Lin Yutang - the Importance of Living

THE

IMPORTANCE

Of LIVING

a JOHN DAY book

NEW YORK

It is not truth that makes man great, but man that makes truth

great.

CONFUCIUS

Only those who take leisurely what the people of the world are

busy about can be busy about what the people of the world take

leisurely.

CHANG CH’AO

PREFACE

This is a personal testimony, a testimony of my own experience of

thought and life. It is not intended to be objective and makes no

claim to establish eternal truths. In fact I rather despise claims to

objectivity in philosophy; the point of view is the thing. I should have

liked to call it “A Lyrical Philosophy,” using the word “lyrical” in the

sense of being a highly personal and individual outlook. But that

would be too beautiful a name and I must forego it, for fear of aiming

too high and leading the reader to expect too much, and because the

main ingredient of my thought is matter-of-fact prose, a level easier

to maintain because more natural. Very much contented am I to lie

low, to cling to the soil, to be of kin to the sod. My soul squirms

comfortably in the soil and sand and is happy, Sometimes when one

is drunk with this earth, one’s spirit seems so light that he thinks he

is in heaven. But actually he seldom rises six feet above the ground.

I should have liked also to write the entire book in the form of a

dialogue like Plato’s. It is such a convenient form for personal,

inadvertent disclosures, for bringing in the significant trivialities of our

daily life, above all for idle rambling about the pastures of sweet,

silent thought. But somehow I have not done so. I do not know why,

A fear, perhaps, that this form of literature being so little in vogue

today, no one probably would read it, and a writer after all wants to

be read. And when I say dialogue, I do not mean answers and

questions like newspaper interviews, or those leaders chopped up

into short paragraphs; I mean really good, long, leisurely discourses

extending several pages at a stretch, with many detours, and coming

back to the original point of discussion by a short cut at the most

unexpected spot, like a man returning home by climbing over a

hedge, to the surprise of his walking companion. Oh, how I love to

reach home by climbing over the back fence, and to travel on

bypaths! At least my companion will grant that I am familiar with the

way home and with the surrounding countryside . . . But I dare not.

I am not original. The ideas expressed here have been thought

and expressed by many thinkers of the East and West over and over

again; those I borrow from the East are hackneyed truths there. They

are, nevertheless, my ideas; they have become a part of my being. If

they have taken root in my being, it is because they express

something original in me, and when I first encountered them, my

heart gave an instinctive assent. I like them as ideas and not

because the person who expressed them is of any account. In fact, I

have traveled the bypaths in my reading as well as in my writing.

Many of the authors quoted are names obscure and may baffle a

Chinese professor of literature. If some happen to be well-known, I

accept their ideas only as they compel my intuitive approval and not

because the authors are well-known. It is my habit to buy cheap

editions of old, obscure books and see what I can discover there. If

the professors of literature knew the sources of my ideas, they would

be astounded at the Philistine. But there is a greater pleasure in

picking up a small pearl in an ash-can than in looking at a large one

in a jeweler’s window.

I am not deep and not well-read. If one is too well-read, then one

does not know right is right and wrong is wrong. I have not read

Locke or Hume or Berkeley, and have not taken a college course in

philosophy. Technically speaking, my method and my training are all

wrong, because I do not read philosophy, but only read life at first

hand. That is an unconventional way of studying philosophy—the

incorrect way. Some of my sources are: Mrs. Huang, an amah in my

family who has all the ideas that go into the breeding of a good

woman in China; a Soochow boat-woman with her profuse use of

expletives; a Shanghai street car conductor; my cook’s wife; a lion

cub in the zoo; a squirrel in Central Park in New York; a deck

steward who made one good remark; that writer of a column on

astronomy (dead for some ten years now); all news in boxes; and

any writer who does not kill our sense of curiosity in life or who has

not killed it in himself . . . how can I enumerate them all?

Thus deprived of academic training in philosophy, I am less

scared to write a book about it. Everything seems clearer and

simpler for it, if that is any compensation in the eyes of orthodox

philosophy, I doubt it. I know there will be complaints that my words

are not long enough, that I make things too easy to understand, and

finally that I lack cautiousness, that I do not whisper low and trip with

mincing steps in the sacred mansions of philosophy, looking properly

scared as I ought to do. Courage seems to be the rarest of all virtues

in a modern philosopher. But I have always wandered outside the

precincts of philosophy and that gives me courage. There is a

method of appealing to one’s own intuitive judgment, of thinking out

one’s own ideas and forming one’s own independent judgments, and

confessing them in public with a childish impudence, and sure

enough, some kindred souls in another corner of the world will agree

with you. A person forming his ideas in this manner will often be

astounded to discover how another writer said exactly the same

things and felt exactly the same way, but perhaps expressed the

ideas more easily and more gracefully. It is then that he discovers

the ancient author and the ancient author bears him witness, and

they become forever friends in spirit.

There is therefore the matter of my obligations to these authors,

especially my Chinese friends in spirit. I have for my collaborators in

writing this book a company of genial souls, who I hope like me as

much as I like them. For in a very real sense, these spirits have been

with me, in the only form of spiritual communion that I recognize as

real—when two men separated by the ages think the same thoughts

and sense the same feelings and each perfectly understands the

other. In the preparation of this book, a few of my friends have been

especially helpful with their contributions and advice: Po Chüyi of the

eighth century, Su Tungp’o of the eleventh, and that great company

of original spirits of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries—the

romantic and voluble T’u Ch’ihshui, the playful, original Yüan

Chunglang, the deep, magnificent Li Chowu, the sensitive and

sophisticated Chang Ch’ao, the epicure Li Liweng, the happy and

gay old hedonist Yuan Tsets’ai, and the bubbling, joking,

effervescent Chin Shengt’an—unconventional souls all, men with too

much independent judgment and too much feeling for things to be

liked by the orthodox critics, men too good to be “moral” and too

moral to be “good” for the Confucianists. The smallness of the select

company has made the enjoyment of their presence all the more

valued and sincere. Some of these may happen not to be quoted,

but they are here with me in this book all the same. Their coming

back to their own in China is only a matter of time. . . . There have

been others, names less well-known, but no less welcome for their

apt remarks, because they express my sentiments so well. I call

them my Chinese Amiels—people who don’t talk much, but always

talk sensibly, and I respect their good sense. There are others again

who belong to the illustrious company of “Anons” of all countries and

ages, who in an inspired moment said something wiser then they

knew, like the unknown fathers of great men. Finally there are

greater ones still, whom I look up to more as masters than as

companions of the spirit, whose serenity of understanding is so

human and yet so divine, and whose wisdom seems to have come

entirely without effort because it has become completely natural.

Such a one is Chuangtse, and such a one is T’ao Yüanming, whose

simplicity of spirit is the despair of smaller men. I have sometimes let

these souls speak directly to the reader, making proper

acknowledgment, and at other times, I have spoken for them while I

seem to be speaking for myself. The older my friendship with them,

the more likely is my indebtedness to their ideas to be of the familiar,

elusive and invisible type, like parental influence in a good family

breeding. It is impossible to put one’s finger on a definite point of

resemblance. I have also chosen to speak as a modern, sharing the

modern life, and not only as a Chinese; to give only what I have

personally absorbed into my modern being, and not merely to act as

a respectful translator of the ancients. Such a procedure has its

drawbacks, but on the whole, one can do a more sincere job of it.

The selections are therefore as highly personal as the rejections. No

complete presentation of any one poet or philosopher is attempted

here, and it is impossible to judge of them through the evidences on

these pages. I must therefore conclude by saying as usual that the

merits of this book, if any, are largely due to the helpful suggestions

of my collaborators, while for the inaccuracies, deficiencies and

immaturities of judgment, I alone am responsible.

Again I owe my thanks to Mr. and Mrs. Richard J. Walsh, first, for

suggesting the idea of the book, and secondly, for their useful and

frank criticism. I must also thank Mr. Hugh Wade for cooperating on

preparing the manuscript for the press and on the proofs, and Miss

Lillian Peffer for making the Index.

LIN YUTANG

New York City

July 30, 1937

CONTENTS
PREFACE
I. THE AWAKENING
I. APPROACH TO LIFE
II. A PSEUDO-SCIENTIFIC FORMULA
III. SHE SCAMP AS IDEAL
II. VIEWS OF MANKIND
I. CHRISTIAN, GREEK AND CHINESE
II. EARTH-BOUND
III. SPIRIT AND FLESH
IV. A BIOLOGICAL VIEW
V. HUMAN LIFE A POEM
III. OUR ANIMAL HERITAGE
I. THE MONKEY EPIC
II. IN THE IMAGE OF THE MONKEY
III. ON BEING MORTAL
IV. ON HAVING A STOMACH
V. ON HAVING STRONG MUSCLES
VI. ON HAVING A MIND
IV. ON BEING HUMAN
I. ON HUMAN DIGNITY
II. ON PLAYFUL CURIOSITY: THE RISE OF HUMAN CIVILIZATION
III. ON DREAMS
IV. ON THE SENSE OF HUMOR
V. ON BEING WAYWARD AND INCALCULABLE
VI. THE DOCTRINE OF THE INDIVIDUAL
V. WHO CAN BEST ENJOY LIFE?
I. FIND THYSELF: CHUANGTSE
II. PASSION, WISDOM AND COURAGE: MENCIUS
III. CYNICISM, FOLLY AND CAMOUFLAGE: LAOTSE
IV. “PHILOSOPHY OF HALF-AND-HALF”: TSESSE
V. A LOVER OF LIFE: T’AO YUANMING
VI. THE FEAST OF LIFE
I. THE PROBLEM OF HAPPINESS
II. HUMAN HAPPINESS IS SENSUOUS
III. CHIN’S THIRTY-THREE HAPPY MOMENTS
IV. MISUNDERSTANDINGS OF MATERIALISM
V. HOW ABOUT MENTAL PLEASURES?

VII. THE IMPORTANCE OF LOAFING
I. MAN THE ONLY WORKING ANIMAL
II. THE CHINESE THEORY OF LEISURE
III. THE CULT OF THE IDLE LIFE
IV. THIS EARTH THE ONLY HEAVEN
V. WHAT IS LUCK?
VI. THREE AMERICAN VICES
VIII. THE ENJOYMENT OF THE HOME
I. ON GETTING BIOLOGICAL
II. CELIBACY A FREAK OF CIVILIZATION
III. ON SEX APPEAL
IV. THE CHINESE FAMILY IDEAL
V. ON GROWING OLD GRACEFULLY
IX. THE ENJOYMENT OF LIVING
I. ON LYING IN BED
II. ON SITTING IN CHAIRS
III. ON CONVERSATION
IV. ON TEA AND FRIENDSHIP
V. ON SMOKE AND INCENSE
VI. ON DRINK AND WINE GAMES
VII. ON FOOD AND MEDICINE
VIII. SOME CURIOUS WESTERN CUSTOMS
IX. THE INHUMANITY OF WESTERN DRESS
X. ON HOUSE AND INTERIORS
X. THE ENJOYMENT OF NATURE
I. PARADISE LOST?
II. ON BIGNESS
III. TWO CHINESE LADIES
IV. ON ROCKS AND TREES
V. ON FLOWERS AND BLOWER ARRANGEMENTS
VI. THE “VASE FLOWERS” OF YUAN CHUNGLANG
VII. THE EPIGRAMS OF CHANG CH’AO
XI. THE ENJOYMENT OF TRAVEL
I. ON GOING ABOUT AND SEEING THINGS
II. “THE TRAVELS OF MINGLIAOTSE”
a. THE REASON FOR THE FLIGHT
b. THE WAY OF TRAVELING
c. AT AUSTERE HEIGHTS
d. BACK TO HUMANITY
e. PHILOSOPHY OF THE FLIGHT
XII. THE ENJOYMENT OF CULTURE
I. GOOD TASTE IN KNOWLEDGE

II. ART AS PLAY AND PERSONALITY
III. THE ART OF READING
IV. THE ART OF WRITING
XIII. RELATIONSHIP TO GOD
I. THE RESTORATION OF RELIGION
II. WHY I AM A PAGAN
XIV. THE ART OF THINKING
I. THE NEED FOR HUMANIZED THINKING
II. THE RETURN TO COMMON SENSE
III. BE REASONABLE
 
APPENDIX A: CERTAIN CHINESE NAMES
 
APPENDIX B: A CHINESE CRITICAL VOCABULARY
 
INDEX OF NAMES AND SUBJECTS

THE IMPORTANCE OF LIVING

Chapter One

THE AWAKENING

I. APPROACH TO LIFE

In what follows I am presenting the Chinese point of view, because I

cannot help myself. I am interested only in presenting a view of life

and of things as the best and wisest Chinese minds have seen it and

expressed it in their folk wisdom and their literature. It is an idle

philosophy born of an idle life, evolved in a different age, I am quite

aware. But I cannot help feeling that this view of life is essentially

true, and since we are alike under the skin, what touches the human

heart in one country touches all I shall have to present a view of life

as Chinese poets and scholars evaluated it with their common

sense, their realism and their sense of poetry. I shall attempt to

reveal some of the beauty of the pagan world, a sense of the pathos

and beauty and terror and comedy of life, viewed by a people who

have a strong feeling of the limitations of our existence, and yet

somehow retain a sense of the dignity of human life.

The Chinese philosopher is one who dreams with one eye open,

who views life with love and sweet irony, who mixes his cynicism with

a kindly tolerance, and who alternately wakes up from life’s dream

and then nods again, feeling more alive when he is dreaming than

when he is awake, thereby investing his waking life with a dream-

world quality. He sees with one eye closed and with one eye opened

the futility of much that goes on around him and of his own

endeavors, but barely retains enough sense of reality to determine to

go through with it. He is seldom disillusioned because he has no

illusions, and seldom disappointed because he never had

extravagant hopes. In this way his spirit is emancipated,

For, after surveying the field of Chinese literature and philosophy, I

come to the conclusion that the highest ideal of Chinese culture has

always been a men with a sense of detachment (takuan) toward life

based on a sense of wise disenchantment From this detachment

comes high-mindedness (k’uanghuai), a high-mindedness which

enables one to go through life with tolerant irony and escape the

temptations of fame and wealth and achievement, and eventually

makes him take what comes. And from this detachment arise also

his sense of freedom, his love of vagabondage and his pride and

nonchalance. It is only with this sense of freedom and nonchalance

that one eventually arrives at the keen and intense joy of living.

It is useless for me to say whether my philosophy is valid or not

for the Westerner. To understand Western life, one would have to

look at it as a Westerner born, with his own temperament, his bodily

attitudes and his own set of nerves. I have no doubt that American

nerves can stand a good many things that Chinese nerves cannot

stand, and vice versa. It is good that it should he so—that we should

all be born different. And yet it is all a question of relativity. I am quite

sure that amidst the hustle and bustle of American life, there is a

great deal of wistfulness, of the divine desire to lie on a plot of grass

under tall beautiful trees of an idle afternoon and just do nothing. The

necessity for such common cries as “Wake up and live” is to me a

good sign that a wise portion of American humanity prefer to dream

the hours away. The American is after all not as bad as all that. It is

only a question whether he will have more or less of that sort of

thing, and how he will arrange to make it possible. Perhaps the

American is merely ashamed of the word “loafing” in a world where

everybody is doing something, but somehow, as sure as I know he is

also an animal, he likes sometimes to have his muscles relaxed, to

stretch on the sand, or to lie still with one leg comfortably curled up

and one arm placed below his head as his pillow If so, he cannot he

very different from Yen Huei, who had exactly that virtue and whom

Confucius desperately admired among all his disciples. The only

thing I desire to see is that he be honest about it, and that he

proclaim to the world that he likes it when he likes it, that it is not

when he is working in the office but when he is lying idly on the sand

that his soul utters, “Life is beautiful”

We are, therefore, about to see a philosophy and art of living as

the mind of the Chinese people as a whole has understood it. I am

inclined to think that, in a good or bad sense, there is nothing like it

in the world. For here we come to an entirely new way of looking at

life by an entirely different type of mind. It is a truism to say that the

culture of any nation is the product of its mind, Consequently, where

there is a national mind so racially different and historically isolated

from the Western cultural world, we have the right to expect new

answers to the problems of life, or what is better, new methods of

approach, or, still better, a new posing of the problems themselves.

We know some of the virtues and deficiencies of that mind, at least

as revealed to us in the historical past. It has a glorious art and a

contemptible science, a magnificent common sense and an intile

logic, a fine womanish chatter about life and no scholastic

philosophy. It is generally known that the Chinese mind is an

intensely practical, hard-headed one, and it is also known to some

lovers of Chinese art that it is a profoundly sensitive mind; by a still

smaller proportion of people, it is accepted as also a profoundly

poetic and philosophical mind. At least the Chinese are noted for

taking things philosophically, which is saying more than the

statement that the Chinese have a great philosophy or have a few

great philosophers. For a nation to have a few philosophers is not so

unusual, but for a nation to take things philosophically is terrific. It is

evident anyway that the Chinese as a nation are more philosophic

than efficient, and that if it were otherwise, no nation could have

survived the high blood pressure of an efficient life for four thousand

years. Four thousand years of efficient living would ruin any nation.

An important consequence is that, while in the West, the insane are

so many that they are put in an asylum, in China the insane are so

unusual that we worship them, as anybody who has a knowledge of

Chinese literature will testify-And that, after all, is what I am driving

at. Yes, the Chinese have a light, an almost gay, philosophy, and the

best proof of their philosophic temper is to be found in this wise and

merry philosophy of living.

II. A PSEUDO-SCIENTIFIC FORMULA

Let us begin with an examination of the Chinese mental make-up

which produced this philosophy of living: great realism, inadequate

idealism, a high sense of humor, and a high poetic sensitivity to life

and nature.

Mankind seems to be divided into idealists and realists, and

idealism and realism are the two great forces molding human

progress. The clay of humanity is made soft and pliable by the water

of idealism, but the stuff that holds it together is after all the clay

itself, or we might all evaporate into Ariels. The forces of idealism

and realism tug at each other in all human activities, personal, social

and national, and real progress is made possible by the proper

mixture of these two ingredients, so that the clay is kept in the ideal

pliable, plastic condition, half moist and half dry, not hardened and

unmanageable, nor dissolving into mud. The soundest nations, like

the English, have realism and idealism mixed in proper proportions,

like the clay which neither hardens and so gets past the stage for the

artist’s molding, nor is so wishy-washy that it cannot retain its form.

Some countries are thrown into perpetual revolutions because into

their clay has been injected some liquid of foreign ideals which is not

yet properly assimilated, and the clay is therefore not able to keep its

shape.

A vague, uncritical idealism always lends itself to ridicule and too

much of it might be a danger to mankind, leading it round in a futile

wild-goose chase for imaginary ideals. If there were too many of

these visionary idealists in any society or people, revolutions would

be the order of the day. Human society would be like an idealistic

couple forever getting tired of one place and changing their

residence regularly once every three months, for the simple reason

that no one place is ideal and the place where one is not seems

always better because one is not there. Very fortunately, man is also

gifted with a sense of humor, whose function, as I conceive it, is to

exercise criticism of man’s dreams, and bring them in touch with the

world of reality. It is important that man dreams, but it is perhaps

equally important that he can laugh at his own dreams, That is a

great gift, and the Chinese have plenty of it.

The sense of humor, which I shall discuss at more length in a later

chapter, seems to be very closely related to the sense of reality, or

realism. If the joker is often cruel in disillusioning the idealist, he

nevertheless performs a very important function right there by not

letting the idealist bump his head against the stone wall of reality and

receive a ruder shock. He also gently eases the tension of the hot-

headed enthusiast and makes him live longer. By preparing him for

disillusion, there is probably less pain in the final impact, for a

humorist is always like a man charged with the duty of breaking a

sad news gently to a dying patient. Sometimes the gentle warning

from a humorist saves the dying patient’s life. If idealism and

disillusion must necessarily go together in this world, we must say

that life is cruel, rather than the joker who reminds us of life’s cruelty.

I have often thought of formulas by which the mechanism of

human progress and historical change can be expressed. They

seem to be as follows:

Reality—Dreams = Animal Being

Reality + Dreams = A Heart-Ache (usually called Idealism)

Reality + Humor = Realism (also called Conservatism)

Dreams—Humor = Fanaticism

Dreams + Humor = Fantasy

Reality + Dreams + Humor = Wisdom

So then, wisdom, or the highest type of thinking, consists in toning

down our dreams or idealism with a good sense of humor, supported

by reality itself.

As pure ventures in pseudo-scientific formulations, we may

proceed to analyze national characters in the following manner. I say

“pseudo-scientific” because I distrust all dead and mechanical

formulas for expressing anything connected with human affairs or

human personalities. Putting human affairs in exact formulas shows

in itself a lack of the sense of humor and therefore a lack of wisdom I

do not mean that these things are not being done: they are.

That is why we get so much pseudo-science today. When a

psychologist can measure a man’s I.Q. or P.Q.,

it is a pretty poor

world, and specialists have risen to usurp humanized scholarship.

But if we recognize that these formulas are no more than handy,

graphic ways of expressing certain opinions, and so long as we don’t

drag in the sacred name of science to help advertise our goods, no

harm is done. The following are my formulas for the characters of

certain nations, entirely personal and completely incapable of proof

or verification. Anyone is free to dispute them and change them or

add his own, if he does not claim that he can prove his private

opinions by a mass of statistical facts and figures. Let “R” stand for a

sense of reality (or realism), “D” for dreams (or idealism), “H” for a

sense of humor, and—adding one important ingredient—“S” for

sensitivity.

And further let “4” stand for “abnormally high,” “3” stand

for “high,” “2” for “fair,” and “I” for “low,” and we have the following

pseudo-chemical formulas for the following national characters.

Human beings and communities behave then differently according to

their different compositions, as sulphates and sulphides or carbon

monoxide and carbon dioxide behave differently from one another.

For me, the interesting thing always is to watch how human

communities or nations behave differently under identical conditions.

As we cannot invent words like “humoride” and “humorate” after the

fashion of chemistry, we may put it thus: “3 grains of Realism, 2

grains of Dreams, 2 grains of Humor and I grain of Sensitivity make

an Englishman.”

= The English

= The French

= The Americans

= The Germans

= The Russians

= The Japanese

= The Chinese

I do not know the Italians, the Spanish, the Hindus and others well

enough even to essay a formula on the subject, realizing that the

above are shaky enough as they are, and in any case are enough to

bring down a storm of criticism upon my head. Probably these

formulas are more provocative than authoritative. I promise to modify

them gradually for my own use as new facts are brought to my

knowledge, or new impressions are formed. That is all they are worth

today—a record of the progress of my knowledge and the gaps of

my ignorance.

Some observations may be necessary. It is easy to see that I

regard the Chinese as most closely allied to the French in their

sense of humor and sensitivity, as is quite evident from the way the

French write their books and eat their food, while the more volatile

character of the French comes from their greater idealism, which

takes the form of love of abstract ideas (recall the manifestoes of

their literary, artistic and political movements). “R

” for Chinese

realism makes the Chinese the most realistic people; “D

” accounts

for something of a drag in the changes in their pattern or ideal of life.

The high figures for Chinese humor and sensitivity, as well as for

their realism, are perhaps due to my too close association and the

vividness of my impressions. For Chinese sensitivity, little justification

is needed; the whole story of Chinese prose, poetry and painting

proclaims it. . . . The Japanese and Germans are very much alike in

their comparative lack of humor (such is the general impression of

people), yet it is really impossible to give a “zero” for any one

characteristic in any one nation, not even for idealism in the Chinese

people. It is all a question of degree; such statements as a complete

lack of this or that quality are not based on an intimate knowledge of

the peoples. For this reason, I give the Japanese and the Germans

“H

,” instead of “H

,” and I intuitively feel that I am right. But I do

believe that the Japanese and the Germans suffer politically at

present, and have suffered in the past, fox lacking a better sense of

humor. How a Prussian Geheimrat loves to be called a Geheimrat,

and how he loves his buttons and metal pins! A certain belief in

“logical necessity” (often “holy” or “sacred”), a tendency to fly too

straight at a goal instead of circling around it, often carries one too

far It is not so much what you believe in that matters, as the way in

which you believe it and proceed to translate that belief into action.

By “D

” for the Japanese I am referring to their fanatic loyalty to their

emperor and to the state, made possible by a low mixture of humor.

For idealism must stand for different things in different countries, as

the so-called sense of humor really comprises a very wide variety of

things. . . . There is an interesting tug between idealism and realism

in America, both given high figures, and that produces the energy

characteristic of the Americans. What American idealism is, I had

better leave it to the Americans to find out; but they are always

enthusiastic about something or other. A great deal of this idealism is

noble, in the sense that the Americans are easily appealed to by

noble ideals or noble words; but some of it is mere gullibility. The

American sense of humor again means a different thing from the

Continental sense of humor, but really I think that, such as it is (the

love of fun and an innate, broad common sense), it is the greatest

asset of the American nation. In the coming years of critical change,

they will have great need of that broad common sense referred to by

James Bryce, which I hope will tide them over these critical times. I

give American sensitivity a low figure because of my impression that

they can stand so many things. There is no use quarreling about

this, because we will be quarreling about words. . . . The English

scan to be on the whole the soundest race: contrast their “R

” with

the French “R

”. I am all for “R

”. It bespeaks stability. The ideal

formula for me would seem to be R

, for too much idealism

or too much sensitivity is not a good thing, either. And if I give “S

”

for English sensitivity, and if that is too low, who is to blame for it

except the English themselves? How can I tell whether the English

ever feel anything—joy, happiness, anger, satisfaction—when they

are determined to look so glum on all occasions?

We might apply the same formula to writers and poets. To take a

few well-known types:

Shakespeare

= R

Heine = R

Shelley = R

Poe = R

Li Po = R

Tu Fu = R

Su Tungp’o = R

These are no more than a few impromptu suggestions. But it is clear

that all poets have a high sensitivity, or they wouldn’t be poets at all:

Poe, I feel, is a very sound genius, in spite of his weird, imaginative

gift. Doesn’t he love “ratiocination”?

So my formula for the Chinese national mind is:

There we start with an “S

,” standing for high sensitivity, which

guarantees a proper artistic approach to life and answers for the

Chinese affirmation that this earthly life is beautiful and the

consequent intense love of this life. But it signifies more than that;

actually it stands for the artistic approach even to philosophy. It

accounts for the fact that the Chinese philosopher’s view of life is

essentially the poet’s view of life, and that, in China, philosophy is

married to poetry rather than to science as it is in the West. It will

become amply clear from what follows that this high sensitivity to the

pleasures and pains and flux and change of the colors of life is the

very basis that makes a light philosophy possible. Man’s sense of

the tragedy of life comes from his sensitive perception of the tragedy

of a departing spring, and a delicate tenderness toward life comes

from a tenderness toward the withered blossoms that bloomed

yesterday. First the sadness and sense of defeat, then the

awakening and the laughter of the old rogue-philosopher.

On the other hand, we have “R

” standing for intense realism,

which means an attitude of accepting life as it is and of regarding a

bird in the hand as better than two in the bush. This realism,

therefore, both reinforces and supplements the artist’s affirmation

that this life is transiently beautiful, and it all but saves the artist and

poet from escaping from life altogether. The Dreamer says “Life is

but a dream,” and the Realist replies, “Quite correct. And let us live

this dream as beautifully as we can.” But the realism of one

awakened is the poet’s realism and not that of the business man,

and the laughter of the old rogue is no longer the laughter of the

young go-getter singing his-way to success with his head up and his

chin out, but that of an old man running his finger through his flowing

beard, and speaking in a soothingly low voice. Such a dreamer loves

peace, for no one can fight hard for a dream- He will be more intent

to live reasonably and well with his fellow dreamers. Thus is the high

tension of life lowered.

But the chief function of this sense of realism is the elimination of

all non-essentials in the philosophy of life, holding life down by the

neck, as it were, for fear that the wings of imagination may carry it

away to an imaginary and possibly beautiful, but unreal, world. And

after all, the wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-

essentials, in reducing the problems of philosophy to just a few—the

enjoyment of the home (the relationship between man and woman

and child), of living, of Nature and of culture—and in showing all the

other irrelevant scientific disciplines and futile chases after

knowledge to the door. The problems of life for the Chinese

philosopher then become amazingly few and simple. It means also

an impatience with metaphysics and with the pursuit of knowledge

that does not lead to any practical bearing on life itself. And it also

means that every human activity, whether the acquiring of

knowledge or the acquiring of things, has to be submitted

immediately to the test of life itself and of its subserviency to the end

of living. Again, and here is a significant result, the end of living is not

some metaphysical entity—but just living itself.

Gifted with this realism, and with a profound distrust of logic and

of the intellect itself, philosophy for the Chinese becomes a matter of

direct and intimate feeling of life itself, and refuses to be encased in

any system. For there is a robust sense of reality, a sheer animal

sense, a spirit of reasonableness which crushes reason itself and

makes the rise of any hard and fast philosophic system impossible.

There are the three religions of China, Confucianism, Taoism and

Buddhism, all magnificent systems in themselves, and yet robust

common sense dilutes them all and reduces them all into the

common problem of the pursuit of a happy human life. The mature

Chinese is always a person who refuses to think too hard or to

believe in any single idea or faith or school of philosophy whole-

heartedly. When a friend of Confucius told him that he always

thought three times before he acted, Confucius wittily replied, “To

think twice is quite enough.” A follower of a school of philosophy is

but a student of philosophy, but a man is a student, or perhaps a

master, of life.

The final product of this culture and philosophy is this: in China, as

compared with the West, man lives a life closer to nature and closer

to childhood, a life in which the instincts and the emotions are given

free play and emphasized against the life of the intellect, with a

strange combination of devotion to the flesh and arrogance of the

spirit, of profound wisdom and foolish gaiety, of high sophistication

and childish naïveté. I would say, therefore, that this philosophy is

characterized by: first, a gift for seeing life whole in art; secondly, a

conscious return to simplicity in philosophy; and thirdly, an ideal of

reasonableness in living. The end product is, strange to say, a

worship of the poet, the peasant and the vagabond.

III. THE SCAMP AS IDEAL

To me, spiritually a child of the East and the West, man’s dignity

consists in the following facts which distinguish man from animals.

First, that he has a playful curiosity and a natural genius for exploring

knowledge; second, that he has dreams and a lofty idealism (often

vague, or confused, or cocky, it is true, but nevertheless worthwhile);

third, and still more important, that he is able to correct his dreams

by a sense of humor, and thus restrain his idealism by a more robust

and healthy realism; and finally, that he does not react to

surroundings mechanically and uniformly as animals do, but

possesses the ability and the freedom to determine his own

reactions and to change surroundings at his will. This last is the

same as saying that human personality is the last thing to be

reduced to mechanical laws; somehow the human mind is forever

elusive, uncatchable and unpredictable, and manages to wriggle out,

of mechanistic laws or a materialistic dialectic that crazy

psychologists and unmarried economists are trying to impose upon

him. Man, therefore, is a curious, dreamy, humorous and wayward,

creature.

In short, my faith in human dignity consists in the belief that man

is the greatest scamp on earth. Human dignity must be associated

with the idea of a scamp and not with that of an obedient, disciplined

and regimented soldier. The scamp is probably the most glorious

type of human being, as the soldier is the lowest type, according to

this conception. It seems in my last book, My Country and My

People, the net impression of readers was that I was trying to glorify

the “old rogue.” It is my hope that the net impression of the present

one will be that I am doing my best to glorify the scamp or vagabond.

I hope I shall succeed. For things are not so simple as they

sometimes seem. In this present age of threats to democracy and

individual liberty, probably only the scamp and the spirit of the scamp

alone will save us from becoming lost as serially numbered units in

the masses of disciplined, obedient, regimented and uniformed

coolies. The scamp will be the last and most formidable enemy of

dictatorships. He will be the champion of human dignity and

individual freedom, and will be the last to be conquered. All modern

civilization depends entirely upon him.

Probably the Creator knew well that, when He created man upon

this earth, He was producing a scamp, a brilliant scamp, it is true, but

a scamp nonetheless. The scamp-like qualities of man are, after all,

his most hopeful qualities. This scamp that the Creator has produced

is undoubtedly a brilliant chap. He is still a very unruly and awkward

adolescent, thinking himself greater and wiser than he really is, still

full of mischief and naughtiness and love of a free-for-all.

Nevertheless, there is so much good in him that the Creator might

still be willing to pin on him His hopes, as a father sometimes pins

his hopes on a brilliant but somewhat erratic son of twenty. Would He

be willing some day to retire and turn over the management of this

universe to this erratic son of His? I wonder. . . .

Speaking as a Chinese, I do not think that any civilization can be

called complete until it has progressed from sophistication to un-

sophistication, and made a conscious return to simplicity of thinking

and living, and I call no man wise until he has made the progress

from the wisdom of knowledge to the wisdom of foolishness, ‘and

become a laughing philosopher, feeling first life’s tragedy and then

life’s comedy. For we must weep before we can laugh. Out of

sadness comes the awakening and out of the awakening comes the

laughter of the philosopher, with kindliness and tolerance to boot,

The world, I believe, is far too serious, and being far too serious, it

has need of a wise and merry philosophy. The philosophy of the

Chinese art of living can certainly be called the “gay science,” if

anything can be called by that phrase used by Nietzsche. After all,

only a gay philosophy is profound philosophy; the serious

philosophies of the West haven’t even begun to understand what life

is. To me personally, the only function of philosophy is to teach us to

take life more lightly and gayly than the average business man does,

for no business man who does not retire at fifty, if he can, is in my

eyes a philosopher. This is not merely a casual thought, but is a

fundamental point of view with me. The world can be made a more

peaceful and more reasonable place to live in only when men have

imbued themselves in the light gayety of this spirit. The modern man

takes life far too seriously, and because he is too serious, the world

is full of troubles. We ought, therefore, to take time to examine the

origin of that attitude which will make possible a whole hearted

enjoyment of this life and a more reasonable, more peaceful and

less hot-headed temperament.

I am perhaps entitled to call this the philosophy of the Chinese

people rather than of any one school. It is a philosophy that is

greater than Confucius and greater than Laotse, for it transcends

these and other ancient philosophers; it draws from these fountain

springs of thought and harmonizes them into a whole, and from the

abstract outlines of their wisdom, it has created an art of living in the

flesh, visible, palpable and understandable by the common man.

Surveying Chinese literature, art and philosophy as a whole, it has

become quite clear to me that the philosophy of a wise

disenchantment and a hearty enjoyment of life is their common

message and teaching—the most constant, most characteristic and

most persistent refrain of Chinese thought.

I am not objecting to the limited utility of intelligence tests, but to their claims to

mathematical accuracy or constant dependability as measures of human personality.

In the sense of the French word sensibilité.

Some might with good reason suggest the including 0! an “L” standing for logic or the

rational faculty, as an important element in shaping human progress. This “L” will then often

function or weigh against sensitivity, a direct perception of things. Such a formula might be

attempted. For me personally, the role of the rational faculty in human affairs is rather low.

I have hesitated a long time between giving Shakespeare “S

” and “S

”. Finally his

“Sonnets” decided it No school teacher has experienced greater fear and trembling in

grading a pupil than I in trying to grade Shakespeare.

Chapter Two

VIEWS OF MANKIND

I. CHRISTIAN, GREEK AND CHINESE

There are several views of mankind, the traditional Christian

theological view, the Greek pagan view, and the Chinese Taoist-

Confucianist view, (I do not include the Buddhist view because it is

too sad.) Deeper down in their allegorical sense, these views after all

do not differ so much from one another, especially when the modern

man with better biological and anthropological knowledge gives them

a broader interpretation. But these differences in their original forms

exist

The traditional, orthodox Christian view was that man was created

perfect, innocent, foolish and happy, living naked in the Garden of

Eden, Then came knowledge and wisdom and the Fall of Man, to

which the sufferings of man are due, notably (1) work by the sweat of

one’s brow for man, and (2) the pangs of labor for women. In

contrast with man’s original innocence and perfection, a new

element was introduced to explain his present imperfection, and that

is of course the Devil, working chiefly through the body, while his

higher nature works through the soul. When the “soul” was invented

in the history of Christian theology I am not aware, but this “soul”

became a something rather than a function, an entity rather than a

condition, and it sharply separated man from the animals, which

have no souls worth saving. Here the logic halts, for the origin of the

Devil had to be explained, and when the medieval theologians

proceeded with their usual scholastic logic to deal with the problem,

they got into a quandary. They could not have very well admitted that

the Devil, who was Not-God, came from God himself, nor could they

quite agree that in the original universe, the Devil, a Not-God, was

co-eternal with God, So in desperation they agreed that the Devil

must have been a fallen angel, which rather begs the question of the

origin of evil (for there still must have been another Devil to tempt

this fallenangel), and which is therefore unsatisfactory, but they had

to leave it at that. Nevertheless from all this followed the curious

dichotomy of the spirit and the flesh, a mythical conception which is

still quite prevalent and powerful today in affecting our philosophy of

life and happiness.

Then came the Redemption, still borrowing from the current

conception of the sacrificial lamb, which went still farther back to the

idea of a God Who desired the smell of roast meal and could not

forgive for nothing. From this Redemption, at one stroke a means

was found by which all sins could be forgiven, and a way was found

for perfection again. The most curious aspect of Christian thought is

the idea of perfection. As this happened during the decay of the

ancient worlds, a tendency grew up to emphasize the afterlife, and

the question of salvation supplanted the question of happiness or

simple living itself. The notion was how to get away from this world

alive, a world which was apparently sinking into corruption and

chaos and doomed. Hence the overwhelming importance attached to

immortality. This represents a contradiction of the original Genesis

story that God did not want man to live forever. The Genesis story of

the reason why Adam and Eve were driven out of the Garden of

Eden was not that they had tasted of the Tree of Knowledge, as is

popularly conceived, but the fear lest they should disobey a second

time and eat of the Tree of Life and live forever:

And the Lord God said, Behold, the man is become as one.

of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his

hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for

ever:

Therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of

Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken.

So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the

garden of Eden cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned

every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.

The Tree of Knowledge seemed to be somewhere in the center of

the garden, but the Tree of Life was near the eastern entrance,

where for all we know, cherubims are still stationed to guard the

approach by men.

All in all, there is still a belief in total depravity, that enjoyment of

this life is sin and wickedness, that to be uncomfortable is to be

virtuous, and that on the whole man cannot save himself except by a

greater power outside. The doctrine of sin is still the basic

assumption of Christianity as generally practiced today, and

Christian missionaries trying to make converts generally start out by

impressing upon the party to be converted a consciousness of sin

and of the wickedness of human nature (which is, of course, the sine

qua non for the need of the ready-made remedy which the

missionary has up his sleeve). All in all, you can’t make a man a

Christian unless you first make him believe he is a sinner. Some one

has said rather cruelly, “Religion in our country has so narrowed

down to the contemplation of sin that a respectable man does not

any longer dare to show his face in the church.”

The Greek pagan world was a different world by itself and

therefore their conception of man was also quite different. What

strikes me most is that the Greeks made their gods like men, while

the Christians desired to make men like the gods. That Olympian

company is certainly a jovial, amorous, loving, lying, quarreling and

vow-breaking, petulant lot; hunt-loving, chariot-riding and javelin-

throwing like the Greeks themselves—a marrying lot, too, and having

unbelievably many illegitimate children. So far as the difference

between gods and men is concerned, the gods merely had divine

powers of hurling thunderbolts in heaven and raising vegetation on

earth, were immortal, and drank nectar instead of wine—the fruits

were pretty much the same. One feels one can be intimate with this

crowd, can go hunting with a knapsack on one’s back with Apollo or

Athene, or stop Mercury on the way and chat with him as with a

Western Union messenger boy, and if the conversation gets too

interesting, we can imagine Mercury saying, “Yeah. Okay. Sorry, but

I’ll have to run along and deliver this message at 72nd Street.” The

Greek men were not divine, but the Greek gods were human. How

different from the perfect Christian God! And so the gods were

merely another race of men, a race of giants, gifted with immortality,

while men on earth were not. Out of this background came some of

the most inexpressibly beautiful stories of Demeter and Proserpina

and Orpheus. The belief in the gods was taken for granted, for even

Socrates, when he was about to drink hemlock, proposed a libation

to the gods to speed him on his journey from this world to the next.

This was very much like the attitude of Confucius. It was necessarily

so in that period; what attitude toward man and God the Greek spirit

would take in the modern world there is unfortunately no chance of

knowing. The Greek pagan world was not modern, and the modern

Christian world is not Greek. That’s the pity of it.

On the whole, it was accepted by the Greeks that man’s was a

mortal lot, subject sometimes to a cruel Fate. That once accepted,

man was quite happy as he was, for the Greeks loved this life and

this universe, and were interested in understanding the good, the

true and the beautiful in life, besides being fully occupied in

scientifically understanding the physical world. There was no

mythical “Golden Period” in the sense of the Garden of Eden, and no

allegory of the Fall of Man; the Hellenes themselves were but human

creatures transformed from pebbles picked up and thrown over their

shoulders by Deucalion and his wife Pyrrha, as they were coming

down to the plain after the Great Flood. Diseases and cares were

explained comically; they came through the uncontrollable desire of

a young woman to open and see a box of jewels—Pandora’s Box,

The Greek fancy was beautiful They took human nature largely as it

was: the Christians might say they were “re-signed” to the mortal lot.

But it was so beautiful to be mortal: there was free room for the

exercise of understanding and the free, speculative spirit. Some of

the Sophists thought man’s nature good, and some thought man’s

nature bad, but there wasn’t the sharp contradiction of Hobbes and

Rousseau. Finally, in Plato, man was seen to be a compound of

desires, emotions, and thought, and ideal human life was the living

together in harmony of these three parts of his being under the

guidance of wisdom or true understanding. Plato thought “ideas”

were immortal, but individual souls were either base or noble,

according as they loved justice, learning, temperance and beauty or

not. The soul also acquired an independent and immortal existence

in Socrates; as we are told in “Phaedo,” “When the soul exists in

herself, and is released from the body, and the body is released from

the soul, what is this but death?” Evidently the belief in immortality of

the human soul is something which the Christian, Greek, Taoist and

Confucianist views have in common. Of course this is nothing to be

jumped at by modern believers in the immortality of the soul

Socrates’ belief in immortality would probably mean nothing to a

modern man, because many of his premises in support of it, like re-

incarnation, cannot be accepted by the modern man.

The Chinese view of man also arrived at the idea that man is ‘the

Lord of the Creation (“Spirit of the Ten Thousand Things”), and in the

Confucianist view, man ranks as the equal of heaven and earth in

the “Trio of Geniuses.” The background was animistic: everything

was alive or inhabited by a spirit—mountains, rivers, and everything

that reached a grand old age. The winds and thunder were spirits

themselves; each of the great mountains and each river was ruled by

a spirit who practically owned it; each kind of flower had a fairy in

heaven attending to its seasons and its welfare, and there was a

Queen of All Flowers whose birthday came on the twelfth day of the

second moon; every willow tree pine tree, cypress, fox or turtle that

reached a grand old age, say over a few hundred years, acquired by

that very fact immortality and became a “genius.”

With this animistic background, it is natural that man is also

considered a manifestation of the spirit. This spirit, like all life in the

entire universe, is produced by the union of the male, active, positive

or yang principle, and the female, passive, negative or yin principle—

which is really no more than a lucky, shrewd guess at positive and

negative electricity. When this spirit becomes incarnated in a human

body, it is called p’o; when unattached to a body and floating about

as spirit it is called hwen. (A man of forceful personality or “spirits” is

spoken of as having a lot of p’oil, or p’o-energy.) After death, this

hwen continues to wander about- Normally it does not bother people,

but if no one buries and offers sacrifices to the deceased, the spirit

becomes a “wandering ghost,” for which reason an All Souls’ Day is

set apart on the fifteenth day of the seventh moon for a general

sacrifice to those drowned in water or dead and unburied in a

strange land. Also, if the deceased was murdered or died suffering a

wrong, the sense of injustice in the ghost compels it to hang about

and cause trouble until the wrong is avenged and the spirit is

satisfied. Then all trouble is stopped.

While living, man, who is spirit taking shape in a body, necessarily

has certain passions, desires, and a flow of “vital energy,” or in more

easily understood English, just “nervous energy.” In and for

themselves, these are neither good nor bad, but just something

given and inseparable from the characteristically human life. All men

and women have passions, natural desires and noble ambitions, and

also a conscience; they have sex, hunger, fear, anger, and are

subject to sickness, pain, suffering and death. Culture consists in

bringing about the expression of these passions and desires in

harmony. That is the Confucianist view, which believes that by living

in harmony with this human nature given us, we can become the

equals of heaven and earth, as quoted at the end of Chapter VI. The

Buddhists, however, regard the mortal desires of the flesh essentially

as the medieval Christians did—they are a nuisance to be done

away with. Men and women who are too intelligent, or inclined to

think too much, sometimes accept this view and become monks and

nuns; but on the whole, Confucian good sense forbids it. Then also,

with a Taoistic touch, beautiful and talented girls suffering a harsh

fate are regarded as “fallen fairie,” punished for having mortal

thoughts or some neglect of duty in heaven and sent down to this

earth to live through a predestined fate of mortal sufferings.

Man’s intellect is considered as a flow of energy. Literally this

intellect is “spirit of a genius” (chingshen), the word “genius” being

essentially taken in the sense in which we speak of fox genii, rock

genii and pine genii. The nearest English equivalent is, as I have

suggested, “vitality” or “nervous energy,” which ebbs and flows at

different times of the day and of the person’s life. Every man born

into this world starts out with certain passions and desires and this

vital energy, which run their course in different cycles through

childhood, youth, maturity, old age and death. Confucius said, “When

young, beware of fighting; when strong, beware of sex; and when

old, beware of possession,” which simply means that a boy loves

fighting, a young man loves women, and an old man loves money.

Faced with this compound of physical, mental and moral assets,

the Chinese takes an attitude toward man himself, as toward all

other problems, which may be summed up in the phrase: “Let us be

reasonable.” This is an attitude of expecting neither too much nor too

little. Man is, as it were, sandwiched between heaven and earth,

between idealism and realism, between lofty thoughts and the baser

passions. Being so sandwiched is the very essence of humanity; it is

human to have thirst for knowledge and thirst for water, to love a

good idea and a good dish of pork with bamboo shoots, and to

admire a beautiful saying and a beautiful woman. This being the

case, our world is necessarily an imperfect world. Of course there is

a chance of taking human society in hand and making it better, but

the Chinese do not expect either perfect peace or perfect happiness.

There is a story illustrating this point of view. There was a man who

was in Hell and about to be re-incarnated, and he said to the King of

Re-incarnation, “If you want me to return to the earth as a human

being, I will go only on my own conditions.” “And what are they?”

asked the King. The man replied, “I must be born the son of a

cabinet minister and father of a future ‘Literary Wrangler’ (the scholar

who comes out first at the national examinations). I must have ten

thousand acres of land surrounding my home and fish ponds and

fruits of every kind and a beautiful wife and pretty concubines, all

good and loving to me, and rooms stocked to the ceiling with gold

and pearls and cellars stocked full of grain and trunks chockful of

money, and I myself must be a Grand Councilor or a Duke of the

First Rank and enjoy honor and prosperity and live until I am a

hundred years old,” And the King of Re-incarnation replied, “If there

was such a lot on earth, I would go and be re-incarnated myself, and

not give it to you!”

The reasonable attitude is, since we’ve got this human nature,

let’s start with it. Besides, there is no escaping from it anyway,

Passions and instincts are originally good or originally bad, but there

is not much use talking about them, is there? On the other hand,

there is the danger of our being enslaved by them. Just stay in the

middle of the road. This reasonable attitude creates such a forgiving

kind of philosophy that, at least to a cultured, broad-minded scholar

who lives according to the spirit of reasonableness, any human error

or misbehavior whatsoever, legal or moral or political, which can be

labeled as “common human nature” (more literally, “man’s normal

passions”), is excusable- The Chinese go so far as to assume that

Heaven or God Himself is quite a reasonable being, that if you live

reasonably, according to your best lights, you have nothing to fear,

that peace of conscience is the greatest of all gifts, and that a man

with a clear conscience need not be afraid even of ghosts. With a

reasonable God supervising the affairs of reasonable and some

unreasonable beings, everything is quite all right in this world.

Tyrants die; traitors commit suicide; the grasping fellow is seen

selling his property; the sons of a powerful and rich collector of

curios (about whom tales are told of grasping greed or extortion by

power) are seen selling out the collection on which their father spent

so much thought and trouble, and these same curios are now being

dispersed among other families; murderers are found out and dead

and wronged women are avenged. Some-times, but quite seldom,

an oppressed person cries out, “Heaven has no eyes!” (Justice is

blind.) Eventually, both in Taoism and in Confucianism, the

conclusion and highest goal of this philosophy is complete

understanding of and harmony with nature, resulting in what I may

call “reasonable naturalism,” if we must have a term for

classification. A reasonable naturalist then settles down to this life

with a sort of animal satisfaction. As Chinese illiterate women put it,

“Others gave birth to us and we give birth to others. What else are

we to do?”

There is a terrible philosophy in this saying, “Others gave birth to

us and we give birth to others.” Life becomes a biological procession

and the very question of immortality is sidetracked. For that is the

exact feeling of a Chinese grandfather holding his grandchild by the

hand and going to the shops to buy some candy, with the thought

that in five or ten years he will be returning to his grave or to his

ancestors. The best that we can hope for in this life is that we shall

not have sons and grandsons of whom we need be ashamed. The

whole pattern of Chinese life is organized according to this one idea.

II. EARTH-BOUND

The situation then is this: man wants to live, but he still must live

upon this earth. All questions of living in heaven must be brushed

aside. Let not the spirit take wings and soar to the abode of the gods

and forget the earth. Are we not mortals, condemned to die? The

span of life vouchsafed us, threescore and ten, is short enough, if

the spirit gets too haughty and wants to live forever, but on the other

hand, it is also long enough, if the spirit is a little humble. One can

learn such a lot and enjoy such a lot in seventy years, and three

generations is a long, long time to see human follies and acquire

human wisdom. Anyone who is wise and has lived long enough to

witness the changes of fashion and morals and politics through the

rise and fall of three generations should be perfectly satisfied to rise

from his seat and go away saying, “It was a good show,” when the

curtain falls.

For we are of the earth, earth-born and earth-bound. There is

nothing to be unhappy about the fact that we are, as it were,

delivered upon this beautiful earth as its transient guests. Even if it

were a dark dungeon, we still would have to make the best of it; it

would be ungrateful of us not to do so when we have, instead of a

dungeon, such a beautiful earth to live on for a good part of a

century. Sometimes we get too ambitious and disdain the humble

and yet generous earth. Yet a sentiment for this Mother Earth, a

feeling of true affection and attachment, one must have for this

temporary abode of our body and spirit, if we are to have a sense of

spiritual harmony.

We have to have, therefore, a kind of animal skepticism as well as

animal faith, taking this earthly life largely as it is. And we have to

retain the wholeness of nature that we see in Thoreau who felt

himself kin to the sod and partook largely of its dull patience, in

winter expecting the sun of spring, who in his cheapest moments

was apt to think that it was not his business to be “seeking the spirit,”

but as much the spirit’s business to seek him, and whose happiness,

as he described it, was a good deal like that of the wood-chucks The

earth, after all is real, as the heaven is unreal: how fortunate is man

that he is born between the real earth and the unreal heaven!

Any good practical philosophy must start out with the recognition

of our having a body. It is high time that some among us made the

straight admission that we are animals, an admission which is

inevitable since the establishment of the basic truth at the Darwinian

theory and the great progress of biology, especially bio-chemistry. It

was very unfortunate that our teachers and philosophers belonged to

the so-called intellectual class, with a characteristic professional

pride of intellect. The men of the spirit were as proud of the spirit as

the shoemaker is proud of leather. Sometimes even the spirit was

not sufficiently remote and abstract and they had to use the words,

“essence” or “soul” or “idea,” writing them with capital letters to

frighten us. The human body was distilled in this scholastic machine

into a spirit, and the spirit was further concentrated into a kind of

essence, forgetting that even alcoholic drinks must have a “body”—

mixed with plain water—if they are to be palatable at all. And we

poor laymen were supposed to drink that concentrated quintessence

of spirit. This over-emphasis on the spirit was fatal It made us war

with our natural instincts, and my chief criticism is that it made a

whole and rounded view of human nature impossible. It proceeded

also from an inadequate knowledge of biology and psychology, and

of the place of the senses, emotions and, above all, instincts in our

life. Man is made of flesh and spirit both, and it should be

philosophy’s business to see that the mind and body live

harmoniously together, that there be a reconciliation between the

two.

III. SPIRIT AND FLESH

The most obvious fact which philosophers refuse to see is that we

have got a body. Tired of seeing our mortal imperfections and our

savage instincts and impulses, sometimes our preachers wish that

we were made like angels, and yet we are at a total loss to imagine

what the angels’ life would be like. We either give the angels a body

and a shape like our own—except for a pair of wings—or we don’t. It

is interesting that the general conception of an angel is still that of a

human body with a pair of wings. I sometimes think that it is an

advantage even for angels to have a body with the five senses. If I

were to be an angel, I should like to have a school-girl complexion,

but how am I going to have a school-girl complexion without a skin? I

still should like to drink a glass of tomato juice or iced orange juice,

but how am I going to appreciate iced orange juice without having

thirst? And how am I going to enjoy food, when I am incapable of

hunger? How would an angel paint without pigment, sing without the

hearing of sounds, smell the fine morning air without a nose? How

would he enjoy the immense satisfaction of scratching an itch, if his

skin doesn’t itch? And what a terrible loss in the capacity for

happiness that would be! Either we have to have bodies and have all

our bodily wants satisfied, or else we are pure spirits and have no

satisfactions at all. All satisfactions imply want.

I sometimes think what a terrible punishment it would be for a

ghost or an angel to have no body, to look at a stream of cool water

and have no feet to plunge into it and get a delightful cooling

sensation from it, to see a dish of Peking or Long Island duck and

have no tongue to taste it, to see crumpets and have no teeth to

chew them, to sec the beloved faces of our dear ones and have no

emotions to feel toward them. Terribly sad it would be if we should

one day return to this earth as ghosts and move silently into our

children’s bedroom, to see a child lying there in bed and have no

hands to fondle him and no arms to clasp him, no chest for his

warmth to penetrate to, no round hollow between cheek and

shoulder for him to nestle against, and no ears to hear his voice,

A defense of the angels-without-bodies theory will be found to be

most vague and unsatisfying. Such a defender might say, “Ah, yes,

but in the world of spirit, we don’t need such satisfactions.” “But what

instead have you got?” Complete silence; or perhaps, “Void-Peace—

Calm,” “What then do you gain by it?” “Absence of work and pain

and sorrow.” I admit such a heaven has a tremendous attraction to

galley slaves. Such a negative ideal and conception of happiness is

dangerously near to Buddhism and is ultimately to be traced to Asia

(Asia Minor, in this case) rather than Europe,

Such speculations are necessarily idle, but I may at least point out

that the conception of a “senseless spirit” is quite unwarranted, since

we are coming more and more to feel that the universe itself is a

sentient being. Perhaps motion rather than standing still will be a

characteristic of the spirit, and one of the pleasures of a bodiless

angel will be to revolve like a proton around a nucleus at the speed

of twenty or thirty thousand revolutions a second. There may be a

keen delight in that, more fascinating than a ride on a Coney Island

scenic railway. It will certainly be a kind of sensation. Or perhaps the

bodiless angel will dart like light or cosmic rays in ethereal waves

around curved space at the rate of 183,000 miles per second. There

must still be spiritual pigments for the angels to paint and enjoy

some form of creation, ethereal vibrations for the angels to feel as

tone and sound and color, and ethereal breeze to brush against the

angels’ cheeks. Otherwise spirit itself would stagnate like water in a

cesspool, or feel like men on a hot, suffocating summer afternoon

without a whiff of fresh air. There must still be motion and emotion (in

whatever form) if there is to be life; certainly not complete rest and

insensitiveness.

IV. A BIOLOGICAL VIEW

The better knowledge of our own bodily functions and mental

processes gives us a truer and broader view of ourselves and takes

away from the word “animal” some of its old bad flavor. The old

proverb that “to understand is to forgive” is applicable to our own

bodily and mental processes. It may seem strange, but it is true, that

the very fact that we have a better understanding of our bodily

functions makes it impossible for us to look down upon them with

contempt. The important thing is not to say whether our digestive

process is noble or ignoble; the important thing is just to understand

it, and somehow it becomes extremely noble. This is true of every

biological function or process in our body, from perspiration and the

elimination of waste to the functions of the pancreatic juice, the gall,

the endocrine glands and the finer emotive and cogitative processes.

One no longer despises the kidney, one merely tries to understand it;

and one no longer looks upon a bad tooth as symbolic of the final

decay of our body and, a reminder to attend to the welfare of our

soul, but merely goes to a dentist, has it examined, explained and

properly fixed up. Somehow a man coming out from a dentist’s office

no longer despises his teeth, but has an increased respect for them

—because he is going to gnaw apples and chicken bones with

increased delight. As for the superfine metaphysician who says that

the teeth belong to the devil, and the Neo-Platonists who deny that

individual teeth exist, I always get a satirical delight in seeing a

philosopher suffering from a tooth-ache and an optimistic poet

suffering from dyspepsia. Why doesn’t he go on with his philosophic

disquisitions, and why does he hold his hand against his cheek, just

as you or I or the woman in the next house would do? And why does

optimism seem so unconvincing to a dyspeptic poet? Why doesn’t

he sing any more? How ungrateful it is, of him, therefore, to forget

the intestines and sing about the spirit when the intestines behave

and give him no trouble!

Science, if anything, has taught us an increased respect for our

body, by deepening a sense of the wonder and mystery of its

workings. In the first place, genetically, we begin to understand how

we came about, and see that, instead of being made out of clay, we

are sitting on the top of the genealogical tree of the animal kingdom.

That must be a fine sensation, sufficiently satisfying for any man who

is not intoxicated with his own spirit. Not that I believe dinosaurs

lived and died millions of years ago in order that we today might walk

erect with our two legs upon this earth. Without such gratuitous

assumptions, biology has not at all destroyed a whit of human

dignity, or cast doubt upon the view that we are probably the most

splendid animals ever evolved on this earth. So that is quite

satisfying for any man who wants to insist on human dignity, In the

second place, we are more impressed than ever with the mystery

and beauty of the body. The workings of the internal parts of our

body and the wonderful correlation between them compel in us a

sense of the extreme difficulty with which these correlations are

brought about and the extreme simplicity and finality with which they

are nevertheless accomplished. Instead of simplifying these internal

chemical processes by explaining them, science makes them all the

more difficult to explain. These processes are incredibly more difficult

than the layman without any knowledge of physiology usually

imagines. The great mystery of the universe without is similar in

quality to the mystery of the universe within.

The more a physiologist tries to analyze and study the bio-

physical and bio-chemical processes of human physiology, the more

his wonder increases. That is so to the extent that sometimes it

compels a physiologist with a broad spirit to accept the mystic’s view

of life, as in the case of Dr. Alexis Carrel. Whether we agree with him

or not, as he states his opinions in Man, the Unknown, we must

agree with him that the facts are there, unexplained and

unexplainable. We begin to acquire a sense of the intelligence of

matter itself:

The organs are correlated by the organic fluids and the

nervous system. Each element of the body adjusts itself to the

others, and the others to it. This mode of adaptation is

essentially teleological. If we attribute to tissues an

intelligence of the same kind as ours, as mechanists and

vitalists do, the physiological processes appear to associate

together in view of the end to be attained. The existence of

finality within the organism is undeniable. Each part seems to

know the present and future needs of the whole, and acts

accordingly. The significance of time and space is not the

same for our tissues as for our mind. The body perceives the

remote as well as the near, the future as well as the present.

And we should wonder, for instance, and be extremely amazed that

our intestines heal their own wounds, entirely without our voluntary

effort:

The wounded loop first becomes immobile. It is temporarily

paralyzed, and fecal matter is thus prevented from running

into the abdomen. At the same time, some other intestinal

loop, or the surface of the omentum, approaches the wound

and, owing to a known property of peritoneum, adheres to it.

Within four or five hours the opening is occluded. Even if the

surgeon’s needle has drawn the edges of the wound together,

healing is due to spontaneous adhesion of the peritoneal

surfaces.

Why do we despise the body, when the flesh itself shows such

intelligence? After all, we are endowed with a body, which is a self-

nourishing, self-regulating, self-repairing, self-starting and self-

reproducing machine, installed at birth and lasting like a good

grandfather clock for three-quarters of a century, requiring very little

attention. It is a machine provided with wireless vision and wireless

hearing, with a more highly complicated system of nerves and

lymphs than the most complicated telephone and telegraph system

of the world. It has a system of filing reports done by a vast

complexus of nerves, managed with such efficiency that some files,

the less important ones, are kept in the attic and others are kept in a

more convenient desk, but those kept in the attic, which may be

thirty years old and rarely referred to, are nevertheless there and

sometimes can be found with lightning speed and efficiency. Then it

also manages to go about like a motor car with perfect knee-action

and absolute silence of engines, and if the motor car has an accident

and breaks its glass or its steering wheel, the car automatically

exudes or manufactures a substance to replace the glass and does

its best to grow a steering wheel, or at least manages to do the

steering with a swollen end of the steering shaft; for we must

remember that when one of our kidneys is cut out, the other kidney

swells and increases its function to insure the passage of the normal

volume of urine. Then it also keeps up a normal temperature within a

tenth of a Fahrenheit degree, and manufactures its own chemicals

for the processes of transforming food into living tissues.

Above all, it has a sense of the rhythm of life, and a sense of time,

not only of hours and days, but also of decades; the body regulates

its own childhood, puberty and maturity, stops growing when it

should no longer grow, and brings forth a wisdom tooth at a time

when no one of us ever thought of it. Our conscious wisdom has

nothing to do with our wisdom tooth. It also manufactures specific

antidotes against poison, on the whole with amazing success, and it

does all these things with absolute silence, without the usual racket

of a factory, so that our superfine metaphysician may not be

disturbed and is free to think about his spirit or his essence.

V. HUMAN LIFE A POEM

I think that, from a biological standpoint, human life almost reads

like a poem. It has its own rhythm and beat, its internal cycles of

growth and decay. It begins with innocent childhood, followed by

awkward adolescence trying awkwardly to adapt itself to mature

society, with its young passions and follies, its ideals and ambitions;

then it reaches a manhood of intense activities, profiting from

experience and learning more about society and human nature; at

middle age, there is a slight easing of tension, a mellowing of

character like the ripening of fruit or the mellowing of good wine, and

the gradual acquiring of a more tolerant, more cynical and at the

same time a kindlier view of life; then in the sunset of our life, the

endocrine glands decrease their activity, and if we have a true

philosophy of old age and have ordered our life pattern according to

it, it is for us the age of peace and security and leisure and

contentment; finally, life flickers out and one goes into eternal sleep,

never to wake up again. One should be able to sense the beauty of

this rhythm of life, to appreciate, as we do in grand symphonies, its

main theme, its strains of conflict and the final resolution. The

movements of these cycles are very much the same in a normal life,

but the music must be provided by the individual himself. In some

souls, the discordant note becomes harsher and harsher and finally

overwhelms or submerges the main melody. Sometimes the

discordant note gains so much power that the music can no longer

go on, and the individual shoots himself with a pistol or jumps into a

riven But that is because his original leit-motif has been hopelessly

over-shadowed through the lack of a good self-education. Otherwise

the normal human life runs to its normal end in a kind of dignified

movement and procession. There are sometimes in many of us too

many staccatos or impetuosos, and because the tempo is wrong, the

music is not pleasing to the ear; we might have more of the grand

rhythm and majestic tempo of the Ganges, flowing slowly and

eternally into the sea

No one can say that a life with childhood, manhood and old age is

not a beautiful arrangement; the day has its morning, noon and

sunset, and the year has its seasons, and it is good that it is so.

There is no good or bad in life, except what is good according to its

own season. And if we take this biological view of life and try to live

according to the seasons, no one but a conceited fool or an

impossible idealist can deny that human life can be lived like a

poem. Shakespeare has expressed this idea more graphically in his

passage about the seven stages of life, and a good many Chinese

writers have said about the same thing. It is curious that

Shakespeare was never very religious, or very much concerned with

religion. I think this was his greatness; he took human life largely as

it was, and intruded himself as little upon the general scheme of

things as he did upon the characters of his plays. Shakespeare was

like Nature herself, and that is the greatest compliment we can pay

to a writer or thinker. He merely lived, observed life and went away.

It is a happy fact that with the progress of modern thought, the Devil is the first to be

thrown overboard. I believe that of a hundred liberal Christians today who still believe in

God in some form or other, not more than five believe in a real Devil, except in a figurative

sense. Also the belief in a real Hell is disappearing before the belief in a real Heaven.

Man, the Unknown, p. 197.

Ibid, p. 200.

Chapter Three

OUR ANIMAL HERITAGE

I. THE MONKEY EPIC

But if this biological view helps us to appreciate the beauty and

rhythm of life, it also shows our ludicrous limitations. By presenting to

us a more correct picture of what we are as animals, it enables us to

better understand ourselves and the progress of human affairs, A

more generous sympathy, or even tolerant cynicism, comes with a

truer and deeper understanding of human nature which has its roots

in our animal ancestry. Gently reminding ourselves that we are

children of the Neanderthal or the Peking man, and further back still

of the anthropoid apes, we eventually achieve the capacity of

laughing at our sins and limitations, as well as admiring our monkey

cleverness, which we call a sense of human comedy. This is a

beautiful thought suggested by the enlightening essay of Clarence

Day, This Simian World. Reading that essay of Day’s, we can forgive

all our fellowmen, the censors, publicity chiefs, Fascist editors, Nazi

radio announcers, senators and lawmakers, dictators, economic

experts, delegates to international conferences and all the

busybodies who try to interfere with other people’s lives. We can

forgive them because we begin to understand them.

In this sense, I come more and more to appreciate the wisdom

and insight of the great Chinese monkey epic, Hsiyuchi, The

progress of human history can be better understood from this point

of view; it is so similar to the pilgrimage of those imperfect, semi-

human creatures to the Western Heaven—the Monkey Wuk’ung

representing the human intellect, the Pig Pachieh representing our

lower nature, Monk Sand representing common sense, and the

Abbot Hsüantsang representing wisdom and the Holy Way. The

Abbot, protected by this curious escort, was engaged upon a journey

from China to India to procure sacred Buddhist books. The story of

human progress is essentially like the pilgrimage of this variegated

company of highly imperfect creatures, continually landing in

dangers and ludicrous situations through their own folly and

mischief. How often the Abbot has to correct and chastise the

mischievous Monkey and the sensuous Pig, forever led by their

sadly imperfect minds and their lower passions into all sorts of

scrapes! The instincts of human fraility, of anger, revenge,

impetuousness, sensuality, lack of forgiveness, above all self-conceit

and lack of humility, forever crop up during this pilgrimage of

mankind toward sainthood. The increase of destructiveness goes

side by side with the increase of human skill, for like the Monkey with

magical powers, we are able today to walk upon the clouds and turn

somersaults in the air (which is called “looping-the-Loop” in modern

terms), to pull monkey hair out of our monkey legs and transform

them into little monkeys to harass our enemy, to knock at the very

gates of Heaven, brush the Heavenly Gate Keeper brusquely aside

and demand a place in the company of the gods.

The Monkey was clever, but he was also conceited; he had

enough monkey magic to push his way into Heaven, but he had not

enough sanity and balance and temperance of spirit to live

peacefully there. Too good perhaps for this earth and its mortal

existence, he was yet not good enough for Heaven and the company

of the immortals. There was something raw and mischievous and

rebellious in him, some dregs unpurged in his gold, and that was

why when he entered Heaven he created a terrific scare there, like a

wild lion let loose from a menagerie cage in the streets of a city, in

the preliminary episode before he joined the pilgrims’ party. Through

his inborn incorrigible mischief, he spoiled the Annual Dinner Party

given by the Western Queen Mother of Heaven to all the gods,

saints, and immortals of Heaven. Enraged that he was not invited to

the party, he posed as a messenger of God and sent the Bare-

Footed Fairy on his way to the feast in a wrong direction by telling

him that the place of the party had been changed, and then

transformed himself into the shape of the Bare-Footed Fairy and

went to the feast himself. Quite a number of other fairies had been

misled by him in this way. Then entering the courtyard, he saw he

was the first arrival Nobody was there except the servants guarding

the jars of fairy wine in the corridor. He then transformed himself into

a sleeping-sickness insect and stung the servants into sleep and

drunk the jars of wine. Half intoxicated, he tumbled into the hall and

ate up the celestial peaches laid out at table, When the guests

arrived and saw the despoiled dinner, he was already off for some

other exploits at the home of Laotse, trying to eat his pills of

immortality. Finally, still in disguise, he left Heaven, partly afraid of

the consequences of his drunken exploits, but chiefly disgusted

because he had not been invited to the Annual Dinner, He returned

to his Monkey Kingdom where he was the king and told the little

monkeys so, and set up a banner of rebellion against Heaven,

writing on it the words “The Great Sage, Equal to Heaven.” There

followed then terrific combats between this Monkey and the heavenly

warriors, in which the Monkey was not captured until the Goddess of

Mercy knocked him down with a gentle sprig of flowers from the

clouds.

So, like the Monkey, forever we rebel and there will be no peace

and humility in us until we are vanquished by the Goddess of Mercy,

whose gentle flowers dropped from Heaven will knock us off our feet.

And we shall not learn the lesson of true humility until science has

explored the limits of the universe. For in the epic, the Monkey still

rebelled even after his capture and demanded of the Jade Emperor

in Heaven why he was not given a higher title among the gods, and

he had to learn the lesson of humility by an ultimate bet with Buddha

or God Himself. He made a bet that with his magical powers he

could go as far as the end of the earth, and the stake was the title of

“The Great Sage, Equal of Heaven,” or else complete submission.

Then he leaped into the air, and traveled with lightning speed across

the continents until he came to a mountain with five peaks, which he

thought must be as far as mortal beings had ever set foot In order to

leave a record of his having reached the place, he passed some

monkey urine at the foot of the middle peak, and having satisfied

himself with this feat, he came back and told Buddha about his

journey. Buddha then opened one hand and asked him to smell his

own urine at the base of the middle finger, and told him how all this

time he had never left the palm.

It was only then that the Monkey acquired humility, and after being

chained to a rock for five hundred years, was freed by the Abbot and

joined him in his pilgrimage.

After all, this Monkey, which is an image of ourselves, is an

extremely lovable creature, in spite of his conceit and his mischief.

So should we, too, be able to love humanity in spite of all its

weaknesses and shortcomings.

II. IN THE IMAGE OF THE MONKEY

So then, instead of holding on to the Biblical view that we are

made in the image of God, we come to realize that we are made in

the image of the monkey, and that we are as far removed from the

perfect God, as, let us say, the ants are removed from ourselves. We

are very clever, we are quite sure of that; we are often a little cocky

about our cleverness, because we have a mind. But the biologist

comes in to tell us that the mind after all is a very late development,

as far as articulate thinking is concerned, and that among the things

which go into the make-up of our moral fiber, we have besides the

mind a set of animal or savage instincts, which are much more

powerful and are in fact the explanation why we misbehave

individually and in our group life. We are the better able to

understand the nature of that human mind of which we are so proud.

We see in the first place that, besides being a comparatively clever

mind, it is also an inadequate mind. The evolution of the human skull

shows us that it is nothing but an enlargement of one of the spinal

vertebrae and that therefore its function, like that of the spinal cord,

is essentially that of sensing danger, meeting the external

environment and preserving life—not thinking. Thinking is generally

very poorly done. Lord Balfour ought to go down to posterity on the

strength of his one saying that “the human brain is as much an organ

for seeking food as the pig’s snout” I do not call this real cynicism, I

call it merely a generous understanding of ourselves.

We begin to understand genetically our human imperfections.

Imperfect? Lord, yes, but the Lord never made us otherwise. But that

is not the point. The whole point is, our remote ancestors swam and

crawled and swung from one branch to another in the primeval forest

in Tarzan fashion, or hung suspended from a tree like a spider

monkey by an arm or a tail

At each stage, considered by itself, it

was rather marvelously perfect, to my way of thinking. But now we

are called upon to do an infinitely more difficult job of readjustment.

When man creates a civilization of his own, he embarks upon a

course of development that biologically might terrify the Creator

Himself. So far as adaptation to nature is concerned, all nature’s

creatures are marvelously perfect, for those that are not perfectly

adapted she kills off. But now we are no longer called upon to adapt

ourselves to nature; we are called upon to adapt ourselves to

ourselves, to this thing called civilization. All instincts were good,

were healthy in nature; in society, however, we call all instincts

savage. Every mouse steals—and he is not the less moral or more

immoral for stealing—every dog barks, every cat doesn’t come home

at night and tears everything it can lay its paws upon, every lion kills,

every horse runs away from the sight of danger, every tortoise

sleeps the best hours of the day away, and every insect, reptile, bird

and beast reproduces its kind in public. Now in terms of civilization,

every mouse is a thief, every dog makes too much noise, every cat

is an unfaithful husband, when he is not a savage little vandal, every

lion or tiger is a murderer, every horse a coward, every tortoise a

lazy louse, and finally, every insect, reptile, bird and beast is

obscene when he performs his natural vital functions. What a

wholesale transformation of values! And that is the reason why we

sit back and wonder how the Lord made us so imperfect.

III. ON BEING MORTAL

There are grave consequences following upon our having this

mortal body: first our being mortal, then our having a stomach,

having strong muscles and having a curious mind. These facts,

because of their basic character, profoundly influence the character

of human civilization. Because this is so obvious, we never think

about it But we cannot understand ourselves and our civilization

unless we see these consequences clearly.

I suspect that all democracy, all poetry, and all philosophy start out

from this God-given fact that all of us, princes and paupers alike, are

limited to a body of five or six feet and live a life of fifty or sixty years.

On the whole, the arrangement is quite handy. We are neither too

long nor too short. At least I am quite satisfied with five feet four. And

fifty or sixty years seems to me such an awfully long time; it is, in

fact, a matter of two or three generations. It is so arranged that when

we are born, we see certain old grandfathers, who die in the course

of time, and when we become grandfathers ourselves, we see other

tiny tots being born. That seems to make it just perfect. The whole

philosophy of the matter lies in the Chinese saying that “A man may

own a thousand acres of land, and yet he still sleeps upon a bed of

five feet” or sixty inches, It doesn’t seem as if a king needed very

much more than seven feet at the outside for his bed, and there he

will have to go and stretch himself at night. I am therefore as good as

a king. And no matter how rich a man is, few exceed the Biblical limit

of threescore and ten. To live beyond seventy is to be called in

Chinese “ancient-rare,” because of the Chinese line that “it is rare for

man to live over seventy since the ancient times.”

And so in respect of wealth. Of this life, everybody has a share,

but no one owns the mortgage. And so we are enabled to take this

life more lightly; instead of being permanent tenants upon this earth,

we become its transient guests, for guests we all are of this earth,

the owners of the land no less than the share-croppers. It takes

something out of the meaning of the word “landlord.” No one really

owns a house and no one really owns a field. As a Chinese poet

says:

What pretty, golden fields against a hill!

Newcomers harvest crops that others till.

Rejoice not, O newcomers, at your harvest;

One waits behind—a new newcomer still!

The democracy of death is seldom appreciated. Without death,

even St. Helena would have meant nothing to Napoleon, and I do

not know what Europe would be like. There would be no biographies

of heroes or conquerors, and even if there were, their biographers

certainly would be less forgiving and sympathetic. We forgive the

great of this world because they are dead. By their being dead, we

feel that we have got even with them. Every funeral procession

carries a banner upon which are written the words, “Equality of

Mankind.” What joy of life is seen in the following ballad that the

oppressed people of China composed about the death of Ch’in Shih-

huang, the builder of the Great Wall and the tyrant, who, while he

lived, made “libellous thoughts in the belly” punishable by death,

burned the Confucian books and buried hundreds of Confucian

scholars alive:

Ch’in Shih-huang is going to die!

He opened my door,

And sat on my floor,

He drank my gravy,

And wanted some more.

He sipped my wine,

And couldn’t tell what for;

I’ll bend my bow,

And shoot him at the wall.

When he arrives at Shach’iu,

Then he is going to fall!

From this, then, a sense of human comedy and the very stuff of

human poetry and philosophy take their rise. He who perceives

death perceives a sense of the human comedy, and quickly

becomes a poet. Shakespeare became a deep poet, when he had

Hamlet trace the noble dust of Alexander, “till he find it stopping a

bung-hole”; “Alexander died, Alexander was buried, Alexander

returneth into dust; the dust is earth; of earth we make loam; and

why of that loam, whereto he was converted, might they not stop a

beer-barrel?” There is, after all, no more superb sense of comedy in

Shakespeare than when he let King Richard II talk of graves, of

worms and epitaphs and the antic that keeps court within the hollow

crown that rounds the mortal temples of a king, or where he speaks

of “a great buyer of land, with his statutes, his recognizances, his

fines, his double vouchers, his recoveries,” with all his fines ending in

a “fine pate full of fine dirt,” Omar Khayyam and his Chinese

counterpart, Chia Fuhsi (alias Mup’itse, an obscure Chinese poet),

derived all their comic spirit and comic interpretation of history from

the sense of death itself, by pointing to the foxes making their homes

in the kings’ graves. And Chinese philosophy first acquired depth

and humor with Chuangtse, who based his entite philosophy, too, on

a comment on the sight of a skull:

Chuangtse went to Ch’u and saw an empty skull with its

empty and dried outline. He struck it with a horsewhip and

asked it, “Hast thou come to this because thou loved

pleasures and lived inordinately? Wert thou a refugee running

away from the law? Didst thou do something wrong to bring

shame upon thy parents and thy family? Or wert thou starved

to death? Or didst thou come to thy old age and die a natural

death?” Having said this, Chuangtse took the skull and slept

upon it as a pillow. . .

When Chuangtse’s wife died, Hueitse went to express his

condolence but found Chuangtse squatting on the ground and

singing a song, beating time by striking an earthen basin.

“Why, this woman has lived with you and borne you children.

At the worst, you might refrain from weeping when her old

body dies. Is it not rather too much that you should beat the

basin and sing?”

And Chuangtse replied, “You are mistaken. When she first

died, I could not also help feeling sad and moved, but I

reflected that in the beginning she had no life, and not only no

life, she had no bodily shape; and not only no bodily shape,

she had no ghost. Caught in this everchanging flux of things,

she became a ghost, the ghost became a body, and the body

became alive. Now she has changed again and become

dead, and by so doing she has joined the eternal procession

of spring, summer, autumn and winter. Why should I make so

much noise and wail and weep over her while her body lies

quiedy there in the big house? That would be a failure to

understand the course of things. That is why I stopped

crying.”

Thus I see both poetry and philosophy began with the recognition

of our mortality and a sense of the evanescence of time. This sense

of life’s evanescence is back of all Chinese poetry, as well as of a

good part of Western poetry—the feeling that life is essentially but a

dream, while we row, row our boat down the river in the sunset of a

beautiful afternoon, that flowers cannot bloom forever, the moon

waxes and wanes, and human life itself joins the eternal procession

of the plant and animal worlds in being born, growing to maturity and

dying to make room for others. Man began to be philosophical only

when he saw the vanity of this earthly existence. Chuangtse said

that he once dreamed of being a butterfly, and while he was in the

dream, he felt he could flutter his wings and everything was real, but

that on waking up, he realized that he was Chuangtse and

Chuangtse was real. Then he thought and wondered which was

really real, whether he was really Chuangtse dreaming of being a

butterfly, or really a butterfly dreaming of being Chuangtse. Life,

then, is really a dream, and we human beings are like travelers

floating down the eternal river of time, embarking at a certain point

and disembarking again at another point in order to make room for

others waiting below the river to come aboard. Half of the poetry of

life would be gone, if we did not feel that life was either a dream, or a

voyage with transient travelers, or merely a stage in which the actors

seldom realized that they were playing their parts. So wrote a

Chinese scholar, Liu Tasheng, to his friend:

Of all the things in the world, that in which we are most earnest is

to be an official, and that which we call the most frivolous is to be an

actor in a play. But I think this is all foolishness. I have often seen on

the stage how the actors sing and weep and scold each other and

crack jokes, believing that they are real people. But the real thing in

a play is not the ancient characters thus being enacted, but rather

these actors who enact them. They all have their parents, wives and

children, all want to feed their parents, wives and children, and all do

so by singing and weeping and laughing and scolding and cracking

jokes. They are the real ancient characters that they try to portray. I

have also seen how some of these actors, who wear an official cap

and gown and by their own acting believe themselves to be real

officials, so much so that they think no one in the world ever

suspects they are acting. They do not realize that while they bow

and kowtow to each other and sit and talk and look about, and even

while they are the dignified officials before whom the prisoners

tremble, they are only actors who by their singing and weeping and

laughing and scolding and cracking jokes are trying to feed their

parents, wives and children! Alas! that there are people who stick to

a certain play, a certain role, a certain text and a certain accent or

style of delivery, until the entire asset of their bowels and internal

organs (La, instincts and emotions) are dominated by the play,

without realizing once that they are really actors!

IV. ON HAVING A STOMACH

One of the most important consequences of our being animals is

that we have got this bottomless pit called the stomach. This fact has

colored our entire civilization. The Chinese epicure Li Liweng wrote a

complaint about our having this bottomless pit, in the prefatory note

to the section on food in his book on the general art of living.

I see that the organs of the human body, the ear, the eye,

the nose, the tongue, the hands, the feet and the body, have

all a necessary function, but the two organs which are totally

unnecessary but with which we are nevertheless endowed are

the mouth and the stomach, which cause all the worry and

trouble of mankind throughout the ages. With this mouth and

this stomach, the matter of getting a living becomes

complicated, and when the matter of getting a living becomes

complicated, we have cunning and falsehood and dishonesty

in human affairs. With the coming of cunning and falsehood

and dishonesty in human affairs, comes the criminal law, so

that the king is not able to protect with his mercy, the parents

are not able to gratify their love, and even the kind Creator is

forced to go against His will. All this comes of a little lack of

forethought in His design for the human body at the time of

the creation, and is the consequence of our having these two

organs. The plants can live without a mouth and a stomach,

and the rocks and the soil have their being without any

nourishment. Why, then, must we be given a mouth and a

stomach and endowed with these two extra organs? And

even if we were to be endowed with these organs, He could

have made it possible for us to derive our nourishment as the

fish and shell fish derive theirs from water, or the cricket and

the cicada from the dew, who all are able to obtain their

growth and energy this way and swim or fly or jump or sing.

Had it been like this, we should not have to struggle in this life

and the sorrows of mankind would have disappeared. On the

other hand, He has given us not only these two organs, but

has also endowed us with manifold appetites or desires,

besides making the pit bottomless, so that it is like a valley or

a sea that can never be filled. The consequence is that we

labor in our life with all the energy of the other organs, in order

to supply inadequately the needs of these two, I have thought

over this matter over and over again, and cannot help blaming

the Creator for it. I know, of course, that He must have

repented of His mistake also, but simply feels that nothing can

be done about it now, since the design or pattern is already

fixed. How important it is for a man to be very careful at the

time of the conception of a law or an institution!

There is certainly nothing to be done about it, now that we have

got this bottomless pit to fill, and the fact of our having possessed a

stomach has, to say the least, colored the course of human history.

With a generous understanding of human nature, Confucius reduced

the great desires of human beings to two: alimentation and

reproduction, or in simpler terms, food and drink and women- Many

men have circumvented sex, but no saint has yet circumvented food

and drink. There are ascetics who have learned to live a continent

life, but even the most spiritual of men cannot forget about food for

more than four or five hours. The most constant refrain of our

thought occurring unfailingly every few hours is, “When do I eat?”

This occurs at least three times a day, and in some cases four or five

times. International conferences, in the midst of discussion of the

most absorbing and most critical political situations, have to break up

for the noon meal. Parliaments have to adjust their schedule of

sessions to meal hours. A coronation ceremony that lasts more than

five or six hours or conflicts with the midday meal, will be

immediately denounced as a public nuisance. And stomach-gifted

that we all are, the best arrangement we can think of when we

gather to render public homage to a grandfather is to give him a

birthday feast.

There is a reason for it. Friends that meet at meals meet at peace.

A good birds’ nest soup or a delicious chow mein has the tendency

to assuage the heat of our arguments and tone down the harshness

of our conflicting points of view. Put two of the best friends together

when they are hungry, and they will invariably end up in a quarrel.

The effect of a good meal lasts not only a few hours, but for weeks

and months. We rather hesitate to review unfavorably a book written

by somebody who gave us a good dinner three or four months ago.

It is for this reason that, with the Chinese deep insight into human

nature, all quarrels and disputes are settled at dinner tables instead

of at the court of justice. The pattern of Chinese life is such that we

not only settle disputes at dinner, after they have arisen, but also

forestall the arising of disputes by the same means. In China, we

bribe our way into the good will of everybody by frequent dinners. It

is, in fact, the only safe guide to success in politics. Should some

one take the trouble of, compiling statistical figures, he would be able

to find an absolute correlation between the number of dinners a man

gives to his friends and the rate or speed of his official promotion.

But, constituted as we all are, how can we react otherwise? I do

not think this is peculiarly Chinese. How can an American

postmaster-general or chief of department decline a private request

for a personal favor from some friend at whose home he has eaten

five or six good meals? I bet on the Americans being as human as

the Chinese. The only difference is the Americans haven’t got insight

into human nature or haven’t proceeded logically to organize their

political life in accordance with it. I guess there is something similar

to this Chinese way of life in the American political world, too, since I

cannot but believe human nature is very much the same and we are

all so much alike under the skin. Only I don’t notice it practiced so

generally as in China. The only thing I have heard of is that

candidates for public office give outings for the families in the

districts, bribing the mothers by feeding their children with ice cream

and soda pop. The inevitable conviction of the people after such a

public feeding is that “He’s a jolly good fellow,” which usually bursts

out in song. This is merely another form of the practice of the

medieval lords and nobles in Europe who, on the occasion of a

wedding or a noble’s birthday, gave their tenants a generous feast

with liberal meats and wine.

So basically influenced are we by this matter of food and drink

that revolutions, peace, war, patriotism, international understanding,

our daily life and the whole fabric of human social life are profoundly

influenced by it. What was the cause of the French Revolution?

Rousseau and Voltaire and Diderot? No, just food. What is the cause

of the Russian Revolution and the Soviet experiment? Just food

again. As for war, Napoleon showed the essential depth of his

wisdom by saying that “an army fights on its stomach.” And what is

the use of saying, “Peace, Peace” when there is no peace below the

diaphragm? This applies to nations as well as individuals. Empires

have collapsed and the most powerful regimes and reigns of terror

have broken down when the people were hungry- Men refuse to

work, soldiers refuse to fight, prima donnas refuse to sing, senators

refuse to debate, and even presidents refuse to rule the country

when they are hungry. And what does a husband work and sweat in

the office the whole day for, except the prospect of a good meal at

home? Hence the proverb that the best way to a man’s heart is

through his stomach. When his flesh is satisfied, his spirit is calmer

and more at ease, and he becomes more amorous and appreciative.

Wives have complained that husbands don’t notice their new

dresses, new shoes, new eyebrows, or new covers for chairs. But

have wives ever complained that husbands don’t notice a good steak

or a good omelette?. . . What is patriotism but love of the good things

we ate in our childhood? I have said elsewhere that the loyalty to

Uncle Sam is the loyalty to doughnuts and ham and sweet potatoes

and the loyalty to the German Vaterland is the loyalty to Pfann-

kuchen and Christmas Stollen. As for international understanding, I

feel that macaroni has done more for our appreciation of Italy than

Mussolini. It is a pity that, in the minds of some people, at least, who

are not in favor of the Mussolini regime, what macaroni has done

Mussolini has undone in the cause of understanding between Italy

and the outside world. That is because in food, as in death, we feel

the essential brotherhood of mankind,

How a Chinese spirit glows over a good feast! How apt is he to cry

out that life is beautiful when his stomach and his intestines are well-

filled! From this well-filled stomach suffuses and radiates a

happiness that is spiritual- The Chinese relies upon instinct and his

instinct tells him that when the stomach is right, everything is right.

That is why I claim for the Chinese a life closer to instinct and a

philosophy that makes a more open acknowledgment of it possible.

The Chinese idea of happiness is, as I have noted elsewhere, being

“warm, well-filled, dark and sweet”—referring to the condition of

going to bed after a good supper. It is for this reason that a Chinese

poet says, “A well-filled stomach is indeed a great thing; all else is

luxury.”

With this philosophy, therefore, the Chinese have no prudery

about food, or about eating it with gusto. When a Chinese drinks a

mouthful of good soup, he gives a hearty smack. Of course, that

would be bad table manners in the West, On the other hand, I

strongly suspect that Western table manners, compelling us to sip

our soup noiselessly and eat our food quietly with the least

expression of enjoyment, are the true reason for the arrested

development of the art of cuisine. Why do the Westerners talk so

softly and look so miserable and decent and respectable at their

meals? Most Americans haven’t got the good sense to take a

chicken drumstick in their hand and chew it clean, but continue to

pretend to play at it with a knife and fork, feeling utterly miserable

and afraid to say a thing about it. This is criminal when the chicken is

really good. As for the so-called table manners, I feel sure that the

child gets his first initiation into the sorrows of this life when his

mother forbids him to smack his lips. Such is human psychology that

if we don’t express our joy, we soon cease to feel it even, and then

follow dyspepsia, melancholia, neurasthenia and all the mental

ailments peculiar to the adult life. One ought to imitate the French

and sigh an “Ah!” when the waiter brings a good veal cutlet, and

makes a sheer animal grunt like “Ummm!” after tasting the first

mouthful. What shame is there in enjoying one’s food, what shame in

having a normal, healthy appetite? No, the Chinese are different

They have bad table manners, but great enjoyment of a feast.

In fact, I believe the reason why the Chinese failed to develop

botany and zoology is that the Chinese scholar cannot stare coldly

and unemotionally at a fish without immediately thinking of how it

tastes in the mouth and wanting to eat it. The reason I don’t trust

Chinese surgeons is that I am afraid that when a Chinese surgeon

cuts up my liver in search of a gall-stone, he may forget about the

stone and put my liver in a frying pan. For I see a Chinese cannot

look at a porcupine without immediately thinking of ways and means

of cooking and eating its flesh without being poisoned. Not to be

poisoned is for the Chinese the only practical, important aspect of it.

The taste of the porcupine meat is supremely important, if it should

add one more flavor known to our palate. The bristles of the

porcupine don’t interest us. How they arose, what is their function

and how they are connected with the porcupine’s skin and endowed

with the power of sticking up at the sight of an enemy are questions

that seem to the Chinese eminently idle. And so with all the animals

and plants, the proper point of view is how we humans can enjoy

them and not what they are in themselves. The song of the bird, the

color of the flower, the petals of the orchid, the texture of chicken

meat are the things that concern us. The East has to learn from the

West the entire sciences of botany and zoology, but the West has to

learn from the East how to enjoy the trees, the flowers, and the

fishes, birds and animals, to get a full appreciation of the contours

and gestures of different species and associate them with different

moods or feelings.

Food, then, is one of the very few solid joys of human life. It is a

happy fact that this instinct of hunger is less hedged about with

taboos and a social code than the other instinct of sex, and that

generally speaking, no question of morality arises in connection with

food. There is much less prudery about food than there is about sex.

It is a happy condition of affairs that philosophers, poets, merchants

and artists can join together at a dinner, and without a blush perform

the function of feeding themselves in open public, although certain

savage tribes are known to have developed a sense of modesty

about food and eat only when they are individually alone. The

problem of sex will come in for consideration later, but here at least

is an instinct which, because less hampered, produces fewer forms

of perversion and insanity and criminal behavior. This difference

between the instinct of hunger and the instinct of sex in their social

implications is quite natural. But the fact remains that here is one

instinct which does not complicate our psychological life, but is a

pure boon to humanity. The reason is because it is the one instinct

about which humanity is pretty frank. Because there is no problem of

modesty here, there is no psychosis, neurosis or perversion

connected with it. There is many a slip between the cup and the lip,

but once food gets inside the lips, there is comparatively little

sidetracking. It is freely admitted that everybody must have food,

which is not the case with the sexual instinct. And being gratified, it

leads to no trouble. At the worst, some people eat their way into

dyspepsia, or an ulcered stomach or a hardened liver, and a few dig

their graves with their own teeth—there are cases of Chinese

dignitaries among my contemporaries who do this—but even then,

they are not ashamed of it.

For the same reason, fewer social crimes arise from food than

from sex. The criminal code has comparatively little to do with the

sins of illegal, immoral and faithless eating, while it has a large

section on adultery, divorce, and assault on women. At the worst,

husbands may ransack the icebox, but we seldom hang a man for

spiking a Frigidaire, Should such a case ever be brought up, the

judge will be found to be full of compassion. The frank admission of

the necessity of every man feeding himself makes this possible. Our

hearts go out to people in famine, but not to the cloistered nuns.

This speculation is far from being idle because there is little public

ignorance about the subject of food, as compared with public

ignorance on the subject of sex, which is appalling. There are

Manchu families which school their daughters in the art of love as

well as in the art of cooking before their marriage, but how much of

this is done elsewhere in the world? The subject of food enjoys the

sunshine of knowledge, but sex is still surrounded with fairy tales,

myths and superstitions. There is sunshine about the subject of food,

but very little sunshine about the subject of sex.

On the other hand, it is highly unfortunate that we haven’t got a

gizzard or a crop or a maw. In that case, human society would be

altered beyond recognition; in fact, we should have an altogether

different race of men. A human race endowed with gullets or

gizzards would be found to have the most peaceful, contented and

sweet nature, like the chicken or the lamb. We might grow a beak,

which would alter our sense of beauty, or we might have merely

done with rodent teeth. Seeds and fruits might be sufficient, or we

might pasture on the green hillsides, for Nature is so abundant.

Because we should not have to fight for our food and dig our teeth

into the flesh of our defeated enemy, we would not be the terrible

warlike creatures that we are today.

There is a closer relation between food and temperament—in

Nature’s terms—than we thought. All herbivorous animals are

peaceful by nature: the lamb, the horse, the cow, the elephant, the

sparrow, etc-; all carnivorous animals are fighters: the wolf, the lion,

the tiger, the hawk, etc. Had we been an herbivorous race, our

nature would certainly be more elephantine. Nature does not

produce a pugnacious temperament where no fighting is needed.

Cocks still fight with each other, but they fight not about food, but

about women. There would still be a little fighting of this sort among

the males in human society, but it would be vastly different from this

fighting for exported canned goods that we see in present-day

Europe.

I do not know about monkeys eating monkeys, but I do know

about men eating men for certainly all evidences of anthropology

point to a pretty universal practice of cannibalism. That was our

carnivorous ancestry. Is it therefore any wonder that we are still

eating each other in more senses than one—individually, socially

and internationally? There is this much to be said for the cannibals,

that they are sensible about this matter of killing. Conceding that

killing is an undesirable but unavoidable evil, they proceed to get

something out of it by eating the delicious sirloins, ribs and livers of

their dead enemies. The difference between cannibals and civilized

men seems to be that cannibals kill their enemies and eat them,

while civilized men kill their foes and bury them, put a cross over

their bodies and offer up prayers for their souls. Thus we add

stupidity to conceit and a bad temper.

I quite realize that we are on the road to perfection, which means

that we are excusably imperfect at present. That, I think, is what we

are. Not until we develop a gizzard temper can we call ourselves

truly civilized. I sec in the present generation of men both

carnivorous and herbivorous animals—those who have a sweet

temper and those who have not. The herbivorous men go their way

through life minding their own business, while the carnivorous men

make their living by minding that of others. If I abjured politics ten

years ago, after having a foretaste of it during four months, it was

because I early made the discovery that I was not by nature a

carnivorous animal, although I enjoy a good steak. Half of the world

spends its time doing things, and half the world spends its time

making others do things for them, or making it impossible for others

to do anything. The characteristic of the carnivorous is a certain

sheer delight in pugilism, logrolling, wire-pulling, and in double-

crossing, outwitting and forestalling the enemy, all done with a

genuine interest and real ability, for which, however, I confess I fail to

have the slightest appreciation. But it is all a matter of instinct; men

born with this pugilistic instinct seem to enjoy and revel in it, while

real creative ability, ability in doing their own jobs or knowing their

own subjects, seems at the same time usually to be

underdeveloped. How many good, quiet herbivorous professors are

totally lacking in rapacity and the ability to get ahead in competition

with others, and yet how truly I admire them! In fact I may essay the

opinion that all the world’s creative artists are vastly better at minding

their own business than minding that of others, and are therefore of

the herbivorous species. True evolution of mankind consists in the

multiplication of the herbivorous homo sapiens over against the

carnivorous variety. For the moment, however, the carnivorous must

still be out rulers. That must be so in a world believing in strong

muscles.

V. ON HAVING STRONG MUSCLES

Another important consequence of our being animals and of our

having mortal bodies is that we are susceptible to murder, and the

average man doesn’t like murder. True, we have a divine desire for

knowledge and wisdom, but with knowledge come also differences

of point of view and therefore arguments. Now in a world of

immortals, arguments would last forever, for I can conceive of no

way of settling a dispute, if neither of the disputing immortals is

willing to admit that he is wrong. In a world of mortals, the situation is

different. The disputing party generally gets so obnoxious in the eyes

of his opponent—and the more obnoxious he will appear, the more

embarrassingly right his arguments are—so that the latter just kills

him, and that settles the argument. If “A” kills “B,” “A” is right; and if

“B” kills “A,” “B” is right This, we hardly need remind ourselves, is the

old, old method of settling arguments among brutes. In the animal

kingdom, the lion is always right.

This is basically so true of human society that it offers a good

interpretation of human history, even down to the present time. After

all, Galileo retracted as well as discovered certain ideas about the

roundness of the earth and the solar system. He retracted because

he had a mortal body, susceptible to murder or tortuie. It would have

taken infinite trouble to have argued with Galileo, and if Galileo had

had no mortal body, you could never have convinced him that he

was wrong, and that would have been an eternal nuisance. As it

was, however, a torture chamber or a prison cell, not to speak of the

gallows or the stake, sufficed to show how wrong he was. The clergy

and the gentlemen of the period were determined to have a

showdown with Galileo. The fact that Galileo was convinced that he

was wrong strengthened the belief of the clergy of that period that

they were right. That settled the matter very neatly.

There is something convenient and handy and efficient about this

method of settling quarrels. Wars of depredation, religious wars, the

conflict of Saladin and the Christians, the Inquisition, the burning of

witches, the more modern preaching of the Christian gospel and

proselytizing of heathens by gun-boats, the bearing of the White

Man’s Burden by the same means, the spread of civilization to

Ethiopia by Mussolini’s tanks and airplanes—all these proceed upon

this animal logic to which all mankind is heir. If the Italians have

better guns and shoot straighter and kill more people, Mussolini

carries civilization to Ethiopia, and if, on the other hand, the

Ethiopians have better guns and shoot straighter and kill more

people, then Haile Selassie carries civilization to Italy.

There is something of the noble lion in us that disdains

arguments. Hence our glorification of the soldier because he makes

short shrift with dissenters. The quickest way to shut up a man who

believes he is right, and who shows the propensity to argue, is to

hang him. Men resort to talking only when they haven’t the power to

enforce their convictions upon others. On the other hand, men who

act and have the power to act seldom talk. They despise arguments.

After all, we talk in order to influence people, and if we know we can

influence people, or control them, where is the need for talking at all?

In this connection, is it not somewhat disheartening that the League

of Nations talked so much during the last Manchurian and Ethiopian

wars? It was altogether pathetic. There is something ominous about

this quality of the League of Nations. On the other hand, this method

of settling arguments by force can sometimes be carried to absurdity,

if there is no sense of humor, as when the Japanese actually believe

they can stamp out anti-Japanese feeling among the Chinese by

bombing and machine-gunning them. That is why I am always slow

to admit that we are rational animals.

