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Title: East and West Author: Elisée Reclus Date: 1894 Language: en Topics: geography, cultural geography Source: http://raforum.info/reclus/spip.php?article306][raforum.info]], snapshot at [[https://web.archive.org/web/20160616225015/http://raforum.info/reclus/spip.php?article306. Notes: Contemporary Review vol. 66 (oct. 1894) No. 346 p. 475–487.
ON the surface of this round earth the cardinal points have no precise
meaning except in relation to particular places. The Greenwich observer
may point to his north and his south, his east and his west; but the
astronomers of Paris, of Washington, of Santiago, and direction-seeking
mankind generally, will look for theirs in other directions. The lines
traced by the meridians and the equator are purely artificial.
Nevertheless the attempt has been made to give to the geographical terms
of orientation a common neaning that should be accepted by all. Thus
Carl Ritter, taking into account the idea of heat and of blinding light
which Europeans associate with the “South,” reserved the name of “South”
for the Sahara and the other deserts of the torrid zone which lie
between the northern and the southern hemisphere. In the same way the
expressions “East” and “West” have been used for thousands of years as
synonymous with “Asia” and “Europe”; and indeed the very names of the
two continents, in their original tongues, meant precisely “the Rising
Sun” and “the Setting Sun.” To the Assyrians the land of Assú – i.e.
Asia – was the region lit by the earliest morning rays, and the land of
Ereb, or Europe, included all the countries lying west of them, towards
the evening purple. The Arabs took up the word again, and applied it to
the western extremity of their conquests in Mauritania and the Iberian
peninsula---” El Gharb,” “Maghreb,” “the Algarves.”
In current speech the expressions East and -West must necessarily apply
to regions whose boundary shifts from age to age with the march of
civilisation. Thus Asia Minor, the “West” par excellence to the
Assyrian, became to the Byzantines the land of the sun-rising (Anatolia,
Natolie, Anadoli) ; and later, along the shores of the Mediterranean,
the word “Levant,” applied by the mariners of the “Ponant” to all the
ports of the seas that bathe the coasts of Asia, came to mean more
particularly Smyrna and the other ports of the Asiatic peninsula. So,
again, the “Eastern Empire,” embracing fully half the Roman world,
included in its vast domain the territory of the Ravennate, belonging to
that Italian peninsula which was the ancient Hesperia, “the going down
of the sun.” Thus the phrases “East” and “West” were bound to change
their meaning, even in the popular acceptation, and it became necessary
to gain precision by introducing subdivisions -” Eastern Europe,”
“Eastern Asia,” the “Far East,” just as, in the United States, they
distinguish between “East” “West,” and “Far West.”
From an historical point of view, however, it may be useful to try and
determine approximately the normal line of separation between the two
halves of the ancient world which best deserve the names of East and
West, Just as every surface has its diagonal, and every body its axis,
so the total mass of the continents has its median line, where the
contrasts of soil, climate and history poise themselves over against
each other. Taking as a whole the regions in which mankind has spent its
life, and reached at last the consciousness of its collective
personality, what is this median line, this watershed of human history?
Africa may be left out, for its development appears to have taken place
almost independently; and that massive continent four-fifths of whose
surface lies within the southern temperate or the torrid zone — the
“South” par excellence — belongs to our common world of early history
only by its Mediterranean littoral — Egypt, Cyrenaica, Mauritania. But,
on the other hand, we must restore to the ancient world the isles of the
Indian Ocean which form the retinue of the Gangetic peninsulas, and all
the island groups that people the immense stretch of sea eastward
towards America, for, by the migrations and counter-migrations of their
inhabitants, by their legends and traditions, and by the whole testimony
of historic evolution, these ocean territories do indeed form part of
the same circle as Farther Asia.
It might seem, at first sight, as if the true and natural partition
between East and West must be indicated by the watershed which separates
the eastward slope towards the Indian and Chinese seas from the slope
that drains into the Atlantic through the Mediterranean and other
European waters. But this boundary, purely artificial after all, as it
winds from the Taurus to the Caucasus, crosses populations subject to
the same influences of soil and climate, participators in the same
historical movements, and composed to a great extent of elements of the
same ethnological origin. The true frontier between the Eastern and
Western world must be so shifted as to throw off upon the Western side
the whole watershed of the great twin streams, Tigris and Euphrates, as
well as the chief summits of Iran. This whole region of Persia and
Media, of Assyria and Chaldaea, is intimately associated in its history
with the countries of the Mediterranean, while its relations with the
Eastern world were always less active and more frequently interrupted.
