and pursue therein his poetical invention. The result of this verbal alchemy is a work that shines in obscurity like a diamond, and is itself-not darkness-but, like the diamond, transparent and impenetrable.

ANTONIO MARICHALAR

DEAR SIR,

IN DEFENCE OF THE EAST

To the Editor

M. Henri Massis, in his article In Defence of the West', which appeared in the last two issues of The New Criterion, makes statements which are either far removed from truth, or which show how limited his ideas of Europe, European culture, and of the world in general are. For example, when he says that ‘the West should not allow itself to be broken up by Oriental anarchy', he evidently betrays his ignorance of Eastern life and thought. His attack on Germany and Russia for being attracted by Oriental philosophies shows that he thinks that all European nations should be like the Latin races and seek their inspiration from Greco-Roman culture only. And when he says that the human race is less united now than it was in the time of St. Louis', he seems to think that the human race consists of Western European nations only! There are many other statements of his which can also be refuted. But I shall not do so. I shall only try to show here that (1) Eastern influence on the West is not a thing of yesterday or to-day only, but is much older, and therefore it need not frighten good Europeans like M. Massis; (2) In what respects the West can learn from the East with advantage to herself.

The West has been influenced by the East from the earliest period of its history. There would perhaps have been no GrecoRoman sculpture-certainly not in its present form-had not Egyptian and Assyrian sculpture nursed it in its infancy. How Pythagoras and Plato would have evolved without Egyptian and Indian influences-it is difficult to say. Plato was not satisfied with Athenian society and government, and so he evolved his ideal Republic -which was more akin to the real states which the Chinese and Hindus had evolved at that time than to any European state of that or any subsequent period. For it was in India and China that learned men and philosophers governed the country. Like Plato, Indians did not think too much of poets, and so they assigned to them a lower place in national estimation (they did not exclude

them altogether from their society as Plato did) than they did to philosophers. The Egyptian religion, especially the worship of Isis, influenced both the Greeks and Romans considerably. It is also a fact that the Neo-Platonists of Alexandria were influenced by Hindu philosophy. If then M. Massis fulminates against Germans and Russians for being attracted towards the East, he might also fulminate against the Greeks and Romans for the same reason.

Then comes the greatest influence that the East has ever exercised over the West, namely that of Christianity. Western peoples, when hurling all sorts of opprobrious epithets at the East, forget that Christianity is an Eastern religion, and that Christ was an Oriental of Orientals. What would Western culture have been like if Western peoples had not accepted Christianity? Christianity -because of its totally different conceptions of life and conduct from those that the Greeks and Romans had evolved-had to fight tooth and nail to establish itself in Europe. Had there been no Christianity in Europe, there would have been no Mariolatry, no Santa Sophia, no St. Peter's, no Gothic cathedrals, no pre-Raphaelite art, no Divine Comedy, and no Paradise Lost. And without Christianity, we may be certain that the very ideas and language of Shakespeare would have been different.

There is yet another Oriental influence to which I must refer: and that influence was that of the Arabs. How much of the Humanism', which is generally attributed by European scholars to the Renaissance was really due to the influence of Arabian civilisation on Europe in the Middle Ages! The Roman Church stood for unquestioning belief in its dogmas. It was the Arab universities of Sicily and Spain which taught European scholars who flocked to them to examine everything for themselves and form their individual judgment. Without Arabian influence, there would have been no Grossetête, Abelard, and Roger Bacon-and without them, there would have been no Reformation-which at least the northern European nations have welcomed for making the birth of modern Europe possible. There is also considerable Arab influence on European poetry, stories, and the arts. M. Massis should therefore have denounced his ancestors for being attracted and influenced by Christianity and the Arab civilisation also!

M. Massis is frightened at the Pantheist's desire to merge his individuality in God. It was this very same idea of losing his identity

after death, that made Pierre Loti regard Buddhism with a feeling akin to terror. And yet Pantheism is not unknown to Europeans. Plato was a Pantheist, since he regarded all forms on this earth as nothing more than reflections of the Archetypal Form. Many modern European poets and philosophers-not necessarily German or Russian-have also longed to be absorbed in the Universal Soul. Does not Shelley tell us what he thought had become of Adonais after his death:

'He is a portion of the loveliness

Which once he made more lovely;

but the pure spirit shall flow
Back to the burning fountain whence it came,
A portion of the Eternal.'

One cannot help wondering what made M. Massis associate anarchy' with the East? Is Oriental life unsystematised and Oriental thought unco-ordinated? No one who knows India and China properly would say so. Everything-the relations of man towards man, of man towards woman, of the intellectual classes towards the non-intellectual classes, of different kinds of knowledge towards each other-has been determined and classified there properly. It is surely not the civilisations of India and Chinawhich were born before and which have outlasted those of Greece and Rome-which are anarchic, but Western civilisation which is so. The history of Europe, as an Oriental reads it, is nothing but one long story of internecine warfare. Indian kings and generals might have fought against each other for the glory of conquest or lust of land, but Indian society as a whole, has been always peaceful. The four main castes-based on the ideal of division of labourinto which that society has been divided-have prevented the growth of the competitive, cut-throat instinct in man and thus made class warfare impossible. In Europe, on the contrary, classes have been aways fighting against each other. In ancient times, it was slaves against masters, plebeians against patricians: in the Middle Ages, it was barons against kings: at the beginning of modern history, it was bourgeoisie against nobility and royalty: and now it is Labour against Capital. There is also anarchy enough in other spheres of Western life. Take for example the relations of man and woman towards each other. Are they not thoroughly ill-regulated and

lacking in qualities of endurability from which alone can spring true spirituality? And all this internecine warfare between class and class, between man and woman-what is it for? Not for bringing about any ultimate harmony-realisable in human life with its inevitable limitations-but for the sake of satisfying that dangerous, soul-destroying, anarchy-generating Illusion called Progress!

The East has no doubt many things to learn from the West. But it can also teach much to the West which would make Western life more harmonious, its thought more systematic, its horizons wider.

The West has forgotten-perhaps it had never learnt thoroughly -the meaning of silence and meditation for the uplifting of life and art. It mistakes physical and mental energy for spiritual energy. Western peoples are restless. Their nerves are unstrung, and so they cannot sit still, and think, and meditate, and feel that sense of unity with what the Indians call Peratma-Oversoul-from which alone springs truly great poetry, philosophy, and art. The poetry of the European Romanticists is a clear index of the unsettled mind and the overwrought nerves of Europe. The European Romantic poets were tired of the ideals and institutions that they had inherited, but they did not know clearly what to substitute in their place and thereby find that peace, that calmness of feeling for which they were longing. Their thoughts were disconnected, their ideals were imperfectly worked out, and so they thundered now at this institution and now at that institution. They became Pantheists and went to Nature for consolation, but they found none. They remained discontented, grumbling, and misanthropic; because their Pantheism was the result of neuroticism and not of a long tradition of racial thought and feeling. Take the poetry of Wordsworth, the calmest of British Romantic poets, and what do you find in it? Nothing satisfying. Why? Because his creed was evolved by himself in the space of a few excited years, and was consequently not consistent or lasting enough. Take again the poetry of that divinest of English poets Shelley, and what do you find? You find in it an impossible juxtaposition of mutually contradictory ideas. Take on the contrary a Hindu poet-even a modern Hindu poet-like Rabindranath Tagore, and what do you find? You find that Tagore admires Nature as much as the European Romanticists do, and yet he never looks upon Nature as his final refuge. He is not misanthropic like