Occident and Orient, the most dangerous and profound of animosities, and to give life more abundantly to one-fifth of man's species, and to build what the subtle curving tides of Asia shall never sweep away.
We must see, then, plainly what is to be the fourth and last phase of our Asiatic career.
With us Europeans, as already pointed out, between the claims of religion and of the body, nationality has staked out its domain. But it may be said respecting by far the major portion of humanity, and certainly of the Asiatics, that for them this conception of nationality, as the sphere where the impulses of the body, the reasoning of the mind, and the aspirations of the soul can be co-ordinated for the good of humanity, is new. No one more than the oriental has made life bow to religion: no one more than he has made religion bow to life. In the height of his spiritual fervour, in the depth of his materialism, in the satisfaction of his soul by mysticism, in the gratification of his body by luxury, he has surpassed the world. But India never had a citizen. For the saint is not national, or the voluptuary either.
The Asiatic, as we found him, cared for his women, his family, his caste, his co-religionists—in fact for all those whom his senses or his creed recommended, but for his "neighbour" no more than for a dog. In Renan's phrase, there were never Assyrian patriots. This want of public spirit was the reason why India fell so easily into
