William Haas (1883-1956) was born in Nuremberg and received his PhD. at Munich in 1910. He traveled widely throughout the Middle East and taught at universities in Germany, Iran and the United States. After a lifetime studying the thoughts and cultures of the East, he formulated the thesis laid out here in his final book: that East and West are not mere geographical or even racial distinctions, but two radically different types of consciousness, two fundamentally different orientations and ways of thinking.

"Professor Haas attacks-and I believe, demolishes-an assumption that underlies almost all modern theories of history: that the minds of all human beings, if not defective or disordered, work in essentially the same way. ... [He] has, I believe, done for the study of comparative history what Böhr did for atomic physics." - Revilo Oliver