PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE 455

ought to give place to the truth that

East plus West
Is much the Best.

In spite of all its apparent conflicts and divisions this is
the New Vision of Man that is striving for realisation in the
World to-day. The First Steps in civilisation taken by
Africa and Asia led on to the marvellous creative activity
of Europe. But now it appears that the Oriental ' Conquest
of Civilisation' has culminated in the Occidental 'Ordeal
oj Civilisation'—tv use the phraseology of Breasted and
Robinson. However, there could be little doubt that the
World to be must be the creation of a united effort of
Humanity as a whole; for Integration—not dis-integration
—has been the dominant tendency of Universal History.
From Palaeolithic man to our times the World has become
increasingly inter-dependent: waves might break and rivers
may run dry, but the ocean cannot be split into puddles.

What the ancients perhaps dimly perceived is now being
laboriously but accurately verified. Herein lies the signi-
ficance of Pure science which is hardly to be distinguished
from Philosophy. In essence, the problem of both is identi-
cal : it is Man's attempt to understand Life, to master all
its complexities, and to attain the Platonic ideal of Truth,
Beauty, Goodness. The East, particularly India, sought to re-
alise these primarily through intuition, meditation, and the
mystic ways of religion. The West, following the pragmatic
path of Science, aimed at the same ideal and came by its
materialistic civilisation. At the present moment the subjec-
tive Idealism of Asia and the objective Realism of Europe,
meeting in apparent conflict, are engaged in producing the
synthesis of a new Universalism.

Viewed in the perspective of Man's history from the very