The absolute superiority of India over the West in philosophy; poetry from the Mahabharata, containing the Bhagavad-Gita, “perhaps the most beautiful… - Hermann von Keyserling

I have not found in Europe or America, poets, thinkers or popular leaders equal, or even comparable, to those of India today.

This philosophical nation par excellence” says Count Keyserling, “has more Sanskrit words for philosophical and religious thought than are found in Greek, Latin and German combined.

Thus the unique formative power of Islam depends on the unique nature of their God. Allah deserves the name of the Master of Armies far more than Jehovah, far more than the Christian God. He is an autocrat in the sense of a general, not that of a tyrant And thus I appear to have it: the Mohammedan faith signifies, as the only one in the world, essentially military discipline. There is no question of right, no begging, no arguing, no crawling to and before God; here mere intention in prayer (Schirk) is a cardinal sin; man has to obey orders like a soldier. Now no one will deny that the form of consciousness of a well-drilled soldier ensures the greatest efficiency of all everywhere where execution and not thinking out of a problem is concerned. The Islamic world represents a single army with a unified, unbroken spirit. Such a spirit melts down all differences in the long runj it makes every one into a comrade.In Islam it has melted down all racial differences. The ritualism of this faith has a different significance from that of Hinduism and Catholicism. It is a question of making discipline objective. When the faithful perform their prayers at fixed hours in the mosque, kneeling there line upon line, when they all go through the same gesture simultaneously, this is not done, as in the case of Hinduism, as a means to self-realisation, but it is done in the spirit in which a Prussian soldier files past his Emperor. This fundamentally military attitude explains all the intrinsic advantages of a Mussulman. It explains simultaneously his fundamental failings: his lad: of progressiveness, his inadaptability, his lad: of inventive power. The soldier only has to obey his orders; the rest is Allah's business.