The line of separation, then, is to be found farther East, and it is
well marked, not by the outlines of the continent of Asia, but by a
space of territory distinguished at once by the high relief of the soil
and the comparative sparseness of the population. Between Mesopotamis,
where the swarming human race reared its tower of Babel, and the Western
plains of Hindostan, with their teeming populations – in some parts two
thousand or more to the square mile – a transverse zone, containing less
than two inhabitants to the same surface, runs from north to south
between the Gulf of Oman and the icy Arctic Sea. This almost uninhabited
zone begins just west of the plaine of the lower Indus and its frontier
mountains, in the desert tracts of southern Beloochistan, scattered with
rare oases. Between India and Afghanistan it stretches north and
north-east along the rugged escarpments of the Suleiman Dagh and other
ranges, whose hidden basins and narrow gorges give shelter to mountain
tribes living far from the haunts of other men, except when the martial
fury seizes them and brings them to blows with their neighbours of the
lower tableland or the plains. To the north-west of Hindostan the folds
of the soil become deeper and more numerous, sharply dividing the world
with their countless walls. The high summits of the Hindoo-Koosh,
inferior only to those of the Himalaya of Nepaul, tower above these
ridges and spread their glaciers to enormous distances. Beyond these,
again, the immense mass of almost impassable highlands which have been
called the” Roof of the World “continue the line of demarcation very
effectually between Hindoo-Koosh and Thian-Shan, and the ill-watered
adjacent plains broaden at many points the median zone of separation
between East and West. Finally, farther north, in the great Siberian
depression, the salt borders of Lake Balkash and the barren reaches of
Semipalatinsk and the “Hungry Steppe “stretch between the Obi and the
Yenisei along a hand of thinly inhabited country which loses itself in
the frozen tundras. The researches of Gmelin and other naturalists have
established the fact that the true separation between Europe and Asia
lies here, in these low and arid regions, and not along the green
heights of the Ural mountains.
The ancient world, then, is clearly divided into two distinct halves,
their continental masses being of nearly equal size. The broad zone of
separation is formed, along half its length, of a chain of eminences
which includes the central knot of the mountain system of Eurasia, and
is broken only at rare intervals by passes which have served as roadways
for war and merchandise. Narrow exceedingly, and difficult of access
were these few highways, which afforded the only means of communication
between the populations on either side, the only junction between the
different civilisations of the eastern, and western slopes! Just as a
fall of earth may suddenly choke the current of a stream, so an
incursion of mountain tribes might suddenly close the transit between
East and West, and the world be thus sharply cut in two again. This, as
a matter of fact, has happened many times. To open the passage and to
keep it open has needed from age to age the marshalling of enormous
forces, such as those of he great conquerors, Alexander, Mahmoud the
Ghaznavid, Akbar the Great. In our own day, the mountainous part of the
dividing line still opposes serious obstacles to the march of man, in
spite of roads and railways, caravanserais and forts of refuge; but how
much more dangerous was the mountain barrier in historic times, when it
rose before him bare and formidable, without roads or cities!
In that sense, the general meaning- of the expressions East and West is
clearly determined for the rest of the earth’s circuit. On the one side
lies all that part of Asia which leans toward the Indian Ocean and the
Pacific -– India, Ceylon, the Malay peninsula, and the great islands and
island groups which stud the vast stretch of craters almost to the
American coast. On the other hand lies the Asiatic peninsula which
reaches out into the Mediterranean world – Egypt and Morocco, Europe,
and, beyond the Atlantic, the whole American continent. For that double
continent, facing eastward by its estuaries, by the valleys of its great
rivers and the spread of its fertile plains, belongs incontestably, by
its history no less than by its geographical orientation, to the
European cosmos.
Thus delimited, the two halves of the world, East and West – including
their inland seas and the oceans that bathe them – occupy a surface of
such extent that, up to a few centuries ago, their boundaries were
unknown to their own inhabitants. At the far ends of the earth, the
isolation and unconsciousness of the populations which had been left
outside the cycle of universal history prevented their concerning
themselves with the great contrast between the separated halves of
humanity; but in the ancient world, from the very beginnings of national
life in the historic nations, as they are preserved to us in legends and
annals, the distinction between East and West already existed in full
force. The evolution of humanity was worked out differently on the two
sides of the line, and every century increased the original divergence
of the separate civilisations. Which of these two evolutions –taking
place, the one around the shores of the great ocean, the other chiefly
on the Mediterranean seaboard – was destined to produce the mightier
results, to contribute the larger share to the common education of
humanity? There can be no hesitation as to the answer. In the struggle
for existence the championship remains with the West. It is the peoples
of the West who have shown that they possess both the initiative to
advance and the power of recovery.
