Introduction to the Study of the Hindu Doctrines

done; it is even permissible to conclude that they have thus given knowledge a less pure and less disinterested purpose, because their turn of mind allowed them to remain only with difficulty and as if exceptionally in the realm of principles. This "practical" tendency, in the most ordinary sense of the word, is one of those that would become increasingly marked in the development of Western civilization, and it is visibly predominant in the modern era; the only exception that can be made in this regard is in favor of the Middle Ages, which was much more oriented toward pure speculation speculation: here used in its classical sense of deep theoretical contemplation rather than "guessing.".

Generally speaking, Westerners are, by their nature, very little inclined toward metaphysics; a comparison of their languages with those of Easterners would in itself provide sufficient proof, if indeed philologists philologists: scholars who study the history, development, and "spirit" of languages. were capable of truly grasping the spirit of the languages they study. On the other hand, Easterners have a very marked tendency to disregard applications, and this is easily understood, for anyone who essentially devotes themselves to the knowledge of universal principles universal principles: fundamental truths that apply to all of reality, beyond the physical or material world. can take only a mediocre interest in specialized sciences, and can at most grant them a passing curiosity—certainly insufficient to lead to numerous discoveries in that line of thought. When one knows—with a mathematical certainty, so to speak, and even more than mathematical—that things cannot be otherwise than they are, one is necessarily dismissive of experimentation. This is because the observation of a particular fact, whatever it may be, never proves anything more or other than the pure and simple existence of that fact itself; at most, such an observation may sometimes serve to illustrate a theory as an example, but by no means to prove it, and to believe otherwise is a serious illusion.

Under these conditions, there is obviously no reason to study the experimental sciences for their own sake, and, from a metaphysical point of view, they—like the objects to which they apply—have only a purely accidental and contingent contingent: something that depends on circumstances and could be otherwise, as opposed to something that is "necessary" or absolute. value. Often, one does not even feel the need to extract particular laws, which could nevertheless be derived from principles as a special application to a given field, if one felt the effort was worth it. We can thus understand everything that separates Eastern "savoir" (knowledge) from Western "recherche" (research); yet one may still be surprised that research has come, for modern Westerners, to constitute an end in itself, independent of its possible results.

Another point that it is essential to note here, and which presents itself