XXI
KWANG-TZE
I
The idea may or may not be original with me: that doesn’t matter. In any case, I have had it for a long time, and what is more, I believe it to be true.
I believe that the so-called Renaissance of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, which had the discovery of classic culture as one of its causes and one of its effects, will ultimately prove to be but a slight affair in comparison with the Renaissance of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, which will be due to the discovery of oriental culture.
This new Renaissance will bring not a complete overturn—the human spirit is not an omelet—but an eager change in the direction of European and American thought and life.
We talk of a universal society of nations—and we have not yet formed a universal society of intelligence. It has been attempted now and then during the last hundred years, but the pre-
276
