If we wish to discuss mysticism and society in their mutual relationship there is one astonishing fact which should be pointed out from the outset. In the infinite welter of literature on mysticism which, especially during the last two generations, has taken on quite extraordinary proportions, the problem of mysticism and society has received but scanty attention. The way of the mystic in trying to attain his goal of union or communion with God or however we may define his goal, the peculiar spiritual universe in which he lives, the intricacies of mystical theology, which has the formulation of mystical experience in a conceptural framework and the establishment of an acceptable connection between these experiences and traditional forms of theology—all these have been discussed in full detail. Even the history of such developments in different systems and religions has always aroused the interest of the historian. The social context of mysticism and its implications, however, have, as far as I am aware, only a marginal place in these discussions.

Our society in the Far West is evolving toward a consumers’ society. The differences between social classes tend to be erased by affluence and by ways of life that are becoming more and more common to those on the highest as well as the lowest level of the social scale. Thus the idea itself of social class is tending to disappear. On the other hand, a new differentiation is emerging which is based on culture and the form that culture takes in a society nourished by the means of mass communication. We may suppose that in the society of 1990 human groups will be differentiated according to the tastes and aptitudes of each of their members.

No problem is more crucial in the history of the Old World than that of the relationship between opposite shores of the Mediterranean. We should like to approach it from a particular though historically central viewpoint: namely, from the connection existing between Canaan and the Aegean basin, or, in other words, between a Semitic Orient or Levant which the Greeks called Phoenicia, and a Europe which was the Occident, the region of Sunset, to the Near-Eastern Semites.

We have hesitated in choosing this title because it is identical with that of Bergson's masterly work. Bergson was perhaps the most eminent philosopher to build his philosophical views in part on the basis of biological evolutionism. The biological knowledge which was available in Bergson's time is however now out of date. Our present understanding of evolution is rather different from his. This is as it should be. Science is cumulative knowledge. A scientist works to make the knowledge whith which he started obsolete. In a very real sense he works to make his own work obsolete as well. In so far as a philosophy has science as one of its components, or supports, philosophy must be rethought, reconstructed, and reformulated from the vantage point of each generation. If all conclusions based on scientific knowledge of a half century ago were still valid, this could only mean that the study of the evolution of life is no longer profitable. Such however is not the case.

Until now the history of the first contacts between China and Europe in modern times has been studied principally from a Politica! Point of view or from an economic and commercial one, as well as from its religious aspects. The cultural aspects and more particularly the philosophical consequences of these contacts have hardly been touched upon except by Chinese scholars with little knowledge of European sources, or inversely by European historians who have not made sufficient use of Chinese sources. For about fifteen years I have devoted two or three of my courses at the Collège de France to studying the Chinese thinkers of the Ch'ing period, and this has led me to touch upon certain questions which the introduction of European ideas in China by Jesuit missionaries at this time poses. Occupied with other research in recent years, I have not followed at close hand the many studies which have been devoted to these questions by Chinese and Japanese scholars, notably by Professors Fang Ho of Taipei, Saeki Yoshiro of Hiroshima, and Goto Sueo of Tokyo, and I am not familiar with the recent Marxist interpretations, those of Hiu Wai-lu, of Kwan Fong, or the recent ideas of Fong Yiu-lan or the other collaborators of the Pekinese magazine “Philosophic Studies” (Tcho-hiu yen-kiou). I must apologize for using documentation which is not up-to-date or not according to the fashions of the day and which at any rate is very incomplete, for I am not a specialist in this subject. I would especially like to address myself to the Chinese reactions to the first Sino-European contacts rather than the European reactions, which—in Europe at least— are better known and which still more so are outside my field of competence.

When I was at the lycée, I listened with passion to the lessons of my history professor and I eagerly enlarged upon his lessons by doing a great deal of reading. On the other hand, I disliked mathematics. For me, equations, theorems and logarithms were no more than cumbersome baggage for the historian I aspired to become. Worse than that, it was an obstacle which inevitably I had to surmount in order to obtain my baccalauréat. Having surmounted the obstacle, I simbolically sold my table of logarithms, for had I not freed myself forever of that which for too long had been a nightmare?… Now, about twelve years later, without my ever having deviated from my original course, I find myself once again confronted with mathematics. Of the same sort? Certainly not. What I am now confronted with is infinitely more complicated and beyond my comprehension as I lack the basis which I erstwhile ignored. What then has happened? Why is it that the historian that I became in the meantime now needs mathematics today?