And yet it seemed at first as if the East were the privileged half of
the planet. History indeed proves to demonstration that, taken, as a
whole, the nations of the East had their period of real superiority.
Without entering on a problem which it would now be impossible to solve,
that of assigning a priority of civilisation to one country or another,
without inquiring whether the ground was first tilled on the banks of
the Nile and the Euphrates or on those of the Indus and the
Yang-tse-kiang, or whether ships were sailing the Mediterranean Sea
before the Indian Ocean was known to the mariner, we may assuredly say
that, 3000 years ago, the races sufficiently advanced to be aware of
their own place in history occupied a far wider region east of the
diaphragm of Asia than west of it. The ravines and tablelands occupied
by the Medes and Persians, the plains of Assyria and Chaldaea, the
countries of the Hittites, of the children of Israel and the children of
Ishmael, the coasts of the Phoenicians and the mountains of the
Himyarites, the islands of Cyprus and Crete, and finally the frontier
lands of Asia where germinated the civilisation which was to blossom in
Greece, on the other side, of the AEgea Sea – all these countries form,
but a small domain compared with the vast tract of south-eastern Asia,
from the Indus to the Yellow River. And to this great Asiatic territory,
together perhaps with Southern Siberia, so rich in inscriptions of a
vanished age, we must add a great part of th Malay archipelago, whose
civilisation is certainly of very ancient date. And finally, the lands
of Oceania, scattered eastward over a liquid expanse not less in extent
than the whole continental mass of the ancient world, appear to have
formed part of an area whose historical development was superior to that
of the European populations at the time of the Pelasgians.
As far back as history goes towards the origin of the Eastern world, we
find traces of the very considerable share of influence exercised by the
group of nations. which has been included under the general name of
Malay,, taken from a district of Sumatra, one of the large islands
partly populated by them. No region in the world was better furnished
than this with the facilties for transit and exchange; if the word
“predestined” could be applied to any part of the earth’s surface, it
might justly. be applied to those islands and peninsulas of Malaysia.
They abound in products. of every sort and kind, minerals and precious
gems, bark and gums, plants and fruits; every island has its riches;
nowhere is there a greater diversity of living forms, vegetable or
animal; two fieras, two faunas, men of different nationality and race,
confront each other across a narrow arm of sea. Great trunks of floating
trees supply the riverside populations with ready-made rafts, only
needing to be disbranched and solidly lashed together with liana ropes;
while the forests of the seashore offer their choicest woods to the
boat-builder. Wide roadsteads and sheltered havens break the outline of
the islands; innumerable ports of call present themselves on every side,
directing the voyage of the navigator. Gradually, the Malays became the
natural intermediaries between the various countries of Eastern Asia,
from India to Japan; and, favoured by the trade winds which carried them
across the Indian Ocean from shore to shore, succeeded in turning the
flank of the great barrier that separated the two worlds, and even
gained the coast of Africa. Madagascar was included within their area of
navigation and of conquest, and their civilisation radiated almost to
the opposite extremity of the earth’s surface, within a little distance
of the American continent. The system of numeration which obtains in all
the Polynesian languages is proof sufficient of the wide spread of this
Malay civilisation. Even in our own day, notwithstanding the great
superiority that science and industry have given to the European
navigator, a great part of the carrying trade of the Far East is still
conducted by the Malaya with their fleets of praus. No literature is
richer than theirs in stories of the sea; and it was the Malay seaman
who gave to the Arab the Thousand and One Nights that still charm our
children.
