Let us examine then, the Western term "Philo-sophy" and its Eastern equivalent in the classical language of India, Sanskrit; and even at the outset we meet with fundamental contrasts. For the Greek term philo-sophia means literally "love of sophia" of human reason, measure, of judgment and discrimination. On the other hand, the Sanskrit term for philosophy is anu-iksiki, the "survey of, literally the look along (anu), all things/' which means "along all existent facts." Thus contemplation of reality, not discrimination in a rational order, is the cardinal aimof Indian Philosophy, the Sanskrit name of which means no more than synopsis, comprehensive view and receptive contemplation. Further evidence of the profound gulf between East and West is provided by another fundamental philosophical term. Our word "system" (systema) is literally "putting together," in a rational order. It was Aristotle, the founder and organizer of Western exact science, a post-Sophistic scholar and the first great genuinely Western Philosopher, who invented the goal of unity and of final liberation from the fiction of isolated existence. And thus India's conclusion is not cogito ergo sum but: In spite of my reasoning I exist just as do all other accidental manifestations of the primeval unity. Everything is rooted in static Reality, that vast reservoir from which all emerges and in which everything will be finally immersed, thus relapsing into immanent and genuine unity.
We shall thus discover how unequal were the respective contributions of East and West to each of these domains. Each subject is differently valued in the Occident and the Orient, and has therefore been developed with greater or less success. The West has, for example, and with excellent results, concentrated on the exact sciences Physics, Astronomy and Mathematics, together with social problems; India, on the other hand, has made more valuable contributions to Metaphysics. In short, the West has elaborated the best systematic framework of thought, while India's natural task is to keep this framework sufficiently elastic to embrace all possibilities of
thought, equally those already realized and those not yet foreseen.
Indian arithmetic similarly has its own special complexion, the concept of zero being due not to abstract mathematical deduction, but to empirical observations of polarity in Nature and their application to Ontology and Metaphysics: zero then implying no definite size, or the non-dimensional and the all-dimensional. Accordingly the mathematicians (e.g. Bhaskaracarya) identify Sunya (zero) with Nirvana.
Doubtful instrument, his reasoning mind, Man continues to use it to increase the accuracy and efficiency of his technical methods, overstraining his brain in restless search for still farther-reaching discoveries. Leisure is no longer left for solitude devoted to fruitful meditation and humble expectation of divine intuition; but it was only the quiet of a culture, knowing no time restrictions, that could give birth to India's intuitive vision.
Summing up, then, in the West two strangely contradictory attempts to overcome the moral, political and economic dilemma of the present day predominate: on the one hand, an exaggerated
rationalism; on the other, an equally exaggerated and forced emotionalism assuming the guise of political, religious, scientific and artistic movements; Direr's dictum, therefore, is still valid for the West: "Art is hidden in Nature; snatch it from her grasp and it is yours.
Both alike, however, are inevitable developments, and perhaps the final consequences, of the primal anthropological idea, even though they may also be reactions from this. But in no event will the changeable West ever return to an undisturbed harmony with any earthly cosmos. For India's collectivism and non-individualism, her relativity of values and sense of infinity, are all naturally antipathetic to the spasmodic actions and reactions of the West. Any apparent rapprochement, therefore, really removes both types of culture further apart, and increasingly reveals their inherently different tendencies. In the West the antitheses are never harmonized, but simply indicate painful attempts to terminate transient struggles. The exaggeration of both mechanical production and emotional stresses constitutes a contrast which is not recognized by Nature herself. We seem driven to conclude, therefore, that the divergent lines of West and East belong to wholly different planes, so that even if they sometimes appear to converge, still they will never meet.