ABSTRACT
It is no easy task for me to speak of Richard Wilhelm and his work, because, starting very far away from one another, our paths crossed in comet-like fashion. His life-work has a range that lies outside my compass. I have never seen the China that first moulded his thought and later continued to engross him, nor am I familiar with its language, the living expression of the Chinese East. I stand indeed as a stranger outside that vast realm of knowledge and experience in which Wilhelm worked as a master of his profession. He as a sinologist and I as a doctor would probably never have come into contact had we remained specialists. But we met in a field of humanity which begins beyond the academic boundary posts. There lay our point of contact; there the spark leapt across and kindled a light that was to become for me one of the most significant events of my life. Because of this I may perhaps speak of Wilhelm and his work, thinking with grateful respect of this mind which created a bridge between East and West and gave to the Occident the precious heritage of a culture thousands of years old, a culture perhaps destined to disappear forever.
