Sources of Chinese Tradition: Volume 2: From 1600 Through the Twentieth Century, Second Edition

As its name implies, the New Culture Movement was an attempt to destroy what remained of traditional Confucian culture in the republican era and to replace it with something new. The collapse of the old dynastic system in 1911 and the failure of Yuan Shikai’s Confucian-garbed monarchical restoration in 1916 meant that, politically, Confucianism was almost dead. It had, however, been much more than a political philosophy. It had been a complete way of life, which nationalism and republicanism supplanted only in part. There were some even among republicans who felt that certain aspects of the old culture, Confucian ethics especially, should be preserved and strengthened, lest the whole fabric of Chinese life come apart and the new regime itself be seriously weakened. Others, with far more influence on the younger generation, drew precisely the opposite conclusion. For them, nothing in Confucianism was worth salvaging from the debris of the Manchu dynasty. In fact, whatever vestiges of the past remained in the daily life and thinking of the people should be rooted out; otherwise the young republic would rest on shaky foundations, and its progress would be retarded by a backward citizenry. The new order required a whole new culture. The political revolution of 1911 had to be followed by a cultural revolution. In this conflict of views many issues surfaced that reappeared in the 1980s and 1990s between those who advocated a return to Confucianism and those who saw “modernization” as requiring liberation from the past.

During and just after World War I the intellectual spearhead of this cultural revolution went on the offensive, launching a movement that reached out in many directions and touched many aspects of Chinese society. Roughly, it may be divided into six major phases, presented below in more or less chronological order. They are (1) the attack on Confucianism, (2) the Literary Revolution, (3) the proclaiming of a new philosophy of life, (4) the debate on science and the philosophy of life, (5) the “doubting of antiquity” movement, and (6) the debate on Chinese and Western cultural values. Needless to say, these phases overlapped considerably, and certain leading writers figured prominently in more than one phase of the movement.

From the movement’s anti-traditionalist character one may infer that its leaders looked very much to the West. Positivism was their great inspiration, science and materialism were their great slogans, and—in the early years especially—John Dewey and Bertrand Russell were their great idols. The leaders themselves were in many cases Western-educated, though not necessarily schooled in the West, since Western-style education was by now established in the East, in Japan, and in the new national and missionary colleges of China. Often college professors themselves, the leaders now had access to the lecture platform, as well as to the new organs of the public journalism and the intellectual and literary reviews that were a novel feature of the modern age. Above all, they had a new audience—young, intense, frustrated by China’s failures in the past, and full of eager hopes for the future.

The open assault on Confucianism, which began in 1916, was led by Chen Duxiu (1879–1942), editor of a magazine titled The New Youth. Earlier reformers had attacked certain of the concepts of Confucianism, often in the name of a purified and revitalized Confucian belief or, with less obvious partisanship, combining criticism of certain aspects with praise of others. Chen, by contrast, challenged Confucianism from beginning to end, realizing as he did so that he struck at the very heart of the traditional culture. For him, a partisan of “science” and “democracy,” Confucianism stood simply for reaction and obscurantism. He identified it with the old regime, with Yuan Shikai’s attempt to restore the monarchy, with everything from the past that, to his mind, had smothered progress and creativity.

Such an uncompromising attack was bound to shock many—those who had taken Confucianism as much for granted as the good earth of China or those who still held to it consciously, and with some pride, as an expression of cultural nationalism. But there were others upon whom Chen’s bold denunciations had an electrifying effect—those, particularly young teachers and students, for whom Confucianism had come to hold little positive meaning as their own education became more Westernized; those for whom, in fact, it was now more likely to be felt in their own lives simply as a form of unwanted parental or societal constraint. Young people of this group, with Beijing as their center, The New Youth as their mouthpiece, and Chen as their literary champion, were glad to throw themselves into a crusade against this bugbear from the past and to proclaim their own coming of age in the modern world by shouting, “Destroy the old curiosity shop of Confucius!”

Through articles such as this, which appeared in December 1916, Chen Duxiu established himself as perhaps the most influential writer of his time. His popular review, Xin qingnian (The New Youth), had for its Western title La Jeunesse nouvelle, reflecting the avant-garde character of its editor, who had obtained his higher education first in a Japanese normal college and later in France. Here the Westernized and “liberated” Chen directs his fire at social customs and abuses that seemed to have Confucian sanction but have no place in the modern age. Here the man who was to found the Chinese Communist Party five years later speaks as an individualist, who attributes the lack of individualism in China to the traditional view of property as family-owned and -controlled rather than belonging to an individual.

The pulse of modern life is economic, and the fundamental principle of economic production is individual independence. Its effect has penetrated ethics. Consequently, the independence of the individual in the ethical field and the independence of property in the economic field bear witness to each other, thus reaffirming the theory [of such interaction]. Because of this [interaction], social mores and material culture have taken a great step forward.

In China, the Confucians have based their teachings on their ethical norms. Sons and wives possess neither personal individuality nor personal property. Fathers and elder brothers bring up their sons and younger brothers and are in turn supported by them. It is said in chapter 30 of the Record of Rites: “While parents are living, the son dares not regard his person or property as his own” [27: 14]. This is absolutely not the way to personal independence. . . .

In all modern constitutional states, whether monarchies or republics, there are political parties. Those who engage in party activities all express their spirit of independent conviction. They go their own way and need not agree with their fathers or husbands. When people are bound by the Confucian teachings of filial piety and obedience to the point of the son not deviating from the father’s way even three years after his death¹ and the woman not only obeying her father and husband but also her son,² how can they form their own political party and make their own choice? The movement of women’s participation in politics is also an aspect of women’s life in modern civilization. When they are bound by the Confucian teaching that “To be a woman means to submit,”³ that “The wife’s words should not travel beyond her own apartment,” and that “A woman does not discuss affairs outside the home,“⁴ would it not be unusual if they participated in politics?

In the West some widows choose to remain single because they are strongly attached to their late husbands and sometimes because they prefer a single life; they have nothing to do with what is called the chastity of widowhood. Widows who remarry are not despised by society at all. On the other hand, in the Chinese teaching of decorum, there is the doctrine of “no remarriage after the husband’s death.“⁵ It is considered to be extremely shameful and unchaste for a woman to serve two husbands or a man to serve two rulers. The Record of Rites also prohibits widows from wailing at night [27: 21] and people from being friends with sons of widows. For the sake of their family reputation, people have forced their daughters-in-law to remain widows. These women have had no freedom and have endured a most miserable life. Year after year these many promising young women have lived a physically and spiritually abnormal life. All this is the result of Confucian teachings of ritual decorum.

