East V/S West

In the words of the great Aurobindo...

The East is more ancient by many thousands of years than the West, but a greater length of years does not necessarily imply a more advanced age.... Asia is long-lived, Europe brief, ephemeral. Asia is in everything hugely mapped, immense and grandiose in its motions, and its life-periods are measured accordingly. Europe lives by centuries, Asia by millenniums. Europe is parcelled out in nations, Asia in civilisations. The whole of Europe forms only one civilisation with a common, derived and largely second-hand culture; Asia supports three civilisations, each of them original and of the soil. Everything in Europe is small, rapid and short-lived;
she has not the secret of immortality.

July 3, 1907