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Address at the conference on Oriental Classics,
Columbia University, New York, September 12, 1958.
 In the light of the
very thoughtful discussions you have had during the course of the day
and are likely to have tomorrow, you must not expect me, in these
lighter moments of the conference, to say anything novel or even useful.
All that I hope to do is perhaps add a personal accent to some of the
thoughts around the theme of this conference which you will be
expounding and annotating with a distinction all your own.
It is pleasurable to
take part, in whatever humble capacity, in a conference which is
essentially concerned with books. We are living in an age of books. This
is not just a truism. I believe that today, more than in any other epoch
in history, there are books on almost every conceivable subject under
the sun. Actually, I should say that we are living in an age of words.
But if you exclude printed words, what remains? The millions of words
impinging on the ionosphere that emanate from politicians,
propagandists, and quiz masters. These, for the moment, we can ignore.
Between ourselves, I do not think that we shall be ignoring anything
valuable. So let's return to books.
Those of us who during
the last war were separated from our own or any other important source
of books, who were perhaps in a remote part of the world, must have
shared with many in my part of the world, in addition to the horror of
murder and pillage and destruction, the horror of being separated from
books. Books were not plentiful, editions were limited and were
exhausted as soon as they were produced. I know of some people who made
difficult journeys during those first hazardous days of 1939-40, in
order to get closer to books.
But if books in plenty
are a blessing, they also create a difficulty. The difficulty is not
that there are books, but, alas, that there are too many books, and to
make a choice is a baffling task. Sir William Haley, the editor of the
London Times who, as you know, was for many years a book reviewer on the
Manchester Guardian - one of those book reviewers who did read the books
he reviewed - said in a lecture that if he read at the rate of a hundred
pages an hour, which, mind you, is a difficult pace to keep, and that if
at this rate he read for four hours a day for forty years, he could not
hope to read more than about 6,000 books. This means that persons who
could have read 10,000 books are extremely rare. Six thousand books out
of the millions that are produced - what would we not give for the
choice to be made easy!
This conference is
concerned, among other things, with making the choice somewhat easy and
telling us what good and significant books there are to read. I'm
grateful to any organization, any discussion, any intellectual
cooperation, which makes me aware of the gold so that I can keep away
from the dross. It would be a great service for any teacher to perform
in this age if he but confined himself to suggesting the books that his
students should read. I therefore welcome a conference like this. I know
that its avowed aim is limited, but, while you pursue your specialists’
interests, the larger aim is also fulfilled.
There is another aspect
also which these books, that you have chosen and value and are
determined to pass on to the next generation, have in common. They have
a moral standpoint. In the last resort, they're concerned with what is
valuable. They are concerned with problems of good and evil, and for
those of us who believe, as I do, that the moral and the aesthetic and
the great are but aspects of the same elevation, a book with a moral
standpoint elevates a man in all these ways. These books are concerned
intensely with the problem of evaluation of human conduct. They may
differ from each other in many ways, they may differ from the classics
which have their origin in other lands and other ages, but in all such
cases it's not the answer that's important. The important thing is that
they all raise the same important question.
It is good to remind
ourselves that that question is an eternal question to which every man
within the sanctity and solitude of his own soul, with whatever help he
can get from fellow human beings, must find an answer. In our age and
time there are many forces, and many currents of thought which are
deterministic and fatalistic in their effect and which make one's
awareness of the value in conduct or of transcendental values somewhat
dim.
I suggest to you an
experiment which I've tried with some students, both my own and others.
If you ask an average young man or woman to name what he or she
considers to be, say, the six most important virtues, you will seldom
get a clear or a prompt answer. In fact, you will probably cause great
confusion. First of all, the word "virtue" will fall strangely upon the
ear. It is a word which is gradually falling into disuse. And secondly,
it would take an average student brought up in our environment a long
time before he could think of or name such qualities as kindness, love,
tolerance. He will think of various other things, but on the whole he
will be on the rack trying to define what those qualities of human
conduct and human attitudes are which he must inculcate.