In today’s civilized society, social intercourse between men and women is a common practice. Some even say that because women have a tender nature and can temper the crudeness of man, they are necessary in public or private gatherings. It is not considered improper even for strangers to sit or dance together once they have been introduced by the host. In the way of Confucian teaching, however, “Men and women do not sit on the same mat,” “Brothers- and sisters-in-law do not exchange inquiries about each other,” “Married sisters do not sit on the same mat with brothers or eat from the same dish,” “Men and women do not know each other’s name except through a matchmaker and should have no social relations or show affection until after marriage presents have been exchanged,”⁶ “Women must cover their faces when they go out,“⁷ “Boys and girls seven years or older do not sit or eat together,” “Men and women have no social relations except through a matchmaker and do not meet until after marriage presents have been exchanged,“⁸ and “Except in religious sacrifices, men and women do not exchange wine cups.“⁹ Such rules of decorum are not only inconsistent with the mode of life in Western society; they cannot even be observed in today’s China.

Western women make their own living in various professions such as that of lawyer, physician, and store employee. But in the Confucian Way, “In giving or receiving anything, a man or woman should not touch the other’s hand,“¹⁰ “A man does not talk about affairs inside [the household] and a woman does not talk about affairs outside [the household],” and “They do not exchange cups except in sacrificial rites and funerals.“¹¹ “A married woman is to obey” and the husband is the mainstay of the wife.¹² Thus the wife is naturally supported by the husband and needs no independent livelihood.

A married woman is at first a stranger to her parents-in-law. She has only affection but no obligation toward them. In the West, parents and children usually do not live together, and daughters-in-law, particularly, have no obligation to serve parents-in-law. But in the way of Confucius, a woman is to “revere and respect them and never to disobey day or night,“¹³ “A woman obeys, that is, obeys her parents-in-law,“¹⁴ “A woman serves her parents-in-law as she serves her own parents,“¹⁵ she “never should disobey or be lazy in carrying out the orders of parents and parents-in-law.” “If a man is very fond of his wife, but his parents do not like her, she should be divorced.“¹⁶ (In ancient times there were many such cases, like that of Lu Yu [1125–1210].) “Unless told to retire to her own apartment, a woman does not do so, and if she has an errand to do, she must get permission from her parents-in-law.“¹⁷ This is the reason why cruelty to daughters-in-law has never ceased in Chinese society.

According to Western customs, fathers do not discipline grown-up sons but leave them to the law of the country and the control of society. But in the Way of Confucius, “When one’s parents are angry and not pleased and beat him until he bleeds, he does not complain but instead arouses in himself the feelings of reverence and filial piety.“¹⁸ This is the reason why in China there is the saying, “One has to die if his father wants him to, and the minister has to perish if his ruler wants him to.” . . .

Confucius lived in a feudal age. The ethics he promoted is the ethics of the feudal age. The social mores he taught and even his own mode of living were teachings and modes of a feudal age. The objectives, ethics, social norms, mode of living, and political institutions did not go beyond the privilege and prestige of a few rulers and aristocrats and had nothing to do with the happiness of the great masses. How can this be shown? In the teachings of Confucius, the most important elements in social ethics and social life are the rules of decorum, and the most serious thing in government is punishment. In chapter 1 of the Record of Rites, it is said, “The rules of decorum do not go down to the common people and the penal statutes do not go up to great officers” [1: 35]. Is this not solid proof of the [true] spirit of the Way of Confucius and the spirit of the feudal age?

Paralleling the attack on Confucianism was the attack on the classical literary language—the language of Confucian tradition and of the old-style scholar-official. With the abandonment of the “eight-legged essay” examinations for the civil service in 1905, the discarding also of the official language, so far removed from ordinary speech, might have seemed inevitable. This was a time of rising nationalism, which in the West had been linked to the rise of vernacular literatures; an era of expanding education, which would be greatly facilitated by a written language simpler and easier to learn; a period of strong Westernization in thought and scholarship, which would require a more flexible instrument for the expression of new concepts. No doubt each of these factors contributed to the rapid spread of the literary revolution after its launching by Hu Shi, with the support of Chen Duxiu in 1917. And yet it is a sign of the strong hold that the classical language had on educated men, and of its great prestige as a mark of learning, that until Hu appeared on the scene with his novel ideas, even the manifestos of reformers and revolutionaries had kept to the classical style of writing as if there could be no other.

Hu Shi (1891–1962) had studied agriculture at Cornell on a Boxer Indemnity grant and philosophy at Columbia under John Dewey, of whom he became the leading Chinese disciple. Even before his return home he had begun advocating a new written language for China, along with a complete reexamination and reevaluation of the classical tradition in thought and literature. Chen Duxiu’s position as head of the department of literature at Beijing National University, and his new political organ, The New Youth, represented strong backing for Hu’s revolutionary program—a program all the more commanding of attention because its aim was not merely destructive of traditional usage but, ambitiously enough, directed to the stimulation of a new literature and new ideas. Instead of dwelling solely upon the deficiencies of the past, Hu’s writings were full of concrete and constructive suggestions for the future. There was hope here, as well as indignation.

Hu’s program thus looked beyond the immediate literary revolution, stressing the vernacular as a means of communication, to what came to be known as the literary renaissance. There can be no doubt that this movement stimulated literary activity along new lines, especially in the adoption of forms and genres then popular in the West. Yet there is real doubt whether this new literary output was able to fulfill all of Hu’s expectations, given the political constraints to which it was later subjected. It excelled in social criticism and so contributed further to the processes of social and political disintegration. Also—and this is particularly true of Hu’s own work—it rendered great service in the rehabilitation of popular literature from earlier centuries, above all, the great Chinese novels. But whether it produced in its own right a contemporary literature of great distinction and creative imagination is a question that must be left to historians and critics of the future with a better perspective on these troubled times.

Many people have been discussing literary reform. Who am I, unlearned and unlettered, to offer an opinion? Nevertheless, for some years I have studied the matter and thought it over many times, helped by my deliberations with friends; and the conclusions I have come to are perhaps not unworthy of discussion. Therefore I shall summarize my views under eight points and elaborate on them separately to invite the study and comments of those interested in literary reform.

