Introduction to the Study of the Hindu Doctrines

Moreover, as a corollary corollary: a proposition that follows naturally from one already proven. to what preceded, it is clear that no one has ever been further than the Easterners, without exception, from having a "cult of nature" like that of Greco-Roman antiquity. This is because nature has never been for them anything more than the world of appearances; to be sure, these appearances also possess a reality, but it is only a transitory and non-permanent reality—contingent contingent: dependent on something else; not necessary or absolute. and not universal. Thus, "naturalism," in all the forms it can take, can only constitute a deviation—and even a true intellectual monstrosity—in the eyes of men who might be called metaphysicians by temperament.

It must be said, however, that the Greeks, despite their tendency toward "naturalism," never went so far as to attach the excessive importance to experimentation that the moderns attribute to it. Throughout all of antiquity, even in the West, one finds a certain disdain for experimental experience. It would perhaps be quite difficult to explain this otherwise than by seeing in it a trace of Eastern influence; for the Greeks, such a disdain had partially lost its justification original: "raison d'être", since their concerns were hardly metaphysical, and aesthetic considerations often took the place of the deeper reasons that eluded them.

It is these latter aesthetic considerations that are most commonly used to explain this fact; but we believe there is something else at play, at least originally. In any case, this does not prevent us from finding already among the Greeks, in a certain sense, the starting point of the experimental sciences as moderns understand them—sciences in which the "practical" tendency unites with the "naturalist" tendency. Neither of these can reach their full development except at the expense of pure thought and disinterested knowledge disinterested knowledge: knowledge pursued for its own sake, for the sake of truth alone, rather than for practical application or personal gain..

Thus, the fact that Easterners never attached themselves to certain specialized sciences is in no way a sign of inferiority on their part; intellectually, it is quite the opposite. This is, in short, a normal consequence of the fact that their activity has always been directed in an entirely different direction and toward an entirely different end. It is precisely the various directions in which human mental activity can be exercised that give each civilization its specific character by determining the fundamental direction of its development. At the same time, this is what gives the illusion of progress to those who, knowing only one civilization, see exclusively the direction in which it develops, believe it to be the only one possible, and do not realize that this development in one area may be largely