I have always thought that the League of Nations was an

excellent School for Modern Languages, specializing in translation of

the modern tongues, giving the hearers excellent practice by first

making an accomplished orator deliver a perfect address in English,

and after the audience is thus made acquainted with the gist and

content of the speech, having it rendered into fluent, flawless,

classical French by a professional translator, with intonation, accent

and all In fact, it is better than the Berlitz School; it is a school of

modern languages and public speaking to boot. One of my friends, in

fact, reported that, after a six months’ stay at Geneva, his lisping

habit which had bothered him for years was cured. But the amazing

fact is that even in this League of Nations, consecrated to the

exchange of opinions, in an institution that conceivably has no other

purpose than talking, there should be a distinction between Big

Talkers and Small Talkers, the Big Talkers being those having Big

Fists, and the Small Talkers being those having Small Fists, which

shows the whole thing is quite silly, if not a fake. As if the nations

with Small Fists couldn’t talk as fluently as the others! That is to say,

if we mean just talking. . . . I cannot but think that this inherent belief

in the eloquence of the Big Fist belongs to that animal heritage we

have spoken of. (I shouldn’t like to use the word “brute” here, and yet

it would seem most appropriate in this connection.)

Of course, the gist of the matter lies in the fact that mankind is

endowed with a chattering instinct as well as the fighting instinct. The

tongue is, historically speaking, as old as the fist or the strong arm.

The ability to talk distinguishes man from animals, and the mixture of

verbiage and barrage seems to be a peculiarly human trait. This

would seem to point to the permanency of institutions like the

League of Nations, or the American Senate, or a tradesmen’s

convention—anything that affords men an opportunity to talk. It

seems we humans are destined to chatter in order to find out who is

right. That is all right; chattering is a characteristic of the angels, The

peculiarly human trait lies in the fact that we chatter to a certain point

until one of the parties of the dispute who has a stronger arm feels

so embarrassed or angered—” Embarrassment leads naturally to

anger,” the Chinese say—until that embarrassed and therefore

angered party thinks that this chattering has gone far enough, bangs

the table, takes his opponent by the neck, gives him a wallop, and

then looks about and asks the audience, which is the jury, “Am I right

or am I wrong?” And as we learn at every tea house, the audience

invariably replies, “You are right!” Only humans ever settle a thing

like that. Angels settle arguments all by chatter; brutes settle

arguments all by muscle and claws; human beings alone settle them

by a strange confusion of muscle and chatter. Angels believe sheerly

in right; brutes believe sheerly in might; and human beings alone

believe that might is right. Of the two, the chattering instinct, or the

effort to find out who is right, is of course the nobler instinct.

Someday we must all just chatter That will be the salvation of

mankind. At present, we must be content with the tea house method

and tea house psychology. It doesn’t matter whether we settle an

argument in a tea house or at the League of Nations; at both places,

we are consistently and characteristically human.

I have witnessed two such tea house scenes, one in 1931-32 and

one in 1936, And the most amusing thing is, there was an admixture

of a third instinct, modesty, in these two squabbles. In the 1931:

affair, we were at the tea house and there was one party in dispute

with another and we were supposed to be the jury in the matter. The

charge was some sort of a theft or stealing of property. The fellow

with the strong arm at first joined in the argument made an address

to justify himself, spoke of his infinite patience with his neighbor—

what restraint, what magnanimity, what unselfishness of motive in his

desire to cultivate his neighbor’s garden! The funny thing was, he

encouraged us to go on with our chatter while he stole outside the

room and completed the stealing by staking up a fence around the

stolen property, and then came in to ask us to go and see for

ourselves if he wasn’t right. We all went, saw the new fence being

steadily pushed farther and farther to the West, for even then the

fence was being constantly shifted. “Now, then, am I right or wrong?”

We returned the verdict of “You are wrong!”—a little impudent of us

to have said that. Thereupon the fellow with the strong arm protested

that he was publicly insulted, that his sense of modesty was injured

and his honor besmirched. Angrily and proudly he walked out of the

room, wiping the dust off his shoes with sneering contempt, thinking

us not good company for him. Imagine a man like that feeling

insulted! That is why I say the third instinct of modesty complicates

the matter. Thereupon the tea house lost a good bit of its reputation

as a place for scientific settling of private quarrels.

Then in 1936 we were called upon to judge another dispute.

Another fellow with a strong arm said he would lay the facts of the

dispute before the table and ask for justice. I heard the word “justice”

with a shudder. And we believed him—not without a premonition as

to the awkwardness of the situation or our questionable capacity as

a jury. Determined to justify our reputation as fair-minded and

competent judges, we, almost to a man, told him to his face that he

was wrong, that he was nothing but a bully. He, too, felt insulted;

again his sense of modesty was injured and his honor was

besmirched. Well, then, he took the opponent by the neck and went

outside and killed him, and then he came back and asked us, “Now

am I right or wrong?” And we echoed, “You are right!” with a

profound bow. Still not satisfied, he asked us, “Am I good enough

company for you now?” and we shouted like a regular tea house

crowd, “Of course you are!” But what modesty on the part of the

killer!

That is human civilization in the year of Our Lord 1936. I think the

evolution of law and justice must have passed through scenes like

the above in its earliest dawn, when we were little better than

savages. From that tea house scene to the Supreme Court of

Justice, where the convicted does not protest that he is insulted by

the conviction, seems a long, long way of development. For some

ten years, while we started the tea house, we thought we were on

the road to civilization, but a wiser God, knowing human beings and

our essential human traits, might have predicted the setback. He

might have known how we must fail and falter at the beginning,

being only half civilized as we are at present. For the present, the

reputation of the tea house is gone, and we are back to falling upon

each other and tearing each other’s hair out and digging our teeth

into each other’s flesh, in the true grand style of the jungle. . . . Still I

am not in total despair. That thing called modesty or shame is after

all a good thing, and the chattering instinct also. The way I look at it

is we are quite devoid of real shame at present But let us continue to

pretend that we have a sense of shame, and continue to chatter. By

chattering we shall one day attain the blessed state of the angels.

VI. ON HAVING A MIND

The human mind, you say, is probably the noblest product of the

Creation. This is a proposition that most people will admit,

particularly when it refers to a mind like Albert Einstein’s that can

prove curved space by a long mathematical equation, or Edison’s

that can invent the gramaphone and the motion picture, or the minds

of other physicists who can measure the rays of an advancing or

receding star or deal with the constitution of the unseen atoms, or

that of the inventor of natural-color movie cameras. Compared with

the aimless, shifting and fumbling curiosity of the monkeys, we must

agree that we have a noble, a glorious intellect that can comprehend

the universe in which we are born.

The average mind, however, is charming rather than noble. Had

the average mind been noble, we should be completely rational

beings without sins or weaknesses or misconduct, and what an

insipid world that would be! We should be so much less charming as

creatures. I am such a humanist that saints without sins don’t

interest me. But we are charming in our irrationality, our

inconsistencies, our follies, our sprees and holiday gaieties, our

prejudices, bigotry and forgetfulness. Had we all perfect brains, we

shouldn’t have to make new resolutions every New Yean The beauty

of the human life consists in the fact that, as we review on New

Year’s Eve our last New Year resolutions, we find we have fulfilled a

third of them, left unfulfilled another third, and can’t remember what

the other third was. A plan that is sure to be carried out down to its

last detail already loses interest for me. A general who goes to battle

and is completely sure of his victory beforehand, and can even

predict the exact number of casualties, will lose all interest in the

battle, and might just as well throw up the whole thing. No one would

play chess if he knew his opponent’s mind—good, bad or indifferent

—was infallible. All novels would be unreadable did we know exactly

how the mind of each character was going to work and were we able

consequently to predict the exact outcome. The reading of a novel is

but the chase of a wayward and unpredictable mind making its

incalculable decisions at certain moments, through a maze of

evolving circumstanced. A stern, unforgiving father who does not at

some moment relax ceases to impress us as human, and even a

faithless husband who is forever faithless soon forfeits the reader’s

interest. Imagine a renowned, proud composer, whom no one could

induce to compose an opera for a certain beautiful woman, but who,

on hearing that a hated rival composer is thinking of doing it,

immediately snatches at the job; or a scientist who in his life has

consistently refused to publish his writings in newspapers, but who,

on seeing a rival scientist make a slip with one single letter, forgets

his own rule and rushes into print. There we have laid our finger

upon the singularly human quality of the mind.

The human mind is charming in its unreasonableness, its

inveterate prejudices, and its waywardness and unpredictability. If

we haven’t learned this truth, we have learned nothing from the

century of study of human psychology. In other words, our minds still

retain the aimless, fumbling quality of simian intelligence.

Consider the evolution of the human mind. Our mind was

originally an organ for sensing danger and preserving life. That this

mind eventually came to appreciate logic and a correct mathematical

equation I consider a mere accident. Certainly it was not created for

that purpose. It was created for sniffing food, and if after sniffing

food, it can also sniff an abstract mathematical formula, that’s all to

the good. My conception of the human brain, as of all animal brains,

is that it is like an octopus or a starfish with tentacles, tentacles for

feeling the truth and eating it. Today we still speak of “feeling” the

truth, rather than “thinking” it. The brain, together with other sensory

organs, constitutes the feelers. How its tentacles feel the truth is still

as great a mystery in physics as the sensitivity to light of the purple

in the eye’s retina. Every’ time the brain dissociates itself from the

collaborating sensory apparatus and indulges in so-called “abstract

thinking,” every time it gets away from what William James calls the

perceptual reality and escapes into the world of conceptual reality, it

becomes devitalized, dehumanized and degenerate. We all labor

under the misconception that the true function of the mind is thinking,

a misconception that is bound to lead to serious mistakes in

philosophy unless we revise our notion of the term “thinking’’ itself. It

is a misconception that is apt to leave the philosopher disillusioned

when he goes out of his studio and watches the crowd at the market.

As if thinking had much to do with our everyday behavior!

The late James Harvey Robinson has tried to show, in The Mind

in the Making, how our mind gradually evolved from, and is still

operating upon, four underlying layers: the animal mind, the savage

mind, the childish mind and the traditional civilized mind, and has

further shown us the necessity of developing a more critical mind if

the present human civilization is to continue. In my scientific

moments, I am inclined to agree with him, but in my wiser moments,

I doubt the feasibility, or even the desirability, of such a step of

general progress- I prefer to have our mind charmingly unreasonable

as it is at present. I should hate to see a world in which we are all

perfectly rational beings. Do I distrust scientific progress? No, I

distrust sainthood. Am I anti-intellectualistic? Perhaps yes; perhaps

no, I am merely in love with life, and being in love with life, I distrust

the intellect profoundly. Imagine a world in which there are no stories

of murder in newspapers, every one is so omniscient that no house

ever catches fire, no airplane ever has an accident, no husband

deserts his wife, no pastor elopes with a choir girl, no king abdicates

his throne for love, no man changes his mind and everyone

proceeds to carry out with logical precision a career that he mapped

out for himself at the age of ten—good-by to this happy human

world! All the excitement and uncertainty of life would be gone.

There would be no literature because there would be no sin, no

misbehavior, no human weakness, no upsetting passion, no

prejudices, no irregularities and, worst of all, no surprises. It would

be like a horse race in which every one of the forty or fifty thousand

spectators knew the winner. Human fallibility is the very essence of

the color of life, as the upsets are the very color and interest of a

steeplechase. Imagine a Doctor Johnston without his bigoted

prejudices! If we were all completely rational beings, we should then,

instead of growing into perfect wisdom, degenerate into automatons,

the human mind serving merely to register certain impulses as

unfailingly as a gas meter. That would be inhuman, and anything

inhuman is bad.

My readers may suspect that I am trying a desperate defense of

human frailties and making virtues of their vices, and yet it is not so.

What we gained in correctness of conduct through the development

of a completely rational mind, we should lose in the fun and color of

life. And nothing is so uninteresting as to spend one’s life with a

paragon of virtue as a husband or wife. I have no doubt that a

society of such perfectly rational beings would be perfectly fitted to

survive, and yet I wonder whether survival on such terms is worth

having. Have a society that is well-ordered, by all means—but not

too well-ordered! I recall the ants, who, to my mind, are probably the

most perfectly rational creatures on earth. No doubt ants have

evolved such a perfect socialist state that they have been able to live

on this pattern for probably the last million years. So far as complete

rationality of conduct is concerned, I think we have to hand it to the

ants, and let the human beings come second (I doubt very much

whether they deserve that). The ants are a hard-working, sane,

saving and thrifty lot. They are the socially regimented and

individually disciplined beings that we are not. They don’t mind

working fourteen hours a day for the state or the community; they

have a sense of duty and almost no sense of rights; they have

persistence, order, courtesy and courage, and above all, self-

discipline. We are poor specimens of self-discipline, not even good

enough for museum pieces.

Run across any hall of honor, with statues of the great men of

history lining the corridor, and you will perceive that rationality of

conduct is probably the last thing to be recalled from their lives. This

Julius Caesar, who fell in love with Cleopatra—noble Julius Caesar,

who was so completely irrational that he almost forgot (as Anthony

did entirely forget) an empire for a woman. That Moses, who in a fit

of rage shattered the sacred stone tablets which had taken him forty

days on Mount Sinai to inscribe in company with God, and in that he

was no more rational than the Israelites who forsook God and took to

worshiping the Golden Calf during his absence. That King David,

who was alternately cruel and generous, alternately religious and

impious, who worshiped God and sinned and wrote psalms of

repentance and worshiped God again. King Solomon, the very

image of wisdom, who couldn’t do a thing about his son. . .

Confucius, who told a visitor he was not at home and then, as the

visitor was just outside the door, sang upstairs in order to let him

know that he was at home. . . Jesus, with his tears at Gethsemane

and his doubts on the cross. . . Shakespeare, who bequeathed his

“second-best bed” to his wife. . . Milton, who couldn’t get along with

his seventeen-year-old wife and therefore wrote a treatise on divorce

and, being attacked, then burst forth into a defense of the liberty of

speech in Areopagitica. . . Goethe, who went through the Church’s

wedding ceremony with his wife, their nineteen-year-old son

standing by their side. . . Jonathan Swift and Stella. . . Ibsen and

Emilie Bardach (he kept rational—good for him). . . .

Is it not plain that passion rather than reason rules the world? And

that what made these great men lovable, what made them human,

was not their rationality, but their lack of rationality? Chinese obituary

notices and biographical sketches of men and women written by

their children are so unreadable, so uninteresting and so untrue,

because they make all their ancestors appear abnormally and wholly

virtuous beings. . . . The great criticism of my book on China by my

countrymen is that I make the Chinese too human, that I have

painted their weaknesses as well as their strength. My countrymen

(at least the little bureaucrats) believe that if I had painted China as a

paradise inhabited by Confucianist saints only, living in a millennium

of peace and reason, I could have done more effective propaganda

for my country! There is really no limit to the stupidity of

bureaucrats. . . . But the very charm of biography, its very readability,

depends on showing the human side of a great character which is so

similar to ours. Every touch of irrational behavior in a biography is a

stroke in convincing reality. On that alone, the success of Lytton

Strachey’s portraits depends.

An excellent illustration of a perfectly sound mind is provided by

the English. The English have got bad logic, but very good tentacles

in their brains for sensing danger and preserving life. I have not been

able to discover anything logical in their national behavior or their

rational history. Their universities, their constitution, their Anglican

Church are all pieces of patchwork, being the steady accretions of a

process of historical growth. The very strength of the British Empire

consists in the English lack of cerebration, in their total inability to

see the other man’s point of view, and in their strong conviction that

the English way is the only right way and English food is the only

good food. The moment the Englishmen learn to reason and lose

their strong confidence in themselves, the British Empire will

collapse. For no one can go about conquering the world i£ he has

doubts about himself. You can make absolutely nothing out of the

English attitude toward their king, their loyalty to, and their quite

genuine affection for, a king who is deprived by them of the liberty of

speech and is summarily told to behave or quit the throne. . . . When

Elizabethan England needed pirates to protect the Empire, she was

able to produce enough pirates to meet the situation and glorified

them. In every period, England was able to fight the right war,

against the right enemy, with the right ally, on the right side, at the

right time, and call it by a wrong name. They didn’t do it by logic, did

they? They did it by their tentacles.

The English have a ruddy complexion, developed no doubt by the

London fog and by cricket. A skin that is so healthy cannot but help

playing an important part in their thinking, that is, in the process of

feeling their way through life. And as the English think with their

healthy skin, so the Chinese think with their profound intestines. That

is a pretty generally established matter in China, We Chinese know

that we do think with our intestines; scholars are said to have “a

bellyful of ideas,” or “of scholarship,” “of poetry and literature,” or “a

bellyful of sorrow,’ or “of anger,” “remorse,” “chagrin,” or longing.”

Chinese lovers separated from each other write letters to say that

“their sorrowful intestines are tied into a hundred knots,” or that at

their last parting “their intestines were broken.” Chinese scholars

who have arranged their ideas for an essay or a speech, but have

not written them down on paper, are said to have their “belly

manuscript” ready. They have got their ideas all arranged down

there. I’m quite sure they have. This is, of course, all strictly scientific

and capable of proof, especially when modern psychologists come to

understand better the emotional quality and texture of our thought.

But the Chinese don’t need any scientific proof. They just feel it

down there. Only by appreciating the fact that the emotional quality

of Chinese melodies all starts from below the diaphragm of the

singers, can one understand Chinese music with its profound

emotional color.

One must never deprecate the capacity of the human mind when

dealing with the natural universe or anything except human

relationships. Optimistic about the conquests of science, I am less

hopeful about the general development of a critical mind in dealing

with human affairs, or about mankind reaching a calm and

understanding far above the sway of passions. Mankind as

individuals may have reached austere heights, but mankind as social

groups are still subject to primitive passions, occasional back-

slidings and outcrop-pings of the savage instincts, and occasional

waves of fanaticism and mass hysteria.

Knowing then our human frailties, we have the more reason to

hate the despicable wretch who in demagogue fashion makes use of

our human foibles to hound us into another world war; who

inculcates hatred, of which we already have too much; who glorifies

self-aggrandizement and self-interest, of which there is no lack; who

appeals to our animal bigotry and racial prejudice; who deletes the

fifth commandment in the training of youth and encourages killing

and war as noble, as if we were not already warlike enough

creatures; and who whips up and stirs our mortal passions, as if we

were not already very near the beast. This wretch’s mind, no matter

how cunning, how sagacious, how worldly-wise, is itself a

manifestation of the beast The gracious spirit of wisdom is tied down

to a beast or a demon in us, which by this time we have come to

understand is nothing but our animal heritage, or rather it ties this

demon down by an old and worn leash and holds it but in temporary

submission. At any time the leash may snap, and the demon be

unleashed, and amidst hosannas the car of Juggernaut will ride

roughshod over us, just to remind us once more how terribly near the

savage we have been all this time, and how superficial is our

civilization. Civilization will then be turned into a magnificent stage,

on which Moors will kill Christians and Christians kill Moors and

Negroes fall upon whites and whites stab Negroes and field mice

emerge from sewers to eat human corpses and hawks circle in the

air over an abundant human feast—all just to remind ourselves of

the brotherhood of animals. Nature is quite capable of such

experiments.

Psychoanalyists often cure mental patients by making them

review their past and see their life objectively. Perhaps if mankind

will think more of their past, they will also have a better mastery over

themselves. The knowledge that we have an animal heritage and

that we are very near the beasts might help to check our behaving

like beasts. This animal heritage of ours makes it easier to see

ourselves as we are in animal fables and satires, as in Aesop’s

Fables, Chaucer’s Parliament of Fowles, Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels

and Anatole France’s Penguin Island. These animal fables were

good in Aesop’s day and will still be good in the year A. D. 4000.

How can we remedy the situation? The critical mind is too thin and

cold, thinking itself will help little and reason will be of small avail;

only the spirit of reasonableness, a sort of warm, glowing, emotional

and intuitive thinking, joined with compassion, will insure us against

a reversion to our ancestral type. Only the development of our life to

bring it into harmony with our instincts can save us. I consider the

education of our senses and our emotions rather more important

than the education of our ideas.

Is this the reason why, when we are on a swing and about to swing forward after swinging

backward, we get a tingle at the end of our spinal cord, where a tail formerly was? The

reflex is still there and we are trying to catch on to something by a tail which has already

disappeared.

By inversion, these ballads were reported by the Chinese historians as prophetic oracles,

giving expression to the voice of God through the voice of the people. That explains the

future tense. The Emperor did die at Shach’iu.

Chapter Four

ON BEING HUMAN

I. ON HUMAN DIGNITY

In the preceding chapter, we have seen man’s mortal heritage, the

part he shares with the animal world, and its consequences on the

character of human civilization. But still we find the picture is not

complete. There is still something missing for a well-rounded view of

human nature and human dignity. Ah, human dignity—that is the

word! There is a need of emphasizing that and there is a need of

knowing what that dignity consists of, lest we confuse the issue and

lose it. For there is a very evident danger of our losing that dignity in

the twentieth century and especially in the present and immediate

following decades.

“Don’t you think a man is the most amazing of animals, if you

insist that we are animals?” I quite agree. Man alone has invented a

civilization, and this is not something to be lightly dismissed. There

are perhaps finer animals with better forms and nobler structures,

like the horse; with finer muscles, like the lion; with a finer sense of

smell and greater docility and loyalty, like the dog; or better vision,

like the eagle; or a better sense of direction, like the homing pigeon;

with greater thrift and discipline and capacity for hard work, like the

ant; with a sweeter temper like the dove or the deer; more patience

and contentment like the cow; better singers, like the lark; and

better-dressed beings, like the parrot and the peacock. Still there is

something in a monkey that makes me prefer the monkey to all

these animals, and something of the monkey curiosity and monkey

cleverness in man that makes me prefer to be a man. Granted that

ants are more rational and better-disciplined beings than ourselves,

as I have pointed out, and granted that they have a more stable form

of government than present-day Spain, still they haven’t got a library

or a museum, have they? Any time ants or elephants can invent a

giant telescope or discover a new variable star or predict a solar

eclipse, or seals can discover the science of calculus or beavers can

cut the Panama Canal, I will hand them the championship as

masters of the world and Lords of Creation. Yes, we can be proud of

ourselves, but we had better find out what it is that we have got to be

proud of, what is the essence of human dignity.

This human dignity, as I have already hinted at the beginning of

this book, consists of four characteristics of the scamp, who has

been glorified by Chinese literature. They are: a playful curiosity, a

capacity for dreams, a sense of humor to correct those dreams, and

finally a certain waywardness and incalculability of behavior.

Together they represent the Chinese version of the American

doctrine of the individual. It is impossible to paint a more glowing

portrait of the individualist than has been done for the scamp in

Chinese literature, and it is certainly no accident that Walt Whitman,

the greatest literary champion of American individualism, is himself

called the “Magnificent Idler.”

II. ON PLAYFUL CURIOSITY: THE RISE OF HUMAN CIVILIZATION

How did the human scamp begin his ascent to civilization? What

were the first signs of promise in him, or of his developing

intelligence? The answer is undoubtedly to be found in man’s playful

curiosity, in his first efforts to fumble about with his hands and turn

everything inside out to examine it, as a monkey in his idle moments

turns the eyelid or the ear-lobe of a fellow-monkey, looking for lice or

for nothing at all—just turning about for turning about’s sake. Go to

the 200 and watch a pair of monkeys picking each other’s ears, and

there you have the promise of an Isaac Newton or an Albert Einstein.

This figure of the playful, fumbling activities of the exploring

human hand is more than a figure. It is a scientific truth. The very

basis of human civilization started with the emancipation of the

hands consequent upon man’s assuming an erect stature and

becoming a biped. Such playful curiosity we see even in cats, the

moment their front paws are relieved from the duty of walking and

supporting the body. It might have been quite as possible for a

civilization to be developed from cats as well as from monkeys,

except for the fact that in the case of the monkeys, the fingers were

already well developed through the clasping of branches, whereas

the cat’s paws were still paws—merely lumps of flesh and cartilage.

Let me for a moment forget that I am not a qualified biologist and

speculate about the rise of human civilization from this emancipation

of the hands, because I have a few things to say here, which may or

may not have been observed by others. The assumption of an erect

stature and the consequent emancipation of the hand had extremely

far-reaching results. It brought about the use of tools, the sense of

modesty, the subjection of women, and in this connection probably

also the development of language, and finally a prodigious increase

in playful curiosity and the instinct of exploration. It is pretty well

known that human civilization began with the discovery of tools and

that this came from the development of the human hands. When the

big anthropoid ape descended partially from the tree, probably

because his body was too heavy, he had two roads to follow, either

that of a baboon, going on all fours, or that of the orang-outang,

learning to walk on its hind legs. Human ancestry could not possibly

have come from the baboon, a quadruped (or quadrumanum),

because the baboon’s front paws were too much occupied. On the

other hand, with an erect posture more or less successfully acquired

by the orang-outang, the hands acquired freedom, and how

significant was this freedom for all civilization! By that time, the

anthropoid ape certainly had learned already to pick fruit with his

hands, instead of with his big jaws. It was but a simple step, when he

took to living in a cave on a high cliff, to pick stones and pebbles and

roll them down from the cliff on his enemies. That was the first tool

man ever used. There we must picture a constant fumbling and

manipulating activity of his hands, grasping at things for some

purpose or for no purpose. There would be sharp flints or jagged

pieces of rocks which through his aimless fumbling were accidently

discovered to be more useful for killing than round pieces of stone.

The mere act of turning things about, for instance, of looking at the

back as well as the front of an ear-lobe, must have already increased

his power for conceiving things in their totality and therefore also the

number of images he carried in his brain, thus stimulating the growth

of the frontal lobes of the brain.

I believe the mystery of the origin of sexual modesty in man,

which is totally absent in animals, is also due to this erect posture.

For by this new posture, which Father Nature in his scheme of things

probably never intended, certain posterior parts of the body at one

stroke came to occupy the center of the body, and what was

naturally behind came in front. Allied to this terrible new situation

were other maladjustments chiefly affecting women, causing

frequent abortions and menstrual troubles. Anatomically, our

muscles were designed and developed for the quadruped position.

The mother pig, for instance, carries its litter of pig embryos logically

suspended from its horizontal spine, like wash hung on a line with its

weight properly distributed. Asking the human pregnant mother to

stand erect is like tipping the wash line vertically and expecting the

clothes to remain in position. Our peritoneal muscles are badly

designed for that: if we were originally bipeds, such muscles should

be nicely attached to the shoulder, and the whole thing would be a

more pleasant job. Anybody with a knowledge of the anatomy of the

human womb and ovaries should be surprised that they keep in

position and function at all, and that there are not more dislocations

and menstrual troubles. The whole mystery of menstruation has

never yet been satisfactorily explained, but I am quite sure that, even

granted that a periodical renewal of ova is necessary, we must admit

that the function is carried out in a most inefficient, unnecessarily

long and needlessly painful manner, and I have no doubt that this

inefficiency is due to the biped position.

This, then, led to the subjection of women and probably also to

the development of human society with its present characteristics, I

do not think that if the human mother could walk on all fours, she

would have been subjected by her husband at all. Two forces came

into play simultaneously. On the one hand, men and women were

already by that time idle, curious and playful creatures. The amorous

instinct developed new expressions. Kissing was still not entirely

pleasant, or wholly successful, as we can see it between two

chimpanzees kissing each other with hard, clapping, protruding jaws.

But the hand developed new, more sensitive and softer movements,

the movements of patting, pawing, tickling and embracing, all as

incidental results of chasing lice on each other’s body. I have no

doubt that lyrical poetry would not have developed if our hairy human

ancestors had had no lice on their bodies. This, then, must have

helped considerably to develop the amorous instinct.

On the other hand, the biped human pregnant mother was now for

a considerably longer period subjected to a state of grievous

helplessness. During the earlier period of imperfect adjustment to the

erect position, I can see that it was even more difficult for the

pregnant mother to carry her load and go about, especially before

the legs and heels were properly modified, and the pelvis was

properly projected backwards to counter-balance the burden in front.

At the earliest stages, the biped position was so awkward that a

Pleistocene mother must have shamefacedly gone on all fours when

nobody was looking, to relieve her aching spine. What with these

inconveniences and other women’s troubles, the human mother

began to use other tactics and play for love, thereby losing some of

her spirit of independence. Good Lord, she had need of being patted

and pawed during those times of confinement! The erect posture

prolonged, too, the period of infancy by making it difficult for the

human baby to learn to walk. While the baby calf or baby elephant

can trot about practically as soon as it is born, the human baby took

two or three years to learn the job, and who was the most natural

person to look after him except the mother?

Man then went off into a completely new path of development,

Human society developed from the single fact that sex, in the

broadest sense of the word, began to color human daily life. The

human female was more consciously and constantly a female than a

female animal—the negress more than the tigress, and the countess

more than the lioness. Specialization between men and women in

the civilized sense began to develop, and the female, instead of the

traditional male, began to decorate herself, probably by picking hair

out of her face and her breast. It was all a matter of tactics for

survival. We see these tactics clearly in animals. The tiger attacks,

the tortoise hides, and the horse runs away—all for survival. Love or

beauty and the gentle cunning of womanhood had then a survival

value. The man probably had a stronger arm, and there was no use

fighting him; why not, therefore, bribe and flatter and please him?

That is the very character of our civilization even today. Instead of

learning to repel and attack, woman learned to attract, and instead of

trying to achieve her goal by force, she tried her best to achieve it by

softer means. And after all, softness is civilization. I rather think

therefore that human civilization began with woman rather than with

man.

And then I also cannot help but think that woman played a greater

role than man in the development of chattering, which we call

language today. The instinct for chatter is so deep in women that I

firmly believe they must have helped to create human language in a

more important manner than men. Early men, I imagine, were quite

morose, silent creatures. I suppose human language began when

the first male anthropoids were away from their cave dwellings

hunting, and two women neighbors were discussing before their

caves whether William was a better fellow than Harold or Harold was

a better fellow than William, and how Harold was disgustingly

amorous last night, and how easily he could be offended. In some

such form, human language must have begun. It cannot be

otherwise. Of course the taking of food by hands, thus relieving the

original double duty of the jaw in both taking and eating food,

eventually made it possible also for the jaw gradually to recede and

diminish in size, and thus also helped toward the development of

human language.

But, as I have suggested, the most important consequence of this

new posture was the emancipation of the hands for turning things

about and examining them inside out, as symbolized in the pastime

of chasing lice by monkeys. From this chasing of lice, the

development of the spirit of free inquiry into knowledge had its start.

Today human progress still consists very largely in chasing after

some form or other of lice that is bothering human society. An

instinct for curiosity has been developed which compels the human

mind to explore freely and playfully into all kinds of subjects and

social diseases. This mental activity has nothing to do with seeking

food; it is an exercise of the human spirit pure and simple. The

monkeys do not chase after lice in order to eat them, but for the

sheer fun of it. And this is the characteristic of all worthwhile human

leaning and human scholarship, an interest in things in themselves

and a playful, idle desire to know them as they are, and not because

that knowledge directly or immediately helps in feeding our stomach.

(If I contradict myself here as a Chinese, I am happy as a Chinese

that I contradict myself.) This I regard as characteristically human

and contributing very largely to human dignity. Knowledge, or the

process of seeking knowledge, is a form of play; it is certainly so with

all scientists and inventors who are worth anything and who truly

accomplish worthwhile results. Good medical research doctors are

more interested in microbes than in human beings, and astronomers

will try to record or register the movements of a distant star hundreds

of millions of miles away from us, although the star cannot possibly

have any direct bearing on human life on this planet. Almost all

animals, especially the young, have also the play instinct, but it is in

man alone that playful curiosity has been developed to an important

extent.

It is for this reason that I hate censors and all agencies and forms

of government that try to control our thought. I cannot but believe

that such a censor or such a ruler is wilfully or unintentionally

insulting human intelligence. If the liberty of thought is the highest

activity of the human mind, then the suppression of that liberty must

be the most degrading to us as human beings. Euripides defined the

slave as a man who has lost his liberty of thought or opinion. Every

autocracy is a factory for turning out gorgeous Euripidean slaves.

Don’t we have fine examples of them, East and West, in the

twentieth century and at the very home of culture? Every autocratic

government, no matter in what form, therefore, is intellectually

retrograde. We have seen it in the Middle Ages in general, and in the

Spanish Inquisition in particular. Short-sighted politicians or

clergymen may think that uniformity of belief and thought contributes

toward peace and order, but historically the consequence is always

depressing and degrading to the human character. Such autocrats

must have a great contempt for the people in general when they do

not confine themselves to ordering a nation’s external conduct, but

proceed also to regiment the people’s inner thoughts and beliefs.

They have a naive assurance that human minds will put up with this

uniformity and that they will like or dislike a book or a concerto or a

moving picture exactly as the official propagandist or chief of

publicity bureau tells them to. Every autocratic government has tried

to confuse literature with propaganda, art with politics, anthropology

with patriotism, and religion with worship of the living ruler.

It simply can’t be done, and if the controllers of thought go too far

in. running against human nature itself, they are thereby sowing the

seeds of their downfall. As Mencius put it, “If the ruler considers the

people as blades of grass, then the people will consider their ruler as

a robber or enemy.” There is no greater robber in this world than he

who robs us of our liberty of thought. Deprived of that, we might as

well go down on all fours, call the whole biped experiment of walking

on two legs a mistake, and revert to our earlier posture of at least

some 30,000 years ago. In Mencian terms, therefore, the people will

resent this robber as much as the latter despises the people, and

exactly in the same proportion. The more the robber takes away, the

more the people hate him. And as nothing is so precious and

personal and intimate as our intellectual, moral or religious beliefs,

no greater hatred can be aroused in us than by the man who

deprives us of the right to believe what we believe. But such short-

sighted stupidity is natural in an autocrat, because I believe such

autocrats are always intellectually retrograde. And the resilience of

human character and unconquerable liberty of the human

conscience always spring back and hit the autocratic ruler with a

vengeance.

III. ON DREAMS

Discontent, they say, is divine; I am quite sure anyway that

discontent is human. The monkey was the first morose animal, for I

have never seen a truly sad face in animals except in the

chimpanzee. And I have often thought such a one a philosopher,

because sadness and thoughtfulness are so akin. There is

something in such a face which tells me that he is thinking. Cows

don’t seem to think, at least they don’t seem to philosophize,

because they look always so contented, and while elephants may

store up a terrific anger, the eternal swinging of their trunks seems to

take the place of thinking and banish all brooding discontent. Only a

monkey can look thoroughly bored with life. Great indeed is the

monkey!

Perhaps after all philosophy began with the sense of boredom.

Anyway it is characteristic of humans to have a sad, vague and

wistful longing for an ideal. Living in a real world, man has yet the

capacity and tendency to dream of another world. Probably the

difference between man and the monkeys is that the monkeys are

merely bored, while man has boredom plus imagination. All of us

have the desire to get out of an old rut, and all of us wish to be

something else, and all of us dream. The private dreams of being a

corporal, the corporal dreams of being a captain, and the captain

dreams of being a major or colonel. A colonel, if he is worth his salt,

thinks nothing of being a colonel. In more graceful phraseology, he

calls it merely an opportunity to serve his fellow men. And really

there is very little else to it. The plain fact is, Joan Crawford thinks

less of Joan Crawford and Janet Gaynor thinks less of Janet Gaynor

than the world thinks of them, “Aren’t you remarkable?” the world

says to all the great, and the great, if they are truly great, always

reply, “What is remarkable?” The world is therefore pretty much like

an à la carte restaurant where everybody thinks the food the next

table has ordered is so much more inviting and delicious than his

own. A contemporary Chinese professor has made the witticism that

in the matter of desirability, “Wives are always better if they are

others’, while writing is always better if it is one’s own.” In this sense,

therefore, there is no one completely satisfied in this world. Everyone

wants to be somebody so long as that somebody is not himself.

This human trait is undoubtedly due to our power of imagination

and our capacity for dreaming. The greater the imaginative power of

a man, the more perpetually he is dissatisfied. That is why an

imaginative child is always a more difficult child; he is more often sad

and morose like a monkey, than happy and contented like a cow.

Also divorce must necessarily be more common among the idealists

and the more imaginative people than among the unimaginative. The

vision of a desirable ideal life companion has an irresistible force

which the less imaginative and less idealistic never feel On the

whole, humanity is as much led astray as led upwards by this

capacity for idealism, but human progress without this imaginative

gift is itself unthinkable.

Man, we are told, has aspirations. They are very laudable things

to have, for aspirations are generally classified as noble. And why

not? Whether as individuals or as nations, we all dream and act

more or less in accordance with our dreams. Some dream a little

more than others, as there is a child in every family who dreams

more and perhaps one who dreams less. And I must confess to a

secret partiality for the one who dreams. Generally he is the sadder

one, but no matter; he is also capable of greater joys and thrills and

heights of ecstasy. For I think we are constituted like a receiving set

for ideas, as radio sets are equipped for receiving music from the air.

Some sets with a finer response pick up the finer short waves which

are lost to the other sets, and why, of course, that finer, more distant

music is all the more precious if only because it is less easily

perceivable.

And those dreams of our childhood, they are not so unreal as we

might think. Somehow they stay with us throughout our life. That is

why, if I had my choice of being any one author in the world, I would

be Hans Christian Andersen rather than anybody else. To write the

story of The Mermaid, or to be the Mermaid ourselves, thinking the

Mermaid’s thoughts and aspiring to be old enough to come up to the

surface of the water, is to have felt one of the keenest and most

beautiful delights that humanity is capable of.

And so, out in an alley, up in an attic, or down in the barn or lying

along the waterside, a child always dreams, and the dreams are real.

So Thomas Edison dreamed. So Robert Louis Stevenson dreamed.

So Sir Walter Scott dreamed. All three dreamed in their childhood.

And out of the stuff of such magic dreams are woven some of the

finest and most beautiful fabrics we have ever seen. But these

dreams are also partaken of by lesser children. The delights they get

are as great, if the visions or contents of their dreams are different

Every child has a soul which yearns, and carries a longing on his lap

and goes to sleep with it, hoping to find his dream come true when

he wakes up with the morn. He tells no one of these dreams, for

these dreams are his own, and for that reason they are a part of his

innermost growing self. Some of these children’s dreams “are clearer

than others, and they have a force which compel their own

realization; on the other hand, with growing age, those less clear

dreams are forgotten, and we all live through life trying to tell those

dreams of our childhood, and “sometimes we die ere we find the

language.”

And so with nations, too. Nations have their dreams and the

memories of such dreams persist through generations and centuries.

Some of these are noble dreams, and others wicked and ignoble.

The dreams of conquest and of being bigger and stronger than all

the others are always bad dreams, and such nations always have

more to worry about than others who have more peaceful dreams.

But there are other and better dreams, dreams of a better world,

dreams of peace and of nations living at peace with one another, and

dreams of less cruelty, injustice, and poverty and suffering. The bad

dreams tend to destroy the good dreams of humanity, and there is a

struggle and a fight between these good and bad dreams. People

fight for their dreams as much as they fight for their earthly

possessions. And so dreams descend from the world of idle visions

and enter the world of reality, and become a real force in our life.

However vague they are, dreams have a way of concealing

themselves and leave us no peace until they are translated into

reality, like seeds germinating under ground, sure to sprout in their

search for the sunlight. Dreams are very real things.

There is also a danger of our having confused dreams and

dreams that do not correspond to reality. For dreams are escapes

also, and a dreamer often dreams to escape from the present world,

hardly knowing where. The Blue Bird always attracts the

romanticist’s fancy. There is such a human desire to be different from

what we are, to get out of the present ruts, that anything which offers

a change always has a tremendous appeal to average humanity. A

war is always attractive because it offers a city clerk the chance of

donning a uniform and wearing puttees and a chance for travel

gratis, while an armistice or peace is always desirable after three or

four years in the trenches because it offers the soldier a chance to

come back home and wear civilian dress and a scarlet necktie once

more. Some such excitement humanity evidently needs, and if war is

to be avoided, governments may just as well recruit people between

twenty and forty-five under a conscript system and send them on

European tours to see some exposition or other, once every ten

years. The British Government is spending five billion pounds on its

Rearmament Program, a sum sufficient to send every Englishman

on a trip to the Riviera. The argument is, of course, that expenditures

on war are a necessity while travel is a luxury. I feel inclined to

disagree: travel is a necessity, while war is a luxury.

There are other dreams too. Dreams of Utopia and dreams of

immortality. The dream of immortality is entirely human—note its

universality—although it is vague like the rest, and few people know

what they are going to do when they find eternity hanging on their

hands. After all, the desire for immortality is very much akin to the

psychology of suicide, its exact opposite. Both presume that the

present world is not good enough for us. Why is the present world

not good enough for us? We should be more surprised at the

question than at any answer to the question if we were out on a visit

to the country on a spring day.

And so with dreams of Utopia also. Idealism is merely that state of

mind which believes in another world order, no matter what kind of

an order, so long as it is different from the present one, The idealistic

liberal is always one who thinks his own country the worst possible

country and the society in which he lives the worst of all possible

forms of society. He is still the fellow in the à la carte restaurant who

believes that the next table’s order of dishes is better than his own.

As the New York Times’ “Topics” writer says, only the Russian

Dnieper Dam is a real dam in the eyes of these liberals and

democracies have never built any dams. And of course only the

Soviets have built a subway. On the other hand, the Fascist press

tells their people that only in their country have mankind discovered

the only sensible, right and working form of government. Therein lies

the danger of Utopian liberals as well as of Fascist propaganda

chiefs, and as a very necessary corrective, they can have nothing

better than a sense of humor.

IV. ON THE SENSE OF HUMOR

I doubt whether the importance of humor has been fully

appreciated, or the possibility of its use in changing the quality and

character of our entire cultural life—the place of humor in politics,

humor in scholarship, and humor in life. Because its function is

chemical, rather than physical, it alters the basic texture of our

thought and experience. Its importance in national life we can take

for granted. The inability to laugh cost the former Kaiser Wilhelm an

empire, or as an American might say, cost the German people

billions of dollars. Wilhelm Hohenzollern probably could laugh in his

private life, but he always looked so terribly impressive with his

upturned mustache in public, as if he was always angry with

somebody. And then the quality of his laughter and the things he

laughed at—laughter at victory, at success, at getting on top of

others—were just as important factors in determining his life fortune,

Germany lost the war because Wilhelm Hohenzollern did not know

when to laugh, or what to laugh at. His dreams were not restrained

by laughter.

It seems to me the worst comment on dictatorships is that

presidents of democracies can laugh, while dictators always look so

serious—with a protruding jaw, a determined chin, and a pouched

lower lip, as if they were doing something terribly important and the

world could not be saved, except by them. Franklin D. Roosevelt

often smiles in public—good for him, and good for the American

people who like to see their president smile. But where are the

smiles of the European dictators? Or don’t their people want to see

them smile? Or must they indeed look either frightened, or dignified,

or angry, or in any case look frightfully serious in order to keep

themselves in the saddle? The best thing I have ever read about

Hitler is that he is completely natural in private. It somehow restores

my confidence in him. But something must be wrong with

dictatorships, if dictators have to look either angry or else

vainglorious. The whole temper is wrong.

We are not indulging in idle fooling now, discussing the smiles of

dictators; it is terribly serious when our rulers do not smile, because

they have got all the guns. On the other hand, the tremendous

importance of humor in politics can be realized only when we picture

for ourselves (by that faculty for dreaming known as “D”) a world of

joking rulers. Send, for instance, five or six of the world’s best

humorists to an international conference, and give them the

plenipotentiary powers of autocrats, and the world will be saved. As

humor necessarily goes with good sense and the reasonable spirit,

plus some exceptionally subtle powers of the mind in detecting in-

consistencies and follies and bad logic, and as this is the highest

form of human intelligence, we may be sure that each nation will

thus be represented at the conference by its sanest and soundest

mind. Let Shaw represent Ireland, Stephen Leacock represent

Canada; G. K. Chesterton is dead, but P. G. Wodehouse or Aldous

Huxley may represent England. Will Rogers is dead, otherwise he

would make a fine diplomat representing the U. S.; we can have in

his stead Robert Benchley or Heywood Broun. There will be others

from Italy and France and Germany and Russia. Send these people

to a conference on the eve of a great war, and see if they can start a

European war, no matter how hard they try. Can you imagine this

bunch of international diplomats starting a war or even plotting for

one? The sense of humor forbids it. All people are too serious and

half-insane when they declare a war against another people. They

are so sure that they are right and that God is on their side. The

humorists, gifted with better horse-sense, don’t think so. You will find

George Bernard Shaw shouting that Ireland is wrong, and a Berlin

cartoonist protesting that the mistake is all theirs, and Heywood

Broun claiming the largest share of bungling for America, while

Stephen Leacock in the chair makes a general apology for mankind,

gently reminding us that in the matter of stupidity and sheer

foolishness no nation can claim itself to be the superior of others,

How in the name of humor are we going to start a war under these

conditions?

For who have started wars for us? The ambitious, the able, the

clever, the scheming, the cautious, the sagacious, the haughty, the

over-patriotic, the people inspired with the desire to “serve” mankind,

people who have a “career” to carve and an “impression” to make on

the world, who expect and hope to look down the ages from the eyes

of a bronze figure sitting on a bronze horse in some square.

Curiously, the able, the clever, and the ambitious and haughty are at

the same time the most cowardly and muddle-headed, lacking in the

courage and depth and subtlety of the humorists. They are forever

dealing with trivialities, while the humorists with their greater sweep

of mind can envisage larger things. As it is, a diplomat who does not

whisper in a low voice and look properly scared and intimidated and

correct and cautious is no diplomat at all,. . . But we don’t even have

to have a conference of international humorists to save the world.

There is a sufficient stock of this desirable commodity called a sense

of humor in all of us. When Europe seems to be on the brink of a

catastrophic war, we may still send to the conferences our worst

diplomats, the most “experienced” and self-assured, the most

ambitious, the most whispering, most intimidated and correct and

properly scared, even the most anxious to “serve” mankind. If it be

required that, at the opening of every morning and afternoon

session, ten minutes be devoted to the showing of a Mickey Mouse

picture, at which all the diplomats are compelled to be present, any

war can still be averted.

This I conceive to be the chemical function of humor: to change

the character of our thought. I rather think that it goes to the very root

of culture, and opens a way to the coming of the Reasonable Age in

the future human world. For humanity I can visualize no greater ideal

than that of the Reasonable Age. For that after all is the only

important thing, the arrival of a race of men imbued with a greater

reasonable spirit, with greater prevalence of good sense, simple

thinking, a peaceable temper and a cultured outlook. The ideal world

for mankind will not be a rational world, nor a perfect world in any

sense, but a world in which imperfections are readily perceived and

quarrels reasonably settled. For mankind, that is frankly the best we

can hope for and the noblest dream that we can reasonably expect

to come true. This seems to imply several things: a simplicity of

thinking, a gaiety in philosophy and a subtle common sense, which

will make this reasonable culture possible. Now it happens that

subtle common sense, gaiety of philosophy and simplicity of thinking

are characteristic of humor and must arise from it.

It is difficult to imagine this kind of a new world because our

present world is so different. On the whole, our life is too complex,

our scholarship too serious, our philosophy too somber, and our

thoughts too involved. This seriousness and this involved complexity

of our thought and scholarship make the present world such an

unhappy one today.

Now it must be taken for granted that simplicity of life and thought

is the highest and sanest ideal for civilization and culture, that when

a civilization loses simplicity and the sophisticated do not return to

unsophistication, civilization becomes increasingly full of troubles

and degenerates. Man then becomes the slave of the ideas,

thoughts, ambitions and social systems that are his own product.

Mankind, overburdened with this load of ideas and ambitions and

social systems, seems unable to rise above them. Luckily, however,

there is a power of the human mind which can transcend all these

ideas, thoughts and ambitions and treat them with a smile, and this

power is the subtlety of the humorist. Humorists handle thoughts and

ideas as golf or billiard champions handle their balls, or as cowboy

champions handle their lariats. There is an ease, a sureness, a

lightness of touch, that comes from mastery. After all, only he who

handles his ideas lightly is master of his ideas, and only he who is

master of his ideas is not enslaved by them. Seriousness, after all, is

only a sign of effort, and effort is a sign of imperfect mastery, A

serious writer is awkward and ill at ease in the realm of ideas as a

nouveau riche is awkward, ill at ease and self-conscious in society.

He is serious because he has not come to feel at home with his

ideas.

Simplicity, then, paradoxically is the outward sign and symbol of

depth of thought. It seems to me simplicity is about the most difficult

thing to achieve in scholarship and writing. How difficult is clarity of

thought, and yet it is only as thought becomes clear that simplicity is

possible. When we see a writer belaboring an idea we may be sure

that the idea is belaboring him. This is proved by the general fact

that the lectures of a young college assistant instructor, freshly

graduated with high honors, are generally abstruse and involved,

and true simplicity of thought and ease of expression are to be found

only in the words of the older professors. When a young professor

does not talk in pedantic language, he is then positively brilliant, and

much may be expected of him. What is involved in the progress from

technicality to simplicity, from the specialist to the thinker, is

essentially a process of digestion of knowledge, a process that I

compare strictly to metabolism. No learned scholar can present to us

his specialized knowledge in simple human terms until he has

digested that knowledge himself and brought it into relation with his

observations of life. Between the hours of his arduous pursuit of

knowledge (let us say the psychological knowledge of William

James), I feel there is many a “pause that refreshes,” like a cool

drink after a long fatiguing journey. In that pause many a truly human

specialist will ask himself the all important question, “What on earth

am I talking about?” Simplicity presupposes digestion and also

maturity: as we grow older, our thoughts become clearer,

insignificant and perhaps false aspects of a question are lopped off

and cease to disturb us, ideas take on more definite shapes and long

trains of thought gradually shape themselves into a convenient

formula which suggests itself to us one fine morning, and we arrive

at that true luminosity of knowledge which is called wisdom. There is

no longer a sense of effort, and truth becomes simple to understand

because it becomes clear, and the reader gets that supreme

pleasure of feeling that truth itself is simple and its formulation

natural. This naturalness of thought and style, which is so much

admired by Chinese poets and critics, is often spoken of as a

process of gradually maturing development. As we speak of the

growing maturity of Su Tungp’o’s prose, we say that he has

“gradually approached naturalness”—a style that has shed off its

youthful love of pomposity, pedantry, virtuosity and literary

showmanship.

Now it is natural that the sense of humor nourishes this simplicity

of thinking. Generally, a humorist keeps closer touch with facts, while

a theorist dwells more on ideas, and it is only when one is dealing

with ideas in themselves that his thoughts get incredibly complex.

The humorist, on the other hand, indulges in flashes of common

sense or wit, which show up the contradictions of our ideas with

reality with lightning speed, thus greatly simplifying matters.

Constant contact with reality gives the humorist a bounce, and also a

lightness and subtlety. All forms of pose, sham, learned nonsense,

academic stupidity and social humbug are politely but effectively

shown the door. Man becomes wise because man becomes subtle

and witty. All is simple. All is clear. It is for this reason that I believe a

sane and reasonable spirit, characterized by simplicity of living and

thinking, can be achieved only when there is a very much greater

prevalence of humorous thinking.

V. ON BEING WAYWARD AND INCALCULABLE

It seems that today the scamp is being displaced by the soldier as

the highest ideal of a human being. Instead of wayward, incalculable,

unpredictable free individuals, we are going to have rationalized,

disciplined, regimented and uniformed, patriotic coolies, so efficiently

controlled and organized that a nation of fifty or sixty millions can

believe in the same creed, think the same thoughts and like the

same food. Clearly two opposite views of human dignity are

possible: the one regarding the scamp, and the other regarding the

soldier, as the ideal; the one believing that a person who retains his

freedom and individuality is the noblest type, and the other believing

that a person who has completely lost independent judgment and

surrendered all rights to private beliefs and opinions to the ruler or

the state is the best and noblest being. Both views are defensible,

one by common sense, and the other by logic. It should not be

difficult to defend by logic the ideal of the patriotic automaton as a

model citizen, useful as a means to serve another external goal,

which is the strength of the state, which exists again for another

goal, the crushing of other states. All that can be easily

demonstrated by logic—a logic so simple and naive that all idiots fall

for it. Incredible as it may seem, such a view has been upheld and is

still being upheld in many “civilized” and “enlightened” European

countries. The ideal citizen is the soldier who thought he was being

transported to Ethiopia and found himself in Guadalajara. Among

such ideal citizens two classes, “A” and “B,” may again be

distinguished. The “A” class, consisting of the better citizens from the

point of view of the state or its ruler, are those who, on discovering

that they have been landed in Spain, are still extremely sweet and

amiable and offer up thanks to God directly or through the army

chaplain for sending them, by a kind of providential miracle, to the

thick of the battle to die for the state. Class “B” would be those

insufficiently civilized beings who feel an inner resentment at the

discovery. Now for myself, that inner resentment, that human

recalcitrancy, is the only sign of human dignity, the only spark of

hope illuminating for me the otherwise somber and dismal picture,

the only hope for a restoration of human decency in some future

more civilized world.

It is clear then that, in spite of all logic, I am still for the scamp. I

am all for the scamp, or the tramp, and for “Mary, Mary, quite

contrary.” Our contrary-mindedness is our only hope for civilization,

My reason is simple: that we are descended from the monkeys and

not from the cows, and that therefore we are better monkeys, nobler

monkeys, for being contrary-minded. I am selfish enough as a

human being to desire a sweet and contented temper for the cows,

who can be led to the pasture or to the slaughter-house at human

behest with equal magnanimity and nobility of mind, motivated by the

sole desire to sacrifice themselves for their master. At the same time,

I am such a lover of humanity as not to desire that we become cows

ourselves. The moment cows rebel and feel our recalcitrancy, or

begin to act waywardly and less mechanically, I call them human.

The reason I think all dictatorships are wrong is a biological reason.

Dictators and cows go well together, but dictators and monkeys

don’t.

In fact, my respect for Western civilization has been considerably

lowered since the nineteen-twenties. I had been ashamed of

Chinese civilization, and I had honored the West, for I regarded it as

a stain upon Chinese civilization that we had not developed a

constitution and the idea of civil rights, and I decidedly thought that a

constitutional government, republican or monarchical, was an

advance in human culture. Now in the very home of Western

civilization, I have the pleasure and satisfaction of seeing that human

rights and individual liberty, even the common sense rights of

individual freedom of belief that we in China enjoy and have always

enjoyed, can be trampled upon, that a constitutional government is

no longer thought of as the highest form of government, that there

are more Euripidean slaves in central Europe than in feudalistic

China, and that some Western nations have more logic and less

common sense than we Chinese. What more easy than for me to

play the trump card from my sleeve by producing the Chinese ideal

of the happy-go-lucky, carefree scamp, tramp and vagabond, which

is the highest cultural ideal of a human being according to the

Chinese conception? Has the West a trump card to match,

something to show that its doctrine of individual liberty and civil rights

is a serious and deep-rooted belief or instinct, with enough vitality to

stage a comeback and swing the pendulum of thought in the other

direction, after the present fashion for glorified, uniformed coolies is

gone? I am waiting to see it.

It is easy to see how the European tradition of individual liberty

and freedom has been forgotten, and why the pendulum is swinging

in the wrong direction today. The reasons are two: first, the

consequences of the present economic movement toward

collectivism, and second, a heritage from the mechanistic outlook of

mid-Victorian times. It seems that in the present age of rising

collectivism of all sorts—social, economic and political—mankind is

naturally forgetting and forfeiting its right to human recalcitrancy and

losing sight of the dignity of the individual. With the predominance of

economic problems and economic thinking, which is overshadowing

all other forms of human thinking, we remain completely ignorant of,

and indifferent to, a more humanized knowledge and a more

humanized philosophy, a philosophy that deals with the problems of

the individual life. This is natural, As a man who has an ulcered

stomach spends all his thought on his stomach, so a society with a

sick and aching economics is forever preoccupied with thoughts of

economics. Nevertheless, the result is that we remain totally

indifferent to the individual and have almost forgotten that he exists.

A man used to be a man for a’ that. Today he is generally conceived

as an automaton blindly obeying material or economic laws. We no

longer think of a man as a man, but as a cog in a wheel, a member

of a union or a class, an alien to be imported by quotas, a petit

bourgeois to be referred to with contempt, or a capitalist to be

denounced, or a worker to be regarded as a comrade because he is

a worker. It seems that to label a man as a petit bourgeois or a

“capitalist” or a “worker” is already to understand him completely, and

he can be conveniently hated or hailed as a comrade accordingly.

We are no longer individuals, no longer men, but only classes. May I

suggest that this is an over-simplification of things? The scamp has

completely disappeared as an ideal, and so has the man with his

gloriously scamp-like qualities of reacting freely and incalculably to

his external surroundings. Instead of men, we have members of a

class; instead of ideas and personal prejudices and idiosyncracies,

we have ideologies, or class thoughts; instead of personalities, we

have blind forces; and instead of individuals, we have a Marxian

dialectic controlling and foreshadowing all human activities with

unfailing precision. We are all progressing happily and

enthusiastically toward the model of the ants.

Of course I realize that I am talking nothing but old-fashioned

democratic individualism. But may I also remind the Marxists that

Karl Marx was himself a product of the Hegelian logic of a century

ago and of the English classical school of economics of the mid-

Victorian period? And nothing is so old-fashioned today as Hegelian

logic or the mid-Victorian precision school of economic thought—

nothing so unconvincing and untrue and so totally devoid of common

sense, from the Chinese humanist point of view. But we can

understand how this mechanistic view of man came about at a time

when mechanistic science was proud of its achievements and its

conquests over nature. This science was pilfered, its mechanistic

logic transferred to apply to human society, and the always imposing

name of “natural laws” was very much sought after by the students

of human affairs. Hence the prevalent theory that the surroundings

are greater than the man and that human personalities can be

almost reduced to equations. That may be good economics, but bad

biology. Good biology recognizes the individual’s power of reaction

as just as important a factor in the development of life as the

physical environment, as any wise doctor will admit that the patient’s

temperament and individual reactions are an all-important factor in

the fight against a disease. Medical doctors today recognize more

and more the incalculable factor of the individual. Many patients,

who by all logic and precedents ought to die, simply refuse to do so

and shock the doctor by their recovery, A doctor who prescribes an

identical treatment for an identical disease in two individuals and

expects an identical development may be properly classified as a

social menace. No less a social menace are the social philosophers

who forget the individual, his capacity for reacting in a different

manner from others, and his generally wayward and incalculable

behavior.

Perhaps I don’t understand economics, but economics does not

understand me, either. That is why economics is still floundering

today and hardly dares pop up its head as a science. The sad thing

about economics is that it is no science, if it stops at commodities

and does not go beyond to human motives, and if it does go beyond

to human motives, it is still no science, or at best a pseudo-science,

if it tries to reach human motives by statistical averages. It hasn’t

developed even a technique suitable to the examination of the

human mind, and if it carries over to the realm of human activities its

mathematical approach and its love of drawing statistical averages, it

stands in still greater danger of floundering in ignorance. That is why

every time an important economic measure is about to be adopted,

two economic experts or authorities will come out exactly on

opposite sides. Economics after all goes back to the idiosyncrasies

of the human mind, and of these idiosyncrasies the experts have no

ghost of an idea. One believed that, should England go off the gold

standard, there would be a catastrophe, while another believed, with

equal cocksureness, that England’s going off the gold standard

would be the only salvation. When people begin to buy and when

people begin to sell are problems that the best experts cannot

reasonably foretell. It is entirely due to this fact that speculations on

the stock exchange are possible. It remains true that the stock

exchange cannot, with the best assemblage of world economic data,

scientifically predict the rise and fall of gold or silver or commodities,

as the weather bureau can forecast the weather. The reason clearly

lies in the fact that there is a human element in it, that when too

many people are selling out, some will start buying in, and when too

many people are buying in, a few people will start selling out. Thus is

introduced the element of human resilience and human uncertainty.

It is to be presumed, of course, that every person who is selling out

regards as a fool the other person who is buying in what he is selling

out, and vice versa. Who are the fools only future events can prove.

This is merely an illustration of the incalculableness and

waywardness of human behavior, which is true not only in the hard

and matter-of-fact dealings of business, but also in the shaping of

the course of history by human psychology, and in all human

reactions toward morals, customs, and social reforms.

VI. THE DOCTRINE OF THE INDIVIDUAL

Man today may be living in a democratic country to a greater or

lesser extent threatened by great social changes, or he may be living

in a communist country tending more and more to approach and

come back to the democratic ideal, or he may be living under a

dictatorship which may survive him or which more probably he will

survive. In any case, his individual life remains an integrated whole,

shaped by the currents of the times, but still retaining its individuality.

Philosophy not only begins with the individual, but also ends with

the individual. For an individual is the final fact of life. He is an end in

himself, and not a means to other creations of the human mind. The

greatest empire of the world, like the British Empire, exists in order

that an Englishman in Sussex may live a fairly happy and reasonable

life; a false philosophy would assume that the Englishman in Sussex

lives in order that there may be the great British Empire. The best

social philosophies do not claim any greater objective than that the

individual human beings living under such a regime shall have happy

individual lives. If there are social philosophies which deny the

happiness of the individual life as the final goal and aim of

civilization, those philosophies are the product of a sick and

unbalanced mind.

As far as culture is concerned, I am inclined to think that the final

judgment of any particular type of culture is what type of men and

women it turns out. It is in this sense that Walt Whitman, one of the

wisest and most far-seeing of Americans, struggles in his essay

Democratic Vistas to bring forth the principle of individuality or

“personalism,” as the end of all civilization:

And, if we think of it, what does civilization itself rest upon—

and what object has it, with its religions, arts, schools, etc.,

but rich, luxuriant, varied personalism? To that all bends; and

it is because toward such result democracy alone, on

anything like Nature’s scale, breaks up the limitless fallows of

humankind, and plants the seed, and gives fair play, that its

claims now precede the rest. The literature, songs, esthetics,

etc., of a country are of importance principally because they

furnish the materials and suggestions of personality for the

women and men of that country, and enforce them in a

thousand effective ways.

Speaking of the individuality as a final fact, Whitman says:

There is, in sanest hours, a consciousness, a thought that

rises, independent, lifted out from all else, calm, like the stars,

shining eternal. This is the thought of identity—yours for you,

whoever you are, as mine for me. Miracle of miracles, beyond

statement, most spiritual and vaguest of earth’s dreams, yet

hardest basic fact, and only entrance to all facts. In such

devout hours, in the midst of the significant wonders of

heaven and earth, (significant only because of the Me in the

centre), creeds, conventions, fall away and become of no

account before this simple idea. Under the luminousness of

real vision, it alone takes possession, takes value. Like the

shadowy dwarf in the fable, once liberated and look’d upon, it

expands over the whole earth, and spreads to the roof of

heaven.

The temptation is strong to quote more from this typically American

philosopher’s most eloquent glorification of the individual, summed

up in the following manner:

. . . . and, as an eventual conclusion and summing up (or

else the entire scheme of things is aimless, a cheat, a crash),

the simple idea that the last, best dependence is to be upon

humanity itself, and its own inherent, normal, full-grown

qualities, without any superstitious support whatever.

The purpose of democracy . . . is, through many

transmigrations, and amid endless ridicules, arguments and

ostensible failures, to illustrate, at all hazards, this doctrine or

theory that man, properly train’d in sanest, highest freedom,

may and must become a law, and series of laws, unto

himself. . . .

After all, it is not our surroundings, but our reactions toward them

that count. France, Germany, England and America are all living in

the same machine civilization, yet their patterns and flavors of life

are all different, and all solve their political problems in different

ways. It is foolish to assume that man must be swamped by the

machine in a uniform, helpless manner, when we realize there is

such room for variety of life, when we see that two drivers on the

same truck will take a joke differently. A father of two sons who gives

them the same education and the same start in life, will see how they

gradually shape their lives according to the inner laws of their own

being. Even if both turn out to be presidents of banks with exactly the

same capitalization, yet in all things that matter, in all things that

make for happiness, they are different, different in their address,

accent and temperament; in their policies and ways of handling

problems; in the way they get on with their staff, whether they are

feared or loved, harsh and exacting or pleasant and easygoing; in

the way they save and spend their money; and different in their

personal lives as colored by their hobbies, their friends, their clubs,

their reading and their wives. Such is the rich variety possible in

identical surroundings that no one can take up the obituary page of a

newspaper, without wondering how persons living in the same

generation and dying on the same day have led entirely different

lives, how some plodded on in a chosen vocation with a singular

devotion and found happiness in it, how others had a checkered and

varied career, how some invented, some explored, some cracked

jokes, some were morose and without a sense of humor, some

skyrocketed to fame and wealth and died in the cold, dark cinders of

the rocket, and some sold ice and coal and were stabbed to death in

their cellar homes with a hoard of twenty thousand dollars in gold,

Yes, human life is wondrous strange still, even in an industrial age.

So long as man is man, variety will still be the flavor of life.

There is no such thing as determinism in human affairs, whether

politics or social revolution. The human factor is what upsets the

calculations of the propounders of new theories and systems, and

what defeats the originators of laws, institutions and social

panaceas, whether it be the Oneida Community, or the American

Federation of Labor, or Judge Lindsay’s companionate marriage.

The quality of the bride and bridegroom is more important than the

conventions of marriage and divorce, and the men administering or

upholding the laws are more important than the laws themselves.

But the importance of the individual comes not only from the fact

that the individual life is the end of all civilization, but also from the

fact that the improvement of our social and political life and

international relationships comes from the aggregate action and

temper of the individuals which compose a nation and is eventually

based on the temper and quality of the individual. In national politics

and the evolution of a country from one stage to another, the

determining factor is the temperament of the people. For above the

laws of industrial development, there is the more important factor of

a nation’s way of doing things and solving problems. Rousseau as

little foresaw the course of the French Revolution and the

appearance of Napoleon, as Karl Marx foresaw the actual

development of his socialistic theories and the appearance of Stalin.

The course of the French Revolution was not determined by the

slogan of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity, but by certain traits in

human nature in general and in the French temperament in

particular. Karl Marx’s predictions about the course of the socialist

revolution have failed miserably, despite his rigorous dialectic. By all

the laws of logic, as he predicted, a revolution of the proletariat

should have come where the industrial civilization was most

advanced and where there was a strong class of proletarian workers

—first in England, perhaps in the United States and possibly in

Germany. Instead, Communism had first a chance to be put on trial

in an agricultural country like Russia where there was no important

proletarian class at all. What Karl Marx forgot to calculate was the

human factor in England and in the United States and the

Englishman’s or American’s way of doing things and of solving

problems. The great omission in all immature economics is the

neglect to provide for a je ne sais quoi factor in national affairs. The

English distrust of theories and slogans, the Englishman’s way of

slowly bungling, if necessary, but in any case slowly finding his way,

the Anglo-Saxon’s love of individual liberty, self-respect, good sense

and love of order, are things which are more powerful in shaping the

course of events in England and America than all the logic of the

German dialectician.

And so the conduct of a nation’s affairs and the course of its social

and political development are eventually based on the ideas which

govern the individuals. This racial temperament, the thing we

abstractly call “the genius of the people,” is after all an aggregate of

the individuals who comprise that nation, for it is nothing but the

character of a nation in action, as it faces certain problems or crises,

There is nothing more false than the notion that this “genius’ is a

mythological entity like the “soul” in medieval theology, as if it were

something more than a figure of speech. The genius of a nation is

nothing but the character of its conduct and its way of doing things.

So far from being an abstract entity with an independent existence of

its own, as we sometimes think of the “destiny” of a nation, this

genius can be seen only in action; it is a matter of choice, of certain

selections and rejections, preferences and prejudices, which

determine the nation’s final course of action in a given crisis or

situation. Historians of the old school would like to think with Hegel

that the history of a nation is but the development of an idea,

proceeding by a kind of mechanical necessity, whereas a more

subtle and realistic view of history is that it was very largely a matter

of chance. At every critical period, the nation made a choice, and in

the choice we see a struggle of opposing forces and conflicting

passions, and a little more of this kind of sentiment or a little less of

that kind might have tipped the scale in the other direction. The so-

called genius of a nation, as expressed in such a given crisis, was a

decision by the nation that they would like to have a little more of one

thing, or had had enough of it. For after all every nation went ahead

with what it liked, or what appealed to its sentiments, and rejected

what it would not tolerate. Such a choice was based on a current of

ideas and a set of moral sentiments and social prejudices.

In the last constitutional crisis of England, eventually compelling

the abdication of a king, we see most clearly this thing called the

character of a people in action, revealed by its approvals and

disapprovals, its tide of changing emotions, in a conflict among many

working motives of assumed validity. Such motives were personal

loyalty to a popular prince, the Church of England’s prejudice against

a divorcée, the Englishman’s traditional conception of a king, the

question whether a king’s private affair was or could be a private

affair, and whether a king should be more than a figurehead, or

whether he should have definite Laborite sympathies. A little more of

any one of these conflicting sentiments might have brought about a

different solution of the crisis.

And so throughout current history, whether Zenoviev, Kamenev

and Piatakoff might have been killed and Radek imprisoned, whether

“counter-revolutionary” plots and rebellion against the Stalin regime

might or might not be so extensive, whether the German Catholic

and Protestant churches might or might not hold their integrity in

their resistance against the Nazi regime (that is, how much human

resilience there is in Germany), whether England might turn truly

Laborite, and whether the American Communist party might grow or

lose in public favor, are things which eventually are determined by

the ideas, sentiments and character of the individual members of the

states concerned. In all this moving panorama of human history, I

see only flux and change, determined by man’s own wayward and

incalculable and unpredictable choice.

In this sense, Confucianism connected the question of world

peace with the cultivation of our personal lives. The very first lesson

that Confucian scholars since the Sung Dynasty have decided

should be learned by the child at school contains this passage:

The ancient people who desired to have a clear moral

harmony in the world would first order their national life; those

who desired to order their national life would first regulate

their home life; those who desired to regulate their home life

would first cultivate their personal lives; those who desired to

cultivate their personal lives would first set their hearts right;

those who desired to set their hearts right, would first make

their wills sincere; those who desired to make their wills

sincere would first arrive at understanding; understanding

comes from the exploration of knowledge of things. When the

knowledge of things is gained, then understanding is reached;

when understanding is reached, then the will is sincere; when

the will is sincere, then the heart is set right; when the heart is

set right, then the personal life is cultivated; when the

personal life is cultivated, then the home life is regulated;

when the home life is regulated, then the national life is

orderly; and when the national life is orderly; then the world is

at peace. From the Emperor down to the common man, the

cultivation of the personal life is the foundation for all. It is

impossible that when the foundation is disorderly, the

superstructure can be orderly. There has never been a tree

whose trunk is slender and whose top branches are heavy

and strong. There is a cause and a sequence in things, and a

beginning and end in human affairs. To know the order of

precedence is to have the beginning of wisdom.

This parental care gradually became more and more lengthened in period, so that while a

savage child of six or seven is practically independent, the child in civilization takes a

quarter of a century to learn to make his living, and even then has to learn it all over again.

Chapter Five

WHO CAN BEST ENJOY LIFE?

I. FIND THYSELF: CHUANGTSE

In modern life, a philosopher is about the most honored and most

unnoticed person in the world, if indeed such a person exists.

“Philosopher” has become merely a term of social compliment.

Anyone who is abstruse and unintelligible is called “a philosopher.”

Anyone who is unconcerned with the present is also called “a

philosopher” And yet there is some truth in the latter meaning. When

Shakespeare made Touchstone say in As You Like It, “Hast any

philosophy in thee, shepherd?” he was using it in the second

meaning. In this sense, philosophy is but a common, rough and

ready outlook on things or on life in general, and every person has

more or less of it. Anyone who refuses to take the entire panorama

of reality on its surface value, or refuses to believe every word that

appears in a newspaper, is more or less a philosopher. He is the

fellow who refuses to be taken in.

There is always a flavor of disenchantment about philosophy. The

philosopher looks at life as an artist looks at a landscape—through a

veil or a haze. The raw details of reality are softened a little to permit

us to see its meaning. At least that is what a Chinese artist or a

Chinese philosopher thinks. The philosopher is therefore the direct

opposite of the complete realist who, busily occupied in his daily

business, believes that his successes and failures, his losses and

gains, are absolute and real. There is nothing to be done about such

a person because he does not even doubt and there is nothing in

him to start with. Confucius said: “If a person does not say to himself

‘What to do? What to do?’ indeed I do not know what to do with such

a person!”—one of the few conscious witticisms I have found in

Confucius.

I hope to present in this chapter some opinions of Chinese

philosophers on a design for living. The more these philosophers

differ, the more they agree—that man must be wise and unafraid to

live a happy life. The more positive Mencian outlook and the more

roguishly pacifist Laotsean outlook merge together in the Philosophy

of the Half-and-Half, which I may describe as the average

Chinaman’s religion. The conflict between action and inaction ends

in a compromise, or contentment with a very imperfect heaven on

earth. This gives rise to a wise and merry philosophy of living,

eventually typified in the life of T’ao Yüanming—in my opinion

China’s greatest poet and most harmonious personality,

The only problem unconsciously assumed by all Chinese

philosophers to be of any importance is: how shall we enjoy life, and

who can best enjoy life? No perfectionism, no straining after the

unattainable, no postulating of the unknowable; but taking poor,

mortal human nature as it is, how shall we organize our life that we

can work peacefully, endure nobly and live happily?

Who are we? That is the first question. It is a question almost

impossible to answer. But we all agree that the busy self occupied in

our daily activities is not quite the real self. We are quite sure we

have lost something in the mere pursuit of living. When we watch a

person running about looking for something in a field, the wise man

can set a puzzle for all the spectators to solve: what has that person

lost? Some one thinks it is a watch; another thinks it is a diamond

brooch; and others will essay other guesses. After all these guesses

have failed, the wise man who really doesn’t know what the person

is seeking after tells the company: “I’ll tell you. He has lost some

breath.” And no one can deny that he is right. So we often forget our

true self in the pursuit of living, like a bird forgetting its own danger in

pursuit of a mantis, which again forgets its own danger in pursuit of

another prey, as is so beautifully expressed in a parable by

Chuangtse:

When Chuangtse was wandering in the park at Tiao-ling, he

saw a strange bird which came from the south. Its wings were

seven feet across. Its eyes were an inch in circumference.

And it flew close past Chuangtse’s head to alight in a chestnut

grove.

‘What manner of bird is this?” cried Chuangtse. “With strong

wings it does not fly away. With large eyes it does not see.”

So he picked up his skirts and strode towards it with his

cross-bow, anxious to get a shot. Just then he saw a cicada

enjoying itself in the shade, forgetful of all else. And he saw a

mantis spring and seize it, forgetting in the act its own body,

which the strange bird immediately pounced upon and made

its prey. And this it was which had caused the bird to forget its

own nature.

“Alas!” cried Chuangtse with a sigh, “how creatures injure

one another. Loss follows the pursuit of gain.”

So he laid aside his bow and went home, driven away by

the park-keeper who wanted to know what business he had

there.

For three months after this, Chuangtse did not leave the

house; and at length Lin Chü asked him, saying, “Master, how

is it that you have not been out for so long?”

“While keeping my physical frame,” replied Chuangtse, “I

lost sight of my real self. Gazing at muddy water, I lost sight of

the clear abyss. Besides, I have learnt from the Master as

follows:—’When you go into the world, follow its customs.’

Now when I strolled into the park at Tiao-ling, I forgot my real

self. That strange bird which flew close past me to the

chestnut grove, forgot its nature. The keeper of the chestnut

grove took me for a thief. Consequently I have not been out.”

Chuangtse was the eloquent follower of Laotse, as Mencius was

the eloquent follower of Confucius, both separated from their

masters by about a century. Chuangtse was a contemporary of

Mencius, as Laotse was probably a contemporary of Confucius. But

Mencius agreed with Chuangtse that we have lost something and

the business of philosophy is to discover and recover that which is

lost—in this case, “a child’s heart,” according to Mencius. “A great

man is he who has not lost the heart of a child,” says this

philosopher. Mencius regards the effect of the artificial life of

civilization upon the youthful heart born in man as similar to the

deforestation of our hills:

There was once a time when the forests of the Niu Mountain were

beautiful. But can the mountain any longer be regarded as beautiful,

since being situated near a big city, the woodsmen have hewed the

trees down? The days and nights gave it rest, and the rams and the

dew continued to nourish it, and a new life was continually springing

up from the soil, but then the cattle and the sheep began to pasture

upon it. That is why the Niu Mountain looks so bald, and when

people see its baldness, they imagine that there was never any

timber on the mountain. Is this the true nature of the mountain? And

is there not a heart of love and righteousness in man, too? But how

can that nature remain beautiful when it is hacked down every day,

as the woodsman chops down the trees with his ax? To be sure, the

nights and days do the healing and there is the nourishing air of the

early dawn, which tends to keep him sound and normal, but this

morning air is thin and is soon destroyed by what he does in the day.

With this continuous hacking of the human spirit, the rest and

recuperation obtained during the night are not sufficient to maintain

its level, and when the night’s recuperation does not suffice to

maintain its level, then the man degrades himself to a state not far

from the beast’s. People see that he acts like a beast and imagine

that there was never any true character in him. But is this the true

nature of man?

II. PASSION, WISDOM AND COURAGE: MENCIUS

The ideal character best able to enjoy life is a warm, carefree and

unafraid soul. Mencius enumerated the three “mature virtues” of his

“great man” as “wisdom, compassion and courage.” I should like to

lop off one syllable and regard as the qualities of a great soul

passion, wisdom and courage. Luckily, we have in the English

language the word “passion” which in its usage very nearly

corresponds to the Chinese word ch’ing. Both words start out with

the narrower meaning of sexual passion, but both have a much

wider significance. As Chang Ch’ao says, “A passionate nature

always loves women, but one who loves women is not necessarily a

passionate nature. “ And again, “Passion holds up the bottom of the

world, while genius paints its roof.” For unless we have passion, we

have nothing to start out in life with at all. It is passion that is the soul

of life, the light in the stars, the lilt in music and song, the joy in

flowers, the plumage in birds, the charm in woman, and the life in

scholarship. It is as impossible to speak of a soul without passion as

to speak of music without expression. It is that which gives us inward

warmth and the rich vitality which enables us to face life cheerily,

Or perhaps I am wrong in choosing the word “passion” when I

speak of what the Chinese writers refer to as ch’ing. Should I

translate it by the word “sentiment,” which is gender and suggests

less of the tumultuous qualities of stormy passion? Or perhaps we

mean by it something very similar to what the early Romanticists call

“sensibility,” which we find in a warm, generous and artistic soul. It is

strange that among the Western philosophers so few, except

Emerson, Amiel, Joubert and Voltaire, have a good word to say for

passion. Perhaps we are arguing about words merely, while we

mean the same thing. But then, if passion is different from sentiment

and means something tumultuous and upsetting, then we haven’t got

a Chinese word for it, and we still have to go back to the old word

ch’ing. Is this an index of a difference in racial temperament, of the

absence among the Chinese people of grand and compelling

passions, which eat up one’s soul and form the stuff of tragedy in

Western literature? Is this the reason why Chinese literature has not

developed tragedy in the Greek sense; why Chinese tragic

characters at the critical moment weep, give up their sweethearts to

their enemy, or as in the case of Ch’u Pawang, stab their

sweethearts and then plunge the knife into their own breasts? It is a

sort of ending that will be found unsatisfying to a Western audience,

but as Chinese life is, so is Chinese literature. Man struggles with

fate, gives up the battle, and the tragedy comes in the aftermath, in a

flood of reminiscences, of vain regret and longing, such as we see in

the tragedy of Emperor T’ang Minghuang, who after granting the

suicide of his beloved queen to placate a rebellious army, lives in a

dream world in memory of her. The tragic sense is shown in the

remaining part of the Chinese play long after the denouement, in a

swelling crescendo of sorrow. As he travels in his exile, he hears the

distant music of cowbells in the hills on a rainy day and he composes

the “Song of Rain on Cowbells” in her honor; everything he sees or

touches, a little perfumed scarf that still retains its old scent, or an

old maid servant of hers, reminds him of his beloved queen, and the

play ends with him searching for her soul with the help of Taoist

priests in the abode of the Immortals. So then, we have here a

romantic sensibility, if we are not allowed to speak of it as passion.

But it is passion mellowed down to a gentle glow. So it is

characteristic of Chinese philosophers that while they disparage the

human “desires” (in the sense of the “seven passions”), they have

never disparaged passion or sentiment itself, but made it the very

basis of a normal human life, so much so that they regard “the

passion between husband and wife as the very foundation of all

normal human life.”

It is unfortunately true that this matter of passion, or still better,

sentiment, is something born in us, and that as we cannot choose

our parents, we are born with a given cold or warm nature. On the

other hand, no child is born with a really cold heart, and it is only in

proportion as we lose that youthful heart that we lose the inner

warmth in ourselves. Somewhere in our adult life, our sentimental

nature is killed, strangled, chilled or atrophied by an unkind

surrounding, largely through our own fault in neglecting to keep it

alive, or our failure to keep clear of such surroundings. In the

process of learning “world experience,” there is many a violence

done to our original nature, when we learn to harden ourselves, to be

artificial, and often to be cold-hearted and cruel, so that as one

prides oneself upon gaining more and more worldly experience, his

nerves become more and more insensitive and benumbed—-

especially in the world of politics and commerce. As a result, we get

the great “go-getter” pushing himself forward to the top and brushing

everybody aside; we get the man of iron will and strong

determination, with the last embers of sentiment, which he calls

foolish idealism or sentimentality, gradually dying out in his breast. It

is that sort of person who is beneath my contempt. The world has

too many cold-hearted people. If sterilization of the unfit should be

carried out as a state policy, it should begin with sterilizing the

morally insensible, the artistically stale, the heavy of heart, the

ruthlessly successful, the cold-heartedly determined and all those

people who have lost the sense of fun in life—rather than the insane

and the victims of tuberculosis. For it seems to me that while a man

with passion and sentiment may do many foolish and precipitate

things, a man without passion or sentiment is a joke and a

caricature. Compared with Daudet’s Sappho, he is a worm, a

machine, an automaton, a blot upon this earth. Many a prostitute

lives a nobler life than a successful business man. What if Sappho

sinned? For although she sinned, she also loved, and to those who

love much, much will be forgiven. Anyway she emerged out of an

equally harsh business environment with more of the youthful heart

than many of our millionaires. The worship of Mary Magdalene is

right. It is unavoidable that passion and sentiment should lead us

into mistakes for which we are duly punished, yet there is many an

indulgent mother who by her indulgence often let her love get the

better of her judgment, and yet who, we feel sure, in her old age felt

that she had had a more happy life with her family than many

rigorous and austere souls. A friend told me the story of an old lady

of seventy-eight who said to him, “As I look back upon my seventy-

eight years, it still makes me happy to think of when I sinned; but

when I think I was stupid, I cannot forgive myself even at this late

day.”

But life is harsh, and a man with a warm, generous and

sentimental nature may be easily taken in by his cleverer fellowman

The generous in nature often make mistakes by their generosity, by

their too generous regard of their enemies and faith in their friends.

Sometimes the generous man comes home disillusioned to write a

poem of bitterness. That is the case of many a poet and scholar in

China, as for instance that great tea-drinker, Chang Tai, who

generously squandered his fortune, was betrayed by his own closest

friends and relatives, and set down in twelve poems some of the

bitterest verses I have ever read. But I have a suspicion that he kept

on being generous to the end of his days, even when he was quite

poor and destitute, being many times on the verge of starvation, and

I have no doubt that those bitter sentiments passed away like a

cloud and he was still quite happy.

Nevertheless this warm generosity of soul has to be protected

against life by a philosophy, because life is harsh, warmth of soul is

not enough, and passion must be joined to wisdom and courage. To

me wisdom and courage are the same thing, for courage is born of

an understanding of life; he who completely understands life is

always brave. Anyway that type of wisdom which does not give us

courage is not worth having at all. Wisdom leads to courage by

exercising a veto against our foolish ambitions and emancipating us

from the fashionable humbug of this world, whether humbug of

thought or humbug of life.

There is a wealth of humbug in this life, but the multitudinous little

humbugs have been classified by Chinese Buddhists under two big

humbugs: fame and wealth. There is a story that Emperor Ch’ienlung

once went up a hill overlooking the sea during his trip to South China

and saw a great number of sailing ships busily plying the China Sea

to and fro. He asked his minister what the people in those hundreds

of ships were doing, and his minister replied that he saw only two

ships, and their names were “Fame” and “Wealth” Many cultured

persons were able to escape the lure of wealth, but only the very

greatest could escape the lure of fame, Once a monk was

discoursing with his pupil on these two sources of worldly cares, and

said: “It is easier to get rid of the desire for money than to get rid of

the desire for fame. Even retired scholars and monks still want to be

distinguished and well-known among their company. They want to

give public discourses to a large audience, and not retire to a small

monastery talking to one pupil, like you and me now.” The pupil

replied: “Indeed, Master, you are the only man in the world who has

conquered the desire for fame!” And the Master smiled.

From my own observation of life, this Buddhist classification of

life’s humbugs is not complete, and the great humbugs of life are

three, instead of two: Fame, Wealth and Power. There is a

convenient American word which again combines these three

humbugs into the One Great Humbug: Success. But many wise men

know that the desires for success, fame and wealth are euphemistic

names for the fears of failure, poverty and obscurity, and that these

fears dominate our lives. There are many people who have already

attained both fame and wealth, but who still insist on ruling others.

They are the people who have consecrated their lives to the service

of their country. The price is often very heavy. Ask a wise man to

wave his silk hat to a crowd and make seven speeches a day and

give him a presidency, and he will refuse to serve his country. James

Bryce thinks the system of democratic government in America is

such that it is hardly calculated to attract the best men of the country

into politics. I think the strenuousness of a presidential campaign

alone is enough to frighten off all the wise souls of America. A public

office often demands that a man attend six dinners a week in the

name of consecrating his life to the service of mankind. Why does he

not consecrate himself to a simple supper at home and to his bed

and his pyjamas? Under the spell of that humbug of fame or power,

a man is soon prey to other incidental humbugs. There will be no

end to it. He soon begins to want to reform society, to uplift others’

morality, to defend the church, to crush vice, to map programs for

others to carry out, to block programs that other people have

mapped out, to read before a convention a statistical report of what

other people have done for him under his administration, to sit on

committees examining blueprints of an exposition, even to open an

insane asylum (what cheek!)—in general, to interfere in other

people’s lives. He soon forgets that these gratuitous assumptions of

responsibility, these problems of reforming people and doing this and

preventing one’s rivals from doing that, never existed for him before,

perhaps had not even entered his mind. How completely the great

problems of labor, unemployment and tariffs leave the mind of a

defeated presidential candidate even two weeks after an election!

Who is he that he should want to reform other people and uplift their

morals and send other people into an insane asylum? But these

primary and secondary humbugs keep him happily busy, i£ he is

successful, and give him the illusion that he is really doing something

and is therefore “somebody.”

Yet there is a secondary social humbug, quite as powerful and

universal, the humbug of fashion. The courage to be one’s own

natural self is quite a rare thing The Greek philosopher Democritus

thought he was doing a great service to mankind by liberating it from

the oppression of two great fears: the fear of God and the fear of

death. But even that does not liberate us from another equally

universal fear: the fear of one’s neighbors. Few men who have

liberated themselves from the fear of God and the fear of death are

yet able to liberate themselves from the fear of man, Consciously or

unconsciously, we are all actors in this life playing to the audience in

a part and style approved by them.

This histrionic talent, together with the related talent for imitation,

which is a part of it, are the most outstanding traits of our simian

inheritance. There are undoubted advantages to be derived from this

showmanship, the most obvious being the plaudits of the audience.

But then the greater the plaudits, the greater also are the flutterings

of heart back stage. And it also helps one to make a living, so that no

one is quite to blame for playing his part in a fashion approved by the

gallery.

The only objection is that the actor may replace the man and take

entire possession of him. There are a few select souls who can wear

their reputation and a high position with a smile and remain their

natural selves; they are the ones who know they are acting when

they are acting, who do not share the artificial illusions of rank, title,

property and wealth, and who accept these things with a tolerant

smile when they come their way, but refuse to believe that they

themselves are thereby different from ordinary human beings. It i$

this class of men, the truly great in spirit, who remain essentially

simple in their personal lives. It is because they do not entertain

these illusions that simplicity is always the mark of the truly great.

Nothing shows more conclusively a small mind than a little

government bureaucrat suffering from illusions of his own grandeur,

or a social upstart displaying her jewels, or a half-baked writer

imagining himself to belong to the company of the immortals and

immediately becoming a less simple and less natural human being.

So deep is our histrionic instinct that we often forget that we have

real lives to live off stage. And so we sweat and labor and go through

life, living not for ourselves in accordance with our true instincts, but

for the approval of society, like “old spinsters working with their

needles to make wedding dresses for other women,” as the Chinese

saying goes.

III. CYNICISM, FOLLY AND CAMOUFLAGE: LAOTSE

Paradoxically, Laotse’s most wicked philosophy of “the old rogue”

has been responsible for the highest ideal of peace, tolerance,

simplicity and contentment. Such teachings include the wisdom of

the foolish, the advantage of camouflage, the strength of weakness,

and the simplicity of the truly sophisticated. Chinese art itself, with its

poetic illusion and its glorification of the simple life of the woodcutter

and the fisherman, cannot exist apart from this philosophy. And at

the bottom of Chinese pacificism is the willingness to put up with

temporary losses and bide one’s time, the belief that, in the scheme

of things, with nature operating by the law of action and reaction, no

one has a permanent advantage over the others and no one is a

“damn fool” all the time.

The greatest wisdom seems like stupidity.

The greatest eloquence like stuttering.

Movement overcomes cold,

But staying overcomes heat.

So he by his limpid calm

Puts everything right under heaven.

Knowing then that in Nature’s ways no man has a permanent

advantage over others and no man is a damn fool all the time, the

natural conclusion is that there is no use for contention. In Laotse’s

words, the wise man “does not contend, and for that very reason no

one under Heaven can contend with him.” Again he says, “Show me

a man of violence that came to a good end, and I will take him for my

teacher.” A modern writer might add, “Show me a dictator that can

dispense with the services of a secret police, and I will be his

follower.” For this reason, Laotse says, “When the Tao prevails not,

horses are trained for battle; when the Tao prevails, horses are

trained to pull dungcarts.”

The best charioteers do not rush ahead;

The best fighters do not make displays of wrath.

he greatest conqueror wins without joining issue;

The best user of men acts as though he were their inferior.

This is called the power that comes of not contending,

Is called the capacity to use men,

The secret of being mated to heaven, to what was of old.

The law of action and reaction brings about violence rebounding

to violence:

He who by Tao purposes to help a ruler of men

Will oppose all conquest by force of arms;

For such things are wont to rebound.

Where armies are, thorns and brambles grow.

The raising of a great host

Is followed by a year of dearth.

Therefore a good general effects his purpose and then stops;

he does not take further advantage of his victory.

Fulfills his purpose and does not glory in what he has done;

Fulfills his purpose and does not boast of what he has done;

Fulfills his purpose, but takes no pride in what he has done;

Fulfills his purpose, but only as a step that could not be avoided.

Fulfills his purpose, but without violence;

For what has a time of vigor also has a time of decay.

This is against Tao,

And what is against Tao will soon perish.

My feeling is that, if Laotse had been invited to take the chair at the

Versailles Conference, there would not be a Hitler today. Hitler

claims that he and his work must have been “blessed by God,” on

the evidence of his miraculous rise to power. I am inclined to think

that the matter is simpler than that, that he was blessed by the spirit

of Clemenceau. Chinese pacifism is not that of the humanitarian, but

that of the old rogue—based not upon universal love, but upon a

convincing type of subtle wisdom.

What is in the end to be shrunk

Must first be stretched.

Whatever is to be weakened

Must begin by being made strong.

What is to be overthrown

Must begin by being set up.

He who would be a taker

Must begin as a giver.

This is called “dimming” one’s light.

It is thus that the soft overcomes the hard

And the weak, the strong.

“It is best to leave the fish down in his pool;

Best to leave the State’s sharpest weapons

where none can see them.”

There has never been a more effective sermon more effectively

preached on the strength of weakness, the victory of the peace-

loving and the advantage of lying low than by Laotse. For water

remains for Laotse forever as the symbol of the strength of the weak

—water that gently drips and makes a hole in a rock, and water

which has the great Taoistic wisdom of seeking the lowest level:

How did the great rivers and seas get their kingship over the

hundred lesser streams?

Through the merit of being lower than they; that was how

they got their kingship.

An equally common symbol is that of “the Valley,” representing the

hollow, the womb and mother of all things, the yin or the Female.

The Valley Spirit never dies.

It is named die Mysterious Female.

And the Doorway of the Mysterious Female

Is the base from which Heaven and Earth sprang.

It is there within us all the while;

Draw upon it as you will, it never runs dry.

It would not be at all far-fetched to say that Oriental civilization

represents the female principle, while the Occidental civilization

represents the male principle. Anyway, there is something terribly

resembling the womb or valley in China’s passive strength that, in

Laotsean language, “receives into it all things under heaven, and

being a valley, has all the time a power that suffices,”

Against the desire of Julius Caesar to be the first man in a village,

Laotse gives the opposite counsel of “Never be the first in the world.”

This thought of the danger of being eminent is expressed by

Chuangtse in the form of a satire against Confucius and his display

of knowledge. There were many such libels against Confucius in the

books of Chuangtse, for Confucius was dead when Chuangtse

wrote, and there was no libel law in China.

When Confucius was hemmed in between Ch’en and Ts’ai,

he passed seven days without food.

The minister Jen went to condole with him, and said, “You

were near, Sir, to death.”

“I was indeed,” replied Confucius.

“Do you fear death, Sir?” inquired Jen.

“I do,” said Confucius.

“Then I will try to teach you,” said Jen, “the way not to die.

“In the eastern sea there are certain birds, called the i-erh.

They behave themselves in a modest and unassuming

manner, as though unpossessed of ability. They fly

simultaneously; they roost in a body. In advancing, none

strives to be first; in retreating, none venture to be last. In

eating, none will be the first to begin; it is considered proper to

take the leavings of others. Therefore, in their own ranks they

are at peace, and the outside world is unable to harm them.

And thus they escape trouble.

“Straight trees are the first felled. Sweet wells are soonest

exhausted. And you, you make a show of your knowledge in

order to startle fools. You cultivate yourself in contrast to the

degradation of others. And you blaze along as though the sun

and moon were under your arms; consequently, you cannot

avoid trouble. . . .”

“Good indeed!” replied Confucius; and forthwith he took

leave of his friends and dismissed his disciples and retired to

the wilds, where he dressed himself in skins and serge and

fed on acorns and chestnuts. He passed among the beasts

and birds and they took no heed of him.

I have made a poem which sums up for me the message of

Taoistic thought:

There is the wisdom of the foolish,

The gracefulness of the slow,

The subtlety of stupidity,

The advantage of lying low.

This must sound to Christian readers like the Sermon on the Mount,

and perhaps seem equally ineffective to them. Laotse gave the

Beatitudes a cunning touch when he added: “Blessed are the idiots,

for they are the happiest people on earth.” Following Laotse’s

famous dictum that “The greatest wisdom is like stupidity; the

greatest eloquence like stuttering,” Chuangtse says: “Spit forth

intelligence,” Liu Chungyuan in the eighth century called his

neighborhood hill “the Stupid Hill” and the nearby river “the Stupid

River.” Cheng Panch’iao in the eighteenth century made the famous

remark: “It is difficult to be muddle-headed. It is difficult to be clever,

but still more difficult to graduate from cleverness into muddle-

headedness.” The praise of folly has never been interrupted in

Chinese literature. The wisdom of this attitude can at once be

understood through the American slang expression: “Don’t be too

smart.” The wisest man is often one who pretends to be a “damn

fool”

In the Chinese culture, therefore, we see the curious phenomenon

of a high intellect growing suspicious of itself and developing, so far

as I know, the only gospel of ignorance and the earliest theory of

camouflage as the best weapon in the battle of life. From

Chuangtse’s advice to “spit forth intelligence,” it is but a short step to

the glorification of the idiot, which we see constantly reflected in

Chinese paintings and literary sketches of the beggar, or the

disguised immortal, or the crazy monk, or the extraordinary recluse,

as seen in The Travels of Mingliaotse (Chapter XI). The wise

disenchantment with life receives a romantic or religious touch and

enters the realm of poetic fantasy, when the poor, ragged and half-

crazy monk becomes for us the symbol of highest wisdom and

nobility of character.

The popularity of fools is an undeniable fact. I have no doubt that,

East or West, the world hates a man who is too smart in his dealings

with his fellowmen. Yuan Chunglang wrote an essay showing why he

and his brothers chose to keep four extremely stupid and extremely

loyal servants. Anyone can run over the names of his friends and

associates in his mind and verify this fact for himself, that those we

like are not those we respect for distinguished ability and those we

respect for distinguished ability are not those we like, and that we

like a stupid servant because he is more reliable, and because in his

company we can better relax and do not have to set up a condition

of defense against his presence. Most wise men choose to marry a

not too smart wife, and most wise girls choose a not too smart

husband as a life companion.

There have been a number of famous fools in Chinese history, all

extremely popular and beloved for their real or affected crazi-ness.

Among these, for instance, is the famous Sung painter, Mi Fei, styled

“Mi Tien” (or “Mi the Crazy One”), who got this title because he once

appeared in a ceremonial robe to worship a piece of jagged rock that

he called his “father-in-law.” Both Mi Fei and the famous Yuan

painter, Ni Yünlin, had a mild form of dirt-phobia or fastidious

cleanliness. There was the famous crazy poet-monk Hanshan, who

went about with disheveled hair and bare feet, doing odd kitchen

jobs at different monasteries, eating the leftovers, and scribbling

immortal poetry on the temple and kitchen walls. The greatest crazy

monk who has captured the imagination of the Chinese people is

undoubtedly Chi Tien (“Chi the Crazy One”), or Chi Kung (“Master

Chi”), who is the hero of a popular romance steadily being

lengthened and added to until it is about three times the size of Don

Quixote, and still seems endless. For he lives in a world of magic,

medicine, roguery, and drunkenness, and possesses the gift of

appearing at different cities several hundred miles apart on the same

day. The temple to his honor still stands at Hupao near the West

Lake of Hangchow today. To a lesser degree, the great romantic

geniuses of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, while decidedly

as normal as we, tended through their unconventionalities of

appearance and conduct to give people an impression of being

crazy, such as Hsu Wench’ang, Li Chowu and Chin Shengt’an

(literally, “the Sigh of the Sage,” a name he gave himself because he

said that when he was born, a mysterious sigh was heard in the

village temple of Confucius).

IV. “PHILOSOPHY OF HALF-AND-HALF”: TSESSE

I have no doubt that a philosophy which enjoins the carefree and

conscience-free life has a strong tendency to warn us away from a

too busy life and from too great responsibilities, and therefore tends

to decrease the desire for action. On the other hand, the modern

man needs this refreshing wind of cynicism which cannot but do him

some good. Probably more harm is done by a forward-looking

philosophy delivering man over to a life of futile, wasteful activities

than is ever done by all the cynicism of the ancient and modern

philosophies combined. There are too many physiological impulses

for action in every man, ready to counteract this philosophy, and in

spite of the popularity of this great Philosophy of the Scamp, the

Chinese people are still one of the most industrious on earth. The

majority of men cannot be cynics, simply because the majority of

men are not philosophers.

As far as I can see, therefore, there is very little danger of

cynicism being transformed into a general vogue followed by the

herd. Even in China, where the Taoist philosophy finds an instinctive

response in the Chinese breast, and where that philosophy has been

at work for several thousand years, staring at us from every poem

and every scroll of landscape painting, life still goes on merrily with

lots of people believing in wealth and fame and power, quite

determined and anxious to serve their country. Were it not so, human

life would not be able to get along at all. No, the Chinese are cynics

and poets only when they have failed; most of my countrymen are

still very good showmen. The effect of Taoistic cynicism has been

only to slow down the tempo of life, and in the case of natural

calamities and human misrule, to promote trust in the law of action

and reaction, which brings about justice in the end.

And yet there is an opposite influence in Chinese thought in

general which counteracts this carefree philosophy, the philosophy of

the natural vagabond. Opposed to the philosophy of nature’s

gentlemen, there is the philosophy of society’s gentlemen; opposed

to Taoism, there is Confucianism. Insofar as Taoism and

Confucianism mean merely the negative and positive outlooks on

life, I do not think they are Chinese, but are inherent in all human

nature, We are all born half Taoists and half Confucianists. The

logical conclusion of a thorough-going Taoist would be to go to the

mountains and live as a hermit or a recluse, to imitate as far as

possible the simple carefree life of the woodcutter and the fisherman,

the woodcutter who is lord of the green hills and the fisherman who

is the owner of the blue waters. The Taoist recluse, half-hidden in the

clouds on top of the mountain, looks down at the woodcutter and the

fisherman holding an idle conversation, remarking that the hills go on

being green and the waters go on flowing just to please themselves,

entirely oblivious of the two tiny conversationalists. From this

reflection, he gets a sense of perfect peace. And yet it is poor

philosophy that teaches us to escape from human society altogether.