I believe that literary reform at the present time must begin with these eight items: (1) Write with substance. (2) Do not imitate the ancients. (3) Emphasize grammar. (4) Reject melancholy. (5) Eliminate old clichés. (6) Do not use allusions. (7) Do not use couplets and parallelisms. And (8) Do not avoid popular expressions or popular forms of characters.

1. Write with substance. By substance I mean: (a) Feeling. . . . Feeling is the soul of literature. Literature without feeling is like a man without a soul. . . . (b) Thought. By thought I mean insight, knowledge, and ideals. Thought does not necessarily depend on literature for transmission, but literature becomes more valuable if it contains thought, and thought is more valuable if it possesses literary value. This is the reason why the essays of Zhuangzi, the poems of Tao Qian [365–427], Li Bo [689–762], and Du Fu [717–770], the ci of Xin Jiaxuan [1140–1207], and the novel of Shi Naian [that is, the Shuihu zhuan or Water Margin] are matchless for all times. . . . In recent years literary men have satisfied themselves with tones, rhythm, words, and phrases and have had neither lofty thoughts nor genuine feeling. This is the chief cause of the deterioration of literature. This is the bad effect of superficiality over substantiality, that is to say, writing without substance. To remedy this bad situation, we must resort to substance. And what is substance? Nothing but feeling and thought.

2. Do not imitate the ancients. Literature changes with time. Each period from Zhou and Qin to Song, Yuan, and Ming has its own literature. This is not my private opinion but the universal law of the advancement of civilization. Take prose, for example. There is the prose of the Classic of History, the prose of the ancient philosophers, the prose of [the historians] Sima Qian and Ban Gu, the prose of the [Tang and Song masters] Han Yu, Liu Zongyuan, Ouyang Xiu, and Su Xun, the prose of the Recorded Conversations of the Neo-Confucians, and the prose of Shi Naian and Cao Xueqin [d. ca. 1765, author of The Dream of Red Mansions]. This is the development of prose. . . . Each period has changed in accordance with its situation and circumstance, each with its own characteristic merits. From the point of view of historical evolution, we cannot say that the writings of the ancients are all superior to those of modern writers. The prose of Zuo Qiuming [sixth century B.C., author of the Zuozhuan] and Sima Qian is wonderful, but compared to the Zuozhuan and Records of the Historian, wherein is Shi Naian’s Water Margin (Shuihu zhuan) inferior? . . .

I have always held that colloquial stories alone in modern Chinese literature can proudly be compared with the first-class literature of the world. Because they do not imitate the past but only describe the society of the day, they have become genuine literature. . . .

3. Emphasize grammar. Many writers of prose and poetry today neglect grammatical construction. Examples are too numerous to mention, especially in parallel prose and the four-line and eight-line verses.

4. Reject melancholy. This is not an easy task. Nowadays young writers often show passion. They choose such names as “Cold Ash,” “No Birth,” and “Dead Ash” as pen names, and in their prose and poetry they think of declining years when they face the setting sun, and of destitution when they meet the autumn wind. . . . I am not unaware of the fact that our country is facing many troubles. But can salvation be achieved through tears? I hope all writers become Fichtes and Mazzinis and not like Jia Yi [201–169 B.C.], Wang Can [177–217], Qu Yuan [343–277 B.C.], Xie Gaoyu [1249–1295], and so on [who moaned and complained]. . . .

5. Eliminate old clichés. By this I merely mean that writers should describe in their own words what they personally experience. So long as they achieve the goal of describing things and expressing the mood without sacrificing realism, that is literary achievement. Those who employ old cliches are lazy people who refuse to coin their own terms of description.

6. Do not use allusions. I do not mean allusion in the broad sense. These are of five kinds: (a) analogies employed by ancient writers, which have a universal meaning . . . ; (b) idioms; (c) references to historical events . . . ; (d) quoting from or referring to people in the past for comparison . . . ; and (e) quotations. . . . Allusions such as these may or may not be used.

But I do not approve of the use of allusions in the narrow sense. By using allusions I mean that writers are incapable of creating their own expressions to portray the scene before them or the concepts in their minds, and instead muddle along by borrowing old stories or expressions that are partly or wholly inapplicable. . . .

7. Do not use couplets and parallelisms. Parallelism is a special characteristic of human language. This is why in ancient writings such as those of Laozi and Confucius, there are occasionally couplets. The first chapter of the Daodejing consists of three couplets. Analects 1: 14, 1: 15, and 3: 17 are all couplets. But these are fairly natural expressions and have no indication of being forced or artificial, especially because there is no rigid requirement about the number of words, tones, or parts of speech. Writers in the age of literary decadence, however, who had nothing to say, emphasized superficiality, the extreme of which led to the development of the parallel prose, regulated ci, and the long regulated verse. It is not that there are no good products in these forms, but they are, in the final analysis, few. Why? Is it not because they restrict to the highest degree the free expression of man? (Not a single good piece can be mentioned among the long regulated verse.) To talk about literary reform today, we must “first establish the fundamental“¹⁹ and not waste our useful energy in the nonessentials of subtlety and delicacy. This is why I advocate giving up couplets and rhymes. Even if they cannot be abolished, they should be regarded as merely literary stunts and nothing to be pursued seriously.

There are still people today who deprecate colloquial novels as trifling literature, without realizing that Shi Naian, Cao Xueqin, and Wu Jianren [1867–1910]²⁰ all represent the main line of literature while parallel and regulated verse are really trifling matters. I know some will keep clear of me when they hear this.