The Polynesians, again, like the Malaya-scattered over their hundred
islands, their ocean rocks and coral banks -took to the sea by natural
compulsion, and thus contributed to the spread of geographical knowledge
in the ancient East. The great diversity of types to be met within a
single group, or even on a single island, the innumerable legends of
native migrations, and, finally, indisputable historical documents,
prove that the Pacific Ocean was traversed from the earliest times, not
only from East to West, in the direction of the trade winds, but also in
the opposite direction, with the set of the counter-currents. All this
was long ago understood. It is well known that the equatorial zone
strictly so called, embracing a space of about five hundred miles north
and south of the Equator, escapes the domination of the trade winds, and
the west wind alternates with calms, during which the mariner may row
his boat where he will, while the normal set of swells and currents is
from west to east. [1] Moreover, even in the zone of the trade winds
proper, there are storm winds that sometimes blow in a contrary
direction to the prevailing atmospheric currents – as if, according te
the Tongan legend, [2] a god had separated families of brothers by
blowing an obstinate east wind between them, but now and then stopped
blowing to let the relatives renew their acquaintance. The islanders
were not slow to profit by the respite. Skilful in the management of
their boats, they knew how to seize the opportunity afforded by the very
slightest deviation of the regular winds to modify their course, reefing
their sails as close as possible and pointing in the eye of the wind.
When the Spaniards first visited the Marianne islands, of which they
were afterwards almost to exterminate the inhabitants, they were
astonished at the sight of the flying barques, far swifter than any boat
of European construction. Most of the Polynesian vessels were, moreover,
provided with outriggers, which made it almost impossible to upset them;
and many of them were large enough te convey the whole fighting strength
of a tribe. Coppinger [3] saw a canoe built to carry 250 men.
Thus fortified by their nautical industry, the Polynesians were in a
position to contribute largely, and did in fact contribute, to the
discovery and exploration of the world. Some of their navigators,
carried away by the storm and lost upon the waste of waters, would be
guided in their search for a place of refuge by the indications afforded
by the waves, by birds and fishes. Others might be driven from their
native isle by force of war or civil dissension, and launched upon the
sea at the mercy of wind and wave while others, again, young and
adventurous, would set out of their own accord in search of some region
more vast or more fortunate than their own. Myths and legends, the vague
reminiscences, perhaps, of earlier migrations, would stimulate this
exodus of islanders across the infinite expanse of sea. Thus the natives
of Eastern Polynesia, looking towards the West as towards a region of
divine repose, concealing somewhere in its bosom the Islands of the
Blest, might seek again and again to discover the happy land. Who can
tell? The unconscious impulse may have been a true nostalgia, an
hereditary instinct, a re-awakened yearning for the home of their
ancestors. Or perhaps it was the mirage of the clouds that lured them,
as it reared fantastic mountains toward the zenith, or stretched away in
golden plains under the purple light of evening. Perhaps they really
imagined that they saw with their own eyes that land of desire rising
out of the sea, its outline appearing dimly on the horizon, then lost
again – a promise not yet fulfilled, but never to be forgotten.
Polynesian history tells us that these island families had a natural
tendency to multiply westward – just as our modern towns, encroaching
constantly on the surrounding districts stretch out their suburbs
towards the setting sun. Again and again, Polynesian voyagers, impelled
by the thirst for the unknown, attempted the discovery of these lands of
promise, like nomads of the steppes moving forward in search of fresh
pastures. Even so lately as the beginning of this century, the people of
Nouka Riva – now more than decimated by war, oppression, and disease –
sent out, from time to time, -their surplus population of young men in
the supposed direction of the traditional Isle of Utupu, whence the god
Tao was said to have brought the cocoanut tree [4]. Happy couples, full
of hope, would put out on the transparent evening tide, rowing towards
the distant land; they rowed away and never came back: no one knew
whether the sea had sucked them in, or the grim Hunger had devoured
them, or whether they had indeed made at last the shore of Perpetual
Youth.
Doubtless the savage tribes of ’Europe in the Age of Stone had also
their migrations and counter-migrations, overrunning, from this point or
from that, countries widely remote from one another; but the political
and social condition of. these tribes did not afford sufficient cohesion
for the preservation of any record of their comings and goings. In a
world itself unknown, their journeyings remained unknown, as if they had
never been; while the equally unrecorded migrations of the Pacific
islanders were at any rate connected, by the network of Malay
navigation, with the great world of insular and continental India thus
enabling the Orientals to form some vague idea of that vast sea, studded
with a milky way of islands, which spread outwards from the coast of
Asia into the immeasurable distance. It was not on that side of the
world that the ocean could have been conceived – as the Greeks did
conceive it – as a winding stream, embracing in its narrow arms the
countries of the continent. To the Indian and Malay it must rather have
seemed a limitless expanse, losing ite1f in the immensity of heaven.