The need for bringing
to the notice of everybody including ourselves books which have a moral
standpoint is, I venture to suggest, very great, apart from the fact
that these books have already inspired large numbers of people over
centuries. For a long time amongst the illiterate and the untutored
people of the East, a book meant a good book. In my home town in my
childhood, and I dare say even now, you would find a man illiterate come
across a stray piece of paper in the street. He wouldn't know what's
written on it, but he would pick it up carefully and carry it until he
came to a niche in a wall into which he might safely tuck it, because if
it is paper with something written on it, it must be sacred and it must
not be trampled upon. This is the attitude that he has toward books, and
it is the attitude that I think we might try to inculcate amongst
ourselves and amongst our students. For that purpose, the classics of
the Orient will stand you in good stead, as, indeed would similar books
from other regions. I do not wish to give the impression that such
literature is confined to the Orient.
There is a great need
for mutual understanding in the world today. We are living, as you heard
from a very thoughtful teacher, Father Berry, this morning, in a
multicultural world. Now that does not mean that we are living at a time
when many cultures co-exist, because that would not be a statement worth
making. There was no time when there were not many cultures in the
world. What, therefore, do we mean when we say we are living in a
multicultural world?
What we mean is that
each one of us today is exposed to many cultures as he never was before.
In fact, some of the advances made in the first half of the century have
made this exposure so easy that it is inescapable. The development of
printing, the development of colour photography (which has made
paintings available to people who had never hoped to see them); and,
above all, the development of scientific anthropology, which has brought
other cultures nearer to us so that we can study them in a spirit of
humility or at least open-mindedness and which has taught us that
cultures, simply because they are foreign and exotic, need not be
shunned as corrupting the mind - all have helped the process. It is in
this sense that we are living in a multicultural world. We cannot escape
the impact on our minds of various cultures across and around the globe.
In fact, one might borrow a phrase from Mr. Andre Malraux, who talked of
"the imaginary museum" in which an artist today lives. An artist today
is much more aware of art allover the world than, say, Leonardo da
Vinci. What is true of the artist is true of the scholar, and what is
true of the scholar is true of the common man, in varying degrees. It is
imperative, this exposure being there, to know what to do with. it. If
some attempt is not made at understanding other cultures, we shall be
living in a neglected manner.
I do not believe that
the study of Oriental literatures by the Occident, or of Occidental
literatures by the Orient, will immediately bring about an era of peace
on earth. An era of peace on earth is a matter of the heart not of the
head. But it is quite true that a large number of mistakes could be
avoided if one knew the motives, the moral and intellectual background
of other nations.
Take the political
problems posed by Islamic movements today. It would be impossible, I
think, fully to understand the urges of Muslim countries or even the
urges of the Arab world without studying the Quran which laid down not
merely a religion but the requirements of a new society. To understand
the Muslims, one is driven to a study of the book from which the
conception of Islamic society takes its origin.
There must be some
people who keep up such studies in the hope that they will somehow find
the means of passing their understanding on to those who are in a
position to act. Those who act have no time to think and others who
think are not in a position to act, and the problem always has been how
the benefit of the studies of those who think, which preeminently
includes this group, can be passed on to those who act. The passage
between them, the channel, has never been very easy. How to give every
Alexander an Aristotle? And would he listen to Aristotle after he is at
the peak of his glory? That is the great question. Your efforts, in your
own sphere, could, I believe, lead to a better education of those who
are in a position to act and with whom lies the comparative tranquility
of the world, if not the total abolition of war.
Even, therefore, if we
take a pragmatic, a politically international view, it should be an
asset for a nation to know other people. I don't believe anyone roams
the globe more than the Americans. They do it partly because they have
lots of money. But aside from that, I think they have a wanderlust.
