The Civilizations of the East and the West

Abstract

In recent years the despondent mood of a number of European writers has led to the revival of such old myths as the bankruptcy of the material civilization of the West and the superiority of the spiritual civilization of the Oriental nations. When I was in Germany last year, a German savant most solemnly assured me that the civilization of the East was based on spiritual principles. “In the East,” said my enthusiastic friend, “even souls are selected on the basis of moral fitness. For does not the doctrine of the transmigration of souls imply the idea of moral selection?” Although these expressions represent nothing more than the pathological mentality of war-stricken Europe, they have already had the unfortunate effect of gratifying the vanity of Oriental apologists and thereby strengthening the hand of reaction in the East. In the West, too, one could see, as I have seen during my recent travels, that such loose thinking was leading not a few people away from a proper understanding of their own civilization which is fast becoming the world civilization. It is in the hope of furnishing a new point of view and a new basis of discussion that I now offer these few reflections on the civilizations of the East and the West.

Chapter Note: Charles A. Beard, ed., Whither Mankind: A Panorama of Modern Civilization. New York: Longmans, Green and Co., 1928. pp. 25–41.