Romain Rolland's views on East vs. West
I started this blog for East Vs. West and then I cam across the writings of Romain Rolland, the great European philosopher of early 20th century who was also an Indologist. Here are few excerpts from his book Prophets of the New India.
"The age-long history of the spirit of India is the history of a countless throng marching ever to the conquest of
supreme Reality. All the great peoples of the world, wittingly or unwittingly, have the same fundamental aim ;
they belong to the conquerors who age by age go up to assault the Reality of which they form a part, and which lures them on to strive and climb ; sometimes they fall out exhausted, then with recovered breath they mount undaunted until they have conquered or been overcome.But each one does not see the same face of Reality. It is like a great fortified city beleaguered on different sides by different armies who are not in alliance. Each army has its own tactics and weapons to solve its own problems of attack and assault. Our Western races storm the bastions, the outer works. They desire to overcome the physical forces of Nature, to make her laws their own so that they may construct weapons therefrom for gaining the inner citadel, and forcing the whole fortress to capitulate. India proceeds along different lines. She goes straight to the centre, to the Commander-in-Chief of the unseen General Headquarters ; for the Reality she seeks is transcendental.
But let us be careful not to put Western realism in opposition to Indian "idealism." Both are "realisms."
Indians are essentially realists in that they are not easily contented with abstractions, and that they attain their ideal by the self-chosen means of enjoyment and sensual possession.They must see, hear, taste and touch ideas. Both in sensual richness and in their extraordinary imaginative power they are far in advance of the West. How then can we reject their evidence in the name of Western reason ?"
"The age-long history of the spirit of India is the history of a countless throng marching ever to the conquest of
supreme Reality. All the great peoples of the world, wittingly or unwittingly, have the same fundamental aim ;
they belong to the conquerors who age by age go up to assault the Reality of which they form a part, and which lures them on to strive and climb ; sometimes they fall out exhausted, then with recovered breath they mount undaunted until they have conquered or been overcome.But each one does not see the same face of Reality. It is like a great fortified city beleaguered on different sides by different armies who are not in alliance. Each army has its own tactics and weapons to solve its own problems of attack and assault. Our Western races storm the bastions, the outer works. They desire to overcome the physical forces of Nature, to make her laws their own so that they may construct weapons therefrom for gaining the inner citadel, and forcing the whole fortress to capitulate. India proceeds along different lines. She goes straight to the centre, to the Commander-in-Chief of the unseen General Headquarters ; for the Reality she seeks is transcendental.
But let us be careful not to put Western realism in opposition to Indian "idealism." Both are "realisms."
Indians are essentially realists in that they are not easily contented with abstractions, and that they attain their ideal by the self-chosen means of enjoyment and sensual possession.They must see, hear, taste and touch ideas. Both in sensual richness and in their extraordinary imaginative power they are far in advance of the West. How then can we reject their evidence in the name of Western reason ?"
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