ORIENTAL SCHOLARSHIP DURING THE PRESENT CEN- 

 TURY.* 



By Prof. Frederick Max Muller. 



- - - When we wish to express sometliing removed from us as far as 

 it can be, we use the expression "So far as the East is from tlie West." 

 Is ow what we who are assembled, here are aiming at, what may be called 

 our real raison d'etre^ is to bring- the East, which seems so far from us, 

 so distant from us, nay, often so strange and iiidifl'erentto many of us, 

 as near as possible — near to our thoughts, near to our hearts. It seems 

 strange indeed that there should ever have been a frontier line to sep- 

 erate the East from the West, nor is it easy to see at what time that line 

 was first drawn, or whether there were any physical conditions which 

 necessitated such a line of demarcation. The sun moves in unbroken 

 continuity from East to West, there is no break in his triumphant prog- 

 ress. Why should there ever have been a break in the triumphant 

 progress of the human race from East to West, and how could that break 

 have been brought about? It is quite true that as long as we know 

 anything that deserves tlie name of history, that break exists. The 

 Mediterranean with the Black Sea, the Caspian with the Ural Moun- 

 tains may be looked upon as the physical boundary that separates the 

 East from the Wesc. The whole history of the West seems so strongly 

 determined by the Mediterranean, that Ewald was inclined to include 

 all Aryan nations under the name of Mediterranean. But the Mediter- 

 ranean ought to have formed not only the barrier, but likewise the 

 connecting-link between Asia and Europe. Without that high-road 

 leading to all the emporia of the world, without the pure and refresh- 

 ing breezes, without the inlinite laughter of the Mediterranean, there 

 would never have been an Athens, a Eome; there would never have 

 been that spirited and never-resting Europe, so different from the solid 

 and slowly -changing Asiatic continent. Northern Africa, however, 

 Egypt, Palestine, Pheuicia, and Arabia, though in close proximity to 

 the Mediterranean, belong in their history to the East, quite as much as 



* Extracts from inauj;ural address by the president of the International Congress 

 of Orientalists, London, 1892. {Transactions of the Congress, vol. i.) 



681 



