Chapter One THE AWAKENING



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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 man with a

sense of detachment (tukuan ) toward life based on a sense of wise disenchantment.

From this detachment comes high-mindedness ( k'uunghuui ), 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 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 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 be 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 il 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 lo

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 an and a

contemptible science, a magnificent common sense and an infantile logic, a fine

womanish chatter about life and no scholastic philosophy. Il 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" title="ad.深深地">profoundlysensitive mind; by a still smaller

proportion of people, it is accepted as also a profoundly" title="ad.深深地">profoundlypoetic 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. F'or a nation to have a few philosophers is not so unusual,

bul 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 th;n they

are put in an asylum, in China the insane are so unusual that we worship them, as

any 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 temper is to be found in this wise and merry

of living.



II. A PSEUDOSCIENTIFIC 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. . . .

A vague, uncriticalidealism 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 theChinese 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,

ratlier 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 Heartache (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 pseudoscientific formulations, we may proceed to analyze national

characters in the following manner. I say "pseudoscientific" 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 meanthat these

things are not being done: they are. That is why we get so much pseudoscience 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 "1" 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 "numerate" after the fashion

of chemistry, we may put it thus: "3 grains of Realism, 2 grains of Dreams, 2 grains

of Humor and 1 grain of Sensitivity make an Englishman. "

Q) I am not objecting to the limitedutility of intelligence tests, but to their

claims to mathematicalaccuracy or constant dependability as measures of human

personality.

In the sense of the French word sensibilite.

Some might with good reason suggest the including of 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.



R3DzH2Si = The English R2D3H3&, = The French R3D3H2S; = The Americans R3D4HiS2= The

Germans

R2D4H[Si = The Russians R2D3HiSi= The Japanese R4DiH3S3= 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) . " R4" for Chinese realism makes the Chinese the most

realistic people; "Di" 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 "Hi, " instead of "Ho, " 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, for 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 fanaticloyalty 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