8. Do not avoid popular expressions or popular forms of characters. When Buddhist scriptures were introduced into China, because classical expressions could not express their meanings, translators used clear and simple expressions. Their style already approached the colloquial. Later, many Buddhist lectures and dialogues were in the colloquial style, thus giving rise to the “conversation” style. When the Neo-Confucians of the Song dynasty used the colloquial in their Recorded Conversations, this style became the orthodox style of scholarly discussion. (This was followed by scholars of the Ming.) By that time, colloquial expressions had already penetrated rhymed prose, as can be seen in the colloquial poems of Tang and Song poets. From the third century to the end of the Yuan, North China had been under foreign races and popular literature developed. In prose there were such novels as Water Margin (Shuihu zhuan) and Journey to the West (Xiyou ji). In drama the products were innumerable. From the modern point of view, the Yuan period should be considered as a high point of literary development; unquestionably it produced the greatest number of immortal works. At that time writing and colloquial speech were the closest to each other, and the latter almost became the language of literature. Had the tendency not been checked, living literature would have emerged in China, and the great work of Dante and Luther [who inaugurated the substitution of a living language for dead Latin] would have taken place in China. Unfortunately, the tendency was checked in the Ming when the government selected officials on the basis of the rigid “eight-legged” prose style and at the same time literary men like the “seven scholars” including Li [Mengyang, 1472–1529] considered “returning to the past” as highbrow. Thus the once-in-a-millennium chance of uniting writing and speech was killed prematurely, midway in the process. But from the modern viewpoint of historical evolution, we can definitely say that the colloquial literature is the main line of Chinese literature and that it should be the medium employed in the literature of the future. (This is my own opinion; not many will agree with me today.) For this reason, I hold that we should use popular expressions and words in prose and poetry. Rather than using dead expressions of three thousand years ago, it is better to employ living expressions of the twentieth century, and rather than using the language of the Qin, Han, and the Six Dynasties, which cannot reach many people and cannot be universally understood, it is better to use the language of the Water Margin (Shuihu zhuan) and Journey to the West (Xiyou ji), which is understood in every household.

[Hu, “Wenxue gailiang chuyi,” in Hu Shi wencun, collection 1, ch. 1, pp. 5–16; original version in Xin qingnian 2, no. 5 (January 1917): 1–11—WTC]

The movement of literary revolution has been in the making for some time. My friend Hu Shi is the one who started the revolution of which he is the vanguard. I do not mind being an enemy of all old-fashioned scholars in the country and raising to great heights the banner of “the Army of Literary Revolution” to support my friend. On this banner shall be written these three fundamental principles of our revolutionary army: (1) Destroy the aristocratic literature, which is nothing but literary chiseling and flattery, and construct a simple, expressive literature of the people. (2) Destroy the outmoded, showy, classical literature and construct a fresh and sincere literature of realism. (3) Destroy the obscure and abstruse “forest” literature²¹ and construct a clear and popular literature of society. . . .

At this time of literary reform, aristocratic literature, classical literature, and forest literature should all be rejected. What are the reasons for attacking these three kinds of literature? The answer is that aristocratic literature employs embellishments and depends on previous writers and therefore has lost the qualities of independence and self-respect, that classical literature exaggerates and piles word after word and has lost the fundamental objective of expressing emotions and realistic descriptions; and that “forest” literature is difficult and obscure and is claimed to be lofty writing but is actually of no benefit to the masses. The form of such literatures is continuous repetition of previous models. It has flesh but no bones, body but no spirit. It is an ornament and is of no actual use. With respect to their contents, their horizon does not go beyond kings and aristocrats, spiritual beings and ghosts and personal fortunes and misfortunes. The universe, life, and society are all beyond their conception. These defects are common to all three forms of literature. These types of literature are both causes and effects of our national character of flattery, boasting, insincerity, and flagrant disregard of truth and facts. Now that we want political reform, we must regenerate the literature of those who are entrenched in political life. If we do not open our eyes and see the literary tendencies of the world society and the spirit of the time but instead bury our heads in old books day and night and confine our attention to kings and aristocrats, spiritual beings and ghosts and immortals, and personal fortunes and misfortunes, and in so doing hope to reform literature and politics, it is like binding our four limbs to fight Meng Ben [an ancient strong man].

Since I returned to China last year, in my speeches on literary revolution in various places, I have changed my “eight points” [in the previous selection] into something positive and shall summarize them under four items:

1. Speak only when you have something to say. (A different version of the first of the eight points.)

2. Speak what you want to say and say it in the way you want to say it. (Different version of points 2–6.)

3. Speak what is your own and not that of someone else. (Different version of point 7.)

4. Speak in the language of the time in which you live. (Different version of point 8.)

The literary revolution we are promoting aims merely at the creation of a Chinese literature of national speech. Only when there is such a literature can there be a national speech of literary quality. And only when there is a national speech of literary quality can our national speech be considered a real national speech. A national speech without literary quality will be devoid of life and value and can be neither established nor developed. This is the main point of this essay. . . .

Why is it that a dead language cannot produce a living literature? It is because of the nature of literature. The function of language and literature lies in expressing ideas and showing feelings. When these are well done, we have literature. Those who use a dead classical style will translate their own ideas into allusions of several thousand years ago and convert their own feelings into literary expressions of centuries past. . . . If China wants to have a living literature, we must use the plain speech that is the natural speech, and we must devote ourselves to a literature of national speech. . . .

Someone says, “If we want to use the national speech in literature, we must first have a national speech. At present we do not have a standard national speech. How can we have a literature of national speech?” I will say, this sounds plausible but is really not true. A national language is not to be created by a few linguistic experts or a few texts and dictionaries of national speech.. .. The truly effective and powerful text of national speech is the literature of national speech—novels, prose, poems, and plays written in the national speech. The time when these works prevail is the day when the Chinese national speech will have been established. Let us ask why we are now able simply to pick up the brush and write essays in the plain-speech style and use several hundred colloquial terms. Did we learn this from some textbook of plain speech? Was it not that we learned from such novels as the Water Margin (Shuihu zhuan), Journey to the West (Xiyou ji), Dream of Red Mansions (Hongloumeng) and Unofficial History of the Scholars (Rulin waishi)? This type of plain-speech literature is several hundred times as powerful as textbooks and dictionaries. . . . If we want to establish anew a standard national speech, we must first of all produce numerous works like these novels in the national speech style. . . .

A literature of national speech and a national speech of literary quality are our basic programs. Let us now discuss what should be done to carry them out.

I believe that the procedure in creating a new literature consists of three steps: (1) acquiring tools, (2) developing methods, and (3) creating. The first two are preparatory. The third is the real step to create a new literature.

1. The tools. Our tool is plain speech. Those of us who wish to create a literature of national speech should prepare this indispensable tool right away. There are two ways to do so:

(a) Read extensively literary works written in the plain speech that can serve as models, such as the works mentioned above, the Recorded Conversations of the Song Neo-Confucians and their letters written in the plain speech, the plays of the Yuan period, and the stories and monologues of the Ming and Qing times. Tang and Song poems and ci written in the plain speech should also be selected to read.