There is still a greater philosophy than this naturalism, namely, the

philosophy of humanism. The highest ideal of Chinese thought is

therefore a man who does not have to escape from human society

and human life in order to preserve his original, happy nature. He is

only a second-rate recluse, still slave to his environment, who has to

escape from the cities and live away in the mountains in solitude.

“The Great Recluse is the city recluse,” because he has sufficient

mastery over himself not to be afraid of his surroundings. He is

therefore the Great Monk (the kaoseng) who returns to human

society and eats pork and drinks wine and mixes with women,

without detriment to his own soul. There is, therefore, the possibility

of the merging of the two philosophies. The contrast between

Confucianism and Taoism is relative, the two doctrines setting forth

only two great extremes, and between them there are many

intermediate stages.

Those are the best cynics who are half-cynics. The highest type of

life after all is the life of sweet reasonableness as taught by

Confucius’ grandson, Tsesse, author of The Golden Mean. No

philosophy, ancient or modern, dealing with the problems of human

life has yet discovered a more profound truth than this doctrine of a

well-ordered life lying somewhere between the two extremes—the

Doctrine of the Half-and-Half. It is that spirit of sweet

reasonableness, arriving at a perfect balance between action and

inaction, shown in the ideal of a man living in half-fame and semi-

obscurity; half-lazily active and half-actively lazy; not so poor that he

cannot pay his rent, and not so rich that he doesn’t have to work a

little or couldn’t wish to have slightly more to help his friends; who

plays the piano, but only well enough for his most intimate friends to

hear, and chiefly to please himself; who collects, but just enough to

load his mantelpiece; who reads, but not too hard; learns a lot but

does not become a specialist; writes, but has his correspondence to

the Times half of the time rejected and half of the time published—in

short, it is that ideal of middle-class life which I believe to be the

sanest ideal of life ever discovered by the Chinese. This is the ideal

so well expressed in Li Mi-an’s “The Half-and-Half Song”:

By far the greater half have I seen through

This floating life—Ah, there’s a magic word—

This “half”—so rich in implications.

It bids us taste the joy of more than we

Can ever own. Halfway in life is man’s

Best state, when slackened pace allows him ease;

A wide world lies halfway ‘twixt heaven and earth;

To live halfway between the town and land,

Have farms halfway between the streams and hills;

Be half-a-scholar, and half-a-squire, and half

In business; half as gentry live,

And half related to the common folk;

And have a house that’s half genteel, half plain,

Half elegantly furnished and half bare;

Dresses and gowns that are half old, half new,

And food half epicure’s, half simple fare;

Have servants not too clever, not too dull;

A wife who’s not too simple, nor too smart—

So then, at heart, I feel I’m half a Buddha,

And almost half a Taoist fairy blest.

One half myself to Father Heaven I

Return; the other half to children leave-

Half thinking how for my posterity

To plan and provide, and yet half minding how

To answer God when the body’s laid at rest.

He is most wisely drunk who is half drunk;

And flowers in half-bloom look their prettiest;

As boats at half-sail sail the steadiest,

And horses held at half-slack reins trot best.

Who half too much has, adds anxiety,

But half too little, adds possession’s zest.

Since life’s of sweet and bitter compounded,

Who tastes but half is wise and cleverest.

We have here, then, a compounding of Taoistic cynicism with the

Confucian positive outlook into a philosophy of the half-and-half. And

because man is born between the real earth and the unreal heaven,

I believe that, however unsatisfactory it may seem on the first look to

a Westerner, with his incredibly forward-looking point of view, it is still

the best philosophy, because it is the most human. After all, a half

Lindbergh would be better, because more happy, than a complete

Lindbergh, I am quite sure Lindbergh would be much happier if he

had flown only halfway across the Atlantic. After all allowances are

made for the necessity of having a few supermen in our midst—

explorers, conquerors, great inventors, great presidents, heroes who

change the course of history—the happiest man is still the man of

the middle-class who has earned a slight means of economic

independence, who has done a little, but just a little, for mankind,

and who is slightly distinguished in his community, but not too

distinguished. It is only in this milieu of well-known obscurity and

financial competence with a pinch, when life is fairly carefree and yet

not altogether carefree, that the human spirit is happiest and

succeeds best. After all, we have to get on in this life, and so we

must bring philosophy down from heaven to earth.

V. A LOVER OF LIFE: T’AO YUANMING

It has been shown, therefore, that with the proper merging of the

positive and the negative outlooks on life, it is possible to achieve a

harmonious philosophy of the “half-and-half” lying somewhere

between action and inaction, between being led by the nose into a

world of futile busy-ness and complete flight from a life of

responsibilities, and that so far as we can discover with the help of

all the philosophies of the world, this is the sanest and happiest ideal

for man’s life on earth. What is still more important, the mixture of

these two different outlooks makes a harmonious personality

possible, that harmonious personality which is the acknowleged aim

of all culture and education. And significantly, out of this harmonious

personality, we see a joy and love of life,

It is difficult for me to describe the qualities of this love of life; it is

easier to speak in a parable or tell the story of a true lover of life, as

he really lived. And the picture of T’ao Yuanming, the greatest poet

and most harmonious product of Chinese culture, inevitably comes

to my mind.

There will be no one in China to object when I say that

T’ao represents to us the most perfectly harmonious and well-

rounded character in the entire Chinese literary tradition. Without

leading an illustrious official career, without power and outward

achievements and without leaving us a greater literary heritage than

a thin volume of poems and three or four essays in prose, he

remains today a beacon shining through the ages, forever a symbol

to lesser poets and writers of what the highest human character

should be. There is a simplicity in his life, as well as in his style,

which is awe-inspiring and a constant reproach to more brilliant and

more sophisticated natures. And he stands, today, as a perfect

example of the true lover of life, because in him the rebellion against

worldly desires did not lead him to attempt a total escape, but has

reached a harmony with the life of the senses. About two centuries

of literary romanticism and the Taoistic cult of the idle life and

rebellion against Confucianism had been working in China and

joined forces with the Confucian philosophy of the previous centuries

to make the emergence of this harmonious personality possible. In

T’ao we find the positive outlook had lost its foolish complacency and

the cynic philosophy had lost its bitter rebelliousness (a trait we see

still in Thoreau—a sign of immaturity), and human wisdom first

reaching full maturity in a spirit of tolerant irony.

T’ao represents to me that strange characteristic of Chinese

culture, a curious combination of devotion to the flesh and arrogance

of the spirit, of spirituality without asceticism and materialism without

sensuality, in which the senses and the spirit have come to live

together in harmony. For the ideal philosopher is one who

understands the charm of women without being coarse, who loves

life heartily but loves it with restraint, and who sees the unreality of

the successes and failures of the active world, and stands somewhat

aloof and detached, without being hostile to it. Because T’ao

reached that true harmony of spiritual development, we see a total

absence of inner conflict and his life was as natural and effortless as

his poetry.

T’ao was born toward the end of the fourth century of our era, the

great grandson of a distinguished scholar and official, who in order to

keep himself from being idle, moved a pile of bricks from one place

to another in the morning, and moved them back in the afternoon. In

his youth he accepted a minor official job in order to support his old

parents, but soon resigned and returned to the farm, tilling the field

himself as a farmer, from which he developed a kind of bodily

ailment. One day he asked his relatives and friends, “Would it be all

right for me to go out as a minstrel singer in order to pay for the

upkeep of my garden?” On hearing this, certain of his friends got him

a position as a magistrate of P’engcheh, near Kiukiang. Being very

fond of wine, he commanded that all the fields belonging to the local

government should be planted with glutinous rice, from which wine

could be made, and only on the protestations of his wife did he allow

one-sixth to be planted with another kind of rice. When a government

delegate came and his secretary told him that he should receive the

little fellow with his gown properly girdled, T’ao sighed and said, “I

cannot bend and bow for the sake of five bushels of rice.” And he

immediately resigned and wrote that famous poem, “Ah, Homeward

Bound I Go!” From then on, he lived the life of a farmer and

repeatedly refused later calls to office. Poor himself, he lived in

communion with the poor, and he expressed a certain paternal regret

in a letter to his sons that they should be so poorly clad and do the

work of a common laborer. But when he managed to send a peasant

boy to his sons when he was away, to help them do the work of

carrying water and gathering fuel, he said to them, ‘Treat him well,

for he is also some one’s son.”

His only weakness was a fondness for wine. Living very much to

himself, he seldom saw guests, but whenever there was wine, he

would sit down with the company, even though he might not be

acquainted with the host. At other times, when he was the host

himself and got drunk first, he would say to his guests, “I am drunk

and thinking of sleep; you can all go.” He had a stringed instrument,

the ch’in, without any strings left. It was an ancient instrument that

could be played only in an extremely slow manner and only in a state

of perfect mental calm. After a feast, or when feeling in a musical

mood, he would express his musical feelings by fondling and

fingering this stringless instrument. “I appreciate the flavor of music;

what need have I for the sounds from the strings?”

Humble and simple and independent, he was extremely chary of

company. A magistrate, one Wang, who was his great admirer,

wanted to cutivate his friendship, but found it very difficult to see him.

With his perfect naturalness he said, “I’m keeping to myself because

by nature I’m not made for the life of society, and I am staying in the

house because of an ailment. Far be it from me to act in this manner

in order to acquire a reputation for being high and aloof.” Wang

therefore had to plot with a friend in order to see him; this friend had

to induce him to leave his home, by inviting him to a feast and an

accidental meeting. When he was halfway and stopped at a pavilion,

wine was presented. T’ao’s eyes brightened and he gladly sat down

to drink, when Wang, who had been hiding nearby, came out to meet

him. And he was so happy that he remained there talking with him

the whole afternoon, and forgot to go on to his friend’s place. Wang

saw that he had no shoes on his feet and ordered his subordinates

to make a pair for him. When these minor officials asked for the

measurements, he stretched forth his feet and asked them to take

the measure. And thereafter, whenever Wang wanted to see him, he

had to wait in the forest or around the lake, so that perchance he

might meet the poet. Once when his friends were brewing wine, they

took his linen turban to use it as a strainer, and after the wine had

been strained, he wound the turban again around his head.

There was then in the great Lushan Mountains, at whose foot he

lived, a great society of illustrious Zen Buddhists, and the leader, a

great scholar, tried to get him to join the Lotus Society. One day he

was invited to come to a party, and his condition was that he should

be allowed to drink. This breaking of the Buddhist rule was granted

him and he went. But when it came to putting his name down as a

member, he “knitted his brows and stole away.” This was a society

that so great a poet as Hsieh Lingyün had been very anxious to join,

but could not get in. But still the abbot courted his friendship and one

day he invited him to drink, together with another great Taoist friend.

They were then a company of three; the abbot, representing

Buddhism, T’ao representing Confucianism, and the other friend

representing Taoism. It had been the abbot’s life vow never to go

beyond a certain bridge in his daily walks, but one day when he and

the other friend were sending T’ao home, they were so pleasurably

occupied in their conversation that the abbot went past the bridge

without knowing it. When it was pointed out to him, the company of

three laughed. This incident of the three laughing old men became

the subject of popular Chinese paintings, because it symbolized the

happiness and gaiety of three carefree, wise souls, representing

three religions united by the sense of humor.

And so he lived and died, a carefree and conscience-free, humble

peasant-poet, and a wise and merry old man. But something in his

small volume of poems on drinking and the pastoral life, his three or

four casual essays, one letter to his sons, three sacrificial prayers

(including one to himself), and some of his remarks handed down to

posterity shows a sentiment and a genius for harmonious living that

reached perfect naturalness and never has yet been surpassed. It

was this great love of life that was expressed in the poem which he

wrote one day in November, A. D. 405, when he decided to lay down

the burdens of the magistrate’s office.

Ah, homeward bound I go! why not go home, seeing that

my field and garden with weeds are overgrown? Myself have

made my soul serf to my body: why have vain regrets and

mourn alone?

Fret not over bygones and the forward journey take. Only a

short distance have I gone astray, and I know today I am right,

if yesterday was a complete mistake.

Lightly floats and drifts the boat, and gently flows and flaps

my gown. I inquire the road of a wayfarer, and sulk at the

dimness of the dawn.

Then when I catch sight of my old roofs, joy will my steps

quicken. Servants will be there to bid me welcome, and

waiting at the door are the greeting children.

Gone to seed, perhaps, are my garden paths, but there will

still be the chrysanthemums and the pine! I shall lead the

youngest boy in by the hand, and on the table there stands a

cup full of wine!

Holding the pot and cup I give myself a drink, happy to see

in the courtyard the hanging bough. I lean upon the southern

window with an immense satisfaction, and note that the little

place is cosy enough to walk around.

The garden grows more familiar and interesting with the

daily walks. What if no one ever knocks at the always closed

door! Carrying a cane I wander at peace, and now and then

look aloft to gaze at the blue above.

There the clouds idle away from their mountain recesses

without any intent or purpose, and birds, when tired of their

wandering flights, will think of home. Darkly then fall the

shadows and, ready to come home, I yet fondle the lonely

pines and loiter around.

Ah, homeward bound I go! Let me from now on learn to live

alone’ The world and I are not made for one another, and why

drive round like one looking for what he has not found?

Content shall I be with conversations with my own kin, and

there will be music and books to while away the hours. The

farmers will come and tell me that spring is here and there will

be work to do at the western farm.

Some order covered wagons; some row in small boats.

Sometimes we explore quiet, unknown ponds, and sometimes

we climb over steep, rugged mounds.

There the trees, happy of heart, grow marvelously green,

and spring water gushes forth with a gurgling sound. I admire

how things grow and prosper according to their seasons, and

feel that thus, too, shall my life go its round.

Enough! How long yet shall I this mortal shape keep? Why

not take life as it comes, and why hustle and bustle like one

on an errand bound?

Wealth and power are not my ambitions, and unattainable

is the abode of the gods! I would go forth alone on a bright

morning, or perhaps, planting my cane, begin to pluck the

weeds and till the ground.

Or I would compose a poem beside a clear stream, or

perhaps go up Tungkao and make a long-drawn call on the

top of the hill. So would I be content to live and die, and

without questionings of the heart, gladly accept Heaven’s will.

T’ao might be taken as an “escapist,” and yet it was not so. What

he tried to escape from was politics and not life itself. If he had been

a logician, he might have decided to escape from life altogether by

becoming a Buddhist monk. With T’ao’s great love of life, he could

not have been willing to escape from it altogether. His wife and

children were too real for him, his garden and the bough stretching

across his courtyard and the lonely pines which he fondled were

altogether too attractive, and being a reasonable man, instead of a

logician, he stuck to them. That was his love of life and his jealousy

over it, and it was from this positive, but reasonable, attitude toward

life that he arrived at the feeling of harmony with life which was

characteristic of his culture. From that harmony with life welled forth

the greatest poetry in China. Of the earth and earth-born, his

conclusion was not to escape from it, but “to go forth alone on a

bright morning, or perhaps, planting his cane, begin to pluck the

weeds and till the ground!” T’ao merely returned to the farm and to

his family. The end was harmony and not rebellion.

From Professor H. A. Giles’s translation, Chuang Tzu (Quatrich, London), which is a

complete translation of Chuangtse’s works.

This and the following quotations from Laotse’s Taouhching are from Arthur Waley’s

excellent translation, The Way and It’s Power (Allen & Unwin, London).

Giles’s translation.

Literally, “Half thinking how to face King Yenlo of Hell.”

T’ao Ch’ien (alias “Yüanming”), A. D. 372-427

Considered one of his greatest sayings by the Chinese.

This poem is in the form of a fu, progressing in parallel constructions, like the Psalms, and

sometimes rhymed.

Chapter Six

THE FEAST OF LIFE

I. THE PROBLEM OF HAPPINESS

The enjoyment of life covers many things: the enjoyment of

ourselves, of home life, of trees, flowers, clouds, winding rivers and

falling cataracts and the myriad things in Nature, and then the

enjoyment of poetry, art, contemplation, friendship, conversation,

and reading, which are all some form or other of the communion of

spirits. There are obvious things like the enjoyment of food, a gay

party or family reunion, an outing on a beautiful spring day; and less

obvious things like the enjoyment of poetry, art and contemplation. I

have found it impossible to call these two classes of enjoyment

material and spiritual, first because I do not believe in this distinction,

and secondly because I am puzzled whenever I proceed to make

this classification. How can I say, when I see a gay picnic party of

men and women and old people and children, what part of their

pleasures is material and what part spiritual? I see a child romping

about on the grass plot, another child making daisy chains, their

mother holding a piece of sandwich, the uncle of the family biting a

juicy, red apple, the father sprawling on the ground looking at the

sailing clouds, and the grandfather holding a pipe in his mouth.

Probably somebody is playing a gramophone, and from the distance

there come the sound of music and the distant roar of the waves.

Which of these pleasures is material and which spiritual? Is it so

easy to draw a distinction between the enjoyment of a sandwich and

the enjoyment of the surrounding landscape, which we call poetry?

Is it possible to regard the enjoyment of music which we call art, as

decidedly a higher type of pleasure than the smoking of a pipe,

which we call material? This classification between material and

spiritual pleasures is therefore confusing, unintelligible and untrue for

me. It proceeds, I suspect, from a false philosophy, sharply dividing

the spirit from the flesh, and not supported by a closer direct scrutiny

of our real pleasures.

Or have I perhaps assumed too much and begged the question of

the proper end of human life? I have always assumed that the end of

living is the true enjoyment of it. It is so simply because it is so. I

rather hesitate at the word “end” or “purpose.” Such an end or

purpose of life, consisting in its true enjoyment, is not so much a

conscious purpose, as a natural attitude toward human life, The

word “purpose” suggests too much contriving and endeavor. The

question that faces every man born into this world is not what should

be his purpose, which he should set about to achieve, but just what

to do with life, a life which is given him for a period of on the average

fifty or sixty years? The answer that he should order his life so that

he can find the greatest happiness in it is more a practical question,

similar to that of how a man should spend his weekend, than a

metaphysical proposition as to what is the mystic purpose of his life

in the scheme of the universe.

On the contrary, I rather think that philosophers who start out to

solve the problem of the purpose of life beg the question by

assuming that life must have a purpose. This question, so much

pushed to the fore among Western thinkers, is undoubtedly given

that importance through the influence of theology. I think we assume

too much design and purpose altogether. And the very fact that

people try to answer this question and quarrel over it and are

puzzled by it serves to show it up as quite vain and uncalled for. Had

there been a purpose or design in life, it should not have been so

puzzling and vague and difficult to find out.

The question may be divided into two; either that of a divine

purpose, which God has set for humanity, or that of a human

purpose, a purpose that mankind should set for itself. As far as the

first is concerned, I do not propose to enter into the question,

because everything that we think God has in mind necessarily

proceeds from our own mind; it is what we imagine to be in God’s

mind, and it is really difficult for human intelligence to guess at a

divine intelligence. What we usually end up with by this sort of

reasoning is to make God the color-sergeant of our army and to

make Him as chauvinistic as ourselves; He cannot, so we conceive,

possibly have a “divine purpose” and “destiny” for the world, or for

Europe, but only for our beloved Fatherland. I am quite sure the

Nazis can’t conceive of God without a swastika arm-band. This Gott

is always mit uns and cannot possibly be wit ihnen. But the Germans

are not the only people who think this way.

As far as the second question is concerned, the point of dispute is

not what is, but what should be, the purpose of human life, and it is

therefore a practical, and not a metaphysical question. Into this

question of what should be the purpose of human life, every man

projects his own conceptions and his own scale of values. It is for

this reason that we quarrel over the question, because our scales of

values differ from one another. For myself, I am content to be less

philosophical and more practical. I should not presume that there

must be necessarily a purpose, a meaning of human existence. As

Walt Whitman says, “I am sufficient as I am.” It is sufficient that I live

—and am probably going to live for another few decades—and that

human life exists. Viewed that way, the problem becomes amazingly

simple and admits of no two answers. What can be the end of

human life except the enjoyment of it?

It is strange that this problem of happiness, which is the great

question occupying the minds of all pagan philosophers, has been

entirely neglected by Christian thinkers. The great question that

bothers theological minds is not human happiness, but human

“salvation”—a tragic word. The word has a bad flavor for me,

because in China I hear everyday some one talking about our

“national salvation,” Everybody is trying to “save” China. It suggests

the feeling of people on a sinking ship, a feeling of ultimate doom

and the best method of getting away alive. Christianity, which has

been described as “the last sigh of two expiring worlds” (Greek and

Roman), still retains something of that characteristic today in its

preoccupation with the question of salvation. The question of living is

forgotten in the question of getting away alive from this world. Why

should man bother himself so much about salvation, unless he has a

feeling of being doomed? Theological minds are so much occupied

with salvation, and so little with happiness, that all they can tell us

about the future is that there will be a vague heaven, and when

questioned about what we are going to do there and how we are

going to be happy in heaven, they have only ideas of the vaguest

sort, such as singing hymns and wearing white robes. Mohammed at

least painted a picture of future happiness with rich wine and juicy

fruits and black-haired, big-eyed, passionate maidens that we

laymen can understand. Unless heaven is made much more vivid

and convincing for us, there is no reason why one should strive to go

there, at the cost of neglecting this earthly existence. As some one

says, “An egg today is better than a hen tomorrow.” At least, when

we’re planning a summer vacation, we take the trouble to find out

some details about the place we are going to. If the tourist bureau is

entirely vague on the question, I am not interested; I remain where I

am. Are we going to strive and endeavor in heaven, as I am quite

sure the believers in progress and endeavor must assume? But how

can we strive and make progress when we are already perfect? Or

are we going merely to loaf and do nothing and not worry? In that

case, would it not be better for us to learn to loaf while on this earth

as a preparation for our eternal life?

If we must have a view of the universe, let us forget ourselves and

not confine it to human life. Let us stretch it a little and include in our

view the purpose of the entire creation—the rocks, the trees and the

animals. There is a scheme of things (although “scheme” is another

word, like “end” and “purpose,” which I strongly distrust)—I mean

there is a pattern of things in the creation, and we can arrive at some

sort of opinion, however lacking in finality, about this entire universe,

and then take our place in it. This view of nature and our place in it

must be natural, since we are a vital part of it in our life and go back

to it when we die. Astronomy, geology, biology and history all provide

pretty good material to help us form a fairly good view if we don’t

attempt too much and jump at conclusions. It doesn’t matter if, in this

bigger view of the purpose of the creation, man’s place recedes a

little in importance. It is enough that he has a place, and by living in

harmony with nature around him, he will be able to form a workable

and reasonable outlook on human life itself.

II. HUMAN HAPPINESS IS SENSUOUS

All human happiness is biological happiness. That is strietly

scientific. At the risk of being misunderstood, I must make it clearer:

all human happiness is sensuous happiness. The spiritualists will

misunderstand me, I am sure; the spiritualists and materialists must

forever misunderstand each other, because they don’t talk the same

language, or mean by the same word different things. Are we, too, in

this problem of securing happiness to be deluded by the spiritualists,

and admit that true happiness is only happiness of the spirit? Let us

admit it at once and immediately proceed to qualify it by saying that

the spirit is a condition of the perfect functioning of the endocrine

glands. Happiness for me is largely a matter of digestion. I have to

take cover under an American college president to insure my

reputation and respectability when I say that happiness is largely a

matter of the movement of the bowels. The American college

president in question used to say with great wisdom in his address to

each class of freshmen, “There are only two things I want you to

keep in mind: read the Bible and keep your bowels open.” What a

wise, genial old soul he was to have said that! If one’s bowels move,

one is happy, and if they don’t move, one is unhappy. That is all

there is to it.

Let us not lose ourselves in the abstract when we talk of

happiness, but get down to facts and analyze for ourselves what are

the truly happy moments of our life. In this world of ours, happiness

is very often negative, the complete absence of sorrow or

mortification or bodily ailment. But happiness can also be positive,

and then we call it joy. To me, for instance, the truly happy moments

are: when I get up in the morning after a night of perfect sleep and

sniff the morning air and there is an expansiveness in the lungs,

when I feel inclined to inhale deeply and there is a fine sensation of

movement around the skin and muscles of the chest, and when,

therefore, I am fit for work; or when I hold a pipe in my hand and rest

my legs on a chair, and the tobacco burns slowly and evenly; or

when I am traveling on a summer day, my throat parched with thirst,

and I see a beautiful clear spring, whose very sound makes me

happy, and I take off my socks and shoes and dip my feet in the

delightful, cool water; or when after a perfect dinner I lounge in an

armchair, when there is no one I hate to look at in the company and

conversation rambles off at a light pace to an unknown destination,

and I am spiritually and physically at peace with the world; or when

on a summer afternoon I see black clouds gathering on the horizon

and know for certain a July shower is coming in a quarter of an hour,

but being ashamed to be seen going out into the rain without an

umbrella, I hastily set out to meet the shower halfway across the

fields and come home drenched through and through and tell my

family that I was simply caught by the rain.

Just as it is impossible for me to say whether I love my children

physically or spiritually when I hear their chattering voices or when I

see their plump legs, so I am totally unable to distinguish between

the joys of the mind and the joys of the flesh. Does anybody ever

love a woman spiritually without loving her physically? And is it so

easy a matter for a man to analyze and separate the charms of the

woman he loves—things like laughter, smiles, a way of tossing one’s

head, a certain attitude toward things? And after all every girl feels

happier when she is well-dressed. There is a soul-uplifting quality

about lipstick and rouge and a spiritual calm and poise that comes

from the knowledge of being well-dressed, which is real and definite

for the girl herself and of which the spiritualist has no inkling of an

idea. Being made of this mortal flesh, the partition separating our

flesh from our spirit is extremely thin, and the world of spirit, with its

finest emotions and greatest appreciations of spiritual beauty, cannot

be reached except with our senses. There is no such thing as

morality and immorality in the sense of touch, of hearing and vision.

There is a great probability that our loss of capacity for enjoying the

positive joys of life is largely due to the decreased sensibility of our

senses and our lack of full use of them.

Why argue about it? Let us take concrete instances and cull

examples from all the great lovers of life, Eastern and Western, and

see what they describe as their own happy moments, and how

intimately they are connected with the very senses of hearing and

smelling and seeing. Here is a description of the high aesthetic

pleasure that Thoreau

got from hearing the sound of crickets:

First observe the creak of crickets. It is quite general amid

these rocks. The song of only one is more interesting to me. It

suggests lateness, but only as we come to a knowledge of

eternity after some acquaintance with time. It is only late for

all trivial and hurried pursuits. It suggests a wisdom mature,

never late, being above all temporal considerations, which

possesses the coolness and maturity of autumn amidst the

aspiration of spring and the heats of summer. To the birds

they say: “Ah! you speak like children from impulse; Nature

speaks through you; but with us it is ripe knowledge. The

seasons do not revolve for us; we sing their lullaby.” So they

chant, eternal, at the roots of the grass. It is heaven where

they are, and their dwelling need not be heaved up. Forever

the same, in May and in November (?). Serenely wise, their

song has the security of prose. They have drunk no wine but

the dew. It is no transient love-strain hushed when the

incubating season is past, but a glorifying of God and enjoying

of him forever. They sit aside from the revolution of the

seasons. Their strain is unvaried as Truth. Only in their saner

moments do men hear the crickets.

And see how Walt Whitman’s senses of smell and sight and sound

contribute to his spirituality and what great importance he places

upon them:

A snowstorm in the morning, and continuing most of the

day. But I took a walk over two hours, the same woods and

paths, amid the falling flakes. No wind, yet the musical low

murmur through the pines, quite pronounced, curious, like

waterfalls, now still’d, now pouring again. All the senses,

sight, sound, smell, delicately gratified. Every snowflake lay

where it fell on the evergreens, hollytrees, laurels, etc, the

multitudinous leaves and branches pied, bulging-white,

defined by edgelines of emerald—the tall straight columns of

the plentiful bronze-topt pines—a slight resinous odor

blending with that of the snow. (For there is a scent to

everything, even the snow, if you can only detect it—no two

places, hardly any two hours, anywhere, exactly alike. How

different the odor of noon from midnight, or winter from

summer, or a windy spell from a still one!)

How many of us are able to distinguish between the odors of noon

and midnight, or of winter and summer, or of a windy spell and a still

one? If man is so generally less happy in the cities than in the

country, it is because all these variations and nuances of sight and

smell and sound are less clearly marked and lost in the general

monotony of gray walls and cement pavements.

The Chinese and the Americans are alike when it comes to the

true limits and capacities and qualities of the happy moments. Before

I translate the thirty-three happy moments given by a Chinese

scholar, I want to quote by way of comparison another passage from

Whitman, which will show the identity of our senses:

A clear, crispy day—dry and breezy air, full of oxygen. Out

of the sane, silent, beauteous miracles that envelop and fuse

me—trees, water, grass, sunlight, and early frost—the one I

am looking at most today is the sky. It has that delicate,

transparent blue, peculiar to autumn, and the only clouds are

little or larger white ones, giving their still and spiritual motion

to the great concave. All through the earlier day (say from 7 to

II) it keeps a pure, yet vivid blue. But as noon approaches the

color gets lighter, quite gray for two or three hours—then still

paler for a spell, till sun-down—which last I watch dazzling

through the interstices of a knoll of big trees—darts of fire and

a gorgeous show of light-yellow, liver-color and red, with a

vast silver glaze askant on the water—the transparent

shadows, shafts, sparkle, and vivid colors beyond all the

paintings ever made.

I don’t know what or how, but it seems to me mostly owing

to these skies, (every now and then I think, while I have of

course seen them every day of my life, I never really saw the

skies before,) I have had this autumn some wondrously

contented hours—may I not say perfectly happy ones? As I’ve

read, Byron just before his death told a friend that he had

known but three happy hours during his whole existence.

Then there is the old German legend of the king’s bell, to the

same point. While I was out there by the wood, that beautiful

sunset through the trees, I thought of Byron’s and the bell

story, and the notion started in me that I was having a happy

hour. (Though perhaps my best moments I never jot down;

when they come I cannot afford to break the charm by inditing

memoranda. I just abandon myself to the mood, and let it float

on, carrying me in its placid extasy).

What is happiness, anyhow? Is this one of its hours, or the

like of it?—so impalpable—a mere breath, an evanescent

tinge? I am not sure—so let me give myself the benefit of the

doubt. Hast Thou, pellucid, in Thy azure depths, medicine for

case like mine? (Ah, the physical shatter and troubled spirit of

me the last three years.) And dost Thou subtly mystically now

drip it through the air invisibly upon me?

III. CHIN’S THIRTY-THREE HAPPY MOMENTS

We are now better prepared to examine and appreciate the happy

moments of a Chinese, as he describes them. Chin Shengt’an, that

great impressionistic critic of the seventeenth century, has given us,

between his commentaries on the play Western Chamber, an

enumeration of the happy moments which he once counted together

with his friend, when they were shut-up in a temple for ten days on

account of rainy weather. These then are what he considers the truly

happy moments of human life, moments in which the spirit is

inextricably tied up with the senses:

: It is a hot day in June when the sun hangs still in the sky and there

is not a whiff of wind or air, nor a trace of clouds; the front and back

yards are hot like an oven and not a single bird dares to fly about.

Perspiration flows down my whole body in little rivulets. There is the

noon-day meal before me, but I cannot take it for the sheer heat. I

ask for a mat to spread on the ground and lie down, but the mat is

wet with moisture and flies swarm about to rest on my nose and

refuse to be driven away. Just at this moment when I am completely

helpless, suddenly there is a rumbling of thunder and big sheets of

black clouds overcast the sky and come majestically on like a great

army advancing to battle. Rain water begins to pour down from the

eaves like a cataract. The perspiration stops. The clamminess of the

ground is gone. All flies disappear to hide themselves and I can eat

my rice. Ah, is this not happiness?

A friend, one I have not seen for ten years, suddenly arrives at

sunset. I open the door to receive him, and without asking whether

he came by boat or by land, and without bidding him to sit down on

the bed or the couch, I go to the inner chamber and humbly ask my

wife: “Have you got a gallon of wine like Su Tungp’o’s wife?” My wife

gladly takes out her gold hairpin to sell it. I calculate it will last us

three days. Ah, is this not happiness?

I am sitting alone in an empty room and I am just getting annoyed at

a mouse at the head of my bed, and wondering what that little

rustling sound signifies—what article of mine he is biting or what

volume of my books he is eating up. While I am in this state of mind,

and don’t know what to do, I suddenly see a ferocious-looking cat,

wagging its tail and staring with its wide open eyes, as if it were

looking at something. I hold my breath and wait a moment, keeping

perfectly still, and suddenly with a little sound the mouse disappears

like a whiff of wind. Ah, is this not happiness?

I have pulled out the hait’ang and chikching

in front of my studio,

and have just planted ten or twenty green banana trees there. Ah, is

this not happiness?

I am drinking with some romantic friends on a spring night and am

just half intoxicated, finding it difficult to stop drinking and equally

difficult to go on. An understanding boy servant at the side suddenly

brings in a package of big fire-crackers, about a dozen in number,

and I rise from the table and go and fire them off. The smell of

sulphur assails my nostrils and enters my brain and I feel

comfortable all over my body. Ah, is this not happiness?

I am walking in the street and see two poor rascals engaged in a hot

argument of words with their faces flushed and their eyes staring

with anger as if they were mortal enemies, and yet they still pretend

to be ceremonious to each other, raising their arms and bending their

waists in salute, and still using the most polished language of thou

and thee and wherefore and is it not so? The flow of words is

interminable. Suddenly there appears a big husky fellow swinging his

arms and coming up to them, and with a shout tells them to disperse.

Ah, is this not happiness?

To hear our children recite the classics so fluently, like the sound of

pouring water from a vase. Ah, is this not happiness?

Having nothing to do after a meal I go to the shops and take a fancy

to a little thing. After bargaining for some time, we still haggle about

a small difference, but the shop-boy still refuses to sell it. Then I take

out a little thing from my sleeve, which is worth about the same thing

as the difference and throw it at the boy. The boy suddenly smiles

and bows courteously saying, “Oh, you are too generous!” Ah, is this

not happiness?

I have nothing to do after a meal and try to go through the things in

some old trunks. I see there are dozens or hundreds of I.O.U.’s from

people who owe my family money. Some of them are dead and

some still living, but in any case there is no hope of their returning

the money. Behind people’s backs I put them together in a pile and

make a bonfire of them, and I look up to the sky and see the last

trace of smoke disappear. Ah, is this not happiness?

It is a summer day. I go bareheaded and barefooted, holding a

parasol to watch young people singing Soochow folk songs while

treading the water wheel. The water comes up over the wheel in a

gushing torrent like molten silver or melting snow. Ah, is this not

happiness?

I wake up in the morning and seem to hear some one in the house

sighing and saying that last night some one died. I immediately ask

to find out who it is, and learn that it is the sharpest, most calculating

fellow in town. Ah, is this not happiness?

I get up early on a summer morning and see people sawing a large

bamboo pole under a mat-shed, to be used as a water pipe. Ah, is

this not happiness?

It has been raining for a whole month and I lie in bed in the morning

like one drunk or ill, refusing to get up. Suddenly I hear a chorus of

birds announcing a clear day. Quickly I pull aside the curtain, push

open the window and see the beautiful sun shining and glistening

and the forest looks like having a bath. Ah, is this not happiness?

At night I seem to hear some one thinking of me in the distance. The

next day I go to call on him. I enter his door and look about his room

and see that this person is sitting at his desk, facing south, reading a

document. He sees me, nods quietly and pulls me by the sleeve to

make me sit down, saying “Since you are here, come and look at

this.” And we laugh and enjoy ourselves until the shadows on the

walls have disappeared. He is feeling hungry himself and slowly

asks me “Are you hungry, too?” Ah, is this not happiness?

Without any serious intention to build a house of my own, I

happened, nevertheless, to start building one because a little sum

had unexpectedly come my way. From that day on, every morning

and every night I was told that I needed to buy timber and stone and

tiles and bricks and mortar and nails. And I explored and exhausted

every avenue of getting some money, all on account of this house,

without, however, being able to live in it all this time, until I got sort of

resigned to this state of things. One day, finally, the house is

completed, the walls have been whitewashed and the floors swept

clean; the paper windows have been pasted and scrolls of paintings

are hung up on the walls. All the workmen have left, and my friends

have arrived, sitting on different couches in order. Ah, is this not

happiness?

I am drinking on a winter’s night, and suddenly note that the night

has turned extremely cold. I push open the window and see that

snowflakes come down the size of a palm and there are already

three or four inches of snow on the ground. Ah, is this not

happiness?

To cut with a sharp knife a bright green watermelon on a big scarlet

plate of a summer afternoon. Ah, is this not happiness?

I have long wanted to become a monk, but was worried because I

would not be permitted to eat meat. If then I could be permitted to

become a monk and yet eat meat publicly, why then I would heat a

basin of hot water, and with the help of a sharp razor shave my head

clean in a summer month! Ah, is this not happiness?

To keep three or four spots of eczema in a private part of my body

and now and then to scald or bathe it with hot water behind closed

doors. Ah, is this not happiness?

To find accidently a handwritten letter of some old friend in a trunk.

Ah, is this not happiness?

A poor scholar comes to borrow money from me, but is shy about

mentioning the topic, and so he allows the conversation to drift along

on other topics. I see his uncomfortable situation, pull him aside to a

place where we are alone and ask him how much he needs. Then I

go inside and give him the sum and after having done this, I ask him:

“Must you go immediately to settle this matter or can you stay a

while and have a drink with me?” Ah, is this not happiness?

I am sitting in a small boat. There is a beautiful wind in our favor, but

our boat has no sails. Suddenly there appears a big lorcha, coming

along as fast as the wind. I try to hook on to the lorcha in the hope of

catching on to it, and unexpectedly the hook does catch. Then I

throw over a rope and we are towed along and I begin to sing the

lines of Tu Fu: “The green makes me feel tender toward the peaks,

and the red tells me there are oranges.” And we break out in joyous

laughter. Ah, is this not happiness?

I have been long looking for a house to share with a friend but have

not been able to find a suitable one. Suddenly some one brings the

news that there is a house somewhere, not too big, but with only

about a dozen rooms, and that it faces a big river with beautiful

green trees around. I ask this man to stay for supper, and after the

supper we go over together to have a look, having no idea what the

house is like. Entering the gate, I see that there is a large vacant lot

about six or seven mow, and I say to myself, “I shall not have to

worry about the supply of vegetables and melons henceforth.” Ah, is

this not happiness?

A traveller returns home after a long journey, and he sees the old

city gate and hears the women and children on both banks of the

river talking his own dialect. Ah, iº this not happiness?

When a good piece of old porcelain is broken, you know there is no

hope of repairing it. The more you turn it about and look at it, the

more you are exasperated. I then hand it to the cook, asking him to

use it as any old vessel, and give orders that he shall never let that

broken porcelain bowl come within my sight again. Ah, is this not

happiness?

I am not a saint, and am therefore not without sin. In the night I did

something wrong and I get up in the morning and feel extremely ill at

ease about it. Suddenly I remember what is taught by Buddhism,

that not to cover one’s sins is the same as repentance. So then I

begin to tell my sin to the entire company around, whether they are

strangers or my old friends. Ah, is this not happiness?

To watch some one writing big characters a foot high. Ah, is this not

happiness?

To open the window and let a wasp out of the room. Ah, is this not

happiness?

A magistrate orders the beating of the drum and calls it a day. Ah, is

this not happiness?

To see some one’s kite line broken. Ah, is this not happiness?

To see a wild prairie fire. Ah, is this not happiness?

To have just finished repaying all one’s debts. Ah, is this not

happiness?

To read the Story of Curly-Beard.

Ah, is this not happiness?

Poor Byron, who had only three happy hours in his life! He was

either of a morbid and enormously unbalanced spirit, or else he was

affecting merely the fashionable Weltschmerz of his decade. Were

the feeling of Weltschmerz not so fashionable, I feel bound to

suspect that he must have confessed to at least thirty happy hours

instead of three. Is it not plain from the above that the world is truly a

feast of life spread out for us to enjoy—merely through the senses,

and a type of culture which recognizes these sensual pleasures

therefore makes it possible for us frankly to admit them? My

suspicion is, the reason why we shut our eyes willfully to this

gorgeous world, vibrating with its own sensuality, is that the

spiritualists have made us plain scared of them. A nobler type of

philosophy should re-establish our confidence in this fine receptive

organ of ours, which we call the body, and drive away first the

contempt and then the fear of our senses. Unless these philosophers

can actually sublimate matter and etherealize our body into a soul

without nerves, without taste, without smell, and without sense of

color and motion and touch, and unless we are ready to go the

whole way with the Hindu modifiers of the flesh, let us face ourselves

bravely as we are. For only a philosophy that recognizes reality can

lead us into true happiness, and only that kind of philosophy is sound

and healthy.

IV. MISUNDERSTANDINGS OF MATERIALISM

Chin’s description of the happy moments of his life must have

already convinced us that in real human life, the mental and the

physical pleasures are inextricably tied up together. Mental

pleasures are real only when they are felt through the body. I would

include even the moral pleasures, too. He who preaches any kind of

doctrine must be prepared to be misunderstood, as the Epicureans

and Stoics were. How often people fail to see the essential kindness

of spirit of a Stoic, like Marcus Aurelius, and how often the Epicurean

doctrine of wisdom and restraint has been popularly construed as

the doctrine of the man of pleasure! It will at once be brought up

against this somewhat materialistic view of things, that it is selfish,

that it lacks totally a sense of social responsibility, that it teaches one

to enjoy one’s self merely. This type of argument proceeds from

ignorance; those who use it know not what they are talking about.

They know not the kindness of the cynic, not the gentleness of

temper of such a lover of life. Love of one’s fellowmen should not be

a doctrine, an article of faith, a matter of intellectual conviction, or a

thesis supported by arguments. The love of mankind which requires

reasons is no true love. This love should be perfectly natural, as

natural for man as for the birds to flap their wings. It should be a

direct feeling, springing naturally from a healthy soul, living in touch

with Nature. No man who loves the trees truly can be cruel to

animals or to his fellowmen. In a perfectly healthy spirit, gaining a

vision of life and of one’s fellowmen and a true and deep knowledge

of Nature, kindness is the natural thing. That soul does not require

any philosophy or man-made religion to tell him to be kind. It is

because his spirit has been properly nourished through his senses,

somewhat detached from the artificial life and the still more artificial

learning of human society, that he is able to retain a true mental and

moral health. We cannot, therefore, be accused of teaching

unselfishness when we are scratching off the earth and enlarging the

opening from which this spring of kindness will naturally flow.

Materialism has been misunderstood, grievously misunderstood.

In this matter I must let George Santayana speak for us, who

describes himself as “a materialist—perhaps the only one living,” and

who, nevertheless, as we all know, is probably one of the sweetest

spirits of the present generation. He tells us that our prejudice

against the materialistic philosophy is a prejudice of one looking at it

from the outside. One gets a feeling of shock from certain

deficiencies which are only apparent by comparison with one’s old

creed. But one can truly understand any foreign creed or religion or

country only when one enters to live in spirit in that new world. There

is a bounce and a joy, a wholesomeness of feeling in this so-called

“materialism” which we usually fail to see entirely, As Santayana tells

us, the true materialist is always like Democritus, the laughing

philosopher. It is we, the “unwilling materialists,” who aspire to

spiritualism but nevertheless live a selfish materialistic life, “that have

generally been awkwardly intellectual and incapable of laughter.”

But a thorough materialist, one born to the faith and not half

plunged into it by an unexpected christening in cold water, will

be like the superb Democritus, a laughing philosopher. His

delight in a mechanism that can fall into so many marvellous

and beautiful shapes, and can generate so many exciting

passions, should be of the same intellectual quality as that

which the visitor feels in a museum of natural history, where

he views the myriad butterflies in their cases, the flamingoes

and shell-fish, the mammoths and gorillas. Doubtless there

were pangs in that incalculable life, but they were soon over;

and how splendid meantime was the pageant, how infinitely

interesting the universal interplay, and how foolish and

inevitable those absolute little passions. Somewhat of that

sort might be the sentiment that materialism would arouse in a

vigorous mind, active, joyful, impersonal, and in respect to

private illusions not without a touch of scorn.

To the genuine sufferings of living creatures the ethics that

accompanies materialism has never been insensible; on the

contrary, like other merciful systems, it has trembled too much

at pain and tended to withdraw the will ascetically, lest the will

should be defeated. Contempt for mortal sorrows is reserved

for those who drive with hosannas the Juggernaut car of

absolute optimism. But against evils born of pure vanity and

self-deception, against the verbiage by which man persuades

himself that he is the god and acme of the universe, laughter

is the proper defence. Laughter also has this subtle

advantage, that it need not remain without an overtone of

sympathy and brotherly understanding; as the laughter that

greets Don Quixote’s absurdities and misadventures does not

mock the hero’s intent. His ardour was admirable, but the

world must be known before it can be reformed pertinently,

and happiness, to be attained, must be placed in reason.

What then is this mental life, or this spiritual life, of which we have

been always so proud, and which we always place above the life of

the senses? Unfortunately modern biology has a tendency to track

the spirit down to its lair, finding it to be a set of fibers, liquids and

nerves, I almost believe that optimism is a fluid, or at least it is a

condition of the nerves made possible by certain circulating fluids.

Whence does the mental life arise, and from what does it take its

being and derive its nourishment? Philosophers have long pointed

out that all human knowledge comes from sensuous experience. We

can no more attain knowledge of any kind without the senses of

vision and touch and smell than a camera can take pictures without

a lens and a sensitive plate. The difference between a clever man

and a dull fellow is that the former has a set of finer lenses and

perceiving apparatus by which he gets a sharper image of things and

retains it longer. And to proceed from the knowledge of books to the

knowledge of life, mere thinking or cogitation is not enough; one has

to feel one’s way about—to sense things as they are and to get a

correct impression of the myriad things in human life and human

nature not as unrelated parts, but as a whole. In this matter of feeling

about life and of gaining experience, all our senses cooperate, and it

is through the cooperation of the senses, and of the heart with the

head, that we can have intellectual warmth. Intellectual warmth, after

all, is the thing, for it is the sign of life, like the color of green in a

plant. We detect life in one’s thought by its presence or absence of

warmth, as we detect life in a half dried-up tree struggling after some

unfortunate accident, by noting the greenness of its leaves and the

moisture and healthy texture of its fiber.

V. HOW ABOUT MENTAL PLEASURES?

Let us take the supposedly higher pleasures of the mind and the

spirit, and see to what extent they are vitally connected with our

senses, rather than with our intellect. What are those higher spiritual

pleasures that we distinguish from those of the lower senses? Are

they not parts of the same thing, taking root and ending up in the

senses, and inseparable from them? As we go over these higher

pleasures of the mind—literature, art, music, religion and philosophy

—we see what a minor role the intellect plays in comparison with the

senses and feelings. What does a painting do except to give us a

landscape or a portrait and recall in us the sensuous pleasures of

seeing a real landscape or a beautiful face? And what does literature

do except to recreate a picture of life, to give us the atmosphere and

color, the fragrant smell of the pastures or the stench of city gutters?

We all say that a novel approaches the standard of true literature in

proportion as it gives us real people and real emotions. The book

which takes us away from this human life, or merely coldly dissects

it, is not literature and the more humanly true a book is, the better

literature we consider it. What novel ever appeals to a reader if it

contains only a cold analysis, if it fails to give us the salt and tang

and flavor of life?

As for the other things, poetry is but truth colored with emotion,

music is sentiment without words, and religion is but wisdom

expressed in fancy. As painting is based on the sense of color and

vision, so poetry is based on the sense of sound and tone and

rhythm, in addition to its emotional truth. Music is pure sentiment

itself, dispensing entirely with the language of words with which

alone the intellect can operate. Music can portray for us the sounds

of cowbells and fishmarkets and the battlefield; it can portray for us

even the delicacy of the flowers, the undulating motion of the waves,

or the sweet serenity of the moonlight; but the moment it steps

outside the limit of the senses and tries to portray for us a

philosophic idea, it must be considered decadent and the product of

a decadent world.

And did not the degeneration of religion begin with reason itself?

As Santayana says, the process of degeneration of religion was due

to too much reasoning: “This religion unhappily long ago ceased to

be wisdom expressed in fancy in order to become superstition

overlaid with reasoning.” The decay of religion is due to the pedantic

spirit, in the invention of creeds, formulas, articles of faith, doctrines

and apologies. We become increasingly less pious as we

increasingly justify and rationalize our beliefs and become so sure

that we are right. That is why every religion becomes a narrow sect,

which believes itself to have discovered the only truth. The

consequence is that the more we justify our beliefs, the more

narrow-minded we become, as is evident in all religious sects. This

has made it possible for religion to be associated with the worst

forms of bigotry, narrow-mindedness and even pure selfishness in

personal life. Such a religion nourishes a man’s selfishness not only

by making it impossible for him to be broad-minded toward other

sects, but also by turning the practice of religion into a private

bargain between God and himself, in which the party of the first part

is glorified by the party of the second part, singing hymns and calling

upon His name on every conceivable occasion, and in return the

party of the first part is to bless the party of the second part, bless

particularly himself more than any other person and his own family

more than any other family That is why we find selfishness of nature

goes so well with some of the most “religious” and regularly church-

going old women. In the end, the sense of self-justification, of having

discovered the only truth, displaces all the finer emotions from which

religion took its rise.

I can see no other reason for the existence of art and poetry and

religion except as they tend to restore in us a freshness of vision and

more emotional glamour and more vital sense of life. For as we grow

older in life, our senses become gradually benumbed, our emotions

become more callous to suffering and injustice and cruelty, and our

vision of life is warped by too much preoccupation with cold, trivial

realities. Fortunately, we have a few poets and artists who have not

lost that sharpened sensibility, that fine emotional response and that

freshness of vision, and whose duties are therefore to be our moral

conscience, to hold up a mirror to our blunted vision, to tone up our

withered nerves. Art should be a satire and a warning against our

paralyzed emotions, our devitalized thinking and our denaturalized

living. It teaches us unsophistication in a sophisticated world. It

should restore to us health and sanity of living and enable us to

recover from the fever and delirium caused by too much mental

activity. It should sharpen our senses, re-establish the connection

between our reason and our human nature, and assemble the ruined

parts of a dislocated life again into a whole, by restoring our original

nature. Miserable indeed is a world in which we have knowledge

without understanding, criticism without appreciation, beauty without

love, truth without passion, righteousness without mercy, and

courtesy without a warm heart!

As for philosophy, which is the exercise of the spirit par

excellence, the danger is even greater that we lose the feeling of life

itself, I can understand that such mental delights include the solution

of a long mathematical equation, or the perception of a grand order

in the universe. This perception of order is probably the purest of all

our mental pleasures and yet I would exchange it for a well prepared

meal In the first place, it is in itself almost a freak, a byproduct of our

mental occupations, enjoyable because it is gratuitous, but not in any

case as imperative for us as other vital processes. That intellectual

delight is, after all, similar to the delight of solving a crossword

puzzle successfully. In the second place, the philosopher at this

moment more often than not is likely to cheat himself, to fall in love

with this abstract perfection, and to conceive a greater logical

perfection in the world than is really warranted by reality itself. It is as

much a false picture of things as when we paint a star with five

points—a reduction to formula, an artificial stylizing, an over-

simplification. So long as we do not overdo it, this delight in

perfection is good, but let us remind ourselves that millions of people

can be happy without discovering this simple unity of design. We

really can afford to live without it. I prefer talking with a colored maid

to talking with a mathematician; her words are more concrete, her

laughter is more energetic, and I generally gain more in knowledge

of human nature by talking with her. I am such a materialist that at

any time I would prefer pork to poetry, and would waive a piece of

philosophy for a piece of filet, brown and crisp and garnished with

good sauce.

Only by placing living above thinking can we get away from this

heat and the re-breathed air of philosophy and recapture some of the

freshness and naturalness of true insight of the child. Any true

philosopher ought to be ashamed of himself when he sees a child, or

even a lion cub in a cage. How perfectly nature has fashioned him

with his paws, his muscles, his beautiful coat of fur, his pricking ears,

his bright round eyes, his agility and his sense of fun! The

philosopher ought to be ashamed that God-made perfection has

sometimes become man-made imperfection, ashamed that he wears

spectacles, has no appetite, is often distressed in mind and heart,

and is entirely unconscious of the fun in life. From this type of

philosopher nothing is to be gained, for nothing that he says can be

of importance to us. That philosophy alone can be of use to us which

joins hands merrily with poetry and establishes for us a truer vision,

first of nature and then of human nature.

Any adequate philosophy of life must be based on the harmony of

our given instincts. The philosopher who is too idealistic is soon

tripped up by nature herself. The highest conception of human

dignity, according to the Chinese Confucianists, is when man

reaches ultimately his greatest height, an equal of heaven and earth,

by living in accordance with nature. This is the doctrine given in The

Golden Mean, written by the grandson of Confucius.

What is God-given is called nature; to follow nature is called

Tao

(the Way); to cultivate the Way is called culture. Before

joy, anger, sadness and happiness are expressed, they are

called the inner self; when they are expressed to the proper

degree, they are called harmony. The inner self is the correct

foundation of the world, and harmony is the illustrious Way.

When a man has achieved the inner self and harmony, the

heaven and earth are orderly and the myriad things are

nourished and grow thereby.

To arrive at understanding from being one’s true self is

called nature, and to arrive at being one’s true self from

understanding is called culture; he who is his true self has

thereby understanding, and he who has understanding finds

thereby his true self. Only those who are their absolute selves

in the world can fulfil their own nature; only those who fulfil

their own nature can fulfil the nature of others; only those who

fulfil the nature of others can fulfil the nature of things; those

who fulfil the nature of things are worthy to help Mother

Nature in growing and sustaining life; and those who are

worthy to help Mother Nature in growing and sustaining life

are the equals of heaven and earth.

Thoieau is the most Chinese of all American authors in his entire view of life, and being a

Chinese, I feel much akin to him in spirit. I discovered him only a few months ago, and the

delight of the discovery is still fresh in my mind. I could translate passages of Thoreau into

my own language and pass them off as original writing by a Chinese poet, without raising

any suspicion.

When a Chinese draws up a set of seventeen or eighteen regulations, it is his custom (the

idiom of our language) to set them down as “Articles I, I, I, I, I, I,” etc.

Hait’ang is of the pyrus family, bearing fruits like crab-apples, and chihching blossoms in

spring, with small violet flowers growing directly on the trunks and branches.

The hero, known as “Curly-Beard,” aided the escape of a pair of eloping lovers, and after

giving them his home in a distant city, then disappeared.

From the essay on “Emotions of the Materialist,” in Little Essays of Santayana, edited by

Logan Pearsall Smith. The italics are mine.

There is a strong element of Taoism in Confucianism, perhaps due to the influence of

Taoistic thought, a fact which is not usually noticed. Anyway, here this passage stands in

one of the Confucian Four Books, and similar passages in the Analects can be quoted.

Chapter Seven

THE IMPORTANCE OF LOAFING

I. MAN THE ONLY WORKING ANIMAL

The feast of life is, therefore, before us, and the only question is

what appetite we have for it. The appetite is the thing, and not the

feast. After all, the most bewildering thing about man is his idea of

work and the amount of work he imposes upon himself, or civilization

has imposed upon him. All nature loafs, while man alone works for a

living. He works because he has to, because with the progress of

civilization life gets incredibly more complex, with duties,

responsibilities, fears, inhibitions and ambitions, born not of nature,

but of human society. While I am sitting here before my desk, a

pigeon is flying about a church steeple before my window, not

worrying what it is going to have for lunch. I know that my lunch is a

more complicated affair than the pigeon’s, and that the few articles of

food I take involve thousands of people at work and a highly

complicated system of cultivation, merchandising, transportation,

delivery and preparation. That is why it is harder for man to get food

than for animals. Nevertheless, if a jungle beast were let loose in a

city and gained some apprehension of what busy human life was all

about, he would feel a good deal of skepticism and bewilderment

about this human society.

The first thought that the jungle beast would have is that man is

the only working animal. With the exception of a few draught-horses

or buffalos made to work a mill, even domestic pets don’t have to

work. Police dogs are but rarely called upon to do their duty; a house

dog supposed to watch a house plays most of the time, and takes a

good nap in the morning whenever there is good, warm sunshine;

the aristocratic cat certainly never works for a living, and gifted with a

bodily agility which enables it to disregard a neighbor’s fence, it is

even unconscious of its captivity—it just goes wherever it likes to go.

So, then, we have this toiling humanity alone, caged and

domesticated, but not fed, forced by this civilization and complex

society to work and worry about the matter of feeding itself.

Humanity has its own advantages, I am quite aware—the delights of

knowledge, the pleasures of conversation and the joys of the

imagination, as for instance in watching a stage play. But the

essential fact remains that human life has got too complicated and

the matter of merely feeding ourselves, directly or indirecdy, is

occupying well over ninety per cent of our human activities.

Civilization is largely a matter of seeking food, while progress is that

development which makes food more and more difficult to get. If it

had not been made so difficult for man to obtain his food, there

would be absolutely no reason why humanity should work so hard.

The danger is that we get over-civilized and that we come to a point,

as indeed we have already done, when the work of getting food is so

strenuous that we lose our appetite for food in the process of getting

it. This doesn’t seem to make very much sense, from the point of

view either of the jungle beast or the philosopher.

Every time I see a city skyline or look over a stretch of roofs, I get

frightened. It is positively amazing. Two or three water towers, the

backs of two or three steel frames for billboards, perhaps a spire or

two, and a stretch of asphalt roofing material and bricks going up in

square, sharp, vertical outlines without any form or order, sprinkled

with some dirty, discolored chimneys and a few wash-lines and criss-

cross lines of radio aerials. And looking down into a street, I see

again a stretch of gray or discolored red brick walls, with tiny, dark,

uniform windows in uniform rows, half open and half hidden by

shades, with perhaps a bottle of milk standing on a windowsill and a

few pots of tiny, sickly flowers on some others, A child comes up to

the roof with her dog and sits on the roof-stairs every morning to get

a bit of sunshine. And as I lift my eyes again, I see rows upon rows

of roofs, miles of them, stretching in ugly square outlines to the

distance. More water towers, more brick houses. And humanity live

here. How do they live, each family behind one or two of these dark

windows? What do they do for a living? It is staggering. Behind every

two or three windows, a couple go to bed every night like pigeons

returning to their pigeonholes; then they wake up and have their

morning coffee and the husband emerges into the street, going

somewhere to find bread for the family, while the wife tries

persistently and desperately to drive out the dust and keep the little

place clean. By four or five o’clock they come out on their doorsteps

to chat with and look at their neighbors and get a sniff of fresh air.

Then night falls, they are dead tired and go to sleep again. And so

they live!

There are others, more well-to-do people, living in better

apartments. More “arty” rooms and lampshades. Still more orderly

and more clean! They have a little more space, but only a little more.

To rent a seven-room flat, not to speak of owning it, is considered a

luxury! But it does not imply more happiness. Less financial worry

and fewer debts to think about, it is true. But also more emotional

complications, more divorce, more cat-husbands that don’t come

home at night, or the couple go prowling together at night, seeking

some form of dissipation. Diversion is the word. Good Lord, they

need to be diverted from these monotonous, uniform brick walls and

shining wooden floors! Of course they go to look at naked women.

Consequently more neurasthenia, more aspirin, more expensive

illnesses, more colitis, appendicitis and dyspepsia, more softened

brains and hardened livers, more ulcerated duodenums and

lacerated intestines, overworked stomachs and overtaxed kidneys,

inflamed bladders and outraged spleens, dilated hearts and

shattered nerves, more flat chests and high blood pressure, more

diabetes, Bright’s disease, beri-beri, rheumatism, insomnia, arterio-

sclerosis, piles, fistulas, chronic dysentry, chronic constipation, loss

of appetite and weariness of life. To make the picture perfect, more

dogs and fewer children. The matter of happiness depends entirely

upon the quality and temper of the men and women living in these

elegant apartments. Some indeed have a jolly life, others simply

don’t But on the whole, perhaps they are less happy than the hard-

working people; they have more ennui and more boredom. But they

have a car, and perhaps a country home. Ah, the country home, that

is their salvation! So then, people work hard in the country so that

they can come to the city so that they can earn sufficient money and

go back to the country again.

And as you take a stroll through the city, you see that back of the

main avenue with beauty parlors and flower shops and shipping

firms is another street with drug stores, grocery stores, hardware

shops, barber shops, laundries, cheap eating places, news-stands.

You wander along for an hour, and if it is a big city, you are still there;

you see only more streets, more drug stores, grocery stores,

hardware shops, barber shops, laundries, cheap eating places and

news-stands. How do these people make their living? And why do

they come here? Very simple. The laundrymen wash the clothes of

the barbers and restaurant waiters, the restaurant waiters wait upon

the laundry-men and barbers while they eat, and the barbers cut the

hair of the laundrymen and waiters. That is civilization. Isn’t it

amazing? I bet some of the laundrymen, barbers and waiters never

wander beyond ten blocks from their place of work in their entire life.

Thank God they have at least the movies, where they can see birds

singing on the screen, trees growing and swaying, Turkey, Egypt, the

Himalayas, the Andes, storms, shipwrecks, coronation ceremonies,

ants, caterpillars, muskrats, a fight between lizards and scorpions,

hills, waves, sands, clouds, and even a moon—all on the screen!

O wise humanity, terribly wise humanity! Of thee I sing. How

inscrutable is the civilization where men toil and work and worry their

hair gray to get a living and forget to play!

II. THE CHINESE THEORY OF LEISURE

The American is known as a great hustler, as the Chinese is

known as a great loafer. And as all opposites admire each other, I

suspect that the American hustler admires the Chinese loafer as

much as the Chinese loafer admires the American hustler. Such

things are called the charms of national traits. I do not know if

eventually the West and the East will meet; the plain fact is that they

are meeting now, and are going to meet more and more closely as

modern civilization spreads, with the increase of communication

facilities. At least, in China, we are not going to defy this machine

civilization, and there the problem will have to be worked out as to

how we are going to merge these two cultures, the ancient Chinese

philosophy of life and the modern technological civilization, and

integrate them into a sort of working way of life. The question is very

much more problematical as to Occidental life ever being invaded by

Oriental philosophy, although no one would dare to prophesy.

After all, the machine culture is rapidly bringing us nearer to the

age of leisure, and man will be compelled to play more and work

less. It is all a matter of environment, and when man finds leisure

hanging on his hand, he will be forced to think more about the ways

and means of wisely enjoying his leisure, conferred upon him,

against his will, by rapidly improving methods of quick production.

After all, no one can predict anything about the next century. He

would be a brave man who dared even to predict about life thirty

years from now. The constant rush for progress must certainly one

day reach a point when man will be pretty tired of it all, and will begin

to take stock of his conquests in the material world. I cannot believe

that, with the coming of better material conditions of life, when

diseases are eliminated, poverty is decreased and man’s

expectation of life is prolonged and food is plentiful, man will care to

be as busy as he is today. I’m not so sure that a more lazy

temperament will not arise as a result of this new environment

Apart from all this, the subjective factor is always as important as

the objective. Philosophy comes in as a way of changing man’s

outlook and also changing his character. How man is going to react

toward this machine civilization depends on what kind of a man he

is. In the realm of biology, there are such things as sensibility to

stimulus, slowness or quickness of reaction, and different behaviors

of different animals in the same medium or environment. Some

animals react more slowly than others. Even in this machine

civilization, which I understand includes the United States, England,

France, Germany, Italy and Russia, we see that different reactions

toward the mechanical age arise from different racial temperaments.

The chances of peculiar individual reactions to the same

environment are not eliminated. For China, I feel the type of life

resulting from it will be very much like that in modern France,

because the Chinese and the French temperaments are so akin.

America today is most advanced in machine civilization, and it has

always been assumed that the future of a world dominated by the

machine will tend toward the present American type and pattern of

life. I feel inclined to dispute this thesis, because no one knows yet

what the American temperament is going to be. At best we can only

describe it as a changing temperament. I do not think it at all

impossible that there may be a revival of that period of New England

culture so well described in Van Wyck Brooks’ new book. No one can

say that that flowering of New England culture was not typically

American culture, and certainly no one can say that that ideal Walt

Whitman envisaged in his Democratic Vistas, pointing to the

development of free men and perfect mothers, is not the ideal of

democratic progress. America needs only to be given a little respite,

and there may be—I am quite sure there will be—new Whitmans,

new Thoreaus and new Lowells, when that old American culture, cut

short literally and figuratively by the gold rush, may blossom forth

again. Will not, then, American temperament be something quite

different from that of the present day, and very near to the

temperament of Emerson and Thoreau?

Culture, as I understand it, is essentially a product of leisure. The

art of culture is therefore essentially the art of loafing. From the

Chinese point of view, the man who is wisely idle is the most cultured

man. For there seems to be a philosophic contradiction between

being busy and being wise. Those who are wise won’t be busy, and

those who are too busy can’t be wise. The wisest man is therefore

he who loafs most gracefully. Here I shall try to explain, not the

technique and varieties of loafing as practised in China, but rather

the philosophy which nourishes this divine desire for loafing in China

and gives rise to that carefree, idle, happy-go-lucky—and often

poetic—temperament in the Chinese scholars, and to a lesser

extent, in the Chinese people in general. How did that Chinese

temperament—that distrust of achievement and success and that

intense love of living as such—arise?

In the first place, the Chinese theory of leisure, as expressed by a

comparatively unknown author of the eighteenth century, Shu

Paihsiang, who happily achieved oblivion, is as follows: time is useful

because it is not being used. “Leisure in time is like unoccupied floor

space in a room.” Every working girl who rents a small room where

every inch of space is fully utilized feels highly uncomfortable

because she has no room to move about, and the moment she gets

a raise in salary, she moves into a bigger room where there is a little

more unused floor space, besides those strictly useful spaces

occupied by her single bed, her dressing table and her two-burner

gas range. It is that unoccupied space which makes a room

habitable, as it is our leisure hours which make life endurable. I

understand there is a rich woman living on Park Avenue, who bought

up a neighboring lot to prevent anybody from erecting a skyscraper

next to her house. She is paying a big sum of money in order to have

space fully and perfectly made useless, and it seems to me she

never spent her money more wisely.

In this connection, I might mention a personal experience. I could

never see the beauty of skyscrapers in New York, and it was not until

I went to Chicago that I realized that a skyscraper could be very

imposing and very beautiful to look at, if it had a good frontage and

at least half a mile of unused space around it. Chicago is fortunate in

this respect, because it has more space than Manhattan. The tall

buildings are better spaced, and there is the possibility of obtaining

an unobstructed view of them from a long distance. Figuratively

speaking, we, too, are so cramped in our life that we cannot enjoy a

free perspective of the beauties of our spiritual life. We lack spiritual

frontage.

III. THE CULT OF THE IDLE LIFE

The Chinese love of leisure arises from a combination of causes.

It came from a temperament, was erected into a literary cult, and

found its justification in a philosophy. It grew out of an intense love of

life, was actively sustained by an underlying current of literary

romanticism throughout the dynasties, and was eventually

pronounced right and sensible by a philosophy of life, which we may,

in the main, describe as Taoistic. The rather general acceptance of

this Taoistic view of life is only proof that there is Taoistic blood in the

Chinese temperament.

And here we must first clarify one point. The romantic cult of the

idle life, which we have defined as a product of leisure, was

decidedly not for the wealthy class, as we usually understand it to

be. That would be an unmitigated error in the approach to the

problem. It was a cult for the poor and unsuccessful and humble

scholar who either had chosen the idle life or had idleness enforced

upon him. As I read Chinese literary masterpieces, and as I imagine

the poor schoolmaster teaching the poor scholars these poems and

essays glorifying the simple and idle life, I cannot help thinking that

they must have derived an immense personal satisfaction and

spiritual consolation from them. Disquisitions on the handicaps of

fame and advantages of obscurity sounded pleasing to those who

had failed in the civil examinations, and such sayings as “Eating late

(with appetite whetted) is eating meat” tended to make the bad

provider less apologetic to his family. No greater misjudgment of

literary history is made than when the young Chinese proletarian

writers accuse the poets Su Tungpo’s and T’ao Yüanming and

others of belonging to the hated leisure-class intelligentsia—Su who

sang about “the clear breeze over the stream and bright moon over

the hills,” and T’ao who sang about “the dew making wet his skirt”

and “a hen roosting on the top of a mulberry tree.” As if the river

breeze and the moon over the hills and the hen roosting on a

mulberry tree were owned only by the capitalist class! These great

men of the past went beyond the stage of talking about peasant

conditions, and lived the life of the poor peasant themselves and

found peace and harmony in it.

In this sense I regard this romantic cult of the idle life as

essentially democratic. We can better understand this romantic cult

when we picture for ourselves Laurence Sterne on his sentimental

journey, or Wordsworth and Coleridge hiking through Europe on foot

with a great sense of beauty in their breast, but very little money in

their purse. There was a time when one didn’t have to be rich in

order to travel, and even today travel doesn’t have to be a luxury of

the rich. On the whole, the enjoyment of leisure is something which

decidedly costs less than the enjoyment of luxury. All it requires is an

artistic temperament which is bent on seeking a perfectly useless

afternoon spent in a perfectly useless manner, The idle life really

costs so very little, as Thoreau took the trouble to point out in

Walden.

The Chinese romanticists were, on the whole, men gifted with a

high sensibility and a vagabond nature, poor in their worldly

possessions, but rich in sentiment. They had an intense love of life

which showed itself in their abhorence of all official life and a stern

refusal to make the soul serf to the body. The idle life, so far from

being the prerogative of the rich and powerful and successful (how

busy the successful American men are’) was in China an

achievement of highmindedness, a highmindedness very near to the

Western conception of the dignity of the tramp who is too proud to

ask favors, too independent to go to work, and too wise to take the

world’s successes too seriously. This highmindedness came from,

and was inevitably associated with, a certain sense of detachment

toward the drama of life; it came from the quality of being able to see

through life’s ambitions and follies and the temptations of fame and

wealth. Somehow the highminded scholar who valued his character

more than his achievements, his soul more than fame or wealth,

became by common consent the highest ideal of Chinese literature.

Inevitably he was a man with great simplicity of living and a proud

contempt for worldly success as the world understands it.

Great men of letters of this class—T’ao Y anming, Su Tungp’o, Po

Chüyi, Y an Chunglang, Yüan Tsets’ai—were generally enticed into

a short term of official life, did a wonderful job of it, and then got

exasperated with its eternal kowtowing and receiving and sending off

of fellow officials, and gladly laying down the burdens of an official

life, returned wisely to the life of retirement. Yüan Chunglang wrote

seven successive petitions to his superior, when he was magistrate

of Soochow, complaining of these eternal kowtowings, and begging

to be allowed to return to the life of the free and careless individual.

A rather extravagant example of the praise of idleness is found in

the inscription of another poet, Po Yüchien, written for his studio,

which he called “The Hall of Idleness”:

I’m too lazy to read the Taoist classics, for Tao doesn’t reside in

the books;

Too lazy to look over the sutras, for they go no deeper in Tao than

its looks.

The essence of Tao consists in a void, clear, and cool,

But what is this void except being the whole day like a fool?

Too lazy am I to read poetry, for when I stop, the poetry will be

gone;

Too lazy to play on the ch’in, for music dies on the string where it’s

born;

Too lazy to drink wine, for beyond the drunkard’s dream there are

rivers and lakes;

Too lazy to play chess, for besides the pawns there are other

stakes;

Too lazy to look at the hills and streams, for there is a painting

within my heart’s portals;

Too lazy to face the wind and the moon, for within me is the Isle of

the Immortals;

Too lazy to attend to worldly affairs, for inside me are my hut and

my possessions;

Too lazy to watch the changing of the seasons, for within me are

heavenly processions.

Pine trees may decay and rocks may rot; but I shall always remain

what I am.

Is it not fitting that I call this the Hall of Idleness?

This cult of idleness was therefore always bound up with a life of

inner calm, a sense of carefree irresponsibility and an intense

wholehearted enjoyment of the life of nature. Poets and scholars

have always given themselves quaint names, like “The Guest of

Rivers and Lakes” (Tu Fu); “The Recluse of the Eastern Hillside” (Su

Tungp’o); the “Carefree Man of a Misty Lake”; and “The Old Man of

the Haze-Girdled Tower,” etc.

No, the enjoyment of an idle life doesn’t cost any money. The

capacity for true enjoyment of idleness is lost in the moneyed class

and can be found only among people who have a supreme contempt

for wealth. It must come from an inner richness of the soul in a man

who loves the simple ways of life and who is somewhat impatient

with the business of making money. There is always plenty of life to

enjoy for a man who is determined to enjoy it. If men fail to enjoy this

earthly existence we have, it is because they do not love life

sufficiently and allow it to be turned into a humdrum routine

existence. Laotse has been wrongly accused of being hostile to life;

on the other hand, I think he taught the renunciation of the life of the

world exactly because he loved life all too tenderly, to allow the art of

living to degenerate into a mere business of living.

For where there is love, there is jealousy; a man who loves life

intensely must be always jealous of the few exquisite moments of

leisure that he has. And he must retain the dignity and pride always

characteristic of a vagabond. His hours of fishing must be as sacred

as his hours of business, erected into a kind of religion as the

English have done with sport. He must be as impatient at having

people talk to him about the stock market at the golf club, as the

scientist is at having anybody disturb him in his laboratory. And he

must count the days of departing spring with a sense of sad regret

for not having made more trips or excursions, as a business man

feels when he has not sold so many wares in the day.

IV. THIS EARTH THE ONLY HEAVEN

A sad, poetic touch is added to this intense love of life by the

realization that this life we have is essentially mortal. Strange to say,

this sad awareness of our mortality makes the Chinese scholar’s

enjoyment of life all the more keen and intense. For if this earthly

existence is all we have, we must try the harder to enjoy it while it

lasts. A vague hope of immortality detracts from our wholehearted

enjoyment of this earthly existence. As Sir Arthur Keith puts it with a

typically Chinese feeling, “For if men believe, as I do, that this

present earth is the only heaven, they will strive all the more to make

heaven of it.” Su Tungp’o says, “Life passes like a spring dream

without a trace,” and that is why he clung to it so fondly and

tenaciously. It is this sentiment of our mortal existence that we run

across again and again in Chinese literature. It is this feeling of the

impermanence of existence and the evanescence of life, this touch

of sadness, which overtakes the Chinese poet and scholar always at

the moment of his greatest feasting and merrymaking, a sadness

that is expressed in the regret that “the moon cannot always be so

round and the flowers cannot forever look so fair” when we are

watching the full moon in the company of beautiful flowers. It was in

that poem commemorating a gorgeous feast on “A Spring Night

amidst Peach Blossoms” that Li Po penned the favorite line: “Our

floating life is like a dream; how many times can one enjoy one’s

self?” And it was in the midst of a gay reunion of his happy and

illustrious friends that Wang Hsichih wrote that immortal little essay,

“The Orchid Pavilion,” which gives, better than anything else, this

typical feeling about the evanescence of life:

In the ninth year of the reign Yungho [A. D. 353] in the

beginning of late spring we met at the Orchid Pavilion in

Shanyin of Kweich’i for the Water Festival, to wash away the

evil spirits.

Here are gathered all the illustrious persons and assembled

both the old and the young. Here are tall mountains and

majestic peaks, trees with thick foliage and tall bamboos.

Here are also clear streams and gurgling rapids, catching

one’s eye from the right and left. We group ourselves in order,

sitting by the waterside, and drink in succession from a cup

floating down the curving stream; and although there is no

music from string and wood-wind instruments, yet with

alternate singing and drinking, we are well disposed to

thoroughly enjoy a quiet intimate conversation. Today the sky

is clear, the air is fresh and the kind breeze is mild. Truly

enjoyable it is to watch the immense universe above and the

myriad things below, travelling over the entire landscape with

our eyes and allowing our sentiments to roam about at will,

thus exhausting the pleasures of the eye and the ear.

Now when people gather together to surmise life itself,

some sit and talk and unburden their thoughts in the intimacy

of a room, and some, overcome by a sentiment, soar forth

into a world beyond bodily realities. Although we select our

pleasures according to our inclinations—some noisy and

rowdy, and others quiet and sedate—yet when we have found

that which pleases us, we are all happy and contented, to the

extent of forgetting that we are growing old. And then, when

satiety follows satisfaction, and with the change of

circumstances, change also our whims and desires, there

then arises a feeling of poignant regret. In the twinkling of an

eye, the objects of our former pleasures have become things

of the past, still compelling in us moods of regretful memory.

Furthermore, although our lives may be long or short,

eventually we all end in nothingness. “Great indeed are life

and death” said the ancients. Ah! what sadness!

I often study the joys and regrets of the ancient people, and

as I lean over their writings and see that they were moved

exactly as ourselves, I am often overcome by a feeling of

sadness and compassion, and would like to make those

things clear to myself. Well I know it is a lie to say that life and

death are the same thing, and that longevity and early death

make no difference! Alas! as we of the present look upon

those of the past, so will posterity look upon our present

selves. Therefore, have I put down a sketch of these

contemporaries and their sayings at this feast, and although

time and circumstances may change, the way they will evoke

our moods of happiness and regret will remain the same.

What will future readers feel when they cast their eyes upon

this writing!

Belief in our mortality, the sense that we are eventually going to

crack up and be extinguished like the flame of a candle, I say, is a

gloriously fine thing. It makes us sober; it makes us a little sad; and

many of us it makes poetic. But above all, it makes it possible for us

to make up our mind and arrange to live sensibly, truthfully and

always with a sense of our own limitations. It gives peace also,

because true peace of mind comes from accepting the worst.

Psychologically, I think, it means a release of energy.

When Chinese poets and common people enjoy themselves,

there is always a subconscious feeling that the joy is not going to last

forever, as the Chinese often say at the end of a happy reunion,

“Even the most gorgeous fair, with mat-sheds stretching over a

thousand miles, must sooner or later come to an end.” The feast of

life is the feast of Nebuchadnezzar. This feeling of the dreamlike

quality of our existence invests the pagan with a kind of spirituality.

He sees life essentially as a Sung landscape artist sees mountain

scenery, enveloped in a haze of mystery, sometimes with the air

dripping with moisture.

Deprived of immortality, the proposition of living becomes a simple

proposition. It is this: that we human beings have a limited span of

life to live on this earth, rarely more than seventy years, and that

therefore we have to arrange our lives so that we may live as happily

as we can under a given set of circumstances. Here we are on

Confucian ground. There is something mundane, something terribly

earth-bound about it, and man proceeds to work with a dogged

commonsense, very much in the spirit of what George Santayana

calls “animal faith.” With this animal faith, taking life as it is, we made

a shrewd guess, without Darwin’s aid as to our essential kinship with

animals. It made us therefore, cling to life—the life of the instinct and

the life of the senses—on the belief that, as we are all animals, we

can be truly happy only when all our normal instincts are satisfied

normally. This applies to the enjoyment of life in all its aspects.

Are we therefore materialistic? A Chinese would hardly know how

to answer this question. For with his spirituality based on a kind of

material, earth-bound existence, he fails to see the distinction

between the spirit and the flesh Undoubtedly he loves creature

comforts, but then creature comforts are matters of the senses. It is

only through the intellect that man attains the distinction between the

spirit and the flesh, while our senses provide the portals to both, as

we have already seen in the preceding chapter. Music, undoubtedly

the most spiritual of our arts, lifting man to a world of spirit, is based

on the sense of hearing. And the Chinese fails to see why a

sympathy of castes in the enjoyment of food is less spiritual than a

symphony of sounds. Only in this realistic sense, can we feel about

the woman we love. A distinction between her soul and her body is

impossible. For if we love a woman, we do not love her geometrical

precision of features, but rather her ways and gestures in motion, her

looks and smiles. But are a woman’s looks and smiles physical or

spiritual? No one can say.

This feeling of the reality and spirituality of life is helped by

Chinese humanism, in fact by the whole Chinese way of thinking and

living. Chinese philosophy may be briefly defined as a preoccupation

with the knowledge of life rather than the knowledge of truth.

Brushing aside all metaphysical speculations as irrelevant to the

business of living, and as pale reflections engendered in our intellect,

the Chinese philosophers clutch at life itself and ask themselves the

one and only eternal question: “How are we to live?” Philosophy in

the Western sense seems to the Chinese eminently idle. In its

preoccupation with logic, which concerns itself with the method of

arrival at knowledge, and epistemology, which poses the question of

the possibility of knowledge, it has forgotten to deal with the

knowledge of life itself. That is so much tomfoolery and a kind of

frivolity, like wooing and courtship without coming to marriage and

the producing of children, which is as bad as having redcoated

regiments marching in military parades without going to battle. The

German philosophers are the most frivolous of all; they court truth

like ardent lovers, but seldom propose to marry her.

V. WHAT IS LUCK?

The peculiar contribution of Taoism to the creation of the idle

temperament lies in the recognition that there are no such things as

luck and adversity. The great Taoist teaching is the emphasis on

being over doing, character over achievement, and calm over action.

But inner calm is possible only when man is not disturbed by the

vicissitudes of fortune. The great Taoist philosopher Liehtse gave the

famous parable of the Old Man At the Fort:

An Old Man was living with his Son at an abandoned fort on

the top of a hill, and one day he lost a horse. The neighbors

came to express their sympathy for this misfortune, and the

Old Man asked “How do you know this is bad luck?” A few

days afterwards, his horse returned with a number of wild

horses, and his neighbors came again to congratulate him on

this stroke of fortune, and the Old Man replied, “How do you

know this is good luck?” With so many horses around, his son

began to take to riding, and one day he broke his leg. Again

the neighbors came around to express their sympathy, and

the Old Man replied, “How do you know this is bad luck?” The

next year, there was a war, and because the Old Man’s son

was crippled, he did not have to go to the front.

Evidently this kind of philosophy enables a man to stand a few hard

knocks in life in the belief that there are no such things as hard

knocks without advantages. Like medals, they always have a

reverse side. The possibility of calm, the distaste for mere action and

bustle, and the running away from success and achievement are

possible with this kind of philosophy, a philosophy which says:

Nothing matters to a man who says nothing matters. The desire for

success is killed by the shrewd hunch that the desire for success

means very much the same thing as the fear of failure. The greater

success a man has made, the more he fears a climb down. The

illusive rewards of fame are pitched against the tremendous

advantages of obscurity. From the Taoist point of view, an educated

man is one who believes he has not succeeded when he has, but is

not so sure he has failed when he fails, while the mark of the half-

educated man is his assumptions that his outward successes and

failures are absolute and real.

Hence, the distinction between Buddhism and Taoism is this: the

goal of the Buddhist is that he shall not want anything, while the goal

of the Taoist is that he shall not be wanted at all. Only he who is not

wanted by the public can be a carefree individual, and only he who is

a carefree individual can be a happy human being. In this spirit

Chuangtse, the greatest and most gifted among the Taoist

philosophers, continually warns us against being too prominent, too

useful and too serviceable. Pigs are killed and offered on the

sacrificial altar when they become too fat, and beautiful birds are the

first to be shot by the hunter for their beautiful plumage. In this

sense, he told the parable of two men going to desecrate a tomb and

robbing the corpse. They hammer the corpse’s forehead, break his

cheekbones and smash his jaws, all because the dead man was

foolish enough to be buried with a pearl in his mouth.

The inevitable conclusion of all this philosophizing is: why not

loaf?

VI. THREE AMERICAN VICES

To the Chinese, therefore, with the fine philosophy that “Nothing

matters to a man who says nothing matters,” Americans offer a

strange contrast Is life really worth all the bother, to the extent of

making our soul a slave to the body? The high spirituality of the

philosophy of loafing forbids it The most characteristic advertisement

I ever saw was one by an engineering firm with the big words:

“Nearly Right Is Not Enough.” The desire for one hundred per cent

efficiency seems almost obscene. The trouble with Americans is that

when a thing is nearly right, they want to make it still better, while for

a Chinese, nearly right is good enough.

The three great American vices seem to be efficiency, punctuality

and the desire for achievement and success. They are the things

that make the Americans so unhappy and so nervous. They steal

from them their inalienable right of loafing and cheat them of many a

good, idle and beautiful afternoon. One must start out with a belief

that there are no catastrophes in this world, and that besides the

noble art of getting things done, there is a nobler art of leaving things

undone. On the whole, if one answers letters promptly, the result is

about as good or as bad as if he had never answered them at all.

After all, nothing happens, and while one may have missed a few

good appointments, one may have also avoided a few unpleasant

ones. Most of the letters are not worth answering, if you keep them

in your drawer for three months; reading them three months

afterwards, one might realize how utterly futile and what a waste of

time it would have been to answer them all. Writing letters really can

become a vice. It turns our writers into fine promotion salesmen and

our college professors into good efficient business executives. In this

sense, I can understand Thoreau’s contempt for the American who

always goes to the post office.

Our quarrel is not that efficiency gets things done and very well

done, too. I always rely on American water-taps, rather than on

those made in China, because American water-taps do not leak.

That is a consolation. Against the old contention, however, that we

must all be useful, be efficient, become officials and have power, the

old reply is that there are always enough fools left in the world who

are willing to be useful, be busy and enjoy power, and so somehow

the business of life can and will be carried on. The only point is who

are the wise, the loafers or the hustlers? Our quarrel with efficiency

is not that it gets things done, but that it is a thief of time when it

leaves us no leisure to enjoy ourselves and that it frays our nerves in

trying to get things done perfectly. An American editor worries his

hair gray to see that no typographical mistakes appear on the pages

of his magazine. The Chinese editor is wiser than that. He wants to

leave his readers the supreme satisfaction of discovering a few

typographical mistakes for themselves. More than that, a Chinese

magazine can begin printing serial fiction and forget about it halfway.

In America it might bring the roof down on the editors, but in China it

doesn’t matter, simply because it doesn’t matter. American engineers

in building bridges calculate so finely and exactly as to make the two

ends come together within one-tenth of an inch. But when two

Chinese begin to dig a tunnel from both sides of a mountain, both

come out on the other side. The Chinese’s firm conviction is that it

doesn’t matter so long as a tunnel is dug through, and if we have two

instead of one, why, we have a double track to boot. Provided you

are not in a hurry, two tunnels are as good as one, dug somehow,

finished somehow and if the train can get through somehow. And the

Chinese are extremely punctual, provided you give them plenty of

time to do a thing. They always finish a thing on schedule, provided

the schedule is long enough.

The tempo of modern industrial life forbids this kind of glorious

and magnificent idling. But worse than that, it imposes upon us a

different conception of time as measured by the clock, and

eventually turns the human being into a clock himself. This sort of

thing is bound to come to China, as is evident, for instance in a

factory of twenty thousand workers. The luxurious prospect of twenty

thousand workers coming in at their own sweet pleasure at all hours

is, of course, somewhat terrifying. Nevertheless, this is what makes

life so hard and hectic. A man who has to be punctually at a certain

place at five o’clock has the whole afternoon from one to five ruined

for him already. Every American adult is arranging his time on the

pattern of the schoolboy—three o’clock for this, five o’clock for that,

six-thirty for change of dress; six-fifty for entering the taxi and seven

o’clock for emerging into a hotel room. It just makes life not worth

living.

And Americans have now come to such a sad state that they are

booked up not only for the following day, or the following week, but

even for the following month. An appointment three weeks ahead of

time is a thing unknown in China. And when a Chinese receives an

invitation card, happily he never has to say whether he is going to be

present or not. He can put down on the invitation list “coming” if he

accepts, or “thanks” if he declines, but in the majority of cases the

invited party merely writes the word “know,” which is a statement of

fact that he knows of the invitation and not a statement of intention.

An American or a European leaving Shanghai can tell me that he is

going to attend a committee meeting in Paris on April 19, 1938, at

three o’clock and that he will be arriving in Vienna on May 21st by

the seven o’clock train. If an afternoon is to be condemned and

executed, must we announce its execution so early? Cannot a fellow

travel and be lord of himself, arriving when he likes and taking

departure when he likes?

But above all, the American’s inability to loaf comes directly from

his desire for doing things and in his placing action above being. We

should demand that there be character in our lives as we demand

there be character in all great art worthy of the name. Unfortunately,

character is not a thing which can be manufactured overnight. Like

the quality of mellowness in wine, it is acquired by standing still and

by the passage of time. The desire of American old men and women

for action, trying in this way to gain their self-respect and the respect

of the younger generation, is what makes them look so ridiculous to

an Oriental. Too much action in an old man is like a broadcast of jazz

music from a megaphone on top of an old cathedral. Is it not

sufficient that the old people are something? Is it necessary that they

must be forever doing something? The loss of the capacity for

loafing is bad enough in men of middle age, but the same loss in old

age is a crime committed against human nature.

Character is always associated with something old and takes time

to grow, like the beautiful facial lines of a man in middle age, lines

that are the steady imprint of the man’s evolving character. It is

somewhat difficult to see character in a type of life where every man

is throwing away his last year’s car and trading it in for the new

model. As are the things we make, so are we ourselves. In 1937

every man and woman look 1937, and in 1938 every man and

woman will look 1938. We love old cathedrals, old furniture, old

silver, old dictionaries and old prints, but we have entirely forgotten

about the beauty of old men. I think an appreciation of that kind of

beauty is essential to our life, for beauty, it seems to me, is what is

old and mellow and well-smoked.

Sometimes a prophetic vision comes to me, a beautiful vision of a

millennium when Manhattan will go slow, and when the American

“go-getter” will become an Oriental loafer. American gentlemen will

float in skirts and slippers and amble on the sidewalks of Broadway

with their hands in their pockets, if not with both hands stuck in their

sleeves in the Chinese fashion. Policemen will exchange a word of

greeting with the slow-devil at the crossings and the drivers

themselves will stop and accost each other and inquire after their

grandmothers’ health in the midst of traffic. Some one will be

brushing his teeth outside his shopfront, talking the while placidly

with his neighbors, and once in a while, an absent-minded scholar

will sail by with a limp volume rolled up and tucked away in his

sleeve. Lunch counters will be abolished, and people will be lolling

and lounging in soft, low armchairs in an Automat, while others will

have learned the art of killing a whole afternoon in some cafe. A

glass of orange juice will last half an hour, and people will learn to sip

wine by slow mouthfuls, punctuated by delightful, chatty remarks,

instead of swallowing it at a gulp. Registration in a hospital will be

abolished, “emergency wards” will be unknown, and patients will

exchange their philosophy with their doctors. Fire engines will

proceed at a snail’s pace, their staff stopping on the way to gaze at

and dispute over the number of passing wild geese in the sky. It is

too bad that there is no hope of this kind of a millennium on

Manhattan ever being realized. There might be so many more

perfect idle afternoons.

Incidentally, the manuscript of this essay, or rather its early rubbings, are today the most

highly valued examples of Chinese calligraphy, because the writer and author, Wang

Hsichih, is the acknowledged Prince of Calligraphy. For three times he failed to improve

upon his original handwriting, and so today the script is preserved to us in rubbings, with all

the deletions and additions as they stood in the first draft.

Chapter Eight

THE ENJOYMENT OF THE HOME

I. ON GETTING BIOLOGICAL

It has seemed to me that the final test of any civilization is, what type

of husbands and wives and fathers and mothers does it turn out?

Besides the austere simplicity of such a question, every other

achievement of civilization—art, philosophy, literature and material

living—pales into insignificance.

This is a dose of soothing medicine that I have always given to my

countrymen engaged m the head-racking task of comparing Chinese

and Western civilizations, and it has become a trick with me, for the

medicine always works. It is natural that the Chinese student of

Western life and learning, whether in China or studying abroad, is

dazzled by the brilliant achievements of the West, from medicine,

geology, astronomy to tall skyscrapers, beautiful motor highways and

natural-color cameras. He is either enthusiastic about such

achievements, or ashamed of China for not having made such

achievements, or both. An inferiority complex sets in, and in the next

moment you may find him the most arrogant, chauvinistic defender

of the Oriental civilization, without knowing what he is talking about.

Probably as a gesture, he will condemn the tall skyscrapers and the

beautiful motor highways, although I haven’t yet found one that

condemns a good camera. His plight is somewhat pathetic, for that

disqualifies him for judging the East and the West sanely and

dispassionately. Perplexed and dazzled and harrassed by such

thoughts of inferiority, he has great need of what the Chinese call a

medicine for “calming the heart” to allay his fever.

The suggestion of such a test as I propose has the strange effect

of leveling all mankind by brushing aside all the non-essentials of

civilization and culture and bringing all under a simple and clear

equation. All the other achievements of civilization are then seen as

merely means toward the end of turning out better husbands and

wives and fathers and mothers. Insofar as ninety per cent of

mankind are husbands or wives and one hundred per cent have

parents, and insofar as marriage and the home constitute the most

intimate side of a man’s life, it is clear that that civilization which

produces better wives and husbands and fathers and mothers

makes for a happier human life, and is therefore a higher type of

civilization. The quality of men and women we live with is much more

important than the work they achieve, and every girl ought to be

grateful for any civilization that can present her with a better

husband. Such things are relative, and ideal husbands and wives

and fathers and mothers are to be found in every age and country.

Probably the best way to get good husbands and wives is by

eugenics, which saves us a great deal of trouble in educating wives

and husbands. On the other hand, a civilization which ignores the

home or relegates it to a minor position is apt to turn out poorer

products.

I realize that I am getting biological. I am biological, and so is

every man and woman. There is no use saying, “Let’s get biological,”

because we are so whether we like it or not. Every man is happy

biologically, angry biologically, or ambitious biologically, or religious

or peace-loving biologically, although he may not be aware of it. As

biological beings, there is no getting around the fact that we are all

born as babies, suck at mothers’ breasts and marry and give birth to

other babies. Every man is born of a woman, and almost every man

lives with a woman through life and is the father of boys and girls,

and every woman is also born of a woman, and almost every woman

lives with a man for life and gives birth to other children. Some have

refused to become parents, like trees and flowers that refuse to

produce seeds to perpetuate their own species, but no man can

refuse to have parents, as no tree can refuse to grow from a seed.

So then we come to the basic fact that the most primary relationship

in life is the relationship between man and woman and the child, and

no philosophy of life can be called adequate or even called

philosophy at all unless it deals with this essential relationship.

But the mere relationship between man and woman is not

sufficient; the relationship must result in babies, or it is incomplete.

No civilization has any excuse for depriving a man or woman of his

or her right to have babies. I understand that this is a very real

problem at present, that there are many men and women today who

don’t get married, and many others who, after getting married, refuse

to have babies for one reason or another. My point of view is,

whatever the reason may be, the fact of a man or woman leaving

this world without children is the greatest crime he or she can

commit against himself or herself. If sterility is due to the body, then

the body is degenerate and wrong; if it is due to the high cost of

living, then the high cost of living is wrong; if it is due to a too high

standard of marriage, then the too high standard of marriage is

wrong; if it is due to a false philosophy of individualism, then the

philosophy of individualism is wrong; and if it is due to the entire

fabric of social system, then the entire fabric of social system is

wrong. Perhaps men and women of the twenty-first century will come

to see this truth when we have made better progress in the science

of biology and there is a better understanding of ourselves as

biological beings. I am quite convinced that the twentieth century will

be the century of biology, as the nineteenth century was the century

of comparative natural science. When man comes to understand

himself better and realizes the futility of warring against his own

instincts, with which nature has endowed him, man will appreciate

more such simple wisdom. We see already signs of this growing

biological and medical wisdom, when we hear the Swiss

psychologist Jung advise his rich women patients to go back to the

country and raise chickens, children and carrots. The trouble with

rich women patients is that they are not functioning biologically, or

their biological functioning is disgracefully low-grade.

Man has not learned to live with woman, since history began. The

strange thing is that no man has lived without a woman, in spite of

that fact. No man can speak disparagingly of woman if he realizes

that no one has come into this world without a mother. From birth to

death, he is surrounded by women, as mother, wife and daughters,

and even if he does not marry, he has still to depend on his sister,

like William Wordsworth, or depend on his housekeeper, like Herbert

Spencer. No fine philosophy is going to save his soul if he cannot

establish a proper relationship with his mother or his sister, and if he

cannot establish a proper relationship even with his housekeeper,

may God have pity on him!

There is a certain pathos in a man who has not arrived at a proper

relationship with woman and who has led a warped moral life, like

Oscar Wilde, who still exclaims, “Man cannot live with a woman, nor

can he live without her!” So that it seems human wisdom has not

progressed an inch farther between the writer of a Hindu tale and

Oscar Wilde at the beginning of the twentieth century, for that writer

of the Hindu tale of the Creation expressed essentially the same

thought four thousand years ago. According to this story of the

Creation, in creating woman, God took of the beauty of the flowers,

the song of the birds, the colors of the rainbow, the kiss of the

breeze, the laughter of the waves, the gentleness of the lamb, the

cunning of the fox, the waywardness of the clouds and the fickleness

of the shower, and wove them into a female being and presented her

to man as his wife. And the Hindu Adam was happy and he and his

wife roved about on the beautiful earth. After a few days, Adam

came to God and said, “Take this woman away from me, for I cannot

live with hen” And God listened to his request and took Eve away.

Adam then became lonely and was still unhappy, and after a few

days he came to God again and said, “Give me back my woman, for

I cannot live without her.” Again God listened to his request and

returned him Eve. After a few days again, Adam came to God and

asked, “Please take back this Eve that Thou has created, for I swear

I cannot live with her.” In His infinite wisdom God again consented.

When finally Adam came a fourth time and complained that he could

not live without his female companion, God made him promise that

he was not going to change his mind again and that he was going to

throw in his lot with her for better and for worse, and live together on

this earth as best they knew how. I do not think the picture has

essentially changed much, even today.

II. CELIBACY A FREAK OF CIVILIZATION

The taking of such a simple and natural biological viewpoint

implies two conflicts, first, the conflict between individualism and the

family, and second, a deeper conflict between the sterile philosophy

of the intellect and the warmer philosophy of the instinct. For

individualism and worship of the intellect are likely to blind a man to

the beauties of home life, and of the two, I think the first is not so

wicked as the second. A man believing in individualism and carrying

it to its logical consequences can still be a very intelligent being, but

a man believing in the cold head as against the warm heart is a fool.

For the collectivism of the family as a social unit, there can be

substitutes, but for the loss of the mating and paternal-maternal

instincts, there can be none.

We have to start with the assumption that man cannot live alone

in this world and be happy, but must associate himself with a group

around him and greater than himself. Man’s self is not limited by his

bodily proportions, for there is a greater self which extends as far as

his mental and social activities go. In whatever age and country and

under whatever form of government, the real life that means

anything to a man is never co-extensive with his country or his age,

but consists in that smaller circle of his acquaintances and activities

which we call the “greater self.” In this social unit he lives and moves

and has his being Such a social unit may be a parish, or a school, or

a prison, or a business firm, or a secret society or a philanthropic

organization. These may take the place of the home as a social unit,

and sometimes entirely displace it Religion itself or sometimes a big

political movement may consume a man’s whole being. But of all

such groups, the home remains the only natural and biologically real,

satisfying and meaningful unit of our existence. It is natural because

every man finds himself already in a home when he is born, and also

because it remains with one for life; and it is biologically real

because the blood relationship lends the notion of such a greater self

a visible reality. One who does not make a success of this natural

group life cannot be expected to make a success of life in other

groups. Confucius says, “The young should learn to be filial in the

home and respectful in society; they should be conscientious and

honest, and love all people and associate with the kindly gentlemen.

If after acting on these precepts, they still have energy left, let them

read books.” Apart from the importance of this group life, man

expresses and fulfils himself fully and reaches the highest

development of his personality only in the harmonious

complementing of a suitable member of the other sex.

Woman, who has a deeper biological sense than man, knows this.

Subconsciously all Chinese girls dream of the red wedding petticoat

and the wedding sedan, and all Western girls dream of the wedding

veil and wedding bells. Nature has endowed women with too

powerful a maternal instinct for it to be easily put out of the way by

an artificial civilization. I have no doubt that nature conceives of

woman chiefly as a mother, even more than as a mate, and has

endowed her with mental and moral characteristics which are

conductive to her role as mother, and which find their true

explanation and unity in the maternal instinct—realism, judgment,

patience with details, love of the small and helpless, desire to take

care of somebody, strong animal love and hatred, great personal and

emotional bias and a generally personal outlook on things.

