it is not contrary to reason, as
no faith should be or long can be. Many men do _not_ believe it, for
many are not religious; others, while believing it, may believe also
many other things. But it is the irreducible minimum of religion in the
modern West, the justification of our life, the faith of our works. I
call it the Religion of Time, and distinguish it thus from the Religion
of Eternity.

In this sense, then, this profound sense, of a common aim and a common
motive, there is really a West. Is there also an East? That is not so
clear. In some important respects, no doubt, the Eastern civilisations
are alike. They are still predominantly agricultural. Their industry is
manual not mechanical. Their social unit is the extended family. To
travel in the East is to realise that life on the soil and in the
village is there still the normal life, as it has been almost everywhere
and always, throughout civilisation, until the last century in the West.
But though there is thus in the East a common way of life, there is not
a common organisation nor a common spirit. Economically, the great
Eastern countries are still independent of one another. Each lives for
the most part by and on itself. And their intellectual and spiritual
intercourse is now (though it was not in the past) as negligible as
their economic commerce. The influence that is beginning to be strong
upon them all is that of Western culture; and if they become alike in
their outlook on life, it will be by assimilating that. But, at present,
they are not alike. It is easy, in this matter, to be deceived by the
outward forms of religion. Because Buddhism originated in India and
spread to China and Japan, because Japan took Confucian ideals from
China, it is natural to conclude that there is a common religious spirit
throughout the East, or the Far East. But one might as reasonably infer
that the spirit of the christianised Teutons was the same as that of the
Jews or of the Christians in the East. Nations borrow religions, but
they shape them according to their own genius. And if I am not very much
mistaken the outlook of India is, and always has been, radically
distinct from and even opposed to that of China or Japan. These latter
countries, indeed, I believe, are far closer to the West than they are
to India. Let me explain.

India is the true origin and home of what I have called the religion of
Eternity. That idea seems to have gone out from her to the rest of