without going into explanations that would be quite out of place in a work such as the present one.

Bearing in mind the reservations we have mentioned, we need therefore only consider three great Eastern civilizations, corresponding respectively to the geographical divisions previously referred to, namely the Islamic, Hindu, and Chinese civilizations. In order to make clear the essential points in which these civilizations differ from one another, though without entering into too much detail, the most useful thing we can do will be to explain as briefly as possible the principles upon which the basic unity of each of them rests.