Philosophers, ancient as well as modern, Eastern as well as Western, have always been primarily concerned with the relation of the One and the Many. They have approached it from many angles and have treated it under different titles; Act and Potency, Form and Matter, Substance and Accidents, these fall within the perennial philosophy, but there are many other approaches. They are looking for the meaning of things; the meaning is one, the things are many. Even if the philosopher decides that there is no meaning and all is continuous, unrelated change, he has found a single frame, the One, for his whole experience of the Many. How can both have reality, the one being embracing all things? If the one being is the reality, then is not the multiplicity around us only apparent? If the things we look upon, daily astonished at their variety, are real, then is not the One into which we try to fit them merely a convenient fiction to satisfy the hunger of the enquiring mind?

Curiously, although philosophers have given themselves to this problem with a constant zeal, they have seldom found a stabilised view that could show them the One and the Many locked in an enduring embrace. They have swayed between the two poles, either seeing all in terms of the unique One, or seeing the One in terms of the All. The Atomists found nothing but multiplicity, the lowest possible unit, undistinguished, containing nothing but its one homogeneous self; for Zeno and Parmenides, all that they could see or know was contained in the unique being of which they were themselves only expressions. Even Plato became so enamoured of unity that the variety of the world around him appeared only as fleeting shadows, never to be possessed as real treasure. Who can balance between these attractive depths?

Pascal, to use a customary word of his own, is admirable. It is true that the satire of the Provinciales, however clever and amusing in its time, is out-of-date and unjust; that his scientific experiments and writings belong to the domain of the history of science. But his apology for Christianity, even in the fragmentary form of the famous Pensees, is an imperishable work. Into it he put all his knowledge and experience of the world, of human achievement, and of the divine things that were the absorbing pursuit of his mature file.

It is a happiness to re-read them, or a selection of them, in this new edition : to marvel once again at Pascal’s penetration and his ardent zeal, to feel once again the beauty and power of so many compelling pages and lapidary sentences ; especially as we are reminded in an early paragraph (No. 11) of what is in fact the goal of this long array of close reasoning and urgent pleading: ‘Jesus-Christ the object of everything, the cenfre to which everything tends.’—‘The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, the God of Christians is a God of love and consolation, He is a God who fills the soul and heart of those whom He possesses, a God who makes them feel within themselves their wretchedness and His infinite mercy; who unites Himself with them in the depths of their soul; who fills it with humility, joy, trust, love; who makes them incapable of any other end than Himself.’

We had been to a neighbouring seaside resort to visit an old priest living in semi-retirement. The winter atternoon was pallid with weak sunshine that strove to conquer the Crome-grey sky. The top of the bus was thick with stale tobacco smoke. Behind us, as we sat over the driver’s cabin, were the quiet low sounds of East Anglian men making speech. My companion, a venerated canon, lived some miles outside the city to which we were returning. A parish priest who had never lost the wonderment of childhood : a student who had learned Hebrew long after leaving college by a correspondence course so as to deepen his love of the Breviary.

We too spoke quietly, but what follows are simply the remembrance of his words. Men are not always the poorer for their gregariousness. Indeed the wealth I have gained, not once but many, many times, from the deep waters of this priest’s mind, is a wealth immeasurable and beyond gratitude ....

‘I am That, thou art This; thou art This, I am That. I am Sky, thou art Earth. I am the Harmony, thou the Words. Let us twain here unite our houses.’ The whole Indian theory of government is epitomised in these ritual words which the Brahman Priest addresses to the King. By a characteristic modern distortion of traditional thought, it has been supposed that the King addresses them to the Priest, and Dr. Coomaraswamy devotes a great part of his new book to restoring the ancient interpretation beyond a doubt. His study is difficult reading, and touches on a whole multitude of matters which a short summary must necessarily pass over; but one may give some suggestion of the general scope of the argument and of the depth and serenity which set it apart from the many political philosophies now daily beating upon our ears.

Through all things there is hierarchy; as in heaven, so in earth, as in the government of ‘these worlds,’ so in that of states and of every man within himself. The spiritual is above the temporal, the contemplative above the active; and the Priest represents spiritual authority and the contemplative life, the King temporal power and the active life. In Eastern terms, the higher principle is described as masculine, the lower as feminine. Hence in the ideal marriage of Sacerdotium and Regnum, the Priest is bridegroom, the King is bride. The formula cited above is a marriage formula.

Until recently most Europeans imagined that ‘history of thought’ and ‘development of Western civilisation’ were almost the same thing. The development of Western thought was seen as a coherent whole and as the only one that mattered both for the present and the future. Hence Western scholars quite naively judged Indian and Chinese thought by their own standards.

Eastern achievements in religion and philosophy appeared on the horizon of our spiritual world as strange, attractive phenomena. To see a Chinese work of art is, indeed, an exciting experience. But, in our culture, art has a place apart ; we can enjoy these astonishing creations without identifying ourselves with the particular feeling for life which is embodied in them. In the same way some ancient Eastern religious and philosophical writings appealed to moderns who, though rather sceptical in matters of religious creed and dogmas, yet regarded mystical experience of the Infinite as the core of religion. The documents of early Indian metaphysics—the so-called Upanishads—were interpreted in this romantic way as remnants of ‘a far off, ancient household of the soul.’ Of the rich philosophical literature of China one book has become popular in Western Europe since it was discovered in the last century : the so-called Tao Te ching, the title indicating that its subject is both the Absolute and absolute, or perfect, action. This short but great book, composed about the end of the creative period of ancient Chinese philosophy (3rd century B.C.), was accepted as the embodiment of a primaeval metaphysic that could be regarded as mysticism. Translated again and again in nearly all Western languages, it has obtained a definite place in what is called ‘World Literature.’