2. Methods. I believe that the greatest defect of the literary men who have recently emerged in our country is the lack of a good literary method. . . .

(a) The method of collecting material. . . . I believe that for future literary men the method of collecting material should be about as follows: (i) Enlarge the area from which material is to be collected. The three sources of material, namely, officialdom, houses of prostitution, and dirty society [from which present novelists draw their material], are definitely not enough. At present, the poor man’s society, male and female factory workers, rickshaw pullers, farmers in the interior districts, small shop owners and peddlers everywhere, and all conditions of suffering have no place in literature [as they should]. Moreover, now that new and old civilizations have come into contact, problems like family catastrophes, tragedies in marriage, the position of women, the unfitness of present education, and so on, can all supply literature with material. (ii) Stress actual observation and personal experience. . . . (iii) Use broad and keen imagination to supplement observation and experience.

(b) The method of construction. . . . This may be separated into two steps, namely, tailoring and laying the plot. . . . While tailoring is to determine what to do, laying the plot is to determine how to do it. . . .

3. Creation. The two items, tools and methods, discussed above are only preparations for the creation of a new literature. . . . As to what constitutes the creation of a new literature, I had better not say a word. In my opinion we in China today have not reached the point where we can take concrete steps to create a new literature, and there is no need of talking theoretically about the techniques of creation. Let us first devote our efforts to the first two steps of preparatory work.

[Hu, “Jianshe di wenxue geminglun,” Xin qingnian 4, no. 4 (April 1918): 290–306; Hu Shi wencun, collection 1, pp. 56–73—WTC]

Another significant trend of the New Culture Movement that owes its inception to Hu Shi is the new historical and critical approach to the study of Chinese philosophy and literature begun by Hu with his doctoral studies at Columbia. His Outline of the History of Chinese Philosophy (Zhongguo zhexue shi dagang), published in 1919, is permeated with a spirit of doubt that led him to reject tradition and to study Chinese thought historically and critically. This spirit soon penetrated the whole New Culture Movement. Hu’s friend Qian Xuantong (1887–1939) and pupil Gu Jiegang (1895–1980) took it up as a concerted “debunking” movement in the early 1920s, which resulted in an almost complete rejection of traditional beliefs in regard to ancient Chinese history, as well as to the loss by the Confucian classics of whatever sacredness, prestige, or authority they still retained.

The attacks of reformers in recent decades had already undermined belief in the political and social ethics of Confucianism among young Chinese. As nationalists, however, these same reformers had often felt a pride in Chinese antiquity that inclined them to spare it the devastating scrutiny to which they subjected the recent past. Now ancient history too—a domain in which Confucians had always excelled and that was so vital to their whole worldview—was invaded and occupied by modern skepticism.

In those years [1918 ff.] Dr. Hu Shi published many articles. Those articles often provided me with the methods for the study of history. . . . If I can do what Dr. Hu has done in his investigations for the novel Water Margin (Shuihu zhuan), discovering the stages through which the story developed and going through the story systematically to show how these stages changed, wouldn’t it be interesting! At the same time I recalled that this past spring Dr. Hu published an article on the “well-field” system in the periodical Construction (Jianshe), using the same critical method of investigation. It shows that ancient history can be investigated by the same method as the investigation of the novel. [p. 40]

As is well known, the history of China is generally considered to be five thousand years old (or 2,276,000 years according to the apocryphal books!). Actually it is only two thousand years old if we deduct the history recorded in spurious works and also unauthenticated history based on spurious works. Then we have only what is left after a big discount! At this point I could not help arousing in my mind an ambition to overthrow unauthentic history. At first I wanted only to overthrow unauthentic history recorded in unauthentic books. Now I wanted also to overthrow unauthentic history recorded in authentic works. Since I read the first section of [Kang Youwei’s] Confucius As a Reformer [Kongzi gaizhi kao], my thought had been germinating for five or six years, and now for the first time I had a clear conception and a definite plan to overthrow ancient history. What is this plan? Its procedure involves three things to be done. First, the origin and the development of the events recorded in unauthentic histories must be investigated one by one. Second, every event in the authentic histories must be investigated to see what this and that person said about it, list what they said, and compare them, like a judge examining evidence so that no lie can escape detection. Third, although the words of liars differ, they follow a certain common pattern, just as the rules governing plots in plays are uniform although the stories themselves differ. We can detect the patterns in their ways of telling falsehood. [pp. 42–43]

My only objective is to explain the ancient history transmitted in the tradition of a certain period by the circumstances of that period. . . . Take Boyi [c. 1122 B.C.?, who according to tradition preferred starving to death to serving another king]. What was the man really like? Was he the son of the Lord of Guzhu? We have no way of knowing. But we do know that in the Spring and Autumn period people liked to talk about moral cultivation and upheld the “gentleman” as the standard of molding personal character. Consequently, when Boyi was talked about in the Analects, he was described as “not keeping in mind other people’s former wickedness” [5: 22] and “refusing to surrender his will or degrade himself” [18: 8]. We also know that in the Warring States period, rulers and prime ministers liked to keep scholars in their service and scholars desperately looked for rulers to serve. For this reason, the book of Mencius says of Boyi that, having heard King Wen was in power, his hopes were aroused and he declared, “Why should I not go and follow him? I hear King Wen is hospitable to the old” [4a: 13, 7a: 22]. We also know that after the Qin united the empire, the concept of absolute loyalty to the ruler became very strong and no one could escape from the mutual obligation between the ruler and minister. For this reason, in the Records of the Historian he is recorded as one who bowed before King Wu of Zhou to admonish him [not to overthrow King Zhou of Shang] and, having failed in this mission, chose to follow what he believed to be right, refusing to eat the food produced under the Zhou and starving to death in the Shouyang Mountain.²² After the Han dynasty the story, which had undergone many changes before, became stabilized; books had become common and as a result the personality of Boyi no longer changed in accordance with the varying circumstances of time. We therefore should treat ancient history in the same way as we treat the stories of our own day, for they have all passed from mouth to mouth.

