Sri Aurobindo

Essays Divine and Human

Writings from Manuscripts. 1910 – 1950

A Misunderstanding of Continents

The peculiar and striking opposition of thought, temperament, culture and manners between Asia and Europe has been a commonplace of observation and criticism since the times when Herodotus noted in his history the objection of both men and women to be seen naked as a curious and amusing trait of Asiatic barbarism. Much water has flown under the bridges since Herodotus wrote and in this respect Asia seems not only to have infected Europe with this “barbaric” trait of manners, but to have been far outstripped by her pupil in the development of sartorial superfluities. Excessive wealth and gorgeous splendour was also quoted as a characteristic of Asiatic barbarism from the time of the classical poets. Europe has seen to it that this charge shall only apply now in a very minimum quantity to the eastern continent. Asia now stands, not only by choice of her ascetics, but by economic compulsion for the simple life, and the ostentation of wealth which was once depreciated as a sign of oriental barbarism now parades itself, much vulgarised, at least to our barbaric eastern notion of aesthetics as the splendid face of occidental civilisation. But if circumstances have changed, the essential opposition abides; East is still East in its soul and West is still West and the misunderstanding of continents still flourishes, not only in the minds of politicians and “statesmen”, — where one would naturally expect to find it, since it is there that vulgar prejudices, half-truths, whole untruths and unintelligent commonplaces assume their most solemn and sententious form, coin themselves into glittering phrases or flow in rhetorical periods, — but in the minds too of critics, poets and leading intellectuals. Faced with this continued misunderstanding, one is obliged to ask whether it is really incurable, an antinomy on which Nature is resolved to insist until the end of this cycle.

Some of us, temerarious idealists, have thought that the misconception, the want of understanding is not only curable, but that to cure it as soon as may be is essential to the future interests of humanity. For my part I hold that all antinomies and opposed powers in this world of contradictions would be much better for an attempt to understand each other's souls and find their meeting point, would find something helpful not only to tone down their own exaggerations, but to fill in and round themselves without losing what is essential to their own spirit. Recently there has been a distinct widening in many minds, a nearer approach to understanding, almost to fusion. A little while ago in the first lyrical enthusiasm of the war and its “sacred unions” one imagined that a decisive step had been taken and the peoples themselves would now be ready for sympathy and understanding. But it seems it is not quite so yet[.]

Circa 1918

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