Philosophy, therefore, has gone far astray when it departs from

nature’s own conception and” tries to make women happy without

taking into account this maternal instinct which is the dominant trait

and central explanation of her entire being. Thus with all uneducated

and sanely educated women, the maternal instinct is never

suppressed, comes to light in childhood and grows stronger and

stronger through adolescence to maturity, while with man, the

paternal instinct seldom becomes conscious until after thirty-five, or

in any case until he has a son or daughter five years old. I do not

think that a man of twenty-five ever thinks about be-coming a father.

He merely falls in love with a girl and accidentally produces a baby

and forgets all about it, while his wife’s thoughts are occupied with

nothing else, until one day in his thirties he suddenly becomes aware

that he has a son or daughter whom he can take to the market and

parade before his friends, and only then does he begin to feel

paternal. Few men of twenty or twenty-five are not amused at the

idea of their becoming a father, and beyond amusement, there is

little thought spent on it, whereas having a baby, even anticipating

one, is probably the most serious thing that ever comes to a

woman’s life and changes her entire being to the point of affecting a

transformation of her character and habits. The world becomes a

different world for her when a woman becomes an expectant mother.

Thenceforth she has no doubt whatever in her mind as to her

mission in life or the purpose of her existence. She is wanted. She is

needed. And she functions. I have seen the most pampered and

petted only daughter of a rich Chinese family growing to heroic

stature and losing sleep for months when her child was ill. In nature’s

scheme, no such paternal instinct is necessary and none is provided

for, for man, like the drake or the gander, has little concern over his

offspring otherwise than contributing his part. Women, there-fore,

suffer most psychologically when this central motive power of their

being is not expressed and does not function. No one need tell me

how kind American civilization is to women, when it permits so many

nice women to go unmarried through no fault of their own.

I have no doubt that the maladjustment in American marriages is

very largely due to this discrepancy between the maternal instinct of

women and the paternal instinct of men. The so-called “emotional

immaturity” of American young men can find no other explanation

than in this biological fact; the men being brought up under a social

system of over-pampering of youth do not possess the natural check

of responsible thinking which the girls have through their greater

maternal instinct. It would be ruinous if nature did not provide women

with sufficient soberness when they are physiologically ready to

become mothers, so nature just does it. Sons of poor families have

responsible thinking drilled into their system by harder

circumstances, thus leaving only the pampered sons of rich families,

in a nation which worships and pampers youth, in an ideal condition

for developing into emotional and social incompetents.

After all, we are concerned only with the question: “How to live a

happy life?” and no one’s life can be happy unless beyond the

superficial attainments of the external life, the deeper springs of his

or her character are touched and find a normal outlet. Celibacy as an

ideal in the form of “personal career” carries with it not only an

individualistic, but also a foolishly intellectualistic taint, and is for the

latter reason to be condemned. I always suspect the confirmed

bachelor or unmarried woman who remains so by choice of being an

ineffectual intellectualist, too much engrossed with his or her own

external achievements, believing that he or she can, as a human

being, find happiness in an effective substitute for the home life, or

find, an intellectual, artistic or professional interest which is deeply

satisfying.

I deny this. This spectacle of individualism, unmarried and

childless, trying to find a substitute for a full and satisfying life in

“careers” and personal achievements and preventing cruelty to

animals has struck me always as somewhat foolish and comical. It is

psychologically symptomatic in the case of old maiden ladies trying

to sue a circus manager for cruelty to tigers because their suspicion

has been aroused by whipmarks on the animals’ backs. Their

protests seem to come out of a misplaced maternal instinct, applied

to a wrong species, as if true tigers ever thought anything of a little

whipping. These women are vaguely groping for a place in life and

trying very hard to make it sound convincing to themselves and to

others.

The rewards of political, literary and artistic achievement produce

in their authors only a pale, intellectual chuckle, while the rewards of

seeing one’s own children grow up big and strong are wordless and

immensely real How many authors and artists are satisfied with their

accomplishments in their old age, and how many regard them as

more than mere products of their pastime, justifiable chiefly as

means of earning a living? It is said that a few days before his death,

Herbert Spencer had the eighteen volumes of The Synthetic

Philosophy piled on his lap and, as he felt their cold weight,

wondered if he would not have done better could he have a

grandchild in their stead. Would not wise Elia have exchanged the

whole lot of his essays for one of his “dream children?” It is bad

enough to have ersatz-sugar, ersatz-butter and ersatz-cotton, but it

must be deplorable to have ersatz-children! I do not question that

there was a moral and aesthetic satisfaction to John D. Rockefeller

in the feeling that he had contributed so much to human happiness

over such a wide area. At the same time, I do not doubt that such a

moral or aesthetic satisfaction was extremely thin and pale, easily

upset by a stupid stroke on the golf course, and that his real, lasting

satisfaction was John D., Jr.

To look at it from another aspect, happiness is largely a matter of

finding one’s life work, the work that one loves. I question whether

ninety per cent of the men and women occupied in a profession have

found the work that they really love. The much vaunted statement, “I

love my work,” I suspect, must always be taken with a grain of salt.

One never says, “I love my home,” because it is taken for granted.

The average business man goes to his office in very much the same

mood as Chinese women produce babies: everybody is doing it, and

what else can I do? “I love my work,” so says everybody. Such a

statement is a lie in the case of elevator men and telephone girls and

dentists, and a gross exaggeration in the case of editors, real estate

agents and stock brokers. Except for the Arctic explorer or the

scientist in his laboratory, engaged in the work of discovery, I think,

to like one’s work, finding it congenial, is the best we can hope for.

But even allowing for the figure of speech, there is no comparison

between one’s love of his work and the mother’s love of her children.

Many men have doubts about their true vocation, and shift from one

to another, but there is never a doubt in a mother’s mind concerning

her life work, which is the taking care and guiding of the little ones.

Successful politicians have thrown up politics, successful editors

have thrown up magazine work, successful aviators have given up

flying, successful boxers have given up the ring, and successful

actors and actresses have given up the stage, but imagine mothers,

successful or unsuccessful, giving up motherhood! It is unheard of.

The mother has a feeling that she is wanted; she has found a place

in life, and has the deep conviction that no one in the world can take

her place, a conviction more profound than Hitler’s that he must save

Germany. And what can give man or woman a greater, deeper

happiness than the satisfaction of knowing he or she has a definite

place in life? Is it not common sense to say that whereas less than

five per cent are lucky enough to find and be engaged in the work

they love, a hundred per cent of parents find the work of looking after

their children the most deep and engrossing of their life motives? Is it

not true, therefore, that the chance of finding real happiness is surer

and greater for a woman if she is engaged as a mother rather than

as an architect, since nature never fails? Is it not true that marriage

is the best profession for women?

My feminist readers must have sensed this all along, and bit by bit

have begun trembling with rage as I grew more and more

enthusiastic about the home, knowing that the cross of the home

eventually must be borne by women. Such is exactly my intention

and my thesis. It remains to be seen who is kinder to women, for it is

with women’s happiness alone that we are concerned, happiness not

in terms of social achievements, but in terms of the depths of

personal being. Even from the point of view of fitness or competency,

I have no doubt that there are fewer bank presidents really fit for

their jobs than women fit for mothers. We have incompetent

department chiefs, incompetent business managers, incompetent

bankers, and incompetent presidents, but we rarely have

incompetent mothers. So then women are fit for motherhood, they

want it and they know it. I understand that there has been a swing in

the right direction away from the feminist ideal among the American

college girls of today, that the majority of them are able to look at life

sanely enough to say openly that they want to get married. The ideal

woman for me is one who loves her cosmetics along with her

mathematics, and who is more feminine than feminist. Let them have

their cosmetics, and if they still have energy left, as Confucius would

say, let them play with mathematics also.

It is to be understood that we are talking of the average ideal of

the average man and woman. There are distinguished and talented

women as there are distinguished and talented men, whose creative

ability accounts for the world’s real progress. If I ask the average

woman to regard marriage as the ideal profession and to bear

babies and perhaps also wash dishes, I also ask the average man to

forget the arts and just earn the family breadsss, by cutting hair or

shining shoes or catching thieves or tinkering pots or waiting at

tables. Since some one has to bear the babies and take care of them

and see them safely through measles and raise them to be good and

wise citizens, and since men are entirely ineffectual in bearing

babies and frightfully awkward in holding and bathing them, naturally

I look to the women to do the job. I’m not so sure which is the nobler

work—comparing the averages—raising babies, or cutting people’s

hair or shining people’s shoes or opening doors at department

stores. I don’t see why women have to complain about washing

dishes if their husbands have to open doors for strangers at

department stores. Men used to stand behind counters, and now

girls have rushed in to take their place behind counters while the

men open the doors, and they are welcome to it, if they think it is a

nobler kind of work. Considered as a means of living, no work is

noble and no work is ignoble. And I am not so sure that checking

men’s hats is necessarily more romantic than mending husbands’

socks. The difference between the hat-check girl and the sock

darner at home is that the sock darner has got a man over whose

destiny it is her privilege to preside, while the hat-check girl hasn’t. It

is to be hoped, of course, that the wearer of the socks is worth the

woman’s labor, but it would be also unwarranted pessimism to lay

down as a general rule that his socks are not worth her mending.

Men are not all quite as worthless as that. The important point is that

the general assumption that home life, with its important and sacred

task of raising and influencing the young of the race, is too low for

women can hardly be called a sane social attitude, and it is possible

only in a culture where woman and the home and motherhood are

not sufficiently respected.

III. ON SEX APPEAL

Behind the facade of woman’s rights and increased social

privileges for women, I always think woman is not given her due

even in modern America. Let us hope that my impression is

incorrect, and that with the increase of woman’s rights, chivalry has

not decreased. For the two things do not necessarily go together,

chivalry or true respect for women and allowing women to spend

money, to go where they please, to hold executive jobs and to vote.

It has seemed to me (a citizen of the Old World with the Old World

outlook) that there are things which matter and things which don’t,

and that American women are far ahead of their Old World sisters in

all things that don’t matter, and remain very much in the same

situation in all things that do. Anyway, there is no clear index of a

greater chivalry in America than in Europe. What real authority the

American woman does exercise is still from her traditional old throne

—the hearth—over which she presides as the happy ministering

angel. I have seen such angels, but only in the sanctity of a private

home, where a woman glides along in the kitchen or in the parlor,

true mistress of a home consecrated to family love. Somehow she

suffuses a radiance which would be unthinkable or out of place in an

office.

Is it merely because woman is more charming and more graceful

in a chiffon dress than in a business jacket, or is it merely my

imagination? The gist of the matter seems to lie in the fact that

women at home are like fish in water. Clothe women in business

jackets and men will regard them as co-workers with the right to

criticize, but let them float about in georgette or chiffon one out of the

seven office hours in the day and men will give up any Idea of

competing with them, and will merely sit back and wonder and gasp.

Submitted to business routine, women are disciplined quite easily

and make better routine workers than men, but the moment the

office atmosphere is changed, as when as a business staff meet at a

wedding tea, and you will find that women immediately come into

their own by advising their men colleagues or their boss to get a

haircut, or where to get the best lotion for curing dandruff. In the

office, women talk with civility; outside the office, they talk with

authority.

Frankly speaking from a man’s point of view—there is no use in

pretending to speak otherwise—I think that the appearance of

women in public has added greatly to the charm and amenities of

life, life in the office and in the street, for the benefit of men; that

voices in the offices are softer, colors gayer and the desks neater. I

think also that not a whit of the sexual attraction or desire for sexual

attraction provided by nature has changed, but that in America, men

are having a grander time because American women are trying

harder to please the men than, for instance, Chinese women, so far

as attention to sex appeal is concerned. And my conclusion is that in

the West, people think too much of sex and too little of women.

Western women spend almost as much time fixing their hair as

Chinese women used to do; attend to their make-up more openly,

constantly and ubiquitously; diet, exercise, massage and read

advertisements for keeping the figure more assiduously; kick their

legs up and down in bed to reduce their waistline more religiously; lift

their faces and dye their hair, at an age at which no Chinese women

ever think of doing such a thing. They are spending more money, not

less, on lotions and perfumes, and there is a bigger business in

beauty aids and day creams, night creams, vanishing creams,

foundation creams, face creams, hand creams, pore creams, lemon

creams, sun-tan oils, wrinkle oils, turtle oils, and every conceivable

variety of perfumed oil. Perhaps it is simply because American

women have more time and more money to spend. Perhaps they

dress to please men and undress to please themselves, or the other

way round, or both. Perhaps the reason is merely that Chinese

women have fewer available modern beauty aids, for I hesitate very

much to draw a distinction between races when it comes to woman’s

desire to attract men. Chinese women were trying hard enough to

please men by binding their own feet half a century ago, and now

they have gayly capered their way from their “bow shoes” into high

heels. I am not usually a prophet, but I can say with prophetic

conviction that in the immediate future, Chinese women will be

having their morning ten minutes of kicking their legs up and down in

order to please their husbands or themselves. Yet the obvious fact is

there: American women at present seem to be trying harder to

please the men by spending more thought on their bodily sex appeal

and dress with better understanding of sex appeal. The net result is

that women as a whole, as seen in the parks and in the streets, have

better figures and are better dressed, thanks to the continuous

tremendous daily efforts of women to keep their figure—to the great

delight of men. But I imagine how it must wear on their nerves. And

when I speak of sex appeal, I mean it in contrast to motherhood

appeal, or woman’s appeal as a whole. I suspect this phase of

modern civilization has stamped its character on modern love and

marriage.

Art has made the modern man sex conscious. I have no doubt

about it. First art and then commercial exploitation of the woman’s

body, down to its last curve and muscular undulation and the last

painted toe-nail. I have never seen every part of a woman’s body so

completely exploited commercially, and find it hard to understand

how American women have submitted so sweetly to this exploitation

of their bodies. To an Oriental, it is hard to square this commercial

exploitation of the female body with respect for women. Artists call it

beauty, theater-goers call it art, only producers and managers

honestly call it sex appeal, and men generally have a good time. It is

typical of a man-made and man-ruled society that women are

stripped for commercial exploitation and men almost never, outside a

few acrobats. On the stage, one sees women nearly undressed,

while the men still keep their morning coats and black ties; in a

woman-ruled world, one would certainly see the men half undressed

while the women kept their skirts. Artists study male and female

anatomy equally, but somehow find it difficult to turn their study of the

male body beautiful to commercial account, The theater strips to

tease, but generally strips the women to tease the men, and does

not strip the men to tease the women. Even in the higher-class

shows, where they try to be both artistic and moral, people allow the

women to be artistic and the men to be moral, but never insist on the

women being moral and the men artistic. (All men actors in

vaudeville shows merely try to be funny, even in dancing, which is

supposed to be “artistic”) The commercial advertisements pick up

the theme and play it up in endless variations, so that today all a

man needs to do when he wants to be “artistic” is to take a copy of a

magazine and run through the advertising section. The result is, the

women themselves are so impressed with the duty of being artistic

that they unconsciously accept the doctrine and starve themselves

or submit to massage and rigorous discipline, in order to contribute

toward a more beautiful world. The less clear-minded are almost led

to think that their only way of getting a man and holding him is by sex

appeal.

I consider that this over-emphasis on sex appeal involves an

adolescent and inadequate view of the entire nature of woman, with

certain consequences upon the character of love and marriage,

whose conception becomes also false or inadequate. Woman is thus

more thought of as a mating possibility than as a presiding spirit over

the hearth. Woman is wife and mother both, but with the emphasis

on sex as such, the notion of a mate displaces the notion of the

mother, and I insist that woman reaches her noblest status only as

mother, and that a wife who by choice refuses to become a mother

immediately loses a great part of her dignity and seriousness and

stands in danger of becoming a plaything- To me, any wife without

children is a mistress, and any mistress with children is a wife, no

matter what their legal standing is. The children ennoble and sanctify

the mistress, and the absence of children degrades the wife. It is a

truism that many modern women refuse to have babies because

pregnancy would spoil their figures.

The amorous instinct has its proper contribution to make to the

enrichment of life, yet it can be overdone to the detriment of woman

herself. The strain of keeping up sex appeal necessarily falls upon

the nerves of women and not of men. It is also unfair, for by placing a

premium upon beauty and youth, middle-aged women are

confronted with the hopeless task of fighting their gray hair and

time’s course. A Chinese poet has already warned us that the

fountain of youth is a hoax, that no man can yet “tie a string to the

sun” and hold back its course. Middle-aged woman’s effort to keep

up sex appeal thus becomes an arduous race with the years, which

is quite senseless. Only humor can save the situation. If there is no

use carrying on a hopeless fight against old age and white hair, why

then not call the white hair beautiful? So sings Chu Tu:

I’ve gained white hairs, some hundreds, on my head.

As often as they’re plucked, still more grow in their stead.

Why not stop plucking, then, and let the white alone?

Who has the time to fight against the silvery thread?

The whole thing is unnatural and unfair. It is unfair to the mother and

older women, because as surely as a heavyweight champion must

hand over his title in a few years to a younger challenger and an old

champion horse must yield in a few years to a younger horse, so

must the old women fight a losing battle against the younger women,

and after all they are all fighting against their own sex. It is foolish,

dangerous, and hopeless for middle-aged women to meet younger

women on the issue of sex appeal. It is also foolish because there is

more to a woman than her sex, and while wooing and courtship are

necessarily largely based on physical attraction, maturer men and

women should have outgrown it.

Man, we know, is the most amorous animal in the zoological

kingdom. Besides this amorous instinct, however, there is an equally

strong parental instinct, resulting in the human family life. The

amorous and paternal instincts we share in common with most of the

animals, but the beginnings of a human family life seem to be found

among the gibbons. There is a danger, however, of the amorous

instinct subjugating the family instinct in an over-sophisticated

culture surrounding man with constant sexual stimuli in art, the

movies and the theatre. In such a culture, the necessity of the family

ideal can be easily forgotten, especially when in adition there is a

current of individualistic ideas. In such a society, therefore, we get a

strange view of marriage, as consisting of eternal kissing, generally

ending with the wedding bells, and a strange view of woman, chiefly

as man’s mate and not as mother. The ideal woman, then, becomes

a young woman with perfect physical proportions and physical

charm, whereas for me, woman is never more beautiful than when

she is standing over a cradle, never more serious and dignified than

when she is holding a baby in her breast and leading a child of four

or five years by the hand, and never more happy than, as I have

seen in a Western painting, when she is lying in bed against a pillow

and playing with a baby at her breast. Perhaps I have got a

motherhood complex, but that is all right because psychological

complexes never do a Chinese any harm. Any suggestion of an

Oedipus complex or father-and-daughter complex, or of a son-and-

mother complex, in a Chinese always seems to me ridiculous and

unconvincing. I suggest that my view of woman is not due to a

motherhood complex, but is due to the influence of the Chinese

family ideal.

IV. THE CHINESE FAMILY IDEAL

I rather think that the Genesis story of the Creation needs to be

rewritten all over again. In the Chinese novel Red Chamber Dream,

the boy hero, a sentimental mollycoddle very fond of female

company and admiring his beautiful female cousins intensely and all

but sorry for himself for being a boy, says that, “Woman is made of

water and man is made of clay,” the reason being that he thinks his

female cousins are sweet and pure and clever, while he himself and

his boy companions are ugly and muddle-headed and bad-

tempered. If the writer of the Genesis story had been a Paoyü and

knew what he was talking about, he would have written a different

story. God took a handful of mud, molded it into human shape and

breathed into its nostrils a breath, and there was Adam. But Adam

began to crack and fall to pieces, and so He took some water, and

with the water He molded the clay, and this water which entered into

Adam’s being was called Eve, and only in having Eve in his being

was Adam’s life complete. At least that seems to me to be the

symbolic significance of marriage. Woman is water and man is clay,

and water permeates and molds the clay, and the clay holds the

water and gives its substance, in which water moves and lives and

has its full being.

The analogy of clay and water in human marriage was long ago

expressed by Madame Kuan, wife of the great Yuan painter Chao

Mengfu and herself a painter and teacher at the Imperial Court When

in their middle age Chao’s ardor was cooling, or anyway when he

was thinking of taking a mistress, Madame Kuan wrote the following

poem, which touched his heart and changed his mind.

’Twixt you and me

There’s too much emotion.

That’s the reason why

There’s such a commotion!

Take a lump of clay,

Wet it, pat it,

And make an image of me,

And an image of you.

Then smash them, crash them,

And add a little water.

Break them and re-make them

Into an image of you,

And an image of me.

Then in my clay, there’s a little of you.

And in your clay, there’s a little of me.

And nothing ever shall us sever;

Living, we’ll sleep in the same quilt,

And dead, we’ll be buried together.

It is a well-known fact that Chinese society and Chinese life are

organized on the basis of the family system. This system determines

and colors the entire Chinese pattern of life. Whence came this

family ideal of life? It is a question that has seldom been asked, for

the Chinese seem to take it for granted, while foreign students do not

feel competent to enter into the question. Confucius is reputed to

have provided the philosophical foundation for the family system as

the basis of all social and political life, with its tremendous emphasis

on the husband-wife relationship as the foundation of all human

relationships, on filial piety toward parents, annual visits to ancestral

graves, ancestor worship, and the institution of the ancestral hall.

Chinese ancestor worship has already been called a religion by

certain writers, and I believe this to a very great extent is correct Its

non-religious aspect is the exclusion or the much less significant

place of the supernatural element. The supernatural is left almost

untouched, and ancestor worship can go side by side with belief in a

Christian, a Buddhist, or a Mohammedan god. The rituals of

ancestor worship provide a form of religion and are both natural and

justifiable because all beliefs must have an outward symbol and

form. As it is, I do not think the respect paid to square wooden

tablets about fifteen inches long, inscribed with the names of

ancestors, is more religious or less so than the use of the picture of

the King on a British postage stamp. In the first place, these

ancestral spirits are conceived less as gods than as human beings,

continuing to be served as they were in their old age by their

descendants. There is no prayer for gifts and no prayer for cure of

sickness, and none of the usual bargaining between the worshiper

and the worshiped. In the second place, this ceremony of worship is

no more than an occasion for pious remembrance of one’s departed

ancestors, on a day consecrated to family reunion and reflections of

gratitude on what the ancestor has done for the family. At best, it is

only a poor substitute for celebrating the ancestor’s birthday when he

was alive, but in spirit it differs in no way from the celebration of a

parent’s birthday, or of Mother’s Day in America.

The only objection which led Christian missionaries to forbid

Chinese converts to participate in the ceremonies and communal

feasting and merrymaking of ancestor worship is that the worshipers

are required to kneel down before the ancestral tablets, thus

infringing upon the first of the Ten Commandments. This is about the

most flagrant instance of lack of understanding on the part of the

Christian missionaries. Chinese knees are not quite as precious as

Western knees, for we kneel down before emperors, magistrates

and before our own parents on New Year’s Day, when they are

living. Consequently Chinese knees are naturally more flexible, and

one doesn’t become a heathen more or less by kneeling before an

inscribed wooden tablet, resembling a calendar block. On the other

hand, Chinese Christians in the villages and towns are forced to cut

themselves off from the general community life by being forbidden to

participate in the general feasting and merrymaking, or even to

contribute money toward the theatrical performances usual on such

an occasion. The Chinese Christians, therefore, practically

excommunicate themselves from their own clan.

There is hardly a question that, in many cases, this feeling of piety

and of mystic obligation toward one’s own family actually amounted

to a deeply religious attitude. We have, for instance, the case of Yen

Yuan, one of the greatest Confucianist leaders in the seventeenth

century, who in his old age started out on a pathetic journey of

search for his brother, in the hope that his brother might be found to

have a son, since he himself had none. This follower of

Confucianism, who believed in conduct more than in knowledge, was

living in Szechuen. His brother had been missing for years. Tired of

teaching the doctrines of Confucius, one day he felt what among

missionaries would be regarded as a “divine call” to search for this

lost brother. The situation was practically hopeless. He had no idea

where his brother might be, or even if he were living Travel was a

highly perilous undertaking in those days, and the country was in

disorder because of the collapse of the Ming regime. Still this old

man set out on this truly religious journey, with no better means of

locating his brother than pasting placards on city gates and inns

wherever he went. Thus he traveled from Western China to the

northeastern provinces, covering over a thousand miles, and only

after years of desperate search, was he brought to the home of his

brother through the latter’s son recognizing his name on an umbrella

left standing against a wall while he was in a public privy. His brother

was then dead, but he achieved his goal, which was to find a male

descendant for his ancestor’s family.

Why Confucius laid such emphasis on filial piety nobody knows,

but it has been suggested by Dr. John C. H. Wu in an illuminating

essay

that the reason was that Confucius was born without a

father. The psychological reason is therefore similar to that of the

writer of Home, Sweet Home, who never knew a home in his entire

life. Had Confucius’ father been living when he was a child, the idea

of fatherhood could not have been invested with such romantic

glamour, and if his father had been living after he grew up, the result

might have been still more disastrous. He would have been able to

see his father’s foibles, and he might have found the precept of

absolute piety somewhat difficult to live up to. Anyway his father was

dead when he was born, and not only that, but Confucius did not

even know where his father’s grave was. He had been born out of

wedlock, and his mother refused to tell him who his father was.

When his mother died, he buried her (cynically, I suppose) at the

“Road of the Five Fathers,” and only after he had found out the

location of his father’s grave from an old woman, did he provide for

the burial of his parents together at another place.

We have to let this ingenious theory stand for what it is worth But

for the necessity of the family ideal, there is no lack of reasons in

Chinese literature. It starts out with a view of man not as an

individual, but as a member of a family unit, is backed by the view of

life which I may call the “stream-of-life” theory, and justified by a

philosophy which regards the fulfillment of man’s natural instincts as

the ultimate goal of morals and politics.

The ideal of the family system is necessarily dead set against the

ideal of personal individualism. No man, after all, lives as an

individual completely alone, and the idea of such an individual has

no reality to it. If we think of an individual and regard him as neither a

son, nor a brother, nor a father, nor a friend, then what is he? Such

an individual becomes a metaphysical abstraction. And being

biologically minded as the Chinese are, they naturally think of a

man’s biological relationships first. The family then becomes the

natural biological unit of our existence, and marriage itself becomes

a family affair, and not an individual affair.

In My Country and My People, I have pointed out the evils of this

all-engrossing family system, which can become a form of magnified

selfishness, to the detriment of the state. But such evils are inherent

in all human systems, in the family system, as well as in the

individualism and nationalism of the West, because of defects in

human nature. In China, man is always thought of as greater and

more important than the state, but he is never thought of as greater

and more important than the family, because, apart from the family,

he has no real existence. The evils of nationalism are just as

apparent in modern Europe. The state can be easily transformed into

a monster, as it already is in some countries, swallowing up the

individual’s liberty of speech, his freedom of religious conscience

and belief, his personal honor, and even the last and final goal of

individual happiness. The theoretical consequences of such a

collectivistic view are quite apparent in both Fascism and

Communism, and in fact have been already logically worked out by

Karl Marx. A total annihilation of the parental instinct seems to be

aimed at by the Marxian state, in which family affection and loyalty

are openly denounced as bourgeois sentiments, sure to become

extinct in a different material surrounding.

How Karl Marx was quite

so cocksure about this point in biology, I do not know. Wise in his

economics, perhaps he was a moron in common sense. An

American schoolboy would have guessed that five thousand years

were too short for the atrophy of an instinct which had the

momentum of a million years of development behind it. But such an

argument, strange as it may seem, could appeal to a Western

intellect as strictly logical. It is, in the words of the writer of the New

Your Time,’ “Topics,” “consistency gone mad.” The conception of

man waging a class war in obedience to certain mechanistic laws

naturally deprives man of individual freedom of belief and action.

According to such an extreme view, therefore, we have even less

individualism than under the family system.

In place of this individualism and nationalism of the West, there is

then the family ideal in which man is not regarded as an individual

but as a member of a family and an essential part of the great

stream of family life. That is what I mean by the “stream-of-life”

theory. Human life as a whole may be regarded as consisting of

different racial streams of life, but it is the stream of life in the family

that a man feels and sees directly. In accordance with both a

Chinese and Western analogy, we speak of the “family tree,” and

every man’s life is but a section or a branch of that tree, growing

upon the trunk and contributing by its very existence to its further

growth and continuation. Human life, therefore, is inevitably seen as

a growth or a continuance, in which every man plays a part or a

chapter in the family history, with its obligations toward the family as

a whole, bringing upon itself and upon the family life shame or glory.

This sense of family consciousness and family honor is probably

the only form of team spirit or group consciousness in Chinese life.

In order to play this game of life as well as, or better than, another

team, every member of the family must be careful not to spoil the

game, or to let his team down by making a false move. He should, if

possible, try to bring the ball further down the field. A derelict son is

a. shame to himself and to his family in exactly the same sense as a

quarterback who makes a fumble and loses the ball. And he who

comes out on top in the civil examinations is like a player who makes

a touchdown. The glory is his own and at the same time that of his

family. The benefits of one’s be-coming a chuangyüan (“No. I” in the

Imperial examinations), or even a third-class chinshih, are both

sentimentally and materially shared by members of his immediate

family, his relatives, his clan, and even his town. For a hundred or

two hundred years afterwards, the townspeople will still boast that

they produced a chuangyüan in such and such a reign. In

comparison with the family and town rejoicing when a man got a

chuangyüan or chinshih and came home to place a golden-painted

tablet of honor high upon his ancestral hall, With his mother probably

shedding tears and the entire clan feeling themselves honored by

the great occasion, the getting of a college diploma today is a pretty

dull and tame affair.

In this picture of the family life, there is room for the greatest

variety and color. Man himself passes through the stages of child-

hood, youth, maturity and old age: first being taken care of by others,

then taking care of others, and in old age again being taken care of

by others; first obeying and respecting others, and later being

obeyed and respected in turn in proportion as he grows older. Above

all, color is lent to this picture by the presence of women. Into this

picture of the continuous family life comes woman, not as a

decoration or a plaything, nor even essentially as a wife, but as a

vital and essential part of the family tree—the very thing which

makes continuity possible. For the strength of any particular branch

of a family depends so much upon the woman married into the home

and the blood she contributes to the family heritage. A wise patriarch

is pretty careful to select women of sound heritage, as a gardener is

careful to select the proper strain for grafting a branch. It is pretty

well suspected that a man’s life, particularly his home life, is made or

unmade by the wife he marries, and the entire character of the future

family is determined by her. The health of one’s grandchildren and

the type of family breeding that they are going to receive (upon

which great emphasis is laid) depend entirely upon the breeding of

the daughter-in-law herself. Thus there is a kind of amorphous and

ill-defined eugenic system, based on belief in heredity and often

placing great emphasis on menti (literally “door and home” or lineage

or family standing), but in any case based on standards of

desirability in the health, beauty and breeding of the bride as seen by

the eyes of the parents or grandparents of the family. In general; the

emphasis is upon family breeding (in the same sense that a

Westerner would choose a girl from a “good home”), representing

the fine old traditions of thrift, hard work, good manners and civility.

And when sometimes a parent discovers to his sorrow that his son

has married a worthless daughter-in-law with no manners, he always

secretly curses the other family for not training their daughter better.

Hence upon the mother and father devolves the duty of training their

daughters so that they shall not be ashamed of them when they

marry into another household—as, for instance, when they do not

know how to cook or how to make a good New Year pudding.

According to the stream-of-life theory as seen in the family

system, immortality is almost visible and touchable. Every

grandfather seeing his grandchild going to school with a satchel feels

that truly he is living over again in the life of the child, and when he

touches the child’s hand or pinches his cheeks, he knows it is flesh

of his own flesh and blood of his own blood. His own life is nothing

but a section of the family tree or of the great family stream of life

flowing on forever, and therefore he is happy to die. That is why a

Chinese parent’s greatest concern is to see that his sons and

daughters are properly married before he dies, for that is an even

more important concern than the site of his own grave or the

selection of a good coffin. For he cannot know what kind of life his

children are going to have until he sees with his own eyes what type

of girls and men his sons and daughters marry, and if the daughters-

in-law and sons-in-law look pretty satisfactory, he is quite willing to

“close his eyes without regret” on his deathbed.

The net result of such a conception of life is that one gets a

lengthened outlook on everything, for life is no more regarded as

beginning and ending with that of the individual. The game is

continued by the team after the center or the quarterback is put out

of action. Success and failure begin to take on a different

complexion. The Chinese ideal of life is to live so as not to be a

shame to one’s ancestors and to have sons of whom one need not

be ashamed. A Chinese official when resigning office often quotes

the line:

Having sons, I am content with life;

Without office, my body is light

The worst thing that can happen to a man, probably, is to have

unworthy sons who cannot “maintain the family glory” or even the

family fortune. The millionaire father of a gambling son sees his

fortune dispersed already, the fortune that he has taken a life time to

build up. When the son fails, the failure is absolute. On the other

hand, a farsighted widow is able to endure years of misery and

ignominy and even persecution, if she has a good boy of five.

Chinese history and literature are full of such widows who endured

all kinds of hardships and persecutions, but who lived for the day

when their sons should do well and prosper, and perhaps even

become prominent citizens. The latest case is Chiang Kai-shek

himself, who as a boy was persecuted with his widowed mother by

their neighbors. The widow did not fail so long as there was hope in

her son. The success of widows in giving their children a perfect

education of character and morals, through woman’s generally more

realistic sense, has often led me to think that fathers are totally

unnecessary, so far as the upbringing of children is concerned. The

widow always Laughs the loudest because she laughs last.

Such an arrangement of life in the family then, is satisfying

because a man’s life in all its biological aspects is well taken care of.

That, after all, was Confucius’ chief concern. The final ideal of

government, as Confucius concaved it, was curiously biological:

“The old shall be made to live in peace and security, the young shall

learn to love and be loyal, that inside the chamber there may be no

unmarried maids, and outside the chamber there may be no

unmarried males.” This is all the more remarkable because it is not

merely a statement of a side issue, but of the find god of

government. This is the humanist philosophy known as tech’ing, or

“fulfillment of instincts.” Confucius wanted to be pretty sure that all

our human instincts are satisfied, because only thus can we have

moral peace through a satisfying life, and because only moral peace

is truly peace. It is a kind of political ideal which aims at making

politics unnecessary, because it will be a peace that is stable and

based upon the human heart.

V. ON GROWING OLD GRACEFULLY

The Chinese family system, as I conceive it, is largely an

arrangement of particular provision for the young and the old, for

since childhood and youth and old age occupy half of our life, it is

important that the young and the old live a satisfactory life. It is true

that the young are more helpless and can take less care of

themselves, but on the other hand, they can get along better without

material comforts than the old people. A child is often scarcely aware

of material hardships, with the result that a poor child is often as

happy as, if not happier than, a rich child. He may go barefooted, but

that is a comfort, rather than a hardship to him, whereas going

barefooted is often an intolerable hardship for old people. This

comes from the child’s greater vitality, the bounce of youth. He may

have his temporary sorrows, but how easily he forgets them. He has

no idea of money and no millionaire complex, as the old man has. At

the worst, he collects only cigar coupons for buying a pop-gun,

whereas the dowager collects Liberty Bonds. Between the fun of

these two kinds of collection there is no comparison. The reason is

the child is not yet intimidated by life as all grown-ups are. His

personal habits are as yet unformed and he is not a slave to a

particular brand of coffee, and he takes whatever comes along. He

has very little racial prejudice and absolutely no religious prejudice.

His thoughts and ideas have not fallen into certain ruts. Therefore,

strange as it may seem, old people are even more dependent than

the young because their fears are more definite and their desires are

more delimited.

Something of this tenderness toward old age existed already in

the primeval consciousness of the Chinese people, a feeling that I

can compare only to the Western chivalry and feeling of tenderness

toward women. If the early Chinese people had any chivalry, it was

manifested not toward women and children, but toward the old

people. That feeling of chivalry found clear expression in Mencius in

some such saying as, “The people with grey hair should not be seen

carrying burdens on the street,” which was expressed as the final

goal of a good government. Mencius also described the four classes

of the world’s most helpless people as: “The widows, widowers,

orphans and old people without children.” Of these four classes the

first two were to be taken care of by a political economy which

should be so arranged that there would be no unmarried men and

women What was to be done about the orphans Mencius did not

say, so far as we know, although orphanages have always existed

throughout the ages, as well as pensions for old people, Every one

realizes, however, that orphanages and old age pensions are poor

substitutes for the home. The feeling is that the home alone can

provide anything resembling a satisfactory arrangement for the old

and the young. But for the young, it is to be taken for granted that not

much need be said, since there is natural paternal affection. “Water

flows downwards and not upwards,” the Chinese always say, and

therefore the affection for parents and grandparents is something

that stands more in need of being taught by culture. A natural man

loves his children, but a cultured man loves his parents. In the end,

the teaching of love and respect for old people became a generally

accepted principle, and if we are to believe some of the writers, the

desire to have the privilege of serving their parents in their old age

actually became a consuming passion. The greatest regret a

Chinese gentleman could have was the eternally lost opportunity of

serving his old parents with medicine and soup on their deathbed, or

not to be present when they died. For a high official in his fifties or

sixties not to be able to invite his parents to come from their native

village and stay with his family at the capital, “seeing them to bed

every night and greeting them every morning,” was to commit a

moral sin of which he should be ashamed and for which he had

constantly to offer excuses and explanations to his friends and

colleagues. This regret was expressed in two lines by a man who

returned too late to his home, when his parents had already died:

The tree desires repose, but the wind will not stop;

The son desires to serve, but his parents are already gone.

It is to be assumed that if man were to live this life like a poem, he

would be able to look upon the sunset of his life as his happiest

period, and instead of trying to postpone the much feared old age,

be able actually to look forward to it, and gradually build up to it as

the best and happiest period of his existence. In my efforts to

compare and contrast Eastern and Western life, I have found no

differences that are absolute except in this matter of the attitude

towards age, which is sharp and clearcut and permits of no

intermediate positions. The differences in our attitude towards sex,

toward women, and toward work, play and achievement are all

relative. The relationship between husband and wife in China is not

essentially different from that in the West, nor even the relationship

between parent and child. Not even the ideas of individual liberty and

democracy and the relationship between the people and their ruler

are, after all, so very different. But in the matter of our attitude toward

age, the difference is absolute, and the East and the West take

exactly opposite points of view. This is clearest in the matter of

asking about a person’s age or telling one’s own. In China, the first

question a person asks the other on an official call, after asking

about his name and surname is, “What is your glorious age?” If the

person replies apologetically that he is twenty-three or twenty-eight,

the other party generally comforts him by saying that he has still a

glorious future, and that one day he may become old But if the

person replies that he is thirty-five or thirty-eight, the other party

immediately exclaims with deep respect, “Good luck!”; enthusiasm

grows in proportion as the gentleman is able to report a higher and

higher age, and if the person is anywhere over fifty, the inquirer

immediately drops his voice in humility and respect. That is why all

old people, if they can, should go and live in China, where even a

beggar with a white beard is treated with extra kindness. People in

middle age actually look forward to the time when they can celebrate

their fifty-first birthday, and in the case of successful merchants or

officials, they would celebrate even their forty-first birthday with great

pomp and glory. But the fifty-first birthday, or the half-century mark, is

an occasion of rejoicing for people of all classes. The sixty-first is a

happier and grander occasion than the fifty-first and the seventy-first

is still happier and grander, while a man able to celebrate his eighty-

first birthday is actually looked upon as one specially favored by

heaven. The wearing of a beard becomes the special prerogative of

those who have become grandparents, and a man doing so without

the necessary qualifications, either of being a grandfather or being

on the other side of fifty, stands in danger of being sneered at behind

his back. The result is that young men try to pass themselves off as

older than they are by imitating the pose and dignity and point of

view of the old people, and I have known young Chinese writers

graduated from the middle schools, anywhere between twenty-one

and twenty-five, writing articles in the magazines to advise what “the

young men ought and ought not to read,” and discussing the pitfalls

of youth with a fatherly condescension.

This desire to grow old and in any case to appear old is

understandable when one understands the premium generally

placed upon old age in China. In the first place, it is a privilege of the

old people to talk, while the young must listen and hold their tongue.

“A young man is supposed to have ears and no mouth,” as a

Chinese saying goes. Men of twenty are supposed to listen when

people of thirty are talking, and these in turn are supposed to listen

when men of forty are talking. As the desire to talk and to be listened

to is almost universal, it is evident that the further along one gets in

years, the better chance he has to talk and to be listened to when he

goes about in society. It is a game of life in which no one is favored,

for everyone has a chance of becoming old in his time. Thus a father

lecturing his son is obliged to stop suddenly and change his

demeanor the moment the grandmother opens her mouth. Of course

he wishes to be in the grandmother’s place. And it is quite fair, for

what right have the young to open their mouth when the old men can

say, “I have crossed more bridges than you have crossed streets!”

What right have the young got to talk?

In spite of my acquaintance with Western life and the Western

attitude toward age, I am still continually shocked by certain

expressions for which I am totally unprepared. Fresh illustrations of

this attitude come up on every side. I have heard an old lady

remarking that she has had several grandchildren, but, “It was the

first one that hurt! – With the full knowledge that American people

hate to be thought of as old, one still doesn’t quite expect to have it

put that way. I have made allowance for people in middle age this

side of fifty, who, I can understand, wish to leave the impression that

they are still active and vigorous, but I am not quite prepared to meet

an old lady with gray hair facetiously switching the topic of

conversation to the weather, when the conversation without any fault

of mine naturally drifted toward her age. One continually forgets it

when allowing an old man to enter an elevator or a car first; the

habitual expression “after age” comes up to my lips, then I restrain

myself and am at a loss for what to say in its place. One day, being

forgetful, I blurted out the usual phrase in deference to an extremely

dignified and charming old man, and the old man seated in the car

turned to his wife and remarked jokingly to her, “This young man has

the cheek to think that he is younger than myself!”

The whole thing is as senseless as can be. I just don’t see the

point, I can understand young and middle-aged unmarried women

refusing to tell their age, because there the premium upon youth is

entirely natural. Chinese girls, too, get a little scared when they

reach twenty-two and are unmarried or not engaged. The years are

slipping by mercilessly. There is a feeling of fear of being left out,

what the Germans call a Torschlusspanik, the fear of being left in the

park when the gates close at night. Hence it has been said that the

longest year of a woman’s life is when she is twenty-nine; she

remains twenty-nine for three or four or five years. But apart from

this, the fear of letting people know one’s age is nonsensical. How

can one be thought wise unless one is thought to be old? And what

do the young really know about life, about marriage and about the

true values? Again I can understand that the whole pattern of

Western life places a premium on youth and therefore makes men

and women shrink from telling people their age. A perfectly efficient

and vigorous woman secretary of forty-five is, by a curious twist of

reasoning, immediately thought of as worthless when her age

becomes known. What wonder that she wants to hide her age in

order to keep her job? But then the pattern of life itself and this

premium placed upon youth are nonsensical. There is absolutely no

meaning to it, so far as I can see. This sort of thing is undoubtedly

brought about by business life, for I have no doubt there must be

more respect for old age in the home than in the office. I see no way

out of it until the American people begin somewhat to despise work

and efficiency and achievement. I suspect when an American father

looks upon the home and not the office as his ideal place in life, and

can openly tell people, as Chinese parents do, with absolute

equanimity that now he has a good son taking his place and is

honored to be fed by him, he will be anxiously looking forward to that

happy time, and will count the years impatiently before he reaches

fifty.

It seems a linguistic misfortune that hale and hearty old men in

America tell people that they are “young,” or are told that they are

“young” when really what is meant is that they are healthy. To enjoy

health in old age, or to be “old and healthy,” is the greatest of human

luck, but to call it “healthy and young” is but to detract from that

glamour and impute imperfection to what is really perfect. After all,

there is nothing more beautiful in this world than a healthy wise old

man, with “ruddy cheeks and white hair,” talking in a soothing voice

about life as one who knows it. The Chinese realize this, and have

always pictured an old man with “ruddy cheeks and white hair” as

the symbol of ultimate earthly happiness. Many Americans must

have seen Chinese pictures of the God of Longevity, with his high

forehead, his ruddy face, his white beard—and how he smiles! The

picture is so vivid. He runs his fingers through the thin flowing beard

coming down to the breast and gently strokes it in peace and

contentment, dignified because he is surrounded with respect, self-

assured because no one ever questions his wisdom, and kind

because he has seen so much of human sorrow. To persons of great

vitality, we also pay the compliment of saying that “the older they

grow, the more vigorous they are,” and a person like David Lloyd

George would be referred to as “Old Ginger,” because he gains in

pungency with age,

On the whole, I find grand old men with white beards missing in

the American picture. I know that they exist, but they are perhaps in

a conspiracy to hide themselves from me. Only once, in New Jersey,

did I meet an old man with anything like a respectable beard.

Perhaps it is the safety razor that has done it, a process as

deplorable and ignorant and stupid as the deforestation of the

Chinese hills by ignorant farmers, who have deprived North China of

its beautiful forests and left the hills as bald and ugly as the

American old men’s chins. There is yet a mine to be discovered in

America, a mine of beauty and wisdom that is pleading to the eye

and thrilling to the soul, when the American has opened his eyes to it

and starts a general program of reclamation and reforestation. Gone

are the grand old men of America! Gone is Uncle Sam with his

goatee, for he has taken a safety razor and shaved it off, to make

himself look like a frivolous young fool with his chin sticking out

instead of being drawn in gracefully, and a hard glint shining behind

horn-rimmed spectacles. What a poor substitute that is for the grand

old figure! My attitude on the Supreme Court question (although it is

none of my business) is purely determined by my love for the face of

Charles Evans Hughes. Is he the only grand old man left in America,

or are there more of them? He should retire, of course, for that is

only being kind to him, but any accusation of senility seems to me an

intolerable insult. He has a face that we would call “a sculptor’s

dream.”

I have no doubt that the fact that the old men of America still insist

on being so busy and active can be directly traced to individualism

carried to a foolish extent. It is their pride and their love of

independence and their shame of being dependent upon their

children. But among the many human rights the American people

have provided for in their Constitution, they have strangely forgotten

about the right to be fed by their children, for it is a right and an

obligation growing out of service. How can any one deny that

parents who have toiled for their children in their youth, have lost

many a good night’s sleep when they were ill, have washed their

diapers long before they could talk and have spent about a quarter of

a century bringing them up and fitting them for life, have the right to

be fed by them and loved and respected when they are old? Can

one not forget the individual and his pride of self in a general scheme

of home life in which men are justly taken care of by their parents

and, having in turn taken care of their children, are also justly taken

care of by the latter? The Chinese have not got the sense of

individual independence because the whole conception of life is

based upon mutual help within the home; hence there is no shame

attached to the circumstance of one’s being served by his children in

the sunset of one’s life. Rather it is considered good luck to have

children who can take care of one. One lives for nothing else in

China.

In the West, the old people efface themselves and prefer to live

alone in some hotel with a restaurant on the ground floor, out of

consideration for their children and an entirely unselfish desire not to

interfere in their home life. But the old people have the right to

interfere, and if interference is unpleasant, it is nevertheless natural,

for all life, particularly the domestic life, is a lesson in restraint.

Parents interfere with their children anyway when they are young,

and the logic of non-interference is already seen in the results of the

Behaviorists, who think that all children should be taken away from

their parents. If one cannot tolerate one’s own parents when they are

old and comparatively helpless, parents who have done so much for

us, whom else can one tolerate in the home? One has to learn self-

restraint anyway, or even marriage will go on the rocks. And how can

the personal service and devotion and adoration of loving children

ever be replaced by the best hotel waiters?

The Chinese idea supporting this personal service to old parents

is expressly defended on the sole ground of gratitude. The debts to

one’s friends may be numbered, but the debts to one’s parents are

beyond number. Again and again, Chinese essays on filial piety

mention the fact of washing diapers, which takes on significance

when one becomes a parent himself. In return, therefore, is it not

right that in their old age, the parents should be served with the best

food and have their favorite dishes placed before them? The duties

of a son serving his parents are pretty hard, but it is sacrilege to

make a comparison between nursing one’s own parents and nursing

a stranger in a hospital. For instance, the following are some of the

duties of the junior at home, as prescribed by T’u Hsishih and

incorporated in a book of moral instruction very popular as a text in

the old schools:

In the summer months, one should, while attending to his

parents, stand by their side and fan them, to drive away the

heat and the flies and mosquitoes. In winter, he should see

that the bed quilts are warm enough and the stove fire is hot

enough, and see that it is just right by attending to it

constantly. He should also see if there are holes or crevices in

the doors and windows, that there may be no draft, to the end

that his parents are comfortable and happy.

A child above ten should get up before his parents in the

morning, and after the toilet go to their bed and ask if they

have had a good night. If his parents have already gotten up,

he should first curtsy to them before inquiring after their

health, and should retire with another curtsy after the

question. Before going to bed at night, he should prepare the

bed, when the parents are going to sleep, and stand by until

he sees that they have fallen off to sleep and then pull down

the bed curtain and retire himself.

Who, therefore, wouldn’t want to be an old man or an old father or

grandfather in China?

This sort of thing is being very much laughed at by the proletarian

writers of China as “feudalists,” but there is a charm to it which

makes any old gentleman inland cling to it and think that modern

China is going to the dogs. The important point is that every man

grows old in time, if he lives long enough, as he certainly desires to.

If one forgets this foolish individualism which seems to assume that

an individual can exist in the abstract and be literally independent,

one must admit that we must so plan our pattern of life that the

golden period lies ahead in old age and not behind us in youth and

innocence. For if we take the reverse attitude, we are committed

without our knowing to a race with the merciless course of time,

forever afraid of what lies ahead of us—a race, it is hardly necessary

to point out, which is quite hopeless and in which we are eventually

all defeated. No one can really stop growing old; he can only cheat

himself by not admitting that he is growing old. And since there is no

use fighting against nature, one might just as well grow old

gracefully. The symphony of life should end with a grand finale of

peace and serenity and material comfort and spiritual contentment,

and not with the crash of a broken drum or cracked cymbals.

“The Real Confucius,” Tien Hsia Monthly (Shanghai), Vol. I, No. I.

The Communist Manifesto

Chapter Nine

THE ENJOYMENT OF LIVING

I. ON LYING IN BED

It seems I am destined to become a market philosopher, but it can’t

be helped. Philosophy generally seems to be the science of making

simple things difficult to understand, but I can conceive of a

philosophy which is the science of making difficult things simple. In

spite of names like “materialism,” “humanism,” “transcendentalism,”

“pluralism,” and all the other longwinded “isms,” I contend that these

systems are no deeper than my own philosophy. Life after all is

made up of eating and sleeping, of meeting and saying good-by to

friends, of reunions and farewell parties, of tears and laughter, of

having a haircut once in two weeks, of watering a potted flower and

watching one’s neighbor fall off his roof, and the dressing up of our

notions concerning these simple phenomena of life in a kind of

academic jargon is nothing but a trick to conceal either an extreme

paucity or an extreme vagueness of ideas on the part of the

university professors. Philosophy therefore has become a science by

means of which we begin more and more to understand less and

less about ourselves. What the philosophers have succeeded in is

this: the more they talk about it, the more confused we become.

It is amazing how few people are conscious of the importance of

the art of lying in bed, although actually in my opinion nine-tenths of

the world’s most important discoveries, both scientific and

philosophical, are come upon when the scientist or philosopher is

curled up in bed at two or five o’clock in the morning.

Some people lie in the daytime and others lie at night. Now by

“lying” I mean at the same time physical and moral lying, for the two

happen to coincide. I find that those people who agree with me in

believing in lying in bed as one of the greatest pleasures of life are

the honest men, while those who do not believe in lying in bed are

liars and actually lie a lot in the daytime, morally and physically.

Those who lie in the daytime are the moral uplifters, kindergarten

teachers and readers of Aesop’s Fables, while those who frankly

admit with me that a man ought to consciously cultivate the art of

lying in bed are the honest men who prefer to read stories without a

moral like Alice in Wonderland.

Now what is the significance of lying in bed, physically and

spiritually? Physically, it means a retreat to oneself, shut up from the

outside world, when one assumes the physical posture most

conducive to rest and peace and contemplation- There is a certain

proper and luxurious way of lying in bed. Confucius, that great artist

of life, “never lay straight” in bed “like a corpse,” but always curled up

on one side,

I believe one of the greatest pleasures of life is to curl

up one’s legs in bed. The posture of the arms is also very important,

in order to reach the greatest degree of aesthetic pleasure and

mental power. I believe the best posture is not lying flat on the bed,

but being upholstered with big soft pillows at an angle of thirty

degrees with either one arm or both arms placed behind the back of

one’s head. In this posture any poet can write immortal poetry, any

philosopher can revolutionize human thought, and any scientist can

make epoch-making discoveries.

It is amazing how few people are aware of the value of solitude

and contemplation. The art of lying in bed means more than physical

rest for you, after you have gone through a strenuous day, and

complete relaxation, after all the people you have met and

interviewed, all the friends who have tried to crack silly jokes, and all

your brothers and sisters who have tried to rectify your behavior and

sponsor you into heaven have thoroughly got on your nerves. It is all

that, I admit. But it is something more. If properly cultivated, it should

mean a mental house-cleaning. Actually, many business men who

pride themselves on rushing about in the morning and afternoon and

keeping three desk telephones busy all the time on their desk, never

realize that they could make twice the amount of money, if they

would give themselves one hour’s solitude awake in bed, at one

o’clock in the morning or even at seven. What does it matter even if

one stays in bed at eight o’clock? A thousand times better that he

should provide himself with a good tin of cigarettes on his bedside

table and take plenty of time to get up from bed and solve all his

problems of the day before he brushes his teeth. There, comfortably

stretched or curled up in his pyjamas, free from the irksome woolen

underwear or the irritating belt or suspenders and suffocating collars

and heavy leather boots, when his toes are emancipated and have

recovered the freedom which they inevitably lose in the daytime, the

real business head can think, for only when one’s toes are free is his

head free, and only when one’s head is free is real thinking possible.

Thus in that comfortable position, he can ponder over his

achievements and mistakes of yesterday and single out the

important from the trivial in the day’s program ahead of him. Better

that he arrived at ten o’clock in his office master of himself, than that

he should come punctually at nine or even a quarter before to watch

over his subordinates like a slave driver and then “hustle about

nothing,” as the Chinese say.

But for the thinker, the inventor and the man of ideas, lying quietly

for an hour in bed accomplishes even more. A writer could get more

ideas for his articles or his novel in this posture than he could by

sitting doggedly before his desk morning and afternoon. For there,

free from telephone calls and well-meaning visitors and the common

trivialities of everyday life, he sees life through a glass or a beaded

screen, as it were, and a halo of poetic fancy is cast around the

world of realities and informs it with a magic beauty. There he sees

life not in its rawness, but suddenly transformed into a picture more

real than life itself, like the great paintings of Ni Yünlin or Mi Fei.

Now what actually happens in bed is this. When one is in bed the

muscles are at rest, the circulation becomes smoother and more

regular, respiration becomes steadier, and all the optical, auditory

and vaso-motor nerves are more or less completly at rest, bringing

about a more or less complete physical quietude, and therefore

making mental concentration, whether on ideas or on sensations,

more absolute. Even in respect to sensations, those of smell or

hearing for example, our senses are the keenest in that moment. All

good music should be listened to in the lying condition. Li Liweng

said in his essay on “Willows” that one should learn to listen to the

birds at dawn when lying in bed. What a world of beauty is waiting

for us, if we learn to wake up at dawn and listen to the heavenly

concert of the birds! Actually there is a profusion of bird music in

most towns, although I am sure many residents are not aware of it.

For instance, this was what I recorded of the sounds I heard in

Shanghai one morning:

This morning I woke up at five after a very sound sleep and

listened to a most gorgeous feast of sounds. What woke me

up were the factory whistles of a great variety of pitch and

force. After a while, I heard a distant clatter of horse’s hoofs; it

must have been cavalry passing down Yuyuen Road; and in

that quiet dawn it gave me more aesthetic delight than a

Brahms symphony. Then came a few early chirps from some

kind of birds. I am sorry I am not proficient in birdlore, but I

enjoyed them all the same.

There were other sounds of course—some foreigner’s

“boy,” presumably after a night of dissipation outside,

appeared at about half past five and began to knock at

someone’s back door. A scavenger was then heard sweeping

a neighboring alleyway with the swish-swash of his bamboo

broom. All of a sudden, a wild duck, I suppose, would sail by

in the sky, leaving echoes of his kung-tung in the air. At

twenty-five past six, I heard the distant rumble of the engine of

the Shanghai-Hangchow train arriving at the Jessfield Station.

There were one or two sounds coming from the children in

their sleep in the next room. Life then began to stir and a

distant hum of human activities in the near and distant

neighborhood gradually increased in volume and intensity.

Downstairs in the house itself, the servants had got up, too.

Windows were being opened. A hook was being placed in

position. A slight cough. A soft tread of footsteps. A clanging

of cups and saucers. And suddenly the baby cried, “Mammal”

This was the natural concert I heard that morning in Shanghai.

Throughout the whole spring that year my greatest delight was to

listen to a kind of bird probably called a quail or partridge in English.

Its lovecall consists of four notes (do. mi: re—:—. ti,) the re lasting

two or three beats and ending in the middle of a beat, followed by an

abrupt, staccato ti in the lower octave. It is the song I used to hear in

the mountains in the south. The most beautiful part of it was that a

male bird would start the call on top of a tree about twenty yards

from my place early at dawn, and a female bird would counterpoint it

at a distance of about a hundred yards. Then once in a while there

would be a slight variation, a quickening as it were of tempo and of

the bird’s heart, and the last staccato note would be left out. This

bird-song stands out preeminently among those of others, of which

there is a great profusion. I am at a loss to describe these songs

except by resort to musical notation, but I know they include the

songs of orioles and magpies and woodpeckers, and the cooing of

pigeons. The sparrows seem to wake up later, and the reason, I

suppose, must be as our great epicure-poet Li Liweng gave it. The

other birds have to sing early because they are continually afraid of

men’s guns and children’s stones during the day. These birds,

therefore, can sing at ease only before this insufferable human

species wake up from their sleep. As soon as men wake up, the

birds can never finish their song at ease. But the sparrows can,

because they are not afraid, and therefore they can sleep longer.

II. ON SITTING IN CHAIRS

I want to write about the philosophy of sitting in chairs because I

have a reputation for lolling. Now there are many lollers among my

friends and acquaintances, but somehow I have acquired a special

reputation for lolling, at least in the Chinese literary world. I contend

that I am not the only loller in this modern world and that my

reputation has been greatly exaggerated. It happened like this. I

started a magazine called the Analects Fortnightly, in which I

consistently tried to disprove the myth of the harmfulness of

smoking. In spite of the fact that we did not have cigarette

advertisements in our magazine, I wrote and published essay after

essay praising the virtues of Lady Nicotine, Somehow, therefore, a

legend developed that I was a man doing nothing the whole day but

lolling idly on a sofa smoking a cigar, and in spite of my disclaimers

and my protests that I am one of the hardest working men in China,

the legend had got about and was constantly used as an evidence of

my belonging to the hateful leisure-class intelligentsia. Two years

after, the situation was aggravated by the fact that I started another

magazine devoted to the familiar essay. Bored stiff by the dilatory,

hypocritical and pompous style of Chinese editorials, which is the

result of the method of teaching school composition a generation

ago, making young boys of twelve or thirteen write essays on “The

Salvation of the Country” and “The Virtue of Persistence,” I saw that

the introduction of a more familiar style of writing was the means of

emancipating Chinese prose from the straitjacket of Confucian

platitudes. It happened, however, that I translated the phrase

“familiar style” by a Chinese phrase meaning “leisurely style.” This

was a signal for attack from the Communist camp, and now I have

the indisputable reputation of being the most leisurely of all leisurely

writers in China and therefore the most unforgivable, “while we are

living in this period of national humiliation.”

I admit that I do loll about in my friends’ drawing-rooms, but so do

the others. What are armchairs for anyway, except for people to loll

in? If gentlemen and ladies of the twentieth century were supposed

to sit upright all the time with absolute dignity, there should be no

armchairs at all in the modern drawing-room, but we should all be

sitting on stiff redwood furniture, with most ladies’ feet dangling

about a foot from the ground.

In other words, there is a philosophy about lolling in chairs. The

mention of the word “dignity” explains exactly the origin of the

difference in the styles of sitting between the ancient and the modern

people. The ancient people sat in order to look dignified, while

modern people sit in order to be comfortable. There is a philosophic

conflict between the two, for, according to ancient notions only half a

century ago, comfort was a sin, and to be comfortable was to be

disrespectful. Aldous Huxley has made this sufficiently plain in his

essay on “Comfort.” The feudalistic society which made the rise of

the armchair impossible until modern days, as described by Huxley,

was exactly the same as that which existed in China up to a

generation ago- Today any man who calls himself another’s friend

must not be afraid to put his legs on top of a desk in his friend’s

room, and we take that as a sign of familiarity instead of disrespect,

although to put one’s legs on top of a desk in the presence of a

member of the older generation would be a different matter.

There is a closer relationship between morals and architecture

and interior decoration than we suspect. Huxley has pointed out that

Western ladies did not take frequent baths because they were afraid

to see their own naked bodies, and this moral concept delayed the

rise of the modern white-enameled bathtub for centuries. One can

understand why in the design of old Chinese furniture there was so

little consideration for human comfort only when we realize the

Confucian atmosphere in which people moved about. Chinese

redwood furniture was designed for people to sit upright in, because

that was the only posture approved by society. Even Chinese

emperors had to sit on a throne on which I would not think of

remaining for more than five minutes, and for that matter the English

kings were just as badly off. Cleopatra went about inclining on a

couch carried by servants, because apparently she had never heard

of Confucius. If Confucius should have seen her doing that, he would

certainly have “struck her shin with a stick,” as he did to one of his

old disciples, Yuan Jang, when the latter was found sitting in an

Incorrect posture. In the Confucian society in which we lived, gentle-

men and ladies had to hold themselves perfectly erect, at least on

formal occasions, and any sign of putting one’s leg up would be at

once construed as a sign of vulgarity and lack of culture. In fact, to

show extra respect, as when seeing official superiors, one had to at

gingerly on the edge of a chair at an oblique angle, which was a sign

of respect and of the height of culture. There is also a close

connection between the Confucian tradition and the discomforts of

Chinese architecture, but we will not go into that now.

Thanks to the romantic movement in the later eighteenth and

earlier nineteenth centuries, this tradition of classical decorum has

broken down, and to be comfortable is no longer a sin. On the other

hand, a more truthful attitude towards life has taken its place, due as

much to the romantic movement as to a better understanding of

human psychology. The same change of attitude which has ceased

to regard theatrical amusements as immoral and Shakespeare as a

“barbarian,” has also made possible the evolution of ladies’ bathing

costumes, clean bathtubs and comfortable armchairs and divans,

and of a more truthful and at the same time intimate style of living

and writing. In this sense, there is a true connection between my

habit of lolling on a sofa and my attempt to introduce a more intimate

and free and easy writing into modern Chinese journalism.

If we admit that comfort is not a sin, then we must also admit that

the more comfortably a man arranges himself in an armchair in a

friend’s drawing-room, the greater respect he is showing to his host.

After all, to make oneself at home and look restful is only to help

one’s host or hostess succeed in the difficult art of hospitality, How

many hostesses have feared and trembled for an evening party in

which the guests are not willing to loosen up and just be themselves.

I have always helped my hosts and hostesses by putting a leg up on

top of a tea table or whatever happened to be the nearest object,

and in that way forced everybody else to throw away the cloak of

false dignity.

Now I have discovered a formula regarding the comparative

comfort of furniture. This formula may be stated in very simple terms:

the lower a chair is, the more comfortable it becomes. Many people

have sat down on a certain chair in a friend’s home and wondered

why it is so cozy. Before the discovery of this formula, I used to think

that students of interior decoration probably had a mathematical

formula for the proportion between height and width and angle of

inclination of chairs which conduced to the maximum comfort of

sitters. Since the discovery of this formula, I have found that it is

simpler than that. Take any Chinese redwood furniture and saw off

its legs a few inches, and it immediately becomes more comfortable;

and if you saw off another few inches, then it becomes still more

comfortable. The logical conclusion of this is, of course, that one is

most comfortable when one is lying perfectly flat on a bed. The

matter is as simple as that.

From this fundamental principle, we may derive the corollary that

when we find ourselves sitting in a chair that is too high and can’t

saw its legs off, all we have to do is seek some object in the

foreground on which we can rest our legs and therefore theoretically

decrease the difference between the levels of our hips and our feet.

One of the commonest devices that I use is to pull out a drawer in

my desk and put my feet on it. But the intelligent application of this

corollary I can leave to everybody’s common sense.

To correct any misunderstanding that I am lolling all the time for

sixteen waking hours of the day, I must hasten to explain that I am

capable of sitting doggedly at a desk or in front of a typewriter for

three hours. Just because I wish to make it clear that relaxation of

our muscles is not necessarily a crime, I do not mean that we should

keep our muscles relaxed all the time, or that this is the most

hygienic posture to be assumed all the time. That is far from my

intention. After all human life goes in cycles of work and play, of

tension and relaxation. The male brain energy and capacity for work

goes in monthly cycles just like women’s bodies. William James said

that when the chains of a bicycle are kept too tight, they are not

conducive to the easiest running, and so with the human mind.

Everything, after all, is a matter of habit. There is an infinite capacity

in the human body for adjustments. Japanese who have the habit of

sitting with crossed legs on the floor are liable to get cramps, I

suspect, when they are made to sit on chairs. Only by alternating

between the absolutely erect working posture of office hours and the

posture of stretching ourselves on a sofa after a hard day’s work can

we achieve that highest wisdom of living.

A word to the ladies: when there is nothing in the immediate

foreground on which you can rest your feet, you can always curl up

your legs on a sofa. You never look more charming than when you

are in that attitude.

III. ON CONVERSATION

“Talking with you for one night is better than studying books for ten

years,”—this was the comment of an old Chinese scholar after he

had had a conversation with another friend. There is much truth in

that statement, and today the phrase “a night’s talk” has become a

current expression for a happy conversation with a friend at night,

either past or anticipated. There are two or three books which

resemble an English “week-end omnibus,” bearing the title A Night’s

Talk, or A Night’s Talk in the Mountains. Such a supreme pleasure as

a perfect conversation with a friend at night is necessarily rare, for as

Li Liweng has pointed out, those who are wise seldom know how to

talk, and those who talk are seldom wise. The discovery of a man up

in a mountain temple, who really understands life and at the same

time understands the art of conversation, must therefore be one of

the keenest pleasures, like the discovery of a new planet by an

astronomer or of a new variety of plant by a botanist.

People today are complaining that the art of conversation around

a fireplace or on cracker barrels is becoming lost, owing to the tempo

of business life today. I am quite sure that this tempo has something

to do with it, but believe also that the distortion of the home into an

apartment without a log fire began the destruction of the art of

conversation, and the influence of the motor car completed it. The

tempo is entirely wrong, for conversation exists only in a society of

men imbued in the spirit of leisure, with its ease, its humor, and its

appreciation of light nuances. For there is an evident distinction

between mere talking and conversation as such. This distinction is

made in the Chinese language between shuohua (speaking) and

tianhua (conversation), which implies the discourse is more chatty

and leisurely and the topics of conversation are more trivial and less

business-like. A similar difference may be noted between business

correspondence and the letters of literary friends. We can speak or

discuss business with almost any person, but there are very few

people with whom we can truly hold a night’s conversation. Hence,

when we do find a true conversationalist, the pleasure is equal to, if

not above, that of reading a delightful author, with the additional

pleasure of hearing his voice and seeing his gestures. Sometimes

we find it at the happy reunion of old friends, or among

acquaintances indulging in reminiscences, sometimes in the

smoking room of a night train, and sometimes at an inn on a distant

journey. There will be chats about ghosts and fox-spirits, mixed with

amusing tales or impassioned comments on dictators and traitors,

and sometimes before we know it, light is shown by a wise observer

and conversationalist on things taking place in a certain country

which are a premonition of the impending collapse or change in a

regime. Such conversations remain among the memories that we

cherish for life.

Of course, night is the best time for conversation, because there is

a certain lack of glamour in conversations during the daytime. The

place of conversation seems to me entirely unimportant. One can

enjoy a good conversation on literature and philosophy in an

eighteenth-century salon, or sitting on barrels at a plantation of an

afternoon. Or it may be on a windy or rainy night when we are

traveling in a river boat and the lantern lights from boats anchoring

on the opposite bank of the river cast their reflections into the water

and we hear the boatmen tell us stories about the girlhood of the

Queen-In fact, the charm of conversation lies in the fact that the

circumstances in which it takes place, the place, the time and the

persons engaged in it, vary from occasion to occasion. Sometimes

we remember it in connection with a breezy moonlight night, when

the cassia flowers are in bloom, and sometimes we associate it in

memory with a dark and stormy night when a log fire is glowing on

the hearth, and sometimes we remember we were sitting on top of a

pavilion watching boats coming down the river, and perhaps a boat

was overturned by the swift current, or again, we were sitting in the

waiting room of a railroad station in the small hours of the morning.

These pictures associate themselves indelibly with our memory of

those particular conversations. There were perhaps two or three

persons in the room, or perhaps five or six; maybe old Chen was

slightly drunk that night, or old Chin had a cold in the nose and

spoke with a slight twang, adding to the particular flavor of that

evening, Such is human life that “the moon cannot always be round,

the flowers cannot always look so fine and good friends cannot

always meet together,” and I do not think the gods will be jealous of

us when we engage in such simple pastimes.

As a rule, a good conversation is always like a good familiar

essay-Both its style and its contents are similar to that of the essay.

Such topics as fox-spirits, flies, the strange ways of Englishmen, the

difference between Oriental and Occidental culture, the bookstalls

along the Seine, a nymphomaniac apprentice in a tailor shop,

anecdotes of our rulers, statesmen and generals, the method of

preserving “Buddha’s Fingers” (a variety of citron)—these are all

good and legitimate topics of conversation. The point it has most in

common with the essay is its leisurely style. However weighty and

important the topic may be, involving reflections on the sad change

or state of chaos of one’s own country, or the sinking of civilization

itself under a current of mad political ideas, depriving man of liberty,

human dignity and even the goal of human happiness, or even

involving moving questions of truth and justice, still such ideas are

expressed in a casual, leisurely and intimate manner. For in

civilization, however a man chafes and is angry at the robbers of our

liberty, we are allowed only to express our sentiments by a light smile

around our lips or at the tip of our pen. Our really impassioned

tirades, in which we give full reins to our sentiments, may be heard

only by a few of our most intimate friends. Hence the requisite

condition of a true conversation is that we are able to air our views at

leisure in the intimacy of a room with a few good friends and with no

people around whom we hate to look at,

It is easy to see this contrast between the true genre of

conversation and other kinds of polite exchange of opinion by

referring to the similar contrast between a good familiar essay and

the statements of politicians. Although there are a good deal more

noble sentiments expressed in politicians, statements, sentiments of

democracy, desire for service, interest in the welfare of the poor,

devotion to the country, lofty idealism, love of peace and assurances

of unfailing international friendship, and absolutely no suggestions of

greed for power or money or fame, yet there is a smell about it which

puts one off at a distance, like an over-dressed and over-painted

lady. On the other hand, when we hear a true conversation or read a

good familiar essay, we feel that we have seen a plainly dressed

country maiden washing clothes by the riverbank, with perhaps her

hair a little disheveled and one button loose, but withal charming and

intimate and likable. That is the familiar charm and studied

negligence aimed at in a Western woman’s negligee. Some of this

familiar charm of intimacy must be a part of all good conversations

and all good essays.

The proper style of conversation is, therefore, a style of intimacy

and nonchalance, in which the parties engaged have lost their self-

consciousness and are entirely oblivious of how they dress, how

they speak, how they sneeze, and where they put their hands, and

are equally indifferent as to which way the conversation is drifting.

We can engage in a true conversation only when we meet our

intimate friends and are prepared to unburden our hearts to each

other. One of them has put his feet on a neighboring table, another is

sitting on a window sill, and still another is sitting on the floor,

upholstered by a cushion which he has snatched from the sofa, thus

leaving one-third of the sofa seat uncovered. For it is only when your

hands and feet are relaxed and the position of your body is at ease

that your heart can be at ease also. It is then that:

Before my face are friends who know my heart,

And at my side are none who hurt my eyes.

This is the absolutely necessary condition of all conversation worthy

of the name of an art. And since we do not care what we are talking

about, the conversation will drift further and further, without order and

without method, and the company break up, happy of heart.

Such is the connection between leisure and conversation and the

connection between conversation and the rise of prose that I believe

the truly cultured prose of a nation was born at a time when

conversation had already developed as a fine art. This we see most

clearly in the development of Chinese and Greek prose. I cannot

otherwise imagine an explanation for the vitality of Chinese thought

in the centuries following Confucius, giving birth to the so-called

“Nine Schools of Thought,” than the development of a cultured

background, in which there was a class of scholars whose business

was only to talk. For confirmation of my theory, we find there were

five great rich noblemen, noted for their generosity, chivalry and

fondness for guests. All of them had thousands of scholarly guests at

their homes, as for instance Mengch’ang of Ch’i Kingdom who was

reputed to have three thousand scholars, or “guests” wearing

“pearled shoes,” being “fed” at his home. One can imagine the

conversational hubbub that was going on in those houses. The

content of the conversation of scholars of those days is today

reflected in the books of Liehtse, Hucainantse, Chankuotœeh and

Lilian. It is noteworthy that with respect to the last one, which was a

book admittedly written by Lü’s guests but published in his name (in

a sense similar to the “patrons” of English sixteenth-century and

seventeenth-century authors), there was already developed the idea

of the art of living well, in the formula that it would be better to live

well or not at all. There was besides a class of brilliant sophists or

professional talkers, who were engaged by the different warring

states and sent out as diplomats to avert a crisis or persuade a

hostile army to retreat from the walls of a besieged city, or to bring

about an alliance, as so many did. Such professional sophists were

always distinguished by their wit, their clever parables and their

general persuasive power. The conversations or clever arguments of

such sophists are preserved for us in the book Chankuotœeh. From

such an atmosphere of free and playful discussion arose some of the

greatest names in philosophy, Yang Chu, noted for his cynicism,

Hanfeitse, noted for his realism (similar to Machiaevelli’s, but more

tempered), and the great diplomat Yentse, noted for his wit.

An example of the cultured social life existing in the third century

B. C., toward the end of this period, may be seen in the record of

how a certain scholar by the name of Li Yuan succeeded in

presenting his accomplished sister to the court of a rich patron in the

Kingdom of Ch’u. The patron in turn secured the favor of the King for

this girl, which was eventually responsible for the destruction of the

Kingdom of Ch’u by the conquering army of the First Emperor of

Ch’in, who united the Chinese Empire.

Formerly there was Li Yuan, serving as a subordinate of

Prince Ch’unshen, the Prime Minister of the King of Ch’u. Li

had a sister by the name of Nuhuan who spoke to him one

day, “I hear that the King is without an heir. If you will present

me to the Prime Minister, through him I will be able to see the

King.” “But the Prime Minister is a high official,” replied her

brother. “How dare I mention it to him?” “You just go and see

him,” said his sister, “and then tell him that you have to come

home because a noble guest has arrived. He will then ask you

who is the noble guest and you can reply that you have a

sister, that the Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Lu has heard

of her reputation and has sent a delegate to ask for her from

you, and that a messenger from home has just brought the

news. He will then ask, what can your sister do? And you will

reply that I can play on the ch’in, can read and write, and have

mastered one of the classics. He is certain to send for me that

way.”

Li then promised to do as she said, and the next morning,

after seeing the Prime Minister, he said, “A messenger from

home told me that there is a guest from a distant country, and

I must return to receive him.” The Prime Minister Ch’unshen

then actually asked him, “Who is this noble guest from a

distant country?” And Li replied, “I have a sister, and the

Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Lu has heard of her

reputation and has sent a delegate to ask for her.” “May I see

her?” asked the Prime Minister. “Ask her to come and meet

me at the Li Pavilion.” “Yes sir,” replied Li, and he returned

and told his sister that the Prime Minister expected to see her

the next evening at the Li Pavilion. “You must go there

yourself first in order to be there when I arrive,” said the girl.

The Prime Minister then arrived at the time and asked to

see Nühuan. She was presented and they drank a great deal.

Nühuan played on the ch’in, and before her song was

finished, the Prime Minister was greatly pleased and asked

her to stay there for the night. . . .

This then, was the social background of cultivated ladies and

leisurely scholars, which produced for us the first important

development of prose in China. There were ladies who could talk

and read and write and play on a musical instrument, making for that

peculiarly light mixture of social, artistic and literary motives that was

always found in a society where men and women mixed together. It

was undoubtedly aristocratic in character and atmosphere, for the

Prime Minister Ch’unshen was difficult to see, but when he heard of

a lady who could play on a musical instrument and had mastered

one of the classics, he insisted on seeing her, This was then the life

of leisure which the early Chinese sophists and philosophers lived.

The books of these early Chinese philosophers were nothing but the

results of leisurely conversation among these scholars.

It is clear that only in a society with leisure can the art of

conversation be produced, and it is equally clear also that only when

there is an art of conversation can there be good familiar essays. In

general, both the art of conversation and the art of writing good

prose came comparatively late in the history of human civilization,

because the human mind had to develop a certain subtlety and

lightness of touch, and this was possible only in a life of leisure. I am

quite aware that today, from the point of view of the Communists, to

enjoy leisure or to belong to the hated leisure class is already to be

counter-revolutionary, but I am quite convinced that the aim of true

Communism and Socialism is that all people should be able to enjoy

leisure, or that the enjoyment of leisure should become general.

Therefore, the enjoyment of leisure cannot be a sin, but on the other

hand the progress of culture itself depends on an intelligent use of

leisure, of which conversation is only one form. Business men who

are busy the whole day and immediately go to bed after supper,

snoring like cows, are not likely to contribute anything to culture.

Sometimes this “leisure” is enforced upon one and does not come

of one’s own seeking. All the same, many good works of literature

have been produced in an atmosphere of enforced leisure. When we

see a literary genius with great promise, dispersing his energy in

futile social parties or writing essays on current politics, the best and

kindest thing we can do to him is to shut him up in ail. For we must

remember that it was in prison that the King Wen wrote his Book of

Changes, a classic of philosophy on the changes of human life, and

Ssema Ch’ien wrote his masterpiece, Shihcht (conventionally spelled

Shikt), the best history ever written in the Chinese language.

Sometimes the authors were defeated in their ambitions for a

political career, or the political situation was too discouraging, and

great works of literature or of art were produced. That is the reason

why we had such great Yuan painters and Yuan dramatists during

the Mongol regime and such great painters as Shih T’ao and Pata

Shanjen during the beginning of the Manchu conquest of China.

Patriotism in the form of a sense of utter humiliation under foreign

rule made their whole-hearted devotion to art and learning possible

Shih T’ao is undoubtedly one of the very greatest painters China has

ever produced, and the fact that he is not generally known in the

West is due to an accident and to the fact that the Manchu emperors

were not willing to give credit to these artists not in sympathy with

their rule. Other great writers who had failed in the Imperial

examination, began to sublimate their energy and turn to creation, as

in the case of Shih Naian who gave us All Men Are Brothers and P’u

Liuhsien who gave us Strange Stories From a Chinese Studio.

We have in the preface to All Men Are Brothers, attributed to Shih,

one of the most delightful descriptions of the pleasure of

conversation among friends:

When all my friends come together to my house, there are

sixteen persons in all, but it is seldom that they all come. But

except for rainy or stormy days, it is also seldom that none of

them comes. Most of the days, we have six or seven persons

in the house, and when they come, they do not immediately

begin to think; they would take a sip when they feel like it and

stop when they feel like it, for they regard the pleasure as

consisting in the conversation, and not in the wine. We do not

talk about court politics, not only because it lies outside our

proper occupation, but also because at such a distance most

of the news is based upon hearsay; hearsay news is mere

rumour, and to discuss rumours would be a waste of our

saliva. We also do not talk about people’s faults, for people

have no faults, and we should not malign them. We do not

say things to shock people and no one is shocked; on the

other hand, we do wish people to understand what we say,

but people still don’t understand what we say. For such things

as we talk about he in the depths of the human heart, and the

people of the world are too busy to hear them.

It was in this kind of style and with this kind of sentiment that Shih’s

great work was produced, and this was possible because they

enjoyed leisure.

The rise of Greek prose took place clearly in the same kind of a

leisurely social background. The lucidity of Greek thought and

clearness of the Greek prose style clearly owe their existence to the

art of leisurely conversation, as is so clearly revealed in the title of

Plato’s Dialogues. In the “Banquet” we see a group of Greek

scholars inclining on the ground and chatting merrily along in an

atmosphere of wine and fruit and beautiful boys. It was because

these people had cultivated the art of talking that their thought was

so lucid and their style so clear, providing a refreshing contrast to the

pomposity and pedantry of modern academic writers. These Greeks

evidently had learned to handle the topic of philosophy lightly. The

charming conversational atmosphere of the Greek philosophers,

their desire for talking, the value they placed upon hearing a good

talk and the choice of surroundings for conversations were

beautifully described in the introduction to “Phaedrus.” This gives us

an insight into the rise of Greek prose.

Plato’s Republic” itself does not begin, as some of the modern

writers would have it, with some such sentence as, “Human

civilization, as seen through its successive stages of development, is

a dynamic movement from heterogeneity to homogeneity,” or some

other equally incomprehensible rot. It begins rather with the genial

sentence: “I went down yesterday to the Piraeus, with Glauco, the

son of Aristo, to pay my devotion to the goddess; and desirous, at

the same time, to observe in what manner they would celebrate the

festival, as they were now to do it for the first time.” The same

atmosphere that we find among the early Chinese philosophers

when thinking was most active and virile, we find in the picture of

Greek men, gathered to discuss the topic whether a great writer of

tragedies should or should not be also a great writer of comedies, as

described in “The Banquet.” There was an atmosphere of mixed

seriousness and gaiety and friendly repartee. People were making

fun of Socrates’ drinking capacity, but there he sat, drinking or

stopping as he liked, pouring a cup for himself when he felt like it,

without bothering about others. And thus he talked the whole night

out until everybody in the company fell asleep except Aristophanes

and Agathon. When he had thus talked everybody to sleep and was

thus the only one awake, he left the banquet and went to Lyceum to

have a morning bath, and passed the day as fresh as ever. It was in

this atmosphere of friendly discourse that Greek philosophy was

born.

There is no question but we need the presence of women in a

cultured conversation, to give it the necessary frivolity which is the

soul of conversation. Without frivolity and gaiety, conversation soon

becomes heavy and philosophy itself becomes foolish and a

stranger to life. It has been found in all countries and in all ages that,

whenever there was a culture interested in the understanding of the

art of living, there always developed a fashion of welcoming women

in society. This was the case of Athens in the time of Pericles, and it

was so in the eighteenth-century French salons. Even in China,

where mixed company was tabooed, Chinese men scholars still

demanded the presence of women who could join in their

conversation. In the three dynasties, Chin, Sung and Ming, when the

art of conversation was cultivated and became a fashion, there

always appeared accomplished ladies, like Hsieh Taoyun, Ch’oayün,

Liu Jushih and others. Far although Chinese men demanded that

their wives be virtuous and abstain from seeing men, they did not on

that account cease to desire the company of talented women

themselves. Chinese literary history after all was very much mixed

up with the lives of professional courtesans. The demand for a touch

of feminine charm in a company during conversation is a universal

demand. I have met German ladies who can talk from five o’clock in

the afternoon till eleven at night, and I have come across English

and American ladies who frighten me by their familiarity with

economics, a subject that I despair of ever having the courage to

study. But it seems to me, even if there are no ladies around who

can debate with me on Karl Marx and Engels, conversation is always

pleasantly stimulated when there are a few ladies who know how to

listen and look sweetly pensive, I always find it more delightful than

talking to stupid-looking men.

IV. ON TEA AND FRIENDSHIP

I do not think that, considered from the point of view of human

culture and happiness, there have been more significant inventions

in the history of mankind, more vitally important and more directly

contributing to our enjoyment of leisure, friendship, sociability and

conversation, than the inventions of smoking, drinking and tea All

three have several characteristics in common: first of all, that they

contribute toward our sociability; secondly, that they do not fill our

stomach as food does, and therefore can be enjoyed between

meals; and thirdly, that they are all to be enjoyed through the nostrils

by acting on our sense of smell. So great are their influences upon

culture that we have smoking cars besides dining cars, and we have

wine restaurants or taverns and tea houses. ln China and England at

least, drinking tea has become a social institution.

The proper enjoyment of tobacco, drink and tea can only be

developed in an atmosphere of leisure, friendship and sociability For

it is only with men gifted with the sense of comradeship, extremely

select in the matter of forming friends and endowed with a natural

love of the leisurely life, that the full enjoyment of tobacco and drink

and tea becomes possible. Take away the element of sociability, and

these things have no meaning. The enjoyment of these things, like

the enjoyment of the moon, the snow and the flowers, must take

place in proper company, for this I regard as the thing that the

Chinese artists of life most frequently insist upon: that certain kinds

of flowers must be enjoyed with certain types of persons, certain

kinds of scenery must be associated with certain kinds of ladies, that

the sound of raindrops must be enjoyed, if it is to be enjoyed fully,

when lying on a bamboo bed in a temple deep in the mountains on a

summer day; that, in short, the mood is the thing, that there is a

proper mood for everything, and that wrong company may spoil the

mood entirely. Hence the beginning of any artist of life is that he or

anyone who wishes to learn to enjoy life must, as the absolutely

necessary condition, find friends of the same type of temperament,

and take as much trouble to gain and keep their friendship as wives

take to keep their husbands, or as a good chess player takes a

journey of a thousand miles to meet a fellow chess player.

The atmosphere, therefore, is the thing. One must begin with the

proper conception of the scholar’s studio and the general

environment in which life is going to be enjoyed. First of all, there are

the friends with whom we are going to share this enjoyment Different

types of friends must be selected for different types of enjoyment. It

would be as great a mistake to go horseback riding with a studious

and pensive friend, as it would be to go to a concert with a person

who doesn’t understand music. Hence as a Chinese writer

expresses it:

For enjoying flowers, one must secure big-hearted friends.

For going to sing-song houses to have a look at sing-song

girls, one must secure temperate friends. For going up a high

mountain, one must secure romantic friends. For boating, one

must secure friends with an expansive nature. For facing the

moon, one must secure friends with a cool philosophy. For

anticipating snow, one must secure beautiful friends. For a

wine party, one must secure friends with flavor and charm,

Having selected and formed friends for the proper enjoyment of

different occasions, one then looks for the proper surroundings. It is

not so important that one’s house be richly decorated as that it

should be situated in beautiful country, with the possibility of walking

about on the rice fields, or lying down under shady trees on a river

bank. The requirements for the house itself are simple enough. One

can “have a house with several rooms, grain fields of several mow, a

pool made from a basin and windows made from broken jars, with

the walls coming up to the shoulders and a room the size of a rice

bushel, and in the leisure time after enjoying the warmth of cotton

beddings and a meal of vegetable soup, one can become so great

that his spirit expands and fills the entire universe. For such a quiet

studio, one should have wut’ung trees in front and some green

bamboos behind. On the south of the house, the eaves will stretch

boldly forward, while on the north side, there will be small windows,

which can be closed in spring and winter to shelter one from rain and

wind, and opened in summer and autumn for ventilation. The beauty

of the wut’ung tree is that all its leaves fall off in spring and winter,

thus admitting us to the full enjoyment of the sun’s warmth, while in

summer and autumn its shade protects us from the scorching heat.”

Or as another writer expressed it, one should “build a house of

several beams, grow a hedge of chin trees and cover a pavilion with

a hay-thatch. Three mow of land will be devoted to planting bamboos

and flowers and fruit trees, while two mow will be devoted to planting

vegetables. The four walls of a room are bare and the room is empty,

with the exception of two or three rough beds placed in the pavilion.

A peasant boy will be kept to water the vegetables and clear the

weeds. So then one may arm one’s self with books and a sword

against solitude, and provide a ch’in (a stringed instrument) and

chess to anticipate the coming of good friends.”

An atmosphere of familiarity will then invest the place, “In my

friends will be admitted. They will be treated with rich or poor fare

such as I eat, and we will chat and laugh and forget our own

existence. We will not discuss the right and wrong of other people

and will be totally indifferent to worldly glory and wealth. In our

leisure we will discuss the ancients and the moderns, and in our

quiet, we will play with the mountains and rivers. Then we will have

thin, clear tea and good wine to fit into the atmosphere of delightful

seclusion. That is my conception of the pleasure of friendship.”

In such a congenial atmosphere, we are then ready to gratify our

senses, the senses of color and smell and sound. It is then that one

should smoke and one should drink. We then transform our bodies

into a sensory apparatus for perceiving the wonderful symphony of

colors and sounds and smells and tastes provided by Nature and by

culture. We feel like good violins about to be played on by master

violinists. And thus “we burn incense on a moonlight night and play

three stanzas of music from an ancient instrument, and immediately

the myriad worries of our breast are banished and all our foolish

ambitions or desires are forgotten. We will then inquire, what is the

fragance of this incense, what is the color of the smoke, what is that

shadow that comes through the white papered windows, what is this

sound that arises from below my fingertips, what is this enjoyment

which makes us so quietly happy and so forgetful of everything else,

and what is the condition of the infinite universe?”

Thus chastened in spirit, quiet in mind and surrounded by proper

company, one is fit to enjoy tea. For tea is invented for quiet

company as wine is invented for a noisy party. There is something in

the nature of tea that leads us into a world of quiet contemplation of

life. It would be as disastrous to drink tea with babies crying around,

or with loud-voiced women or politics-talking men, as to pick tea on a

rainy or a cloudy day. Picked at early dawn on a clear day, when the

morning air on mountain top was clear and thin, and the fragrance of

dews was still upon the leaves, tea is still associated with the

fragrance and refinement of the magic dew in its enjoyment. With the

Taoist insistence upon return to nature, and with its conception that

the universe is kept alive by the interplay of the male and female

forces, the dew actually stands for the “juice of heaven and earth”

when the two principles are united at night, and the idea is current

that the dew is a magic food, fine and clear and ethereal, and any

man or beast who drinks enough of it stands a good chance of being

immortal De Quincey says quite correctly that tea “will always be the

favorite beverage of the intellectual,” but the Chinese seem to go

further and associate it with the highminded recluse.

Tea is then symbolic of earthly purity, requiring the most fastidious

cleanliness in its preparation, from picking, frying and preserving to

its final infusion and drinking, easily upset or spoiled by the slightest

contamination of oily hands or oily cups. Consequently, its enjoyment

is appropriate in an atmosphere where all ostentation or suggestion

of luxury is banished from one’s eyes and one’s thoughts. After all,

one enjoys sing-song girls with wine and not with tea, and when

sing-song girls are fit to drink tea with, they are already in the class

that Chinese poets and scholars favon. Su Tungp’o once compared

tea to a sweet maiden, but a later critic, T’ien Yiheng, author of

Chuch’ùan Hsiaop’in (Essay On Boiling Spring Water)

immediately

qualified it by adding that tea could be compared, if it must be

compared to women at all, only to the Fairy Maku, and that, “as for

beauties with peach-colored faces and willow waists, they should be

shut up in curtained beds, and not be allowed to contaminate the

rocks and springs.” For the same author says, “One drinks tea to

forget the world’s noise; it is not for those who eat rich food and

dress in silk pyjamas.”

It must be remembered that, according to Ch’alu, “the essence of

the enjoyment of tea lies in appreciation of its color, fragrance and

flavor, and the principles of preparation are refinement, dryness and

cleanliness.” An element of quiet is therefore necessary for the

appreciation of these qualities, an appreciation that comes from a

man who can “look at a hot world with a cool head.” Since the Sung

Dynasty, connoisseurs have generally regarded a cup of pale tea as

the best, and the delicate flavor of pale tea can easily pass

unperceived by one occupied with busy thoughts, or when the

neighborhood is noisy, or servants are quarreling, or when served by

ugly maids. The company, too, must be small. For, “it is important in

drinking tea that the guests be few. Many guests would make it

noisy, and noisiness takes away from its cultured charm. To drink

alone is called secluded; to drink between two is called comfortable;

to drink with three or four is called charming; to drink with five or six

is called common; and to drink with seven or eight is called

[contemptuously] philanthropic.” As the author of Ch’asu said, “to

pour tea around again and again from a big pot, and drink it up at a

gulp, or to warm it up again after a while, or to ask for extremely

strong taste would be like farmers or artisans who drink tea to fill

their belly after hard work; it would then be impossible to speak of

the distinction and appreciation of flavors.”

For this reason, and out of consideration for the utmost Tightness

and cleanliness in preparation, Chinese writers on tea have always

insisted on personal attention in boiling tea, or since that is

necessarily inconvenient, that two boy servants be specially trained

to do the job. Tea is usually boiled on a separate small stove in the

room or directly outside, away from the kitchen. The servant boys

must be trained to make tea in the presence of their master and to

observe a routine of cleanliness, washing the cups every morning

(never wiping them with a towel), washing their hands often and

keeping their fingernails clean. “When there are three guests, one

stove will be enough, but when there are five or six persons, two

separate stoves and kettles will be required, one boy attending to

each stove, for if one is required to attend to both, there may be

delays or mix-ups.” True connoisseurs, however, regard the personal

preparation of tea as a special pleasure. Without developing into a

rigid system as in Japan, the preparation and drinking of tea is

always a performance of loving pleasure, importance and distinction.

In fact, the preparation is half the fun of the drinking, as cracking

melon-seeds between one’s teeth is half the pleasure of eating them.

Usually a stove is set before a window, with good hard charcoal

burning, A certain sense of importance invests the host, who fans

the stove and watches the vapor coming out from the kettle.

Methodically he arranges a small pot and four tiny cups, usually

smaller than small coffee cups, in a tray. He sees that they are in

order, moves the pewter-foil pot of tea leaves near the tray and

keeps it in readiness, chatting along with his guests, but not so much

that he forgets his duties. He turns round to look at the stove, and

from the time the kettle begins to sing, he never leaves it, but

continues to fan the fire harder than before. Perhaps he stops to take

the lid off and look at the tiny bubbles, technically called “fish eyes”

or “crab froth,” appearing on the bottom of the kettle, and puts the lid

on again. This is the “first boil.” He listens carefully as the gentle

singing increases in volume to that of a “gurgle,” with small bubbles

coming up the sides of the kettle, technically called the “second boil.”

It is then that he watches most carefully the vapor emitted from the

kettle spout, and just shortly before the “third boil” is reached, when

the water is brought up to a full boil, “like billowing waves,” he takes

the kettle from the fire and scalds the pot inside and out with the

boiling water, immediately adds the proper quantity of leaves and

makes the infusion. Tea of this kind, like the famous “Iron Goddess

of Mercy,” drunk in Fukien, is made very thick. The small pot is

barely enough to hold four demi-tasses and is filled one-third with

leaves. As the quantity of leaves is large, the tea is immediately

poured into the cups and immediately drunk, This finishes the pot,

and the kettle, filled with fresh water, is put on the fire again, getting

ready for the second pot. Strictly speaking, the second pot is

regarded as the best; the first pot being compared to a girl of

thirteen, the second compared to a girl of sweet sixteen, and the

third regarded as a woman. Theoretically, the third infusion from the

same leaves is disallowed by connoisseurs, but actually one does try

to live on with the “woman,”

The above is a strict description of preparing a special kind of tea

as I have seen it in my native province, an art generally unknown in

North China, In China generally, tea pots used are much larger, and

the ideal color of tea is a clear, pale, golden yellow, never dark red

like English tea.

Of course, we are speaking of tea as drunk by connoisseurs and

not as generally served among shopkeepers. No such nicety can be

expected of general mankind or when tea is consumed by the gallon

by all comers. That is why the author of Ch’asu, Hsu Ts’eshu, says,

“When there is a big party, with visitors coming and coming, one can

only exchange with them cups of wine, and among strangers who

have just met or among common friends, one should serve only tea

of the ordinary quality. Only when our intimate friends of the same

temperament have arrived, and we are all happy, all brilliant in

conversation and all able to lay aside the formalities, then may we

ask the boy servant to build a fire and draw water, and decide the

number of stoves and cups to be used in accordance with the

company present.” It is of this state of things that the author of

Ch’achieh says, “We are sitting at night in a mountain lodge, and are

boiling tea with water from a mountain spring. When the fire attacks

the water, we begin to hear a sound similar to the singing of the wind

among pine trees. We pour the tea into a cup, and the gentle glow of

its light plays around the place. The pleasure of such a moment

cannot be shared with vulgar people.”

In a true tea lover, the pleasure of handling all the paraphernalia is

such that it is enjoyed for its own sake, as in the case of Ts’ai

Hsiang, who in his old age was not able to drink, but kept on

enjoying the preparation of tea as a daily habit. There was also

another scholar, by the name of Chou Wenfu, who prepared and

drank tea six times daily at definite hours from dawn to evening, and

who loved his pot so much that he had it buried with him when he

died.

The art and technique of tea enjoyment, then, consists of the

following: first, tea, being most susceptible to contamination of

flavors, must be handled throughout with the utmost cleanliness and

kept apart from wine, incense, and other smelly substances and

people handling such substances. Second, it must be kept in a cool,

dry place, and during moist seasons, a reasonable quantity for use

must be kept in special small pots, best made of pewter-foil, while

the reserve in the big pots is not opened except when necessary,

and if a collection gets moldy, it should be submitted to a gentle

roasting over a slow fire, uncovered and constantly fanned, so as to

prevent the leaves from turning yellow or becoming discolored.

Third, half of the art of making tea lies in getting good water with a

keen edge; mountain spring water comes first, river water second,

and well water third; water from the tap, if coming from dams, being

essentially mountain water and satisfactory. Fourth, for the

appreciation of rare cups, one must have quiet friends and not too

many of them at one time. Fifth, the proper color of tea in general is

a pale golden yellow, and all dark red tea must be taken with milk or

lemon or peppermint, or anything to cover up its awful sharp taste.

Sixth, the best tea has a “return flavor” (hueiwei), which is felt about

half a minute after drinking and after its chemical elements have had

time to act on the salivary glands. Seven, tea must be freshly made

and drunk immediately, and if good tea is expected, it should not be

allowed to stand in the pot for too long, when the infusion has gone

too far. Eight, it must be made with water just brought up to a boil.

Nine, all adulterants are taboo, although individual differences may

be allowed for people who prefer a slight mixture of some foreign

flavor (e. g., jasmine, or cassia). Eleven, the flavor expected of the

best tea is the delicate flavor of “baby’s flesh.”

In accordance with the Chinese practice of prescribing the proper

moment and surrounding for enjoying a thing, Ch’asu, an excellent

treatise on tea, reads thus:

Proper moments for drinking tea:

When one’s heart and hands are idle,

Tired after reading poetry.

When one’s thoughts are disturbed,

Listening to songs and ditties.

When a song is completed.

Shut up at one’s home on a holiday.

Playing the ch’in and looking over paintings.

Engaged in conversation deep at night.

Before a bright window and a clean desk.

With charming friends and slender concubines.

Returning from a visit with friends.

When the day is clear and the breeze is mild,

On a day of light showers.

In a painted boat near a small wooden bridge.

In a forest with tall bamboos.

In a pavilion overlooking lotus flowers on a summer

Having lighted incense in a small studio.

After a feast is over and the guests are gone.

When children are at school,

In a quiet, secluded temple,

Near famous springs and quaint rocks,

Moments when one should stop drinking tea:

At work.

Watching a play.

Opening letters.

During big rain and snow.

At a long wine feast with a big party.

Going through documents.

On busy days.

Generally conditions contrary to those enumerated above section.

Things to be avoided:

Bad water.

Bad utensils.

Brass spoons.

Brass kettles.

Wooden pails (for water).

Wood for fuel (on account of smoke).

Soft charcoal.

Coarse servant.

Bad-tempered maid.

Unclean towels.

All varieties of incense and medicine.

Things and places to be kept away from:

Damp rooms.

Kitchens.

Noisy streets.

Crying infants.

Hotheaded persons.

Quarreling servants.

Hot rooms.

V. ON SMOKE AND INCENSE

The world today is divided into smokers and non-smokers. It is

true that the smokers cause some nuisance to the non-smokers, but

this nuisance is physical, while the nuisance that the non-smokers

cause the smokers is spiritual. There are, of course, a lot of non-

smokers who don’t try to interfere with the smokers, and wives can

be trained even to tolerate their husbands’ smoking in bed. That is

the surest sign of a happy and successful marriage. It is sometimes

assumed, however, that the non-smokers are morally superior, and

that they have something to be proud of, not realizing that they have

missed one of the greatest pleasures of mankind. I am willing to

allow that smoking is a moral weakness, but on the other hand, we

must beware of the man without weaknesses. He is not to be

trusted. He is apt to be always sober and he cannot make a single

mistake. His habits are likely to be regular, his existence more

mechanical and his head always maintains its supremacy over his

heart Much as I like reasonable persons, I hate completely rational

beings. For that reason, I am always scared and ill at ease when I

enter a house in which there are no ash trays. The room is apt to be

too clean and orderly, the cushions are apt to be in their right places,

and the people are apt to be correct and unemotional. And

immediately I am put on my best behavior, which means the same

thing as the most uncomfortable behavior.