Also, their duties and their position in the world will force them to
look into the four corners of the earth and to be pioneers not in one
place but in a thousand. Therefore, it is far more important for the
young generation of this nation, more than of any other, to try and lay
the groundwork for that kind of understanding which make its wanderlust
rewarding.
There is yet another
purpose which this kind of study might have. I have seen the learned
paper of Father Berry which he read this morning. Many wise men hold the
view that he holds (and I probably belong to the undistinguished
minority in this matter) that there is no universal culture, that a
universal culture is not a dream, but an illusion. Well, with me it's a
dream not an illusion. Father Berry strongly holds the view - and so do
many other distinguished thinkers - that the best equipment for the
study of other cultures is to be firmly implanted in one's own.
I think a difference of
opinion might be permitted on this issue. You can either think of the
scholar (by the scholar I mean the inquirer, any inquirer a student, a
teacher), you can either think of him after the image of Donne's lover,
resembling a pair of compasses with one leg firmly implanted in the
centre and the other leg out and moving around and coming back home
whenever required. Or you can conceive of him as a dome with many
coloured windows. I conceive of him as the second. There are green
windows and blue and yellow, and the light that comes through each takes
the hue of the glass. But in the mind itself the various colours do not
lie snugly side by side. They mingle and form a new and rich and subtle
colour which represents my dream of a universal culture.
Is this obtainable?
Yes, but it is yet a hazardous and a difficult task. It imposes on the
scholar a great mission and a great loneliness. He will find his
community not always around him, but across the seas and across
continents. I think this aristocracy (I use the word with trepidation in
a ferociously democratic country) is the aristocracy which eventually
might solve some of the worst problems of the world. It is not an
aristocracy to which a person has to be born; anyone can be admitted to
it, and therefore I hope that some of the objections that might have
arisen in your mind at the first sound of the word will in the end be
quieted. It is an aristocracy to which one can belong by the bond of
understanding. There's a growing number of people in the world today
-cosmopolitan, if you like to call. them - who beckon to each other
across the darkness - whenever it is dark and get much moral support
from each other.
This does not mean any
dissipation of loyalties. One of the characteristics of our age is that
loyalties are being reexamined in a curious topsyturvy way. The
loyalties of friendship are becoming somewhat undervalued and yet, as
Mr. E. M. Forster reminds us, Dante put Brutus into hell for betraying
his friend. Other loyalties are being substituted for the older ones,
and perhaps most of us are undecided and confused. But I ask for no
dissipation of loyalties. I only ask for higher and higher loyalties as
one goes on.
Let this not have us
a-trembling. As Mr. Justice Frankfurter has said, "The true mark of a
civilized man is the confidence in the certainty and the strength
derived from an inquiring mind." That is the citadel within which, you
will sit and not within the citadel of any temporary or valueless
loyalty which we might hear preached.
I would urge upon every
individual to avoid total involvement in a culture, and to look around
him freely, because what is human is worth! studying, perhaps worth
embracing, and it makes no difference where the source lies. It is what
we bring to it, the readiness to learn, and to feel warmth, which is the
essential factor.
Let me remind you,
also, that what you're undertaking is not an isolated project. There
are, I learned the other day, about six hundred organizations of private
citizens in America which are concerned with intellectual cooperation
with and study of Asian countries. Six hundred is a very large number. I
do not believe that any other country in the world can come anywhere
close to this in studying foreign cultures, and .in intellectual
cooperation with people not born in one's native land. That's an
achievement of which you can justly be proud. The programme you have set
before you, therefore, forms a very important sector in the total attack
upon human ignorance and cultural isolation.
One word more and I
would have finished. There's one other reason why I welcome this
conference and the attention that you pay to Oriental classics. With
your help, shamed by your efforts, and inspired by your efforts, and
inspired by your challenge, some of us in the East -myself most of all
-might let us hope, read a few more of their classics.
First published in
Approaches to the Oriental Classics, edited by William Theodore de
Barry. New York: Columbia University Press, 1959, pp. 39-46. |