In those early times, the East was thus far in advance of the West, both
in point of its known extent and the greater cohesion of its races. But
for thirty centuries, and without any retrogression of its own – for,
speaking generally, evolution has everywhere been in the direction of
the better, or at any rate of the vaster and more comprehensive – the
East has found itself strangely distanced by he West. It has often been
suggested that the precocity of its civilisation was itself the cause of
this arrest of development; that the Asiatic and Polynesian races had
attained a too early and therefore inferior civilisation [5]. Some
writers, giving themselves up to mystical fancies, and arguing from a
supposed Providential predestination, have tried to explain the contrast
between West and East by an original and irreducible racial difference.
In the beginning, according to them, the Eastern and Western races were
created different, the Eastern mind cloudy and chimerical, its
perceptions warped beforehand, its ideas subtle and twisted to
selfcontradiction; while the Western was gifted with the very genius of
observation, a natural rectitude of thought, a true comprehension of
life. The myth of the Serpent in the Garden, symbolising, as it were,
the dangerous influence of the East, seems to dominate history. But such
a conception evidently rests on no better basis than the recollection of
conflicts which took place at a time when the populations thrown across
each other’s path by war or rivalry encountered one another at different
stages of their political and social development. Between a decadent
civilisation and a society in full process of growth the conditions are
not equal ; to judge fairly between them, they must be viewed at the
corresponding periods of their collective life; it is no use making
comparisons between the triumphant youth of Greece and the senility of
Persia. Setting aside, therefore, this assumed essential difference of
the races, we must turn to the geographical conditions of the Eastern
world, and there seek the causes of its retarded development as compared
with the progress of the West.
In the first place, the great ocean, with its thousands and thousands of
islands, has, for all its immense expanse of waters, but a very meagre
allowance of dry land, over and above the arid Australian continent; and
the centres of civilisation, such as Samoa, Tahiti, and the Tongan and
Fijian groups, separated by long distances from each other, and each
inhabited by but a scanty population, could have no chance of exerting
any considerable influence. There was no room within such narrow bounds
for the creation of any nucleus radiating an active intellectual
propaganda. New Zealand, with a superficies large enough to make the
home of a powerful nation, lies altogether apart, in the solitary
southern seas, far from the track of the Polynesian islands. It was
colonised later; and perhaps has not been inhabited at all for more than
some thirty generations. As for the equatorial islands, from Papua to
Borneo, they are large and very favourably situated at the south-eastern
angle of the continent of Asia, in the very axis of the general movement
of civilisation ; but the very richness of their forest vrgetation, znd
the ease of living, enabled the aboriginal tribes to maintain themselves
in their primitive isolation; and thus the greater part of these
magnificent archipelagoes was left outside the march of progress; the
Malay adventurers, as well as the colonists of other races, contented
themselves with occupying the seashores. The interior was unexplored,
and was, indeed, in some islands effectually closed to visitors by the
“Head-hunters.” Only two large islands, those lying nearest to the
Asiatic continent, Sumatra and Java, were attached to the civilised
world of Eastern Asia; and even there the inland forests and plateaux of
the former country were still occupied by barbarians averse to all
commerce with the foreigner. Java, again, if she enjoys the privilege of
being associated with the regions of Hindoo civilisation, undoubtedly
owes it to her geographical conformation. Very long, very narrow, with
no continuous mountain chain to serve as a backbone, cut through at
intervals by passages which are practically so many straits, she has
been, from the earliest days of colonisation, as easy of access as if
she had been a row of islands strung together like a necklace. Come
whence they would, from the northern or the southern coast, the
immigrants penetrated with ease into the open country between the giant
volcanoes, which themselves contributed – unlikely as it might seem – to
render access to the island comparatively convenient, by burning down
the once impenetrable forests of the intermediate valleys, and thus
opening the way from coast to coast.
Nevertheless, Java, and some districts of Sumatra, and a few little
neighbouring islands which participate in the same civilisation, do not
together form a sufficient extent of territory, in comparison with the
immensity of the ocean spaces, to afford a basis and centre of
illumination for the whole island world of the extreme East. Nay, more;
the group of great islands, as a whole, has rather contributed to break
the historic unity of the insular regions. Borneo, Celebes, the greater
part of the Philippine Islands, New Guinea (itself almost continental),
and the arid coast of the neighbouring continent of Australia, were so
many countries in which the stranger, whether shipwrecked mariner or
adventurous colonist, ran every chance of a hostile, if not a hungry,
welcome. And, furthermore, the principal waterway between Polynesia and
the islands of the Indian archipelago is almost barred by coral reefs.