Now the moral and spiritual benefits of smoking have never been

appreciated by these correct and righteous and unemotional and

unpoetic souls. But since we smokers are usually attacked from the

moral, and not the artistic side, I must begin by defending the

smoker’s morality, which is on the whole higher than that of the non-

smokers. The man with a pipe in his mouth is the man after my

heart. He is more genial, more sociable, has more intimate

indiscretions to reveal, and sometimes he is quite brilliant in

conversation, and in any case, I have a feeling that he likes me as

much as I like him. I agree entirely with Thackeray, who wrote: “The

pipe draws wisdom from the lips of the philosopher, and shuts up the

mouths of the foolish; it generates a style of conversation

contemplative, thoughtful, benevolent, and unaffected.”

A smoker may have dirtier finger-nails, but that is no matter when

his heart is warm, and in any case a style of conversation

contemplative, thoughtful, benevolent, and unaffected is such a rare

thing that one is willing to pay a high price to enjoy it. And most

important of all, a man with a pipe in his mouth is always happy, and

after all, happiness is the greatest of all moral virtues. W. Maggin

says that “no cigar smoker ever committed suicide,” and it is still

truer that no pipe smoker ever quarrels with his wife. The reason is

perfectly plain: one cannot hold a pipe between one’s teeth and at

the same time shout at the top of one’s voice. No one has ever been

seen doing that. For one naturally talks in a low voice when smoking

a pipe. What happens when a husband who is a smoker gets angry,

is that he immediately lights a cigarette, or a pipe, and looks glum.

But that will not be for long. For his emotion has already found an

outlet, and although he may want to continue to look angry in order

to justify his indignation or sense of being insulted, still he cannot

keep it up, for the gentle fumes of the pipe are altogether too

agreeable and soothing, and as he puffs the smoke out, he also

seems to let out, breath by breath, his stored-up anger. That is why

when a wise wife sees her husband about to fly into a fit of rage, she

should gently stick a pipe in his mouth and say, “There! forget about

it!” This formula always works. A wife may fail, but a pipe never.

The artistic and literary value of smoking can best be appreciated

only when we imagine what a smoker misses when he stops

smoking for a short period. Every smoker has, in some foolish

moment, attempted to abjure his allegiance to Lady Nicotine, and

then after some wrestling with his imaginary conscience, come back

to his senses again. I was foolish enough once to stop smoking for

three weeks, but at the end of that period, my conscience irresistibly

urged me onto the right road again. I swore I would never relapse,

but would keep on being a devotee and a worshiper at her shrine

until my second childhood, when I might conceivably fall prey to

some Temperance Society wives. When that unhappy old age

arrives, one is of course not responsible for one’s actions. But so

long as I have a modicum of will-power and moral sense left, I shall

not attempt it again. As if I had not seen the folly of it all—the utter

immorality of trying to deny oneself the spiritual force and sense of

moral well-being provided by this useful invention. For according to

Haldane, the great English bio-chemist, smoking counts as one of

the four human inventions in the history of mankind that have left a

deep biologic influence on human culture.

The story of those three weeks, when I played the coward to my

own better self and willfully denied myself something that I knew to

be of great soul-uplifting force, was indeed a disgraceful one. Now

that I can look back upon it in a matter-of-fact and rational way, I can

hardly understand at all how that fit of moral irresponsibility lasted so

long. If I were to detail my spiritual Odyssey by day and by night

during those three weeks in the Joycean manner, I am sure it would

fill three thousand good Homeric lines in verse, or a hundred and fifty

closely printed pages in prose. Of course, the object, to begin with,

was ridiculous. Why, in the name of the human race and the

universe, should one not smoke? I cannot answer now. But such

unreasonable moods do come to a man sometimes, when one, I

suppose, wishes to do something against the grain just for the

pleasure of overcoming resistance and in this way use up his

momentary excess of moral energy. Beyond this, I cannot account

for my sudden and unholy resolution to cut out smoking. In other

words, I was giving myself a moral test much in the same manner as

people indulge in Swedish gymnastics—movement for the sake of

movement, without actually accomplishing any work useful to

society. It was apparently this kind of moral luxury that I was giving

myself, and that was all.

Of course, in the first three days, I felt a queer sinking sensation

somewhere along the alimentary canal, especially in the upper part

of it. To relieve that queer sensation, I took Double-Mint chewing

gum, good Fukien tea, and Montesserat Lime-Fruit Pastilles. I

conquered and killed that sensation in exactly three days. This was

the physical, and therefore the easiest and, to my mind, the most

contemptible part of the battle. People who think that herein lies the

whole of the unholy struggle against smoking have no idea of what

they are talking about. They forget that smoking is a spiritual act, and

those who have no idea of the spiritual significance of smoking ought

never to meddle with the affair. After three days, I encountered the

second stage, when the real spiritual battle began. Scales fell from

my eyes and I saw that there were two races of smokers, one of

which never deserved the name at all For these people, the second

stage never existed. I began to understand why we hear of the “easy

conversions” of many smokers who seem to have given up their

smoking without any struggle at all. The fact that they could stop

such a habit as easily as they could throw away an old toothbrush

shows that they have never really learned to smoke at all. People

credit them with a “strong will-power,” whereas the fact is these

people are never true smokers and have never been so in their lives.

For them, smoking is a physical act, like the washing of their facts

and brushing of their soul-satisfying qualities. I doubt whether this

race of matter-of-fact people would ever be capable of tuning up

their souls in ecstatic response to Shelley’s “Skylark” or Chopin’s

“Nocturne.” These people miss nothing by giving up their smoke.

They are probably happier reading Aesop’s Fables with their

Temperance wives.

For us true smokers, however, a problem existed, of which neither

the Temperance wives nor their Aesop-reading husbands have even

an inkling. For us, the injustice to oneself and the senselessness of it

all soon became apparent. Good sense and reason soon began to

revolt against it and ask: for what reason, social, political, moral,

physiological or financial, should one consciously use one’s will-

power to prevent oneself from attaining that complete spiritual well-

being, that condition of keen, imaginative perception, and full, vibrant

creative energy—a condition necessary to our perfect enjoyment of a

friend’s conversation by the fireside, or to the creating of real warmth

in the reading of an ancient book, or to that bringing forth of a perfect

cadence of words and thought from the mind that we know as

authorship? At such moments, one instinctively feels that reaching

out for a cigarette is the only morally right thing to do, and that

sticking a piece of chewing gum in the mouth instead would be

criminally wicked. Of such moments, I can tell only a few here.

My friend B had arrived from Peiping and called on me. We had

not seen each other for three years. At Peiping, then called Peking,

we used to chat and smoke the evenings out, discussing politics and

philosophy and modern art. And now he had come, and we were

engaged in the fascinating task of rambling reminiscences. We

discussed the whole bunch of professors, poets and cranks we used

to know in Peiping. At every pointed remark, I was mentally reaching

out for a cigar, but instead inhibited myself and only rose up and sat

down again. My friend, on the other hand, was rattling along amidst

his cigar fumes in perfect contentment. I had told him that I had

given up smoking, and I had enough self-respect not to break down

right in his presence. But down in my heart, I knew I was not at my

best, and was only unjustly making myself look coldly rational, when

I wished to partake of the full communion of the two souls with a

complete surrender of the emotions. The conversation went on,

somewhat onesidedly, with half of myself there, and then my friend

left. I had stuck it all out somewhat grimly. By that fiction of

“willpower,” I had “won,” but I knew only that I was unhappy. A few

days later, my friend wrote me on his voyage that he had found me

not the old, vibrant, ecstatic self, and suggested that perhaps living

in Shanghai had something to do with it. To this day, I have not

forgiven myself for failing to smoke that night.

Another night, there was a club meeting of certain “intellectuals,”

which was usually a time for some furious smoking. After the

sumptuous repast, some one of us usually read a paper. This time,

the speaker was C, talking on “Religion and Revolution,” a paper

punctuated with many brilliant remarks. One was that while Feng

Yùhsiang had joined the Northern Methodist Church, Chiang

Kaishek had chosen to join the Southern Methodist Church. Some

one therefore suggested that it would not be long before Wu Peifu

joined the Western Methodists. As such remarks passed round, the

density of the smoke grew, and it seemed to me the very

atmosphere was laden with wicked, fugitive thoughts. The poet H

was sitting in the middle, and was trying to send successive smoke-

rings up the heavy air, very much as a fish would let forth bubbles of

air through the water—lost apparently in his own thoughts and

happy. I alone did not smoke, and felt like a God-forsaken sinner.

The senselessness of it all was growing very apparent to myself. In

that moment of clear vision, I saw that I was mad not to smoke. I

tried to think up the reasons why I had decided not to smoke, and

none could present itself to me with any validity.

After this, my conscience began to gnaw upon my soul. For, I said

to myself, what was thought without imagination, and how could

imagination soar on the clipped wings of a drab, non-smoking soul?

Then one afternoon, I visited a lady. I was mentally prepared for the

re-conversion. Nobody else was in the room, and we were

apparently going to have a real titê-à-têite. The young lady was

smoking with one arm resting on her crossed knee, slightly inclined

forward, and looking wistful and in her best style. I felt the moment

had arrived. She offered the tin, and I took one firmly and slowly from

it, knowing that by that act I had recovered from my temporary fit of

moral degradation.

I came back, and at once sent my boy to buy a tin of Capstan

Minum. On the right side of my desk, there was a regular mark, burnt

in by my habitually placing burning cigarette ends there. I had

calculated that it would take somewhere between seven and eight

years to burn through the two-inch desk top, and had regretted to

observe that, after my last disgraceful resolution, it was going to

remain at about half a centimeter. It was with great delight, therefore,

that I had the pleasure of placing my burning cigarette on that old

mark again, where it is happily at work now, trying to resume its long

journey ahead.

In contrast with wine, there is comparatively little praise of tobacco

in Chinese literature, because smoking as a habit was introduced by

Portuguese sailors as late as the sixteenth century. I have ransacked

the entire Chinese literature after that period, but have found only a

few scattered insignificant lines, quite unworthy of the fragrant weed.

An ode in praise of tobacco evidently has to come from some

undergraduate of Oxford. The Chinese people, however, always had

a very high sense of smell, as is evident in their appreciation of tea

and wine and food. In the absence of tobacco, they had developed

the art of burning incense, which in Chinese literature was always

classified in the same category and mentioned in the same breath,

with tea and wine. From the earliest time, as far back as the Han

Dynasty when the Chinese Empire extended its rule to Indo-China,

incense brought as tribute from the South began to be used at court

and in rich men’s homes. In books on the art of living, sections have

always been devoted to a discussion of the varieties and quality and

preparation of incense. In the chapter on incense in the book

K’aop’an Yüshih, written by T’u Lung, we have the following

description of the enjoyment of incense:

The benefits of the use of incense are manifold High-

minded recluse scholars, engaged in their discussion of truth

and religion, feel that it clears their mind and pleases their

spirit when they burn a stick of incense. At the fourth watch of

the night, when the solitary moon is hanging in the sky, and

one feels cools and detached toward life, it emancipates his

heart and enables him to whistle leisurely. When one is

examining old rubbings of calligraphy before a bright window,

or leisurely singing some poetry with a fly-whip in his hand, or

when one is reading at night in the lamp light, it helps to drive

away the Demon of Sleepiness. You may therefore call it “the

ancient companion of the moon,” When a lady in red pyjamas

is standing by your side, and you are holding her hand around

the incense burner and whispering secrets to each other, it

warms your heart and intensifies your love. You may therefore

call it “the ancient stimulant of passion.” Or when one has

waked up from his afternoon nap and is sitting before a closed

window on a rainy day and practising calligraphy and tasting

the mild flavor of tea, the burner is just getting warm and its

subtle fragrance floats about and encircles our bodies Even

better still is it when one wakes up from a drinking party and a

full moon is shining upon the clear night, and he moves his

fingers across the strings or makes a whistle in an empty

tower, with the green hills in the distance in full sight, and the

half-visible smoke from the remaining embers floats about the

door screen. It is also useful for warding off evil smells and the

malicious atmosphere of a swamp, useful anywhere and

everywhere one goes. The best in quality is chianan, but this

is difficult to obtain, not accessible to a man living in the

mountains. The next best is aloeswood or eagle-wood, which

is of three grades. The highest grade has too strong a smell,

tending to be sharp and pungent; the lowest grade is too dry

and also too full of smoke; the middle grade, costing about six

or seven cents an ounce, is most soothing and fragrant and

can be regarded as exquisite* After one has boiled a pot of

tea, he can make use of the burning charcoals and put them

in the incense container and let the fire heat it up slowly* In

such a satisfying moment, one feels like being transported to

the heavenly abode in the company of the immortals, entirely

oblivious of human existence. Ah, indeed great is the

pleasure! People nowadays lack the appreciation of true

fragrance and go in for strange and exotic names, trying to

outdo one another by having a mixture of different kinds, not

realizing that the fragrance of aloeswood is entirely natural,

and that the best of its kind has an indescribable subtlety and

mildness.

Mao Pichiang in his Reminiscences of My Concubine, describing

the art of life of this rich poet and his accomplished and

understanding mistress, gives various descriptions of their

enjoyment of incense, of which the following is one:

My concubine often sat quietly with me in her fragrant

bedchamber to sample or judge famous incense. The so-

called “palace incense” is seductive in quality, while the

popular way of preparing aloeswood is vulgar. The ordinary

people often set aloeswood right on the fire and its fragrant

fume is soon put out by the burning resin. Thus not only has

its fragrance failed to be brought out, but it also leaves a

smoky, choking odor behind around one’s body. The hard

quality with horizontal grains called hengkoch’en, has a

superb fragrance, being one of the four kinds of aloeswood,

but distinguished by having horizontal fibers. There is another

variety of this wood, known as p’englaihsiang, which is the

size of a mushroom and conically shaped, being not yet fully

grown. We kept all these varieties, and she burned them on

top of fine sand over a slow fire so that no actual smoke was

visible. Its subtle perfume permeated the chamber like the

smell of chianan wood wafted by a breeze, or like that of dew-

bedecked roses, or of a piece of amber rubbed hot by friction,

or of fragrant liquor being poured into a horn cup. When

bedding is perfumed by this method, its fragrance blends with

that of the woman’s flesh, sweet and intoxicating even in

one’s dreams.

VI. ON DRINK AND WINE GAMES

I am no drinker and am therefore totally unqualified to talk of

wines and liquors. My capacity is three cups of shaohsing rice wine,

and I am even capable of getting tipsy on a mere glass of beer. This

is evidently a matter of natural gift, and the gifts of drinking tea and

wine and smoking do not seem to go together. I have found among

my friends great drinkers who get sick before they go through half a

cigar, while I smoke every waking hour of the day without any

appreciable effect, but am not very good with liquors. Anyway, Li

Liweng has put down on record his sworn opinion that great drinkers

of tea are not fond of wine, and vice versa. Li himself was a great tea

connoisseur, but confessed that he had no pretentions to being a

drinker of wine at all. It is therefore my special delight and comfort to

discover so many distinguished Chinese authors that I like who had

really but a small capacity for wine, and who said so. It has taken me

some time to collect these confessions from their letters or other

writings. Li was one, Yuan Tsets’ai, Wang Yüyang, and Yuan

Chunglang were others. All of them, however, were people who had

“the sentiment for wine” without having an actual capacity for it.

In spite of my disqualification, I still cannot ignore this topic,

because more than anything else, it has made an important

contribution to literature, and in the same measure as smoking,

wherever the custom of smoking was known, it has greatly helped

man’s creative power, with considerable lasting results. The pleasure

of wine drinking, especially in what the Chinese call “a little drink,” so

constantly met with in Chinese literature, had always seemed a

mystery to me, until a beautiful Shanghai lady, when half-drunk

herself dilated upon its virtues with such convincing power that I

finally thought the condition described must be real. “One just

babbles along and babbles along in the state of half-drunkenness,

which is the best and happiest state,” she said. There seems to be a

sense of elation, of confidence in one’s power to overcome all

obstacles and a heightened sensibility, and man’s power of creative

thinking, which seems to lie in the borderland of fact and fancy, is

brought up to a higher pitch than at normal times. There seems to be

a force of self-confidence and emancipation, which is so necessary

at the creative moment. The importance of this sense of confidence

and emancipation from mere rules and technique will be made quite

clear when we come to the section on art.

There is a wise thought in the suggestion that the modern

dictators of Europe are so dangerous to humanity because they

don’t drink. In my reading of current literature of the past year, I have

come across no better and wiser and wittier writing than an article by

Charles W. Ferguson on “Dictators Don’t Drink” in Harper’s for June,

1937. The thought is worth pursuing, and the writing is so good

throughout that I feel tempted to quote it in full but have to refrain

from doing so. Mr. Ferguson starts out with the thought that: “Stalin,

Hitler and Mussolini are models of sobriety. . . . The men who

symbolize tyranny in the modern manner, who are up-to-date rulers

of men, are fellows worthy of emulation by any ambitious young man

who earnestly wants to get ahead. Every one of the lot would make a

good son-in-law and husband. They represent an evangelist’s ideal

of moral rectitude. . . . Hitler eats no meat, does not drink, does not

smoke. To these suffocating virtues he adds the further and more

notable virtue of continence. . . . Mussolini is more of a horse in his

eating, but he abstains with grim fortitude from spirituous liquors,

now and then taking only a tantalizing glass of light wine—but

nothing which might seriously interfere with such high matters as the

subjugation of an inferior people. Stalin lives frugally in a three-room

apartment, dresses inconspicuously and in self-effacing taste, eats

frightfully simple meals, and sips brandy like a connoisseur.” The

question is what do these facts signify for us? “Do they indicate that

we are today in the grip of a coterie of men essentially smug,

disastrously self-righteous, grimly aware of their tremendous

rectitude, and hence so dangerous that the world at large would be

better off if it could entice them on a roaring drunk?”. . . “No man

could be a dangerous dictator with a hang-over. His sense of God-

almighty-ness would be wrecked. He would feel himself to have

been gross and humiliated in the presence of his subjects. He would

have become one of the masses—one of the lowest of them—and

the experience would have done something to his insufferable

conceit.” The writer thinks that should there be an international

cocktail party, attended only by these chosen leaders, in which main

object would merely be to fry the dignitaries as smoothly and as

quickly as possible,” the next morning, “Far from being the

irreproachable supermen of today, the world’s best would have

become ordinary fellows, afflicted like their meanest followers, and

perhaps in a frame of mind to grapple with matters as men and not

as demigods.”

The reason I don’t like dictators is that they are inhuman, and

anything which is inhuman is bad. An inhuman religion is no religion,

inhuman politics is foolish politics, inhuman art is just bad art, and

the inhuman way of life is the beast’s way of life. This test of

humanness is universal and can be applied to all walks of life and all

systems of thought. The greatest ideal that man can aspire to is not

to be a show-case of virtue, but just to be a genial, likable and

reasonable human being.

While the Chinese can teach the Westerners about tea,

Westerners can teach the Chinese about wine. A Chinese is easily

dazzled by the variety of bottles and labels when he enters an

American wine-shop for wherever he goes, in his own country, he

sees shaohsing, again shaohsing, and nothing but shaohsing. There

are six or seven other varieties, and there are distilled liquors from

millet, the kaoliang, besides the class of medicinal wines, but the list

is soon exhausted. The Chinese have not developed the nicety of

serving different drinks with different courses of food. On the other

hand, the popularity of shaohsing is such at the place giving its name

to this wine, that there as soon as a girl is born, her parents make a

jar of wine, so that by the time she marries, she is sure to have at

least a jar of wine about twenty years old as part of her trousseau.

Hence the name huatiao, the proper name for this wine, which

means “florally decorated,” from the jar decoration.

This lack in the variety of wine they make up for by greater

insistence on the proper moment and surrounding for drinking. The

feeling for wine is essentially correct. The contrast between wine and

tea is expressed in the form that “tea resembles the recluse, and

wine resembles the cavalier; wine is for good comradeship, and tea

is for the man of quiet virtue.” Specifying the proper moods and

places for drink, a Chinese writer says, “Formal drinking should be

slow and leisurely, unrestrained drinking should be elegant and

romantic; a sick person should drink a small quantity, and a sad

person should drink to get drunk. Drinking in the spring should take

place in a courtyard, in summer in the outskirts of a city, in autumn

on a boat and in winter in the house, and at night it should be

enjoyed in the presence of the moon.”

Another writer says, “There is a proper time and place for getting

drunk. One should get drunk before flowers in the daytime, in order

to assimilate their light and color; and one should get drunk in snow

in the night-time, in order to clear his thoughts, A man getting drunk

when happy at success should sing, in order to harmonize his spirit;

and a man getting drunk at a farewell party should strike a musical

tone, in order to strengthen his spirit, A drunk scholar should be

careful in his conduct, in order to avoid humiliations; and a drunk

military man should order gallons and put up more flags, in order to

increase his military splendor. Drinking in a tower should take place

in summer, in order to profit from the cool atmosphere; and drinking

on the water should take place in autumn, in order to increase the

sense of elated freedom. These are proper ways of drinking in

respect of mood and scenery, and to violate these rules is to miss

the pleasure of drinking.”

The Chinese attitude toward wine and behavior during a wine

feast is partly incomprehensible or reprehensible to me, and partly

commendable. The reprehensible part is the custom of getting

pleasure out of forcing a man to drink beyond his capacity. I am not

aware that such a practice exists or is common in Western society. It

is usual among drinkers to place a mystic value upon the mere

quantity of drinking, whether by oneself, or by those in the company.

No doubt there is a certain hilarity connected with it and such urging

is done in a playful or friendly spirit, resulting generally in a lot of

noise and hubbub and confusion, which adds to the fun of the

occasion. It is beautiful to look at when the company reach a state

when they all forget themselves and the guests shout for more wine

or leave or exchange their seats, and nobody remembers who is the

host and who are the guests. It usually degenerates into a drinking

match, played with great pride and subtlety and finesse and always

with the desire to see the other fellow under the table- One has to be

on the lookout for foul play, and guard against the other party’s

underhanded tactics. Probably the fun lies there, in the spirit of

contest.

The commendable side of Chinese drinking lies in the noise.

Eating at a Chinese restaurant sometimes makes one imagine one is

attending a football match. How is the volume of noise produced and

whence come those noises with beautiful rhythm resembling cheers

and yells at a football match? The answer lies in the custom of

“guessing fingers,” in which each party puts up a number of fingers

simultaneously with his opponent and shouts the number of the total

sum of fingers that he guesses will be put out by both parties. The

numbers, “one, two, three, four,” and so on, are given in poetic,

polysyllabic phrases like “seven stars” (Ch’ich’iao, the constellation

“Dipper”), or “eight horses” or “eight immortals crossing the sea.” The

necessity for perfectly timed and simultaneous action in putting out

the fingers forces the phrases into definite musical beats or bars, into

which the varying syllables have to be compressed, and these are

accompanied during the interval by a set introductory phrase

occupying another musical bar, and the song is carried on without

interruption rhythmically until one party makes a correct conjecture

and the other party has to drink a full cup, large or small, or two or

three, as previously agreed. Guessing at the total is not mere blind

conjecture, but is based on observation of the opponent’s habit of

sequence or alternation of numbers and demands some quick

thinking. The fun and swing of the game depends entirely upon the

speed and uninterrupted rhythm’ of the players.

We have come to the real point about the conception of a wine

party, for this alone gives a satisfactory explanation of the length of a

Chinese feast, its number of courses and its method of service. One

does not sit down at a feast to eat, but to have a good time, provided

by telling of stories and jokes and all kinds of literary puzzles and

poetic games between the serving of different dishes. The party

looks more like a time for oral games, punctuated every five or seven

or ten minutes with the appearance of a dish on the table and a bite

or two by the company. This produces two effects: first, the

vociferousness of oral games undoubtedly helps to let the spirituous

liquors evaporate from the system, and secondly, by the time one

comes to the end of a feast lasting over an hour, some of the food is

already digested, so that the more one eats, the more hungry he

becomes. Silence after all is a vice during eating; it is immoral

because it is unhygienic. Any foreigner in China who has lasting

doubts about the Chinese being a gay and happy people with a

touch of Latin gaiety, who still clings to the preconceived notion that

the Chinese people are silent, sedate and unemotional, should

watch them while eating, for then the Chinaman is in his natural

element and his moral perfections are complete. If the Chinaman

does not have a good time when he is eating, when does he have a

good time?

Famous as the Chinese are for their puzzles, their wine games

are less well-known. With wine as forfeit, a great variety of games

have been invented as excuses for drinking. All Chinese novels

dutifully record the names of dishes served at a dinner, and equally

dutifully describe the contests of poetry which have no difficulty in

filling an entire chapter. The feminist novel Chinghuayüan describes

so many games among the literary girls (including games in

phonetics), as to seem to make these the main theme of the story.

The simplest game is shehfu, in which a syllable forming the

beginning of one word and the end of another is concealed by joining

the other syllables into a word, and the player has to guess at the

missing syllable. Thus “drum” being the syllable common to

“humdrum” and “drumstick,” the puzzle is given in the combination

“hum-stick” and the other party is to supply the missing syllable. Or

given “a-starch,” the other person is to find the missing middle

syllable “corn” in “acorn-cornstarch.” Properly played, the person

who has guessed at the middle syllable is not to declare it, but to

form a counter-puzzle with the syllable “corn” and simply answer

“pop-er” (“pop-corn-corner”), or pop-muffin,” from which the original

maker of the puzzle is able to tell whether he has got the correct

answer, while it remains a mystery to the rest of those present.

Sometimes an answer not originally intended, but even better than

the one the maker has in mind, has to be accepted. Both parties can

set syllable-puzzles for each other to solve at the same time. Some

puzzles are simple and some are carefully concealed, as “a-ounce”

for the missing syllable “pron,” while “cam-ephant” can be easily

detected to contain “el” in camel-elephant” Rare and difficult words

might be used, and in the practice of scholars, rare historical names

might be used, taxing one’s scholarship: e.g., names from one of

Shakespeare’s plays or Balzac’s novels.

Variations of literary games are infinite. One popular among

scholars is for each person in turn to say a doggerel line of seven

words for the other person to follow up with another rhymed line, the

poem as a whole degenerating into pure nonsense at the end. Lines

usually begin with some comment on some object or person in view,

or the scenery. Every person is to say two lines, the first one

completing a couplet begun by the preceding person, and the

second leading off a new couplet for the successor to finish. The first

line sets the rhyme, and the third, fifth, seventh (and so on) lines

must keep to it. In the milieu of scholars, by whom every name and

sentence from the Four Books or the Book of Poetry has been

memorized by heart, demands may be made by the toastmaster for

apt quotations illustrating a topic, (e.g., “Girl shy,” “Girl happy,” “Girl

cries”). Names of popular ditties, and lines from Tang poems are

often included. Or the party may be required to give names of

medicines or flowers that answer to the description in a given tide of

a popular tune, or, to make the matter appear simpler in English, to

give names of medicines or flowers that refer to an article pertaining

to women; e.g., Queen Anne’s lace, fox-glove, etc.

Possibility of such combinations depends on the beauty of names

given to flowers, medicines, trees, etc, in a language. English family

names might, for instance, be given to call up names of popular

songs, (as an instance, “Rockefeller” may suggest “Sit Down, You’re

Rocking the Boat,” and “Whitehead” may suggest “Silver Threads

Among the Gold”). The aptness of such juxtapositions depends on

one’s ingenuity, and the fun of such games lies in spontaneity and

fanciful, but not necessarily learned, associations, Names like

“Tugwell,” “Sitwell” and “Frankfurter” can easily be made to serve

any humorous purpose (for the last I suggest “Non-cold Not-Pig”).

College students can have a good time making wine games out of

their professors’ names.

More elaborate games require specially designed chips. In the

novel An Orchid’s Dream, one finds, for instance, a description of the

following game. Three sets of chips (which may be made of paper)

contain the following combination of six persons doing six things in

six places:

Dandy goes horse-riding thoroughfare

Abbot says prayers abbot’s room

Lady embroiders Lady’s chamber

Butcher fights streets

Courtesan flirts red-light district

Beggar sleeps cemetery

Chips drawn from the three sets by a person may form the weirdest

combinations: thus, “Abbot flirts in a lady’s room,” “Courtesan says

prayers in a cemetery,” “Beggar sleeps in the red-light district,”

“Butcher embroiders in a thoroughfare,” “Lady fights in an Abbot’s

room,” etc., all of which would make good newspaper headlines.

With some such situation as the main theme, each person is to give

a five-word line from a poem, followed by the name of a song, and

concluded by a line from the Book of Poetry, the whole to make an

apt description of the situation.

It is no wonder therefore that a wine feast easily lasts two hours,

The object of a dinner is not to eat and drink, but to join in

merrymaking and to make a lot of noise. For that reason, he who

drinks half drinks best. Like the poet Tao Yüanming playing upon a

stringless instrument, for the drinker the sentiment is the thing. And

one may enjoy the sentiment for wine without the capacity to drink it.

“There are people who cannot read a single word, but have the

sentiment for poetry; people who cannot repeat a single prayer but

have the sentiment for religion; people who cannot touch a drop but

have the sentiment for wine; and people who do not understand a

thing about rocks, but have the sentiment for painting.” It is such

people who are fit company for poets, saints, drinkers and painters,

VII. ON FOOD AND MEDICINE

A broader view of food should regard it essentially as including all

things that go to nourish us, just as a broader view of house should

include everything pertaining to living conditions. As we are all

animals, it is but common sense to say that we are what we eat. Our

lives are not in the lap of the gods, but in the lap of our cooks. Hence

every Chinese gentleman tries to befriend his cook, because so

much of the enjoyment of life lies within his power to give or to take

away as he sees fit. Chinese, and I suppose Western, parents

always try to befriend the wet-nurse and treat her royally, because

they realize that the health of their baby depends on the temper and

happiness and general living conditions of the wet-nurse. Pari passu,

we should give our cooks who feed us the same royal treatment, if

we care as much for our own health as we care for that of our

babies. If a man will be sensible and one fine morning, when he is

lying in bed, count at the tips of his fingers how many things in this

life truly give him enjoyment, invariably he will find food is the first

one. Therefore it is the invariable test of a wise man whether he has

good food at home or not.

The tempo of modern city life is such that we are giving less and

less time and thought to the matter of cooking and feeding. A

housewife who is at the same time a brilliant journalist can hardly be

blamed for serving her husband with canned soup and beans.

Nevertheless, it is a pretty crazy life when one eats in order to work

and does not work in order to eat. We need a certain kindness and

generosity to ourselves before we learn kindness and generosity to

others. What good does it do a woman to do some muckraking for

the city and improve general social conditions, if she herself has to

cook on a two-burner range and allow ten minutes for eating her

meal? Confucius undoubtedly would divorce her, as he divorced his

wife for failure in good cooking.

The story is not exactly clear as to whether Confucius divorced

her or she just had to run away in order to flee from the demands of

this fastidious artist of life. For him “rice could never be white enough

and mince meat could never be chopped fine enough.” He refused to

eat “when meat was not served with its proper sauce,” “when it was

not cut square,” “when its color was not right,” and “when its flavor

was not right,” I am quite sure that even then his wife could have

stood it, but when one day, unable to find fresh food, she sent her

son Li to buy wine and cold meat from some delicatessen and be

through with it, and he announced that he “would not drink wine that

was not homemade, nor taste meat that was bought from the shops,”

what else could she do except pack up and run away? This insight

into the psychology of Confucius’ wife is mine, but the severe

conditions that he imposed upon his poor wife stands there today in

the Confucian classics.

Taking then the broader view of food as nourishment, the Chinese

do not draw any distinction between food and medicine. What is

good for the body is medicine and at the same time food. Modern

science has only in the last century come to realize the importance

of diet in curing diseases, and happily today all modern hospitals are

well equipped with trained dietitians. If modern doctors would carry it

a step further, and send these dietitians to be trained in China, they

might have less use for their glass bottles-An early medical writer,

Sun Ssemiao (sixth century, A. D.), says: “A true doctor first finds out

the cause of the disease, and having found that out, he tries to cure

it first by food. When food fails, then he prescribes medicine.” Thus

we find the earliest existing Chinese book on food, written by an

Imperial physician at the Mongol Court in 1330, regards food

essentially as a matter of regimen for health, and makes the

introductory remarks: “He who would take good care of his health

should be sparing in his tastes, banish his worries, temper his

desires, restrain his emotions, take good care of his vital force, spare

his words, regard lightly success and failure, ignore sorrows and

difficulties, drive away foolish ambitions, avoid great likes and

dislikes, calm his vision and his hearing, and be faithful in his internal

regimen. How can one have sickness if he does not tire his spirits

and worry his soul? Therefore he who would nourish his nature

should eat only when he is hungry and not fill himself with food, and

he should drink only when he is thirsty and not fill himself with too

much drink. He should eat little and between long intervals, and not

too much and too constantly, He should aim at being a little hungry

when well-filled, and being a little well-filled when hungry. Being well-

filled hurts the lungs and being hungry hurts the flow of vital energy.”

This cook book, like all Chinese cook books, therefore reads like a

pharmacopoeia.

Walking down Honan Road in Shanghai and passing through the

shops selling Chinese medicine, one might find it hard to decide

whether they sell more medicine than food or more food than

medicine. For there one finds cinnamon bark standing side by side

with ham, tiger’s tendons and beaver kidneys along with sea dugs,

and horns of young deer along with mushrooms and Peiping dates.

All of them are good for the body and all of them nourish us. The

distinction between food and medicine is positively impossible in the

case of a bottle of “tiger-tendon and quince wine.” Happily a Chinese

tonic does not consist of three grams of hypophosphate and .02

grains of arsenic. It consists of a bowl of black-skinned chicken soup,

cooked with rehmannia lutea. This is due entirely to the practice of

Chinese medicine, for while Western medicines are taken in pills or

tablets, Chinese medicines are served as stews and literally called

“soups.” And Chinese medicine is conceived and prepared in the

same manner as ordinary soup, with proper regard for mixing of the

flavors and ingredients-There are anywhere from seven or eight to

twenty ingredients in a Chinese stew, so designed as to nourish and

strengthen the body as a whole, and not to attack the disease solely.

For Chinese medicine essentially agrees with the most up-to-date

Western medicine in thinking that, when a man’s liver is sick, it is not

his liver alone but the entire body that is sick. After all, all that

medicine can do comes down to the essential principle of

strengthening our vital energy, through acting on this most highly

complicated system of organs and fluids and hormones called the

human body, and letting the body cure itself. Instead of giving

patients aspirin tablets, Chinese doctors would therefore ask them to

take large bowls of medicinal tea to produce perspiration. And

instead of taking quinine tablets, the patients of the future world

might conceivably be required to drink a bowl of rich turtle soup with

mushrooms, cooked with pieces of cinchona bark. The dietetics

department of a modern hospital will have to be enlarged, and the

future hospital itself will very nearly resemble a sanatorium-

restaurant. Eventually we have to come to a conception of health

and disease by which the two merge into each other, when men eat

in order to prevent disease instead of taking medicine in order to

cure it. This point is not stressed enough in the West, for the

Westerners go to see a doctor only when they are sick, and do not

see him when they are well Before that time comes, the distinction

between medicine which nourishes the body and medicine which

cures disease will have to be abolished.

We have, therefore, to congratulate the Chinese people on their

happy confusion of medicine and food. This makes their medicine

less of a medicine, but makes their food more of a food. There

seems to be a symbolic significance in the fact that the God of

Gluttony appeared even in our semi-historical period, the God

T’aot’ieh being found today as a favorite motif among our earliest

bronze and stone sculptures. The spirit of T’aot’ieh is in us. It makes

our pharmacopoeias resemble our cook books and our cook books

resemble a pharmacopoeia, and it makes the rise of botany and

zoology as branches of the natural science impossible, for the

Chinese scientists are thinking all the time of how a snake, a

monkey, or a crccidile’s flesh or a camel’s hump would taste. True

scientific curiosity in China is a gastronomic curiosity.

With the confusion of medicine and magic, found in all savage

tribes, and with the Chinese Taoists making the “nourishment of life”

and the search after immortality or long life their central object, we

find that food and medicine often lie in their hands. In the Imperial

Cook Book of the Mongol Dynasty referred to above, Yinshan

Chengyao, there are chapters devoted to preserving long life and

warding off disease. With the Taoist passionate devotion to Nature,

the tendency is always to emphasize fruits and food of a vegetarian

nature. There is a sort of combination of poetry and Taoist

detachment from life, regarding the eating of fresh lotus seeds with

their delicate flavor born of the dew as the height of a scholar’s

refined pleasure. He would drink the dew itself, if he could. In this

class belong the seeds of pine trees, arrowroot and Chinaroot, which

are all regarded as tending toward long life, because they clarify

one’s heart and purify one’s soul. One is not supposed to have

mortal desires, like the desire for women, when eating a lotus seed.

More like medicine and constantly taken as part of one’s food and

highly valued for prolonging life are as pamgus lucidus, rehmannia

lutea, lycium chinense, atratylis ovata, polygonatum giganteum, and

particularly ginseng and astragalus hoantely.

The Chinese pharmacopoeia offers an immense field waiting for

Western scientific research. Western medicine has only within the

past decade discovered the blood-building value of liver, while

Chinese have all along regarded it as an important tonic for old

people. I have a suspicion that when a Western butcher kills a pig,

he throws away all the parts that have the greatest nourishing food

value—kidneys, stomachs, intestines (which must be full of gastric

juice), blood, bone marrow and brains. It is beginning to be

discovered that the bone is the place where the red corpuscles of

one’s blood are manufactured, and I cannot help thinking the

throwing away of mutton bones and pig’s bones and cow’s bones

without stewing them into a fine soup is a terrific waste of food value.

There are many Western foods that I like, and first of all I must

mention the honeydew melon, because its suggestion of dew is so

Chinese. Also, if an ancient Chinese Taoist were given a grapefruit,

he might imagine that he had discovered the elixir of immortality, for

it was the exotic flavor of strange and unknown fruits that the Taoists

were looking for. Tomato juice must be ranked as one of the greatest

Western discoveries in the twentieth century, for the Chinese, like the

Westerners of a century ago, used to consider tomatoes not fit for

eating. Next comes the eating of raw celery, which comes nearest to

the Chinese idea of eating food for texture, as with bamboo shoots.

Asparagus is fine, when it is not green, but it is not unknown in

China. Finally I must confess to a great liking for English roast beef,

and for all roasts. Every food is good when cooked and tasted in its

own country and in its proper season. I have always liked American

food when it is served in American homes, but have never yet tasted

food that impressed me as good in the best hotels of New York. The

fault is not due to hotels or restaurants, for even in Chinese

restaurants, it is impossible to get good food unless with long notice

and unless it is prepared with individual care.

On the other hand, there are glaring deficiencies in American and

European cuisine. Far ahead in bakery and the making of sweets

and desserts, Western cuisine strikes one as being pretty dull and

insipid and extremely limited in variety. After eating in any hotel or

boarding house or steamship for three weeks, and after one has had

chicken à la king, prime ribs of beef and lamb chops and filet for the

thirteenth time, the food begins to pall on one’s palate. The most

undeveloped branch of Western cooking is that of preparing

vegetables. In the first place, vegetables are extremely limited in

variety; in the second place, they are merely boiled in water; and in

the third place, they are always over-cooked until they lose their

color and look mushy. Spinach, the calamity of all children, is never

cooked properly; it is cooked until it becomes mushy, whereas if it is

fried on a very hot pan with oil and salt and taken away before it

loses its crispness, it is one of the most palatable of foods. Lettuce

prepared in the same manner is also delightful, the only

consideration being not to allow it to stand in the pan for too long.

Chicken liver is considered a delicacy in the West, and even grilled

lamb kidneys, but there is a large number of foods of the same class

which have not even been experimented upon. This explains the

lack of variety in Western food. Fried chicken gizzard, along with

fried chicken liver, dipped in salt, is among the commonest dishes in

China. Carp’s head, with its delicate flesh around the cheeks and

jowl, is served as a special dish of great delicacy. Pig’s tripe is my

favorite food, and for that matter, certain parts of the ox’s tripe. It

makes a delicious soup with noodles, or it may be thrown into boiling

soup over an extremely hot fire and immediately taken out, so that it

has a crispness almost like that of raw celery. Large snails (meaning

only the thick covering at their mouth) are a delicacy much sought

after in France, and they are also a delicacy in China. In taste and

texture and resistance to the teeth, they are practically the same as

abalones and scallops.

The lack of variety of soups is due to two causes. First, the lack of

experiment on mixtures of vegetables with meat. By combinations

and permutations, five or six ingredients, like dried shrimp,

mushroom, bamboo-shoot, melon, pork, etc., can give a hundred

varieties of different soups. Melon soup is unknown in the West, and

yet, made with different varieties and prepared with a dash of dried

shrimp, it is one of the most delicious dishes in summer. Secondly,

the lack of variety in soup is due to failure to make full use of sea

food. Scallops are always fried in the West, but dried scallops are

one of the most important elements for making good soup, and so is

abalone. As for clam chowder, I never smell the clam in it, and one,

of course, never sees turtle flesh in turtle soup. A real turtle soup,

cooked until it is sticky on the lips, is one of he favorite Cantonese

dishes, sometimes being prepared with the webbed feet of ducks or

geese. The Shaohsing people of Chekiang lave a favorite dish called

“the big corners,” consisting of the wings and legs of chicken,

because there is a happy combination of skin and tendon and meat

in chicken wings and feet. The best soup I have tasted, however, is

the soup of bastard carp and small soft-shell clams combined. The

test of soup generally made from shell good is that it should not be

oily.

As an instance of Chinese feeling about food, I may quote here

rom Li Liweng’s essay on “Crabs” in the section on food in his Art of

Living.

There is nothing in food and drink whose flavor I cannot

describe with the utmost understanding and imagination. But

as for crabs, my heart likes them, my mouth relishes them,

and I can never forget them for a year and a day, but find it

impossible to describe in words why I like them, relish them,

and can never forget them. Ah, this thing has indeed become

for me a weakness in food, and is in itself a strange

phenomenon of the universe. All my days I have been

extremely fond of it. Every year before the crab season

comes, I set aside some money for the purpose and because

my family say that “crab is my life,” I call this money “my life

ransom.” From the day it appears on the market to the end of

the season, I have never missed it for a night. My friends who

know this weakness of mine always invite me to dinner at this

season, and I therefore call October and November “crab

autumn,” . . . I used to have a maid quite devoted to attending

to the care and preparation of crabs and I called her “my crab

maid.” Now she is gone! O crab! my life shall begin and end

with thee!

The reason that Li finally gave for his appreciation of crab was hat it

was perfect in the three requisites of food—color, fragrance and

flavor. Li’s feeling about crabs is quite generally shared by Chinese

of all classes today, the kind eaten being from freshwater lakes.

For me, the philosophy of food seems to boil down to three things:

freshness, flavor and texture. The best cook in the world cannot

make a savory dish unless he has fresh things to cook with, and any

good cook can tell you that half the art of cooking lies in buying.

Yuan Tsets’ai, the great epicure and poet of the seventeenth century,

wrote beautifully about his cook as a man carrying himself with great

dignity who absolutely refused to cook a dish ordered unless the

thing was in its best season. The cook had a bad temper, but

confessed that he continued to serve the poet because the latter

understood flavor. Today there is a cook over sixty years old in

Szechuen who must be courteously invited to prepare a dinner for

some special occasion, and who must be given a week’s notice to

collect and buy things and must be left entirely free to be the sole

lord and judge of the menu to be served.

For the common people who cannot afford expensive cooks, there

is comfort in the knowledge that anything tastes good in its season,

and that it is always better to depend upon nature than upon culture

to furnish us with the greatest epicurean delights. For this reason,

people who have their own garden or who live in the country may be

quite sure that they have the best food, although they may not have

the best cook. For the same reason, food ought to be tasted in its

place of origin, before any judgment can be pronounced upon it. But

for a wife who does not know how to buy fresh food or a man who is

willing to put up with cold storage foods, any discussion of epicurean

values is futile.

The texture of food, as regards tenderness, elasticity, crispness

and softness, is largely a matter of timing and adjusting the heat of

the fire. Chinese restaurants can produce dishes not possible in the

home because they are equipped with a fine oven. As for flavor,

there are clearly two classes of food, those that are best served in

their own juice, without adulteration except salt or soya bean sauce,

and those that taste best when they are combined with the flavor of

another food. Thus, in the case of fish, fresh mandarin fish or trout

should be prepared in its natural juice to get its full flavor, while more

fatty fish like the shad tastes best with Chinese pickled beans. The

American succotash is an example of the perfect combination of

tastes. There are certain flavors in nature which seem to be made for

each other and reach their highest degree of delectability only in

combination with each other. Bamboo shoot and pork seem to make

a perfect pair, each borrowing its fragrance from the other and

lending it in return its own. Ham somehow combines well with the

sweet flavor, and one of the proudest dishes of my cook in Shanghai

is ham with rich Peking golden dates, steamed together in a

casserole. So does black tree fungus combine perfectly with duck’s

egg in soup, and New York lobster combine with Chinese pickled

bean-curd sauce (nanju). In fact, there is a large class of eatables

whose chief function seems to be to lend their flavor to others—

mushroom, bamboo shoots, Szechuen tsatœai, etc. And there is a

large class of food, most valued by the Chinese, which have no

flavor of their own, and depend entirely on borrowing from others.

The three necessary characteristics of the most expensive

Chinese delicacies are that they must be colorless, odorless, and

flavorless. These articles are shark’s fin, birds’ nest and the “silver

fungus.” All of them are gelatinous in quality and all have no color,

taste or smell. The reason why they taste so wonderful is because

they are always prepared in the most expensive soup possible.

VIII. SOME CURIOUS WESTERN CUSTOMS

One great difference between Oriental and Occidental civilizations

is that the Westerners shake each other’s hands, while we shake our

own. Of all the ridiculous Western customs, I think that of shaking

hands is one of the worst. I may be very progressive and able to

appreciate Western art, literature, American silk stockings, Parisian

perfumes and even British battleships, but I cannot see how the

progressive Europeans could allow this barbarous custom of shaking

hands to persist to the present day. I know there are private groups

of individuals in the West who protest against this custom, as there

are people who protest against the equally ridiculous custom of

wearing hats or collars. But these people don’t seem to be making

any headway, being apparently taken for men who make mountains

of molehills and waste their energy on trivialities. I am one of these

men who are always interested in trivialities. As a Chinese, I am

bound to feel more strongly against this Western custom than the

Europeans, and prefer always to shake my own hands when

meeting or parting from people, according to the time-honored

etiquette of the Celestial Empire.

Of course, everyone knows this custom is the survival of the

barbaric days of Europe, like the other custom of taking off one’s hat.

These customs originated with the medieval robber barons and

chevaliers, who had to lift their visors or take off their steel gauntlets

to show that they were friendly or peacefully disposed toward the

other fellow. Of course it is ridiculous in modern days to repeat the

same gestures when we are no longer wearing helmets or gauntlets,

but survivals of barbaric customs will always persist, as witness, for

instance, the persistence of duels down to the present day,

I object to this custom for hygienic and many other reasons.

Shaking hands is a form of human contact subject to the finest

variations and distinctions. An original American graduate student

could very well write a doctorate dissertation on a “Time-and-motion

Study of the Varieties of Hand-Shaking,” reviewing it, in the approved

fashion, as regards pressure, duration of time, humidity, emotional

response, and so forth, and further studying it under all its possible

variations as regards sex, the height of the person concerned (giving

us undoubtedly many “types of marginal differences”), the condition

of the skin as affected by professional work and social classes, etc.

With a few charts and tables of percentages, I am sure a candidate

would have no difficulty in getting a Ph.D., provided he made the

whole thing sufficiently abstruse and tiresome.

Now consider, the hygienic objections. The foreigners in

Shanghai, who describe our copper coins as regular reservoirs of

bacteria and will not touch them, apparently think nothing of shaking

hands with any Tom, Dick or Harry in the street This is really highly

illogical, for how are you to know that Tom, Dick or Harry has not

touched those coppers which you shun like poison? What is worse

is, sometimes you may see a consumptive-looking man who

hygienically covers his mouth with his hands while coughing and in

the next moment stretches his hand to give you a friendly shake. In

this respect, our celestial customs are really more scientific, for in

China, each of us shakes his own hand. I don’t know what was the

origin of this Chinese custom, but its advantage from a medical or

hygienic point of view cannot be denied.

Then there are aesthetic and romantic objections to handshaking.

When you put out your hand, you are at the mercy of the other

person, who is at liberty to shake it as hard as he likes and hold it as

long as he likes. As the hand is one of the finest and most

responsive organs in our body, every possible variety of pressure is

possible. First you may have the Y. M. C. A. type of handshaking; the

man pats you on the shoulder with one hand and gives you a violent

shake with the other until all your joints are ready to burst within you.

In the case of a Y. M. C. A- secretary who is at the same time a

baseball player with a powerful grip, and the two often go together,

his victim often does not know whether to scream or to laugh.

Coupled with his straightforward self-assertive manner, this type of

handshaking practically seems to say, “Look here, you are now in my

power. You must buy a ticket for the next meeting or promise to take

back with you a pamphlet by Sherwood Eddy before I’ll let your hand

go.” Under such circumstances I am always very prompt with my

pocketbook.

Coming down the scale, we find different varieties of pressure,

from the indifferent handshake which has utterly lost all meaning, to

that kind of furtive, tremulous, retiring handshake which indicates

that the owner is afraid of you, and finally to the elegant society lady

who condescends to offer you the very tip of her fingers in a manner

that almost suggests that you look at her red-painted fingernails. All

kinds of human relationships, therefore, are reflected in this form of

physical contact between two persons. Some novelists profess that

you can tell a man’s character from his type of handshake,

distinguishing between the assertive, the retiring, the dishonest and

the weak and clammy hands which instinctively repel one. I wish to

be spared the trouble of analyzing a person’s moral character every

time I have to meet him, or reading from the degree of his pressure

the increase or decrease of his affection towards me.

More senseless still is the custom of taking off one’s hat. Here we

find all kinds of nonsensical rules of etiquette. Thus a lady should

keep her hat on during church service or during afternoon tea

indoors. Whether this custom of wearing hats in church has anything

to do with the customs of Asia Minor in the first century A. D. or not, I

do not profess to know, but I suspect it comes from a senseless

following of St. Paul’s injunction that women should have their heads

covered in church while men should not, being based thus on an

Asiatic philosophy of sexual inequality which the Westerners have so

long repudiated. For the men, there is that ridiculous custom of

taking off one’s hat in an elevator when there are ladies in it. There

can be absolutely no defense for this meaningless custom. In the

first place, the elevator is but a continuation of the corridor, and if

men are not required to take off their hats in a corridor, why should

they be made to do so in a lift? Any one would see the utter

senselessness of it all, if he happens to pass from one floor to

another in the same building with a hat on. In the second place, the

elevator cannot by any logical analysis be distinguished from other

types of conveyance, the motor car, for instance. If a man can, with a

free conscience, keep his hat on while driving in a motor car in the

company of ladies, why should he be forbidden from doing the same

in a lift?

All in all, this is a very crazy world of ours. But I am not surprised.

After all, we see human stupidity around us everywhere. from the

stupidity of modern international relations to that of the modern

educational system. Mankind may be intelligent enough to invent the

radio and wireless telephones, but mankind is simply not intelligent

enough to stop wars, nor will ever be. So I am willing to let stupidity

in the more trivial things go by, and content merely to be amused.

IX. THE INHUMANITY OF WESTERN DRESS

In spite of the popularity of Western dress among the modern

Turks, Egyptians, Hindus, Japanese and Chinese, and in spite of its

universality as the official diplomatic costume in the entire world, I

still cling to the old Chinese dress. Many of my best friends have

asked me why I wear Chinese instead of foreign dress. And those

people call themselves my friends! They might just as well ask me

why I stand on two legs. The two happen to be related, as I shall try

to show. Why must I give a reason for wearing the only “human”

dress in the world? Need anyone who in his native garb practically

goes about the house and outside in his pyjamas and slippers give

reasons why he does not like to be encased in a system of

suffocating collars, vests, belts, braces and garters? The prestige of

the foreign dress rests on no more secure basis than the fact that it

is associated with superior gunboats and Diesel engines. It cannot

be defended on esthetic, moral, hygienic or economic grounds. Its

superiority is simply and purely political.

Is my attitude merely a pose, or symptomatic of my progress in

knowledge of Chinese philosophy? I hardly think so. In taking this

attitude, I am supported by all the thinking persons of my generation

in China. The Chinese dress is worn by all Chinese gentlemen.

Furthermore, all the scholars, thinkers, bankers and people who

made good in China either have never worn foreign dress, or have

swiftly come back to their native dress the moment thy have “arrived”

politically, financially or socially. They have swiftly come back

because they are sure of themselves and no longer feel the need for

a coat of foreign appearance to hide their bad English or their inferior

mental outfit No Shanghai kidnaper would think of kidnaping a

Chinese in foreign clothes, for the simple reason that he is not worth

the candle. Who are the people wearing foreign clothes today in

China? The college students, the clerks earning a hundred a month,

the political busybodies who are always on the point of landing a job,

the tangpu

young men, the nouveaux riches, the nincompoops, the

feebleminded. . . . And then, of course, last but not least, we have

Henry P’uyi, who has the incomparably bad taste to adopt a foreign

name, foreign dress, and a pair of dark spectacles. That outfit of his

alone will kill all his chances of coming back to the Dragon Throne,

even if he has all the bayonets of the Mikado behind him. For you

may tell any lies to the Chinese people, but you cannot convince

them that the fellow who wears a foreign dress and dark spectacles

is their “emperor.” So long as he wears that foreign dress and so

long as he calls himself Henry, Henry will be perfectly at home in the

dockyards of Liverpool, but not on a Dragon Throne.

Now the philosophy behind Chinese and Western dress is that the

latter tries to reveal the human form, while the former tries to conceal

it. But as the human body is essentially like the monkeys’, usually

the less of it revealed the better. Think of Gandhi in his loin-cloth!

Only in a world of people blind in sense of beauty is the foreign dress

tolerable. It is a platitude that the perfect human figure rarely exists.

Let any one who doubts this go to Coney Island and see how

beautiful real human forms are. But the Western dress is so

designed that any man in the street can tell whether your waistline is

thirty-two or thirty-eight. Why must one proclaim to the world that his

waistline is thirty-two, and if it happens to be above normal, why can

he not have the right to make it his private affair?

That is why I also believe in the foreign dress for young women of

good figure between twenty and forty and for ail children whose

natural bodily rhythm has not yet been subjected to our uncivilized

form of living. But to demand that all men and women reveal their

figure to the eyes of the world is another story. While the graceful

woman in foreign evening dress shines and charms in a way not

even remotely dreamed of by the Oriental costume-makers, the

average over-fed and over-slept lady of forty who finds herself in the

golden horseshoe at an opera premiére is also one of the eyesores

invented by the West. The Chinese dress is kinder to them. Like

death, it levels the great and the small, the beautiful and the ugly.

The Chinese dress is therefore more democratic.

So much for the esthetic considerations. Now for the reasons of

hygiene and common sense. No sane-minded man can pretend that

the collar, that survival of Cardinal Richelieu’s and Sir Walter

Raleigh’s times, is conducive to health, and all thinking men in the

West have repeatedly protested against it. While the Western female

dress has achieved a large measure of comfort in this respect

formerly denied to the fair sex, the male human neck is still

considered by the Western educated public as so ugly and immoral

and socially unpresentable that it must be concealed as much as his

waistline must be revealed. That satanic device makes proper

ventilation impossible in summer, proper protection against cold

impossible in winter and proper thinking impossible at all times.

From the collar downwards, it is a story of continuous and

unmitigated outrage of common sense. The clever foreigner who can

invent Neon lights and Diesel engines has not enough common

sense to see that the only part of his body which is free is his head.

But why go into details—the tight-fitting underwear, which interferes

with free ventilation, the vest which allows for no bending of the

body, and the braces or the belt which allow for no natural difference

in different states of nutrition? Of these, the least logical is the vest.

Anybody who studies the natural forms of the naked human body

knows that, except when in a perfectly straight position, the lines of

the back and the front are never equal. Anyone who wears a stiff

shirt front also knows by experience that it bulges every time the

body bends forward. But the vest is designed on the assumption that

these lines remain always equal, which compels one to keep in a

perfectly straight position. As no one actually lives up to this

standard, the consequence is that the end of the vest either

protrudes or falls into creases pressing on the body at every

movement. In the case of a male victim of obesity, the vest describes

a protruding are and invariably ends in the air, from which point the

receding are is taken up by the belt and the pants. Can anything

invented by the human mind be more grotesque? Is it any wonder

that a nudist movement has sprung up as a protest and a reaction

against this grotesque bondage of the human body?

But if mankind were still in the quadruped stage, there could be

some justification for the belt, which then could be adjusted as the

saddle strap is adjusted on the horse. But, while mankind has

adopted the erect position, his belt is designed on the assumption

that he is still a quadruped, just as anatomy of the peritoneal

muscles shows that these are designed for the quadruped position

with all weight suspended from the backbone. The disastrous

consequence of this erect position is that, while human mothers are

liable to miscarriage and abortion, from which animals are exempt,

the belt of the male dress also has a tendency to gravitate

downwards. The only way to prevent this is to keep the belt so tight

that it does not gravitate, but also with the result that it interferes with

all natural intestinal movements.

I am quite convinced that when the Westerners have made more

progress in the impersonal things, they will one day also come to

devote more time to their personal things and exercise more

common sense in the matter of dress. Western men are paying a

severe penalty for their conservatism in this matter of dress and for

their fear of innovation, while Western women long ago achieved

simplicity and common sense in their dress. To speak not for the

immediate decades but for the distant centuries, I am quite

convinced that men will eventually evolve a dress for themselves

that is logical and consistent with their biped position, as is already

achieved in women’s dress. Gradually all cumbersome belts and

braces will be eliminated and men’s dress will be so designed that it

hangs naturally down from the shoulder in a sort of graceful and

fitting form. There will be no meaningless padded shoulders and

lapels, and in place of the present design, there will be a much more

comfortable type of dress, more nearly resembling the house jacket

As I see it, the great difference then between men’s dress and

women’s dress will be only that men wear pants while women wear

skirts. So far as the upper part of the body is concerned, the same

essential consideration of ease and comfort will prevail. Men’s necks

will be just as free as women’s, the vest will correspondingly

disappear and the jacket will be used exactly to the same extent as

women’s coats are used today. Most of the time men will go about

without their jackets as women are doing today.

This involves, of course, a revolution in our present conception of

the shirt. Instead of being something to be worn inside, it will be

made of darker material and worn outside, from the lightest silk to

the heaviest woollen material, according to the season, and cut

accordingly for better appearance. And then they can slip the jacket

on, whenever they want to, but more for consideration of the weather

than for formality, for this future apparel will be practically correct and

acceptable in any company. In order to destroy the insufferable belts

and suspenders, there will be a kind of combination shirt and pants,

to be slipped over the head as women’s dresses are slipped over

now, with certain adjustments, pretended or real, around the waist to

bring out the figure better,

Even at present, a reform is possible for the elimination of the belt

or suspenders while maintaining the present pattern of men’s dress.

The whole principle is: weight should be suspended from the

shoulders and evenly distributed, and should not be clamped on to

the vertical wall of the abdomen by sheer force of adhesion, friction

and compression, and the human male waist should be liberated

from its duty as a bottleneck, to the end that a system of loose-fitting

undergarments may become possible. If we start on the road of

progress without the vest, men can just have their shirts buttoned to

the pants, as children’s dresses are today. In time, then, as the shirt

becomes outside apparel, it will be made of finer material, probably

of the same color and quality as the pants;, or matching them. Or if

we start on dress reform with the vest as a necessary part, we

should have a combination vest and pants, preserving their present

form, but made of one piece, the back of the vest being reduced to

two diagonal straps. Even at the present time, belts and suspenders

can easily be eliminated by having six little appendages, four in

frontand two behind, sewed onto the inside of the vest, with

buttonholes to fit into the buttons on the pants. As the vest comes

outside the pants, there will be no visible difference from vests as

they are worn at present. Once the innovations are started and men

begin to think that their present dress designs are not co-eternal with

the universe, it will be possible to gradually modify and eliminate the

vest itself, by having this combination garment so cut as to be better

looking than an overall, but still going on the same principle.

It requires no imagination to see that for adjustment to varying

climatic conditions, the Chinese dress is also the only logical mode.

While the Westerner is compelled to wear underwear, one shirt,

perhaps one vest and one coat, whether the weather temperature is

below zero or above a hundred, the Chinese dress is infintely

flexible* There is a story told of the fond Chinese mother who puts

one gown on her boy when he sneezes once, puts on another when

he sneezes twice, and puts on a third when he sneezes thrice. No

Western mother can do that; she would be at her wit’s end at the

third sneeze. All she can do is to call for the doctor, I am led to

believe that the only thing which saves the Chinese nation from

extermination by tuberculosis and pneumonia is the cotton-padded

gown.

X. ON HOUSE AND INTERIORS

The word “house” should include all the living conditions or the

physical environment of one’s house. For everyone knows it is more

important in selecting a house to see what one looks out on from the

house than what one sets in it. The location of the country and its

surrounding landscape are the thing. I have seen rich men in

Shanghai very proud of a tiny plot of land that they own, which

includes a fish pond about ten feet across and an artificial hill that

takes ants three minutes to crawl to the top, not knowing that many a

poor man lives in a hut on a mountain side and owns the entire view

of the hillside, the river and the lake as his private garden. There is

absolutely no comparison between the two. There are houses

situated in such beautiful scenery up in the mountains that there is

no point whatsoever in fencing off a piece of land as one’s own,

because wherever he wanders, he owns the entire landscape,

including the white clouds nestling against the hills, the birds flying in

the sky and the natural symphony of falling cataracts and birds’

song. That man is rich, rich beyond comparison with any millionaire

living in a city. A man living in a city may see sailing clouds, too, but

he seldom sees them actually, and when he does, the clouds are not

set off against an outline of blue hills, and then what is the point of

seeing clouds? The background is all wrong.

The Chinese conception of house and garden is therefore

determined by the central idea that the house itself is only a detail

forming a part of the surrounding country, like a jewel in its setting,

and harmonizing with it. For this reason, all signs of artificiality must

be hidden as much as possible, and the rectilinear lines of the walls

must be hidden or broken by overhanging branches. A perfectly

square house, shaped like a magnified piece of brick, is justifiable in

a factory building, because it is a factory building where efficiency is

the first consideration. But a perfectly square house for a home to

live in is an atrocity of the first order. The Chinese conception of an

ideal home has been succinctly expressed by a writer in the

following manner:

Inside the gate there is a footpath and the footpath must be

winding. At the turning of the footpath there is an outdoor

screen and the screen must be small. Behind the screen there

is a terrace and the terrace must be level. On the banks of the

terrace there are flowers and the flowers must be fresh.

Beyond the flowers is a wall and the wall must be low. By the

side of the wall, there is a pine tree and the pine tree must be

old. At the foot of the pine tree there are rocks and the rocks

must be quaint. Over the rocks there is a pavilion and the

pavilion must be simple. Behind the pavilion are bamboos and

the bamboos must be thin and sparse. At the end of the

bamboos there is a house and the house must be secluded.

By the side of the house there is a road and the road must

branch off. At the point where several roads come together,

there is a bridge and the bridge must be tantalizing to cross.

At the end of the bridge there are trees and the trees must be

tall. In the shade of the trees there is grass and the grass

must be green. Above the grass plot there is a ditch and the

ditch must be slender. At the top of the ditch there is a spring

and the spring must gurgle. Above the spring there is a hill

and the hill must be deep. Below the hill there is a hall and the

hall must be square. At the corner of the hall there is a

vegetable garden and the vegetable garden must be big. In

the vegetable garden there is a stork and the stork must

dance. The stork announces that there is a guest and the

guest must not be vulgar. When the guest arrives there is

wine and wine must not be declined. During the service of the

wine, there is drunkenness and the drunken guest must not

want to go home.

The charm of a house lies in its individuality. Li Liweng has

several chapters on houses and interiors in his book on the Art of

Living, and in the introductory remarks he emphasizes the two points

of familiarity and individuality. Familiarity, I feel, is more important

than individuality. For no matter how big and pretentious a house a

man may have, there is always one particular room that he likes and

really lives in, and that is invariably a small, unpretentious room,

disorderly and familiar and warm. So says Li:

A man cannot live without a house as his body cannot go

about without clothing. And as it is true of clothing that it

should be cool in summer and warm in winter, the same thing

is true of a house. It is all very imposing to live in a hall twenty

or thirty feet high with beams several feet across, but such a

house is suitable for summer and not for winter. The reason

why one shivers when he enters an official’s mansion is

because of its space. It is like wearing a fur coat too broad for

girdling around the waist. On the other hand, a poor man’s

house with low walls and barely enough space to put one’s

knees in, while having the virtue of frugality, is suitable for the

owner, but not suitable for entertaining guests. That is why we

feel cramped and depressed without any reason when we

enter a poor scholar’s hut. . . . I hope that the dwellings of

officials will not be too high and big. For a house and the

people living in it must harmonize as in a picture. Painters of

landscape have a formula saying, “ten-feet mountains and

one-foot trees; one-inch horses and bean-sized human

beings.” It would be inappropriate to draw trees of two or three

feet on a hill of ten feet, or to draw a human being the size of

a grain of rice or millet riding on a horse an inch tall. It would

be all right for officials to live in halls twenty or thirty feet high,

if their bodies were nine or ten feet. Otherwise the taller the

building, the shorter the man appears, and the wider the

space, the thinner the man seems. Would it not be much

better to make his house a little smaller and his body a little

stouter?. . .

I have seen high officials or relatives of officials who throw

away thousands and ten thousands of dollars to build a

garden and who begin by telling the architect, “For the

pavilion, you copy the design of So-and-So, and for the

covered terrace overlooking a pond, you follow the model of

So-and-So, down to its last detail.” When the mansion is

completed, its owner will proudly tell people that every detail

of the house, from its doors and windows to its corridors and

towers, has been copied from some famous garden without

the slightest deviation. Ah, what vulgarity!. . .

Luxury and expensiveness are the things most to be

avoided in architecture. This is so because not only the

common people, but also the princes and high officials,

should cherish the virtue of simplicity. For the important thing

in a living house is not splendor, but refinement, not elaborate

decorativeness, but novelty and elegance. People like to

show off their rich splendor not because they love it, but

because they are lacking in originality, and besides trying to

show off, they are at a total loss to invent something else.

That is why they have to put up with mere splendor. Ask two

persons to put on two new dresses, one simple and elegant

and original, and the other rich and decorative, but common.

Will not the eye of spectators be directed to the original dress

rather than to the common dress? Who doesn’t know the

value of silk and brocade and gauze, and who has not seen

them? But a simple, plain dress with a novel design will attract

the eyes of spectators because they have never seen it

before.

There are points about house designs and interiors which LI

Liweng goes into fully in his book. The subjects he deals with

coverhouses, windows, screens, lamps, tables, chairs, curios,

cabinets, beds, trunks, and so on. Being an exceptionally original

and inventive mind, the has something new to say on every topic,

and some of his inventions have become a part of the Chinese

tradition today. The most outstanding contributions are his letter

paper, which were sold in his life time as “Chiehtseyuan letter paper,”

and his windows and partition designs. Although his book on the Art

of Living is not so generally well-known, he is always remembered in

connection with the Chiehtseyüan Painting Patterns, the most

generally used beginner’s handbook of Chinese painting, and for his

Ten Comedies, for he was a dramatist, musician, epicure, dress

designer, beauty expert and amateur inventor all combined.

Li had new ideas about beds. He said that whenever he moved

into a new house, the first thing he looked for and attended to was

the bed. The Chinese bed has always been a curtained and framed

affair, resembling a large cabinet or a small room in itself, with poles,

shelves and drawers built around the pole, for placing books, tea-

pots, shoes, stockings and odds and ends. Li conceived the idea that

one should have flower stands as well in the bed. His method was to

build a thin, tiny piece of wooden shelf, over a foot wide but only two

or three inches deep, and have it fixed to the embroidered curtain.

According to him, the wooden shelf should be wrapped up in

embroidered silk to resemble a floating cloud, with certain

irregularities. There he would put whatever flowers were in season,

or burn “Dragon’s Saliva” incense, or keep “Buddha’s Fingers” or

quince for their fragrance. Thus, he says, “My body is no longer a

body, but a butterfly flitting about and sleeping and eating

among

flowers, and the man is no longer a man but a fairy, walking about

and sitting and lying in a paradise. I have thus once in my sleep felt

in a half-awake state the fragrance of plum flowers so that my throat

and teeth and cheeks were permeated with this subtle fragrance, as

if it came out from my chest. And I felt my body so light that I almost

thought I was not living in a human world. After waking up I told my

wife, ‘Who are we to enjoy this happiness? Are we not thus

“curtailing” the entire lot of happiness allowed to us?’

My wife

replied, ‘Perhaps that’s the reason why we always remain poor and

low! The thing is true and not a lie.’”

Lie’s most outstanding contribution, I believe, is in his ideas about

windows. He invented “fan windows” (for pleasure houseboats used

on lakes), landscape windows, and plum-flower windows. The idea

of having fan-shaped windows on the sides of a houseboat was

connected with the Chinese habit of painting and writing on fans and

collecting such fan paintings in albums. Li’s idea was therefore that

with the fan window on a boat as the frame, both the people inside

the boat looking out on the scenery on the banks and the people

walking on the banks looking at those having a wine or tea party in

the boat would see the view like a picture on a Chinese fan. For the

significance of the window lies in the fact that it is primarily a place

for looking out on a view, as when we say that the eye is the

“window” of the soul. It should be so designed as to look out on the

best view and also to enable one to see the view in the most

favorable manner, in this way introducing the element of nature into

house interiors by “borrowing” from the outside landscape, as Li put

it. Thus:

When a man is sitting in the boat, the light of the lake and

the color of the hills, the temples, clouds, haze, bamboos,

trees on the banks, as well as the woodcutters, shepherd

boys, drunken old men and promenading ladies, will all be

gathered within the framework of the fan and form a piece of

natural painting. Moreover, it is a living and moving picture,

changing all the time, not only when the boat is moving, giving

us a new sight with every movement of the oar and a new

view with every punting of the pole, but even when the boat is

lying at anchor, when the wind moves and the water ripples,

changing its form at every moment. Thus we are able to enjoy

hundreds and thousands of beautiful paintings of hills and

water in a day by means of this fan-shaped window. . . .

I have also made a window for looking out on hills, called

landscape window, otherwise known also as “unintentional

painting-” I will tell how I came to make one. Behind my

studio, the Studio of Frothy White (signifying “drinking”), there

is a hill about ten feet high and seven feet wide only,

decorated with a miniature scenery of red cliffs and blue

water, thick forests and tall bamboos, singing birds and falling

cataracts, thatched huts and wooden bridges, complete in all

the things that we see in a mountain village. For at first a

modeller of clay made a clay figure of myself with a wonderful

expression, and furthermore, because my name Liweng

meant “an old man with a bamboo hat,” also made me into a

fisherman, holding a fishing pole and sitting on top of a rock.

Then we thought since there was a rock, there must be also

water, and since there was water, there must be also a hill,

and since there were both hill and water, there must be a

mountain retreat for the old man with a bamboo hat to retire

and fish in his old age. That was how we gradually built up the

entire scenery. It is clear therefore that the artificial hill grew

out of a clay statue without any idea of making it serve the

purpose of a window view-Later I saw that although the things

were in miniature, their suggested universe was great, and it

seemed to recall the Buddhist idea that a mustard seed and

the Himalayas are equal in size, and therefore I sat there the

whole day looking at it, and could not bear to close the

window. And one day inspired I said to myself, “This hill can

be made into a painting, and this painting can be made into a

window. All it will cost me will be just one day’s drink money to

provide the ‘mounting’ for this painting.’ I therefore asked a

boy servant to cut out several pieces of paper, and paste

them above and below the window and at the sides, to serve

as the mounting for a real picture. Thus the mounting was

complete, and only the space usually occupied by the painting

itself was left vacant, with the hill behind my house to take its

place. Thus when one sits and looks at it, the window is no

more a window but a piece of painting, and the hill is no

longer the hill behind my house, but a hill in the painting. I

could not help laughing out loud, and my wife and children,

hearing my laughter, came to see it and joined in laughing at

what I had been laughing at This is the origin of the

“unintentional painting,” and the “landscape window.”

In the matter of tables and chairs and cabinets, Li also had a

number of novel ideas, I can only mention here his invention of a

heated armchair for use in winter. It is quite a practicable and useful

invention wherever the rooms are not properly heated. It is a long

wooden settee on a raised wooden platform built into the settee

itself. The platform is two or three feet deep, with upright wooden

panels at the sides about the height of a low desk. The front of the

settee is also provided with two wooden door panels,

and as one

goes up the platform, he closes the door, which together with the

upright panels on the side forms a perfect support for a removable

desk top. The sitter is thus encased behind the desk. The platform

itself is provided with a drawer containing hot ashes and well burned

and smokeless charcoal. The settee is so made that one can sit and

work there, and also lie down when he is tired. Li claimed that the

cost of thus providing a perfectly warm and comfortable place to

work in was no more than four pieces of charcoal a day, two being

added in the morning and two in the afternoon. He claimed further

that, when traveling, two strong bamboo poles could be tied to its

sides and the settee could be used like a regular sedan chair, with

the certainty of avoiding cold feet, and the added advantage of

keeping warm whatever food and drink was taken on the journey.

For the summer, he also thought of a bench resembling a bathtub,

with a porcelain tub specially ordered to fit into it. The tub could then

be filled with cold water, reaching to the back of the seat and cooling

it.

The Western world has invented rotating, collapsible, adjustable,

reversible and convertible beds, sofas and barber chairs, but

somehow it has not struck upon the idea of detachable and divisible

tables and curio stands. This is a thing that has had a long

development in China, showing considerable ingenuity. The principle

of divisible tables, known as “yenchi,” originated with a game similar

to building blocks for Western children, according to which a

collection of blocks of wood forming a perfect square can be made

into the most diverse symbolic figures of animals, human figures,

utensils and furniture on a flat surface. A “yenchi” table of six pieces

could be arranged to form one or several tables of different size,

square or rectangular or T-shaped, or with the tops at various

angles, making a total of forty ways of arrangement.

Another type, called tiehchi, or “butterfly tables,” differ from the

yenchi in having triangular pieces and diagonal lines, and therefore

the resulting shapes of pieces put together present a greater

diversity of outline. Whereas the first type of yenchi tables were

largely designed for dinner or card-tables of different size,

sometimes with a vacant space in the center for candle stands, this

second type is designed for dinner tables and card tables and flower

and curio stands as well, because flower and curio stands require a

greater diversity of arrangement. This butterfly table consists of

thirteen pieces, and together they form square tables, rectangular

tables, diamond shaped tables, with or without varying kinds of

holes, the possibility of novel arrangements being limited only by the

ingenuity of the housewife.

There is a great desire among housewives both of the East and

West to vary their interior arrangements, and divisible flower stands

or tea tables seem to provide the possibility for infinite variety. The

resulting shapes of such tables look strangely modernistic, for

modernistic furniture emphasizes the idea of simplicity of line, which

is also characteristic of Chinese furniture. The art seems to lie in

combining variety in line with simplicity. I have seen, for instance, an

old Chinese redwood flower stand so made that its legs are not

perfectly straight, but there is a slight turn in their middle. As for

varying arrangements, the simplest way would be not to order a

round or square table, but to have the round table consist of two

semi-circular halves, and the square table consist of two triangular

tops, forming a square with the common base of the triangles as its

diagonal line. When not wanted for playing cards, such round or

square tables can be broken up in two and placed against the wall

with the base of the triangle or of the semi-circle against it, and used

for flower pots or books. With the “butterfly tables,” one can then

have, instead of a triangular table against the wall, one similar to it

but with a twin apex to the triangle, like two peaks of a hill. Card

tables can be made larger or smaller in size according to the

company present, Tea tables can be made to look like two squares

overlapping one another at one of their corners, or they may

resemble a “T” shape or a “U” or an “S” shape. It might be quite

interesting to have a small party sitting at dinner around a “U” or “S”

shaped table in a small apartment.

There exists today a perfect copy of a detachable bookcase made

of hardwood, found in Ch’angshu, Kiangsu. Sectional bookcases are

common in the West, but the new feature about this detachable

bookcase is that its sections are so designed that, when taken apart,

they can be put one inside another, the whole occupying no more

space than a large suitcase. As it stands, it looks like a strangely

modernistic bookcase. But it is possible to vary it and modify it so

that one can break it up and have two or three small bookcases,

perhaps twelve, eighteen, or twenty-four inches long, to be put at the

head of sofas and beds, instead of one big bookcase, standing

forever at one point in the room.

The ideal of Chinese interiors seems to consist of the two ideas,

simplicity and space. A well arranged room always has few pieces of

furniture, and these are generally of mahogany with extremely

polished surface and simple lines, usually curved around the ends.

Mahogany is polished by hand, and the difference in polish, entailing

enormous labor, accounts for a wide difference in price. A long board

table without drawers generally stands against one wall, supporting

one big “liver” vase. At another corner perhaps may he seen one,

two or three mahogany flower or curio stands, of different height, and

perhaps a few stools with gnarled roots as supports, A bookcase or

curio cabinet stands on one side, with sections of various heights

and levels, giving a strangely modernistic effect. And on the wall are

just one or two scrolls, either of calligraphy, showing the sheer joy of

brush movement, or of painting, with more empty space than brush

strokes in it. And like the painting itself, the room should be

k’ungling, or “empty and alive.” The most distinctive feature of

Chinese home design is the stone-paved courtyard, similar in effect

to a Spanish cloister, and symbolizing peace, quiet and repose.

Analects, Chapter X.

The classic on tea is Ch’aching, by Lu Yu (d. A. D. 804); other well-known treatises

mentioned below are Ch’alu, by Ts’ai Hsiang (1012-1067); Ch’asu, by Hsu Ts’eshu;

Chuchùan Hstaop’tn, by Tien Yihng (c. 1570); Ch’aehien, by Tu Lung (c. 1592).

Analects, Ch. X.

Kuomintang party office.

A Chinese rich man having a good time with his concubine at night often has food and

wine served in bed by attending maid servants.

The Chinese idea is that every man born into this world is predestined with a certain

quantity of luck or happiness, which may not be changed, and if one enjoys too much of

something, his luck in other respects is curtailed, or he may live a shorter life.

It would be more practical to have the door panel at one side, instead of in front.

Tie first divisible tables were invented either by the great Yüan painter, Ni Yünlin,, who

was also a great collector of curios and old furniture, or still further back by certain Huang

Posse of the southern Sung Dynasty. A later man, Hsüan Kuch’ing, added one more piece,

with the possibility of seventy-six different arrangements, for which pictures of the different

arrangements exist. The design is simple enough, consisting of seven pieces all one unit

wide, of which three pieces are two units long, two pieces are three units long and two

pieces are four units long. The actual dimension given for the unit is one foot and three

quarters, so that the two longest tables of four units are seven feet long.

This was invented by acertain Ko Shan, at the end of the Ming Dynasty, and the book

giving sixty-two diagrams of its arrangements has been reprinted in various old Chinese

libraries on the art of living.

Chapter Ten

THE ENJOYMENT OF NATURE

I. PARADISE LOST?

It is a curious thing that among the myriad creations on this planet,

while the entire plant life is deprived from taking any attitude toward

Nature and practically all animals can also have no “attitude” to

speak of, there should be a creature called man who is both self-

conscious and conscious of his surroundings and who can therefore

take an attitude toward it. Man’s intelligence begins to question the

universe, to explore its secrets and to find out its meaning. There are

both a scientific and a moral attitude toward the universe. The

scientific man is interested in finding out the chemical composition of

the inside and crust of the earth upon which he lives, the thickness of

the atmosphere surrounding it, the quantity and nature of cosmic

rays dashing about on the top layers of the atmosphere, the

formation of its hills and rocks, and the law governing life in general.

This scientific interest has a relationship to the moral attitude, but in

itself it is a pure desire to know and to explore. The moral attitude,

on the other hand, varies a great deal, being sometimes one of

harmony with nature, sometimes one of conquest and subjugation,

or one of control and utilization, and sometimes one of supercilious

contempt. This last attitude of supercilious contempt toward our own

planet is a very curious product of civilization and of certain religions

in particular. It springs from the fiction of the “Lost Paradise,” which,

strange to say, is pretty generally accepted as being true today, as a

result of a primitive religious tradition.

It is amazing that no one ever questions the truth of the story of a

lost Paradise. How beautiful, after all, was the Garden of Eden, and

how ugly, after all, is the present physical universe? Have flowers

ceased to bloom since Eve and Adam sinned? Has God cursed the

apple tree and forbidden it to bear fruit because one man sinned, or

has He decided that its blossoms should be made of duller or paler

colors? Have orioles and nightingales and skylarks ceased to sing?

Is there no snow upon the mountain tops and are there no reflections

in the lakes? Axe there no rosy-sunsets today and no rainbows and

no haze nestling over villages, and are there no falling cataracts and

gurgling streams and shady trees? Who therefore invented the myth

that the “Paradise” was “lost” and that today we are living in an ugly

universe? We are indeed ungrateful spoiled children of God.

A parable has to be written of this spoiled child. Once upon a time

there was a man whose name we will not yet mention. He came to

God and complained that this planet was not good enough for him,

and said he wanted a Heaven of Pearly Gates. And God first pointed

out to the moon in the sky and asked him if it was not a good toy,

and he shook his head. He said he didn’t want to look at it. Then

God pointed out to the blue hills in the distance and asked him if the

lines were not beautiful, and he said they were common and

ordinary. Next God showed him the petals of the orchid and the

pansy, and asked him to put out his fingers and touch gently their

velvety lining and asked if the color scheme was not exquisite, and

the man said, “No.” In His infinite patience, God took him to an

aquarium, and showed him the gorgeous colors and shapes of

Hawaiian fishes, and the man said he was not interested. God then

took him under a shady tree and commanded a cool breeze to blow

and asked him if he couldn’t enjoy that, and the man replied again

that he was not impressed. Next God took him to a mountain lake

and showed him the light of the water, the sound of winds whistling

through a pine forest, the serenity of the rocks and the beautiful

reflections in the lake, and the man said that still he could not get

excited over it. Thinking that this creature of His was not mild-

tempered and wanted more exciting views, God took him then to the

top of the Rocky Mountains, the Grand Canyon, and caves with

stalactites and stalagmites, and geysers, and sand dunes, and the

fairyfinger-shaped cactus plants on a desert, and the snow on the

Himalayas, and the cliffs of the Yangtse Gorges, and the granite

peaks of the Yellow Mountains, and the sweeping cataract of

Niagara Falls, and asked him if He had not done everything possible

to make this planet beautiful to delight his eyes and his ears and his

stomach, and the man still clamored for a Heaven with Pearly Gates.

“This planet,” the man said, “is not good enough for me,” “You

presumptuous, ungrateful rat!” said God. “So this planet is not good

enough for you. I will therefore send you to Hell where you shall not

see the sailing clouds and the flowering trees, nor hear the gurgling

brooks and live there forever till the end of your days,” And God sent

him to live in a city apartment. His name was Christian.

It is clear that this man is pretty difficult to satisfy. There is a

question as to whether God can create a heaven to satisfy him. I am

sure that with his millionaire complex, he will be pretty sick of the

Pearly Gates during his second week in Heaven, and God will be at

His wits’ end to invent something else to please this spoiled child.

Now it must be pretty generally accepted that modern astronomy, by

exploring the entire visible universe, is forcing us to accept this earth

itself as a very heaven, and the Heaven that we dream of must

occupy some space, and occupying some space, it must be

somewhere among the stars in the firmament, unless it is in the

inter-stellar void. And since this Heaven is to be found in some star,

with or without moons, my imagination rather fails to conceive of a

better planet than our own. Of course there may be a dozen moons

instead of one, colored pink, purple, Prussian blue, cabbage green,

orange, lavender, aquamarine, and turquoise, and in addition there

may be better and more frequent rainbows. But I suspect that a man

who is not satisfied with one moon will also get tired of a dozen

moons, and one who is not satisfied with an occasional snow scene

or rainbow, will be equally tired of better and more frequent

rainbows. There may be six seasons in a year instead of four, and

there will be the same beautiful alternation of spring and summer

and day and night, but I don’t see how that will make a difference. If

one doesn’t enjoy spring and summer on earth, how can he enjoy

spring and summer in Heaven? I must seem to be talking either like

a great fool or an extremely wise man now, but certainly I don’t share

the Buddhist or Christian desire to escape from the senses and

physical matter by assuming a heaven occupying no space and

constructed out of sheer spirit. For myself, I would as soon live on

this planet as on any other. Certainly no one can say that life on this

planet is stale and monotonous. If a man cannot be satisfied with the

variety of weather and the changing colors of the sky, the exquisite

flavors of fruits appearing by rotation in the different seasons, and

flowers blooming by rotation in the different months, that man had

better commit suicide and not try to go on a futile chase after an

impossible Heaven that may satisfy God himself and never satisfy

man.

As the facts of the case really stand today, there is a perfect, and

almost a mystic, coördination between the sights, sounds, smells

and tastes of nature and our organs of seeing, hearing, smelling and

eating. This coordination between the sights and sounds and smells

of the universe and our own perceptive organs is so perfect that it

forms a perfect argument for teleology, so much ridiculed by Voltaire.

But we need not all be teleologists. God might have invited us to this

feast, or he might not. The Chinese attitude is that we will join in the

feast whether we are invited or not. It simply doesn’t make sense not

to taste the feast when the food looks so tempting and we have such

an appetite. Let the philosophers carry on their metaphysical

researches and try to find out whether we are among the invited

guests, but the sensible man will eat up the food before it gets cold.

Hunger always goes with good common sense.

Our planet is a very good planet. In the first place, there is the

alternation of night and day, and morning and sunset, and a cool

evening following upon a hot day, and a silent and clear dawn

presaging a busy morning, and there is nothing better than that. In

the second place, there is the alternation of summer and winter,

perfect in themselves, but made still more perfect by being gradually

ushered in by spring and autumn, and there is nothing better than

that. In the third place, there are the silent and dignified trees, giving

us shade in summer and not shutting out the warm sunshine in

winter, and there is nothing better than that. In the fourth place, there

are flowers blooming and fruits ripening by rotation in the different

months, and there is nothing better than that. In the fifth place, there

are cloudy and misty days alternating with clear and sunny days, and

there is nothing better than that. In the sixth place, there are spring

showers and summer thunder-storms and the dry crisp wind of

autumn and the snow of winter, and there is nothing better than that.

In the seventh place, there are peacocks and parrots and skylarks

and canaries singing inimitable songs, and there is nothing better

than that. In the eighth place, there is the zoo, with monkeys, tigers,

bears, camels, elephants, rhinoceros, crocodiles, sea lions, cows,

horses, dogs, cats, foxes, squirrels, woodchucks and more variety

and ingenuity than we ever thought of, and there is nothing better

than that. In the ninth place, there are rainbow fish, sword fish,

electric eels, whales, minnows, clams, abalones, lobsters, shrimps,

turtles and more variety and ingenuity than we ever thought of, and

there is nothing better than that. In the tenth place, there are

magnificent redwood trees, fire-spouting volcanoes, magnificent

caves, majestic peaks, undulating hills, placid lakes, winding rivers

and shady banks, and there is nothing better than that. The menu is

practically endless to suit individual tastes, and the only sensible

thing to do is to go and partake of the feast and not complain about

the monotony of life.

II. ON BIGNESS

Nature is itself always a sanatorium. If it can cure nothing else, it

can cure man of megalomania. Man has to be “put in his place,” and

he is always put in his place against nature’s background. That is

why Chinese paintings always paint human figures so small in a

landscape. In a Chinese landscape called “Looking at a Mountain

After Snow,” it is very difficult to find the human figure supposed to

be looking at the mountain after snow. After a careful search, he will

be discovered perching beneath a pine tree—his squatting body

about an inch high in a painting fifteen high, and done in no more

than a few rapid strokes. There is another Sung painting of four

scholarly figures wandering in an autumn forest and raising their

heads to look at the intertwining branches of majestic trees above

them. It does one good to feel terribly small at times. Once I was

passing a summer in Ruling, and lying there on top of the mountain, I

began to see two little creatures, the size of ants, a hundred miles off

in Nanking, hating and intriguing against each other for a chance to

serve China, and it made the whole thing seem a little comical. That

is why a mountain trip is supposed by the Chinese to have a

cathartic effect, cleansing one’s breast of a lot of foolish ambitions

and unnecessary worries.

Man is liable to forget how small and often how futile he is. A man

seeing a hundred-story building often gets conceited, and the best

way to cure that insufferable conceit is to transport that skyscraper in

one’s imagination to a little contemptible hill and learn a truer sense

of what may and what may not be called “enormous.” What we like

about the sea is its infiniteness, and what we like about the mountain

is its enormity. There are peaks in Huangshan or the Yellow

Mountains which are formed by angle pieces of granite a thousand

feet high from their visible base on the ground to their tops, and half

a mile long. These are what inspire the Chinese artists, and their

silence, their rugged enormity and their apparent eternity account

partly for the Chinese love of rocks in pictures. It is hard to believe

that there are such enormous rocks until one visits Huangshan, and

there was a Huangshan School of painters in the seventeenth

century, deriving their inspiration from these silent peaks of granite.

On the other hand, by association with nature’s enormities, a

man’s heart may truly grow big also. There is a way of looking upon

a landscape as a moving picture and being satisfied with nothing

less big as a moving picture, a way of looking upon tropic clouds

over the horizon as the backdrop of a stage and being satisfied with

nothing less big as a backdrop, a way of looking upon the mountain

forests as a private garden and being satisfied with nothing less as a

private garden, a way of listening to the roaring waves as a concert

and being satisfied with nothing less as a concert, and a way of

looking upon the mountain breeze as an air-cooling system and

being satisfied with nothing less as an air-cooling system. So do we

become big, even as the earth and firmaments are big. Like the “Big

Man” described by Yüan Tsi (A. D. 210-263), one of China’s first

romanticists, we “live in heaven and earth as our house.”

The best “spectacle” I ever saw took place one evening on the

Indian Ocean. It was truly immense. The stage was a hundred miles

wide and three miles high, and on it nature enacted a drama lasting

half an hour, now with giant dragons, dinosaurs and lions moving

across the sky—how the lions’ heads swelled and their manes

spread and how the dragons’ backs bent and wriggled and curled!—

now showing armies of white-clad and gray-uniformed armies and

officers with golden epaulets, marching and countermarching and

united in combat and retreating again. As the battle and the chase

were going on, the stage-lights changed, and the soldiers in white

uniform burst out in orange and the soldiers in gray uniforms seemed

to don purple, while the backdrop was a flaming iridescent gold.

Then as Nature’s stage technicians gradually dimmed the lights, the

purple overcame and swallowed up the orange, and changed into

deeper and deeper mauve and gray, presenting for the last five

minutes a spectacle of unspeakable tragedy and black disaster

before the lights went out. And I did not pay a single cent to watch

the grandest show of my life.

There is, too, the silence of the mountains, and that silence is

therapeutic—the silent peaks, the silent rocks, the silent trees, all

silent and all majestic. Every good mountain with an enclosing

gesture is a sanatorium. One feels good nestling like a baby on its

breast A disbeliever in Christian Science, I do believe in the spiritual,

heating properties of grand, old trees and mountain resorts, not for

curing a fractured shoulder-bone or an infected skin, but for curing

the ambitions of the flesh and diseases of the soul—kleptomania,

megalomania, egocentricity, spiritual halitosis, bonditis, couponitis,

managitis (the desire to manage others), war-neurosis, verse-

phobia, spitefulness, hatred, social exhibitionism, general muddle-

headedness and all forms of moral distemper.

III. TWO CHINESE LADIES

The enjoyment of Nature is an art, depending so much on one’s

mood and personality, and like all art, it is difficult to explain its

technique. Everything must be spontaneous and rise spontaneously

from an artistic temperament. It is therefore difficult to lay down rules

for the enjoyment of this or that tree, this or that rock and this or that

landscape in a particular moment, for no landscapes are exactly

alike. He who understands will know how to enjoy Nature without

being told. Havelock Ellis and Van der Velde are wise when they say

that what is allowable and what is not allowable, or what is good and

what is bad taste in the art of love between husband and wife in the

intimacy of their bedroom, is not something that can be prescribed

by rules. The same thing is true of the art of enjoying Nature. The

best approach is probably by studying the lives of such people who

have the artistic temperament in them. The feeling for Nature, one’s

dreams of a beautiful landscape seen a year ago, and one’s sudden

desire to visit a certain place—these things come in at the most

unexpected moments. One who has the artistic temperament shows

it wherever he goes, and writers who truly enjoy nature will go off in

descriptions of a beautiful snow scene or a spring evening, forgetting

entirely about the story or the plot. Autobiographies of journalists and

statesmen are usually full of reminiscences of past events, while the

autobiographies of literary men should mainly concern themselves

with reminiscences of a happy night, or a visit with some of their

friends to some valley. In this sense I find the autobiographies of

Rudyard Kipling and G. K. Chesterton disappointing. Why are the

important anecdotes of their lives regarded as so unimportant, and

why are the unimportant anecdotes regarded as so important? Men,

men, men, everywhere, and no mention of flowers and birds and hills

and streams!

The reminiscences of Chinese literary men, and also their letters,

differ in this respect. The important thing is to tell a friend in one’s

letter about a night on the lake, or to record in one’s autobiography a

perfectly happy day and how it was passed. In particular, Chinese

writers, at least a number of them, have gone to the length of writing

reminiscences about their married lives. Of these, Mao Pichiang’s

Reminiscences of My Concubine,

Shen Sanpo’s Six Chapters of a

Floating Life, and Chiang T’an’s Reminiscences Under the Lamp-

Light are the best examples. The first two were written by the

husbands after their wives’ death, while the last was written in the

author’s old age during his wife’s lifetime.

We will begin with certain

select passages from the Reminiscences Under the Lamp-Light with

the author’s wife Ch’iufu as the heroine, and follow it with selections

from Six Chapters of a Floating Life, with Yün as the heroine. Both

these women had the right temperament, although they were not

particularly educated or good poets. It doesn’t matter. No one should

aim at writing immortal poetry; one should learn the writing of poems

merely as a way to record a meaningful moment, a personal mood,

or to help the enjoyment of Nature.

A. CH’IUFU

Ch’iufu often said to me, “A man’s life lasts only a hundred

years, and of this hundred sleep and dream occupy one half,

days of illness and sorrow occupy one half, and the days of

swaddling clothes and senile age again occupy one half.

What we have got left is only a tenth or fifth part. Besides, we

who are made of the stuff of willows can hardly expect to live

a hundred years.”

One day when the autumn moon was at its best, Ch’iufu

asked a young maid to carry a ch’in and accompany her to a

boating trip among the lotus flowers of the West Lake. I was

then returning from the West River, and when I arrived and

found that Ch’iufu had gone boating, I bought some melons

and went after her. We met at the Second Bridge of the Su

Tungp’o Embankment, when Ch’iufu was playing the sad ditty

of “Autumn in Han Palace.” Stopping to listen with my gown

gathered in my hands, I listened to her music. At this moment,

the hills all around were enveloped in the evening haze, and

the reflections of the stars and the moon were seen in the

water. Different musical sounds came to my ear so that I could

not distinguish whether it was the sounds of the wind in the

air, or the sounds of jingling jade. Before the song was

completed, the bow of our boat had already touched the

southern bank of the Garden of Swirling Waters. We then

knocked at the gate of the White Cloud Convent, for we knew

the nuns there. After sitting down for a while, the nuns served

us with freshly picked lotus seeds prepared in soup. Their

color and their fragrance were enough to cool one’s

intestines, a world different from the taste of meats and oily

foods. Coming back, we landed at Tuan’s Bridge, where we

spread a bamboo matting on the ground and sat talking for a

long time. The distant rumble of the city rather annoyed our

ears like the humming of flies. . . . Then the stars in the sky

became fewer and fewer and the lake was blanketed with a

stretch of white. We heard the drum on top of the city wall and

realized that it was already the fourth watch [about 3 A. M.]

and carried the ch’in and paddled the boat home.

The banana trees that Ch’iufu planted had already grown

big leaves which cast their green shade across the screen. To

have heard raindrops beating upon the leaves in autumn

when lying inclined on a pillow was enough to break one’s

heart. So one day I playfully wrote three lines on one of the

leaves:

What busybody planted this sapling?

Morning tapping,

Evening rapping!

Next day, I saw another three lines following them, which read;

It’s you who’re lonesome, fretting!

Banana getting,

Banana regretting!

The characters were delicately formed, and they came from

Ch’lufu’s playful pen. But I have learnt something from what

she wrote.

One night we heard the noise of wind and rain, and the

pillows and matting revealed the cooler spirit of autumn,

Ch’iufu was just undressing for the night, and I was sitting by

her side and had just gone through an album of hundred

flowers with inscriptions that I was making. I heard the noise

of several yellow leaves falling upon the floor from the

window, and Ch’iufu sang the lines:

Yesterday was better than today;

And this year I’m older than the last.

I consoled her, saying, “One never lives a full hundred years,

How can we have time to wipe the tears for others [the falling

leaves].” And with a sigh I laid aside the painting brush. When

the night was getting late, and Ch’iufu wanted to have

something to drink, I found that the fire in the earthen stove

had already died out, and the maid servants were all in

dreamland, drooping their heads. I then took the oil lamp on

the table and placed it under the little tea stove, and warmed

up a cup of lotus seeds for her. Ch’iufu has been suffering

from an affection in the lungs for ten years, and always

coughs in late autumn and sleeps well only when upholstered

on a high pillow. This year, she is feeling stronger, and we

often sit face to face with each other deep into the night.

Perhaps it is due to proper care and nourishment.

I made a dress with a plum-flower design for Ch’iufu, with

fragrant snow all over her body, and at a distance she looked

like a Plum Fairy standing alone in a world of mortal beings. In

late spring, when her green sleeves were resting on the

balcony, butterflies would flit about her temples, not knowing

that the season of the Eastern Wind was already gone.

Last year, the swallows came back later than usual, and

when they came, half of the peach blossoms outside the

screen had already bloomed. One day, the clay from their

nest fell down and a young swallow fell to the ground. Afraid

that a wild cat might get it, Ch’iufu immediately took it up, and

made a bamboo support for its nest. This year the same

swallows have returned and are chirping around the house.

Do they perhaps remember the one who protected the young

one last year?

Ch’iufu loves to play chess but is not very good at it. Every

night, she would force me to play “the conversation of fingers”

with her, sometimes till daybreak. I playfully quoted the line of

Chu Chuchia, “At tossing coins and matching grass-blades

you have both lost. I ask you with what are you going to pay

me tonight?” “Are you so sure I cannot win?” she said,

evading the question. “I will bet you this jade tiger.” We then

played and when twenty or thirty stones had been laid, and

she was getting into a worse situation, she let the cat upon

the chess-board to upset the game. “Are you regarding

yourself as Yang Kueifei [who played the same trick upon

Emperor T’ang Minghuang]?” I asked. She kept quiet, but the

light of silver candles shone upon her peach-colored cheeks.

After that, we did not play any more.

There are several cassia trees at the Hupao Spring,

stretching low over some rocks. During blossom, its yellow

flowers cover up the stone steps, its perfume making one feel

like visiting the Kingdom of Divine Fragrance. I have a

weakness for flowers and often boiled tea

under them.

Ch’iufu plucked the flowers and decorated her hair with them,

but sometimes her hair would be caught or upset by the

overhanging branches. I arranged it and smoothed it with the

spring water. On our departure, we plucked a few twigs and

brought them home, putting them on the back of our cart as

we went through the city streets, that people might know the

latest news of the new autumn.