The energetic assault on traditional thought and literature focused attention on what should replace Confucianism as a way of looking at the world and at life. Here again, during the years 1918–1919, Chen Duxiu and Hu Shi manifested their role as leaders of the whole New Culture Movement. At a time that saw the introduction and lively discussion of the philosophies of Kant, Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, Bergson, James, Dewey, Russell, and others, Chen and Hu bespoke the dominant belief in science and social progress. In these days Chen, reacting strongly against what he conceived to be the social conformism and authoritarianism of Confucian thought, emphasized individualism as the basis of his philosophy. Yet his belief in science and materialism also inclined him strongly to the study of Marxism—an inclination checked to some degree by his interest in the ideas of John Dewey, who lectured widely in China in 1919 and 1920. Hu Shi, for his part, identified himself unequivocally with pragmatism. Nevertheless, in the movement as a whole, philosophical allegiances were less clear-cut. It was a period of fermentation and transition, producing also strong countercurrents to trends from the West (as shown in succeeding sections). We can say, however, that the prevailing trend among the educated was toward acceptance of such ideas as individualism, freedom, progress, democracy, and science.

What is the ultimate purpose in life? What should it be, after all? . . . From ancient times not a few people have offered explanations. . . . In my opinion, what the Buddha said is vague. Although the individual’s birth and death are illusory, can we say that humanity as a whole is not really existent? . . . The teachings of Christianity, especially, are fabrications out of nothing and cannot be proved. If God can create the human race, who created Him? Since God’s existence or nonexistence cannot be proved, the Christian philosophy of life cannot be completely believed in. The rectification of the heart, cultivation of the person, family harmony, ordering of the state, and world peace that Confucius and Mencius talked about are but some activities and enterprises in life and cannot cover the total meaning of life. If we are totally to sacrifice ourselves to benefit others, then we exist for others and not for ourselves. This is definitely not the fundamental reason for man’s existence. The idea [of altruism] of Mozi is also not free from one-sidedness. The doctrines of Yang Zhu [fourth century B.C.?] and Nietzsche fully reveal the true nature of life, and yet if we follow them to their extremes, how can this complex, organized, and civilized society continue? . . .

Because we Chinese have accepted the teachings [of contentment and laissez-faire] of Laozi and Zhuangzi, we have to that extent been backward. Scientists say that there is no soul after a man’s death. . . . It is difficult to refute these words. But although we as individuals will inevitably die, it is not easy for the whole race or humanity to die off. The civilization created by the race or humanity will remain. It is recorded in history and will be transmitted to later generations. Is this not the consciousness or memory of our continuation after death? From the above, the meaning of life as seen by the modern man can be readily understood. Let me state it briefly as follows:

1. With reference to human existence, the individual’s birth and death are transitory, but society really exists.

2. The civilization and happiness of society are created by individuals and should be enjoyed by individuals.

3. Society is an organization of individuals—there can be no society without individuals. . . . The will and the happiness of the individual should be respected.

4. Society is the collective life of individuals. If society is dissolved, there will be no memory or consciousness of the continuation of the individual after he dies. Therefore social organization and order should be respected.

5. To carry out one’s will and to satisfy his desires (everything from food and sex to moral reputation is “desire”) are the basic reasons for the individual’s existence. These goals never change. (Here we can say that Heaven does not change and the Way does not change either.)

6. All religions, laws, moral and political systems are but necessary means to preserve social order. They are not the individual’s original purpose of enjoyment in life and can be changed in accordance with the circumstances of the time.

7. People’s happiness in life is the result of their own effort and is neither the gift of God nor a spontaneous natural product. If it were the gift of God, how is it that He was so generous with people today and so stingy with people in the past? If it is a spontaneous, natural product, why is it that the happiness of the various peoples in the world is not uniform?

8. The individual in society is comparable to the cell in the body. Its birth and death are transitory. New ones replace the old. This is as it should be and need not be feared at all.

9. To enjoy happiness, do not fear suffering. Personal suffering at the moment sometimes contributes to personal happiness in the future. For example, the blood shed in righteous wars often wipes out the bad spots of a nation or mankind. Severe epidemics often hasten the development of science.

In a word, what is the ultimate purpose in life? What should it be, after all? I dare say:

During his lifetime, an individual should devote his efforts to create happiness and to enjoy it, and also to keep it in store in society so that individuals of the future may also enjoy it, one generation doing the same for the next and so on unto infinity.

[From Chen, “Rensheng zhenyi,” pp. 90–93—WTC]

There are two fundamental changes in basic scientific concepts that have had the most important bearings on pragmatism. The first is the change of the scientific attitude toward scientific laws. Hitherto, worshipers of science generally had a superstition that scientific laws were unalterable universal principles. They thought that there was an eternal, unchanging “natural law” immanent in all things in the universe and that when this law was discovered, it became scientific law. However, this attitude toward the universal principle has gradually changed in the last several decades. Scientists have come to feel that such a superstitious attitude toward a universal principle could hinder scientific progress. Furthermore, in studying the history of science they have learned that many discoveries in science are the results of hypotheses. Consequently, they have gradually realized that the scientific laws of today are no more than the hypotheses that are the most applicable, most convenient, and most generally accepted as explanations of natural phenomena. . . . Such changes of attitude involve three ideas: (1) Scientific laws are formulated by men. (2) They are hypotheses—whether they can be determined to be applicable or not entirely depends on whether they can satisfactorily explain facts. (3) They are not the eternal, unchanging natural law. There may be such a natural law in the universe, but we cannot say that our hypothecated principles are this law. They are no more than a shorthand to record the natural changes known to us. [pp. 291–294]

Besides this, there was in the nineteenth century another important change that also had an extremely important bearing on pragmatism. This is Darwin’s theory of evolution. . . . When it came to Darwin, he boldly declared that the species were not immutable but all had their origins and developed into the present species only after many changes. From the present onward, there can still be changes in species, such as the grafting of trees and crossing of fowls, whereby special species can be obtained. Not only do the species change, but truth also changes. The change of species is the result of adaptation to environment, and truth is but an instrument with which to deal with environment. As the environment changes, so does truth accordingly. . . . The knowledge that mankind needs is not the way or principle that has an absolute existence but the particular truths for here and now and for particular individuals. Absolute truth is imaginary, abstract, vague, without evidence, and cannot be demonstrated. [pp. 294–295]

