But such a line of poetry would I think be impossible in India or in any country to the East of it.  There man is thought of as a part of nature not its centre or master[57].  Above him are formidable hosts of deities and spirits, and even European engineers cannot subdue the genii of the flood and typhoon:  below but still not separated from him are the various tribes of birds and beasts.  A good man does not kill them for pleasure nor eat flesh, and even those whose aspirations to virtue are modest treat animals as humble brethren rather than as lower creatures over whom they have dominion by divine command.

This attitude is illustrated by Chinese and Japanese art.  In architecture, this art makes it a principle that palaces and temples should not dominate a landscape but fit into it and adapt their lines to its features.  For the painter, flowers and animals form a sufficient picture by themselves and are not felt to be inadequate because man is absent.  Portraits are frequent but a common form of European composition, namely a group of figures subordinated to a principal one, though not unknown, is comparatively rare.

How scanty are the records of great men in India!  Great buildings attract attention but who knows the names of the architects who planned them or the kings who paid for them?  We are not quite sure of the date of Kalidasa, the Indian Shakespeare, and though the doctrines of Sankara, Kabir, and Nanak still nourish, it is with difficulty that the antiquary collects from the meagre legends clinging to their names a few facts for their biographies.  And Kings and Emperors, a class who in Europe can count on being remembered if not esteemed after death, fare even worse.  The laborious research of Europeans has shown that Asoka and Harsha were great monarchs.  Their own countrymen merely say “once upon a time there was a king” and recount some trivial story.

In fact, Hindus have a very weak historical sense.  In this they are not wholly wrong, for Europeans undoubtedly exaggerate the historical treatment of thought and art[58].  In science, most students want to know what is certain in theory and useful in practice, not what were the discarded hypotheses and imperfect instruments of the past.  In literature, when the actors and audience are really interested, the date of Shakespeare and even the authorship of the play cease to be important[59].  In the same way Hindus want to know whether doctrines and speculations are true, whether a man can make use of them in his own religious experiences and aspirations.  They care little for the date, authorship, unity and textual accuracy of the Bhagavad-gita.  They simply ask, is it true, what can I get from it?  The European critic, who expects nothing of the sort from the work, racks his brains to know who wrote it and when, who touched it up and why?