OUT OF THE EAST

The valuable and unique donations of Baron von Stael-Holstein to the Harvard collections as described in the news columns of this morning's CRIMSON, have an especial significance in that they enrich the shelves and panels of Widener and Fogg in a field which is comparatively untouched. Harvard is not alone in this; Oriental religion and literature is a book that a variety of influences have succeeded in keeping very nearly closed to the Occident. This gift is not the first sign that indicates Harvard, at least, is on the way to correcting the omission.

The isolation in which the modern Western world has left the more ancient culture of the East is explicable on several grounds. The interior of China and Tibet is protected by natural barriers of desert and mountain and even at the present day portions of it are forbidden to foreigners. Even in those regions where Westerners have penetrated, the inhabitants are not unnaturally hostile to the strangers who come to disturb their ancestral monuments. Add to this the tremendous difficulties of language and the state of affairs that enabled one civilization to remain practically unknown while another reached a high stage of development from totally different sources becomes less inexplicable than first sight would seem to indicate.

Explaining the phenomenon does not make it any the less undesirable. The intellectual curiosity that led men of the Renaissance to restore to the world the literature of Greece and Rome is today turned to scientific rather than literary discoveries; economic and political changes have come so thick and fast during recent year that they have not yet lost the fascination of novelty for the public, but the existence of such a vast expanse out side the mental bounds of any civilization will remain a constant reproach to its leaders until it be included.

Signs are not wanting to indicate that the barrier is on the verge of yielding to the assaults of Western penetration. Yale-in-China is a well established organization, and with the founding last year of the Harvard Yenching Institute, Harvard made an official entry into the field. It is symbolic of the present lack of knowledge of things Oriental that probably few Harvard students are aware of the fact that four of the most distinguished Sinologists in the world are now working in the University under the auspices of this organization. The gift of Baron von Stael-Holstein will be of the greatest value in its work of introducing America and the world to China.