What we call truth is actually no more than an instrument, comparable to this piece of paper in my hand, this chalk, this blackboard, or this teapot. They are all our instruments. Because this concept produced results, people in the past therefore called it truth, and because its utility still remains, we therefore still call it truth. If by any chance some event takes place for which the old concept is not applicable, it will no longer be truth. We will search for a new truth to take its place. . . . [pp. 309–310]

Dewey is a great revolutionist in the history of philosophy. . . . He said that the basic error of modern philosophy is that modern philosophers do not understand what experience really is. All quarrels between rationalists and empiricists and between idealists and realists are due to their ignorance of what experience is. [p. 316]

Dewey was greatly influenced by the modern theory of biological evolution. Consequently, his philosophy is completely colored by bio-evolutionism. He said that “experiencing means living; and that living goes on in and because of an environing medium, not in a vacuum. . . . The human being has upon his hands the problem of responding to what is going on around him so that these changes will take one turn rather than another, namely, that required by his own further functioning. . . . Heis obliged to struggle—that is to say, to employ the direct support given by the environment in order indirectly to effect changes that would not otherwise occur. In this sense, life goes on by means of controlling the environment. Its activities must change the changes going on around it; they must neutralize hostile occurrences; they must transform neutral events into cooperative factors or into an efflorescence of new features.“²³

The foregoing are the basic concepts of Dewey’s philosophy. Summarized, they are (1) Experience is life and life is dealing with environment; (2) In the act of dealing with environment, the function of thought is the most important. All conscious actions involve the function of thought. Thought is an instrument to deal with environment; (3) True philosophy must throw overboard the previous toying with “philosophers’ problems” and turn itself into a method for solving human problems.

[Hu, “Shiyan zhuyi,” Hu Shi wencun, collection 1, ch. 2, pp. 291–320; originally published in Xin qingnian 6, no. 4 (April 1919): 342–358—WTC]

The prevailing glorification of science prompted a reaction in some quarters, which pointed to the inadequacy of science when conceived as a philosophy for dealing with some of the fundamental questions of human life. The debate was touched off by a lecture at Qinghua College, near Beijing, by Dr. Zhang Junmai (Carsun Chang, 1886–1969), who insisted upon the need for a metaphysics as the basis for a genuine philosophy of life. In the controversy that followed (also known as the controversy between metaphysics and science), Zhang drew some support from his teacher Liang Qichao, now much disillusioned with Western materialism and scientism, and from the professional philosopher and translator of Bergson, Zhang Dongsun (1886–1973). A far larger number of writers, however, immediately rose to attack metaphysics and defend science. Zhang’s chief opponent was Ding Wenjiang (1888–1936), a geologist by profession, who stigmatized metaphysics as mere superstition and insisted that there were no genuine problems of philosophy or psychology that lay outside the domain of science or to which science, with the progress of civilization, would not eventually find an answer. Many others with a basically materialistic view, from Chen Duxiu (now a Marxist and Communist) to Hu Shi and Wu Zhihui (1865–1953), a writer closely identified with the Nationalists (Guomindang), joined in the battle. Altogether the writings that dealt with this issue, later compiled in book form, amounted to more than 250,000 words. In the end, as far as majority opinion was concerned, the “anti-metaphysics, pro-science” group carried the day. The controversy thus served to underscore the overwhelming acceptance of pragmatism and materialism among the younger generation of writers and students.

Zhang Junmai was a young professor of philosophy when he delivered this controversial lecture on February 14, 1923. Like so many others of his generation, he had received his higher education in Japan (Waseda University) and Europe. A follower of Liang Qichao and a believer in the “spiritual” civilization of China, he combined Bergsonian intuitionism with the Neo-Confucian teachings of Wang Yangming. In later years Zhang was also politically active as the leader of a “third force” advocating nationalism and socialism, which had some influence among intellectuals but little mass following.

The central focus of a philosophy of life is the self. What is relative to it is the nonself. . . . But all problems of the nonself are related to human life. Now human life is a living thing and cannot so easily be governed by formulae as can dead matter. The unique character of a philosophy of life becomes especially clear when we compare it with science.

First of all, science is objective, whereas a philosophy of life is subjective. The highest standard of science consists in its objective efficacy. Mr. A says so, Mr. B says so, and C, D, E, F all say so. In other words, a general law is applicable to the entire world. . . . A philosophy of life is different. Confucius’s doctrine of firm action and Laozi’s doctrine of Doing Nothing represent views. . . . Darwin’s theory of struggle and survival and Kropotkin’s theory of mutual aid represent different views. All these have their pros and cons, and no experiment can be conducted to determine who is right and who is wrong. Why? Because they are philosophies of life; because they are subjective.

Second, science is controlled by the logical method whereas a philosophy of life arises from intuition. . . . Science is restricted by method and by system. On the other hand, philosophies of life—whether the pessimism of Schopenhauer and Hartmann or the optimism of Lambert, Nietzsche, and Hegel; whether Confucius’s doctrine of personal perfection and family harmony or Buddha’s doctrine of renunciation; and whether the Confucian doctrine of love with distinctions or the teaching of universal love of Mozi and Jesus—are not restricted by any logical formula. They are not governed by definitions or methods. They are views held according to one’s conscience for the sake of setting a norm for the world and for posterity. This is the reason why they are intuitive.

Third, science proceeds from an analytical method, whereas a philosophy of life proceeds from synthesis. The key to science is analysis. . . . A philosophy of life, on the other hand, is synthetic. It includes everything. If subjected to analysis, it will lose its true meaning. For example, the Buddha’s philosophy of life is to save all living beings. If one seeks his motive and says that it is due to the Indian love of meditation or to India’s climate, to some extent such analysis is reasonable. But it would be a mistake to conclude that Buddhism and all it contains can be explained in terms only of the motives just analyzed. Why? Motives and a philosophy of life are different things. A philosophy of life is a whole and cannot be discovered in what has been divided or mutilated. . . .

Fourth, science follows the law of cause and effect whereas a philosophy of life is based on free will. The first general law governing material phenomena is that where there is cause, there is effect. . . . Even the relation between body and mind . . . is also the result of cause and effect. But purely psychological phenomena are different, and a philosophy of life is much more so. Why is it that Confucius did not even sit long enough to warm his mat [before hurrying off to serve society] or that Mozi’s stove did not have a chance to burn black [before he did likewise]? Why was Jesus crucified, and why did Shakyamuni devote his life to asceticism? All these issued from the free action of conscience and were not determined by something else. Even in an ordinary person, such things as repentance, self-reform, and a sense of responsibility cannot be explained by the law of cause and effect. The master agent is none other than the person himself. This is all there is to it, whether in the case of great men like Confucius, Mozi, the Buddha, and Jesus, or in the case of an ordinary person.

