None Of Her Children Has Done Justice To The Poets And
Philosophers Of Persia Or Of India.
They have even been better
known to her merchant scholars than to her poets and thinkers by
profession.
You may look in vain through English poetry for a
single memorable verse inspired by these themes. Nor is Germany
to be excepted, though her philological industry is indirectly
serving the cause of philosophy and poetry. Even Goethe wanted
that universality of genius which could have appreciated the
philosophy of India, if he had more nearly approached it. His
genius was more practical, dwelling much more in the regions of
the understanding, and was less native to contemplation than the
genius of those sages. It is remarkable that Homer and a few
Hebrews are the most Oriental names which modern Europe, whose
literature has taken its rise since the decline of the Persian,
has admitted into her list of Worthies, and perhaps the _worthiest_
of mankind, and the fathers of modern thinking, - for the
contemplations of those Indian sages have influenced, and still
influence, the intellectual development of mankind, - whose works
even yet survive in wonderful completeness, are, for the most
part, not recognized as ever having existed. If the lions had
been the painters it would have been otherwise. In every one's
youthful dreams philosophy is still vaguely but inseparably, and
with singular truth, associated with the East, nor do after years
discover its local habitation in the Western world. In comparison
with the philosophers of the East, we may say that modern Europe
has yet given birth to none. Beside the vast and cosmogonal
philosophy of the Bhagvat-Geeta, even our Shakespeare seems
sometimes youthfully green and practical merely. Some of these
sublime sentences, as the Chaldaean oracles of Zoroaster, still
surviving after a thousand revolutions and translations, alone
make us doubt if the poetic form and dress are not transitory,
and not essential to the most effective and enduring expression
of thought. _Ex oriente lux_ may still be the motto of scholars,
for the Western world has not yet derived from the East all the
light which it is destined to receive thence.
It would be worthy of the age to print together the collected
Scriptures or Sacred Writings of the several nations, the
Chinese, the Hindoos, the Persians, the Hebrews, and others, as
the Scripture of mankind. The New Testament is still, perhaps,
too much on the lips and in the hearts of men to be called a
Scripture in this sense. Such a juxtaposition and comparison
might help to liberalize the faith of men. This is a work which
Time will surely edit, reserved to crown the labors of the
printing-press. This would be the Bible, or Book of Books, which
let the missionaries carry to the uttermost parts of the earth.
While engaged in these reflections, thinking ourselves the only
navigators of these waters, suddenly a canal-boat, with its sail
set, glided round a point before us, like some huge river beast,
and changed the scene in an instant; and then another and another
glided into sight, and we found ourselves in the current of
commerce once more.
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