B. Y N

In the Six Chapters of a Floating Life we have the reminiscences

of an obscure Chinese painter about his married life with Yün, They

were both simple artistic souls, trying to snatch every moment of

happiness that came their way, and the story was told in a simple

unaffected manner. Somehow Yün has seemed to me the most

beautiful woman in Chinese literature. Theirs was a sad life, and yet

it was one of the gayest, with a gaiety that came from the soul. It is

interesting to see how the enjoyment of nature came in as a vital part

of their spiritual experience. Below are three passages describing

their enjoyment of the seventh of the seventh moon and the fifteenth

of the seventh moon, both festivals, and of how they passed a

summer inside the city of Soochow:

On the seventh night of the seventh moon of that year [1780] Yün

prepared incense, candies and some melons and fruits, so that we

might together worship the Grandson of Heaven

in the Hall called

“After My Heart.” I had carved two seals with the inscription, “That

we might remain husband and wife from incarnation to incarnation.” I

kept the seal with positive characters, while she kept the one with

negative characters, to be used in our correspondence. That night,

the moon was shining beautifully and when I looked down at the

creek, the ripples shone like golden chains. We were wearing light

silk dresses and sitting together with a small fan in our hands, before

a window overlooking the creek. Looking up at the sky, we saw the

clouds sailing through the heavens, changing at every moment into a

myriad forms, and Yün said: “This moon is common to the whole

universe. I wonder if there is another pair of lovers quite as

passionate as ourselves looking at the same moon tonight?” And I

said: “Oh, there are plenty of people who will be sitting in the cool

evening and looking at the moon, and, perhaps also many women

criticising or enjoying the clouds in their chambers; but when a

husband and wife are looking at the moon together, I hardly think

that the clouds will form the subject of their conversation.” By and by,

the candle-lights went out, the moon sank in the sky, and we

removed the fruits and went to bed.

The fifteenth of the seventh moon was All Souls’ Day. Yün

prepared a little dinner, so that we could drink together with the

moon as our company, but when night came, the sky was suddenly

overcast with dark clouds. Yün knitted her brow and said: “If it be the

wish of God that we two should live together until there are silver

threads in our hair, then the moon must come out again tonight.” On

my part I felt disheartened also. As we looked across the creek, we

saw will-o’-the-wisps flitting in crowds hither and thither like ten

thousand candle-lights, threading their way through the willows and

smartweeds. And then we began to compose a poem together, each

saying two lines at a time, the first completing the couplet which the

other had begun, and the second beginning another couplet for the

other to finish, and after a few rhymes, the longer we kept on, the

more nonsensical it became, until it was a jumble of slapdash

doggerel. By this time, Yün was buried amidst tears and laughter

and choking on my breast, while I felt the fragrance of the jasmine in

her hair assail my nostrils. I patted her on the shoulder and said

jokingly, “I thought that the jasmine was used for decoration in

women’s hair because it was round like a pearl; I did not know that it

is because its fragrance is so much finer when it is mixed with the

smell of women’s hair and powder. When it smells like that, even the

citron cannot remotely compare with it.” Then Yün stopped laughing

and said: “The citron is the gentleman among the different fragrant

plants because its fragrance is so slight that you can hardly detect it;

on the other hand, the jasmine is a common fellow because it

borrows its fragrance partly from others. Therefore, the fragrance of

the jasmine is like that of a smiling sycophant,” “Why, then,” I said,

“do you keep away from the gentleman and associate with the

common fellow?” And Yün replied, “I am amused by the gentleman

that loves the common fellow.” While we were thus bandying words

about, it was already midnight, and we saw the wind had blown away

the clouds in the sky and there appeared the full moon, round like a

chariot wheel, and we were greatly delighted. And so we began to

drink by the side of the window, but before we had tasted three cups,

we heard suddenly the noise of a splash under the bridge, as if some

one had fallen into the water. We looked out through the window and

saw there was not a thing, the water was a smooth as a mirror,

except that we heard the noise of a duck scampering in the marshes.

I knew that there was a ghost of some one drowned by the side of

the Ts’anglang Pavilion, but knowing that Yün was very timid, dared

not mention it to her. And Yün sighed and said: “Alas! whence

cometh this noise?” and we shuddered all over. Quickly we shut the

window and carried the wine pot back into the room. A lamp light

was then burning as small as a pea, and the curtains moved in the

dark, and we were shaking all over. We then put out the light and

went inside the bed curtain, and Yün already had run up a high fever.

Soon I had a high temperature myself, and our illness dragged on for

about twenty days. True it is that when the cup of happiness over-

flows, disaster follows, as the saying goes, and this was also an

omen that we should not be able to live together until old age. The

book is strewn literally with passages of such charm and beauty,

showing an overflowing love of nature, but the following description

of how they spent a summer must suffice:

After we had moved to Ts’angmi Alley, I called our bedroom

the “Tower of Guests’ Fragrance,” with a reference to Yün’s

name,

and to the story of Liang Hung and Meng Kuang who

as husband and wife were always courteous to each other

“like guests.” We rather disliked the house because the walls

were too high and the courtyard was too small. At the back,

there was another house, leading to the library. Looking out of

the window at the back, one could see the old garden of Mr.

Lu, then in a dilapidated condition. Y n’s thoughts still hovered

about the beautiful scenery of the Ts’anglang Pavilion.

At this time there was an old peasant woman living on the

east of Mother Gold’s Bridge and the north of Kenghsiang.

Her little cottage was surrounded on all sides by vegetable

fields and had a wicker gate. Outside the gate, there was a

pond about thirty yards across, surrounded by a wilderness of

trees on all sides. . . . A few paces to the west of the cottage,

there was a mound filled with broken bricks, from the top of

which one could command a view of the surrounding country,

which was an open ground with a stretch of wild vegetation.

Once the old woman happened to mention the place, and Yün

kept on thinking about it. . . . So the next day I went there and

found that the cottage consisted only of two rooms, which

could be partitioned into four. With paper windows and

bamboo beds, the house would make quite a delightfully cool

place to stay in. . . .

Our only neighbours were an old couple who raised

vegetables for the market. They knew that we were going to

stay there for the summer, and came and called on us,

bringing us some fish from the pond and vegetables from their

own fields. We offered to pay for them, but as they wouldn’t

take any money, Yün made a pair of shoes for them, which

they were finally persuaded to accept. This was in July when

the trees cast a green shade over the place. The summer

breeze blew over the water of the pond, and cicades filled the

air with their singing the whole day. Our old neighbour also

made a fishing line for us, and we used to angle together

under the shade. Late in the afternoons, we would go up on

the mound to look at the evening glow and compose lines of

poetry, when we felt so inclined. Two of the lines were;

Beast-clouds swallow the sinking sun,

And the bow-moon shoots the falling stars.

After a while, the moon cut her image in the water, insects

began to cry all around, and we placed a bamboo bed near

the hedgerow to sit or lie upon. The old woman then would

inform us that wine had been warmed up and dinner

prepared, and we would sit down to have a little drink under

the moon-After we had a bath, we would put on our slippers

and carry a fan, and lie or sit there, listening to old tales of

retribution told by our neighbour. When we came in to sleep

about midnight, we felt our whole bodies nice and cool, almost

forgetting that we were living in a city.

There along the hedgerow, we asked the gardener to plant

chrysanthemums. The flowers bloomed in the ninth moon,

and we continued to stay there for another ten days. My

mother was also quite delighted and came to see us there. So

we ate crabs in the midst of chrysanthemums and whiled

away the whole day. Y n was quite enchanted with all this

and said: “Some day we must build a cottage here. We’ll buy

ten mow of ground, and around it well plant vegetables and

melons for our food. You will paint and I will do embroidery,

from which we could make enough money to buy wine and

compose poems over dinners. Thus, clad in simple gowns

and eating simple meals, we could live a very happy life

together without going anywhere.” I fully agreed with her. Now

the place is still there while the one who knows my heart is

dead, Alas, such is life!

IV. ON ROCKS AND TREES

I don’t know what we are going to do now. We are building houses

square and are building them in a row, and we are having straight

roads without trees. There are no more crooked streets, no more old

houses, no more wells in one’s garden, and whatever private garden

there is in the city is usually a caricature. We have quite successfully

shut nature out from our lives, and we are living in houses without

roofs, the roofs being the neglected end of a building, left in any old

shape after the utilitarian purposes have been served and the

building contractor is a little tired and in a hurry to get through his

job. The average building looks like wooden blocks built by a peevish

or fickle child who is tired of the game before he finishes building,

and leaves them unfinished and uncrowned. The spirit of Nature has

left the modern civilized man, and it seems to me we are trying to

civilize the trees themselves. If we ever remember to plant them on

boulevards, we usually number them serially, disinfect them, cut

them and trim them to assume a shape that we humans consider

beautiful.

We often plant flowers and lay them out on a plot so that they

resemble either a circle, or a star, or different letters of the alphabet,

and we are horrified when some of the flowers so planted get out of

line, as we are horrified when we see a West Point cadet march out

of step, and we proceed to cut them down with scissors. And at

Versailles, we plant these conically cut trees in pairs and arrange

them with perfect symmetry along a perfectly round circle or in

perfectly rectilinear rows in army formation. Such is human glory and

power and our ability to train and discipline the trees as we train and

discipline uniformed soldiers. If one tree of a pair grows taller than

the other, our hands itch to cut off its top so as not to let it disturb our

sense of symmetry and human power and glory.

There exists, therefore, the great problem of recovering nature

and bringing nature back to the home. This is an exasperating

problem. What can one do with the best artistic temperament, when

one lives in an apartment and away from the soil? How is one going

to have a plot of grass or a well or a bamboo grove even if he is rich

enough to rent a penthouse? Everything is wrong, utterly and

irretrievably wrong. What has one got left to admire except tall

skyscrapers and lighted windows in a row at night? Looking at these

skyscrapers and these lighted windows in a row at night, one gets

more and more conceited about the power of human civilization and

forgets what puny little creatures human beings are, I am therefore

forced to give up the problem as hopeless of solution.

We must begin, therefore, by giving man land and plenty of it. No

matter what the excuse, a civilization that deprives man of land is

wrong. But suppose in a future civilization every man is able to own

an acre of land, then he has got something to start with. He can have

trees, his own trees, and rocks, his own rocks. He will be careful to

choose a site where there are already full-grown trees, and if there

are not already full-grown trees, he will plant trees that grow fast

enough for him, such as bamboos and willows. Then he will not have

to keep birds in cages, for birds will come to him and he will see to it

that there are frogs in the neighborhood, and preferably also some

lizards and spiders. His children will then be able to study nature in

Nature and not study nature in a glass case. At least his children will

be able to watch how chickens hatch from their eggs and they need

not be woefully ignorant about sex and reproduction as the children

of “good” Boston families often are. And they will have the pleasure

of watching a fight between lizards and spiders. And they will have

the pleasure also of getting comfortably dirty.

The Chinese sentiment for rocks has already been explained, or

hinted at, in a previous section.

That explanation sufficiently

accounts for the love of rocky peaks in Chinese landscape painting.

This explanation is basic, but it does not sufficiently account for

Chinese rock gardens and the love of rocks in general. The basic

idea is that rocks are enormous, strong and suggest eternity. They

are silent, unmovable and have strength of character like great

heroes, and they are independent and detached from life like retired

scholars. They are invariably old, and the Chinese love whatever is

old. Above all, from the artistic point of view they have grandeur,

majesty, ruggedness, and quaintness. There is the further sentiment

of wei, which means “dangerous” but is really untranslatable. A tall

cliff that rises abruptly three hundred feet above the ground is always

fascinating to look at because of its suggestion of “danger.”

But then it is necessary to go further. As one cannot visit the

mountains every day, it is necessary to have rocks brought to the

home. In the case of rock gardens and artificial rock grottoes, a

subject which is difficult for Western travelers in China to understand

and appreciate, the idea is still to retain a suggestion of the rugged,

“dangerous” and majestic lines of rocky peaks. Western travelers are

not to blame because most of the rockeries are done with atrocious

taste, and fail to convey the suggestion of natural grandeur and

majesty. Artificial grottoes built out of several pieces of rock are

usually cemented together, and the cement shows. A really artistic

rockery should have the composition and contrast- of a painting.

There is no question that the artistic appreciation of artificial rock

sceneries and that of mountain rocks in landscape painting are

closely associated, as we find the Sung painter, Mi Fei, was the

author of a book on ink-stones, and there was a book Shihp’u on

rocks by a Sung author, Tu Kuan, giving detailed descriptions of the

quality of over a hundred kinds of rocks produced at different places

and used for rockeries, showing that rockeries were already a highly

developed art in the time of the great Sung painters.

Side by side with this appreciation of the grandeur of rocks on

mountain peaks, there developed then a different appreciation of

rocks in gardens, emphasizing their color, texture, surface, grains

and sometimes the sounds they produced when struck. The smaller

the stones, the more emphasis was laid on quality of texture and

color of grains. The development along this direction was greatly

helped by the hobby of collecting the finest ink-stones and seals, two

things which the literary man in China daily associated with.

Daintiness, texture, light or translucence and shades of color

became then of the first importance, as also in the case of stone,

jade and jadeite snuff bottles, which came later. A good stone seal or

a good snuff bottle could cost six or seven hundred dollars.

For the fullest appreciation of all uses of stone in the house and

gardens, however, one has to go back to Chinese calligraphy. For

calligraphy is nothing but a study of rhythm and line and composition

in the abstract. While really good pieces of rock should suggest

majesty or detachment from life, it is even more important that the

lines be correct. By line one does not mean a straight line, or a circle

or a triangle, but the rugged lines of nature. Laotse, “The Old Boy,”

always emphasized in his Taotehching the uncarved rock. Let us not

tamper with Nature, for the best work of art, like the best poem or

literary composition, is one which shows no sign of human effort, as

natural as a winding river or a sailing cloud, or as the Chinese

literary critics always say, “without ax and chisel marks.” This applies

to every field of art. The appreciation is of beauty in irregularity, in

lines that suggest rhythm and movement and gesture. The

appreciation of the gnarled roots of an oak tree, sometimes used as

stools in a rich man’s studio, is based on the same idea.

Consequently most of the rockeries found in Chinese gardens are

uncut rocks, which may be the fossilized bark of a tree ten or fifteen

feet high standing vertically alone and unmovable like a great man,

or of rocks found in lakes and caves, generally bearing perforations

and having the utmost irregularity of outline. One writer suggested

that if the perforations happen to be perfectly round, some little

pebble should be inserted to break up the regularity of the circle.

Rockeries near Shanghai and Soochow are mostly built of rocks

from the Taihu Lake, bearing marks of former sea waves. Such rocks

were dug out of the bottom of the lake, and sometimes when

something was needed to correct their lines, they would be chiseled

until they were perfect and let down into the water again for a year or

so, so that the chisel marks might be obliterated by the movement of

water.

The feeling for trees is easier to understand, and is, of course,

universal. Houses without trees around them are naked, like men

and women without clothing. The difference between trees and

houses is that houses are built but trees grow, and anything which

grows is always more beautiful to look at than anything which is built.

There are considerations of practical convenience which force us to

build our walls straight and our stories level, although in the matter of

floors, there is absolutely no reason why the floors of different rooms

in a house should not be on different levels. Nevertheless, there is

an inevitable tendency to go in for straight lines and square shapes,

and such straight lines and square shapes can be brought into

pleasurable relief only by the company of trees. In the color scheme,

too, we dare not paint our houses green. But nature dares and has

painted the trees green.

The wisdom of art consists in concealing art. We are so anxious to

show off. In this respect, I must pay my tribute to a great scholar of

the Manchu Dynasty, Yüan Yüan, who as governor had an islet built

in the water of the West Lake, known today as Governor Yüan’s

Islet, and who refused to put a single human edifice on the place, not

a pavilion, not a pillar, not even a monument. He completely

obliterated himself as an architect. Today the Governor Yüan’s Islet

stands in the middle of the lake, a level piece of land about a

hundred yards across, rising barely a foot above the water and

planted all around with willow trees. And today as you stand looking

at it on a misty day, the magic island seems to rise out of the water,

and the willow trees cast their reflections in the water, breaking the

monotony of the lake’s surface and harmonizing with it. Therefore

Governor Yüan’s Islet is in perfect harmony with nature. It is not

obtrusive to the eye, like the lighthouse-shaped monument next to it

built by a student returned from America, which gives me

inflammation of the eyelids every time I look at it. I have made a

public promise that if one day I should emerge as a bandit general

and capture Hangchow, my first official act would be to direct a

cannon and blow that lighthouse-shaped thing to pieces.

Out of the myriad variety of trees, Chinese critics and poets have

come to fed that there are a few which are particularly good for

artistic enjoyment, due to their special lines and contours which are

aesthetically beautiful from a calligrapher’s point of view. The point

is, that while all trees are beautiful, certain trees have a particular

gesture or strength or gracefulness. These trees are there fore

picked out from among the others and associated with definite

sentiments. It is clear that an ordinary olive tree has no rugged

manner, for which we go to the pine, and while a willow is graceful, it

can never be said to be “majestic” or “inspiring.” There are then a

small number of trees which are more constantly painted in paintings

and sung about in poems. Of these the most outstanding are the

pine tree, enjoyed for its grand manner, the plum tree, enjoyed for its

romantic manner, the bamboo tree, enjoyed for its delicacy of line

and the suggestion of the home, and the willow tree, enjoyed for its

gracefulness and its suggestion of slender women.

The enjoyment of the pine tree is probably most notable and of

the greatest poetic significance. It typifies better than other trees the

conception of nobility of manner. For there are trees noble and trees

ignoble, trees distinguished for their grand manner and trees of the

common manner. The Chinese artists therefore speak of the grand

old manner of the pine tree, as Matthew Arnold spoke of the grand

manner of Homer. It would be as hopeless to look for this grand

manner in willows among the trees, as it is to look for the grand

manner of poetry in Swinburne among the poets. There are so many

kinds of beauty, beauty of tenderness, of gracefulness, of majesty, of

austerity, of quaintness, of ruggedness, of sheer strength, and of a

suggestion of the antique. It is this antique manner of the pine tree

that gives the pine a special position among the trees, as it is the

antique manner of a recluse scholar, clad in a loose-fitting gown,

holding a bamboo cane and walking on a mountain path, that sets

him off as the highest ideal among men. For this reason Li Liweng

says that to sit in an orchard full of peach trees and flowers and

willows without a pine nearby is like sitting in the company of young

children and women without the presence of an austere master or

old man, whom we can look up to. It is also for this reason that when

Chinese admire pine trees, they go in for the old ones; the older the

better, for then they become more majestic Classed with the pine

tree is the cedar cypress which has the same manner, particularly

the kind known as selaginela involvens, with twisting, encircling and

ruggedly downward-pointing branches. While branches that stretch

upwards toward heaven seem to symbolize youth and aspiration,

downward-pointing branches seem to symbolize the posture of old

men bending down toward youth.

I say the enjoyment of pine trees is artistically most significant,

because it represents silence and majesty and detachment from life

which are so similar to the manner of the recluse. This enjoyment is

then associated with “stupid” rocks and with figures of old people

loitering around underneath its shade, as we so often see in Chinese

paintings. As one stands there beneath a pine tree, he looks up to it

with a sense of its majesty and its old age, and its strange happiness

in its own independence, Laotse says, “Nature does not talk,” nor

does the old pine tree. There it stands silent and imperturbable; from

its height it looks down upon us, thinking it has seen so many

children grow up into maturity and so many middle-aged people pass

on to old age. Like wise, old men, it understands everything, but it

does not talk, and therein lie its mystery and grandeur.

The plum tree is enjoyed partly for its romantic manner in its

branches, and partly for the fragrance in its flowers. It is curious that

among the trees selected for our poetic enjoyment, the pine tree, the

plum tree and the bamboo are associated with winter, being known

as the “Three Friends of Winter,” for the bamboo tree and the pine

tree are evergreens, while the plum tree blossoms at the end of

winter and the beginning of spring. The plum tree, therefore, in

particular, symbolizes purity of character, the purity that we find in

the crisp, cold winter air. Its splendor is a cold splendor, and like the

recluse, the cooler the atmosphere it finds itself in, the better it

prospers. Like the orchid flower, it typifies the idea of charm in

seclusion. A Sung poet and recluse, Lin Hoching, declared that he

had married plum trees as his wives, and had a stork for his son.

Today the site of his seclusion on the Kushan in the middle of the

West Lake is an object of pilgrimage for poets and scholars, and

below his tomb is the tomb of the stork, his “son.” Now the

appreciation of the plum tree, of its type of fragrance and its outline,

is best expressed by this poet in his famous line of seven words:

An hsiang fou tung yin heng sheh

“Its dim fragrance floats around, its shadow leaning across.” It is

admitted by all poets that the essence of the beauty of the plum is

expressed in those seven words and cannot be improved upon.

The bamboo tree is loved for its delicacy of trunk and leaves, and

being more delicate, it is more enjoyed in the intimacy of a scholar’s

home. Its beauty is more a kind of smiling beauty and the happiness

it gives us is mild and temperate. Bamboos are best enjoyed when

they are thin and slender and sparse, and for this reason two or

three trees are as good as a whole bamboo grove, either in life or in

painting. The appreciation of its slender outlines makes it possible to

paint just two or three twigs of bamboo in a picture, as it is also

possible to paint a single twig of plum flowers. Somehow its slender

lines go very well with the rugged lines of rocks, and hence one finds

always one or two rocks painted along with a few bamboos. Such

rocks are invariably painted as having the beauty of Slenderness.

The willow grows easily anywhere and often on a bank.

It is the

feminine tree par excellence. That is why Chang Ch’ao counts the

willow among the four things in the universe which touch man’s heart

most profoundly, and why he says the willow tree makes a man

sentimental. Chinese ladies of slender waist are said to have “willow

waists,” and Chinese female dancers, with their long sleeves and

their flowing robe, try to simulate the movement of willow branches

swaying and bowing in the wind. As willows grow most easily, there

are places in China where willows are planted for miles around and

then when a wind blows over them, the effect of the combination is

spoken of as “willow-waves,” or liulang. Furthermore, as orioles love

to perch on their hanging branches, they are associated in pictures

or in life with the presence of orioles, or with cicadas which also love

to rest there. One of the ten scenic spots of the West Lake is

therefore called Liulang Wen Ying, or “Listening to Orioles among

Willow-Waves.”

There are of course other trees, and a good number of them

admired for other reasons, like the wut’ung (sterculia platanitolia),

admired for the cleanliness of its bark and the possibility of carving

poems on its smooth surface with a knife. There is also great love of

gigantic old creepers, two or three inches across at their roots,

encircling old trees or rocks. Their encircling and undulating

movement contrasts pleasurably with the straight trunks of erect

trees. Sometimes a particularly good creeper suggests a sleeping

dragon and is given that name. Old trees that have zigzag and more

or less sloping trunks are also greatly loved and valued for this

reason. At Mutu, a point on the Taihu Lake near Soochow, there are

four such cypress trees which have been given the four respective

names “Pure,” “Rare,” “Antique” and “Quaint.” “Pure” goes up by a

long, straight trunk, spreading out a foliage on top resembling an

umbrella; “Rare” crouches on the ground and rolls along in three

zigzag bands like the letter “Z; “Antique” is bald and bare at the top

and broad and stumpy, with its straggling limbs half dried up and

resembling a man’s fingers; and “Quaint’s” trunk twists around in

spiral formation alf the way up to its highest branches.

Above all, the enjoyment of trees is not only in and for

themselves, but in association with other elements of nature, such as

rocks, clouds, birds, insects and human beings. Chang Ch’ao says

that “planting flowers serves to invite butterflies, piling up rocks

serves to invite clouds, planbng pine trees serves to invite the

wind,. . . planting banana trees serves to invite the rain, and planting

willow trees serves to invite the cicada.” One enjoys the sounds of

birds dong with the trees, and enjoys the sounds of crickets along

with the rocks, for birds sings where trees are, and crickets sing

where rocks are found The Chinese enjoyment of croaking frogs,

chirping crickets and intoning cicadas is immeasurably greater than

their love of cats and dogs and other animal pets. Among all the

animals, the only one which belongs in the same category with pine

trees and plum trees is the stork, because he, too, is the symbol of

the recluse. As one sees a stork, or even a heron, standing

motionless in the marshes of some secluded pond, dignified, elegant

and white and pure, the scholar wishes that he were a stork himself.

The final picture of man harmonizing with nature and happy

because the animals are happy is best expressed by Cheng

Panch’iao (1693-1765) in his letter to his younger brother, pointing

out his disapproval of keeping birds in cages:

In regard to what I said about not keeping birds in cages, I

wish to add that it isn’t that I don’t love birds, but there is a

proper way of loving them. The best way of keeping birds is to

plant hundreds of trees around the house, and let them find in

their green shade a bird kingdom and bird homes. So then, at

dawn, when we have waked up from sleep and are still

tossing about in bed, we hear a chorus of chirping songs like

a celestial symphony. When we have got up and put on our

gowns and are washing our faces or gargling our mouths or

sipping the morning tea, we see their gorgeous plumes flitting

to and fro, and before we have time to look at one, our eyes

are attracted by another—an enjoyment that is not to be

compared with looking at a single bird in a single cage.

Generally the enjoyment of life should come from a view

regarding the universe as a park and the rivers and lakes as a

pond, so that all beings can live according to their nature, and

great indeed is such happiness! How does this compare in

kindness and cruelty and in the magnitude of enjoyment with

the enjoyment of a bird in a cage, or of a fish in a jar!

V. ON FLOWERS AND FLOWER ARRANGEMENTS

There seems to be a certain randomness about the enjoyment of

flowers and flower arrangements, as we know it today. The

enjoyment of flowers, like the enjoyment of trees, must begin with

the selection of certain noble varieties, with a sense of grading of

their relative standing, and with the association of definite sentiments

and surroundings with definite flowers. To begin with, there is the

matter of fragrance, from the strong and obvious, like that of jasmine,

to the delicate, like that of lilac, and finally to the most refined and

subtle kind, like that of the Chinese orchid. The more subtle and less

easily perceivable its fragrance, the more noble the flower may be

regarded. Then there is the matter of color and appearance and

charm, which again varies a great deal. Some are like buxom lassies

and others are like slender, poetic, quiet ladies. Some seem to

pander their charms to the crowd, and others are happy in their own

fragrant being and seem contented merely to dream their hours

away. Some go in for a dash of color, while others have a milder and

more restrained taste. Above all, flowers are always associated with

the outward surroundings and seasons of their bloom. The rose is

naturally associated in our minds with a bright sunny spring day; the

lotus is naturally associated with a cool summer morning on a pond;

the cassia is naturally associated with the harvest moon and mid-

autumn festivities; the chrysanthemum is associated with the eating

of crabs in late autumn; the plum is naturally associated with snow

and together with the narcissus it forms a definite part of our

enjoyment of the New Year. Each seems perfect in its own natural

surroundings, and it is the easiest of all things for lovers of flowers to

make them stand in our mind for definite pictures of the different

seasons, as the holly stands for Christmas.

Like the pine tree and the bamboo, the orchid, the

chrysanthemum and the lotus are selected for certain definite

qualities and stand in Chinese literature as symbols for the

gentleman, the orchid more particularly for an exotic beauty. The

plum flower is probably most beloved by Chinese poets among all

flowers, and has been partly dealt with already in the previous

section. It is said to be the “first” among the flowers, because it

comes with the New Year and therefore stands first in the procession

of flowers in the course of the year. Opinions differ, of course, and

the peony has been traditionally regarded as the “king of flowers,”

particularly in the T’ang Dynasty. On the other hand, the peony being

rich in its colors and its petals, is rather regarded as the symbol of

the rich and happy man, whereas the plum flower is the poet’s

flower, and symbol of the quiet, poor scholar, and therefore the latter

is spiritual as the former is materialistic. One scholar voiced his

sympathy for the peony only because of the fact that, when Empress

Wu of the T’ang Dynasty commanded one day, in one of her

megalomaniac whims, that all the flowers in the Imperial garden

should bloom on a certain day in mid-winter, just because she

wanted it, the peony was the only one that dared to offend her

Imperial Majesty by blooming a few hours late, and consequently, all

the thousands of pots of peony flowers were banished by Imperial

decree from Sian, the capital, to Loyang. Although falling out of

Imperial favor, the cult of the peony was still maintained and Loyang

became a center for peony flowers. I think the reason that the

Chinese do not place more importance on the rose is because its

color and shape belong in the same class with the peony, but have

been overshadowed by the latter’s gorgeousness. According to early

Chinese sources, there were ninety varieties of the peony

distinguished, and each was given a most poetic name.

Unlike the peony, the orchid stands as the symbol of secluded

charm because it is often found in a deserted shady valley. It is said

to have the virtue of “enjoying its own lonely charm,” not caring

whether people look at it or not, and extremely unwilling to be moved

into the city. If it consents to be moved, it must be cultivated on its

own terms, or it dies. Hence we often speak of a beautiful secluded

maiden, or a great scholar living away in the mountains with

contempt for power and fame, as “a secluded orchid in a deserted

valley.” Its fragrance is so subtle that it doesn’t seem to make a

particular effort to please anybody, but when people do appreciate it,

how divine is its fragrance! This makes it a symbol for the gentleman

not caring to cater to the public, and also for true friendship, because

an ancient book says, “After entering and remaining in a house with

orchids for a long time, one ceases to feel the fragrance,” when he

himself is permeated with it. Li Liweng advised that the best way to

enjoy orchids was not to place them in all rooms, but only in one

room and then to enjoy the fragrance when passing out and in.

American orchids do not seem to have this subtle fragrance, but on

the other hand, are bigger and more gorgeous in shape and color. In

my native city and province, we are supposed to have the best

orchids in China, known as “Fukien orchids.” The flower is pale

green with spots of purple and is of a very much smaller size, the

petals being slightly over an inch long. The best and most highly

valued variety, the Ch’en Mengliang, has such a color that it is barely

visible when immersed in water, being of the same color as the water

itself. Unlike the peony, whose varieties are known after their place

of origin, the different famous varieties of the orchid are known, like

many American flower varieties, after their owners, as “General P’u,”

“Quartermaster Shun,” “judge Li,” “Eighth Brother Huang,” “Chen

Mengliang,” “Hsü Chingch’u.”

There is no question that the extreme difficulty of cultivating

orchids and the flower’s extreme delicacy of health contributed to the

idea of its nobility of character. Among all the flowers, the orchid is

the one that most easily withers or rots away with the slightest

mishandling. Hence an orchid-lover always attends to it with his

personal care and does not leave it to the servants, and I have seen

people caring for their orchids like their own parents. An extremely

valuable plant aroused as much jealousy as a particularly good piece

of bronze or vase, and hatred from a friend’s refusal to give away its

new offshoots could be extremely bitter. Chinese notebooks record

the case of a scholar who was refused new offshoots from a plant

and was sentenced to jail for stealing it. This sentiment is well

expressed by Shen Fu in Six Chapters of a Floating Life in the

following manner:

The orchid was prized most among all the flowers because

of its subdued fragrance and graceful charm, but it was

difficult to obtain really good classic varieties. When Lanp’o

died, he presented me with a pot of spring orchids, whose

flowers had lotus-shaped petals; the centre of the flowers was

broad and white, the petals were very neat and even at the

“shoulders,” and the stems were very slender. This type was

classical, and I prized it like a piece of old jade. When I was

working away from home, Yün used to take care of it

personally and it grew beautifully. After two years, it died

suddenly one day. I dug up its roots and found that they were

white like marble, while nothing was wrong with the sprouts,

either. At first, I could not understand this, but ascribed it with

a sigh merely to my own bad luck, which might be unworthy to

raise such flowers. Later on, I found out that some one had

asked for some of the flowers from the same pot, had been

refused, and had therefore killed it by pouring boiling water

over it. Thenceforth I swore I would never grow orchids again.

The chrysanthemum is the flower of the poet T’ao Yuanming, as

the plum flower was the flower of the poet Lin Hoching, and the lotus

was the flower of the Confucian doctrmaire, Chou Liench’i. Blooming

in late autumn, it shares the idea of “cold fragrance” and “cold

splendor.” The contrast between the cold splendor of the

chrysanthemum and the gorgeous splendor, say, of the peony is

easily seen and understood. Hundreds of varieties exist, and so far

as I know, a great Sung scholar, Fan Ch’engta, started the fashion of

recording its different varieties with the most beautiful names. Variety

seems to be the very essence of the chrysanthemum flower, both

variety of shape and of color. The white and the yellow are regarded

as the “orthodox” colors of the flower, while purple and red are

regarded as deviations and therefore given a low grading. The colors

of white and yellow gave rise to the names of the varieties like “Silver

Bowl,” “Silver Bells,” “Golden Bells,” “Jade Basin,” “Jade Bells,”

“Jade Embroidered Ball.” Some were given the names of famous

beauties, like “Yang Kueifei” and “Hsishih.” Sometimes their shapes

resemble a lady’s close-cropped hair and sometimes their quills

resemble flowing locks. Some varieties have more fragrance than

others, and the best are supposed to have the fragrance of musk, or

of an incense called “Dragon’s Brains.”

The lotus or water lily is in a class by itself and seems to me

personally the most beautiful of all flowers, when we consider the

flower, including its stem and its leaves floating on the water, as a

whole. It is impossible to enjoy summer without having lotus flowers

around, and if one does not have a house near a pond, he can grow

them in big earthen jars. In this case, however, we miss much of the

beauty of a half a mile’s stretch of lotus flowers, their perfume

pervading the air, and their white and red tipped blossoms

contrasting with their broad green leaves with water running on them

like liquid pearls. (The American water lilies are different from the

lotus.) The Sung scholar Chou wrote an essay explaining why he

loved the lotus and pointing out that the lotus, like the gentleman,

grew out of dirty water but was not contaminated by it. He was

talking like a regular Confucian doctrinaire. From the utilitarian point

of view, every part of the flower is utilized. The lotus root is used to

make a cooling drink, its leaves are used for wrapping fruits or food

to be steamed, its flowers are enjoyed for their shape and fragrance,

and finally the lotus seed is regarded as the food of the fairies, either

eaten raw, fresh from the pod, or dried and sugared.

The hait’ang pyrus, resembling apple-blossoms, enjoys as great a

popularity among poets as any other flower, although Tu Fu failed to

make a single mention of this flower which grew in his native

province, Szechuen. Various explanations have been offered, but the

most plausible one was that the hait’ang was his mother’s name and

he had avoided it out of deference to his mother. There are only two

flowers for whose fragrance I am willing to forego the orchid, and

they are the cassia and the narcissus. The last is also a special

product of my native city, Changchow, and its import into the United

States in the form of cultivated roots at one time ran to hundreds of

thousands of dollars, until the Department of Agriculture saw fit to

deprive the American people of this flower with a heavenly

fragrance, in order to protect them from possible germs. The notion

that the white roots of the narcissus, as clean as a fairy itself, and

intended to be planted not in mud but in a glass or china basin of

water supported with pebbles, and prepared with the utmost care,

could contain germs is most fantastic. The azalea is supposed to be

a tragic flower, in spite of its smiling beauty, because it was

supposed to spring from the tears of blood of the cuckoo, who was

formerly a boy in search of his lost brother persecuted out of home

by a stepmother.

Quite as important as the selection and grading of the flowers

themselves is their arrangement in vases. This was an art that could

be traced back at least as far as the eleventh century. The author of

Six Chapters of a Floating Life, written at the beginning of the

nineteenth century, gives a description of the art of arranging flowers

to resemble a picture with good composition in his chapter on “The

Little Pleasures of Life”:

The chrysanthemum, however, was my passion in the

autumn of every year. I loved to arrange these flowers in

vases, but not to raise them in pots, not because I did not

want to have them that way, but because I had no garden in

my home and could not take care of them myself. Those I

bought at the market were not properly trained and not to my

liking. When arranging chrysanthemum flowers in vases, one

should take an odd, not even number, and each vase should

have flowers of only one colour. The mouth of the vase should

be broad so that the flowers can lie easily together. Whether

there be half a dozen flowers or even thirty or forty of them in

a vase, they should be so arranged as to come up together

straight from the mouth of the vase, neither overcrowded, nor

too much spread out, nor leaning against the mouth of the

vase. This is called “keeping the handle firm.” Sometimes they

can stand gracefully erect, and sometimes spread out in

different directions. In order to avoid a bare monotonous

effect, they should be mixed with some flower buds and

arranged in a kind of studied disorderliness. The leaves

should not be too thick and the stems should not be too stiff.

In using pins to hold the stems up, one should break the long

pins off, rather than expose them. This is called “keeping the

mouth of the vase clear.” Place from three to seven vases on

a table, depending on the size of the latter, for if there were

too many of them, they would be overcrowded, looking like

chrysanthemum screens at the market. The stands for the

vases should be of different height, from three or four inches

to two and a half feet, so that the different vases at different

heights would balance one another and belong intimately to

one another as in a picture with unity of composition. To put

one vase high in the centre with two low at the sides, or to put

a low one in front and a tall one behind, or to arrange them in

symmetrical pairs, would be to create what is vulgarly called

“a heap of gorgeous refuse.” Proper spacing and arrangement

must depend on the individual’s understanding of pictorial

composition.

In the case of flower bowls or open dishes, the method of

making a support for the flowers is to mix refined resin with

elm bark, flour and oil, and heat the mixture with hot hay

ashes until it becomes a kind of glue, and with it glue some

nails upside down on to a piece of copper. This copper plate

can then be heated up and glued on to the bottom of the bowl

or dish. When it is cold, tie the flowers in groups by means of

wire and stick them on those nails. The flowers should be

allowed to incline sideways and not shoot up from the centre;

it is also important that the stems and leaves should not come

too closely together. After this is done, put some water in the

bowl and cover up the copper support with some clean sand,

so that the flowers will seem to grow directly from the bottom

of the bowl.

When picking branches from flower trees for decoration in

vases, it is important to know how to trim them before putting

them in the vase, for one cannot always go and pick them

oneself, and those picked by others are often unsatisfactory.

Hold the branch in your hand and turn it back and forth in

different ways in order to see how it lies most expressively.

After one has made up one’s mind about it, lop off the

superfluous branches, with the idea of making the twig look

thin and sparse and quaintly beautiful. Next think how the

stem is going to lie in the vase and with what kind of bend, so

that when it is put there, the leaves and flowers can be shown

to the best advantage. If one just takes any old branch in

hand, chooses a straight section and puts it in the vase, the

consequence will be that the stem will be too stiff, the

branches will be too close together and the flowers and

leaves will be turned in the wrong direction, devoid of all

charm and expression. To make a straight twig crooked, cut a

mark half way across the stem and insert a little piece of

broken brick or stone at the joint; the straight branch will then

become a bent one. In case the stem is too weak, put one or

two pins to strengthen it. By means of this method, even

maple leaves and bamboo twigs or even ordinary blades of

grass and thistles will look very well for decoration. Put a twig

of green bamboo side by side with a few berries of Chinese

matrimony vine or arrange some fine blades of grass together

with some branches of thistle. They will look quite poetic, if

the arrangement is correct.

VI. THE “VASE FLOWERS” OF Y AN CHUNGLANG

Probably the best treatise on the arrangement of flowers was

written by Yuan Chunglang, one of my favorite authors in other

respects, living at the end of the sixteenth century. His book on the

arrangement of flowers in vases, called P’ingshih, is highly valued in

Japan, and there is known to be a “Yuan School” of flower

arrangement. He began in his preface by noting that since hills and

water and flowers and bamboos luckily lay outside the scope of the

stragglers for fame and power, and furthermore, since such people

were so busy with their engrossing pursuits and therefore had no

time for the enjoyment of hills and water and flowers and bamboos,

the retiring scholar was enabled to snatch this opportunity and

monopolize the enjoyment of the latter for himself. He explained,

however, that the enjoyment of vase flowers should never be

regarded as normal, but at best only as a temporary substitute for

people living in cities, and their enjoyment should not cause one to

forget the greater happiness of enjoying the hills and lakes

themselves.

Proceeding from a consideration that one should be careful in

admitting flowers for decoration in his studio, and that it would be

better to have no flowers at all than to have promiscuous varieties

admitted, he went on to describe the various types of bronze and

porcelain vases to be used. Two types are distinguished. Those who

are rich and possess antique bronze vessels of Han Dynasty and

have big halls should have big flowers and tall branches standing in

huge vases. On the other hand, scholars should have smaller

branches of flowers to go with smaller vases, which should also be

carefully selected. The only exceptions allowed are the peony and

the lotus, which being big flowers should be placed in big vases. In

putting flowers in vases:

One should avoid having them too profuse, or too meager.

At most, two or three varieties may be put in a vase, and their

relative height and arrangement should aim at the

composition of a good picture. In placing flower vases, one

should avoid having them in pairs, or uniform, or in a straight

row. One should also avoid binding the flowers with string. For

the neatness of flowers lies exactly in their irregularity and

naturalness of manner, like the prose of Tu Sungpo, which

flows on or stops as it pleases, and like the poems of Li Po,

which do not necessarily go in couplets. This is true neatness.

How can it be called neatness when the branches and leaves

merely match each other and red is mixed with white? The

latter resemble the trees in the courtyard of minor provincial

officials or the stone gateways leading to a tomb.

In selecting and breaking off the branches, one should

choose the slender and exquisite ones and should not have

the branches too thick together. Only one kind of flowers

should be used, and at most two, and the two should be so

arranged together that they seem to grow out of one

branch. . . . Generally the flowers should match with the

vases, and they may be four or five inches taller than the

height of the vase itself. Suppose the vase is two feet high

and its shape is broad in the center and bottom, the flowers

may be two feet and six or seven inches from the mouth of

the vase. . . . If the vase is tall and slender, one should have

two branches, one long and one short, and perhaps stretching

out in curves, and then it is better that the flowers are a few

inches shorter than the vase itself. What is most to be avoided

is that the flowers be too slender for the vase. Profusion is

also to be avoided, as for instance when flowers are tied up

together like a handle, lacking all charm. In placing flowers in

small vases, one should let the flowers come out two inches

shorter than the body of the vase. For instance, a narrow vase

of eight inches should have flowers of only six or seven

inches. But if the vases are stout in shape, flowers may also

be two inches longer than the vases.

The room in which flowers are placed should contain a

simple table and a cane couch. The table must be broad and

thick and should be of fine wood and have a smooth surface.

All lacquered tables with decorated margins, golden-painted

couches and stands with colored floral designs should be

eliminated.

With regard to the “bathing” of flowers, or watering them, the

author shows a loving insight into the moods and sentiments of the

flowers themselves:

For flowers have their moods of happiness and sorrow and

their time of sleep. If one bathes flowers in their morning and

evening, at the proper time, the water is like good rain to

them. A day with light clouds and a mild sun and the sunset

and beautiful moon are morning to the flowers. A big storm, a

pouring rain, a scorching sun and bitter cold are evening to

the flowers. When their stands bask in the sunlight and their

delicate bodies are protected from wind, that is the happy

mood of the flowers. When they seem drunk or quiet and tired

and when the day is misty, that is the sorrowful mood of the

flowers. When their branches incline and rest sideways as if

unable to hold themselves erect, that is when the flowers are

dreaming in their sleep. When they seem to smile and look

about, with a shining light in their eyes, that is when the

flowers have waked up from their sleep. In their “morning”

they should be placed in an empty pavilion or a big house; in

their “evening,” they should be placed in a small room or a

secluded chamber; when they are sad, they should sit quietly

with abated breath, and when they are happy, they should

smile and shout and tease each other; during their sleep, they

should let down the curtain, and when they have waked up,

they should attend to their toilet. All this is done to please their

nature and regulate their times of getting up and going to bed.

To bathe flowers in their “morning” is the best; to bathe them

when they are asleep, is second; and to bathe them when

they are happy is the last. As for bathing them during their

“evening,” or during their sorrow, it really seems more like a

way of punishing the flowers.

The way of bathing flowers is to use fresh and sweet water

from a spring and pour it down gently in small quantities, like

a small shower awakening a drunken man, or like the gentle

dew itself permeating their body. One should avoid touching

the flowers with his hands, or picking them with the tips of

fingers, and the work cannot be entrusted to stupid

manservants or dirty maids. Plum flowers should be bathed

by recluse scholars, the hait’ang by charming guests, the

peony by beautifully dressed young girls, the pomegranate by

beautiful slave girls, the cassia by intelligent children, the lotus

by fascinating concubines, the chrysanthemum by remarkable

persons who love the ancients, and the winter plum by a

slender monk. On the other hand, flowers blooming in the cold

season should not be bathed, but should be protected by thin

silk gauze.

According to Yuan, certain flowers go with certain other flowers as

their minors or “maids” in a vase. As personal maids who attended to

a lady for life were an institution in old China, there developed the

notion that beautiful ladies looked perfect when they had pretty

maids by their side as their necessary adjuncts. Both ladies and

maids should be beautiful, but there is a je ne sais quoi which

stamps one type of beauty as belonging to a maid rather than to a

mistress. Maids who were out of harmony with their mistresses were

like stables that did not match a manor house. Carrying the notion

over to flowers, Yuan found that, for their “maids” in the vase, the

plum flower should have camelias, the hait’ang should have apple

blossoms and lilacs, the peony should have cinnamon roses, the

paeonia albiflora should have poppies and Szechuen sunflowers, the

pomegranate should have crape myrtle and hisbiscus syriacus, the

lotus should have white day lilies, the cassia should have hisbiscus

mutabilis, the chrysanthemum should have “autumn hait’ang,” and

the winter plum should have narcissus. Each maid is exquisite in its

own way, and they differ in their voluptuous or elegant charms like

their mistresses. Not that any slight was intended upon these flower

maids, for they were comparable to the famous maids of history, the

narcissus ethereal down to her bones like Liang Yüch’ing, the maid

of the Spinster in heaven, the camelia and the rose fresh and

youthful like the maids Hsiangfeng and Chingwan of the Shih and

Yang families (of Chin Dynasty), the shanfan flower clean and

“romantic” like the maid servant of the tragic nun-poetess, Yü

Hsüanch’i, while the lilac was slender, the white day lily was cool and

the “autumn hait’ang” was coy, but savored a little of pedantry like

the maid of Cheng K’angch’eng (scholar of Han Dynasty and profuse

commentator on Confucian classics).

Holding to his central idea that anyone who achieves notable

results in any line, even in such matters as playing chess, must love

it to a point of craze, Yuan develops the same idea with regard to the

love of flowers as a hobby:

I have found that all the people in the world who are dull in

their conversation and hateful to look at in their faces are are

those who have no hobbies,. . . When the ancient people who

had a weakness for flowers heard there was a remarkable

variety, they would travel across high mountain passes and

deep ravines in search of them, unconscious of bodily fatigue,

bitter cold or scorching heat, and their peeling skins, and

completely oblivious of their bodies soiled with mud. When a

flower was about to bud, they would move their beds and

pillows to sleep under them, watching how the flowers passed

from infancy to maturity and finally dropped off and died. Or

they would plant thousands in their orchards to study how

they varied, or have just a few in their rooms to exhaust their

interest. Some would be able to tell the size of flowers from

smelling their leaves, and some were able to tell from the

roots the color of their flowers. These were the people who

were true lovers of flowers and who had a true weakness for

them.

In regard to the “enjoyment” (or shang) of flowers, it is pointed out

that:

Enjoying them with tea is the best, enjoying them with

conversation second, and enjoying them with wine the third.

As for all forms of noisy behaviour and common vulgar prattle,

they are an insult to the spirits of flowers. One should rather

sit dumb like a fool than offend them. There is a proper place

and time for the enjoyment of flowers and to enjoy them

without regard to the proper circumstances would be a

sacrilege. The flowers in the cold season should be enjoyed

at the beginning of snow, or after the sky has cleared after a

snowfall, or during crescent moon, or in a warm room. The

flowers in the warm [spring] season should be enjoyed on a

clear day, or on a slightly chilly day, in a beautiful hall. The

flowers of summer should be enjoyed after rain, in a

refreshing breeze, in the shade of nice trees, beneath

bamboos, or on a water terrace. The flowers of the cool

[autumn] season should be enjoyed under a cool moon, at

sunset, on the brink of a stone hall pavement, on a mossy

garden path, or in the neighborhood of rugged rocks

surrounded by ancient creepers. If one looks at flowers

without regard to wind and sun and place, or when one’s

thoughts are wandering and bear no relation to the flowers,

what difference is it from seeing flowers in singsong houses

and wine taverns?

Finally, Yüan lists the following fourteen conditions as “pleasing”

to the flowers, and “twenty-three”

conditions as being disgraceful

or humiliating to them:

Conditions that please the flowers:

A clear window

A clean room

Antique tripods

Sung ink-stones

“Pine waves” and river sounds

The owner loving hobbies and poetry

Visiting monk understands tea

A native of Chichow arrives with wine

Guests in the room are exquisite

Many flowers in bloom

A carefree friend has arrived

Copying books on flower cultivation

Kettle sings deep at night

Wife and concubines editing stories of flowers

Conditions humiliating to the flowers:

The owner constantly seeing guests

A stupid servant putting in extra branches, upsetting the

arrangement

The family asking for accounts

Writing poems by consulting rhyming dictionaries

Books in bad condition lying about

Common monks talking zen

Dogs fighting before the window

Singing boys of Lientse Alley

Yiyang [Kiangsi] tunes

Ugly women plucking flowers and decorating their hair with them

Discussing people’s official promotion and demotion

False expressions of love

Poems written for courtesy

Flowers in full bloom before one has paid his debts

Fukien agents

Kiangsu spurious paintings

Faeces of mice and rats

Trailing marks of slime left by snails

Servants lying about

Wine runs out after one begins to play wine games

Being neighbor to wine-shops

A piece of writing with phrases like the “purple morning air” [common

in imperial eulogies] on the desk

VII. THE EPIGRAMS OF CHANG CH’AO

We have seen that the enjoyment of nature does not lie merely in

art and painting. Nature enters into our life as a whole. It is all sound

and color and shape and mood and atmosphere, and man as the

perceiving artist of life begins to select the proper moods of nature

and harmonize them with his own. This is the attitude of all Chinese

writers of poetry or prose, but I think its best expression is found in

the epigrams of Chang Ch’ao (mid-seventeenth century), in his book

Yumengying (or Sweet Dream Shadows). This is a book of literary

maxims, of which there are many collections, but none comparable

to those written by Chang Ch’ao himself. Such literary maxims stand

in relation to popular proverbs as the fairy tales of Anderson stand in

relation to old English fairy tales, or as Schubert’s art songs stand in

relation to folk melodies. His book has been so beloved that a group

of Chinese scholars have added comments of their own to each of

his maxims, in a most delightful chatty vein. I am compelled,

however, to translate only some of the best of his maxims about the

enjoyment of Nature. A few of his maxims on human life are so good

and form such a vital part of the whole that I shall include some of

them at the end.

On What is Proper

It is absolutely necessary that flowers should have butterflies, hills

should have springs, rocks should have moss, water should have

water-cress, tall trees should have entwining creepers, and human

beings should have hobbies.

One should enjoy flowers in the company of beauties, get drunk

under the moon in the company of charming friends, and enjoy the

light of snow in the company of highminded scholars.

Planting flowers serves to invite butterflies, piling up rocks serves

to invite the clouds, planting pine trees serves to invite the wind,

keeping a reservoir of water serves to invite duckweed, building a

terrace serves to invite the moon, planting banana trees serves to

invite the rain, and planting willow trees serves to invite the cicada.

One always gets a different feeling when looking at hills from the

top of a tower, looking at snow from a city wall, looking at the moon

in the lamp-light, looking at colored clouds in a boat, and looking at

beautiful women in the room.

Rocks lying near a plum tree should look “antique,” those beneath

a pine tree should look “stupid,” those by the side of bamboo trees

should look “slender,” and those inside a flower basin should be

exquisite.

Blue waters come from green hills, for the water borrows its color

from the hills; good poems come from flavory wine, for poetry begs

its inspiration from the wine.

When the mirror meets with an ugly woman, when a rare ink-

stone finds a vulgar owner, and when a good sword is in the hands

of a common general, there is utterly nothing to be done about it.

On Flowers and Women

One should not see flowers wither, see the moon decline below

the horizon, or see beautiful women die in their youth.

One should see flowers when they are in bloom, after planting the

flowers; should see the moon when it is full, after waiting for the

moon; should see a book completed, after starting to write it; and

should see beautiful women when they are gay and happy.

Otherwise our purpose is defeated.

One should look at beautiful ladies in the morning toilet after they

have powdered themselves.

There are faces that are ugly but stand looking at, and other faces

that do not stand looking at, although not ugly; there are writings

which are lovable although ungrammatical, and there are other

writings which are extremely grammatical, but are disgusting. This is

something that I cannot explain to superficial persons.

If one loves flowers with the same heart that he loves beauties, he

feels a special charm in them; if one loves beautiful women with the

same heart that he loves flowers, he feels a special tenderness and

protective affection.

Beautiful women are better than flowers because they understand

human language, and flowers are better than beautiful women

because they give off fragrance; but if one cannot have both at the

same time, he should forsake the fragrant ones and take the talking

ones.

In putting flowers in liver-colored vases, one should arrange them

so that the size and height of the vase match with those of the

flowers, while the shade and depth of its color should contrast with

them.

Most of the flowers that are seductive and beautiful are not

fragrant, and flowers that have layers upon layers of petals mostly

are ill-formed. Alas, rare is a perfect personality! Only the lotus

combines both.

The plum flower makes a man feel highminded, the orchid makes

a man feel secluded, the chrysanthemum makes a man simple-

hearted, the lotus makes a man contented, the spring hait’ang

makes a man passionate, the peony makes a man chivalrous, the

bamboo and the banana tree make a man charming, the autumn

hatit’ang makes a man graceful, the pine tree makes a man feel like

a recluse, the wut’ung (sterculia platanifolia) makes a man clean-

hearted, and the willow makes a man sentimental.

If a beauty should have the face of a flower, the voice of a bird,

the soul of the moon, the expression of a willow, the charm of an

autumn lake, bones of jade and skin of snow, and a heart of poetry, I

should be perfectly satisfied, [I should say so!—Tr.]

If there are no books in this world, then nothing need be said, but

since there are books, they must be read; if there is no wine, then

nothing need be said, but since there is wine, it must be drunk; if

there are no famous hills, then nothing need be said, but since there

are, they must be visited; if there are no flowers and no moon, then

nothing need be said, but since there are, they must be enjoyed and

“played”; if there are no talented men and beautiful women, then

nothing need be said, but since there are, they must be loved and

protected.

The reason why a looking-glass doesn’t become the enemy of

ugly-looking women is because it has no feeling; if it had, it certainly

would have been smashed to pieces.

One feels tender toward even a good potted flower that he has

just bought; how much more should he be tender toward a “talking

flower!”

Without wine and poetry, hills and water would exist for no

purpose; without the company of beautiful ladies, flowers and the

moon would be wasted. Talented men who are at the same time

handsome, and beautiful ladies who at the same time can write, can

never live a long life. This is not only because the gods are jealous of

them, but because this type of person is not only the treasure of one

generation, but the treasure of all ages, so that the Creator doesn’t

want to leave them in this world too long, for fear of sacrilege.

On Hills and Water

Of all the things in the universe, those that touch man most

profoundly are: the moon in heaven, the ch’in in music, the cuckoo

among animals, and the willow tree among plants.

To worry with the moon about clouds, to worry with books about

moths, to worry with flowers about storms, and to worry with talented

men and beautiful women about a harsh fate is to have the heart of a

Buddha,

One dies without regret if there is one in the whole world a “bosom

friend,” or one who “knows his heart.”

An ancient writer said that if there were no flowers and moon and

beautiful women, he would not want to be born in this world, and I

might add, if there were no pen and ink and chess and wine, there

was no purpose in being born a man.

The light of hills, the sound of water, the color of the moon, the

fragrance of flowers, the charm of literary men, and the expression of

beautiful women are all illusive and indescribable. They make one

lose sleep dreaming about them and lose appetite thinking about

them.

The snow reminds one of a highminded scholar; the flower

reminds one of beautiful ladies; wine reminds one of good

swordsmen; the moon reminds one of good friends; and hills and

water remind one of good verse and good prose that the author

himself is pleased with.

There are landscapes on earth, landscapes in painting,

landscapes in dreams, and landscapes in one’s breast. The beauty

of landscapes on earth lies in depth and irregularity of outline; the

beauty of landscapes in painting lies in the freedom and

luxuriousness of the brush and ink; the beauty of landscapes in

dreams lies in their strangely changing views; and the beauty of

landscapes in one’s breast lies in the fact that everything is in its

proper place.

For places that we pass by during our travel, we need not be

fastidious in our artistic demands, but for places where we are going

to settle down for life we must be fastidious in such demands.

The bamboo shoot is a phenomenon among the vegetables; the

lich’i is a among aquatic animals; wine is a phenomenon among our

foods and drinks; the moon is a phenomenon in the firmament; the

West Lake is a phenomenon among hills and waters; and the Sung

lyrics (ts’e) and Yüan dramatic poems (ch’ù) are phenomena in

literature.

In order to see famous hills and rivers, one must have also

predestined luck; unless the appointed time has come, one has no

time to see them even though they are situated within a dozen miles.

The images in a looking-glass are portraits in color, but the

images [shadows] under a moonlight are pen sketches. The images

in a looking-glass are paintings with solid outlines, but the images

under a moonlight are “paintings without bones.” The images of hills

and waters in the moon are geography in heaven, and the images of

stars and the moon in water are astronomy on earth.

On Spring and Autumn

Spring is the natural frame of mind of heaven; autumn is one of its

changing moods.

The ancient people regarded winter as the “extra” [or resting

period] of the other three seasons, but I think we should regard

summer as the season of “three extras”: getting up at a summer

dawn is the extra of the night; sitting at a summer night is the extra of

the day; and an afternoon nap is the extra of social intercourse.

Indeed, “I love the long summer days,” as an ancient poet says.

One should discipline oneself in the spirit of autumn, and deal with

others in the spirit of spring.

Good prose and “T’ang poems” should have the spirit of autumn;

good Sung lyrics and Yüan dramatic poems should have the spirit of

spring.

On Sounds

One should listen to the sounds of birds in spring, to the sounds of

cicadas in summer, to the sounds of insects in autumn and the

sounds of snowfall in winter; he should listen to the sounds of

playing chess in the daytime, the sounds of flute under the

moonlight, the sounds of pine trees in the mountains, and the

sounds of ripples on the waterside. Then he shall not have lived in

vain. But when a young loafer starts a racket in the street or when

one’s wife is scolding, one might just as well be deaf.

Hearing the sound of geese makes one feel like in Nanking;

hearing the sound of oars makes one feel like in Soochow,

Ch’angchow and Huchow;

hearing the sound of waves on the

beach makes one feel like being in Chekiang; and hearing the sound

of bells beneath the necks of thin horses makes one feel like being

on the road to Sian.

All sounds should be listened to at a distance; only the sounds of

the ch’in can be listened to both at a distance and nearby.

There is a special flavor about one’s ears when listening to ch’in

music under pine trees, listening to a flute in the moon-light, listening

to a waterfall by a brook, and listening to Buddhist chants in the

mountains.

There are four kinds of sounds of water: the sounds of cataracts,

of gushing springs, of rapids, and of gullets. There are three kinds of

sounds of wind: the sounds of “pine waves,” of autumn leaves, and

of storm upon the water. There are two kinds of sounds of rain: the

sounds of raindrops upon the leaves of wu’tung and lotus, and the

sounds of rain water coming down from the eaves into bamboo pails.

On Rain

This thing called rain can make the days seem short and the

nights seem long.

A spring rain is like an Imperial edict conferring an honor; a

summer rain is like a writ of pardon for a condemned criminal; an

autumn rain is like a dirge.

A rainy day in spring is suitable for reading; a rainy day in summer

is suitable for playing chess; a rainy day in autumn is suitable for

going over things in the trunks or in the attic; and a rainy day in

winter is suitable for drinking.

I would write a letter to the God of Rain and tell him that rain in

spring should come after the fifteenth of the first moon [when the

Lantern Festival is over], and continue till ten days before ch’ingming

[the third day of the third moon, at which time the peach-trees begin

to blossom], and come also at kuyù [time for planting rice]; that

summer rain should come in the first and last ten days of every

month [so as not to interfere with our enjoyment of the moon]; that

autumn rain should come in the the first and last ten days of the

seventh and the ninth moon [leaving the eighth moon, or mid-

autumn, entirely dry for enjoyment of the harvest moon]; and that as

for the three months of winter, no rain is called for at all.

On the Moon, Wind and Water

One is exasperated at the crescent moon for declining so early,

and exasperated at the waning moon in its third quarter for coming

up so late.

To listen to a Buddhist lesson under the moon makes one’s

mental mood more detached; to discuss swordmanship under the

moon makes one’s courage more inspired; to discuss poetry under

the moon makes one’s personal flavor more charming in seclusion;

and to look at beautiful women under the moon makes one’s passion

deeper.

The method of “playing” the moon is to look up at it from a low

place when it is clear and bright, and to look down at it from a height

when it is hazy and unclear.

The spring wind is like wine; the summer wind is like tea; the

autumn wind is like smoke; and the winter wind is like ginger.

On Leisure and Friendship

Only those who take leisurely what the people of the world are

busy about can be busy about what the people of the world take

leisurely.

There is nothing that man enjoys more than leisure, and this does

not mean that one simply does nothing during that time. Leisure

enables one to read, to travel to famous places, to form beneficial

friendships, to drink wine, and to write books. What greater

pleasures can there be in the world than these?

When a cloud reflects the sun, it becomes a colored cloud (hsia),

and when a spring gullet flows over a cliff, it becomes a waterfall. By

a different association, it is given a new name. That is why friendship

is so valuable.

When celebrating the Lantern Festival on the fifteenth of the first

moon, one should drink with nonchalant friends; when celebrating

the Dragon Boat Festival on the fifth of the fifth moon, one should

drink with handsome friends; when celebrating the annual reunion of

the Cowherd and the Spinning Maid in Heaven on the seventh day of

the seventh moon, one should drink with friends who have charm;

when looking at the harvest moon, at the Mid-Autumn Festival, one

should drink with quiet or mild-tempered friends; when going up to

high mountains on the ninth day of the ninth moon, one should drink

with romantic friends.

To talk with learned friends is like reading a rare book; to talk with

poetic friends is like reading the poems and prose of distinguished

writers; to talk with friends who are careful and proper in their

conduct is like reading the classics of the sages; and to talk with

witty friends is like reading a novel or romance.

Every quiet scholar is bound to have some bosom friends. By

“bosom friends” I do not mean necessarily those who have sworn a

life-and-death friendship with us. Generally bosom friends are those

who, although separated by hundreds or thousands of miles, still

have implicit faith in us and refuse to believe rumors against us;

those who on hearing a rumor, try every means to explain it away;

those who in given moments advise us as to what to do and what not

to do; and those who at the critical hour come to our help, and,

sometimes without our knowing, undertake of their own accord to

settle a financial account, or make a decision, without for a moment

questioning whether by doing so they are not making themselves

open to criticism of perhaps injuring our interests.

It is easier to find bosom friends (“those who know our hearts”)

among friends than among one’s wife and concubines, and it is still

more difficult to find a bosom friend in the relationship between ruler

and ministers.

A “remarkable book” is one which says things that have never

been said before, and a “bosom friend” is one who unburdens to us

his family secrets.

Living in the country is only enjoyable when one has got good

friends with him. One soon gets tired of the peasants and

woodcutters who know only how to distinguish the different kinds of

grains and to forecast the weather. Again, among the different kinds

of friends, those who can write poems are the best, those who can

talk or hold a conversation come second, those who can paint come

next, those who can sing come fourth, and those who understand

wine games come last.

On Books and Reading

Reading books in one’s youth is like looking at the moon through

a crevice; reading books in middle age is like looking at the moon in

one’s courtyard; and reading books in old age is like looking at the

moon on an open terrace. This is because the depth of benefits of

reading varies in proportion to the depth of one’s own experience.

Only one who can read books without words [i. e., the book of life

itself] can say strikingly beautiful things; and only one who

understands truth difficult to explain by words can grasp the highest

Buddhist wisdom.

All immortal literature of the ancients and the moderns was written

with blood and tears.

All Men Are Brothers (Shuihu) is a book of anger, The Monkey

Epic (Hsiyuchi) is a book of spiritual awakening, and Gold-Vase

Plum (Chinp’ingmei) [a pornographic novel] is a book of sorrow.

Literature is landscape on the desk, and a landscape is literature

on the earth.

Reading is the greatest of all joys, but there is more anger than

joy in reading history. But after all there is pleasure in such anger.

One should read the classics in winter, because then one’s mind

is more concentrated; read history in summer, because one has

more time; read the ancient philosophers in autumn, because they

have such charming ideas; and read the collected works of later

authors in spring, because then Nature is coming back to life.

When literary men talk about military affairs, it is mostly military

science in the studio [literally, “discussing soldiers on paper”]; and

when military generals discuss literature, it is mostly rumors picked

up on hearsay.

A man who knows how to read finds everything becomes a book

wherever he goes: hills and waters are also books, and so are chess

and wine, and so are the moon and flowers. A good traveler finds

that everything becomes a landscape wherever he goes: books and

history are landscapes, and so are wine and poetry, and so are the

moon and flowers.

An ancient writer said that he would like to have ten years devoted

to reading, ten years devoted to travel and ten years devoted to

preservation and arrangement of what he had got. I think that

preservation should not take ten years and two or three years should

be enough. As for reading and travel, I do not think even twice or five

times the period suggested would be enough to satisfy my desires.

To do so one would have to live three hundred years, as Huang

Chiuyen says.

The ancient people said that “poetry becomes good only after one

becomes poor or unsuccessful,”

for the reason that an

unsuccessful man usually has a lot of things to say, and it is thus

easy to show himself to advantage. How can the poetry of the rich

and successful people be good when they neither sigh over their

poverty nor complain about their being unpromoted, and when all

they write about are the wind, the clouds, the moon and the dew?

The only way for such a person to write poetry is to travel, so that all

he sees on his way, the hills and rivers and people’s customs and

ways of life, and perhaps the sufferings of people during war or

famine, may all go into his poems. Thus borrowing from the sorrows

of other people, for the purpose of his own songs and sighs, one can

write good poetry without waiting to be poor or unsuccessful.

On living in General

Passion holds up the bottom of the universe and genius paints up

its roof.

Better be insulted by common people than be despised by

gentlemen; better be flunked by an official examiner than be

unknown to a famous scholar.

A man should so live as to be like a poem, and a thing should so

look as to be like a picture.

There are scenes which sound very exquisite, but are really sad

and forlorn, as for instance a scene of mist and rain; there are

situations which sound very poetic, but are really hard to bear, as for

instance sickness and poverty; and there are sounds which seem

charming when mentioned, but are really vulgar, as for instance the

voices of girls selling flowers.

I cannot be a farmer myself, and all I can do is to water the

garden; I cannot be a woodcutter myself, and all. I can do is to pull

out the weeds

My regrets, or things that exasperate me, are ten: (1) that book

bags are easily eaten by moths, (2) that summer nights are spoiled

by mosquitos, (3) that a moon terrace easily leaks, (4) that the

leaves of chrysanthemums often wither, (5) that pine trees are full of

big ants, (6) that bamboo leaves fall in great quantities upon the

ground, (7) that the cassia and lotus flowers easily wither, (8) that the

pilo plant often conceals snakes, (9) that flowers on a trellis have

thorns, and (10) that porcupines are often poisonous to eat.

It is extremely pretty to stand outside a window and see someone

writing characters on the window paper from the inside.

One should be the hsüan [hemerocalis flava, a plant called

“Forget-sorrow”] among the flowers, and not be the cuckoo [reputed

to shed tears of blood which grow up into azaleas] among the birds.

To be born in times of peace in a district with hills and lakes when

the magistrate is just and upright, and to live in a family of

comfortable means, marry an understanding wife and have

intelligent sons—this is what I call a perfect life.

To have hills and valleys in one’s breast enables one to live in a

city as in a mountain wood, and to be devoted to clouds transforms

the Southern Continent into a fairy isle.

To sit alone on a quiet night—to invite the moon and tell her one’s

sorrow—to keep alone on a good night—and to call the insects and

tell them one’s regrets.

One living in a city should regard paintings as his landscape

miniature sceneries in a pot as his garden, and books as his friends.

To ask a famous scholar to teach one’s children, to go into a

famous mountain and learn the art of writing examination essays,

and to ask a famous writer to be his literary ghost—all these three

things are utterly wrong.

A monk need not abstain from wine, he needs only abstain from

vulgarity; a red petticoat need not understand literature, she need

only understand what is artistically interesting.

If one is annoyed by the coming of tax-gatherers, he should pay

the land taxes early; if one enjoys talking Buddhism with monks. he

cannot help making contributions to temples from time time.

It is easy to forget everything except this one thought of fame; it is

easy to grow indifferent to everything except three cups of wine.

Wine can take the place of tea, but tea cannot take the place of

wine; poems can take the place of prose, but prose cannot take the

place of poems; Yuan dramatic poems can take the place of Sung

lyrics, but Sung lyrics cannot take the place of Yuan dramatic poems;

the moon can take the place of lamps, but lamps cannot take the

place of the moon; the pen can take the place of the mouth, but the

mouth cannot take the place of the pen; a maid servant can take the

place of a man servant, but a man servant cannot take the place of a

maid.

A little injustice in the breast can be drowned by wine; but a great

injustice in the world can be drowned only by the sword.

A busy man’s private garden must be situated next to his house;

while a man of leisure may have his private garden separated from

his house at a distance.

There are people who have the pleasures of a mountain recluse
lying  before  them  and  don’t  know  how  to  enjoy  them—fishermen,
woodcutters,  farmers,  gardeners and  monks; there  are  people who
have  the  pleasures  of  gardens,  pavilions  and  concubines  before
them  and  don’t know  how to  enjoy  them—rich merchants  and high
officials.
It is easy to stand a pain, but difficult to stand an itch; it is easy to
bear the bitter taste, but difficult to bear the sour taste.
17
It is true that the ink-stone of a man of leisure should be exquisite,
but a busy man’s ink-stone should equally be exquisite; it is true that
a  concubine  for  pleasure  should  be  pretty,  but  a  concubine  for  the
continuation of the family line should also be pretty.
The  stork  gives  a  man  the  romantic  manner,  the  horse  gives  a
man  the  heroic  manner,  the  orchid  gives  a  man  the  recluse’s
manner, and the pine gives a man the grand manner of the ancients.
I  want  one  day  to  give  a  grand  nudist  ball,  first  to  propitiate  the
spirits of the talented men of all ages, and secondly to propitiate the
spirits of the beautiful women of all ages. When I have found a really
high monk,
18
 then I am going to give the ball and ask him to preside
at it.
It  is  against-the  will  of  God  to  eat  delicate  food  hastily,  to  pass
gorgeous  views  hurriedly,  to  express  deep  sentiments  superficially,
to pass a beautiful day steeped in food and drinks, and to enjoy your
wealth steeped in luxuries.
 
1
 Quoted in the section on “Smoke and Incense.”
2
 There are a number of others; for instance, Li Iiweng has also two sketches about his two
concubines, who were good singers, personally trained by him.
3
 This is merely Chinese mathematics.
4
 Hapao Spring water is famous for making: tea.
5
  The  seventh  day  of  the  seventh  moon  is  the  only  day  in  the  year  when  the  pair  of
heavenly lovers, the Cowherd (“Grandson of Heaven”) and the Spinster are allowed to meet
each other across the Milky Way.
6
 “Yüun” in Chinese means a certain fragrant weed
7
 See above, Section II
8
 I have translated in My Country and My People a passage by Li Liweng on the enjoyment
of the willow tree.

9
 Cheng’s maid was reputed to talk the classical language with her learned master, which is
somewhat like talking Latin among the medieval scholars,
10
  Chinese  authors  are  apparently  indifferent  to  arithmetic  and  figures  in  general.  After
comparing  the  best  available  editions  of  Yüan’s  works,  I  stall  cannot  find  the  reputed
“twenty-three”  conditions  It  really  doesn’t  matter  whether  one’s  figures  are  correct.
Mathematical exactitude worries only a petty soul.
11
 This is a flowering tree about ten feet high, belonging to the pyrus species, and bearing
fruits like crab-apples.
12
 This is in the manner of the Chinese commentators.
13
 Both these latter forms are highly sentimental poetry in form and feeling.
14
 The Lake District in Kiangsu.
15
 By “anger” is meant one’s feeling mad reading in history about a good man being shot or
a  government  falling  into  the  hands  of  eunuchs  and  dictators.  This  feeling  mad  is
aesthetically a beautiful sensation
16
 The idea is that poetry acquires depth through sorrow.
17
 The great idea that it is more difficult to stand an itch than to stand pain is not original
with  this  epigrammatist,  but  was  found  in  the  correspondence  between  Su  Tungp’o  and
Huang Shanku, so far as I can remember.
18
  A  “high  monk,”  kaoseng,  as  distinguished  from  the  common,  everyday  monks,  is  a
person  who  returns  to  the  world,  eats  pork  and  perhaps  dog-meat,  and  drinks  in  the
company of prostitutes, as Jesus did.

Chapter Eleven

THE ENJOYMENT OF TRAVEL

I. ON GOING ABOUT AND SEEING THINGS

Travel used to be a pleasure, now it has become an industry. No

doubt there are greater facilities for traveling today than a hundred

years ago, and governments with their official travel bureaus have

exploited the tourist trade, with the result that the modern man

travels on the whole much more than his grandfather. Nevertheless

travel seems to have become a lost art. In order to understand the

art of travel, one should first of all beware of the different types of

false travel, which is no travel at all.

The first kind of false travel is travel to improve one’s mind. This

matter of improving one’s mind has undoubtedly been overdone. I

doubt very much whether one’s mind can be so easily improved.

Anyway there is very little evidence of it at clubs and lectures. But if

we are usually so serious as to be bent upon improving our minds,

we should at least during a vacation let the mind lie fallow, and give it

a holiday. This false idea of travel has given rise to the institution of

tourist guides, the most intolerable chattering kind of interfering

busybodies that I can imagine. One cannot pass a square or a

bronze statue without his attention being called to the fact that So-

and-So was born on April 23, 1792, and died on December 2, 1852. I

have seen convent sisters escorting school children to a cemetery,

and as the group stopped before a tombstone, reading to them from

a book the dates of the deceased, the age at which he married, the

name and surname of his wife, and such learned nonsense, which I

am sure spoiled the pleasure of the entire trip for the children. The

grown-ups themselves are turned into a group of school children

being vociferously lectured to by the guide, and in the case of

travelers of the more studious type, also taking notes very

assiduously like good school children. Chinese tourists suffer like

American tourists at Radio City, with the difference that Chinese

guides are not professional, but are fruit-sellers, donkey drivers and

peasant boys, whose information is less correct, if their personalities

are more lively. Visiting Huch’iu Hill at Soochow one day, I came

back with a terrible confusion of historical dates and sequence, for

the awe-inspiring bridge suspended forty feet over the Sword Pond,

with two round holes in the stone slabs of the bridge through which a

sword had flown up as a dragon, became, according to my orange-

selling boy, the place where the ancient beauty Hsishih attended to

her morning toilet! (Hsishih’s “dressing table” was actually about ten

miles away from the place.) All he wanted was to sell me some

oranges. But then I had a chance of seeing how folklore was

changed and modified and “metamorphosed.”

The second kind of false travel is travel for conversation, in order

that one may talk about it afterwards. I have seen visitors at Hup’ao

of Hangchow, a place famous for its tea and spring water, having

their picture taken in the act of lifting tea cups to their lips. To be

sure, it is a highly poetic sentiment to show friends a picture of

themselves drinking tea at Hup’ao. The danger is that one spends

less thought on the actual taste of the tea than on the photograph

itself. This sort of thing can become an obsession, especially with

travelers provided with cameras, as we so often see on sight-seeing

buses in Paris and London. The tourists are so busy with their

cameras that they have no time to look at the places themselves. Of

course they have the privilege of looking at them in the pictures

afterwards when they go home, but it is obvious that pictures of

Trafalgar Square or the Champs Elysees can be bought in New York

or in Peiping. As these historical places become places to be talked

about afterwards instead of places to be looked at, it is natural that

the more places one visits, the richer the memory will be, and the

more places there will be to talk about. This urge for learning and

scholarship therefore impels the tourist to cover as many points as

possible in a day. He has in his hand a program of places to visit,

and as he comes to a place, he checks it off with a pencil on the

program. I suspect such travelers are trying to be efficient even on

their holiday.

This sort of foolish travel necessarily produces the third type of

false travelers, who travel by schedule, knowing beforehand exactly

how many hours they are going to spend in Vienna or Budapest.

Before such a traveler departs, he makes a perfect schedule for

himself and religiously adheres to it. Bound by the clock and run by

the calendar as he is at home, he is still bound by the clock and run

by the calendar while abroad.

In place of these false types of travel, I propose that the true

motives of travel are, or should be, otherwise. In the first place, the

true motive of travel should be travel to become lost and unknown,

More poetically, we may describe it as travel to forget. Everyone is

quite respectable in his home town, no matter what the higher social

circles think of him. He is tied by a set of conventions, rules, habits

and duties. A banker finds it difficult to be treated just as an ordinary

human being at home and to forget that he is a banker, and it seems

to me, the real excuse for travel is that he shall be able to find

himself in a community in which he is just an ordinary human being.

Letters of introduction are all very well for people on business trips,

but business trips are by definition outside the category of pure travel

A man stands a poorer chance of discovering himself as a human

being if he brings along with him letters of introduction, and of finding

out exactly how God made him as a human being, apart from the

artificial accidents of social standing. Against the comforts of being

well-received by friends in a foreign country and guided efficiently

through the social strata of one’s own class, there is the greater

excitement of a boy scout in a forest, left to his own devices. He has

the chance to prove for himself that he can order a fried chicken with

the language of fingers alone, or find his way about town by

communicating with a Tokyo policeman. At least, such a traveler can

come home with a less tenderfootish dependence upon his chauffeur

and butler.

A true traveler is always a vagabond, with the joys, temptations

and sense of adventure of the vagabond. Either travel is

“vagabonding” or it is no travel at all. The essence of travel is to have

no duties, no fixed hours, no mail, no inquisitive neighbors, no

receiving delegations, and no destination. A good traveler is one who

does not know where he is going to, and a perfect traveler does not

know where he came from. He does not even know his own name

and surname. This point has been emphasized by T’u Lung in his

idealized sketch of the Travels of Mingtiaotse—which. I have

translated in the next section. Probably he hasn’t got a single friend

in a strange land, but as a Chinese nun expressed it, “Not to care for

anybody in particular is to care for mankind in general.” Having no

particular friend is having everybody as one’s friend. Loving mankind

in general, he mixes with them and goes about observing the charms

of people and their customs. This kind of benefit is entirely missed by

those travelers on the sight-seeing buses, who stay in the hotel,

converse with their fellow passengers from the home country, and in

the case of many American travelers in Paris, make a point of eating

at the favorite rendezvous of American tourists, where they can be

sure of seeing all their fellow passengers who came over on the

same ship all over again, and can eat American doughnuts which

taste exactly as they taste at home. English travelers in Shanghai

make sure that they put up at an English hotel where they can have

their bacon and eggs and toast with marmalade at breakfast, and

hang about the cocktail lounge and fight shy of any inducement to

get them to take a rickshaw ride. They are terribly hygienic, to be

sure, but why go to Shanghai at all? Such travelers never allow

themselves the time and leisure for entering into the spirit of the

people and thus forfeit one of the greatest benefits of traveling.

The spirit of vagabondage makes it possible for people taking a

vacation to get closer to Nature. Travelers of this kind will therefore

insist on going to the summer resorts where there are the fewest

people and one can have some sort of real solitude and communion

with Nature. Travelers of this sort, therefore, do not in their

preparation for journeys go into a department store and take a lot of

time to select a pink or a blue bathing suit. Lipstick is still allowable

because a vacationist, being a follower of Jean Jacques Rousseau,

wants to be natural, and no lady can be quite natural without a good

lipstick. But that is due to the fact that one goes to the summer

resorts and beaches where everybody goes, and the entire benefit of

a closer association with Nature is lost or forgotten. One goes to a

famous spring and says to himself, “Now I am entirely by myself,” but

after supper at the hotel, he takes up a paper in the lounge and

discovers that Mrs. B—came up to the place on Monday. Next

morning on his “solitary” walk, he encounters the entire family of the

Dudleys, who arrived by train the night before. On Thursday night he

finds out to his great delight that Mrs. S—and her husband are also

having a vacation in this wonderful secluded valley. Mrs. S—then

invites the Dudleys to tea, and the Dudleys invite Mr. and Mrs. S—to

a bridge party, and you can hear Mrs. S—exclaim, “Isn’t it wonderful?

It is just like being in New York, isn’t it?”

I may suggest that there is a different kind of travel, travel to see

nothing and to see nobody, but the squirrels and muskrats and

woodchucks and clouds and trees. A friend of mine, an American

lady, described for me how she went with some Chinese friends to a

hill in the neighborhood of Hangchow, in order to see nothing. It was

a misty day in the morning, and as they went up, the mist became

heavier and heavier. One could hear the soft beat of drops of

moisture on the leaves of grass. There was nothing to be seen but

fog. The American lady was discouraged. “But you must come along;

there’s a wonderful sight on top,” insisted her Chinese friends. She

went up with them and after a while saw an ugly rock in the distance

enveloped by the clouds, which had been heralded as a great sight.

“What is there?” she asked. “That is the Inverted Lotus,” her friends

replied. Somewhat mortified, she was ready to go down. “But there is

a still more wonderful sight on top,” they said. Her dress was already

half damp with the moisture, but she had given up the fight already

and went on with them. Finally they reached the summit All about

them was an expanse of mists and fogs, with the outline of distant

hills barely visible on the horizon. “But there is nothing to see here,”

my American friend protested. “That is exactly the point. We come

up to see nothing,” her Chinese friends replied.

There is all the difference between seeing things and seeing

nothing. Many travelers who see things really see nothing, and many

who see nothing see a great deal. I am always amused at hearing of

an author going to a foreign country to “get material for his new

book,” as if he had exhausted all there was to see in humanity in his

own town or country and as if the theme could ever be exhausted.

“Thrums” must be unromantic and the Island of Guernsey too dull to

build a great novel upon! We come therefore to the philosophy of

travel as consisting of the capacity to see things, which abolishes the

distinction between travel to a distant country and going about the

fields of an afternoon.

The two become the same thing, as Chin Shengt’an insisted. The

most necessary outfit a traveler has to carry along with him is “a

special talent in his breast and a special vision below his eyebrows,”

as the Chinese dramatic critic expressed it in his famous running

comment on the drama Western Chamber. The point is whether one

has got the heart to feel and the eyes to see. If he hasn’t, his visits to

the mountains are a pure waste of time and money; on the other

hand, if he has got “a special talent in his breast and a special vision

below his eyebrows,” he can get the greatest joy of travel even

without going to the mountains, by staying at home and watching

and going about the field to watch a sailing cloud, or a dog, or a

hedge, or a lonely tree. I translate below Chin’s dissertation on the

true art of travel:

I have read the travel sketches of people and realize that

very few people understand the art of travelling. Surely the

man who knows how to travel will not be frightened by a long

journey to see all the sights of the land and sea and explore

all their grandeur and mystery. But a certain talent in his

breast and a certain vision below his eyebrows tells him that it

is not necessary to go to all the famous beauty spots of land

and sea in order to explore nature’s wonder and mystery. One

day he goes to a stone cave after using up a great deal of the

energy of his legs, his eyes and his mind, and when he has

done that, the next day he goes again to another blessed spot

and uses up some more of the energy of his legs, his eyes

and his mind. People who do not understand him will say,

“What a wonderful time you have been having, visiting places

these days! Just after seeing one stone cave, you have gone

ahead to visit another blessed spot.” They have entirely

missed the point. For there is a distance between the two

places he visited, perhaps twenty or thirty li, or perhaps, eight,

seven, six, five, four, three, two li, or perhaps even one li or

just half a li With the special talent in his breast and the

special vision beneath his pair of eyebrows, has he not looked

at that little distance of a li or half a li in the same way he

looked at the stone cave and the blessed spot?

It is true that there is something which terrifies the eye and

surprises the soul to find that Mother Nature with her great

skill and wisdom and energy has suddenly produced a thing

like a stone cave or a blessed spot. But I have often stared

casually at little things of this universe, a bird, a fish, a flower,

or a small plant, and even at a bird’s feather, a fish’s scale, a

flower petal and a blade of grass, and realized how Mother

Nature has also created it with all her great skill and wisdom

and energy. As it is said that the lion uses the same energy to

attack an elephant as to attack a wild rabbit, so does Mother

Nature truly do the same thing. She uses all her energy in

producing a stone cave or a blessed spot, but she also uses

all her energy in producing a bird, a fish, a flower, a blade of

grass, or even a feather, a scale, a petal, a leaf. Therefore, it

is not alone the stone cave or the blessed spot that terrifies

the eye and surprises the soul in this world.

Furthermore, have we ever thought how the stone cave and

the blessed spot were produced? Chuangtse has wisely said,

“To comprehend the different organs of the horse is not to

comprehend the horse itself. What we call the horse exists

before its different organs.” To take another analogy, we see

forests growing around the great lakes and number and rocks

spread all over the great mountains. It gives the traveler joy to

know that the great forests and timber and rocks are

assembled together to form the great lakes and great

mountains. But the towering peaks are formed by little rocks

and the falling cataracts are formed and nourished by little

springs of water. If we examine them one by one, we see that

the stones are no bigger than the palm of one’s hand, and the

springs are no bigger than little rivulets. Laotse has said:

“Thirty spokes are grouped around the hub of a wheel, and

when they lose their own individuality, we have a functioning

cart. We knead clay into a vessel and when the clay loses its

own existence, we have a usable utensil. We make a hole in

the wall to make windows and doors, and when the windows

and doors lose their own existence,

we have a house to live

in.” And so when we view a stone cave or a blessed spot and

see the vertically uprising peaks, horizontally stretching

mountain passes, those that go up and form a precipice,

those that go down and form a river, those that are level and

form a precipice, those that go down and form a river, those

that are level and form a plateau, those that are inclined and

form a hillside, those that stretch across and become bridges,

and those that come together and become ravines, we realize

that however incomparably manifold they are in their

greatness and mystery, this mystery and grandeur arises

when the parts lose their individual existence. For when they

lose their own existence, there are no passes, no precipices,

no rivers and no plateaus, hillsides, bridges and ravines. But it

is exactly in their non-existence that the special talent in our

breast and the special vision below our eyebrows wander and

float at ease. And since this special talent in our breast and

this special vision below our eyebrows can wander and float

at ease only when these things are non-existent, why then

must we insist on going to the stone cave and to the blessed

spot?

If, therefore with the special talent in my breast and the

special vision below my eyebrows, I can still wander and float

about at ease only when these things lose their individual

existence, isn’t it then unnecessary that I visit the stone cave

and the blessed spot? For as I have just said, in the distance

of twenty or thirty li, or even one or half li, are there not also

everywhere things that lose their existence? A crooked little

bridge—a shaggy lonely tree—a glimpse of water—a village—

a hedge—a dog—how do I know that the mystery and the

grandeur of the stone cave and the blessed spot where I may

wander and float about at ease are not even here?. . .

Besides, it is not necessary that we have a special talent in

our breast and a special vision below our eyebrows: should

one require a special talent in order to float about and require

a special vision in order to wander at ease, we might not find

a single person in the world who understands the art of

traveling. According to Shengt’an [the writer himself], there

are no special talents and no special visions: to be willing to

float about is already to have the special talent, and to be able

to wander about at ease is already to have a special vision.

The criteria of Old M

Fei] for judging rocks are hsiou,

t’ou, t’on and son [delicacy, undulation, clarity and

slenderness]. Now a little patch of water, a village, a bridge, a

tree, a hedge or a dog at the distance of one li or half a li has

each its great delicacy, great undulation, great clarity and

great slenderness. If we fail to see this, it is because we do

not understand how to look at them as Old Mi looked at the

rocks. If we only see their delicacy, their undulation, their

clarity and their slenderness, we cannot help but wander and

float about at ease among them. What is there in the grandeur

and mystery of peaks and mountain passes and precipices

and rivers and the plateaux, the slopes, the bridges and the

ravines in the stone cave and the blessed spot outside their

being delicate, undulated, clear and slender? Those who

insist on visiting the stone caves and the blessed spots

therefore have left much that they have not visited; in fact,

they have not visited any place at all. For those who fail to see

the mystery and grandeur of a single hedge or a dog have

seen only what is not grand and what is not mysterious in the

stone caves and the blessed spots.

Toushan [Chin’s friend] said, “The one who understands

best the art of travel in all history is Confucius, and the

second, Wang Hsichih [acknowledged master of Chinese

calligraphy].” On being asked to explain, Toushan said, “I

know this of Confucius from the two sentences that for him

‘rice could not be white enough, and mincemeat could not be

chopped fine enough,’ and I know this of Wang from seeing

examples of his calligraphy. There are things in it which his

son Hsienchih could not even understand.” “What you have

just said is devastating to the entire mankind,” said I. Toushan

once told me, “When Wang Hsichih was at home, he often

counted the pistils of every flower on every branch in his yard,

and he would be thus occupied the whole day without saying

a word, while his students stood by with towels at his side.”

“Where did you find the authority for this statement?” asked

Shengt’an. “I found it in my own heart,” replied Toushan. Such

a marvelous person is Toushan. Alas, that the world has not

discovered Toushan and admired his romantic imagination!

II. “THE TRAVELS OF MINGLIAOTSE”

a. The Reason for the Flight

Mingliaotse was once an official, and he was tired of the ways of

the world, of having to say things against his heart and to perform

ceremonies against good form. What is “to say things against one’s

heart?” A host and his visitor make a low bow to each other, and

after a few casual remarks about the weather, dare not make

another comment. People we have met for the first time shake hands

with us and insist they are our bosom friends, but after they have

parted from us, we are totally indifferent to each other. When we

praise a person, we compare him to the saint Poyi, and as soon as

he has turned away, we talk behind his back and compare him to the

thief Cheh. And when we are sitting at ease enjoying a conversation,

we try to preserve a curt dignity, although we have so much we

should like to say to each other; and we gabble about noble ideals,

while we have immoral conduct. Being afraid that to unbosom our

heart would betray the truth and to tell the truth would hurt, we lay

these thoughts aside and let the conversation drift aimlessly on trivial

topics. Sometimes we even play the actor and sigh or shout to cover

up our thoughts, so that our ears, our eyes, our mouth and our nose

are no more our own, and our anger, our joy, our laughter and our

condemnations are no longer genuine. Such is the established

convention of society, and there is no way of rectifying it. And what is

“to perform ceremonies against good form?” In dealings with our

fellowmen, no matter of what rank, we bow and kowtow the whole

day, although they are our old friends. We dissociate ourselves

without reason from some, as if they were our mortal enemies, and

equally without reason try to get close to others, although they have

no real affinity to us. Hardly has a nobleman opened his mouth when

we answer, “Yes, sir!” with a roar, and yet he need only raise an arm,

and our heads may be chopped off. We see two people calling on

each other, and although they hate to see each other’s faces, they

spend their days busily dismounting from their horses and leaving

their cards. Now calling on a friend to inquire after his welfare should

not be merely an empty form. Did the ancient kings who established

these ceremonies mean it to be this way? We put on our gowns and

girdles, feeling like caged monkeys, so that even when a louse bites

our body and our skin itches, we cannot scratch it. And when we are

walking at leisure in the streets, we are afraid of disobeying the law.

Immediately our eyes look at our nose and we dare not look beyond

a short distance, and if we look beyond a short distance, other

people will look at us and try to detect what we are doing. When we

want to ease ourselves and the feeling is intense, we hardly dare to

stop without some excuse. The higher officials are ever mindful of

the sword in front and other people’s criticism behind. The cold and

hot seasons disturb their bodies, and the desire of possession and

the fear of loss trouble their hearts. Thus they suffer greater loss

than comes from the mere fear of being incorrect. Even the noblest

and most chivalrous spirits, who have a sense of wise

disenchantment and are pleased with their own being, fall into this

trap once they have become officials. So, wishing to emancipate his

heart and liberate his will, Mingliaotse sets forth to travel in the

Country of the Nonchalant.

Some one may say: “I have heard that the follower of Tao lives in

quiet and does not feel lonely, and lives in a crowd and does not feel

the noise. He lives in the world and yet is out of it, is without

bondage and without need for emancipation, and soon a willow tree

grows from his left armpit and a bird makes its nest on the top of his

head. This is the height of the culture of quietism and emancipation.

To be a servant in the kitchen, or to pick up the waste on the ground,

is one of the lowest of professions, and yet the saint is not disturbed

by it. Are you not making your spirit the servant of your body, when

you are afraid of the restrictions of the official life, and desire to travel

to unusual places?”

And Mingliaotse replies: “He who has attained the Tao can go into

water without becoming wet, jump into fire without being burned,

walk upon reality as if it were a void and travel on avoid as if it were

reality. He can be at home wherever he is and be alone in whatever

surroundings. That is natural with him. But I am not one who has

attained the Tao, I am merely a lover of Tao. One who has attained

the Tao is master of himself, and the universe is dissolved for him.

Throw him in the company of the noisy and the dirty, and he will be

like a lotus flower growing from muddy water, touched by it, yet

unstained. Therefore he does not have to choose where to go. I am

yet unqualified for this, for I am like a willow tree following the wind—

when the wind is quiet, then I am quiet, and when the wind moves, I

move, too, I am like sand in the water—which is clean or muddy as

the water is. I have often achieved purity and quiet for a whole day

and then lost it in a moment, and have sometimes achieved purity

and quiet for a year and then lost it in a day. It has not been possible

for me to let everything alone and not be disturbed by material

surroundings. If an emperor could follow the Tao, why did Ch’ao Fu

and Hsu Yu have to go to the Chi Hill and the Ying River? If a prince

could follow the Tao, why did Sakyamuni have to go to the

Himalayas? If a duke could follow the Tao, why did Chang Liang

have to ask for sick leave? And if a minor official could follow the

Tao, why did T’ao Yüanming have to resign from his office? I am

going to emancipate my heart and release my spirit and travel in the

Country of the Nonchalant.”

“Let me hear about your travels,” the friend says, and Mingliaotse

replies:

“One who travels does so in order to open his ears and eyes and

relax his spirit. He explores the Nine States

and travels over the

Eight Barbarian Countries, in the hope that he may gather the Divine

Essence and meet great Taoists, and that he may eat of the plant of

eternal life and find the marrow of rocks.

Riding upon the wind and

sailing upon ether, he goes coolly whithersoever the wind may carry

him. After these wanderings, he comes back, shuts himself up and

sits looking at the blank wall, and in this way ends his life. I am not

one who has attained the Tao. I would like to house my spirit within

my body, to nourish my virtue by mildness, and to travel in ether by

becoming a void. But I cannot do it yet. I tried to house my spirit

within my body, but suddenly it disappeared outside; I tried to

nourish my virtue by mildness, but suddenly it shifted to intensity of

feeling; and I tried to wander in ether by keeping in the void, but

suddenly there sprang up in me a desire. And so, being unable to

find peace within myself, I made use of the external surroundings to

calm my spirit, and being unable to find delight within my heart, I

borrowed a landscape to please it. Therefore strange were my

travels.

b. The Way of Traveling

“T go forth with a friend who loves the mountain haze and each of

us carries a gourd and wears a cassock, taking with us a hundred

cash. We do not want more, but try always to keep it at a hundred to

meet emergencies. And we two go begging through cities and

through hamlets, at vermilion gates and at white mansions, before

Taoist temples and monks’ huts. We are careful of what we beg for,

asking for rice and not for wine, and for vegetables and not for meat.

The tone of our begging is humble, but not tragic. If people give, we

then leave them, and if people don’t give, we also leave them; the

whole object being merely to forestall hunger. If some people are

rude, we take it with a bow. Sometimes when there is no place at

which to beg and we cannot do otherwise, we spend one or two from

the hundred cash we carry along with us, and make it up whenever

possible. But we do not spend any cash unless we are actually

forced to it.

“We travel without a destination and stop over wherever we find

ourselves, and we go very slowly, perhaps ten li a day, perhaps

twenty, or perhaps thirty, forty or fifty. We do not try to do too much,

lest we feel tired. And when we come to mountains and streams, and

are enchanted with the springs and white rocks and water fowls and

mountain birds, we choose a spot on a river islet and sit on a rock,

looking at the distance. And when we meet woodcutters or fishermen

or villagers or rustic old men, we do not ask for their names and

surnames, nor give ours, nor talk about the weather, but chat briefly

on the charms of the country life. After a while we part company with

them without regret.

“In times of great cold or great heat, we have to seek shelter, lest

we be affected by the weather. On the road, we stand aside and let

other people pass, and at a ferry, we wait to let other people get into

the boat first. But if there is a storm we do not try to cross the water,

or if a storm comes up when we are already halfway across, we calm

our spirit, and leaving it to fate with an understanding of life, we say,

If we should be drowned while crossing, it is Heaven’s will. Can we

escape by worrying over it?’ If we cannot escape, there our journey

ends. If fortunately we escape, then we go on as before. If we meet

some rough young fellow on the way or accidentally bump into him,

and if the young man is rude, we politely apologize to him. If after the

apology we still cannot escape a fight, then there our journey ends.

But if we escape it, then we go on as before. If one of us falls ill, we

stop to attend to the illness, and the other tries to beg a little for

some medicine, but he himself takes it calmly. He looks within

himself and is not afraid of death. And so a severe illness is changed

into a light illness, and a light illness is immediately cured. If it is

willed that our days are numbered, then there our journey ends. But

if we escape it, then we go on as before. It is natural that during our

wanderings, we might arouse the suspicion of detectives or guards

and might be arrested as spies. We then try to escape either by our

cunning or by our sincerity. If we cannot escape, then there our

journey ends. But if we escape, then we go on as before. Of course

we stop over for the night at a mat-shed hut or a stone lodge, but if it

is impossible to find such a place, we stop for the night lying outside

a temple gate, or beneath a rock cave, or outside people’s house

walls or beneath tall trees. Perhaps the mountain spirits and tigers or

wolves may be looking upon us, and what are we to do? The

mountain spirits can do us no harm, but we are unable to defend

ourselves against the tigers or wolves. But haven’t we a fate

controlled up in heaven? We therefore leave it to the laws of the

universe, and we do not even change the color of our face. If we are

eaten up, that is our fate, and there our journey ends. But if we

escape it, then we go on as before. . . ..

c. At Austere Heights

“As for my destinations, I visit chiefly the Five Sacred Mountains

and the Four Sacred Waters and generally the sacred places on

mountain tops, and secondarily include also the famous mountains

and rivers of the Nine States. But I limit myself to only those parts

within the jurisdiction of the Nine States and where human beings

have set foot. As for those regions lying outside the Celestial Empire,

like the Himalayas and the Ten Small Islands and Three Big Islands

of the China Sea, I do not think I should be able to go there, not

being provided with a pair of wings. I expect also to meet only

traveling scholars of the lakes and rivers or retired men of the

mountains; as for the various immortals, I do not think I shall be able

to come across them, not being provided with an immortal body

myself.

“When I go up to the Five Sacred Mountains, there I stand high

above the celestial winds and look beyond the Four Seas, and the

myriad mountain peaks appear like little snails, the myriad rivers

seem like winding girdles, and the myriad trees appear like kale. The

Milky Way seems to graze by my collar, white clouds pass through

my sleeves, the eagles of the air seem within my arm’s reach, and

the sun and the moon brush my temples and pass by. And there I

have to speak in a low voice, not only for fear I may frighten away

the spirit of the mountain, but also lest it be overheard by God on His

throne. Above us there is the pure firmament, without a single speck

of dust in that vast expanse of space, while below us rain and

thunder and stormy darkness take place without our knowledge, and

the rumbling of the thunder is heard only as the gurgling of a baby.

At this moment, my eyesight is dazzled by the light, and my spirit

seems to fly out of the limitations of space, and I feel as if I were

riding upon the far-journeying winds, but do not know where to go.

