Chapter One

"Europe and China ... as the most cultivated and distant peoples stretch out their arms to each other, those in between may gradually be brought to a better way of life." Leibniz "The sailor relies upon himself amid the fluctuations of the waves, and eye and heart must be always open.... We see the nations freed from the fear of Nature and its slavish bondage." Hegel

Mare Nostrum vs. Central Plain

How and why have human beings developed different civilizations? If Easterners and Westerners were in fact peoples with inherently different biological capacities, we would be able to assign the problem to evolution alone. This was the solution adopted by many important Western thinkers of the Enlightenment, from Hume to Kant and Hegel. But if, on the other hand, we are members of the same species—Homo sapiens—with the same mental capacities, as Western genetics has now surely proven, then cultural differences must have originated from man's varying interactions with his environment. These interactions between Man and Nature ultimately gave rise to distinct civilizations.

Environmental Distinction between West and East

How do the environments of East and West differ? Western civilization began and developed around the sea, whereas Eastern civilization—denoting, in this book, China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Vietnam—developed in a heartland. There was little connection between the two, due to their separation by the high