1、Chapter One THE AWAKENINGI APPROACH TO LIFEIN 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 literat
2、ure.It is an idle philosophy born of an idle life, evolved in a different age, I am quiteaware. But I cannot help feeling that this view of life is essentially true, and sincewe are alike under the skin, what touches the human heart in one country touches all.I shall have to present a view of life a
3、s Chinese poets and scholars evaluated itwith their common sense, their realism and their sense of poetry. I shall attemptto reveal some of the beauty of the pagan world, a sense of the pathos and beautyand terror and comedy of life, viewed by a people who have a strong feeling of thelimitations of
4、our existence, and yet somehow retain a sense of the dignity of humanlife.The Chinese philosopher is one who dreams with one eye open, who views life with loveand sweet irony, who mixes his cynicism with a kindly tolerance, and who alternatelywakes up from life s dream and then nods again, feeling m
5、ore alive when he is dreamingthan 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 goeson around him and of his own endeavors, but barely retains enough sense of realityto determine to go thro
6、ugh with it. He is seldom disillusioned because he has noillusions, and seldom disappointed because he never had extravagant hopes. In thisway his spirit is emancipated.For, after surveying the field of Chinese literature and philosophy, I come to theconclusion that the highest ideal of Chinese cult
7、ure has always been a man with asense of detachment (tukuan ) toward life based on a sense of wise disenchantment.From this detachment comes high-mindedness ( kuunghuui ), a high-mindedness whichenables one to go through life with tolerant irony and escape the temptations of fameand wealth and achie
8、vement, and eventually makes him take what comes. And from thisdetachment arise also his sense of freedom, his love of vagabondage and his prideand nonchalance. It is only with this sense of freedom and nonchalance that oneeventually arrives at the keen and intense joy of living.It is useless for me
9、 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, withhis own temperament, his bodily attitudes and his own set of nerves. I have no doubtthat American nerves can stand a good many things that Chinese nerves
10、cannot stand,and vice versa. It is good that it should be so that we should all be born different.And yet it is all a question of relativity. I am quite sure that amidst the hustleand bustle of American life, there is a great deal of wistfulness, of the divine desireto lie on a plot of grass under t
11、all beautiful trees of an idle afternoon and justdo nothing. The necessity for such common cries as “Wake up and live” is to me a goodsign that a wise portion of American humanity prefer to dream the hours away. TheAmerican is after all not as bad as all that. It is only a question whether he willha
12、ve 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 everybodyis doing something, but somehow, as sure as I know he is also an animal, he likessometimes to have his muscles relaxed, to stretch
13、 on the sand, or to lie still withone leg comfortably curled up and one arm placed below his head as his pillow. Ifso, he cannot be very different from Yen Huei, who had exactly that virtue and whomConfucius desperately admired among all his disciples. The only thing I desire tosee is that he be hon
14、est about it, and that he proclaim to the world that he likesit when he likes it, that it is not when he is working in the office but when he islying idly on thesand that his soul utters, “Life is beautiful. “We are, therefore, about to see a philosophy and art of living as the mind of theChinese pe
15、ople as a whole has understood it. I am inclined to think that, in a goodor bad sense, there is nothing like il in the world. For here we come to an entirelynew way of looking at life by an entirely different type of mind. It is a truism losay that the culture of any nation is the product of its min
16、d. Consequently, wherethere is a national mind so racially different and historically isolated from theWestern cultural world, we have the right to expect new answers to the problems oflife, or what is better, new methods of approach, or, still better, a new posing ofthe problems themselves. We know
17、 some of the virtues and deficiencies of that mind,at least as revealed to us in the historical past. It has a glorious an and acontemptible science, a magnificent common sense and an infantile logic, a finewomanish chatter about life and no scholastic philosophy. Il is generally known thatthe Chine
18、se mind is an intensely practical, hard-headed one, and it is also knownto some lovers of Chinese art that it is a profoundly sensitive mind; by a still smallerproportion of people, it is accepted as also a profoundly poetic and philosophicalmind. At least the Chinese are noted for taking things phi
19、losophically, which issaying more than the statement that the Chinese have a great philosophy or have afew great philosophers. For a nation to have a few philosophers is not so unusual,bul for a nation to take things philosophically is terrific. It is evident anywaythat the Chinese as a nation are m
20、ore philosophic than efficient, and that if it wereotherwise, no nation could have survived the high blood pressure of an efficient lifefor four thousand years. Four thousand years of efficient living would ruin anynation.An important consequence is that, while in the West, the insane are so many th
21、;n theyare put in an asylum, in China the insane are so unusual that we worship them, asany body 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 bcsl proof of their philosophic tempe
22、r is to be found in this wise and merryof living.II. A PSEUDOSCIENTIFIC FORMULALet us begin with an examination of the Chinese mental make-up which produced thisphilosophy of living: great realism, inadequate idealism, a high sense of humor, anda high poetic sensitivity to life and nature.Mankind se
23、ems to be divided into idealists and realists, and idealism and realismare the two great forces molding human progress. The clay of humanity is made softand pliable by the water of idealism, but the stuff that holds it together is afterall the clay itself, or we might all evaporate into Ariels. The
24、forces of idealismand 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 halfdry, not hardened and unmanage
25、able, nor dissolving into mud. The soundest nations,like the English, have realism and idealism mixed in proper proportions, like theclay which neither hardens and so gets past the stage for the artists molding, noris so wishy-washy that it cannot retain its form. . . .A vague, uncritical idealism a
26、lways lends itself to ridicule and too much of it mightbe a danger to mankind, leading it round in a futile wild-goose chase for imaginaryideals. 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 ide