Or when the western sun is about to hide itself and the eastern moon

is bursting out from below the horizon, there the light of the clouds

shines forth in all directions and the purple and the blue scintillate in

the sky and the distant and the near-by peaks change from a deeper

into a lighter hue in a short moment. Or again in the middle of the

night, I hear the sound of the temple bells and the roar of a tiger,

followed by a gust of rustling wind, and the door of the main temple

hall being open, I slip on my gown and get up, and lo! there the Spirit

of the Rabbit

is reclining, and some remains of the last snowfall still

cover up the upper slopes, the light of the night lies like a mass of

undefined white, and the distant mountains present a hardly visible

outline. At such a moment, I feel my body steeped in the cool air and

all desires of the flesh have melted away. Or perhaps I see the God

of the Sacred Mountain sitting in state, giving audience to the inferior

spirits. There is a profusion of banners and canopies, and the air is

filled with the music of the flute and the bells, and the palace roofs

are clothed in a mantle of clouds and scarfs of haze, seeming to

have and yet not to have a visible outline, and giving the illusion of

now being so near and now being so far away. Ah, thrice happy is it

to hear the music of the gods, and why is it suddenly interrupted by a

gust of cold wind?

“Besides these Five Sacred Mountains, there are a number of

other famous mountains, like Szeming, Tient’ai, Chinhua, Kua-

ts’ang, Chint’ing, Tienmu, Wuyi, Lushan, Omei, Chungnan,

Chungt’iao, Wut’ai, T’aiho, Lofu, Kweich’i, Maoshan, Chiuhua, and

Linwu, and such sacred places without number, which have been

called the dwellings of the fairies or the abodes of the spirits. I go

forth in sandals, carrying a bamboo cane, and though I may not be

able to visit them all, I wander about as far as my energy permits. I

drink the water of the Gods’ Faeces, inquire after the name of the

Fairy Mouse, chew the rice of sesame and drink the dew of pine

trees. When I come to a steep peak or overhanging precipice which

rises abruptly into the sky, never scaled by man, I tie myself to a rope

and climb up to the top. Coming to a broken stone bridge, or an old

gate suddenly discovered open, I walk into it without fear; or coming

to a rocky cave so dark that one cannot see its bottom, with but a

single ray of light coming in through a crevice in its roof, I light a

torch and go in by myself without fear, in the hope of finding some

highminded Taoists, or immortal plants, or perhaps the bodily

remains of some Taoists who have gone up to heaven.

“I visit also the famous rivers and lakes, like the Tungt’ing, the

Yünmeng, the Chiit’ang, the Wuhsia,

the Chiich’ü, the P’engli, the

Yangtse, and the Ch’ient’ang. Such deep expanses of water are the

abodes of fish, dragons, and the water spirits. When the air is calm

and the water smooth like a mirror, we know that then the Divine

Dragon is peacefully asleep, holding a pearl in its breast. When the

lights of the water merge with the color of the sky under a clear

moon, we know then it is the Princess of the Dragon King and the

Mistress of the River coming out in a canopied procession, flute in

hand and clad in their new scarfs of light gauze, treading in

embroidered shoes upon the rippling waves. This procession

continues for some time and then disappears. Ah, how cool it is then!

Or a furious wind lashes upon the water and gigantic waves rise, and

we know then it is the spirit of Ch’ihyi

in anger, assisted by

T’ienwu.

Then the great earth churns about like a mill and our

earthly abode shakes and rolls like a sifter, and we seem to see Old

Dragon Chang breaking his way into heaven, carrying his nine sons

in his arms. Ah, how magnificent it is then! Or if we go in for the

gentle beauty of well-dressed women, there is no better place than

the West Lake of Hangchow, where the willows line the banks and

the peach flowers look at their own image in the water, and we know

then it is the Imperial Consort Lihua opening her vanity box in the

morning. When the water-caltrops are in bloom and the lotus flowers

look fresh and gay on a bright morning and the place is filled with a

subtle fragrance, we know then that the beauties Yichu and Hoteh

are coining out of their bath. When the sky is clear and the sun is

shining and the things of the place have a bright charm, and people

are leaning upon their balconies in the vermilion towers in the

morning, or boating on the lake with painted oars in the evening, we

know then it is the Queen Yang Kweifei in her smiling mood. When a

mist and rain hang over the lake and the many hills are enveloped in

gray, changing into the most unexpected colors, it is also a source of

great delight, for we know then it is Hsishih, Queen of the Wu

kingdom, knitting her eyebrows,”

d. Back to Humanity

Then Mingliaotse walks leisurely past the Six Bridges of Hsiling

and goes up to Tienchu and Lingch’iao, where after visiting some

ancient scholars, he comes out and looks for Wild Stork Ting in

some stone cave amidst the clouds. Then there is Ch’aoyin (Poo-

too) which is the monastic home of Mingliaotse, and where the

temple in honor of the Goddess of Mercy is situated, Mingliaotse

goes there to pick lotus flowers and look at the great sea. Ah, is this

not a great delight!

And so wandering farther and farther, happy of heart, Ming-liaotse

proceeds leisurely, covering a distance of ten thousand li on foot And

when he is pleased with what he sees or hears, he stays at a place

for ten days.

[At a temple] he sits still with crossed legs to master the Three

Precious Spirits. The five thousand words of Taotehching—is not the

philosophy subtle and fine? The Golden Casket of Taoist books—is it

already lost or still to be found? The Jade Book of Fusang—shall he

not ask his neighbors concerning its whereabouts? The Two Books

of Yinfu—does their secret lie right before his eyes? The Supreme

Ruler guides his perceptive mind, and the Ancient Buddha directs his

spiritual wisdom. And so trying to understand the law of the changing

universe, he is not lonely during his contemplation.

In the temple of Buddha, there is the gracious appearance of his

golden body, irradiating a glorious halo. The candles have been

lighted and the incense smoke fills the air with a light fragrance, and

there the Taoists or monks are seated in order on their straw

cushions, drinking tea and eating fruit and perusing the classics.

After a while, when they are tired, they control their respiration and

enter the stage of quietude. After a long time, they get up, and see

the moon shining from behind the wisterias, while the universe lies

hushed in silence. An acolyte is kowtowing with his head against the

ground, and a boy servant is taking a nap near the stove where the

medicine of fairies is being stewed. At this moment how can an

earthly thought enter our minds, even if it is there?

When out in the open country, he sees low walls enclosing mud

huts thatched with straw. A piercing wind is blowing through the door

and a mild sun is shining upon the forests. The cattle and sheep are

returning home to the hillside, and hungry birds are making a noisy

sound in the fields on the plain. An old farmer in ragged clothes and

disheveled hair is sunning himself beneath a small mulberry tree,

and an old woman is holding an earthen vessel filled with water and

serving a wheat meal. When the landscape and the mood of the

moment are so sad, one feels too that it is as beautiful as a picture. If

a Taoist on travel should regard such views as too ordinary, he might

just as well not travel at all.

On entering a big city, where crowds jostle and the traffic of carts

and horses fills the streets, Mingliaotse goes along singing and

observing the people—storekeepers, butchers, minstrel singers,

fortune-tellers, people occupied in a dispute, jugglers, animal

trainers, gamblers and sportsmen. Mingliaotse looks at them all. And

when the spirit moves him, he enters a wine shop and orders some

strong wine with dried fish and green vegetables, and the two men

drink across a table. Thus getting warmed up, they sing the ditty

Gathering the Immortal Plant, and look about, supremely satisfied

with themselves. The people of the street wonder at the sight of

these two ragged souls carrying themselves with such an air of

charm and happiness, and suspect that they are perhaps fairies

incarnated. After a short while, they suddenly disappear altogether.

In the great mansions behind tall gates, dukes and princes or

officials of high ranks are having a wine feast. Food is being served

on jade plates, and beauties are sitting around the table. An

orchestra is playing in the hall and the sound of song pierces the

clouds. An old servant with a cane in hand is watching the door.

Mingliaotse goes right in to beg for food. With his bright, wide-open

eyes and a dignified air, he shouts to the company, “Stop all this

noise and listen to a Taoist singing the song of ‘Dew Drops on

Flowers’”:

Dew drops on flowers,

Oh, how gay!

Fear not the cutting wind,

But dread the coming day!

Eastward flows the River,

Westward the Milky Way.

Farmers till the field where

Once the Bronze Tower lay.

Better to have got

A day with this all-precious pot

Than future names remembered not.

Oh, make merry while ye may!

Dew drops on flowers,

Oh, how bright!

So long they last, they shine

Like pearls in morning light,

Where grave mounds dot the wilds,

And winds whine through the night;

Foxes’ howls and screech-owls

On poplars ghastly white.

See where red leaves blow,

Down on the Fragrant Gullet flow,

And mosses over Ch’inien Palace grow.

Oh, make merry while ye might!

After Mingliaotse has finished his song, one of the guests seems

to be angry and says: “Who is this Taoist to spoil our enjoyment in

the midst of our wine feast? Give him a piece of sesame cake and

send him away!” Mingliaotse receives the cake and leaves. Then

another guest speaks to his attendant, saying, “Quick! Ask that

Taoist to come back!” “But we were just enjoying our wine,” says the

former, “and he came to spoil our pleasure. That was why I sent him

away with a piece of sesame cake. It’s just fine. Why do you want

him to come back?” “It seems to me,” replies the latter, “there’s

something unusual about this Taoist, and I want to ask him to return

to have a good look at him.” “Why, he is only a beggar!” replies the

former. “What is unusual about him? All he wants is a cold dish of

leftovers.” Then another guest joins in and says, “It doesn’t seem

from the song he sang that he is just a beggar.”

At this moment, a sing-song girl in red gauze rises up from her

seat and says, “According to my humble opinion, this Taoist is a

fallen fairy from heaven. His eyes and forehead are delicately formed

and his voice is strong and clear. He is disguised as a beggar, but

something in his behavior betrays his noble breeding. The song he

sang is graceful and deep in meaning, more like the song of fairies in

heaven than the song of men on earth. What beggar could have

sung such a song! He is a fairy traveling among mortals in disguise.

Please ask him to come back, for we must not lose him.”

“What has all this to do with him?” says the last one. “All he wants

is perhaps a drink of wine. You ask him to come back and we’ll find

out that he is a common fellow after all.”

The girl in red gauze is still unconvinced and remarks, “Well, all I

can say is, we haven’t the luck to meet with immortals.”

Then another girl in green gauze rises up from her seat and says,

“Will the gentlemen make a bet with me? Ask the Taoist to return,

and if he is an extraordinary person

then those who say he is

extraordinary win the bet, and if we find that he is a common fellow,

then those who say he is a common fellow win.” “Good!” shout the

gentlemen together. They then send a servant to go after

Mingliaotse, but he has completely disappeared, and the servant

returns with the news. “I knew that he was no common fellow!” says

the former. “Alas, we have just lost an immortal!” says the girl in red

gauze. “Why, he just went out of the door and has completely

disappeared!”

Mingliaotse then proceeds with his cane and leisurely passes out

of the outer city gate. He passes by a dozen big cities without

entering one of them, until he comes to a place where he sees a city

wall nestling against a mountain range. There are fine, tall towers

and spacious, magnificent temples, whose roofs overlap one another

in irregular formations, overlooking a clear pond below. It is a

beautiful spring day, birds are singing on splendid trees and all the

flowers are in their full glory. The men and women of the city, clad in

their new clothes and riding in carved carnages or sitting on

embroidered saddles, have come out of the city to “pace the spring.”

Some are drinking in the shade of tall trees, and some have spread

a mat on the fragrant grass, and others have climbed up to a high

vermilion tower, or are rowing on “green sparrow” boats; again

others are riding shoulder to shoulder to visit the flowers, or are

walking hand in hand and singing folk songs. Minghaotse feels

extremely happy and hangs about for a long time.

By and by a scholar with a clean face and nice complexion

appears, coming along gracefully in his long gown. Making a low

bow to Mingliaotse, he says, “Do Taoists come out to pace the

spring, too? I have a few friends having a picnic over there, beneath

the cherry trees in front of the little tower across the river It is a jolly

company and I shall be much pleased if you can join us. Can you

come along?”

Mingliaotse gladly follows the young man, and when he arrives,

he sees six or seven scholars, all handsome and young. The first

young man introduces him to the company with a smile. “My friends,

this is just a spring party among ourselves. I just met this Taoist

gentleman on the road and saw he was not at all vulgar, and I

therefore propose that we share our cups with him. What do you

think?” “Good!” they all reply.

So then they all take their seats in order and Mingliaotse sits at

the end of the table. When sufficient wine has been served and

everybody is tipsy and happy, the conversation waxes more and

more brilliant, and they pass witty remarks about the different people

and the gentry. Some declaim poems celebrating the spring, some

sing the song of gathering flowers, some discuss the policies of the

court, and some tell of the secluded charm of hills and woods. There

is then an exciting conversation going on, with each trying to outdo

the others, while the Taoist merely occupies himself by chewing his

rice. The first young man looks several times at Mingliaotse amidst

his busy conversation, and says, “We must hear something from this

Taoist teacher, too.” And Mingliaotse replies, “Why, I am just enjoying

the many fine and wise things you gentlemen have been saying, and

have not been able to understand them all. How can I contribute

anything to your conversation?”

After a while, the company rise up to take a walk in the rice fields,

some plucking flowers and others pulling willow branches on the

way. The place is full of beauties, and everywhere one’s eyes turn,

one sees beautiful peonies and miwu.

But Minghaotse wanders

alone into a hill path, and comes out again after a long while. “Why

did you go alone?” the gentleman ask. “I was going with two oranges

and a gallon of wine to listen to the orioles,” replies Minghaotse.

“Why, this is a most extraordinary man, by the way he talks,” says

one scholar, and Mingliaotse replies by a courteous remark

concerning his unworthiness.

So then the company sit down again, and one man says, “It won’t

do to go home from such an outing without writing some poems,”

and another expresses his approval.

Soon one person has completed his poem first, which reads:

The willows drunk with ‘circling haze,

And ram-bathed peach flowers brightly gleam.

Fear not thy fragrant cup be empty;

A tavern lies across the stream.

Another finishes his poem, which reads:

My kitchen shares the mountain green;

My tower is sprinkled wet with spray.

If ye drink not when spring is here,

Soon comes the windy, wintry day.

After three other persons have contributed their quatrains,

Mingliaotse is invited to make his contribution. He rises to his feet,

and after some expressions of his diffidence and the friends’

insistence, he sings:

I tread along the sandy bank,

Where clouds are golden, water clear;

The startled fairy hounds go barking—

Into the peach grove

disappear.

Amazed by this poem, the company rise from their seats and

make a low bow to Mingliaotse. “Tut! Tut! To hear such celestial

words from a monk! We knew that you were an extraordinary

person.” And they all come round to ask for his name and surname,

but Mingliaotse only smiles without giving reply. As they still insist,

Mingliaotse says, “What do you want to know my name for? I am

merely a rustic person wandering among clouds and waters, and

we’ve met with a smile. You can just call me ‘The Rustic Fellow of

Clouds and Waters.’” This intrigues the company still more, and they

express their desire to invite him to go into the city with them. “I am

merely a poor monk enjoying a vagabond’s travel, and all the world

is my home,” replies Mingliaotse with a smile. “But since you are so

kind, I will come along.”

They then go back to the city together, and Mingliaotse stays at

their homes by turn. During the days that follow, he finds himself now

in a rich man’s hall, and now in a well-hidden small studio, now

enjoying a literary wine dinner and now watching performances of

dance and song, and Mingliaotse goes to all the places to which he

is invited. The people of the city hear of the Rustic Fellow of Clouds

and Waters, and the socially active people shower him with

invitations, and he visits them all. When people give him drink, he

drinks; when people discuss poetry and literature, he discusses

poetry and literature with them; when people take him out for an

excursion, he goes with them; but when they ask for his name and

surname, he merely smiles without reply. In his discussion of poetry

and literature, he makes very apt remarks about the ancient and

modern writers and gives a penetrating analysis of their styles and

forms. Sometimes he discusses the political order of the ancient

kings and makes passing comments on current affairs and enchants

the people still more by his witty remarks.

Especially well-versed is he in the teaching of Taoism regarding

“nourishing the spirit.” Sometimes, when he is watching dancing or

singing which borders on the bawdy and people make ribald jokes to

find out his attitude toward these things, he seems to be enjoying

himself, like the romantic scholars. But when it comes to

extinguishing the candle and the host asks him to stay with some girl

entertainer, and when the party becomes really rowdy, he sits upright

with an austere appearance, and nobody can make anything of him.

When he takes a nap during the night, he asks for a straw cushion

from the host and sits with crossed legs on it, and merely dozes off

when he is tired. For this reason, admiration and wonder grow about

him.

After more than a month’s stay, he takes leave suddenly one day,

against the persistent entreaty of the people. His friends give him

money and cloth for presents, and write poems of farewell to him. At

the farewell party, the gendemen all come to give him a send-off;

sadly they hold his hands and some shed tears. Mingliaotse arrives

at the outer city gate, and after having reserved a hundred cash for

himself, lie distributes the gendemen’s presents to the poor and goes

away. When his friends hear of this, they sigh and marvel still more,

knowing not what to make of him.

e. Philosophy of the Flight

Mingliaotse then follows a mountain path, and finds himself in

deep, rugged mountains. Thousands of old trees, with creepers

growing on them, spread their deep shade so that one walking

underneath cannot see the sky. There is not a trace of human

habitation, and not even a woodcutter or a cowherd is in sight. He

hears only the cries of birds and monkeys around him, and a gust of

infernally cold wind makes him shiver. Mingliaotse proceeds with his

friend for a long while, when they suddenly see an old man with a

majestic forehead and a delicate face and green veins showing on

his eyeballs. His hair falls down to the shoulders, and he is sitting on

a rock, hugging his knees. Mingliaotse goes forward and makes a

bow. The old man rises to his feet and looks at him steadliy for a

long time, but does not say a word. Going down on his knees,

Mingliaotse speaks to him, “Is Father an extraordinary person who

has attained the Tao? How otherwise can I find the sound of

footsteps in this deep mountain solitude? Your disciple has always

loved the Tao and in his middle age has not yet found it. I feel sad at

the vanity of this life which rapidly burns out like a flash from a flint,

or like oil in a pan. Will you please take pity on me and disperse my

ignorance?” The old man pretends not to hear him. But after

Mingliaotse insists upon his request, he merely teaches him a few

words about being carefree and quiet and the idea of inaction, and

after a little while, goes his way. Mingliaotse’s eyes follow him for a

long while until he altogether disappears. How does one explain the

existence of such an old man in this deep mountain solitude?

Then wandering farther on, he chances to come upon an old

friend of his. Sometimes when he thinks of those people with whom

he had formed a friendship on the basis of love of prose and poetry,

or of respect for each other’s character, or of business relations, or of

personal intimacy and mutual understanding of one another’s hearts,

or of a mutual confidence in one another’s future, he begins to desire

to see them again. Then he goes straight to the home of his friend,

without concealing his indentity. The friend bows to greet him, and

seeing that Mingliaotse is clad in such a strange dress, is surprised

and asks him some questions. “I have already retired from the world,

and Chichen of T’ungming is my master,” explains Mingliaotse. “Are

your sons and daughters all married?” the friend asks. “No, not yet,”

replies Mingliaotse. “When they are all married, then I shall be free of

all cares, like the clearing up of the water of the Yellow River.

Tsep’ing

went away and never returned home, but I am still looking

forward to returning to the hills of my homeland, in order to live in

harmony with my original nature.” The host then gives him

vegetarian food, and they begin to talk of the days twenty or thirty

years ago, and surveying the past with a laugh, feel that everything

has passed like a dream. The friend then bows his head and sighs,

expressing his envy of the carefree life that Mingliaotse is leading.

“Are you not indeed a carefree man!” his friend says. “Now wealth

and power and the glories of this world are things in which people

easily get drowned. I sometimes see an old man with white hair on

his head marching slowly with a stoop in an official procession, still

clinging to these things and unwilling to let them go. If one day he

quits office, he looks about with knitted eyebrows, Inquiring if the

carriage is ready, he is still slow to depart, and passing out of the city

gate of the capital, he still looks back. When back at his farm, he still

disdains to occupy himself with planting rice and hemp and beans,

and morning and night he will be asking for news from the capital. Or

he will still be writing letters to his friends at the court, and such

thoughts flit back and forth in his breast ceaselessly until he draws

his last breath. Sometimes an Imperial order for his recall to office

arrives at the moment when he is breathing his last, and sometimes

the official messenger arrives with the news just a few hours after he

closes his eyes. Isn’t this ridiculous? How have you trained yourself

that you are able to emancipate yourself from such things in good

time?”

“I have looked at life in my leisure,” replies Minghaotse. “It seems

that I have come to an awakening through a sense of life’s tragedy. I

have looked at the skies, and wondered how the sun and the moon

and the stars and the Milky Way rush westward day and night like

busy people. Today passes and never returns, and although

tomorrow comes, it is no longer today. This year passes and never

returns, and although there is next year, it is no longer this year. And

so the days of Nature are steadily lengthened or unrolled, while the

days of my life are daily shortened, and outside the thirty-six

thousand mornings, time does not belong to me. The years of Nature

are steadily unrolled, while the years of my life become steadily

shortened, and beyond a hundred, they do not belong to me.

Furthermore, the so-called ‘hundred’ and the so-called ‘thirty-six

thousand’ in life are not always as we wish them to be, and among

the days and years, most are passed in bad weather and sorrow and

worry and running about. How many moments are there when the

day is beautiful and the company enjoyable, when the moon and the

wind are good and our heart is at ease and our spirit happy, when

there is music and song and wine and we can enjoy ourselves and

while away the hours!

“The sun and the moon pursue their courses, as fast as the bullet,

and when their wheels are about to go behind the Western

Precipices, the arms of the strongest man on earth cannot hold them

and make them travel eastward, even the eloquence of Su Ch’in and

Chang Yi cannot persuade them to travel eastward, even the wit and

the strategy of Ch’uhtse and Yen Ying cannot change their minds

and make them travel eastward, even the sincerity of Chingwei who

knocked herself against the Rainbow and was transformed into a

bird, trying to fill the sea of her regrets with pebbles, cannot touch

their hearts and make them travel eastward. Writers throughout the

ages who discussed this point have always held it as a matter of

eternal regret.

“And I have looked at the earth, where high banks have been

leveled into valleys and deep valleys have been heaved up into

mountains, and the water of the rivers and lakes flows night and day

eternally eastward into the sea. Fang P’ing

has said, ‘Since I took

over my duty, I have seen the sea three times changed into a

mulberry field, and vice versa.’

“Again I have looked at the living things of this world, how they are

born and grow old and fall ill and die, being ground thus in the mill of

yin and yang, like oil in a frying pan which, being heated by fire from

below, dries up in a short while; or like a candle which flickers in the

wind and soon goes out, its tears being dried up and its soot fallen to

the table; or like a boat cut adrift on a big sea, washed forward by

successive waves and floating it knows not whither. Besides, the

seven desires of man continue to burn him up and the pleasures of

the flesh pare him down; he is sometimes too much disappointed

and sometimes too much elated, and usually too much worried.

Without more than a hundred years at his disposal, he plans to live

for a thousand years, and while sitting like oil on fire, his ambitions

stretch beyond the universe. Why wonder, therefore, that his being

quickly deteriorates when old age comes along and his vital energy

is used up and his spirit wanders away from its abode?

“I have seen princes and dukes and generals and premiers whose

crowded roofs form a skyline like the clouds. When the dinner bell

sounds, a thousand people are seen eating together, and when their

gates are opened in the morning, crowds of visitors rush in. Day and

night they give feasts and their halls are full of painted women. When

a monk passes by, they shout at him with a thundering voice and he

dares not even to look at the house. But after twenty or thirty years,

the monk passes by again, and he sees a stretch of wild grass and

broken tiles covered by dew and frost, and a cold sun is shining

upon the place and a moaning wind passes by, with not a roof left

standing. What was once the scene of song and dance and

merrymaking is today the pasture ground of a few cowherd boys. Did

they ever realize, when they were at the height of their prosperity

and laughing and merrymaking, that this day would come? And why

did the great glories of this world pass away in the twinkling of an

eye? Was it alone, like the Garden of Chinku,

the Tower of

T’ungt’ai,

the Hall of P’ihsiang

and the Pool of T’aiyi

that

gradually became ruins after the passage of hundreds or thousands

of years? On my leisure days, I have passed out of the city and gone

up on hills, where I saw a stretch of grave mounds. Do these belong

to Yen or Han or Chin or Wei? Or were these people princes and

dukes, or were they pages and servants? Or were they heroes or

were they fools? How can I know from this stretch of yellow soil? I

thought how they, when they were living, clung to glory and wealth,

vied with one another in their ambitions and struggled for fame, how

they planned what they could never achieve and acquired what they

could never use. Which one of them did not worry and plan and

strive? One morning their eyes closed for the eternal sleep, and they

left all their worries behind.

“I have stopped over at the residences of officials and wondered

how many had taken another’s place as the host of the house. I have

looked at the records of the personnel at court and wondered how

many times old names had been struck off and new names put in. I

have been at mountain passes and at ferries, and have gone up a

high hill to look down upon the plain, and I have seen continuous

processions of boats and carriages and wondered how many

travelers they have carried away. And so I sighed in silence, and

sometimes my tears dropped and my heart’s desires were turned

cold like ashes.”

“I have heard it said by Yentse,” replies his friend, “that Sangch’iu

was happy over the fact that there was no death, and that the King

Ching of Ch’i shed tears and was grieved on account of death, and

wise people criticized him for not understanding life. Are you not also

lacking in the wisdom of those who understand life, when you feel

sad and even shed tears because of the swift passing of time and

the instability of life?”

“No,” replies Mingliaotse. “I have felt sad from the sense of the

instability of life, and I have come to an awakening from this feeling

of sadness. King Ching of Ch’i feared that his power and glory were

temporary and wanted to enjoy them forever and exhaust the

happiness of human life. On the contrary, I feel the instability of

wealth and power and wish to keep them at a distance, in order to

run my normal course of life. Our aims are different.”

“Have you already attained the Tao, then?”

“No, I have not attained the Tao. I am only one who loves it,”

replies Mingliaotse.

“Why do you wander about, if you love the Tao?”

“Oh, no, do not confuse my wanderings with the Tao,” replies

Mingliaotse. “I was merely tired of the restrictions of the official life

and the bother of worldly affairs, and I am traveling merely to free

myself from them. As for winding up the ‘great business of life,’

shall have to wait until I return and shut myself up.”

“Are you happy, going about with a gourd and a cassock and

begging and singing for your living?”

“I have heard from my teacher,” replies Mingliaotse, “that the art of

attaining happiness consists in keeping your pleasures mild. When

people come to a feast where lambs and cows are killed and all the

delicacies that come from land and sea are laid out on the table, they

all enjoy them at first, but when they come to the point of satiety,

they begin to feel a sense of repulsion. Much better are meals of

plain rice and green vegetables, which are mild and simple and good

for one’s health and which will be found to have a lasting flavor, after

one gets used to them. People also enjoy themselves at first in

parties where there are beautiful women and boys, where some beat

the drum and others play the sheng and a lot of things are going on

in the hall. But after the mood is past, one gets, on the contrary, a

sense of sadness. It is much better to light incense and open your

book and sit quietly and leisurely, maintaining a calm of spirit, and

the charm deepens as you go along. Although I was at one time of

my life an official, I had no property or wealth outside a few books. At

first I traveled with these books, but fearing that they might be the

cause of envy on the part of the water spirits, I threw them into the

water. And now I haven’t got a thing outside this body. Does not then

the charm of life remain for me long and lasting, when my burdens

are gone, my surroundings are quiet, my body is free and my heart is

leisurely? With a cassock and a gourd, I go wherever I like, stay

wherever I choose and take whatever I get. Staying at a place, I do

not inquire after its owner, and going away, I do not leave my name. I

do not feel ill at ease when I am left in the cold, and do not become

contaminated when I am in noisy company. Therefore, the purpose

of my wanderings is also to learn the Tao.”

Having heard this, his friend says with a happy smile, “Your words

make me feel like having taken a dose of cooling medicine. The

disturbing fever has left my body without my knowing it.”

[Here follows a discussion on the identity of the Three Religions

and the existence of God and Buddha and fairies and ghosts.]

After a while a young man comes along and, pointing his finger at

Mingliaotse, shouts, “Get away from here, you beggar! A monk ought

to go away quietly when he receives his food. If you keep on

babbling nonsense, I must regard you as a sorcerer and prosecute

you at court.” The young man rolls up his sleeve as if to strike at

Mingliaotse, but the latter merely smiles without making a reply. The

quarrel is settled by some passer-by.

Mingliaotse goes away singing his songs. At night he stops at an

inn, and there is a very well-dressed woman peeping in at the door.

Gradually she approaches and begins slyly to tease him. Mingliaotse

thinks to himself that she must be an evil spirit, and remains sitting

alone. “I am a fairy,” says the woman, “and I have come to save you

because I know that you have been trying very hard to learn the Tao.

Besides, I had an appointment with you in the previous incarnation.

Please don’t doubt me. I will accompany you to the Enchanted

Land.” Minghaotse remembers that when Lü Ch’engtse was learning

the Tao at Chingshan, he was once thus deceived by a temptress

and finally enslaved by an evil spirit. He lost his left eye, and died

without being able to attain the Tao. Even the Classics regard the

failure of Lü Ch’engtse as due to his lack of complete control of his

mind and to the existence of evil desires. It is natural that, when

ghosts and fox spirits tempt people, they destroy their life, and they

should therefore be avoided. But even if sages and saints should

make a mistake and be thus deceived, it would be a wrong way to

control their mind and preserve their spirit. So he sits austerely as

before and the woman all of a sudden disappears. Who can know

whether she was a ghost or a fox spirit or a temptress?

Thus for three years Mingliaotse continues in his travels,

wandering almost over the entire world. Everything that he sees with

his eyes or hears with his ears, or touches with his body, and all the

different situations and meetings, are thus used for the benefit of

training his mind. And so such vagabond travel is not entirely without

its benefits.

He then returns and builds himself a hut in the hills of Szeming

and never leaves it again.

By being blanks in space.

1
  This  is  a  translation  from  a  Chinese  sketch,  entitled  The  Travels  of  Mingliaotse,  which
draws  a  vivid  picture  of  the  glorified,  cultured  vagabond  so  much  idealized  by  Chinese
scholars,  and  sets  forth  a  happy,  carefree  philosophy  of  living,  characterized  by  love  of
truth, freedom and vagabondage. It was written by Tu Lung (alias Tu Ch’ihsui), a writer who
lived toward the end of the sixteenth century and who together with Hsu Wench’ang, Yuan
Chunglang, Li Chowu and  others living at the period, have never been given their due by
the orthodox Chinese critics.
2
Ancient nomenclature for parts of North and Central China.
3
 Stalactites and stalagmites.
4
 The moon.
5
 The Yangtse Gorges.
6
 A mythical bird.
7
 The Spirit of the Sea, with eight heads, eight legs and eight tails.
8
 “Extraordinary person” is the regular phrase for some saint  or  Taoist or fairy, gifted with
magic powers.
9
 A short flowering plant.
10
 The “peach grove” stands in Chinese literature for a fairies’ retreat.
10
 An ancient Taoist who went up to heaven.
11
 A Taoist fairy.
12
 Garden of the fabulously wealthy Shih Ts’ung.
13
 Tower of Ts’ao Ts’ao.
14
Hall of the pampered Queen Feiyen.
15
 Pool of Emperor Han Wuti.
16
 Death.

Chapter Twelve

THE ENJOYMENT OF CULTURE

I. GOOD TASTE IN KNOWLEDGE

The aim of education or culture is merely the development of good

taste in knowledge and good form in conduct. The cultured man or

the ideal educated man is not necessarily one who is well-read or

learned, but one who likes and dislikes the right things. To know

what to love and what to hate is to have taste in knowledge. Nothing

is more exasperating than to meet a person at a party whose mind is

crammed full with historical dates and figures and who is extremely

well posted on current affairs in Russia or Czechoslovakia, but

whose attitude or point of view is all wrong. I have met such persons,

and found that there was no topic that might come up in the course

of the conversation concerning which they did not have some facts

or figures to produce, but whose points of view were deplorable.

Such persons have erudition, but no discernment, or taste. Erudition

is a mere matter of cramming of facts or information, while taste or

discernment is a matter of artistic judgment. In speaking of a scholar,

the Chinese generally distinguish between a man’s scholarship,

conduct, and taste or discernment.

This is particularly so with

regard to historians; a book of history may be written with the most

fastidious scholarship, yet be totally lacking in insight or discernment,

and in the judgment or interpretation of persons and events in

history, the author may show no originality or depth of

understanding. Such a person, we say, has no taste in knowledge.

To be well-informed, or to accumulate facts and details, is the easiest

of all things. There are many facts in a given historical period that

can be easily crammed into our mind, but discernment in the

selection of significant facts is a vastly more difficult thing and

depends upon one’s point of view.

An educated man, therefore, is one who has the right loves and

hatreds. This we call taste, and with taste comes charm. Now to

have taste or discernment requires a capacity for thinking things

through to the bottom, an independence of judgment, and an

unwillingness to be bulldozed by any form of humbug, social,

political, literary, artistic, or academic. There is no doubt that we are

surrounded m our adult life with a wealth of humbugs: humbugs,

wealth humbugs, patriotic humbugs, political humbugs, reli-gious

humbugs and humbug poets, humbug artists, humbug dictators and

humbug psychologists. When a psychoanalyst tells us that the

performing of the functions of the bowels during childhood has a

definite connection with ambition and aggressiveness and sense of

duty in one’s later life, or that constipation leads to stinginess of

character, all that a man with taste can do is to feel amused. When a

man is wrong, he is wrong, and there is no need for one to be

impressed and overawed by a great name or by the number of

books that he has read and we haven’t.

Taste then is closely associated with courage, as the Chinese

always associate shih with tan, and courage or independence of

judgment, as we know, is such a rare virtue among mankind. We see

this intellectual courage or independence during the childhood of all

thinkers and writers who in later life amount to anything. Such a

person refuses to like a certain poet even if he has the greatest

vogue during his time; then when he truly likes a poet, he is able to

say why he likes him, and it is an appeal to his inner judgment. This

is what we call taste in literature. He also refuses to give his approval

to the current school of painting, if it jars upon his artistic instinct.

This is taste in art. He also refuses to be impressed by a philosophic

vogue or a fashionable theory, even though it were backed by the

greatest name. He is unwilling to be convinced by any author until he

is convinced at heart; if the author convinces him, then the author is

right, but if the author cannot convince him, then he is right and the

author wrong. This is taste in knowledge. No doubt such intellectual

courage or independence of judgment requires a certain childish,

naive confidence in oneself, but this self is the only thing that one

can cling to, and the moment a student gives up his right of personal

judgment, he is in for accepting all the humbugs of life.

Confucius seemed to have felt that scholarship without thinking

was more dangerous than thinking unbacked by scholarship; he

said, “Thinking without learning makes one flighty, and learning

without thinking is a disaster.” He must have seen enough students

of the latter type in his days for him to utter this warning, a warning

very much needed in the modern schools. It is well known that

modern education and the modern school system in general tend to

encourage scholarship at the expense of discernment and look upon

the cramming of information as an end in itself, as if a great amount

of scholarship could already make an educated man. But why is

thought discouraged at school? Why has the educational system

twisted and distorted the pleasant pursuit of knowledge into a

mechanical, measured, uniform and passive cramming of

information? Why do we place more importance on knowledge than

on thought? How do we come to call a college graduate an educated

man simply because he has made up the necessary units or week-

hours of psychology, medieval history, logic, and “religion?” Why are

there school marks and diplomas, and how did it come about that the

mark and the diploma have, in the student’s mind, come to take the

place of the true aim of education?

The reason is simple. We have this system because we are

educating people in masses, as if in a factory, and anything which

happens inside a factory must go by a dead and mechanical system.

In order to protect its name and standardize its products, a school

must certify them with diplomas. With diplomas, then, comes the

necessity of grading, and with the necessity of grading come school

marks, and in order to have school marks, there must be recitations,

examinations, and tests. The whole thing forms an entirely logical

sequence and there is no escape from it. But the consequences of

having mechanical examinations and tests are more fatal than we

imagine. For It immediately throws the emphasis on memorization of

facts rather than on the development of taste or judgment. I have

been a teacher myself and know that it is easier to make a set of

questions on historical dates than on vague opinions on vague

questions. It is also easier to mark the papers.

The danger is that after having instituted this system, we are liable

to forget that we have already wavered, or are apt to waver from the

true ideal of education, which as I say is the development of good

taste in knowledge. It is still useful to remember what Confucius said:

“That scholarship which consists in the memorization of facts does

not qualify one to be a teacher.” There are no such things as

compulsory subjects, no books, even Shakespeare’s, that one must

read. The school seems to proceed on the foolish idea that we can

delimit a minimum stock of learning in history or geography which we

can consider the absolute requisite of an educated man. I am pretty

well educated, although I am in utter confusion about the capital of

Spain, and at one time thought that Havana was the name of an

island next to Cuba, The danger of prescribing a course of

compulsory studies is that it implies that a man who has gone

through the prescribed course ipso facto knows all there is to know

for an educated man. It is therefore entirely logical that a graduate

ceases to learn anything or to read books after he leaves school,

because he has already learned all there is to know.

We must give up the idea that a man’s knowledge can be tested

or measured in any form whatsoever. Chuangtse has well said,

“Alas, my life is limited, while knowledge is limitless!” The pursuit of

knowledge is, after all, only like the exploration of a new continent, or

“an adventure of the soul,” as Anatole France says, and it will remain

a pleasure, instead of becoming a torture, if the spirit of exploration

with an open, questioning, curious and adventurous mind is

maintained. Instead of the measured, uniform and passive cramming

of information, we have to place this ideal of a positive, growing

individual pleasure.” Once the diploma and the marks are abolished,

or treated for what they are worth, the pursuit of knowledge becomes

positive, for the student is at least forced to ask him-self why he

studies at all. At present, the question is already answered for the

student, for there is no question in his mind that he studies as a

freshman in order to become a sophomore, and studies as a

sophomore in order to become a junior. All such extraneous

considerations should be brushed aside, for the acquisition of

knowledge is nobody else’s business but one’s own. At present, all

students study for the registrar, and many of the good students study

for their parents or teachers or their future wives, that they may not

seem ungrateful to their parents who are spending so much money

for their support at college, or because they wish to appear nice to a

teacher who is nice and conscientious to them, or that they may go

out of school and earn a higher salary to feed their families. I

suggest that all such thoughts are immoral. The pursuit of knowledge

should remain nobody else’s business but one’s own, and only then

can education become a pleasure and become positive.

II. ART AS PLAY AND PERSONALITY

Art is both creation and recreation. Of the two ideas, I think art as

recreation or as sheer play of the human spirit is more important.

Much as I appreciate all forms of immortal creative work, whether in

painting, architecture or literature, I think the spirit of true art can

become more general and permeate society only when a lot of

people are enjoying art as a pastime, without any hope of achieving

immortality. As it is more important that all college students should

play tennis or football with indifferent skill than that a college should

produce a few champion athletes or football players for the national

contests, so it is also more important that all children and all grown-

ups should be able to create something of their own as their pastime

than that the nation should produce a Rodin. I would rather have all

school children taught to model clay and all bank presidents and

economic experts able to make their own Christmas cards, however

ridiculous the attempt may be, than to have only a few artists who

work at art as a profession. That is to say, I am for amateurism in all

fields. I like amateur philosophers, amateur poets, amateur

photographers, amateur magicians, amateur architects who build

their own houses, amateur musicians, amateur botanists and

amateur aviators. I get as much pleasure out of listening to a friend

playing a sonatina of an evening in an indifferent manner as out of

listening to a first-class professional concert. And everyone enjoys

an amateur parlor magician, who is one of his friends, more than he

enjoys a professional magician on the stage, and every parent

enjoys the amateur dramatics of his own children much more heartily

than he enjoys a Shakespearean play. We know that it is

spontaneous, and in spontaneity alone lies the true spirit of art- That

is why I regard it as so important that in China painting is essentially

the pastime of a scholar and not of a professional artist. It is only

when the spirit of play is kept that art can escape being

commercialized.

Now it is characteristic of play that one plays without reason and

there must be no reason for it. Play is its own good reason. This view

is borne out by the history of evolution. Beauty is something that

cannot be accounted for by the struggle for existence, and there are

forms of beauty that are destructive even to the animal, like the over-

developed horns of a deer. Darwin saw that he could never account

for the beauties of plant and animal life by natural selection, and he

had to introduce the great secondary principle of sexual selection.

We fail to understand art and the essence of art if we do not

recognize it as merely an overflow of physical and mental energy,

free and unhampered and existing for its own sake. This is the much

decried formula of “art for art’s sake.” I regard this not as a question

upon which the politicians have the right to say anything, but merely

as an incontrovertible fact regarding the psychological origin of all

artistic creation. Hitler has denounced many forms of modern art as

immoral, but I consider that those painters who paint portraits of

Hitler, to be shown at the new Art Museum in order to please the

powerful ruler, are the most immoral of all. That is not art, but

prostitution. If commercial art often injures the spirit of artistic

creation, political art is sure to kill it. For freedom is the very soul of

art. Modern dictators are attempting the impossible when they try to

produce a political art. They don’t seem to realize that you cannot

produce art by the force of the bayonet any more than you can buy

real love from a prostitute.

In order to understand the essence of art at all, we have to go

back to the physical basis of art as an overflow of energy. This is

known as an artistic or creative impulse. The use of the very word

“inspiration” shows that the artist himself hardly knows where the

impulse comes from. It is merely a matter of inner urge, like the

scientist’s impulse for the discovery of truth, or the explorer’s impulse

for discovering a new island. There is no accounting for it. We are

beginning to see today, with the help of biological knowledge, that

the whole organization of our mental life is regulated by the increase

or decrease and distribution of hormones in the blood, acting on the

various organs and the nervous system controlling these organs.

Even anger or fear is merely a matter of the supply of adrenalin.

Genius itself, it seems to me, is but an over-supply of glandular

secretions. An obscure Chinese novelist, without the modern

knowledge of hormones, made a correct guess about the origion of

all activity as due to “worms” in our body. Adultery is a matter of

worms gnawing our intestines and impelling the man to satisfy his

desire. Ambition and aggressiveness and love of fame or power are

also due to certain other worms giving the person no rest until he

has achieved the object of his ambition. The writing of a book, say a

novel, is again due to a species of worms which impel and urge the

author to create for no reason whatsoever. Between hormones and

worms, I prefer to believe in the latter. The term is more vivid.

Given an over-supply or even a normal supply of worms, a man is

bound to create something or other, because he cannot help himself.

When a child has an over-supply of energy, his normal walking is

transformed into hopping or skipping. When a man has an

oversupply of energy, his walking becomes transformed into

prancing or dancing. So, then, dancing is nothing but in efficient

walking, inefficient in the sense that there is a waste of energy from

an utilitarian, not an aesthetic, point of view. Instead of going straight

to a point, which is the quickest road, a dancer waltzes and goes in a

circle. No one really tries to be patriotic when he is dancing, and to

command a man to dance according to the capitalist or fascist or

proletarian ideology is to destroy the spirit of play and glorious

inefficiency in dancing. If a Communist is trying to attain a political

objective, or trying to be a loyal comrade, he should just walk, and

not dance. The Communists seem to know the sacredness of labor,

and not the sacredness of play. As if man in civilization didn’t work

too much already, in comparison with every other species and

variety of the animal kingdom, so that even the little leisure he has,

the little time for play and art, must too be invaded by the claims of

that monster, the State!

This understanding of the true nature of art as consisting in mere

play may help to clarify the problem of the relationship of art and

morality. Beauty is merely good form, and there is good form in

conduct as well as in good painting or a beautiful bridge. Art is very

much broader than painting and music and dancing, because there

is good form in everything. There is good form in an athlete at a

race; there is good form in a man leading a beautiful life from

childhood and youth to maturity and old age, each appropriate in its

own time; there is good form in a presidential campaign well

directed, well maneuvered and leading gradually to a finale of

victory, and there is good form, too, in one’s laughter or spitting, as

so carefully practised by the old Mandarins in China. Every human

activity has a form and expression, and all forms of expressions lie

within the definition of art. It is therefore impossible to relegate the

art of expression to the few fields of music and dancing and painting.

With this broader interpretation of art, therefore, good form in

conduct and good personality in art are closely related and are

equally important. There can be a luxury in our bodily movements,

as in the movement of a symphonic poem. Given that over-supply of

energy, there is an ease and gracefulness and attendance to form in

whatever we do. Now ease and gracefulness come from a feeling of

physical competence, a feeling of ability to do a thing more than well

—to do it beautifully. In the more abstract realms, we see this beauty

in anybody doing a nice job. The impulse to do a nice job or a neat

job is essentially an aesthetic impulse. Even a neat murder, a neat

conspiracy neatly earned out, is beautiful to look at, however

condemnable the act may be. In the more concrete details of our life,

there is, or there can be, ease and gracefulness and competence,

too. All the things we call “the amenities of life” belong in this

category. Paying a compliment well and appropriately is called a

beautiful compliment, and on the other hand, paying a compliment

with bad taste is called an awkward compliment,

The development of the amenities of speech and life and personal

habits reached a high point at the end of the Chin Dynasty (third and

fourth centuries, A. D.) in China. That was the time when “leisurely

conversations” were in vogue. The greatest sophistication was seen

in women’s dress, and there were a great number of men noted for

their handsomeness. There was a fashion for growing “beautiful

beards,” and men learned to wabble about clad in extremely loose

gowns. The dress was so designed that there was no part of one’s

body unreachable in case one wanted to scratch an itch. Everything

was gracefully done. The chu, a bundle of hair from the horse’s tail

tied together around a handle for driving away mosquitoes or flies,

became an important accessory of conversation, and today such

leisurely conversations are still known in literary works as chut’an or

“chu conversations.” The idea was that one was to hold the chu in

his hand and wave it gracefully about in the air during conversation.

The fan came in also as a beautiful adjunct to conversation, the

conversationalist opening, waving and closing it, as an American old

man would take off his spectacles and put them on again during a

speech, and was just as beautiful to look at. In point of utility, the chu

or the fan was only slightly more useful than an Englishman’s

monocle, but they were all parts of the style of conversation, as a

cane is a part of the style of walking. Among the most beautiful

amenities of life I have seen in the West are the clicking of heels of

Prussian gentlemen bowing to a lady in a parlor and the curtsying of

German girls, with one leg crossed behind the other. That I consider

a supremely beautiful gesture, and it Is a pity that this custom has

gone out of vogue.

Many are the social amenities practised in China. The gestures of

one’s fingers, hands and arms are carefully cultivated. The method

of greeting among the Manchus, known as taeh’ien, is also a

beautiful thing to look at. The person comes into the room, and

letting one arm fall straight down at the side, he bends one of his

legs and makes a graceful dip. In case there is company sitting

around the room, he makes a graceful turn around the axis of his

unbent leg while in that position, thus making a general greeting to

the entire company. One should also watch a cultivated chess-player

put his stones on the chessboard. Holding one of those tiny white or

black stones carefully balanced on his forefinger, he gently pushes it

from behind by an outward movement of his thumb and an inward

movement of the forefinger, and lands it beautifully on the board. A

cultured Mandarin made extremely beautiful gestures when he was

angry. He wore a gown with the sleeves tucked up at the lower ends

showing the silk lining, known as “horse-hoof sleeves,” and when he

was gready displeased, he would brandish his right arm or both arms

downwards and with an audible jerk bring the tucked-up “horse-hoof”

down, and gracefully wobble out of the room. This is known as

fohsiu, or to “brush one’s sleeves and leave.”

The speech of a cultured Mandarin official is also a beautiful thing

to hear. His words come out with a beautiful cadence, and the

musical tones of the Peking accent have a graceful musical rise and

fall, His syllables are pronounced gracefully and slowly, and in the

case of real scholars, his language is set up with jewels from the

Chinese literary language. And then one should hear how the

Mandarin laughs or spits. It is positively delightful. The spitting is

done generally in three musical beats, the first two being sounds of

drawing in and clearing the throat in preparation for the final beat of

spitting out, which is executed with a quick forcefulness: staccato

after legato. I really don’t mind the germs thus let out into the air, if

the spitting is aesthetically done, for I have survived the germs

without any appreciable effect on my health. His laughter is an

equally regulated and artistically rhythmical affair, slightly artificial

and stylized, and finishing off in an increasing generous volume,

pleasantly softened by a white beard when there is one.

Such laughter is a carefully cultivated art with an actor as part of

his technique of acting, and theater-goers always enjoy and applaud

a perfectly executed laugh. This is of course a very difficult thing,

because there are so many kinds of laughter: the laughter of

happiness, the laughter at some one falling into one’s trap, the

laughter of sneer or contempt, and most difficult of all, the laughter of

despair, of a man caught and defeated by the force of overwhelming

circumstances. Chinese theater-goers watch for these things and for

the hand gestures and steps of an actor, the latter being known as

t’aipu, or “stage steps.” Every movement of the arm, every inclination

of the head, every twist of the neck, every bend of the back, every

waving movement of the flowing sleeve, and of course every step of

the foot, is a carefully practiced gesture. The Chinese classify acting

into the two classes of singing and acting, and there are plays with

emphasis on singing, and other dramas with emphasis on acting. By

“acting” is meant these gestures of the body, the hands and the face,

as much as the more general acting of emotions and expressions.

Chinese actors have to learn how to shake their heads in

disapproval, how to lift their eyebrows in suspicion, and how to

gently stroke their beard in peace and satisfaction.

Now we are ready to discuss the problem of morality and art The

utter confusion of art and propaganda in fascist and comtaunist

countries and its naive acceptance by so many intellectuals in a

democracy make it necessary for every intelligent person to come to

a clear understanding of the problem. The Communists and Fascists

make a false start at the very beginning by ignoring the role of the

individual, both as the creating personality and the object of the

creation, and placing in its stead the superior claims of either the

state or the social class. While literature and art must both be built

on personal, individual emotions, the Communists and Fascists

emphasize only group or class emotions, without postulating the

reality of emotions in varying individuals. With individual personality

pushed out of court, one cannot even begin to discuss the problem

of art and morality sanely.

Art has a relationship to morals only insofar as the peculiar quality

of a work of art is an expression of the artist’s personality. An artist

with a grand personality produces grand art; an artist with a trivial

personality produces trivial art; a sentimental artist produces

sentimental art, a voluptuous artist produces voluptuous art, a tender

artist produces tender art, and an artist of delicacy produces delicate

art. There we have the relationship of art and morality in a nutshell.

Morality, therefore, is not a thing that can be superimposed from the

outside, according to the changing whims of a dictator or the

changing ethical code of the Chief of the Propaganda Department. It

must grow from the inside as the natural expression of the artist’s

soul. And it is not a question of choice, but an inescapable fact. The

mean-hearted artist cannot produce a great painting, and a big-

hearted artist cannot produce a mean picture, even if his life were at

stake.

The Chinese notion of p’in in art is extremely interesting,

sometimes spoken of as jenp’in (“personality of the man”) or p’inkeh

(“personality of character”). There is also an idea of grading, as we

speak of artists or poets of “the first p’in” or “second p’in” and we

also speak of tasting or sampling good tea as “to p’in tea.” There are

then a whole category of expressions in connection with the

personality of a person as shown in a particular action. In the first

place, a bad gambler, or a gambler who shows bad temper or bad

taste, is said to have a bad tup’in or a bad “gambling personality.” A

drinker who is apt to behave disgracefully after a hard drink is said to

have a bad chiup’in or bad “wine personality.’ A good or bad chess-

player is said to have a good or bad ch’ip’in or “chess personality.”

The earliest Chinese book of poetic criticism is known as Shikp’in

(Personalities of Poetry), with a grading of the different poets, and of

course there are books of art criticism known as huap’in or

“Personalities in Painting.”

Connected with this idea of p’in, therefore, there is the generally

accepted belief that an artist’s work is strictly determined by his

personality. This “personality” is both moral and artistic. It tends to

emphasize the notion of human understanding, high-minded-ness,

detachment from life, absence of pettiness or triviality or vulgarity. In

this sense it is akin to English “manner” or “style.” A wayward or

unconventional artist will show a wayward or unconventional style

and a person of charm will naturally show charm and delicacy in his

style, and a great artist with good taste will not stoop to

“mannerisms.” In this sense, personality is the very soul of art. The

Chinese have always accepted implicitly the belief that no painter

can be great unless his own moral and aesthetic personality is great,

and in judging calligraphy and painting, the highest criterion is not

whether the artist shows good technique but whether he has or has

not a high personality, A work, showing perfect technique, may

nevertheless show a “low” personality, and then, as we would say in

English, that work lacks “character.”

We have come thus to the central problem of all art. The great

Chinese general and premier, Tseng Kuofan, said in one of his family

letters that the only two living principles of art in calligraphy are form

and expression, and that one of the greatest calligraphists of the

time, Ho Shaochi, approved of his formula and appreciated his

insight. Since all art is concrete, there is always a mechanical

problem, the problem of technique, which has to be mastered, but as

art is also spirit, the vital element in all forms of creation is the

personal expression. It is the artist’s individuality, over against his

mere technique, that is the only significant thing in a work of art. In

writing, the only important thing in a book is the author’s personal

style and feeling, as shown in his judgment and likes and dislikes.

There is a constant danger of this personality or personal expression

being submerged by the technique, and the greatest difficulty of all

beginners, whether in painting or writing or acting, is to let oneself

go. The reason is, of course, that the beginner is? scared by the

form or technique. But no form without this personal element can be

good form at all. All good form has a swing, and it is the swing that is

beautiful to look at, whether it is the swing of a champion golf-

player’s club, or of a man rocketing to success, or of a football player

carrying the ball down the field. There must be a flow of expression,

and that power of expression must not be hampered by the

technique, but must be able to move freely and happily in it. There is

that swing—so beautiful to look at—in a train going around a curve,

or a yacht going at full speed with straight sails. There is that swing

in the flight of a swallow, or of a hawk dashing down on its prey, or of

a champion horse racing to the finish “in good form,” as we say.

We require that all art must have character, and character is

nothing but what the work of art suggests or reveals concerning the

artist’s personality or soul or heart or, as the Chinese put it, “breast.”

Without that character or personality, a work of art is dead, and no

amount of virtuosity or mere perfection of technique can save it from

lifelessness or lack of vitality.’ Without that highly individual thing

called personality, beauty itself becomes banal, So many girls

aspiring to be Hollywood stars do not know this, and content

themselves with imitating Marlene Dietrich or Jean Harlow, thus

exasperating a movie director looking for talent. There are so many

banally pretty faces, and so little fresh, individual beauty. Why don’t

they study the acting of Marie Dressier? All art is one and based on

the same principle of expression or personality, whether it is acting in

a movie picture or painting or literary authorship. Really, by looking

at the acting of Marie Dressier or Lionel Barrymore, one can learn

the secret of style in writing. To cultivate the charm of that personality

is the important basis for all art, for no matter what an artist does, his

character shows in his work.

The cultivation of personality is both moral and aesthetic, and it

requires both scholarship and refinement. Refinement is something

nearer to taste and may be just born in an artist, but the highest

pleasure of looking at a book of art is felt only when it is supported

by scholarship. This is particularly clear in painting and calligraphy.

One can tell from a piece of calligraphy whether the writer has or has

not seen a great number of Wei rubbings. If he has, this scholarship

gives him a certain antique manner, but in addition to that, he must

put into it his own soul or personality, which varies of course. If he is

a delicate and sentimental soul, he will show a delicate and

sentimental style, but if he loves strength or massive power, he will

also adopt a style that goes in for strength and massive power. Thus

in painting and calligraphy, particularly the latter, we are able to see

a whole category of aesthetic qualities or different types of beauty,

and no one will be able to separate the beauty of the finished

product and the beauty of the artist’s own soul. There may be beauty

of whimsicality and waywardness, beauty of rugged strength, beauty

of massive power, beauty of spiritual freedom, beauty of courage

and dash, beauty of romantic charm, beauty of restraint, beauty of

soft gracefulness, beauty of austerity, beauty of simplicity and

“stupidity,” beauty of mere regularity, beauty of swiftness, and

sometimes even beauty of affected ugliness. There is only one form

of beauty that is impossible because it does not exist, and that is the

beauty of strenuousness or of the strenuous life.

III. THE ART OF READING

Reading or the enjoyment of books has always been regarded

among the charms of a cultured life and is respected and envied by

those who rarely give themselves that privilege. This is easy to

understand when we compare the difference between the life of a

man who does no reading and that of a man who does. The man

who has not the habit of reading is imprisoned in his immediate

world, in respect to time and space. His life falls into a set routine; he

is limited to contact and conversation with a few friends and

acquaintances, and he sees only what happens in his immediate

neighborhood. From this prison there is no escape. But the moment

he takes up a book, he immediately enters a different world, and if it

is a good book, he is immediately put in touch with one of the best

talkers of the world. This talker leads him on and carries him into a

different country or a different age, or unburdens to him some of his

personal regrets, or discusses with him some special line or aspect

of life that the reader knows nothing about. An ancient author puts

him in communion with a dead spirit of long ago, and as he reads

along, he begins to imagine what that ancient author looked like and

what type of person he was. Both Mencius and Ssema Ch’ien,

China’s greatest historian, have expressed the same idea. Now to be

able to live two hours out of twelve in a different world and take one’s

thoughts off the claims of the immediate present is, of course, a

privilege to be envied by people shut up in their bodily prison. Such a

change of environment is really similar to travel in its psychological

effect.

But there is more to it than this. The reader is always carried away

into a world of thought and reflection. Even if it is a book about

physical events, there is a difference between seeing such events in

person or living through them, and reading about them in books, for

then the events always assume the quality of a spectacle and the

reader becomes a detached spectator. The best reading is therefore

that which leads us into this contemplative mood, and not that which

is merely occupied with the report of events. The tremendous

amount of time spent on newspapers I regard as not reading at all,

for the average readers of papers are mainly concerned with getting

reports about events and happenings without contemplative value.

The best formula for the object of reading, in my opinion, was

stated by Huang Shanku, a Sung poet and friend of Su Tungp’o. He

said, “A scholar who hasn’t read anything for three days feels that

his talk has no flavor (becomes insipid), and his own face becomes

hateful to look at (in the mirror).” What he means, of course, is that

reading gives a man a certain charm and flavor, which is the entire

object of reading, and only reading with this object can be called an

art. One doesn’t read to “improve one’s mind,” because when one

begins to think of improving his mind, all the pleasure of reading is

gone. He is the type of person who says to himself: “I must read

Shakespeare, and I must read Sophocles, and I must read the entire

Five Foot Shelf of Dr. Eliot, so I can become an educated man.” I’m

sure that man will never become educated. He will force himself one

evening to read Shakespeare’s Hamlet and come away, as if from a

bad dream, with no greater benefit than that he is able to say that he

has “read” Hamlet. Anyone who reads a book with a sense of

obligation does not understand the art of reading. This type of

reading with a business purpose is in no way different from a

senator’s reading up of files and reports before he makes a speech.

It is asking for business advice and information, and not reading at

all.

Reading for the cultivation of personal charm of appearance and

flavor in speech is then, according to Huang, the only admissible

kind of reading, This charm of appearance must evidently be

interpreted as something other than physical beauty. What Huang

means by “hateful to look at” is not physical ugliness. There are ugly

faces that have a fascinating charm and beautiful faces that are

insipid to look at. I have among my Chinese friends one whose head

is shaped like a bomb and yet who is nevertheless always a

pleasure to see. The most beautiful face among Western authors, so

far as I have seen them in pictures, was that of G. K. Chesterton.

There was such a diabolical conglomeration of mustache, glasses,

fairly bushy eyebrows and knitted lines where the eyebrows met!

One felt there were a vast number of ideas playing about inside that

forehead, ready at any time to burst out from those quizzically

penetrating eyes. That is what Huang would call a beautiful face, a

face not made up by powder and rouge, but by the sheer force of

thinking. As for flavor of speech, it all depends on one’s way of

reading. Whether one has “flavor” or not in his talk, depends on his

method of reading. If a reader gets the flavor of books, he will show

that flavor in his conversations, and i£ he has flavor in his

conversations, he cannot help also having a flavor in his writing.

Hence I consider flavor or taste as the key to all reading. It

necessarily follows that taste is selective and individual, like the taste

for food. The most hygienic way of eating is, after all, eating what

one likes, for then one is sure of his digestion. In reading as in

eating, what is one man’s meat may be another’s poison. A teacher

cannot force his pupils to like what he likes in reading, and a parent

cannot expect his children to have the same tastes as him self. And

if the reader has no taste for what he reads, all the time is wasted.

As Yuan Chunglang says, “You can leave the books that you don’t

like alone, and let other people read them.’’

There can be, therefore, no books that one absolutely must read.

For our intellectual interests grow like a tree or flow like a river. So

long as there is proper sap, the tree will grow anyhow, and so long

as there is fresh current from the spring, the water will flow. When

water strikes a granite cliff, it just goes around it; when it finds itself

in a pleasant low valley, it stops and meanders there a while; when it

finds itself in a deep mountain pond, it is content to stay there; when

it finds itself traveling over rapids, it hurries forward. Thus, without

any effort or determined aim, it is sure of reaching the sea some day.

There are no books in this world that everybody must read, but only

books that a person must read at a certain time in a given place

under given circumstances and at a given period of his life. I rather

think that reading, like matrimony is determined by fate or yinyúan.

Even if there is a certain book that every one must read, like the

Bible, there is a time for it. When one’s thoughts and experience

have not reached a certain point for reading a masterpiece, the

masterpiece will leave only a bad flavor on his palate. Confucius

said, “When one is fifty, one may read the Book of Changes,” which

means that one should not read it at forty-five. The extremely mild

flavor of Confucius’ own sayings in the Analects and his mature

wisdom cannot be appreciated until one becomes mature himself.

Furthermore, the same reader reading the same book at different

periods, gets a different flavor out of it. For instance, we enjoy a

book more after we have had a personal talk with the author himself,

or even after having seen a picture of his face, and one gets again a

different flavor sometimes after one has broken off friendship with

the author. A person gets a kind of flavor from reading the Book of

Changes at forty, and gets another kind of flavor reading it at fifty,

after he has seen more changes in life. Therefore, all good books

can be read with profit and renewed pleasure a second time. I was

made to read Westward Ho! and Henry Esmond in my college days,

but while I was capable of appreciating Westward Ho! in my ‘teens,

the real flavor of Henry Esmond escaped me entirely until I reflected

about it later on, and suspected there was vastly more charm in that

book than I had then been capable of appreciating.

Reading, therefore, is an act consisting of two sides, the author

and the reader. The net gain comes as much from the reader’s

contribution through his own insight and experience as from the

author’s own. In speaking about the Confucian Analacis, the Sung

Confucianist Ch’eng Yich’uan said, “There are readers and readers-

Some read the Analects and feel that nothing has happened, some

are pleased with one or two lines in it, and some begin to wave their

hands and dance on their legs unconsciously.”

I regard the discovery of one’s favorite author as the most critical

event in one’s intellectual development. There is such a thing as the

affinity of spirits, and among the authors of ancient and modern

times, one must try to find an author whose spirit is akin with his

own. Only in this way can one get any real good out of reading. One

has to be independent and search out his masters. Who is one’s

favorite author, no one can tell, probably not even the man himself. It

is like love at first sight. The reader cannot be told to love this one or

that one, but when he has found the author he loves, he knows it

himself by a kind of instinct. We have such famous cases of

discoveries of authors. Scholars seem to have lived in different ages,

separated by centuries, and yet their modes of thinking and feeling

were so akin that their coming together across the pages of a book

was like a person finding his own image. In Chinese phraseology, we

speak of these kindred spirits as re-incarnations of the same soul, as

Su Tungp’o was said to be a re-incarnation of Chuangtse or T’ao

Yuanming,

and Yuan Chunglang was said to be the re-incarnation

of Su Tungp’o. Su Tungp’o said that when he first read Chuangtse,

he felt as if all the time since his childhood he had been thinking the

same things and taking the same views himself. When Yuan

Chunglang discovered one night Hsu Wench’ang, a contemporary

unknown to him, in a small book of poems, he jumped out of bed and

shouted to his friend, and his friend began to read it and shout in

turn, and then they both read and shouted again until their servant

was completely puzzled. George Eliot described her first reading of

Rousseau as an electric shock. Nietzsche felt the same thing about

Schopenhauer, but Schopenhauer was a peevish master and

Nietzsche was a violent-tempered pupil, and it was natural that the

pupil later rebelled against the teacher.

It is only this kind of reading, this discovery of one’s favorite

author, that will do one any good at all. Like a man falling in love with

his sweetheart at first sight, everything is right. She is of the right

height, has the right face, the right color of hair, the right quality of

voice and the right way of speaking and smiling. This author is not

something that a young man need be told about by his teacher. The

author is just right for him; his style, his taste, his point of view, his

mode of thinking, are all right. And then the reader proceeds to

devour every word and every line that the author writes, and

because there is a spiritual affinity, he absorbs and readily digests

everything. The author has cast a spell over him, and he is glad to

be under the spell, and in time his own voice and manner and way of

smiling and way of talking become like the author’s own. Thus he

truly steeps himself in his literary lover and derives from these books

sustenance for his soul. After a few years, the spell is over and he

grows a little tired of this lover and seeks for new literary lovers, and

after he has had three or four lovers and completely eaten them up,

he emerges as an author himself. There are many readers who

never fall in love, like many young men and women who flirt around

and are incapable of forming a deep attachment to a particular

person. They can read any and all authors, and they never amount

to anything.

Such a conception of the art of reading completely precludes the

idea of reading as a duty or as an obligation. In China, one often

encourages students to “study bitterly.” There was a famous scholar

who studied bitterly and who stuck an awl in his calf when he fell

asleep while studying at night. There was another scholar who had a

maid stand by his side as he was studying at night, to wake him up

every time he fell asleep. This was nonsensical. If one has a book

lying before him and falls asleep while some wise ancient author is

talking to him, he should just go to bed. No amount of sticking an awl

in his calf or of shaking him up by a maid will do him any good. Such

a man has lost all sense of the pleasure of reading. Scholars who

are worth anything at all never know what is called “a hard grind” or

what “bitter study” means. They merely love books and read on

because they cannot help themselves.

With this question solved, the question of time and place for

reading is also provided with an answer. There is no proper time and

place for reading. When the mood for reading comes, one can read

anywhere. If one knows the enjoyment of reading, he will read in

school or out of school, and in spite of all schools. He can study

even in the best schools. Tseng Kuofan, in one of his family letters

concerning the expressed desire of one of his younger brothers to

come to the capital and study at a better school, replied that: “If one

has the desire to study, he can study at a country school, or even on

a desert or in busy streets, and even as a woodcutter or a

swineherd. But if one has no desire to study, then not only is the

country school not proper for study, but even a quiet country home or

a fairy island is not a proper place for study.” There are people who

adopt a self-important posture at the desk when they are about to do

some reading, and then complain they are unable to read because

the room is too cold, or the chair is too hard, or the light is too strong.

And there are writers who complain that they cannot write because

there are too many mosquitos, or the writing paper is too shiny, or

the noise from the street is too great. The great Sung, scholar,

Ouyang Hsiu, confessed to “three on’s” for doing his best writing: on

the pillow, on horseback and on the toilet. Another famous Ch’ing

scholar, Ku Ch’ienli, was known for his habit of “reading Confucian

classics naked” in summer. On the other hand, there is a good

reason for not doing any reading in any of the seasons of the year, if

one does not like reading:

To study in spring is treason;

And summer is sleep’s best reason;

If winter hurries the fall,

Then stop till next spring season.

What, then, is the true art of reading? The simple answer is to just

take up a book and read when the mood comes. To be thoroughly

enjoyed, reading must be entirely spontaneous. One takes a limp

volume of Lisao, or of Omar Khayyam, and goes away hand in hand

with his love to read on a river bank. If there are good clouds over

one’s head, let them read the clouds and forget the books, or read

the books and the clouds at the same time-Between times, a good

pipe or a good cup of tea makes it still more perfect. Or perhaps on a

snowy night, when one is sitting before the fireside, and there is a

kettle singing on the hearth and a good pouch of tobacco at the side,

one gathers ten or a dozen books on philosophy, economics, poetry,

biography and piles them up on the couch, and then leisurely turns

over a few of them and gently lights on the one which strikes his

fancy at the moment. Chin Shengt’an regards reading a banned

book behind closed doors on a snowy night as one of the greatest

pleasures of life. The mood for reading is perfectly described by

Ch’en Chiju (Meikung): “The ancient people called books and

paintings ‘limp volumes’ and ‘soft volumes’; therefore the best style

of reading a book or opening an album is the leisurely style.” In this

mood, one develops patience for everything. As the same author

says, “The real master tolerates misprints when reading history, as a

good traveller tolerates bad roads when climbing a mountain, one

going to watch a snow scene tolerates a flimsy bridge, one choosing

to live in the country tolerates vulgar people, and one bent on looking

at flowers tolerates bad wine.”

The best description of the pleasure of reading I found in the

autobiography of China’s greatest poetess, Li Ch’ingchao (Yi-an,

1081-1141). She and her husband would go to the temple, where

secondhand books and rubbings from stone inscriptions were sold,

on the day he got his monthly stipend as a student at the Imperial

Academy. Then they would buy some fruit on the way back, and

coming home, they began to pare the fruit and examine the newly

bought rubbings together, or drink tea and compare the variants in

different editions. As described in her autobiographical sketch known

as Postscript to Chinshihlu (a book on bronze and stone

inscriptions):

I have a power for memory, and sitting quietly after supper

in the Homecoming Hall, we would boil a pot of tea and,

pointing to the piles of books on the shelves, make a guess as

to on what line of what page in what volume of a certain book

a passage occurred and see who was right, the one making

the correct guess having the privilege of drinking his cup of

tea first. When a guess was correct, we would lift the cup high

and break out into a loud laughter, so much so that

sometimes the tea was spilled on our dress and we were not

able to drink. We were then content to live and grow old in

such a world! Therefore we held our heads high, although we

were living in poverty and sorrow . . . In time our collection

grew bigger and bigger and the books and art objects were

piled up on tables and desks and beds, and we enjoyed them

with our eyes and our minds and planned and discussed over

them, tasting a happiness above those enjoying dogs and

horses and music and dance. . . .

This sketch was written in her old age after her husband had died,

when she was a lonely old woman fleeing from place to place during

the invasion of North China by the Chin tribes,

IV. THE ART OP WRITING

The art of writing is very much broader than the art of writing itself,

or of the writing technique. In fact, it would be helpful to a beginner

who aspires to be a writer first to dispel in him any over-concern with

the technique of writing, and tell him to stop trifling with such

superficial matters and get down to the depths of his soul, to the end

of developing a genuine literary personality as the foundation of all

authorship. When the foundation is properly laid and a genuine

literary personality is cultivated, style follows as a natural

consequence and the little points of technique will take care of

themselves. It really does not matter if he is a little confused about

points of rhetoric and grammar, provided he can turn out good stuff.

There are always professional readers with publishing houses whose

business it is to attend to the commas, semicolons, and split

infinitives. On the other hand, no amount of grammatical or literary

polish can make a writer if he neglects the cultivation of a literary

personality. As Buffon says, “The style is the man.” Style is not a

method, a system or even a decoration for one’s writing; it is but the

total impression that the reader gets of the quality of the writer’s

mind, his depth or superficiality, his insight or lack of insight and

other qualities like wit, humor, biting sarcasm, genial understanding,

tenderness, delicacy of understanding, kindly cynicism or cynical

kindliness, hardheadedness, practical common sense, and general

attitude toward things. It is clear that there can be no handbook for

developing a “humorous technique” or a “three-hour course in

cynical kindliness,” or “fifteen rules for practical common serine” and

“eleven rules for delicacy of feeling.”

We have to go deeper than the surface of the art of writing, and

the moment we do that, we find that the question of the art of writing

involves the whole question of literature, of thought, point of view,

sentiment and reading and writing. In my literary campaign in China

for restoring the School of Self-Expression (hsingling) and for the

development of a more lively and personal style in prose, I have

been forced to write essay after essay giving my views on literature

in general and on the art of writing in particular. I have attempted

also to write a series of literary epigrams under the general tide

“Cigar Ashes.” Here are some of the cigar ashes:

(a) Technique and Personality

Professors of composition talk about literature as

carpenters talk about art. Critics analyze a literary

composition by the technique of writing, as engineers

measure the height and structure of Taishan by compasses.

There is no such thing as the technique of writing. All good

Chinese writers who to my mind are worth anything have

repudiated it.

The technique of writing is to literature as dogmas are to

the church—the occupation with trivial things by trivial minds.

A beginner is generally dazzled by the discussion of

technique—the technique of the novel, of the drama, of music

and of acting on the stage. He doesn’t realize that the

technique of writing has nothing to do with the birth of an

author, and the technique of acting has nothing to do with the

birth of a great actor. He doesn’t even suspect that there is

such a thing as personality, which is the foundation of all

success in art and literature.

(b) The Appreciation of Literature

When one reads a number of good authors and feels that

one author describes things very vividly, that another shows

great tenderness of delicacy, a third expresses things

exquisitely, a fourth has an indescribable charm, a fifth one’s

writing is like good whiskey, a sixth one’s is like mellow wine,

he should not be afraid to say that he likes them and

appreciates them, if only his appreciation is genuine. After

such a wide experience in reading, he has the proper

experiential basis for knowing what are mildness, mellowness,

strength, power, brilliance, pungency, delicacy, and charm.

When he has tasted all these flavors, then he knows what is

good literature without reading a single handbook.

The first rule of a student of literature is to learn to sample

different flavors. The best flavor is mildness and mellowness,

but is most difficult for a writer to attain. Between mildness

and mere flatness there is only a very thin margin.

A writer whose thoughts lack depth and originality may try

to write a simple style and end up by being insipid. Only fresh

fish may be cooked in its own juice; stale fish must be

flavored with anchovy sauce and pepper and mustard—the

more the better.

A good writer is like the sister of Yang Kueifei, who could go

to see the Emperor himself without powder and rouge. All the

other beauties in the palace required them. This is the reason

why there are so few writers who dare to write in simple

English.

Writing is good or bad, depending on its charm and flavor,

or lack of them. For this charm there can be no rules. Charm

rises from one’s writing as smoke rises from a pipe-bowl, or a

cloud rises from a hill-top, not knowing whither it is going. The

best style is that of “sailing clouds and flowing water,” like the

prose of Su Tungp’o.

Style is a compound of language, thought and personality.

Some styles are made exclusively of language.

Very rarely does one find clear thoughts clothed in unclear

language. Much more often does one find unclear thoughts

expressed clearly. Such a style is clearly unclear.

Clear thoughts expressed in unclear language is the style of

a confirmed bachelor. He never has to explain anything to a

wife. E.g., Immanuel Kant. Even Samuel Butler often gets so

quizzical.

A man’s style is always colored by his “literary lover.” He

grows to be like him more and more in ways of thinking and

methods of expression. That is the only way a style can be

cultivated by a beginner. In later life, one finds one’s own style

by finding one’s own self.

One never learns anything from a book when he hates the

author. Would that school teachers would bear this fact in

mind!

A man’s character is partly born, and so is his style. The

other part is just contamination.

A man without a favorite author is a lost soul. He remains

an unimpregnated ovum, an unfertilized pistil. One’s favorite

author or literary lover is pollen for his soul.

A favorite author exists in the world for every man, only he

hasn’t taken the trouble to find him.

A book is like a picture of life or of a city. There are readers

who look at pictures of New York or Paris, but never see New

York or Paris itself. The wise man reads both books and life

itself. The universe is one big book, and life is one big school.

A good reader turns an author inside out, like a beggar

turning his coat inside out in search of fleas.

Some authors provoke their readers constantly and

pleasantly like a beggar’s coat full of fleas. An itch is a great

thing.

The best way of studying any subject is to begin by reading

books taking an unfavorable point of view with regard to it. In

that way one is sure of accepting no humbug. After having

read an author unfavorable to the subject, he is better

prepared to read more favorable authors. That is how a

critical mind can be developed.

A writer always has an instinctive interest in words as such.

Every word has a life and a personality, usually not recorded

by a dictionary, except one like the Concise or Pocket Oxford

Dictionary.

A good dictionary is always readable, like the P. O. D.

There are two mines of language, a new one and an old

one. The old mine is in the books, and the new one is in the

language of common people. Second-rate artists will dig in

the old mines, but only first-rate artists can get something out

of the new mine. Ores from the old mine are already smelted,

but those from the new mine are not.

Wang Ch’ung (A. D. 27-c. 100) distinguished between

“specialists” and “scholars,” and again between “writers” and

“thinkers.” I think a specialist graduates into a scholar when

his knowledge broadens, and a writer graduates into a thinker

when his wisdom deepens.

A “scholar’s” writing consists of borrowings from other

scholars, and the more authorities and sources he quotes, the

more of a “scholar” he appears. A thinker’s writing consists of

borrowings from ideas in his own intestines, and the greater

thinker a man is, the more he depends on his own intestinal

juice.

A scholar is like a raven feeding its young that spits out

what it has eaten from the mouth. A thinker is like a silkworm

which gives us not mulberry leaves, but silk.

There is a period of gestation of ideas before writing, like

the period of gestation of an embryo in its mother’s womb

before birth. When one’s favorite author has kindled the spark

in one’s soul, and set up a current of live ideas in him, that is

the “impregnation.” When a man rushes into print before his

ideas go through this period of gestation, that is diarrhoea,

mistaken for birth pains. When a writer sells his conscience

and writes things against his convictions, that is artificial

abortion, and the embryo is always stillborn. When a writer

feels violent convulsions like an electric storm in his head, and

he doesn’t feel happy until he gets the ideas out of his system

and puts them down on paper and feels an immense relief,

that is literary birth. Hence a writer feels a maternal affection

toward his literary product as a mother feels toward her baby.

Hence a writing is always better when it is one’s own, and a

woman is always lovelier when she is somebody else’s wife.

The pen grows sharper with practice like a cobbler’s awl,

gradually acquiring the sharpness of an embroidery needle.

But one’s ideas grow more and more rounded, like the views

one sees when mounting from a lower to a higher peak.

When a writer hates a person and is thinking of taking up

his pen to write a bitter invective against him, but has not yet

seen his good side, he should lay down the pen again,

because he is not yet qualified to write a bitter invective

against the person.

(d) The School of Self-Expression

The so-called “School of Hsingling” started by the three

Yuan brothers

at the end of the sixteenth century, or the so-

called “Kungan School” (Kungan being the native district of

the brothers) is a school of self-expression. Using means

one’s “personal nature,” and ling means one’s “soul” or “vital

spirit.”

Writing is but the expression of one’s own nature or

character and the play of his vital spirit. The so-called “divine

afflatus” is but the flow of this vital spirit, and is actually

caused by an overflow of hormones in the blood.

In looking at an old master or reading an ancient author, we

are but watching the flow of his vital spirit. Sometimes when

this flow of energy runs dry or one’s spirits are low, even the

writing of the best calligraphist or writer lacks spirit or vitality.

This “divine afflatus” comes in the morning when one has

had a good sleep with sweet dreams and wakes up by

himself. Then after his cup of morning tea, he reads the

papers and finds no disturbing news and slowly walks into his

study and sits before a bright window and a clean desk, while

outside there is a pleasant sun and a gentle breeze. At this

moment, he can write good essays, good poems, good

letters, paint good paintings and write good inscriptions on

them.

The thing called “self” or “personality” consists of a bundle

of limbs, muscles, nerves, reason, sentiments, culture,

understanding, experience, and prejudices. It is partly nature

and partly culture, partly born and partly cultivated. One’s

nature is determined at the time of his birth, or even before it.

Some are naturally hard-hearted and mean; others are

naturally frank and straightforward and chivalrous and big-

hearted; and again others are naturally soft and weak in

character, or given over to worries. Such things are in one’s

“marrow bones” and the best teacher or wisest parent cannot

change one’s type of personality. Again other qualities are

acquired after birth through education and experience, but

insofar as one’s thoughts and ideas and impressions come

from the most diverse sources and different streams of

influence at different periods of his life, his ideas, prejudices

and points of view present a most bewildering inconsistency.

One loves dogs and is afraid of cats, while another loves cats

and is afraid of dogs. Hence the study of types of human

personality is the most complicated of all sciences.

The School of Self-Expression demands that we express in

writing only our own thoughts and feelings, our genuine loves,

genuine hatreds, genuine fears and genuine hobbies. These

will be expressed without any attempt to hide the bad from the

good, without fear of being ridiculed by the world, and without

fear of contradicting the ancient sages or contemporary

authorities.

Writers of the School of Self-Expression like a writer’s most

characteristic paragraph in an essay, his most characteristic

sentence in a paragraph, and his most characteristic

expression in a sentence. In describing or narrating a scene,

a sentiment or an event, he deals with the scene that he

himself sees, the sentiment that he himself feels and the

event as he himself understands it, What conforms to this rule

is literature and what does not conform to it is not literature.

The girl Lin Taiyü in Red Chamber Dream belonged also to

the School of Self-Expression when she said, “When a poet

has a good line, never mind whether the musical tones of

words fall in with the established pattern or not.”

In its love for genuine feelings, the School of Self-

Expression has a natural contempt for decorativeness of

style. Hence it always stands for the pure and mild flavor in

writing. It accepts the dictum of Mencius that “the sole goal of

writing is expressiveness.”

Literary beauty is only expressiveness.

The dangers of this school are that a writer’s style may

degenerate into plainness (Yuan Chunglang), or he may

develop eccentricity of ideas (Chin Shengt’an), or his ideas

may differ violently from those of established authorities (Li

Chowu). That is why the School of Self-Expression was so

hated by the Confucian critics. But as a matter of fact, it is

these original writers who saved Chinese thought and

literature from absolute uniformity and death. They are bound

to come into their own in the next few decades.

Chinese orthodox literature expressly aimed at expressing

the minds of the sages and not the minds of the authors and

was therefore dead; the hsingling school of literature aims at

expressing the minds of the authors and not the minds of the

sages, and is therefore alive.

There is a sense of dignity and independence in writers of

this school which prevents them from going out of their way to

say things to shock people. If Confucius and Mencius happen

to agree with them and their conscience approves, they will

not go out of their way to disagree with the Sages; but if their

conscience disapproves, they will not give Confucius and

Mencius the right of way. They can be neither bribed with gold

nor threatened with ostracism.

Genuine literature is but a sense of wonder at the universe

and at human life.

He who keeps his vision sane and clear will have always

this sense of wonder, and therefore has no need to distort the

truth in order to make it seem wonderful. The ideas and points

of view of writers of this school always seem so new and

strange only because readers are so used to the distorted

vision.

A writer’s weaknesses are what endear him to a hsingling

critic. All writers of the hsingling school are against imitation of

the ancients or the moderns and against a literary technique

of rules. The Yuan brothers believed in “letting one’s mouth

and wrist go, resulting naturally in good form” and held that

“the important thing in literature is genuineness.” Li Liweng

believed that “the important thing in literature is charm and

interest.” Yuan Tsets’ai believed that “there is no technique in

writing.” An early Sung writer, Huang Shanku, believed that

“the lines and form of writing come quite accidentally, like the

holes in wood eaten by insects.”

(e) The Familiar Style

A writer in the familiar style speaks in an unbuttoned mood.

He completely exposes his weaknesses, and is therefore

disarming.

The relationship between writer and reader should not be

one between an austere school master and his pupils, but one

between familiar friends. Only in this way can warmth be

generated.

He who is afraid to use an “I” in his writing will never make

a good writer.

I love a liar more than a speaker of truth, and an indiscreet

liar more than a discreet one. His indiscretions are a sign of

his love for his readers.

I trust an indiscreet fool and suspect a lawyer.

The indiscreet fool is a nation’s best diplomat. He wins

people’s hearts.

My idea of a good magazine is a fortnightly, where we bring

a group of good talkers together in a small room once in a

fortnight and let them chat together. The readers listen to their

chats, which last just about two hours. It is like having a good

evening chat, and after that the reader goes to bed, and next

morning when he gets up to attend to his duties as a bank

clerk or accountant or a school principal posting notices to the

students, he feels that the flavor of last night’s chat still lingers

around his cheeks.

There are restaurants for giving grand dinners in a hall with

gold-framed mirrors, and there are small restaurants designed

for a little drink. All I want is to bring together two or three

intimate friends and have a little drink, and not go to the

dinners of rich and important people. But the pleasure we

have in a small restaurant, eating and drinking and chatting

and teasing each other and overturning cups and spilling wine

on dresses is something which people at the grand dinners

don’t understand and cannot even “miss.”

There are rich men’s gardens and mansions, but there are

also little lodges in the mountains. Although sometimes these

mountain lodges are furnished with taste and refinement, the

atmosphere is quite different from the rich men’s mansions

with vermillion gates and green windows and a platoon of

servants and maids standing around. When one enters the

door, he does not hear the barking of faithful dogs and he

does not see the face of snobbish butlers and gatekeepers,

and when he leaves, he doesn’t see a pair of “unchaste stone

lions” outside its gate. The situation is perfectly described by a

writer of the seventeenth century: “It is as if Chou, Ch’eng,

Chang and Chu

are sitting together and bowing to each other

in the Hall of Fuhsi, and suddenly there come Su Tungp’o and

Tungfang Su who break into the room half naked and without

shoes, and they begin to clap their hands and joke with one

another. The onlookers will probably stare in amazement, but

these gentle-men look at each other in silent understanding.”

(f) What is Beauty?

The thing called beauty in literature and beauty in things

depends so much on change and movement and is based on

life, What lives always has change and movement, and what

has change and movement naturally has beauty. How can

there be set rules for literature or writing, when we see that

mountain cliffs and ravines and streams possess a beauty of

waywardness and ruggedness far above that of canals, and

yet they were formed without the calculations of an architect?

The constellations of stars are the wen or literature of the

skies, and the famous mountains and great rivers are the wen

or literature of the earth. The wind blows and the clouds

change and we have the pattern of a brocade; the frost comes

and leaves fall and we have the color of autumn. Now do the

stars moving around their orbits in the firmament ever think of

their appreciation by men on earth? And yet the Heavenly

Dog and the Cowherd are perceived by us by an accident.

The crust of the earth shrinks and stretches and throws up

mountains and forms deep seas. Did the earth consciously

create the Five Sacred Mountains for us to worship? And yet

the T’aihua and the K’uenluen Mountains dash along with

their magnificent rhythm and the Jade Maiden and the Fairy

Boy stand around us on awe-inspiring peaks, apparently for

our enjoyment. These are but free and easy strokes of the

Creator, the great art master. Can clouds, which sail forth from

the hill-tops and meet the lashing of furious mountain winds,

have time to think of their petticoats and scarves for us to look

at? And yet they arrange themselves, now like the scales of

fish, now like the pattern of brocade, and now like racing dogs

and roaring lions and dancing phoenixes and gamboling

unicorns, like a literary masterpiece. Can autumn trees that

are feeling the pinch of heat and cold and the devastation of

frost, and that are busily occupied in slowing down their

breath and conserving their energy, have time to paint and

powder themselves for the traveller on the ancient highway to

look at? And yet they seem so cool and pure and sad and

forlorn, and far superior to the paintings of Wang Wei and Mi

Fei.

And so every living thing in the universe has its literary

beauty. The beauty of a dried-up vine is greater than the

calligraphy of Wang Hsichih, and the austerity of an

overhanging cliff is more imposing than the stone inscriptions

on Chang Menglung’s tomb. Therefore we know that the wen

or literary beauty of things arises from their nature, and those

that fulfill their nature clothe themselves in wen or beautiful

lines. Therefore wen, or beauty of line and form, is intrinsic

and not extrinsic. The horse’s hoofs are designed for a quick

gallop, the tiger’s claws are designed for pouncing on its prey;

the stork’s legs are designed for wading across swamps, and

the bear’s paws are designed for walking on ice. Does the

horse, the tiger, the stork or the bear ever think of its beauty of

form and proportions? All it tries to do is function in life and

adopt a proper posture for movement. But from our point of

view, we see the horse’s hoofs, the tiger’s claws, the stork’s

legs and the bear’s paws have a striking beauty, either in their

fullness of contour and suggestion of power, or in their

slenderness and strength of line, or in their clearness of

outline, or in the ruggedness of their joints. Again the

elephant’s paws are like the lishu style of writing, the lion’s

mane is like the feipo, fighting snakes write wonderful

wriggling ts’aoshu (“grass script”), and floating dragons write

chuanshu (“seal characters”), the cow’s legs resemble pafen

(comparatively stout and symmetrical writing), and the deer

resembles hsiaok’ai (elegant “small script”). Their beauty

comes from their posture or movement, and their bodily

shapes are the result of their bodily functions, and this is also

the secret of beauty in writing. When the shih or posture of

movement requires it, it may not be repressed, and when the

posture or movement does not require it, it must stop. Hence

a literary masterpiece is like a stretch of nature itself, well-

formed in its formlessness, and its charm and beauty come by

accident. For this thing we call shih is the beauty of

movement, and not the beauty of static proportions.

Everything that lives and moves has its shih and therefore has

its beauty, force, and wen, or beauty of form and line.

Hsueh (scholarship); hsing (conduct); shih or shihchien (discernment, or real insight.) Thus

one’s shih, or power of insight into history or contemporary events, may be higher” than

another’s. This is what we call “power of interpretation,” or interpretative insight.

By Chung Yung, who lived about A. D. 500.

Su Tungp’o performed the unique feat of writing a complete set of poems on the rhymes

used by the complete poems of Tao, and at the end of the collection of Su’s Poems on

T’ao’s Rhymes, he said of himself that he was the re-incarnation of Tao, whom he admired

desperately above all other predecessors.

Yuan Hungtao (usually known as Yuan Chunglang), the second brother, is considered the

leader of the school.

Sung doctrinaires.

Chapter Thirteen

RELATIONSHIP TO GOD

I. THE RESTORATION OF RELIGION

So many people presume to know God and what God approves and

God disapproves that it is impossible to take up this subject without

opening oneself to attack as sacrilegious by some and as a prophet

by others. We human creatures who individually are less than a

billionth part of the earth’s crust, which is less than a billionth part of

the great universe, presume to know God!

Yet no philosophy of life is complete, no conception of man’s

spiritual life is adequate, unless we bring ourselves into a

satisfactory and harmonious relation with the life of the universe

around us. Man is important enough; he is the most important topic

of our studies: that i the essence of humanism. Yet man lives in a

magnificent universe, quite as wonderful as the man himself, and he

who ignores the greater world around him, its origin and its destiny,

cannot be said to have a truly satisfying life.

The trouble with orthodox religion is that, in its process of

historical development, it got mixed up with a number of things

strictly outside religion’s moral realm—physics, geology, astronomy,

criminology, the conception of sex and woman. If it had confined

itself to the realm of the moral conscience, the work of re-orientation

would not be so enormous today. It is easier to destroy a pet notion

of “Heaven” and “Hell” than to destroy the notion of God.

On the other hand, science opens up to the modern Christian a

newer and deeper sense of the mystery of the universe and a new

conception of matter as a convertible term with energy, and as for

God Himself, in the words of Sir James Jeans, “The universe seems

to be nearer to a great thought than to a great machine.”

Mathematical calculation itself proves the existence of the

mathematically incalculable. Religion will have to retreat and instead

of saying so many things in the realm of natural sciences as it used

to do, simply acknowledge that they are none of religion’s business;

much less should it allow the validity of spiritual experience to

depend on totally irrelevant topics, like whether the age of man is

4,000 odd years or a million, or whether the earth is flat, or round, or

shaped like a collapsible tea-table, or borne aloft by Hindu elephants

or Chinese turtles. Religion should, and will, confine itself to the

moral realm, the realm of the moral conscience, which has a dignity

of its own comparable in every sense to the study of flowers, the

fishes and the stars. St. Paul performed the first surgical operation

upon Judaism and by separating cuisine (eating hoofed animals)

from religion, immensely benefited it. Religion stands to gain

immensely by being separated not only from cuisine, but also from

geology and comparative anatomy. Religion must cease to be a

dabbler in astronomy and geology and a preserver of ancient

folkways. Let religion respectfully keep its mouth shut when teachers

of biology are talking, and it will seem infinitely less silly and gain

immeasurably in the respect of mankind.

Such religion as there can be in modern life, every individual will

have to salvage from the churches for himself. There is always a

possibility of surrendering ourselves to the Great Spirit in an

atmosphere of ritual and worship as one kneels praying without

words and looking at the stained-glass windows, in spite of all that

one may think of the theological dogmas. In this sense, worship

becomes a true aesthetic experience, an aesthetic experience that is

one’s own, very similar in fact to the experience of viewing a sun

setting behind an outline of trees on hills. For that man, religion is a

final fact of consciousness, for it will be an aesthetic experience very

much akin to poetry.

But what contempt he must have for the churches, as they are at

present. For the God that he worships will not be one that can be

beseeched for daily small presents. He will not command the wind to

blow north when he sails north, and command the wind to blow

south when he sails south. To thank God for a good wind is sheer

impudence, and selfishness also, for it implies that God does not

love the people sailing south when HE, the important individual, is

sailing north. It will be a communion of spirits without one party trying

to beg a favor of the other. He will not be able to comprehend the

meaning of the churches as they are. He will wonder at the strange

metamorphosis that religion has gone through. He will be puzzled

when he tries to define religions in their present forms. Is religion a

glorification of the status quo with mystic emotion? Or is it certain

moral truths so mystified and decorated and camouflaged as to

make it possible for a priestcraft to make a living? Doesn’t revelation

stand in the same relation to religion as “a secret patented process”

stands in relation to certain advertised nostrums? Or is religion a

juggling with the invisible and the unknowable because the invisible

and the unknowable lend themselves so conveniently to juggling? Is

faith to be based on knowledge, or does faith only begin where

knowledge ends? Or is religion a baseball that Sister Aimée

McPherson can hit with a baseball bat right into an audience—

something that Joe can catch and “get” in the way that he catches a

baseball? Or is religion the preservation of Aryan, Nordic blood, or is

it merely opposition to divorce and birth control and calling every

social reformer a “Red” and a “Communist?” Did Christ really have to

receive Tolstoy in his arms in a blazing snowstorm after he was

excommunicated from the Greek Orthodox Church? Or is Jesus

going to stand outside Bishop Manning’s cathedral window and

beckon to the rich men’s children in their pews and repeat His gentle

request, “Suffer little children to come unto me?”

So we are left with the uncomfortable and yet, for me, strangely

satisfying feeling that what religion is left in our lives will be a very

much more simplified feeling of reverence for the beauty and

grandeur and mystery of life, with its responsibilities, but will be

deprived of the good old, glad certainties and accretions which

theology has accumulated and laid over its surface. Religion in this

form is simple and, for many modern men, sufficient. The spiritual

theocracy of the Middle Ages is definitely receding and as for

personal immortality, which is the second greatest reason for the

appeal of religion, many men today are quite content to be just dead

when they die.

Our preoccupation with immortality has something pathological

about it. That man desires immortality is understandable, but were it

not for the influence of the Christian religion, it should never have

assumed such a disproportionately large share of our attention.

Instead of being a fine reflection, a noble fancy, lying in the poetic

realm between fiction and fact, it has become a deadly earnest

matter, and in the case of monks, the thought of death, or life after it,

has become the main occupation of this life. As a matter of fact,

most people on the other side of fifty, whether pagans or Christians,

are not afraid of death, which is the reason why they can’t be scared

by, and are thinking less of, Heaven and Hell. We find them very

often chattering glibly about their epitaphs and tomb designs and the

comparative merits of cremation. By that I do not mean only those

who are sure that they are going to heaven, but also many who take

the realistic view of the situation that when they die, life is

extinguished like light from a candle. Many of the finest minds of

today have expressed their disbelief in personal immortality and are

quite unconcerned about it—H. G. Wells, Albert Einstein, Sir Arthur

Keith and a host of others—but I do not think it requires first-class

minds to conquer this fear of death.

Many people have substituted for this personal immortality,

immortality of other kinds, much more convincing—the immortality of

the race, and the immortality of work and influence. It is sufficient

that when we die, the work we leave behind us continues to

influence others and play a part, however small, in the life of the

community in which we live. We can pluck the flower and throw its

petals to the ground, and yet its subtle fragrance remains in the air. It

is a better, more reasonable and more unselfish kind of immortality.

In this very real sense, we may say that Louis Pasteur, Luther

Burbank and Thomas Edison are still living among us. What if their

bodies are dead, since “body” is nothing but an abstract

generalization for a constantly changing combination of chemical

constituents! Man begins to see his own life as a drop in an ever

flowing river and is glad to contribute his part to the great stream of

life. If he were only a little less selfish, he should be quite contented

with that.

II. WHY I AM A PAGAN

Religion is always an individual, personal thing. Every person

must work out his own views of religion, and if he is sincere, God will

not blame him, however it turns out. Every man’s religious

experience is valid for himself, for, as I have said, it is not something

that can be argued about. But the story of an honest soul struggling

with religious problems, told in a sincere manner, will always be of

benefit to other people. That is why, in speaking about religion, I

must get away from generalities, and tell my personal story.

I am a pagan. The statement may be taken to imply a revolt

against Christianity; and yet revolt seems a harsh word and does not

correctly describe the state of mind of a man who has passed

through a very gradual evolution, step by step, away from

Christianity, during which he clung desperately, with love and piety,

to a series of tenets which against his will were slipping away from

him. Because there was never any hatred, therefore, it is impossible

to speak of a rebellion.

As I was born in a pastor’s family and at one time prepared for the

Christian ministry, my natural emotions were on the side of religion

during the entire struggle rather than against it. In this conflict of

emotions and understanding, I gradually arrived at a position where I

had, for instance, definitely renounced the doctrine of redemption, a

position which could most simply be described as that of a pagan. It

was, and still is, a condition of belief concerning life and the universe

in which I feel natural and at ease, without having to be at war with

myself. The process came as naturally as the weaning of a child or

the dropping of a ripe apple on the ground; and when the time came

for the apple to drop, I would not interfere with its dropping. In

Taoistic phraseology, this is but to live in the Tao, and in Western

phraseology it is but being sincere with oneself and with the

universe, according to one’s lights. I believe no one can be natural

and happy unless he is intellectually sincere with himself, and to be

natural is to be in heaven. To me, being a pagan is just being natural.

“To be a pagan” is no more than a phrase, like “to be a Christian.”

It is no more than a negative statement, for to the average reader, to

be a pagan means only that one is not a Christian; and, since “being

a Christian” is a very broad and ambiguous term, the meaning of “not

being a Christian” is equally ill-defined. It is all the worse when one

defines a pagan as one who does not believe in religion or in God,

for we have yet to define what is meant by “God” or by the “religious

attitude toward life.” Great pagans have always had a deeply

reverent attitude toward nature. We shall therefore have to take the

word in its conventional sense and mean by it simply a man who

does not go to church (except for an aesthetic inspiration, of which I

am still capable), does not belong to the Christian fold, and does not

accept its usual, orthodox tenets.

On the positive side, a Chinese pagan, the only kind of which I

can speak with any feeling of intimacy, is one who starts out with this

earthly life as all we can or need to bother about, wishes to live

intently and happily as long as his life lasts, often has a sense of the

poignant sadness of this life and faces it cheerily, has a keen

appreciation of the beautiful and the good in human life wherever he

finds them, and regards doing good as its own satisfactory reward. I

admit, however, he feels a slight pity or contempt for the “religious”

man who does good in order to get to heaven and who, by

implication, would not do good if he were not lured by heaven or

threatened with hell. If this statement is correct, I believe there are a

great many more pagans in this country than are themselves aware

of it. The modern liberal Christian and the pagan are really close,

differing only when they start out to talk about God.

I think I know the depths of religious experience, for I believe one

can have this experience without being a great theologian like

Cardinal Newman—otherwise Christianity would not be worth having

or must already have been horribly misinterpreted. As I look at it at

present, the difference in spiritual life between a Christian believer

and a pagan is simply this: the Christian believer lives in a world

governed and watched over by God, to whom he has a constant

personal relationship, and therefore in a world presided over by a

kindly father; his conduct is also often uplifted to a level consonant

with this consciousness of being a child of God, no doubt a level

which is difficult for a human mortal to maintain consistently at all

periods of his life or of the week or even of the day; his actual life

varies between living on the human and the truly religious levels.

On the other hand, the pagan lives in this world like an orphan,

without the benefit of that consoling feeling that there is always some

one in heaven who cares and who will, when that spiritual

relationship called prayer is established, attend to his private

personal welfare. It is no doubt a less cheery world; but there is the

benefit and dignity of being an orphan who by necessity has learned

to be independent, to take care of himself, and to be more mature,

as all orphans are. It was this feeling rather than any intellectual

belief—this feeling of dropping into a world without the love of God—

that really scared me till the very last moment of my conversion to

paganism; I felt, like many born Christians, that if a personal God did

not exist the bottom would be knocked out of this universe.

