clysmic change, and the more thoughtful among them—that is, the potential leadership groups—keep groping for the meaning of this painful process. They want a theory of history that will explain and justify their present travail and will help to clarify the way ahead of them. In fact, it is the historical theories in men’s minds, more than any other factor under human control, that gives direction to the tremendous transformation of Asia now under way. This situation actually may not be unique to Asia. In this age in which even the philosophers have retreated into narrow specializations in logic and semantics, the historian seems to have inherited the job of being the synthesizer of knowledge about mankind, and it is the theories of the universal historian that are sometimes the closest approach to what might be called guilding philosophies for modern man.
The traditional historical concepts of Asia, which are even more narrowly culture-bound than are our own, have been found to be entirely inadequate to the task of supplying a guiding philosophy in this age of rapid change. Asians instead have seized upon the historical theories of the Occident, and though these have been derived exclusively from the historical experience of the West, Asians are using them to explain phenomena sometimes quite unlike those ever known in Europe, occurring in areas which for the most part have had very different past experiences from the West. As might be expected, the results have been not just intellectually confusing but often disastrous in a much more practical sense.
Take, for example, the mechanistic application of the narrowly Occidental theories of Marxism to conditions and cultures toward which Marx himself had little interest and less understanding. I do not mean to suggest that Marxist theories are all entirely inapplicable to Asia. Marxist insights have contributed to our understanding of the West, and these insights have some, though usually less, validity in Asia. On the whole, however, the tendency of Asians to see the world through Marxist glasses has blurred and distorted their picture of themselves and their problems far more than it has clarified their vision. I would not say that the present problems of Asia derive basically from such misinterpretation of history, but these misinterpretations unquestionably have greatly aggravated some of these problems.
It might be argued that it is precisely in the field of historical theory that Asia is being adequately taken into account in the West today. The work of that great historian, Arnold Toynbee, might be cited as proof of this thesis. With your indulgence for my temerity, I should like to cite Toynbee to prove the contrary. I do not wish to become involved in a discussion of Toynbee’s specific theories. Even though I do not agree with all of them, I have far too much awe of his prodigious learning
