East Meets West

THE ASIAN LEGACY AND AMERICAN LIFE --edited by Arthur E. Christy--John Day ($3.50).

This authoritative and readable collection of twelve essays is addressed to Americans who think that the U.S. cultural debt to Asia could be repaid with the return of a few porcelains, screens, Chi nese backscratchers and the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Ranging from agriculture to art, music to philosophy, the essays will be especially helpful to Americans who still regard Asiatics as exotically mysterious beings with whom they have virtually nothing in common.

Religion & Happiness. Asia's richest gifts to the U.S., says Harvard's Philosopher-Emeritus William Ernest Hocking, are spiritual. Without its spiritual guid ance, "God knows what religion we would have -- possibly Druidism, if we have a Celtic rill in our veins. . . . Whatever forms of religion are alive among us we owe to Asia." "We of the West," declares Novelist Pearl Buck, "need to have happiness restored to us, not through a new spiritual rebirth, but through a plain and simple return [to the Eastern conviction that] what makes a human being happy is to feel himself wanted and understood and appreciated. The fabulous courtesy of the East is not a ritual, but simply oil to grease the machinery of human relationships. The people of the East need from us the physical aids . . . science to heal diseased bodies and to remove a crushing labor and to provide more food. We are like men digging . . . through a mountain.

We have begun at opposite ends but the goal is the same -- human happiness. We ought to meet somewhere . . . and find that each faces the other's light." Asiatics, concludes Editor Arthur E. Christy, understand the secret of human happiness somewhat better than the U.S. corporation which recently advertised: "Buddha, who was born a prince, gave up his name, succession, and heritage to attain serenity. But we do not need to give up the world; we have only to see a life-insurance agent. . . ."

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