Nor was it possible to find a common centre for the civilisation of the
Eastern world on the shores of the continent. Remarkable as was the
progress of thought in the communities which sprang up on the banks of
the Indus and the Ganges, in Ceylon, on the coasts of Malabar and
Coromandel, in the basins of the Thdo-Chinese rivers, among the plains
watered by the Yang-tse-kiang, and in the Yellow Country of the Hundred
Families, these different civilisations never grouped themselves into
any sort of political union, and such union as they did form, lax as it
was, lasted but for a short time under the influence of religions
proselytism. The communication that took place between the various
countries was always rare and uncertain. Tribes which no one had been
able to reduce to subjection, inhabiting in independent groups nearly
all the mountain regions, broke into separate fragments the territory of
the civilised nations. Taken as a whole, that territory presents itself
pretty much in the form of a spread fan. The axis of the basin of the
Indus, where the first Vedas were first uttered, points toward the
south-west; the united streams of the Ganges and the Brahmapootra bend
their common delta directly toward the south; the water-courses of
Indo-China flow in a southeasterly direction; while the rivers of China
– and the progress of culture, which tends the sespe way – set due east.
Thus the various civilisations of these countries have a natural
centrifugal tendency; they never meet in a common geographical centre;
and even the Indo-Chinese peninsula, situated at the very heart of the
Eastern world, serves at many points rather as a barrier of separation,
with its parallel mountain ranges inhabited by savage tribes. On the
other hand, the table-land of Thibet, the region of the forced pass
between China and India – which, from a geometrical point of view, is
the true focus in the semicircle of the south-eastern countries of Asia
– stretches its snowy ridges at such a height and under such a climate
that its scanty populations live, as it were, for shelter, enclosed
between the fissures of the soil.
To the north-west, the Oriental world is, as we have seen, sharply
defined by mountain ranges, and, to some extent, by arid and almost
uninhabitable wastes. Its mode of communication with the Western world,
always precarious and often interrupted, was by way of dangerous
mountain passes, or else by sea, either skirting the deserts of Gedrosia
(south-east Beloochistan), towards the Persian Gulf, or doubling the
Arabian peninsula to the narrow outlet of the Red Sea. It was thus by
slender driblets, almost drop by drop, that the quintessence of Oriental
thought had to be distilled before it could join the flowing torrent of
the culture of the West. But, by a striking contrast, the roads by which
this transmission from world to world necessarily took place are
disposed in a diametrically different manner from that which
characterises the axes of civilisation at the opposite extremity of
Asia, Instead of diverging at a very obtuse angle, they tend towards one
another, converging uniformly, all of them, upon the basin of the
Hellenic Mediterranean. The long fissure of the Red Sea, which united
the land of the Himyarites and Ethiopia to Lower Egypt, points directly
towards the Eastern Mediterranean, from which it is separated only by a
narrow strip of shore; the winding valley of the Nile opens out in the
same direction; the Persian Gulf, continued to the north-west by the
course of the Euphrates, runs in a straight line towards that angle of
the Mediterranean which is occupied by the Isle of Cyprus; while,
further north, all the rivers, all the highways of commerce which
descend from Asia Minor, from the continent of Asia, and from the
Sarmatian plains to the Black Sea, become tributaries of the Greek
waters through the Bosphorus and the Hellespont. Even the Anatolian
peninsula divides into a number of little secondary peninsulas,
enclosing basins that face towards Greece. Thus the marvellous cosmos of
the Greek islands and capes was indicated, by the convergence of the
ways, as the necessary meeting-point of all the Asiatic civilisations,
and the focus of elaboration of all these ancient elements into new
forms.