27、alisticcouple forever getting tired of one place and changing their residence regularly onceevery three months, for the simple reason that no one place is ideal and the placewhere one is not seems always better because one is not there. Very fortunately, manis also gifted with a sense of humor, whos
28、e function, as I conceive it, is to exercisecriticism of mans dreams, and bring them in touch with the world of reality. It isimportant that man dreams, but it is perhaps equally important that he can laugh athis own dreams. That is a great gift, and theChinese have plenty of it.The sense of humor,
29、which I shall discuss at more length in a later chapter, seemsto be very closely related to the sense of reality, or realism. If the joker is oftencruel in disillusioning the idealist, he nevertheless performs a very importantfunction right there by not letting the idealist bump his head against the
30、 stone wallof reality and receive a ruder shock. He also gently eases the tension of thehot-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 mancharged with the duty of breaking a sad news g
31、ently to a dying patient. Sometimesthe gentle warning from a humorist saves the dying patients life. If idealism anddisillusion must necessarily go together in this world, we must say that life is cruel,ratlier than the joker who reminds us of lifes cruelty.I have often thought of formulas by which
32、the mechanism of human progress andhistorical change can be expressed. They seem to be as follows:Reality Dreams = Animal BeingReality + Dreams = A Heartache (usually called Idealism)Reality + Humor = Realism (also called Conservatism)Dreams Humor = FanaticismDreams + Humor = FantasyReality + Dreams
33、 + Humor = WisdomSo then, wisdom, or the highest type of thinking, consists in toning down our dreamsor idealism with a good sense of humor, supported by reality itself.As pure ventures in pseudoscientific formulations, we may proceed to analyze nationalcharacters in the following manner. I say “pse
34、udoscientific” because I distrust alldead and mechanical formulas for expressing anything connected with human affairsor human personalities. Putting human affairs in exact formulas shows in itself alack of the sense of humor and therefore a lack of wisdom. I do not meanthat thesethings are not bein
35、g done: they are. That is why we get so much pseudoscience today.When a psychologist can measure a mans I. Q. or P. Q., it is a pretty poor world,and specialists have risen to usurp humanized scholarship. But if we recognize thatthese formulas are no more than handy, graphic ways of expressing certa
36、in opinions,and so long as we dont 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 freeto dispute them and change them or
37、 add his own, if he does not claim that he can provehis private opinions by a mass of statistical facts and figures. Let “R” stand fora sense of reality (or realism), “D” for dreams (or idealism), “H” for a sense ofhumor, and adding one important ingredient “S” for sensitivity. And further let “4”st
38、and for “abnormally high, “ “3” stand for “high, “ “2” for “fair, “ and “1” for“low, “ and we have the following pseudo-chemical formulas for the following nationalcharacters. Human beings and communities behave then differently according to theirdifferent compositions, as sulphates and sulphides or
39、 carbon monoxide and carbondioxide behave differently from one another. For me, the interesting thing alwaysis to watch how human communities or nations behave differently under identicalconditions. As we cannot invent words like “humoride” and “numerate” after the fashionof chemistry, we may put it
40、 thus: “3 grains of Realism, 2 grains of Dreams, 2 grainsof Humor and 1 grain of Sensitivity make an Englishman. “Q) I am not objecting to the limited utility of intelligence tests, but to theirclaims to mathematical accuracy or constant dependability as measures of humanpersonality.In the sense of
41、the French word sensibilite.Some might with good reason suggest the including of an “L” standing for logicor the rational faculty, as an important element in shaping human progress . This“L” will then often function or weigh against sensitivity, a direct perception ofthings. Such a formula might be
42、attempted. For me personally, the role of the rationalfaculty in human affairs is rather low.R3DzH2Si = The English R2D3H3 = The Americans R3D4HiS2= TheGermansR2D4HSi = The Russians R2D3HiSi= The Japanese R4DiH3S3= The ChineseI do not know the Italians, the Spanish, the Hindus and others well enough
43、 even toessay a formula on the subject, realizing that the above are shaky enough as theyare, 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 modifythem gradually for my own use as new facts are
44、brought to my knowledge, or newimpressions are formed. That is all they are worth today a record of the progressof my knowledge and the gaps of my ignorance.Some observations may be necessary. It is easy to see that I regard the Chinese asmost closely allied to the French in their sense of humor and
45、 sensitivity, as is quiteevident from the way the French write their books and eat their food, while the morevolatile character of the French comes from their greater idealism, which takes theform of love of abstract ideas (recall the manifestoes of their literary, artisticand political movements) .
46、 “ R4” for Chinese realism makes the Chinese the mostrealistic people; “Di” accounts for something of a drag in the changes in their patternor ideal of life. The high figures for Chinese humor and sensitivity, as well as fortheir realism, are perhaps due to my too close association and the vividness
47、 of myimpressions. For Chinese sensitivity, little justification is needed; the whole storyof Chinese prose, poetry and painting proclaims it. . The Japanese and Germans arevery much alike in their comparative lack of humor (such is the general impressionof people), yet it is really impossible to gi
48、ve a “zero” for any one characteristicin any one nation, not even for idealism in the Chinese people. It is all a questionof degree; such statements as a complete lack of this or that quality are not basedon an intimate knowledge of the peoples. For this reason, I give the Japanese andthe Germans “H
49、i, “ instead of “Ho, “ and I intuitively feel that I am right. But Ido believe that the Japanese and the Germans suffer politically at present, and havesuffered in the past, for lacking a better sense of humor. How a Prussian Geheimratloves to be called a Geheimrat, and how he loves his buttons and metal pins! A certainbelief in “logical necessity” (often “holy” or “sacred”), a tendency to fly toostraight at a goal instead of circling around it, often carries one too far. It isnot so much what you believe in that matters, as the way in which you believe it andproceed t