And yet a pagan can come to the point where he looks on that

perhaps warmer and cheerier world as at the same time a more

childish, I am tempted to say a more adolescent, world; useful and

workable, if one keep the illusion unspoiled, but no more and no less

justifiable than a truly Buddhist way of life; also a more beautifully

colored world but consequently less solidly true and therefore of less

worth. For me personally, the suspicion that anything is colored or

not solidily true is fatal. There is a price one must be willing to pay for

truth; whatever the consequences, let us have it. This position is

comparable to and psychologically the same as that of a murderer: if

one has committed a murder, the best thing he can do next is to

confess it. That is why I say it takes a little courage to become a

pagan. But, after one has accepted the worst, one is also without

fear. Peace of mind is that mental condition in which you have

accepted the worst. (Here I see for myself the influence of Buddhist

or Taoist thought.)

Or I might put the difference between a Christian and a pagan

world like this: the pagan in me renounced Christianity out of both

pride and humility, emotional pride and intellectual humility, but

perhaps on the whole less out of pride than of humility. Out of

emotional pride because I hated the idea that there should be any

other reason for our behaving as nice, decent men and women than

the simple fact that we are human beings; theoretically and if you

want to go in for classifications, classify this as a typically humanist

thought. But more out of humility, of intellectual humility, simply

because I can no longer, with our astronomical knowledge, believe

that an individual human being is so terribly important in the eyes of

that Great Creator, living as the individual does, an infinitesimal

speck on this earth, which is an infinitesimal speck of the solar

system, which is again an infinitesimal speck of the universe of solar

systems. The audacity of man and his presumptuous arrogance are

what stagger me. What right have we to conceive of the character of

a supreme being, of whose work we can see only a millionth part,

and to postulate about his attributes?

The importance of the human individual is undoubtedly one of the

basic tenets of Christianity. But let us see what ridiculous arrogance

that leads to in the usual practice of Christian daily life.

Four days before my mother’s funeral, there was a pouring rain,

and if it continued, as was usual in July in Changchow, the city would

be flooded, and there could be no funeral. As most of us came from

Shanghai, the delay would have meant some inconvenience. One of

my relatives—a rather extreme but not an unusual example of a

Christian believer in China—told me that she had faith in God, Who

would always provide for His children. She prayed, and the rain

stopped, apparently in order that a tiny family of Christians might

have their funeral without delay. But the implied idea that, but for us,

God would willingly subject the tens of thousands of Changchow

inhabitants to a devastating flood, as was often the case, or that He

did not stop the rain because of them but because of us who wanted

to have a conveniently dry funeral, struck me as an unbelievable

type of selfishness. I cannot imagine God providing for such selfish

children.

There was also a Christian pastor who wrote the story of his life,

attesting to many evidences of the hand of God in his life, for the

purpose of glorifying God. One of the evidences adduced was that,

when he had got together 600 silver dollars to buy his passage to

America, God lowered the rate of exchange on the day this so very

important individual was to buy his passage. The difference in the

rate of exchange for 600 silver dollars could have been at most ten

or twenty dollars, and God was willing to rock the bourses in Paris,

London, and New York in order that this curious child of His might

save ten or twenty dollars. Let us remind ourselves that this way of

glorifying God is not at all unusual in any part of Christendom.

Oh, the impudence and conceit of man, whose span of life is but

threescore and ten! Mankind as an aggregate may have a significant

history, but man as an individual, in the words of Su Tungp’o, is no

more than a grain of millet in an ocean or an insect fuyu born in the

morning and dying at eve, as compared with the universe. The

Christian will not be humble. He will not be satisfied with the

aggregate immortality of his great stream of life, of which he is

already a part, flowing on to eternity, like a mighty stream which

empties into the great sea and changes and yet does not change.

The clay vessel will ask of the potter, “Why hast thou cast me into

this shape and why hast thou made me so brittle?” The clay vessel is

not satisfied that it can leave little vessels of its own kind when it

cracks up. Man is not satisfied that he has received this marvelous

body, this almost divine body. He wants to live forever! And he will

not let God alone. He must say his prayers and he must pray daily

for small personal gifts from the Source of All Things. Why can’t he

let God alone?

There was once a Chinese scholar who did not believe in

Buddhism, and his mother who did. She was devout and would

acquire merit for herself by mumbling, “Namu omitabha!” a thousand

times day and night. But every time she started to call Buddha’s

name, her son would call, “Mamma!” The mother became annoyed.

“Well,” said the son, “don’t you think Buddha would be equally

annoyed, if he could hear you?”

My father and mother were devout Christians. To hear my father

conduct the evening family prayers was enough. And I was a

sensitively religious child. As a pastor’s son I received the facilities of

missionary education, profited from its benefits, and suffered from its

weaknesses. For its benefits I was always grateful and its

weaknesses I turned into my strength. For according to Chinese

philosophy there are no such things in life as good and bad luck.

I was forbidden to attend Chinese theaters, never allowed to listen

to Chinese minstrel singers, and entirely cut apart from the great

Chinese folk tradition and mythology. When I entered a missionary

college, the little foundation in classical Chinese given me by my

father was completely neglected. Perhaps it was just as well—so

that later, after a completely Westernized education, I could go back

to it with the freshness and vigorous delight of a child of the West in

an Eastern wonderland. The complete substitution of the fountain

pen for the writing brush during my college and adolescent period

was the greatest luck I ever had and preserved for me the freshness

of the Oriental mental world unspoiled, until I should become ready

for it. If Vesuvius had not covered up Pompeii, Pompeii would not be

so well preserved, and the imprints of carriage wheels on her stone

pavements would not be so clearly marked today. The missionary

college education was my Vesuvius.

Thinking was always dangerous. More than that, thinking was

always allied with the devil. The conflict during the collegiate-

adolescent period, which, as usual, was my most religious period,

between a heart which felt the beauty of the Christian life and a head

which had a tendency to reason everything away, was taking place.

Curiously enough, I can remember no moments of torment or

despair, of the kind that drove Tolstoy almost to suicide. At every

stage, I felt myself a unified Christian, harmonious in my belief, only

a little more liberal than the last, and accepting some fewer Christian

doctrines. Anyway, I could always go back to the Sermon on the

Mount. The poetry of a saying like “Consider the lilies of the field”

was too good to be untrue. It was that and the consciousness of the

inner Christian life that gave me strength.

But the doctrines were slipping away terribly. Superficial things

first began to annoy me. The “resurrection of the flesh,” long

disproved when the expected second coming of Christ in the first

century did not come off and the Apostles did not rise bodily from

their graves, was still there in the Apostles’ Creed. This was one of

those things.

Then, enrolling in a theological class and initiated into the holy of

holies, I learned that another article in the creed, the virgin birth, was

open to question, different deans in American theological seminaries

holding different views. It enraged me that Chinese believers should

be required to believe categorically in this article before they could

be baptized, while the theologians of the same church regarded it as

an open question. It did not seem sincere and somehow it did not

seem right.

Further schooling in meaningless commentary scholarship as to

the whereabouts of the “water gate” and such minutiae completely

relieved me of responsibility to take such theological studies

seriously, and I made a poor showing in my grades. My professors

considered that I was not cut out for the Christian ministry, and the

bishop thought I might as well leave. They would not waste their

instruction on me. Again this seems to me now a blessing in

disguise. I doubt, if I had gone on with it and put on the clerical garb,

whether it would have been so easy for me to be honest with myself

later on. But this feeling of rebellion against the discrepancy of the

beliefs required of the theologian and of the average convert was the

nearest kind of feeling to what I may call a “revolt.”

By this time I had already arrived at the position that the Christian

theologians were the greatest enemies of the Christian religion. I

could never get over two great contradictions. The first was that the

theologians had made the entire structure of the Christian belief

hang upon the existence of an apple. If Adam had not eaten an

apple, there would be no original sin, and, if there were no original

sin, there would be no need of redemption. That was plain to me,

whatever the symbolic value of the apple might be. This seemed to

me preposterously unfair to the teachings of Christ, who never said a

word about the original sin or the redemption. Anyway, from pursuing

literary studies, I feel, like all modern Americans, no consciousness

of sin and simply do not believe in it. All I know is that if God loves

me only half as much as my mother does, he will not send me to

Hell. That is a final fact of my inner consciousness, and for no

religion could I deny its truth.

Still more preposterous another proposition seemed to me. This

was the argument that, when Adam and Eve ate an apple during

their honeymoon, God was so angry that He condemned their

posterity to suffer from generation to generation for that little offense

but that, when the same posterity murdered the same God’s only

Son, God was so delighted that He forgave them all. No matter how

people explain and argue, I cannot get over this simple untruth. This

was the last of the things that troubled me.

Still, even after my graduation, I was a zealous Christian and

voluntarily conducted a Sunday school at Tsing Hua, a non-Christian

college at Peking, to the dismay of many faculty members. The

Christmas meeting of the Sunday school was a torture to me, for

here I was passing on to the Chinese children the tale of herald

angels singing upon a midnight clear when I did not believe it myself.

Everything had been reasoned away, and only love and fear

remained: a kind of clinging love for an all-wise God which made me

feel happy and peaceful and suspect that I should not have been so

happy and peaceful without that reassuring love—and fear of

entering into a world of orphans.

Finally my salvation came. “Why,” I reasoned with a colleague, “if

there were no God, people would not do good and the world would

go topsy-turvy.”

“Why?” replied my Confucian colleague. “We should lead a decent

human life simply because we are decent human beings,” he said.

This appeal to the dignity of human life cut off my last tie to

Christianity, and from then on I was a pagan.

It is all so clear to me now. The world of pagan belief is a simpler

belief. It postulates nothing, and is obliged to postulate nothing. It

seems to make the good life more immediately appealing by

appealing to the good life alone. It better justifies doing good by

making it unnecessary for doing good to justify itself. It does not

encourage men to do, for instance, a simple act of charity by

dragging in a series of hypothetical postulates—sin, redemption, the

cross, laying up treasure in heaven, mutual obligation among men

on account of a third-party relationship in heaven—all so

unnecessarily complicated and roundabout, and none capable of

direct proof. If one accepts the statement that doing good is its own

justification, one cannot help regarding all theological baits to right

living as redundant and tending to cloud the luster of a moral truth.

Love among men should be a final, absolute fact. We should be able

just to look at each other and love each other without being

reminded of a third party in heaven. Christianity seems to me to

make morality appear unnecessarily difficult and complicated and sin

appear tempting, natural, and desirable. Paganism, on the other

hand, seems alone to be able to rescue religion from theology and

restore it to its beautiful simplicity of belief and dignity of feeling.

In fact, I seem to be able to see how many theological

complications arose in the first, second, and third centuries and

turned the simple truths of the Sermon on the Mount into a rigid, self-

contained structure to support a priestcraft as an endowed

institution. The reason was contained in the word revelation—the

revelation of a special mystery or divine scheme given to a prophet

and kept by an apostolic succession, which was found necessary in

all religions, from Mohammedanism and Mormonism to the Living

Buddha’s Lamaism and Mrs. Eddy’s Christian Science, in order for

each of them to handle exclusively a special, patented monopoly of

salvation. All priestcraft lives on the common staple food of

revelation. The simple truths of Christ’s teaching on the Mount must

be adorned, and the lily He so marveled at must be gilded. Hence

we have the “first Adam” and the “second Adam,” and so on and so

forth.

But Pauline logic, which seemed so convincing and unanswerable

in the early days of the Christian era, seems weak and unconvincing

to the more subtle modern critical consciousness; and in this

discrepancy between the rigorous Asiatic deductive logic and the

more pliable, more subtle appreciation of truth of the modern man,

lies the weakness of the appeal to the Christian revelation or any

revelation for the modern man. Therefore only by a return to

paganism and renouncing the revelation can one return to primitive

(and for me more satisfying) Christianity.

It is wrong therefore to speak of a pagan as an irreligious man:

irreligious he is only as one who refuses to believe in any special

variety of revelation. A pagan always believes in God but would not

like to say so, for fear of being misunderstood. All Chinese pagans

believe in God, the most commonly met-with designation in Chinese

literature being the term chaowu, or the Creator of Things. The only

difference is that the Chinese pagan is honest enough to leave the

Creator of Things in a halo of mystery, toward whom he feels a kind

of awed piety and reverence. What is more, that feeling suffices for

him. Of the beauty of this universe, the clever artistry of the myriad

things of this creation, the mystery of the stars, the grandeur of

heaven, and the dignity of the human soul he is equally aware. But

that again suffices for him. He accepts death as he accepts pain and

suffering and weighs them against the gift of life and the fresh

country breeze and the clear mountain moon and he does not

complain. He regards bending to the will of heaven as the truly

religious and pious attitude and calls it “living in the Tao.” If the

Creator of Things wants him to die at seventy, he gladly dies at

seventy. He also believes that “heaven’s way always goes round”

and that there is no permanent injustice in this world. He does not

ask for more.

In the prayer for sickness, it is evidently unreasonable to pray a dozen or a hundred times,

as unreasonable as for a child to beg a dozen or a hundred times to be taken to a movie

theater. To ask once is enough, and a promise is a promise, if the father is a good father.

The repetitious requests are a botheration.

Chapter Fourteen

THE ART OF THINKING

I. THE NEED OF HUMANIZED THINKING

Thinking is an art, and not a science. One of the greatest contrasts

between Chinese and Western scholarship is the fact that in the

West there is so much specialized knowledge, and so little

humanized knowledge, while in China there is so much more

concern with the problems of living, while there are no specialized

sciences. We see an invasion of scientific thinking into the proper

realm of humanized knowledge in the West, characterized by high

specialization and its profuse use of scientific or semi-scientific

terminology. I am speaking of “scientific” thinking in its everyday

sense, and not of true scientific thinking, which cannot be divorced

from common sense on the one hand, and imagination on the other.

In its everyday sense, this “scientific” thinking is strictly logical,

objective, highly specialized and “atomic” in its method and vision.

The contrast in the two types of scholarship, Oriental and Occidental,

ultimately goes back to the opposition between logic and common

sense. Logic, deprived of common sense, becomes inhuman, and

common sense, deprived of logic, is incapable of penetrating into

nature’s mysteries.

What does one find as he goes through the field of Chinese

literature and philosophy? One finds there are no sciences, no

extreme theories, no dogmas, and really no great divergent schools

of philosophy. Common sense and the reasonable spirit have

crushed out all theories and all dogmas. Like the poet Po Chüyi, the

Chinese scholar “utilized Confucianism to order his conduct, utilized

Buddhism to cleanse his mind, and then utilized history, paintings,

mountains, rivers, wine, music and song to soothe his spirit.”

lived in the world and yet was out of it.

China, therefore, becomes a land where no one is trying very hard

to think and everyone is trying very hard to live. It becomes a land

where philosophy itself is a pretty simple and common sense affair

that can be as conveniently put in two lines of verse as in a heavy

volume. It becomes a land where there is no system of philosophy,

broadly speaking, no logic, no metaphysics, no academic jargon;

where there is much less academic dogmatism, less intellectual or

practical fanaticism, and fewer abstract terms and long words. No

sort of mechanistic rationalism is ever possible and there is a strong

hatred of the idea of logical necessity. It becomes also a land where

there are no lawyers in business life, as there are no logicians in

philosophy. In place of well thought out systems of philosophy, they

have only an intimate feeling of life, and instead of a Kant or a Hegel,

they have only essayists, epigram writers and propounders of

Buddhist conundrums and Taoist parables.

The literature of China as a whole presents us with a desert of

short poems and short essays, seemingly interminable for one who

does not appreciate them, and yet as full of variety and inexhaustible

beauty as a wild landscape itself. We have only essayists and letter-

writers who try to put their feeling of life in a short note or an essay of

three or five hundred words, usually much shorter than the school

composition of an American schoolboy. In these casual writings,

letters, diaries, literary notes and regular essays, one finds here a

brief comment on the vicissitudes of fortune, there a record of some

woman who committed suicide in a neighboring village, or of an

enjoyable spring party, or a feast in snow, or boating on a moonlight

night, or an evening spent in a temple with a thunderstorm raging

outside, generally including the remarks made during the

conversation that made the occasion memorable. We find a host of

essayists who are at the same time poets, and poets who are at the

same time essayists, writing never more than five or seven hundred

words, in which a whole philosophy of life is really expressed by a

single line. We find writers of parables and epigrams and family

letters who make no attempt to coördinate their thoughts into a rigid

system. This has prevented the rise of schools and systems. The

intellect is always held in abeyance by the spirit of reasonableness,

and still more by the writer’s artistic sensibility. Actually the intellect is

distrusted.

It is hardly necessary to point out that the logical faculty is a very

powerful weapon of the human mind, making the conquests of

science possible. I am also aware that human progress in the West

is still essentially controlled by common sense and by the critical

spirit, which is greater than the logical spirit and which I think

represents the highest form of thinking in the West. It is unnecessary

for me to admit that there is a very much better developed critical

spirit in the West than in China. In pointing out the weaknesses of

logical thinking, I am only referring to a particular deficiency in

Western thought, and sometimes in Western politics also, e.g., the

Machtpolitik of the Germans and the Japanese. Logic has its charm

also, and I regard the development of the detective story as a most

interesting product of the logical mind, a form of literature which

failed entirely to develop in China. But sheer preoccupation with

logical thinking has also its drawbacks.

The outstanding characteristic of Western scholarship is its

specialization and cutting up of knowledge into different

departments. The over-development of logical thinking and

specialization, with its technical phraseology, has brought about the

curious fact of modern civilization, that philosophy has been so far

relegated to the background, far behind politics and economics, that

the average man can pass it by without a twinge of conscience. The

feeling of the average man, even of the educated person, is that

philosophy is a “subject” which he can best afford to go without. This

is certainly a strange anomaly of modern culture, for philosophy,

which should he closest to men’s bosom and business, has become

most remote from life. It was not so in the classical civilization of the

Greeks and Romans, and it was not so in China, where the study of

the wisdom of life formed the scholars’ chief occupation. Either the

modern man is not interested in the problems of living, which are the

proper subject of philosophy, or we have gone a long way from the

original conception of philosophy. The scope of our knowledge has

been so widened, and we have so many “departments” of knowledge

zealously guarded over by their respective specialists, that

philosophy, instead of being the first of man’s studies, has left for it

only the field no one is willing to specialize in. Typical of the state of

modern education is the announcement of an American university

that “the Department of Psychology has kindly thrown open the

doors of Psychology 4 to the students of Economics 3.” The

professor of Economics 3 therefore commits the care of his students

to the professor of Psychology 4 with his love and blessings, while

as an exchange of courtesy, he allows the students of Psychology 4

to tread in the sacred precincts of Economics 3 with a gesture of

friendly hospitality. Meanwhile, Philosophy, the King of Knowledge, is

like the Chinese Emperor in the times of the Warring Kingdoms, who

instead of drawing tribute from the vassal states, found his authority

and domain daily diminishing, and retained the allegiance of only a

small population of very fine and loyal, but poorly fed subjects.

For we have now come to a stage of human culture in which we

have compartments of knowledge but not knowledge itself;

specialization, but no integration; specialists but no philosophers of

human wisdom. This over-specialization of knowledge is not very

different from the over-specialization in a Chinese Imperial kitchen.

Once during the collapse of a dynasty, a rich Chinese official was

able to secure as his cook a maid who had escaped from the palace

kitchen. Proud of her, he issued invitations for his friends to come

and taste a dinner prepared by one he thought an Imperial cook. As

the day was approaching, he asked the maid to prepare a royal

dinner. The maid replied that she couldn’t prepare a dinner.

“What did you do, then?” asked the official.

“Oh, I helped make the patties for the dinner,” she replied.

“Well, then, go ahead and make some nice patties for my guests.”

To his consternation the maid announced: “Oh, no, I can’t make

patties. I specialized in chopping up the onions for the stuffing of the

patties of the Imperial dinner.”

Some such condition obtains today in the field of human

knowledge and academic scholarship. We have a biologist who

knows a bit of life and human nature; a psychiatrist who knows

another bit of it; a geologist who knows mankind’s early history; an

anthropologist who knows the mind of the savage man; an historian

who, if he happens to be a genial mind, can teach us something of

human wisdom and human folly as reflected in mankind’s past

history; a psychologist who often can help us to understand our

behavior, but who as often as not tells us a piece of academic

imbecility, such as that Lewis Carroll was a sadist, or emerges from

his laboratory experiments on chickens and announces that the

effect of a loud noise on chickens is that it makes their hearts jump.

Some educational psychologists always seem to me stupefying

when they are wrong, and still more stupefying when they are right.

But along with the process of specialization, there has not been the

urgently needed process of integration, the effort to integrate all

these aspects of knowledge and make them serve the supreme end,

which is the wisdom of life. Perhaps we are ready for some

integration of knowledge today, as is evidenced by the Institute of

Human Relations at Yale University and in the addresses at the

Harvard Tercentenary, Unless, however, the Western scientists

proceed about this task by a simpler and less logical way of thinking,

that integration cannot be achieved. Human wisdom cannot be

merely the adding up of specialized knowledge or obtained by a

study of statistical averages; it can be achieved only by insight, by

the general prevalance of more common sense, more wit and more

plain, but subtle, intuition.

There is clearly a distinction between logical thinking and

reasonable thinking, which may be also expressed as the difference

between academic thinking and poetic thinking. Of academic

thinking we have a great deal, but of poetic thinking we find very little

evidence in the modern world. Aristotle and Plato are strikingly

modern, and that is so, perhaps not because the Greeks resembled

the moderns, but because they were strictly the ancestors of modern

thought. In spite of his humanistic point of view and his Doctrine of

the Golden Mean, Aristotle was strictly the grandfather of the modern

textbook writers, being the first man to cut up knowledge into

separate compartments—from physics and botany to ethics and

politics. As was quite inevitable, he was the first man also to start the

impertinent academic jargon incomprehensible to the common man,

which is being outdone by the American sociologists and

psychologists of today. And while Plato had real human insight, yet

in a sense he was responsible for the worship of ideas and

abstractions as such among the Neo-Platonists, a tradition which,

instead of being tempered with more insight, is so familiar among us

today in writers who talk about ideas and ideologies as if they had an

independent existence. Only modern psychology in very recent days

is depriving us of the watertight compartments of “reason,” “will” and

“emotion” and helping to kill the “soul” which was such a real entity

with the medieval theologians. We have killed the “soul,” but we

have created for ourselves a thousand odd social and political

slogans (“revolutionary,” “counter-revolutionary,” “bourgeois,”

“capitalist-imperialist,” “escapist”) which tyrannize over our thoughts,

and have created similar beings like the “class,” the “destiny” and the

“state,” and we proceed logically to transform the state into a

monster to swallow up the individual.

It seems that a regenerated form of thinking, a more poetic

thinking, which can see life steadily and see it whole, is eminently

desirable. As the late James Harvey Robinson warns us: “Some

careful observers express the quite honest conviction that unless

thought be raised to a far higher plane than hitherto, some great set-

back to civilization is inevitable.” Professor Robinson wisely pointed

out that, “Conscientiousness and Insight seem suspicious of one

another, and yet they might be friends.” Modern economists and

psychologists seem to me to have an overdose of conscientiousness

and not enough of insight. This is a point which perhaps cannot be

overemphasized, the danger of applying logic to human affairs. But

the force and prestige of scientific thinking have been so great in the

modern age, that in spite of all warnings, this species of academic

thinking constantly encroaches upon the realm of philosophy, with

the jejune belief that the human mind can be studied like a sewerage

system and the waves of human thought measured like the waves of

radio. The consequences are mildly disturbing in our everyday

thinking, but disastrous in practical politics.

II. THE RETURN TO COMMON SENSE

The Chinese hate the phrase “logical necessity” because there is

no logical necessity in human affairs. The Chinese distrust of logic

begins with the distrust of words, proceeds with the abhorrence of

definitions and ends with instinctive hatred for all systems and

theories. For only words, definitions and systems have made schools

of philosophy possible. The degeneration of philosophy began with

the preoccupation with words. A Chinese writer, Kung Tingan, said:

“The Sage does not talk, the Talented Ones talk, and the stupid ones

argue”—this in spite of the fact that Kung himself loved very much to

argue!

For this is the sad story of philosophy: that philosophers belonged

to the genus of the Talkers and not the Silent Ones. All philosophers

love to hear their own voice. Even Laotse himself, who first taught us

that the Creator (the Great Silent One) does not talk, nevertheless

was persuaded to leave five thousand words to posterity before he

retired outside the Hankukuan Pass to pass the remainder of his life

in wise solitude and oblivion. More typical of the philosopher-talker

genius was Confucius who visited “seventy-two kingdoms” in order

to get a hearing from their kings, or, better still, Socrates who went

about the streets of Athens and stopped passers-by to ask them

questions for the purpose of hearing himself give wise answers. The

statement that the “Sage does not talk” is therefore only a relative

one. But still the difference exists between the Sage and the

Talented Ones, because the Sage talks about life, as he is directly

aware of it; the Talented Ones talk about the Sage’s words and the

stupid ones argue about the words of the Talented Ones. In the

Greek Sophists we have the pure type of Talkers who are interested

in the play and interplay of words as such. Philosophy, which was

the love of wisdom, became the love of words, and in proportion as

this Sophist trend grew, the divorce between philosophy and life

became more and more complete. As time went on, the philosophers

began to use more and more words and longer and longer

sentences; epigrams of life gave place to sentences, sentences to

arguments, arguments to treatises, treatises to commentaries, and

commentaries to philological research; more and more words were

needed to define and classify the words they used and more and

more schools were needed to differ and secede from the schools

already established; the process continued until the immediate,

intimate feeling or the awareness of living has been entirely lost sight

of, and the layman has the perfect right to ask, “What are you talking

about?” Meanwhile, throughout the subsequent history of thought,

the few independent thinkers who have felt the direct impact of life

itself—a Goethe, a Samuel Johnson, an Emerson, a William James

—have refused to speak in the jargon of the Talkers and always

been intractably opposed to the spirit of classification. For they are

the wise ones, who have kept for us the true meaning of philosophy,

which is the wisdom of life. In most cases, they have forsaken

arguments and reverted to the epigram. When man has lost the

ability to speak in epigrams, he writes paragraphs; when he is

unable to express himself clearly in paragraphs, he develops an

argument; and when he still fails to make his meaning clear in an

argument, he writes a treatise.

Man’s love for words is his first step toward ignorance, and his

love for definitions the second. The more he analyzes, the more he

has need to define, and the more he defines, the more he aims at an

impossible logical perfection, for the effort of aiming at logical

perfection is only a sign of ignorance. Since words are the material

of our thought, the effort at definition is entirely laudable, and

Socrates started the mania for definitions in Europe. The danger is

that after being conscious of the words we define, we are further

forced to define the defining words, so that in the end, besides the

words which define or express life itself, we have a class of words

which define other words, which then become the main

preoccupation of our philosophers. There is evidently a distinction

between busy words and idle words, words that do duty in our

workaday life and words that exist only in the philosophers’

seminars, and also a distinction between the definitions of Socrates

and Francis Bacon, and the definitions of our modern professors.

Shakespeare, who had the most intimate feeling of life, certainly got

along without trying to define anything, or rather because he did not

try to define anything, and for that reason, his words had a “body”

which the other writers lacked, and his language was infused with

that sense of human tragedy and grandeur that is often missing

today. We can no more hold his words down to any one particular

function than we can hold him down to any particular conception of

woman. For it is in the nature of definitions that they tend to stifle our

thought and deprive it of that glowing, imaginative color

characteristic of life itself.

But if words by necessity cut up our thoughts in the process of

expression, the love of system is even more fatal to a keen

awareness of life. A system is but a squint at truth, and the more

logically that system is developed, the more horrible that mental

squint becomes. The human desire to see only one phase of truth

which we happen to perceive, and to develop and elevate it into a

perfect logical system, is one reason why our philosophy is bound to

grow stranger to life. He who talks about truth injures it thereby; he

who tries to prove it thereby maims and distorts it; he who gives it a

label and a school of thought kills it; and he who declares himself a

believer buries it. Therefore any truth which has been erected into a

system is thrice dead and buried. The dirge that they all sing at

truth’s funeral is, “I am entirely right and you are entirely wrong.” It is

entirely immaterial what truth they bury, but it is essential that they

do the burying. For so truth suffers at the hands of its defenders, and

all factions and all schools of philosophy, ancient and modern, are

occupied only in proving one point, that “I am entirely right and you

are entirely wrong.” The Germans, with their Griindlichkeit, writing a

heavy volume to prove a limited truth until they have turned it into an

absurdity,

are perhaps the worst offenders, but the same disease of

thinking may be seen or noted more or less in most Western

thinkers, becoming Worse and worse as more and more abstract

they become.

As a result of this dehumanized logic we have dehumanized truth.

We have today a philosophy that has become stranger to life itself,

that has almost half disclaimed any intention to teach us the

meaning of life and the wisdom of living, a philosophy that has lost

that intimate feeling of life or awareness of living which we spoke of

as the very essence of philosophy. It is that intimate feeling of life

which William James has called “the stuff of experience.” As time

goes on, I feel that the philosophy and logic of William James will

become more and more devastating to the modern Western way of

thinking. Before we can humanize Western philosophy, we must first

humanize Western logic. We have to get back to a way of thinking

which is more impatient to be in touch with reality, with life, and

above all with human nature, than to be merely correct, logical and

consistent. For the disease of thinking typified by Descartes’ famous

discovery: “I think, therefore I exist,” we have to substitute the more

human and more sensible statement of Walt Whitman’s: “I am

sufficient as I am.” Life or existence does not have to go down on its

knees and beg logic to prove that it exists or that it is there.

William James spent his life trying to prove and defend the

Chinese way of thinking, without knowing it. Only there is this

difference, that if William James had been a Chinese, he would not

have written so many words to argue it out, but would have merely

stated in an essay of three or five hundred words, or in one of his

leisurely diary notes, that he believed it because it is so. He would be

shy of the words themselves, for fear that the more words he used,

the greater the chances for misunderstanding. But William James

was a Chinese in his keen awareness of life and the varieties of

human experience, in his rebellion against mechanistic rationalism,

his anxiety to keep thought constantly fluid, and his impatience with

people who think they have discovered the one all-important,

“absolute” and universal truth and have enclosed it in a self-sufficient

system. He was Chinese, too, in his insistence on the importance of

the artist’s sense of perceptual reality over and against conceptual

reality. The philosopher is a man who holds his sensibilities at the

highest point of focus and watches the flux of life, ready to be forever

surprised by newer and stranger paradoxes, inconsistencies, and

inexplicable exceptions to the rule. In his refusal to accept a system

not because it is incorrect, but because it is a system, he plays

havoc with all the Western schools of philosophy. Truly, as he says,

the difference between the monistic conception and the pluralistic

conception of the universe is a most pregnant distinction in the

history of philosophy. He has made it possible for philosophy to

forget its beautiful air-castles and return to life itself.

Confucius said, “Truth may not depart from human nature; if what

is regarded as truth departs from human nature, it may not be

regarded as truth.” Again he says, in a witty line that might have

dropped from James’s lips, “It is not truth that can make men great,

but men that can make truth great.” No, the world is not a syllogism

or an argument, it is a being; the universe does not talk, it lives; it

does not argue, it merely gets there. In the words of a gifted English

writer: “Reason is but an item in the mystery; and behind the

proudest consciousness that ever reigned, reason and wonder

blushed face to face. The inevitable stales, while doubt and hope are

sisters. Not unfortunately, the universe is wild, game-flavored as a

hawk’s wing. Nature is miracle all: the same returns not save to be

different.” It seems what the Western logicians need is just a little

humility; their salvation lies in some one curing them of their

Hegelian swelled-heads.

III. BE REASONABLE

In contrast to logic, there is common sense, or still better, the

Spirit of Reasonableness. I think of the Spirit of Reasonableness as

the highest and sanest ideal of human culture, and the reasonable

man as the highest type of cultivated human being. No one can be

perfect; he can only aim at being a likeable, reasonable being. In

fact, I look forward to the time when the people of the world will be

informed with this reasonable spirit, both in their personal and their

national affairs. Reasonable nations live in peace and reasonable

husbands and wives live in happiness. In the selection of husbands

for my daughters, I shall have only one standard: is he a reasonable

person? We cannot imagine perfect husbands and wives who never

quarrel; we can only conceive of reasonable husbands and wives

who quarrel reasonably and then patch up reasonably. Only in a

world of reasonable beings can we have peace and happiness. The

Reasonable Age, if that should ever come about, will be the Age of

Peace. It will be the age in which the Spirit of Reasonableness

prevails.

The Spirit of Reasonableness is the best thing that China has to

offer to the West. I do not mean that Chinese warlords are

reasonable when they tax the people fifty years ahead; I mean only

that the Spirit of Reasonableness is the essence and best side of

Chinese civilization. I had this discovery of mine accidentally

confirmed by two Americans who had lived a long time in China.

One, who had lived in China for thirty years, said that the foundation

of all Chinese social life is based on the word chiangh, or “talk

reason.” In a Chinese quarrel, the final clinching argument is, “Now

is this reasonable?” and the worst and commonest condemnation is

that a man “pu chiangli” or “does not talk reason.” The man who

admits being “unreasonable” is already defeated in the dispute.

I have said in My Country and My People that: “For a Westerner, it

is usually sufficient for a proposition to be logically sound. For a

Chinese it is not sufficient that a proposition be logically correct, but

it must be at the same time in accord with human nature. In fact to

be ‘in accord with human nature,’ to be chinch’ing (i. e., to be

human), is a greater consideration than to be logical.” “The Chinese

word for “reasonableness” is ch’ingli, which is composed of two

elements, ch’ing (jench’ing)

or human nature, and li (t’ienli) or

eternal reason. Ch’ing represents the flexible, human element, while

li represents the immutable law of the universe.” A cultured man is

one who understands thoroughly the human heart and the laws of

things. By living in harmony with the natural ways of the human heart

and of nature, the Confucianist claims that he can become a sage.

But then the sage is no more than a reasonable person, like

Confucius, who is chiefly admired for his plain, common sense and

his natural human qualities, i.e., for his great humanness.

Humanized thinking is just reasonable thinking. The logical man is

always self-righteous and therefore inhuman and therefore wrong,

while the reasonable man suspects that perhaps he is wrong and is

therefore always right. The contrast between the reasonable man

and the logical man is often shown in the postscripts to letters. I

always love the postscripts in my friends’ letters, especially those

that entirely contradict what has been said in the body of the letter.

They contain all the reasonable afterthoughts, the hesitancies, and

the flashes of wit and common sense. The genial thinker is one who,

after proceeding doggedly to prove a proposition by long-winded

arguments, suddenly arrives at intuition, and by a flash of common

sense annihilates his preceding arguments and admits he is wrong.

That is what I call humanized thinking.

We can imagine a letter, in which the logical man speaks in the

body of the letter and the reasonable man, the truly human spirit,

speaks in the postscript. A father may be writing to his daughter, who

has been begging him for a chance to go to college, and in the letter

he proceeds to outline the various perfectly sound reasons, “firstly,”

“secondly,” “thirdly,” why he cannot send her to college with a land of

consistent, cumulative, unanswerable logic, those reasons being that

he has already three sons to support at college, that her sick mother

needs someone to keep her company at home, and so on. After

signing his name he adds a little line: “Hang it, Julie, prepare to go to

college in the fall. Somehow I will do it.”

Or let us imagine a husband writing to his wife, announcing his

decision to arrange for a divorce and giving an unimpeachable array

of reasons for it: firstly, that his wife has been unfaithful, secondly,

that he can never get a hot meal when he comes home, and so on.

They are perfectly valid reasons, even righteous reasons, and if he

engages a lawyer to do the job, the logic will be still more perfect and

the tone more righteous still. But after writing the letter, something

happens in his mind, and he scrawls a barely legible note: “Damn it,

darling Sophie, I’m a rotten dog myself. I’m coming home with a

bunch of flowers.”

While the arguments in both letters are perfectly sound and valid,

it is the logical man who speaks there, while in the postscripts there

speaks a truly human spirit—a human father and a human husband.

For such is the duty of the human mind, that it is not called upon to

make a stupidly logical argument, but should try to maintain a sane

balance in an ever-changing sea of conflicting impulses, feelings,

and desires. And such is truth in human affairs that that is true which

we will to make so. The unanswerable argument can always be

answered with some compassion, and validity itself invalidated by

love. In human affairs, it is often the illogical course of conduct that is

the most convincing. Law itself admits the incompleteness of its

claim to absolute justice when it often has to fall back on “a

reasonable interpretation” of a clause, or when it allows the chief

executive the power of pardon, so well exercised by Abraham

Lincoln to a mother’s son.

The reasonable spirit humanizes all our thinking, and makes us

less sure of our own correctness. Its tendency is to round out our

ideas and tone down the angularities of our conduct. The opposite of

the reasonable spirit is fanaticism and dogmatism of all sorts in

thought and behavior, in our individual life, national life, marriage,

religion and politics. I claim that we have less intellectual fanaticism

and dogmatism in China. While a Chinese mob is quite excitable

(witness the Boxers of 1900), the Spirit of Reasonableness has

humanized to a large extent our monarchical autocracy, our religion,

and the so-called “suppression of women.” All this must be taken

with certain qualifications, but is nevertheless true. It makes our

emperors, our gods, and our husbands merely human beings. The

Chinese emperor was not a semi-divine being like the Japanese

ruler, and Chinese historians have evolved the theory that the

emperor rules by a mandate from Heaven, and when he misrules, he

forfeits that “heavenly mandate.” When he misrules, we just chop off

his head, and we have chopped off the heads of too many kings and

emperors in the many rising and falling dynasties for us to believe

they are “divine” or “semi-divine.” Our sages are not canonized as

gods, but always regarded merely as teachers of wisdom, and our

gods are not models of perfection, but venal and corrupt and open to

cajolement and bribery like our officials. Anything which goes beyond

reasonableness is immediately condemned as puchi’n jench’ing

(“moving far away from human nature”), and a man who is too saintly

or too perfect can be a traitor

because he is psychologically

abnormal.

In the sphere of politics, there is something terribly inhuman in the

logic of the minds of men and conduct of affairs in certain states of

Europe. And I am less terrified by the theories of Fascism and

Communism than by the fanatical spirit which infuses them and the

method by which men push their theories doggedly to logical

absurdities. The result is a confusion of values, a weird mixing-up of

politics with anthropology, art with propaganda, patriotism with

science, government with religion, and above all an entire upset of

the proper relationship between the claims of the state and the

claims of the individual. Only an insane type of mind can erect the

state into a god and make of it a fetish to swallow up the individual’s

right of thinking, feeling and the pursuit of happiness.

Communism and Fascism are both products of the same mind. As

Albert Pauphilet says, “No type of mind is so like the extreme right as

the extreme left.” Characteristic of both regimes and ideologies are,

firstly, the sheer belief in force and power, which I regard as the most

stupid and shallow manifestation of the Western mind, and secondly,

the belief in logical necessity, for after all Fascism, as much as

Communism, is based on the Marxian dialectic, which ultimately is

based on the logic of Hegel. Would that someone realized how man

in the second quarter of the twentieth century is suffering for the sins

in logic of his fathers, committed some hundred years ago!

In a sense we may say that today Europe is not ruled by the

reasonable spirit, nor even by the spirit of reason, but rather by the

spirit of fanaticism. Looking at the picture of Europe today gives one

a feeling of nervousness, a nervousness which comes not so much

from the mere presence of conflicts of national aims and state

boundaries and colonial claims, which the spirit of reason should be

amply able to deal with, but rather from the condition of mind of the

men who are the rulers of Europe. It is like getting into a taxicab in a

strange city and being suddenly overcome by a distrust of the driver.

It is not so bad that the driver doesn’t seem to be acquainted with the

map of the city and cannot take one to his destination by the proper

route; it is more alarming when the passenger in the back seat hears

the driver talk incoherently and begins to suspect his sobriety. That

nervousness is decidedly heightened when the inebriate driver is

armed with a gun and the passenger has no chance of getting out.

One has reason to believe that this caricature of the human mind is

not the human mind itself, that these are mere aberrations, mere

stages of temporary insanity, which will burn themselves out like all

waves of pestilence. One has reason to express a reassurance in

the capacities of the human mind, to believe that the human mortal

mind, limited as it is, is something infinitely higher than the intellect of

the reckless drivers of Europe, and that eventually we shall be able

to live peaceably because we shall have learned to think reasonably.

From Po Chuyi’s composition for his own tomb inscription.

A German writer devoted a whole thesis to proving that genius is due to eye strain,

Spenglar’s show of erudition is splendid, but his reasoning childish and naive.

Jench’ing is really an untranslatable word. Anything which helps to cement locial affection

or lubricate social friction is called jench’ing. Sending flowers and birthday gifts is “to make

jench’ing” and giving a friend’s nephew a job, or saving him from the usual punishment for

an offense, is to “present jench’ing” to the offender’s uncle. Anything which is normal in

human passion, e. g., the desire for revenge, is defended by saying that it is jench’ing or

“merely human.”

A thought expressed in an essay directed against the social-reformer Premier, Wang

Anshih, said to be written by Su Tungp’o’s father.

APPENDIX A

CERTAIN CHINESE NAMES

Chinese scholars always have several names: a personal name

(ming), a literary name or courtesy name (tse), and a fancy name

(hao), given by themselves or by others. In the course of life, as their

taste develops and their wisdom deepens, they often take a fancy to

a certain word or phrase fraught with meaning, and give themselves

another name to indicate their spiritual progress or a particular

meaningful experience: hence a person may have several hao, or

fancy names. In addition to this, an illustrious person is often

addressed by his birthplace, and the great have posthumous titles

conferred upon them. Hence the bewildering confusion of names for

students of Chinese history and literature. It is impossible to stick

consistently to either the personal name or the literary name in this

book, because it is neither natural nor advisable. Some are better

known by their fancy names, and others by their first names; these

things simply happen, and the natural thing to do is to use that

particular name which is the most common form of reference in

Chinese. If one refers to Mi Fei as Mi Fei, he will have to, for

consistency’s sake, refer to Su Tungp’o as Su Shih, or Li Chowu as

Li Chih, which is simply not being done. And no one, of course, can

consistendy refer to Confucius as K’ung Ch’iu and Laotse as Li Erh.

Hence the following table for reference, which is not meant to be

complete, but gives only the more important historical persons

referred to in this book. I have thought it convenient to give their

dates also. Surnames are in capitals. (*) Indicates the name

commonly used in the book.

In Chinese usage, the surname stands before the personal name.

APPENDIX B

A CHINESE CRITICAL VOCABULARY

In my efforts at translation of Chinese literature, for instance in the

translation of The Epigrams of Chang Ch’ao, I have constantly run

across phrases or terms that are extremely difficult to render into

English. This has made me think that perhaps a list of Chinese

critical terms with explanatory comments will be both useful and

enlightening. It will also be enlightening because the Chinese critics

seem to have evolved a technique for the enjoyment of nature and

art and literature, and an examination of their critical vocabulary will

reveal this technique and their aesthetic feelings about things. One is

often forced to write bad English in trying to express such Chinese

aesthetic ideas or notions, as for instance when one speaks of

“enjoying the snow,” “singing the wind,” “awaiting the moon,” “playing

water,” “facing wine,” “sleeping flowers,” “pacing the moonlight,”

“pacing spring,” “pillowing water,” “lying down traveling,” and so on.

One needs to explain that “awaiting the moon” means that one goes

out to the courtyard after supper to look at the crescent moon, but it

has not yet come up and so one has to wait for it, or that “lying down

traveling” means mentally traveling while lying in bed. And when one

speaks of “the moon being suspended at the roof corner

’ or “over

the treetops,” of course the phrase is figurative. But there are more

abstract and elusive ideas that are more difficult to paraphrase, as

for instance when a Chinese artist speaks of the “five grades of

ch’ing” (“purity”): “pure and inspired,” as when one looks at the moon

over the hills and is disgusted with the busy life and thinks of going

away to be a recluse; “pure and charming,” as when one has books

in one’s study and has flowers well arranged in his vase; “pure and

poor,” as when one is somewhat sad and forlorn living out in a dreary

valley and forsaken by his relatives; “pure and crazy” as when one

loves secluded spots and rare persons and books; and “pure and

rare” as when one has read the classics of the ages and finds

himself at home among rocks and springs, and “his writing smells of

haze and colored clouds, and his conduct is far removed from the

dusts of the busy world.”

I am trying in the following to interpret briefly some of these

aesthetic notions under seven heads. First, the emotions and

personality of the man; second, aesthetic notions borrowed from

physical objects in general; third, types of beauty characteristic of

spring; fourth, types of beauty characteristic of summer; fifth, types

of beauty characteristic of autumn; sixth, types of beauty

characteristic of winter; seventh, the beauty of perfect naturalness,

which is the highest form of beauty attainable by human artists. The

list is of course far from complete and deals chiefly with the most

characteristic aesthetic ideas. But while an intensive study of this

critical vocabulary will increase one’s understanding and enjoyment

of Chinese paintings, a great majority of the terms have moral

connotations also. All human personalities can be described in

aesthetic terms, and they usually are in the Chinese language.

1. The Perceiving Artist

All painting, all poetry and all art are based upon two elements,

which are called in Chinese, ching (No. 31) or the scene, the picture;

the ch’ing (No. 16), or the sentiment or mood of man.

A. Expressions concerning man’s style and specific charms of

culture:

1. yün: originally meaning “rhyme,” now meaning “charm.” A

man without charm is said to be without yün. It is used in connection

with word No. 2 in the phrase fengyün, or “wind charm,” meaning

“charm of atmosphere” or “style.” In combination with ch’i in the

phrase ch’iyün (ch’i, No. 40, meaning “atmosphere”), it expresses

the highest aim of Chinese painters, “rhythmic vitality.”

2. feng: wind or style. Fengtiao means “the style” of a person or

of a work of art. Fengyüeh (“wind and moon”) means “sentimental

subjects.” Fengkeh means “style and character.”

3. tiao: tune or style, as explained under fengtiao (No. 2).

4. t’ai: expression of a man or a woman, particularly in the

phrase tset’ai or t’aitu, which means “attitude,” physical or spiritual.

5. tse: charm of expression, especially of a winning woman, but

also of graceful writing.

6. chih: really impossible to translate, originally meaning “fine

and delicate lines,” now meaning “the quality of being interesting to

look at,” also “beauty,” “flavor,” “whimsical charm,” “delicate charm.”

When a man or a writing has delicate charm, we say that he or it has

chih, or fengchih. Quite close to No. 19.

7. ya: refined, elegant, not vulgar, exquisite. Yajen means “a

charming or cultured scholar.” In general, ya is contrasted with shu

or “vulgar.” When one drinks tea at a famous spring sitting on a rock

with bare feet, it is said to be ya. This elegance is always genteel:

wenya, erhya, both mean “genteel elegance,”

8. sao: poetic, sentimental. A poet is called saojen, or

“sentimental person.” Fengsao means “amorous.”

9. yi: romantic, detached from life, fugitive, leisurely. One can

be ch’ingyi or “pure and romantic,” kaoyi or “high and romantic,”

k’uangyi or “expansive and romantic.” This is the quality of people

who have seen through life and begin to take it easy and leisurely. It

is also an important quality of painting. It is understood that all these

words in this list can be used indifferently as nouns or adjectives,

and sometimes as verbs. Ch’aoyi is “to be superior” or “to soar

above the common man” or “to be eminent.”

10. ta: the quality of understanding and consequent ability to

take things lightly. A man who takes anything too seriously, or is too

deeply involved in business, is “not ta” or “puta” Takuan means “to

have seen through life,” which enables a man to be less ambitious

and put up with temporary disadvantages or obscurity and poverty.

But ta doesn’t necessarily mean “escape”; it simply means

“understanding.” One can “ta the human heart” or “the ways of the

world.” Again tach’ing represents the highest ideal of Confucian

moral and political philosophy and means “to enable men and

women to satisfy their emotions or sentiments.”

11. t’ung: similar in meaning to ta, with specific variations.

T’ungta means “to have understanding” of the human heart, or of

any particular subject. A man who has understanding is called either

t’ungjen or tajen; t’ungjen also specifically refers to a man who has

read a great deal and thought things through. Originally t’ung meant

“to go through” or “have a clear passage.” A stupid man is said to

have “an unclear passage in his stomach or intestines.” It is

interesting to note that to be t’ung is regarded generally as the

criterion and real aim of education. We usually ask, “Has So-and-So

read his books t’ung?”, “Is his writing already t’ung?” meaning

thereby whether he has reached a point where he has got his ideas

in order and adopted an intelligent attitude toward things. Hence a

piece of writing which shows muddled thoughts or superficial or

involved ideas or is unidiomatic in language, is said to be “not tung”

or “put’ung.” This is the quality of muddleheadedness. On the other

hand, a man who has thought things through and is able therefore to

take things lightly or who shows quick comprehension is said to be

t’ungt’uo (t’uo meaning “casting off”).

B. Concerning one’s talent or character or spirit:

12. ts’ai: talent, inborn capacity. The notion is originally derived

from “timber,” from which wooden vessels are made. There are

different kinds of talent, e. g., poetic talent (shihts’ai), talent for

painting (huats’ai). Ch’ingts’ai or “pure talent” corresponds to the

English word “talent” and ch’its’ai or “rare talent” corresponds nearly

to the English word “genius,” which is also expressed by tients’ai or

“heavenly talent” Ts’aitse, “a talented man,” is an important notion

going with chiajen or “a beautiful woman.” The notion is that a

talented scholar must go with a beautiful woman. Talented girls or

women are known as ts’ainü. Ts’aitiao means “talent and style.”

Ts’aich’i (ch’i:vessel) means “talent with regard to its competence” for

big or small jobs. A man whose ts’aich’i is small is not qualified for

big jobs, and will not be able to get or hold them simply because of

deficiencies in his own character.

13. p’in: character, personality, grade, quality. A painter must

have good jenp’in, or “human personality.” Pinkeh means “moral

character.” Pin is also a verb; “to p’in tea” is to sample its flavor, or

merely to drink in a quiet and leisurely manner. More fully explained

in the section, “Art as Play and Personality.”

14. shen: spirit. When a man or a piece of writing lacks spirit or

expression, he or it is said to lack shents’ai (“spirit and color”).

Shench’t means “spirit and force” or “forceful expression” or “dignity.”

There was a school of Chinese poetry, called “the school of

shenyün” with emphasis on the elusive qualities of charm and spirit.

A man or woman with a charming spirit is said to have shenyun.

C. Concerning human emotions and feelings:

15. yi: mood, inclination, intention. The intention of a painter or

calligraphist, or his general conception preceding his brushwork, is

spoken of as piyi or “intention of the brush.” This “intention” is often

attributed to nature, as when we say that “the skies have yüyi” or

“intention to rain”; or that “there is a ch’iuyi or intention or spirit of

autumn,” when at the end of summer we feel there is a chill in the air

and leaves are beginning to turn golden. Similarly there is ch’unyi or

“intention of spring,” when the ice begins to melt and the flowers are

getting ready to put forth buds.

16. ch’ing: sentiment, passion, love, sympathy, friendly feeling.

To be able to understand people or the human heart is “to know

jenct’ing or human sentiments.” Any man who is inhuman, who is

over-austere, or who is an ascetic is said to be puchin jench’ing or

“to have departed from human nature or human sentiments.” Any

philosophy which has departed from human sentiments is a false

philosophy, and any political regime which goes against one’s natural

human instincts, religious, sexual, or social, is doomed to fall. A

piece of writing must have both beauty of language and beauty of

sentiment (wen ch’ing ping mou). A man who is cold or hard-hearted

or disloyal is said to be wuch’ing or “to have no heart.” He is a worm,

or “he has a heart and intestines made of iron and stone.”

17. ch’ang: intestines, feelings, emotions. One who is very sad

is said to have “his intestines broken,” or “tied up into a hundred

knots.” These intestines are broad or narrow, depending on whether

a man is generous or mean. A man whose ideas run dry and who

constantly stops during writing is said to have “dried-up intestines.”

18. hsing: inspiration, happy mood, enthusiasm to do

something, One can have shih-hsing, or “mood for poetry,” or

chiuhsing or “mood for drinking.” This mood is either deep or

shallow. It is an important element of poetry.

19. ch’u: interesting, having flavor, the quality of being

interesting to look at. A scene or a man possesses or lacks this ch’ü.

In particular, ch’ü denotes an artistic pleasure, like drinking tea, or

watching clouds. A vulgar person is not supposed to “understand

ch’ü.”

20. sse: thought, longing, idea. In judging a piece of writing, we

say the author’s wensse, or “the flow of his thoughts” or “literary

ideas” is good or bad. One can have “spring thoughts or sentiments”

(ch’unsse), or “autumn thoughts or sentiments” (ch’iusse).

D. Some general ideas about culture:

26. fu: luck, predestined happiness, A man born into this world

is supposed to have a definite quantity of luck awarded to him for his

enjoyment, and some people have more than others. A man whose

children die young, or a man who has a beautiful country home, but

is unable to live in it, is said to have “no luck to enjoy them.” On the

other hand, a man who enjoys too much, or who enjoys inordinately,

or enjoys what is not appropriate, as for instance receiving a kowtow

from an elderly gentleman older than himself, is said thus to chehfu,

or “curtail his luck,” or shorten his life.

27. yüan: a happy predestination, predestined matrimony be-

between two persons. A man may desire to marry a girl, but unless

he has yuan or yinyüan, he can never succeed. Other people who

have this yinyuan will fall in love at first sight and get married in spite

of all obstacles. A yuanchia (yuan written with another character)

means “predestined enemy,” i.e., lover.

28. shih: judgment, insight, taste. This is contrasted with mere

scholarship or learning, hsueh. A man who is learned and has

erudition but lacks insight or judgment or good taste in knowledge, is

an inferior kind of a scholar, as explained in the section “Good Taste

in Knowledge.” It comes also in the phrase shihchien, or chienshih,

which means still the same thing.

29. Tao: the Way, truth, religion—really untranslatable. This is

the Tao of Taoism, generally signifying the ways or laws of nature

itself, and the object of human wisdom is to fall in line with Tao or the

ways and laws of Nature and live in harmony with them. A man who

achieves this happy state is said “to have attained the Tao,” or

tehtao. Closely related to tehtao is tseteh, or “to have found oneself.”

One who has found Tao thereby finds himself also. Tseteh, or “to

have found oneself,” means “to be happy.”

In contrast to these approved cultured qualities, there are a few

expressing disapproval worthy of mention. Some of these are: fu

(rotten, musty), yü (straitjacket), suan (sour) all refer to the

doctrinaire and slavish follower of rules and conventions; suan or

“sour” in particular refers to “pedantry.” Pan (wooden), chih (straight)

and tai (stagnant) refer to “stiffness” of style or conduct. Lu

(colloquially pronounced lou at Peking, meaning “exposed”) refers to

“inartistic plainness” in writing, or painting, or diplomacy. A good

boxer is said to be “not lou” or pulou, i. e., he never lets people know

how good he is until the occasion comes for putting his skill into use.

The first condition in the training of a boxer is “never to swagger.”

Fou, from the idea “floating on water” means superficiality plus

instability, lack of depth and lack of seriousness. Lou, shu, p’i are

common terms for “vulgarity” in contrast to ya,, “refinement” or

“elegance.” This seems especially to refer to the uncultured state,

like unweeded ground, as in the saying of a Chin scholar that “after

having not seen a certain cultured friend for three days, one’s p’ilou

or vulgarity sprouts up again.”

II. Esthetic notions borrowed from physical objects in general:

30. wen: originally “grains of pebbles, ripples on water, waving

lines of objects (e. g., brocade),” now meaning “literature.” The

fundamental idea is the natural lines of movement or beauty of lines

and form, and when applied to writing, it refers to the movement of

one’s thoughts and language. We speak also of the “whirls” or

“eddies” of one’s literary composition (wenchang p’olan), describing

the curious overlapping and back-and-forth twists and turns of the

author’s thoughts. In addition, there is the idea of decoration or

refinement, as contained in the idea of “dress,” and particularly of

brocade or embroidery. In connection with wen, the idea of tsao

“water-cress” refers to the “embellishments” or “intrinsic beauties” of

a writer’s language.

31. ching: a picture, a scene, particularly a beautiful scene, as

of summer clouds or stars at night. This idea of “picture” is highly

subjective, and borrows its charm from human thoughts and

sentiments. If one determines to see a thing as a picture, then it

becomes a picture. A story of convalescence or of a night on the

desert or storm at sea is often more beautiful than the experience

itself.

32. kuang: light. This is an elusive quality, e. g., “the light of

water,” or “light of spring,” Connected with the following.

33. ts’ai: color, a group of bright colors, brilliance. A piece of

writing may be lacking in brilliance or kuangts’ai. One can have of

course “literary brilliance,” “moral brilliance” (“shining virtue”) and

brilliance in the quality of ink and pigment in a painting.

34. wei: flavor, smell. Good flavor is what is good to “ruminate

on”; it is “deep and long”; and it is usually mild. A superficial book or

saying is therefore lacking in wei, because it does not stand

“ruminating.” Huciwei, or “back flavor” or “return flavor,” is felt a while

after eating olives or tasting tea. A man may lack “flavor” (or be

uninteresting) and friendship can smell sweet.

35. ying: shadow, image in a mirror, reflection in water; that

which suggests the original. In the novel Red Chamber Dream,

certain maids are the shadows, yingtse, of certain higher-class girls,

being alike in quality, like minor flowers besides the chief flowers in a

vase, A character in a novel is also said to be the “shadow” of a real

person, its original.

36. ching: a state, a condition, particularly of living, and as felt

by the person; atmosphere created in a painting or a poem; often

chingchieh. Yiehing (yi, No. 15), literally “condition of mind,” is a

mood or atmosphere created by art, which is very important in

poetry; otherwise also expressed as shenehing, or literally “spiritual

atmosphere.”

37. li: reason, inner order, inner form, inner nature of things.

Subjective painters (particularly of Sung Dynasty) would emphasize

this li. Closely related to wen (No. 30), especially in the phrase wenli

(also name of the classical language), wen denoting the form and li

denoting the substance of thought, or its movement.

38. t’i: body, literally and figuratively, general shape, framework,

structure.

39 ku: bone, skeleton, inner being, as contrasted with temporary

appearances. The important thing is what a man has got “in his

bones,” e. g., as a democrat or aristocrat, or hedonist. The

underlying philosophy or attitude of a writer provides “the bones” for

his writings, and a superficial writer touching on trivial topics may

have no “bones” at all. In calligraphy, k u, or kuchia, means the basic

framework or pattern of a character, as contained in a few main

supporting strokes.

40. ch’i: spirit, force, ether, gas, general atmosphere. There are

ch’unch’i (spirit or armosphere of spring), ch’iuch’i (spirit or

atmosphere of autumn), and an old man may have laoch’i, if he tries

too often to remind people of his age and authority. Like the spirit of

the seasons, the ch’i of a ruling dynasty may wax and wane; when

this ch’i is on the decline, everything goes wrong, e. g., there may be

no heirs. Yüanch’i means “vital force” in the universe and in an

individual, and one should do well to nourish or cherish it. A literary

or artistic masterpiece is supposed to have stolen the secrets of

nature, thus “leaking out the yüanch’i” and it is a thing not to be

attempted too often. In connection with yün (fate), ch’iyün or the

dominant fate of a person or house is something which “goes round,”

precipitating different happenings at different appointed times (see

also under No. 1). Thus a man may have ts’aich’i (money ch’i) which

is good or bad for a certain year, determining whether he is going to

make or lose money. It is an important teaching both of

Confucianism and Taoism to yangch’i or “nourish this ch’i,” by being

kind, or generous, or not overworking oneself, or not talking too

much.

41. li: energy, force, A writing or painting may or may not have

energy, shown as force, expressed as ch’ili

42. shih: gesture, posture, social position, battle formation, that

which gives advantage of position in any struggle. This notion is

extremely important and is connected with every form of dynamic

beauty, as against mere beauty of static balance. Thus a rock may

have a “rock posture,” an outstretching branch has its own “branch

posture” (which may be good or bad, elegant or ordinary); and there

are “stroke posture,” “character posture,” and “brush posture” in

writing and painting and “posture of a hill,” “posture of a cloud,” etc.

A hill which has an embracing or encircling gesture (huanpao) is said

to be elegant. A situation is conceived as static, while a shih denotes

that which the situation is going to become, or “the way it looks”: one

speaks of the shih of wind, rain, flood, or battle, as the way the wind,

rain, flood or battle looks for the future, whether increasing or

decreasing in force, stopping soon or continuing indefinitely, gaining

or losing, in what direction, with what force, etc.

III. Types of beauty characteristic of spring:

Of the types of beauty modally associated with the different

seasons, those of spring and summer are comparatively less striking

and peculiar as esthetic notions than those of autumn and winter.

Most of these words are used indifferently as adjectives and nouns.

43. ming: bright (a bright moon, a brightly dressed woman). We

speak of “bright hills and graceful waters,” shan ming shui hsiu. Cf.

met below.

44. met: seductive, enticing, beauty of softness. This quality is

frequently applied to women, the moon and flowers, and even rivers,

“When the rocks contain jade, the hill becomes hui (shining); and

when the water contains pearls, the river becomes met (enticing),”

according to Lu Chi.

45. chiao: beautiful and helpless, enticing—rather similar to the

above word mei

46. hsiu: delicate, graceful, slender and beautiful. A type of

beauty symbolized by the bamboo. A girl or woman must above all

have “an air of delicacy” or hsiuch’i. For a woman without this air of

delicacy (e. g., one who talks in a loud voice), time spent in beauty

parlors is wasted. Nothing can be done about a loud-voiced woman.

Certain kinds of trees and rivers also have this delicate beauty.

47. yen: smilingly or elegantly pretty—mostly of flowers, also of

women and water or hills.

48. yen: voluptuous, gorgeously beautiful, dazzlingly beautiful,

passionate. E. g., the peony, Mae West.

49. lun: lustrous, smooth to the touch, kind to the throat,

nourishing as of liquids, not harsh. Thus the color or light of good

jade is said to be lun, or lustrous. As a verb, the rain lun or nourishes

the fields, and almond soup nourishes the throat. A forest newly

bathed in rain is then spoken of as kuanglum, bright and lustrous.

This is an atmospheric quality.

50. ling (huo, shengch’i, shengtung): vitality characteristic of

spring. A picture is linghuo when it is vitally alive. “Stuffiness” of

composition prevents this. Hence the important notion k’ungling,

“empty and alive,” a quality aimed at in good paintings and rockeries

by the generous use of space.

IV. Types of beauty characteristic of summer:

In general summer suggests luxuriance and full power. Some of

the notions classified under summer, like ch’i, ts’iao (Nos. 57,59) can

just as well belong to autumn.

51. hua: flowery, floral splendor. The “Flowery Kingdom.” A

pretty composition without substance is said to be “flowery without

seeds,” “seeds” being associated with the autumn harvest (see No.

72).

52. mou: rich, luxuriant—of trees, forests and sentiments.

53. ch’ang: luxuriant, forceful in expression, thoroughly

enjoyable. Originally of plants, now of literary compositions. Such

ch’ang compositions can cure one’s headache, as was said of Ch’en

Lin’s philippic. One feels a pleasure of relief when our instincts are

satisified and feelings well expressed.

54. wei: great, grand. In the usual English sense. This and the

following four words are usually used together in varying

combinations.

55. hun: whole, strong, massive—of writing which is deep and

mature and brushwork which is massive.

56. hsiung: heroic, powerful, majestic.

57. ch’i: rare—really an untranslatable word. Literally, it means

“remarkable,” “strange,” “extraordinary,” but it has definite

associations not fully expressed by the word “remarkable.” There

must go with it a subjective love of the unusual, the unconventional

and the unattainable by common men. A ch’ishu is more than a

“remarkable book”: it is one of the few world masterpieces not to be

duplicated. “Rare” comes nearest to it. Tired of the humdrum world

and the common run of men and things, one is on the look out for

ch’i or “rare” books, rocks, peaks, flowers, perfumes, delicacies,

jewels, curios, etc.

58. chuang: strong, powerful. The combination peichuang, “sad

and strong,” denotes the tragic mood.

59. ts’iao: steep, rugged, abrupt—of landscapes and literary

manner.

60. wei: literally “dangerous,” but really “awe-inspiring.” Thus a

flimsy wooden bridge across a deep ravine or an overhanging

precipice is wei or delicious to look at.

61. hao (fang): the chivalrous mood, free and nonchalant,

unrestrained. Two types of poetic manner are distinguished, the

haofang or the romantic, expansive style of Li Po, and wanyüeh, or

the quiet, restrained style of Tu Fu. In this connection there are a

number of expressions rather often used in Chinese biographies in

praise of romantic persons: t’it’ang, (“unconventional”), t’ungt’uo

(“emancipated”), puchi (“unbridled”), etc. A poet or writer writing with

the full sweep and mastery of his powers is compared to “a celestial

horse galloping in the sky.”

V. Types of beauty characteristic of autumn:

In general the autumn season stands for simplicity, maturity and

conservation; in contrast to summer luxuriance, an autumn scene

suggests ethereal thinness, crispness and the penetrating, yet

exhilarating, coolness of the autumn wind. Here the image of a clear

autumn moon and an enticing autumn lake undoubtedly plays an

important role. Autumn also suggests the tragic mood. In autumn,

one is also supposed to have outgrown the luxuriance of summer

and begun to love simplicity, peace and contentment. Like the

farmer, one no longer tills and no longer runs about in the scorching

sun, but begins to gather in and take stock of what he has got. If we

could only learn to live our life in harmony with the rhythm of nature!

But we will not. We want to run forever in the scorching sun.

The feeling for the dreary beauty of autumn was perfectly

expressed by one of the great Yuan dramatists:

Dry vines, old trees, evening crows–

Small bridge, flat banks, water flows—

Old road, slim horse, west wind blows—

And as the sun westward sets,

Forlorn love, far away, no one knows!

62. tan: mild, pale in color, as of a misty lake. Probably the

quality in a painting or writing that gives the greatest pleasure to a

man of mature taste is ch’ingtan (lucid and mild), p’ingtan (“even and

mild,” the natural aroma of simple writing), or tanyüan (yuan, No. 65;

mild-toned and “distant” in perspective, either in painting or in style of

thought). A man of a retiring mild temperament is t’ientan (quiet and

easily contented, or loving simple joys); he adopts an attitude toward

money and fame described as tanpo (mild and thin).

63. p’u: simple in taste, unadorned, unsophisticated, close to

nature. Shunp’u (unspoiled and simple) describes the simple

character and ways of living of the ancient people, characterized by

natural hospitality and kindness, being yet unspoiled by civilization.

Its importance has been indicated throughout this book.

64. kao (shen): high, ethereal, fine (kao), and deep (shen).

One speaks of “high autumn” which in sentiment is akin to

highmindedness (kaoyi, “high and romantic”). A man’s ambition or

interest is said to be kaoyuan, “high and distant,” if he aims at the

superior things of the spirit. Or it is kaok’uang (see No. 65), which

can be used of an autumn landscape and a high- and broad-minded

person.

65. k’uang (yuan): broad-minded, emancipated, expansive in

nature (of person) or in view (of landscape). Yuan means distant,

having a distant perspective. K’uanghuai is to have an “expansive

breast” or to take a detached view of life.

66. hsiao (su): thin and sparse, like an autumn forest, dreary,

Closely connected with the idea of tan or “mildness,” as in the

phrase sutan, “sparse and mild-toned,” as autumn trees ought to be

painted. Often an autumn landscape must be appreciated for its

dreariness, as in the poem of Ma Chihyüan quoted above. What is

often described as ch’iuyi or “intention or spirit of autumn” is just this

quality.

67. sou: thin, slender. This is a strangely beautiful word in the

Chinese language. Slender rocks and bamboos are always painted

together. It expresses non-sensuous beauty.

68. chien: simple, few in words or strokes. The ideal political

condition is described as a state when the “administration is simple

(chien) and punishments are light.” The opposite conception is fan,

or complicated, e.g., the income tax, Chientan again means “simple

and mild.” A writer who does not use too many words is said to have

the chientan (terse and mild) quality.

69. ch’ing: clear, lucid, pure, clean, not profuse, not obstructed,

not burdened with details, like an autumn landscape. Ch’ingliang

(clear and cool), ch’ingtan (lucid and mild), ch’ingp’in (pure and

poor), are common combinations. Ch’inghsin (clean and novel)

expresses the quality of “originality” or “freshness” in thought or

expression.

70. hsien: leisure, leisurely. A very much used word. Thus one’s

“hands” and “mind” can both be “leisurely,” or the hands may be

leisurely while the mind is busy, or the mind may be leisurely while

one’s hands are busy. Directions are given by Ch’en Meikung’s son

on what scholars should do in the different situations. Other

expressions are “leisurely affairs” (hsienshih), “leisurely

conversation” (hsient’an), “leisurely sentiments” (hsiench’ing),

“leisurely gossip” (hsienhua), “luck of leisure” (hsienfu), “leisurely

pleasures” (hsiench’ü). Ch’inghsien means both to “enjoy the luck of

leisure” and (euphemistically) “to be unemployed.” Li Liweng’s book

on the art of living is called Hsiench’ing Ouchi (Casual Occupations

of Leisurely Sentiments), “To kill time” is expressed by hsiaohsien, or

to “consume” leisure.

71. hang (shuang): nice and cool, mainly associated with the

disappearance of heat or any sort of oppressiveness. A philosophy

of detachment is compared to a “dose of cooling medicine.” A man

who readily complies with a request for help, or signs a contract

without too much negotiation over terms, is said to be shuangli,

“direct and pleasantly sharp,” like the autumn wind.

72. shih: substance, having substance; originally “seeds,”

characteristic of autumn. Floral language without thought is “hua and

not shih”—flowers without seeds.

VI. Types of beauty characteristic of winter:

The beauty of winter is chiefly that of old age, of cold splendor, of

quiet and seclusion.

73. han (leng): cold, poor. Opposed to heat and excitement.

Lengyen means “cold splendor,” characteristic of the chry

santhemum and the plum flower. The white pear flowers, although

appearing in spring, are said to have this quality also. Hanching is a

comfortable state known as “cold and quiet.” In the sense of winter

rigor, han also means “poverty.”

74. ching: quiet or quietness, solitude, serenity, a quality as

much appreciated as the notion of “leisure,” and often used as part

of a name for a girl or a private garden. Ch’ingching is to have quiet

and privacy, or not to have too many callers.

75. ku: ancient, antique, of ancient times, of ancient manner,

mature. Almost anything which is k u is good in China, An old,

rugged pine tree or a simple, kind old peasant is said to have the

“manner of the ancients” (kuyi). The notion “ancient” is also

associated with “simplicity” (kup’u), with “elegance” (kuya), and with

“eccentricity” (kukuai).

76. lao (mat): old, mature, experienced, Laolien means “to be

(jg) experienced.” A mature style is said to be laotao (“old and having

arrived”), and what seems ancient and precious is said to be kulao.

There is a fascination about what is old, expressed by the phrase

ts’ctnglao, as speaking of a big old tree.

77. ku: dried-up, beautifully desolate or desolately beautiful,

associated with the idea of ku (No. 75).

78. yu: secluded, charming in seclusion, having the manner of

a recluse, content with oneself. A charming secluded scholar is a

yujen, and his charm is known as yuyun. “Secluded elegance” is

expressed by yuya. Typical of this quality is the “secluded orchid”

growing in a deserted valley, “content to smell its own lonely

fragrance.”

79. wen (hanhsü): recluse, hidden from the world, hidden in

meaning, not exposed to the public. True wisdom is that which

conceals wisdom; as Laotse expressed it, “Great wisdom is like

stupidity..” True art conceals art. Good writing leaves something

unsaid for the reader to think about. The opposite quality, lou, or

“exposed” is a sign of immaturity, or of downright vulgarity.

80. chück (yü): the beauty of stupidity as typified by rocks

and tree roots, often selected for enjoyment. Rocks seem to typify an

absolute return to nature. This is but an extreme formulation of the

worship of non-sensuous beauty, as a reaction to the worship of

sensuous beauty, e. g., the beauty of flowers. There are types of

calligraphy which purposely aim at being chüeh (stupid), or kuchüeh

(ancient and stupid), which shows really a greater refinement of spirit

than the love of sensuous calligraphy. This type of calligraphy would

imitate the lines of rocks, gnarled roots and dried-up vines.

VII. The beauty of complete naturalness:

The highest art is like nature. Hence all traces of “axe and chisel

marks” must be obliterated. Such works can only be done by a

master, with complete seeming artlessness and absence of effort, as

in a poem where we feel there is no labor at embellishments,

because the simple beauty of the sentiments is absolutely adequate.

81. hua: changed, transformed, with all artificiality obliterated.

This is the highest praise that can be given a poem or a painting.

Sometimes shenhua is used, meaning “divinely transformed.” This is

far higher praise than other epithets like miao (exquisite), neng

(clever). In grading different masters or works of art, the huap’in or

shenp’in grade always tops the list. One speaks of such work as

done by “ghost’s axe and god’s craft.” The best prose, like that of Su

Tungp’o is compared to “sailing clouds and flowing water,” going or

stopping according to their inner law.

I have not indicated the tone marks, as this book is for the general reader.

INDEX

INDEX
Academic scholarship, 414
Achievement, 162
Action, 164
Aesop’s Fables, 64
Age, see Old age
Alimentation, 43
All Men Are Brothers (Shuihu), 218, 325
Amateurism, 366
American food, 253
marriage, 172
vices, 161
women, 177
See also Western
Amiel, Henri Frédéric, 99
Analects, 379, 380
Analects Fortnightly, 206
Aneester worship, 184
Andeisen, Hans Christian, 75
Animal, carnivorous, 50
faith, 24, 159
herbivorous, 49
heritage, 24, 33, 64, 159, 367
Animism, 19
Ape, 67
Appetite, 145
Aristotle, 415
Arnold, Matthew, 298
Art, II, 140
and propaganda, 372
as play, 366
physical basis of, 368, 431
taste in, 363
Art of Living, 255, 268
Autobiographies, 284
Chinese, 285
of literary men, 284
Autumn, 321, 431, 442
Azalea, 307
Baboon, 67
Bacon, Francis, 418
Balfour, Lord, 36
Bamboo tree, 298, 300
Beauty, 31, 393
of autumn, 442

of perfect naturalness, 431
of physical objects, 431
of seasons, 431, 439
of spring, 439
of summer, 440
of winter, 444
Bed, Chinese, 2, 270
lying in, 202
Behavior, incalculability of, 66
Benchley, Robert, 79
Biological view, 27, 166
Body, 25, 27
and spirit, 25
rhythm of life, 30
sense of time, 30
Book of Changes, 218, 379
Books, 324
enjoyment of, 376
Boredom, 73
Botany, 47
Brooks, Van “Wyek, 150
Broun, Heywood, 79
Bryce, James, 8, 103
Buddhism, 11, 119, 161
view of man, 20
Burbank, Luther, 399
Byron, George G., 136
Caesar, Julius, 60, 108
Calligraphy, 158 n., 296, 374, 376
Camouflage, 105
Cannibalism, 50
Careers, 173
Carrel, Dr. Alexis, 29
Cassia, 307
Celibacy, 170
Censorship, 72
Ch’achiek, 225 n., 228
Ch’achingg, 225 n.
Chairs, sitting in, 206
Ch’alu, 225
Chang Ch’20, x, 300, 301, 428
Epigrams of, 316, 430
Chang Tai, 101, 428
Chankuots’eh, 215
Ch2o Mengfu, 183
Chaowu, 409

Ch’aoyün, 221
Character, 164, 433
in art, 375
Characteristics, human, 68
individuals, 4
nations, 6
Charm, 363, 431
Ch’asu, 225n., 226, 229
Chattering instinct, 53, 56, 70
Chaucer, Geoffrey, 64
Ch’en Chiju, 383, 428
Ch’en Meikung, see Ch’en Chiju
Ch’en Yun, 288, 428
Cheng Hsieh, see Cheng Panch’iao
Cheng Hsuan, see Cheng K’angch’eng
Cheng K’angch’eng, 314, 428
Cheng Panch’iao, 109, 302, 428
Ch’eng Yich’uan 380
Chesterton, Gilbert K., 79, 284, 378
Chi Kung, III
Chi Tien, see Chi Kung
Chia Fuhsi, 40
Chiang Kaishek, 191, 236
Chiang Tan, 285, 428
Chiangli, 422
Ch’ichiao, 244
Chiehheyuan (Painting Patterns), 270
Ch’ienlung, Emperor, 102
Chihching, 132 n.
Children, 167, 168, 180
Ch’in, 118, 285, 321
Chin Shengt’an, x, III, 130, 334, 383, 428
“Thirty-three Happy Moments, 130
Ch’m Shih-huang, 39
Chin Wei, see Chin Shengt’an
Chinch’ing, 422
Chinese architecture, 208
characteristics, 7, 62
civilization, 84
critical vocabulary, 430
cult of idle life, 152
culture, 1, 20
dress, 261, 370
enjoyment of life, 158
family ideal, 182
furniture, 308
houses, 266
humanism, 159

landscape painting, 140, 281, 294, 376, 431
literature, 411, 412, 430
medicine, 249
names, 427
national mind, 9
pagans, 409
philosophy, 9, 14, 411
definition of, 159
romanticists, 153
scholarship, 362, 411
social amenities, 371
Taoist-Confucianist View of Man, 15, 19
temperament, 150
theory of leisure, 150, 152
wines, 242
Ching, 431
Ch’ing, 98, 422, 431
Chinghuayüan, 245
Ch’ingli, 422
Chingshen, 21 Chingwan, 313
Chinp’ingmei (Gold-Vase Plum), 325
Chinshih, 189
Ch’iufu, 285, 428
Chiup’in, 373
Chivalry, 193
Chou Liench’i, 306
Chou Wenfu, 228
Christian missionaries, 17, 185
religion, 396, 400, 403
salvation, 124
Science, 409
theologians, 407
view of mankind, 15
Christians, Chinese, 185
Chrysanthemum, 303, 306
Chu conversations, 370
Chu Tu, 181
Chuang Chou, see Chuangtse
Chuangtse, X, 40, 95, 96, 108, 161, 365, 381, 428
Chuangyüan, 189
Chuch’üan HHaop’in, 225
Chung Yung, 374 n.
Churches, 397
Chut’an, 370
Cigar Ashes, 386
Civilization, 146
Chinese, 84, 108, 166
machine, 149

twentieth century, 52
Western, 84, 108, 166
Clemenceau, Georges, 107
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 153
Comfort, 207, 208
Common sense, 8, 80, 411
return to, 417
Communism, 92, 187, 217, 425
Compassion, 98
Conduct, good form in, 362, 369
Confucius, 2, II, 60, 95, 97, 108, 171, 176, 185, 186, 203, 208, 364, 379, 417, 421, 423
wife of, 249
Confucianism, 11, 94, 112, 119, 143
view of man, 19
Contemplation, 203
Conversation, 211
and leisure, 214, 217
and prose, 215
art of, 217
Cooking, 248
Western, 253
Courage, 98, 102
intellectual, 363
Creation, story of, 169, 182
Creative impulse, 368
Critical spirit, 413
vocabulary, Chinese, 430
Cult of idle life, Chinese, 152
Culture, 143, 435
and leisure, 150
and the individual, 89
Chinese, 1, 20
enjoyment of, 10, 362
expressions for, 431
Curiosity, instinct of, 71
playful, 66, 71
Customs, Western, 257
Cynicism, 105, III
Cypress trees, 301
Darwin, 24, 159, 367
Daudet, Léon, 101
David, King, 60
Day, Clarence, 33
Death, 38
See also immortality, mortality
Definitions, 418

Democracies, 78
Democratic Vistas, 89, 150
Democritus, 103, 138
De Quincey, 225
Descartes, 420
Detachment, 1, 153
Determinism in human affairs, 91
Devil, 15
Dictators, 78, 84, 241
Diet, 249
Dignity, human, 11, 65, 207, 408
Discernment, 363
Divine purpose, 123
Dogmatism, 424
Dreams, 5, 6, 73
capacity for, 66
national, 75
Dress, Chinese, 261, 370
Western, 261
Drinking, 43, 221
and wine games, 239
Earth, 23, 156
Eating, 42, 244
Economics, 87
mid-Victorian, 85
Edison, Thomas A., 56, 399
Education, aim of, 364
modern, 364
Edward VIII, abdication of, 93
Efficiency, 162
Einstein, Albert, 53, 399
Eliot, George, 381
Ellis, Havelock, 284
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 99
Emotions, 431, 434
expressions for, 431
English characteristics, 6, 8, 61
Environment, 90
Epicureans, 137
Epigrams, 418
Epigrams of Chang Ch’ao, 316
Eugenic system, 189
Euripides, 72
Europe, 79, 187, 426
Evolution, 24, 36, 67, 159
Fame, 102

Family honor, 188
ideal, Chinese, 182
life, 182
tree, 188
Fan Ch’engta, 306
Fanaticism, 5, 424
Fantasy, 5
Fascism, 187, 425
Fashion, 103
Feasts, Chinese, 244
Feelings, 434
Feng Yuhsiang, 236
Ferguson, Charles W., 241
Fighting instinct, 51
Flavor, in reading, 379
in writing, 386
Flesh, see Body
Flowers, 302, 317
and the seasons, 303
arrangements, 302, 308
enjoyment of, 314
watering, 312
Fohsiu, 371
Folly, 105
Food, 43, 146, 248
American, 253
and medicine, 248
and temperament, 49
as nourishment, 249
Chinese, 253
requisites of, 255
Western, 253
France, Ana role, 64
Free speech, 72
Freedom, individual, 85
French characteristics, 6
French Revolution, 45, 91
Friendship, 323
and tea drinking, 221
Furniture, Chinese, 273
Western, 273
Galileo, 52
Games, Chinese, 244
Gardens, Chinese, 267
“Genius,” 19, 21
German characteristics, 6, 7, 419

God, 396
Goethe, 61
Golden Mean, The, 113, 143, 415
Gold-Vase-Plum, 325
Government, constitutional, 85
Governor Yuan’s Islet, 297
Greek pagan view of man, 15, 17
prose, 219
Guessing fingers, 244
Gulhver’s Travels, 64
Hatt’ang, 132n., 307
Haldane, J B. S., 233
Half-and-half Song, 113
Handshaking, 257
Hanfeitsc, 215
Hanshan, 110
Hao, 427
Happiness, 122
individual, 426
of the spirit, 126
sensuous, 126
Hat, removal of, 260
Heaven, 125, 156, 278, 396
Hegel, 86, 92, 425
Heine, Heinrich, 9
Hell, 396
Henry Esmond, 380
Heredity, 188, 189
High-mindedness, 2, 153
Hills, 319
Hitler, Adolf, 78, 107
Hohenzollern, Wilhelm, 77
Home, 170
enjoyment of, 10, 166
Ho Shaochi, 374
House, Chinese, 266
Hsiangfeng, 313
Hsieh Lmgyun, 119, 428
Hsieh Taoyun, 220
Hsingling, 386
Hsiyuchi, 33, 325
Hsu Ts’eshu, 225n., 228
Hsü Wei, see Hsu Wench’ang
Hsü Wench’ang, 111, 338n., 381, 428
Hsüan Kuch’ing, 274 n.
Huainantse, 215

Huang Posse, 274 n.
Huang Shanku, 377, 428
Huang Tingchien, see Huang Shanku
Huangshan school of painters, 282
Huap’in, 374
Huatiao, 242
Hughes, Charles Evans, 199
Human body, 25, 27
characteristics, 68
civilization, rise of, 66
dignity, 11, 65, 207, 408
fallibility, 59
hand, 66
life, 30
mind, evolution of, 58
nature, 23, 27
purpose, 123
society, development of, 68 See also Man
Humanism, 112, 396
Chinese, 159
Humanized thinking, 411, 423
Humanness, 242
Humor, 4, 5, 6, 77
in life, 77
in politics, 77
in scholarship, 77
Hunger, 48
Husbands, 166
Huxley, Aldous, 79, 208
Hwen, 20
Ibsen, Henrik, 61
Idealism, 4, 77
Ideas, aesthetic, 431, 437
Immortality, 16, 19, 156, 190, 399
Impulse, aesthetic, 370
physiological, in Incense, 231, 237
Independence, 363
Individual, the, 87
characteristics of, pseudo-scientific for mula, 4
doctrine of, 88
happiness, 426
importance of, 403
Individualism, 173, 187
Inspiration, 368
Instincts, and intellect, 11
Chinese life closer to, 11

harmony of, 143
maternal, 171
of hunger, 48
parental, 171
paternal, 171
sexual, 48
Intellect, 21, 59
and mental pleasures, 140
Chinese distrust of, 11, 413
education of, 64
Interiors, Chinese, 266
James, William, 58, 82, 210, 420
Japanese characteristics, 7, 53
Jeans, Sir James, 396
jench’ing, 422
Jenp’in, 373
Jesus Christ, 60, 398
Joubert, 99
Kaoliang, 242
K’aop’an Yushih, 237
Keith, Sir Arthur, 156, 399
Kipling, Rudyard, 284
Knowledge, good taste in, 362
integration of, 415
over-specialization of, 413
specialized, 411
Ko Shan, 274 n.
Ku Ch’icnh, 383
Kuan Ch’iufu, 285, 428
Kuan Ing, see Kuan Ch’iufu
Kuan, Madame, 183
K’uanghuai, 2
K’ung Chi, see Tsesse Kung Tingan, 417
Lamaism, 409
Laotse, 97, 105, 155, 296, 299. 417, 428
Leacock, Stephen, 79
League of Nations, 53
Leisure, 217, 323
and culture, 150
Chinese theory of, 148
Li, 422
Li Chih, see Li Chowu
Li Cb’ingchao, 384, 428
Li Chowu, x, 111, 338 n., 428

Li Liweng, x, 42, 305, 211, 240, 255, 268, 298, 304, 428
Li Mi-an, 113
Li Po, 9, 156, 428
Li Yi-an, see Li Ch’ingchao
Li Yü, see Li Liweng
Li Yuan, 216
Liang Yuch’ing, 313
Liberty, 72, 85
Liehtse, 160, 315
Life, American view of, 2
Chinese view of, 1
enjoyment of, 122
purpose of, 123
simplicity of, 80
Lin Hoching, 299, 306, 428
Lin Pu, see Lin Hoching Lincoln, Abraham, 424
Literature, appreciation of, 386
beauty in, 393
Chinese, 411, 412, 430
familiar style, 392
personality of, 386
style of, 387
taste in, 363
technique of, 386
thought in, 387
Liu Tsungyuan, 109, 429
Liu Jushih, 221
Liu Tasheng, 41
Liulang Wen Ying, 301 Living, enjoyment of, 10, 202
simplicity, 159
Living Buddha, 409
Loafing, 2
importance of, 145
Logic, 159, 411
and common sense, 411
dehumanized, 420
Logical necessity, 417
spirit, 413
Lolling, 206
“Lost Paradise,” 277
Lotus, 303, 307
Lu Yü, 225 n.
Luck, 160, 271
Lulan, 215
Lying in bed, 202
Machine civilization, 149

Maggin, W., 232
Man, and nature, 277
and woman, relationship, 168
animal being, 33
attitude toward universe, 277
biological view, 27, 166
characteristics of, 4, 12
Chinese Taoist-Confucianist view, 15
Christian view, 15
Greek pagan view, 15
earth-bound, 23
emotions of, 431
paternal instinct, 171
personality of, 431
relationship to God, 396
working animal, 145
Man the Unknown, 29
Mao Hsiang, see Mao Pichiang
Mao Pichiang, 239, 285, 429
Marcus Aurehus, 137
Marriage, 168, 171, 182
American, 172
childless, 180
Chinese, 171
Marx, Karl, 86, 91, 187
Marxian dialectic, 425
Materialism, 159
and happiness, 122
misunderstandings of, 136
Maternal instinct, 171
Mechanistic school of thought, 85
Medicine, 248
and food, 248
and magic, 252
Chinese, 249
Mencius, 43, 72, 97, 98, 193, 429
Mengch’ang, 215
Mental pleasures, 137
Menti, 190
Mermaid, The, 75
Metaphysics, 10
Middle Ages, 72, 398
Mi Fei, no, 204, 295, 429
Mi Tien, see Mi Fei
Mi Yüanchang, see Mi Fei
Milton, 60
Mind, 56
Chinese, 61, 62

critical, 63
English, 61
evolution of human, 58
quality of human, 57
Mind in the Making, 58
Ming, 427
Minghaotse, 338
Missionaries, Christian, 17, 185
Modesty, 55, 56
sexual, 68
Mohammed, 125
Mohammedanism, 409
Monkey, 65, 66, 73, 84
Monkey Epic (Hsiyuchi), 33, 325
Moon, 322
Moral attitude toward universe, 277
Morals, and art, 372
and furniture, 208
Mormonism, 409
Mortality, 38, 41, 158
Moses, 60
Motherhood, 175
Mup’itse, see Chia Fuhsi
Murder, 51
Music, 140, 159
Mussolini, 52
Mutu, 301
My Country and My People, 12, 187, 422
Names, Chinese, 427
Napoleon, 45, 91
Narcissus, 307
National characteristics, 6
destiny, 92
politics and racial temperament, 91
Naturalism, 112, 187
Naturalness, beauty of, 431, 445
Nature, 143
and man, 277
and the home, 293
benefits of, 281
enjoyment of, 10, 277
an art, 284
Neo-platonists, 416
New England culture, 150
Nietzsche, 381
“Nine Schools of Thought,” 215

Ni Yünlin, 110, 204, 274 n.
Old age, 192
Chinese attitude toward, 192, 193
Western attitude toward, 196
Old Man in the Fort, 160
Old rogue, xx, 105
Omar Khayyam, 40, 383
Orchid, 303, 304
Orchid’s Dream, An, 247
Ouyang Hsiu, 383
Pacificism, Chinese, 105
Pagan, Chinese, 401, 409
Paganism, 400, 403, 408
conversion to, 400
Painting, 140, 294, 376, 431
Pai Yuchien, 154
Parent and child relationship, Chinese, 193
Western, 199
Parenthood, 166
Parliament of Fowles, 64
Passion, 61, 98
sexual, 98
Pasteur, Louis, 399
Pata Shanjen, 218
Paternal instinct, 171
Paul, St., 397
Pauline logic, 409
Peace, 94, 422
Penguin Island, 64
Peony, 303
Perfection, 16
Personalism, 89
Personalities of Poetry, 374
Personality, 431
cultivation of, 376
expressions for, 431
in art, 366, 369, 374
Philosophers, Chinese, 95
German, 160, 419
Philosophy, 41, 142
and the individual, 88
and words, 417
attitude toward, 413
Chinese, 9, 14, 159, 411
function of, 13

gay, 13
of half-and-half, III of humanism, 112
of naturalism, 112
of living, Chinese, 3, 11
social, 89
Western, 159
Physical objects, beauty of, 431
pleasures, 122, 137
p’in, 373
Pine trees, 298
P’ingshih (Vase Flowers), 310
P’inkeh, 373
Plato, 19, 219, 415
Play, 366
Playful curiosity, 66
Pleasures, mental, 140
sensual, 126
spiritual, 140
Plum flower, 303
tree, 298, 299
p’o, 20
Po Chüyi, x, 411, 429
Poe, Edgar Allan, 9
Poetic sensitivity, 4
Poetry, 41, 140, 431
Chinese, 41
Western, 41
Poets, Chinese, 82
Postscript to Chinshihlu, 384
Posture, development of, 67
Power, 103
Propagation, 168
Pseudo-scientific formulas
individuals, 4
nations, 6
poets, 9
writers, 9
Psychology, modern, 413
P’u Liuhsie, 218
Punctuality, 162
Purpose, divine, 123
human, 123
of life, 123
P’uyi, Henry, 252
Racial temperament, 91, 92
Rain, 322

Rationality, 53, 60
Reading, 324
art of, 376, 377
object of, 377
enjoyment of, 382
Realism, 4, 5
Reality, 5
Reason, 61
Reasonable age, 80 422,
attitude, 11, 22
naturalism, 23
Reasonableness, spirit of, 421
Recreation, 366
Red Chamber Dream, 182
Redemption, 16
Refinement, in art, 376
Religion, and moral conscience, 396
and science, 396
and theology, 407
Christian, 396, 400, 403
degeneration of, 141
of China, 11
orthodox, 396
restoration of, 396
Religious experience, 401
Reminiscences of My Concubine, 239,
Reminiscences Under the Lamp-light, 285
Reproduction, 43
Revelation, 408, 409
Rhythm of life, 30, 31
Robinson, James Harvey, 58, 416
Rocks, 292
gardens, 294
Rockefeller, John D., 174
Rogers, Will, 79
Roosevelt, Pres, Franklin D., 78
Rousseau, Jean Jacques, 91, 332, 381
Russian characteristics, 7
Russian Revolution, 45, 91
Salvation, 124
Santayana, George, 137, 141, 159
Sappho, 101
Scamp, 11, 66, 83
See also Vagabond
Scholarship, academic, 414
Chinese, 362, 411

in art, 376
Western, 411, 413
School of Hsingling, 389
School of Self-Expression, 386, 389
Schopenhauer, 381
Science, 28
Scientific attitude toward universe, 277
Scott, Sir Walter, 75
Seasons, 280, 321, 431, 439
beauty of, 439
Sense of humor, 4, 5, 6, 77
Senses, 122, 129, 140, 224
and Chinese life, 11
and intellect, 11
and nature, 122
material pleasures, 122, 127
mental pleasures, 140
of hunger, 48, 145
of sight, 122, 128
of smell, 122, 128
of sound, 122, 128
parental, 171
sensual, 126
sexual, 48
spiritual pleasures, 122
Sensibility, 99
Sensitivity, 6, 9
Sensuality, 126
Sentiment, 99
Sermon on the Mount, 109, 408
Sex, 44, 48
appeal, 177
in art, 179
in theatre, 179
modesty, 68
passion, 98
Shakespeare, William, 9, 32, 40, 60, 95, 158, 418
Shame, 56
Shaohsing, 242
Shaw, George Bernard, 79
Shekju, 245
Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 9
Shen Fu, see Shen Shanpo
Shen Shanpo, 285, 305, 429
Shih, 363
Shih Nai-an, 218
Shih Tao, 218

Shihchi, 218
Shihp’in, 374
Shu Paihsiang, 151
Shuihu (All Men Are Brothers), 218, 325
Shuohua (speaking), 211
Simplicity, 11, 80
Sin, doctrine of, 17
Six Chapters of a Floating life, 285, 305, 308
Smoking, 207, 221, 231
artistic value of, 233
contribution to literature, 240
literary value of, 233
moral and spiritual benefits of, 232
Sociability, 221
atmosphere for, 222
Social, amenities, Chinese, 371
philosophies, 89
Socialism, 217
Socialist Revolution, 91
Socrates, 19, 417
Soldier, as ideal, 83
Solitude, 203
Solomon, King, 60
Sophists, 18, 417
Soul, 15
Sounds, 321
Spanish Inquisition, 72
Spencer, Herbert, 174
Spirit, 433
and the body, 25
happiness of, 122, 126
Spirit of a genius (chngshen), 21
Spring, 280, 321, 431, 439
Ssema Ch’ien, 218, 429
State, and the individual, 425
Sterility, 168
Sterne, Laurence, 153
Stevenson, Robert Louis, 75
Stoics, 137
Stomach, 42
Strachey, Lytton, 61
Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio, 218
Stream-of-life theory, 186, 188
Strip-tease, 180
Style, and thought, 386
familiar, 392
in writing, 385
Su Shih, see Su Tungp’o

Su Tungp’o, x, 9, 82, 152, 154, 155, 156, 225, 377, 381, 404, 429
Success, 103, 162
Suicide, psychology of, 77
Summer, 431, 440
Sun Ssemiao, 249
Sweet Dream Shadows (Yumengying), 316
Swift, Jonathan, 61, 64
Tach’ien, 371
Tach’ing, 192
Taipu, 373
Takuan, 1
Talent, 433
Talking, and philosophy, 417
instinct, 53
Tan, 363
Tang Minghuang, Emperor, 99
T’anhua (conversation), 211
Tao (the Way), 143, 339, 354, 400
See also Taoism
Tao Ch’ien, see T’ao Yuanming
Tao Yuanming, x, 96, 115, 152, 154, 248, 306, 381, 429
Taoism, 11, 19, 109, 143, 119, 143 n, 152, 160, 161
view of man, 20
Taotehching, 296
T’aot’ich (God of Gluttony), 251
Taste, 362
in art, 363
in reading, 379
Tea, 221
and friendship, 221
drinking, 221, 225
enjoyment of, 225
art and technique, 229
preparation of, 226
Tea-house psychology, 54
Temperament, 49
American, 150
Chinese, 150
French, 150
racial, 91
Ten Comedies, 270
Thackeray, William Makepeace, 232
Theology, and religion, 407
Thinking, academic, 415
art of, 411
dehumanized, 420

humanized, 411, 423
logical, 415
poetic, 415
reasonable, 415, 423
scientific, 411
This Simian World, 33
Thoreau, Henry, 24, 116, 128, 153
Thought, simplicity of, 80
Tiehchi, 274 n.
Tien Yiheng, 225
T’ienli, 422
Time, sense of, 30, 41
Tobacco, 231
Travel, 76
enjoyment of, 329
philosophy of, 334
Travels of Mingliaotse, 110, 332, 338
Trees, 292, 296
“Trio of Geniuses,” 19
Ts’ai Chünmou, 225 n., 228
Ts’ai Hsiang, see Ts’ai Chunmou
Tseng Kuofan, 374, 382
Tsesse, 111, 113, 428
Tsing Hua, 407
Tu Ch’ihshui, see T’u Lung
Tu Fu, 9, 155, 307, 429
Tu Hsishih, 200
Tu Kuan, 295
T’u Lung, 225 n., 237, 332, 429
Tup’in, 373
Universe, Chinese attitude toward, 280
moral attitude toward, 277
scientific attitude toward, 277
view of, 125
Utopia, dream of, 76
Vacations, 332
Vagabond, 12, 331
“Vase Flowers,” (P’ingshih), 310
Velde, Van der, 284
Vices, American, 161
Vocabulary, Chinese critical, 430
Voltaire, 99
Wolden, 153
Wang Anshih, 425 n., 429

Wang Ch’ung, 388, 429
Wang Hsichih, 156, 158 n., 429
Wang Yuyang, 240
War, 76, 79
Water, 319, 322
Water lily, 307
Waywardness, 66, 83
Wealth, 102
Wei, 294
Wells, H. G., 399
Wen, King, 218
West Lake, 297, 301
Western Chamber, 130, 334
Western Chivalry, 193
civilization, 84
cooking, 253
individualism, 187
logic, 420
nationalism, 187
philosophy, 420
scholarship, 411
table manners, 46
Westward Ho!, 380
Whitman, Walt, 66, 89, 124, 128, 129, 150, 420
Wilde, Oscar, 169
Willow tree, 298, 300
Wind, 322
Windows, Chinese, 271
Wines, 239
Chinese, 242
contribution to literature, 240
games, 239, 244, 245
Winter, 280, 431, 444
Wisdom, 5, 80, 98, 102
Wives, 166
Wodehouse, P. G., 79
Woman, and man, relationship, 167
Women, 43, 317
American, 177
and marriage, 174
Chinese, 178, 189
maternal instinct, 171
subjection of, 68
Words, and thought, 417
definitions of, 418
Wordsworth, William, 153
Work, 145
World peace, and the individual, 94

Worship, 397
Writing, art of, 217, 385
Wu, Empress, 304
Wu, John C. H., 186
Wu Peifu, 236
Wut’ung, 301
Yang Chu, 215
Yang (male) principle, 20
Yen Hsitsai, see Yen Yuan
Yen Huei, 2, 429
Yen Yuan, 185, 429
Yenchi, 273
Yentse, 215
Yin (female) principle, 20, 107
Yinshan Chengyao, 250, 252
Yu Hsuanchi, 313
Yuan Chunglang, x, 110, 154, 240, 338 n., 379, 381, 429
“Vase Flowers” 310
Yuan Hungtao, see Yuan Chunglang
Yuan Jang, 208
Yuan Mei, see Yuan Tsets’ai
Yuan Tsets’ai, x, 154, 240, 256, 429
Yüan Tsi, 283, 429
Yuan Yuan, 297
Yumengying (Sweet Dream Shadows), 316
Yün, 288, 428
Zen Buddhists, 118
Zoology, 47