It is needless here to describe in detail the march of culture in the
West. The tory has been told by innumerable writers, and the knowledge
of it forms a part of the Ordinary classical education. Every one knows
how the beacons of civilisation sprang up in succession from the
south-east to the north-west, under a climate sharper and less equable
than that of India or the Pacific, and consequently under conditions
which imposed on man a sterner struggle of adaptation and efforts more
vigorous and more sustained. Every one knows how Rome, situated in the
midst of a semicircle of extinct volcanoes, enclosed in their turn by
the grander semicircle of the Apennines, gradually consolidated herself
within this double rampart, then made herself mistress of the whole of
Italy on the hither side of the Alpine wall, and, firmly established in
the centre of the Mediterranean and of the whole known world, ended by
annexing all the countries which pour their waters into that inland sea,
and many that border on the open sea besides. When the political power
of Rome had passed away, her juridical power still remained; and then
the ancient Rome was replaced by a new and mightier religious Rome,
which bound to itself by the subtler tie of spiritual influence the
peoples which heretofore had been the mere conquest of the sword. After
Italian Rome, other centres of intense vitality sprang up north of the
Alps, on the outer slope of Europe; but, even in shifting its centre of
gravity towards the north and west, the world of western civilisation
lost nothing, or at any rate it regained all it had lost, of the lands
which had formed part of the world known to the Greeks.
The ever-increasing domain of European ascendeucy has ended by embracing
the whole world. Enlarged, to begin with by the addition of the two
Americas, it is now assuming to itself the continent of Africa, while
its perpetual encroachments are slowly sucking in the vast territories
of the rival civilisation. Either directly, by force of conquest, or
indirectly, under the continuous pressure of commerce and of moral
influences, the whole world is being Europeanised. Of the two halves of
the world struggling for existence, the Western half has won: the
preponderance is hers for the future; but she has won to a great extent
by the use of weapons which the East had forged for her, since the
religions of the West had been elaborated in India before they came to
be remodelled and transformed in Persia, in Palestine, in Egypt, in
Greece, in Rome. Besides, this very triumph of the West subserves the
progress of the nations it has overcome. From Western Europe, as the
centre of equilibrium between the forces of the human race, radiate not
only all the roadways of commerce, but rise the ideas and influences of
social life, in its collective solidarity.
Thanks to mutual interpenetration, the contrast between East and West is
gradually diminishing. Nevertheless, it is still sharp enough; and at
many points –notably in China and India – it presents itself in such a
form that reconciliation seems an almost impossible task. It is now at
the two extremities of the earth that the opposing forces meet in all
the intensity of their antagonism; but, sometimes at one point,
sometimes at another, the conflict has always been going on. The oldest
historical legends – the expedition of the Argonauts, the Tale of Troy –
recall the state of permanent tension in which the ancient populations
lived and clashed against each other – representatives in miniature of
the two worlds, and, like them, seeking, in spite of their very
hostility, to find some way of union. The Greeks were well aware of the
profound meaning of those hereditary instincts which drove them into
conflict with the peoples of the East, and which, struggle after
struggle, brought them at last, with Alexander, to the banks of the
Hydaspes.
It is in this same region that we must look for the end – not now,
perhaps, very far distant – of the conflict between the two worlds.
Travel and commerce, passing to and fro on the sea highway, are slowly
contributing to bring about a mutual understanding between the races of
men which points towards their unification, intellectual and moral.
England, now dominant in India, labours persistently, even against her
will, to reduce the contrasts that divide the populations of the
peninsula, and to give them a moral unity corresponding to that of their
geographical position; but the barrier of mountains and of solitudes
which, to the north-west of India, marks the natural limit between East
and West, is still almost as difficult to cross as it was two thousand
years ago. The mountain passes are open only to the privileged –
privileged by fortune or by political power; there are no great
highways, even yet, to facilitate freedom of movement to and fro. And
indeed, before any such highways can be opened to the free ingress of
the nations, a great question of political equilibrium – the greatest
and most pressing of modern times – must be settled once for all, and
settled at the foot of those very mountains of Hindostan which have
stood through all times barring the corner passage between the two
worlds. England and Russia are the two countries specialty involved in
the dispute; it is for them to solve – by peaceful means if possible –
this problem of the levelling of the mountains of Central Asia. It was
said once – but in a purely dynastic sense, and history has not yet
ratified the saying – “The Pyrenees are no more!” It rests with the
civilisation of the West to say, more truly, and from a human, not a
dynastic point of view, “We have done away with the Himalaya!”
[1] La PĂ©rouse; Kerhallet; Dunmore Lang; Ellis, &c.
[2] Mariner, “Account of the Natives of the Tonga Islands.” London.
1817.
[3] “Cruise of the Alert.”
[4] Rienzi; Fornander, “Account of the Polynesian Races.”
[5] Gaétan Delaunay, “Mémoire sur l’Infériorité des Civilisations
Précoces.”