Fifth, science arises from the phenomenon of uniformity among objects, whereas a philosophy of life arises from the unity of personality. The greatest principle in science is the uniformity of the course of nature. Plants, animals, and even inorganic matter can all be classified. Because of the possibility of classification, there is a principle running through all changes and phenomena of a particular class of objects, and therefore a scientific formula for it can be discovered. But in human society some people are intelligent while others are stupid, some are good and some are bad, and some are healthy while others are not. . . . The distinction of natural phenomena is their similarity, while that of mankind is its variety. Because of this variety there have been the “first to be enlightened” and the “hero,” as they are called in traditional Chinese terminology, and the “creator” and “genius,” as they are called in Western terminology. All these are merely intended to show the unique character of human personality.

From the above we can see that the distinguishing points of a philosophy of life are subjectivity, intuitiveness, synthesizing power, free will, and personal unity. Because of these five qualities, the solution of problems pertaining to a philosophy of life cannot be achieved by science, however advanced it may be, but can be achieved only by people themselves.

[Zhang Junmai, “Rensheng guan,” in Zhang et al., Kexue yu rensheng guan 1: 4–9—WTC]

Ding Wenjiang (V. K. Ting, 1888–1936) was a professor of geology at the University of Beijing when he responded to Zhang Junmai with this article, published in April 1923. Trained at Cambridge and Glasgow Universities, he was widely respected for his writings in such fields as geology, mining, and geography but became known also as a leading political pamphleteer. In 1919, a few years before this controversy arose, he had accompanied Liang Qichao, Zhang Junmai, and others on an inspection trip to Europe, from which Zhang returned much disillusioned with the materialism of the West. Though Ding’s basic outlook was not altered by this experience, from it developed his interest in a wider range of questions—political and philosophical—than his scientific studies had embraced earlier.

Metaphysics is a bewildered specter that has been haunting Europe for twenty centuries. Of late it has gradually lost its treacherous occupation and all of a sudden come to China, its body swinging, with all its banners and slogans, to lure and fool the Chinese people. If you don’t believe me, look at Zhang Junmai’s “Philosophy of Life.” Zhang is my friend, but metaphysics is an enemy of science. . . .

Can a philosophy of life and science be separated? . . . Zhang’s explanation is that philosophies of life are “most diversified” and therefore science is not applicable to them. But it is one thing to say that at present philosophies of life are not unified and quite another thing to say that they can never be unified. Unless you can advance a reason to prove why they can never be unified, we are obliged to find the unity. Furthermore, granted that at present “there are no standards of right and wrong, truth or falsity” [as Zhang said], how can we tell that right and wrong and truth and falsity cannot be discovered? Unless we discover them, how are we going to have standards? To find right and wrong and truth and falsity, what other method is there aside from the scientific? . . . [p. 6]

Zhang says that a philosophy of life is not controlled by the logical method. Science replies: “Whatever cannot be studied and criticized by logic is not true knowledge. He claims that “purely psychological phenomena” lie outside the law of cause and effect. Science replies: Psychological phenomena are at bottom materials of science. If the phenomena you are talking about are real, they cannot go beyond the sphere of science. He has repeatedly emphasized individuality and intuition, but he has placed these outside the logical method and definition. It is not that science attaches no importance to individuality and intuition. But the individuality and intuition recognized by science are those that “emerge from living experience and are based on evidences of experience” [as Hu Shi has said]. Zhang has said that a philosophy of life is a synthesis—“It is a whole and cannot be discovered in what has been divided and mutilated.” Science replies: We do not admit that there is such a confused, undifferentiated thing. Furthermore, he himself has distinguished the self and the nonself and listed nine items under the latter. Thus he has already analyzed it. He says that “the solution of problems pertaining to a philosophy of life cannot be achieved by science.” Science replies: Anything with a psychological content and all true concepts and inferences are materials for science. [pp. 14–15]

Whether we like it or not, truth is truth and falsity is falsity. As truth is revealed, metaphysics becomes helpless. Consequently, the universe that used to belong to metaphysics has been taken over by science. . . . Biology has become a science. . . . Psychology has also declared [its] independence. Thereupon metaphysics has retreated from First Philosophy to ontology, but it is still without regret and brags before science, saying: “You cannot study intuition; you cannot study reality outside of sensation. You are corporeal, I am metaphysical. You are dead; I am living.” Science does not care to quarrel with it, realizing that the scientific method is all-mighty in the realm of knowledge. There is no fear that metaphysics will not finally surrender. [p. 16]

Metaphysicians talk only about their ontology. We do not want to waste our valuable time attacking them. But young people at large are fooled by them and consider all problems relating to religion, society, government, and ethics to be really beyond the control of the logical method. They think there is really no right or wrong, no truth or falsity. They believe that these problems must be solved by what they call a philosophy of life, which they say is subjective, synthesizing and consisting of free will.

If so, what kind of society will ours be? If so, there will be no need to read or learn, and experience will be useless. We will need only to “hold views according to our conscience,” for philosophies of life “all issue from the free action of conscience and are not dictated by something else.” In that case, aren’t study, learning, knowledge, and experience all a waste of time? Furthermore, there will be no room for discussing any problem, for discussion requires logical formulae, definitions, and methods, and all these are unacceptable to Zhang Junmai. . . . Moreover, everyone has his own conscience. What need is there for anyone to “enlighten” or “set an example” for us? If everyone can “hold his view” according to his irrational philosophy of life, why should he regard the philosophies of life of Confucius, the Buddha, Mozi, or Jesus as superior to his own? And there is no standard of right and wrong or truth and falsity. Thus a person’s philosophy of life may be self-contradictory and he may be preaching the doctrine of equality of the sexes and practicing polygamy at the same time. All he needs to say is that it is “the free action of his conscience,” and he does not have to bother whether it is logical or not. Whenever it is the free action of conscience, naturally other people must not interfere. Could we live in such a society for a single day? [pp. 18–19]

[Ding, “Xuanxue yu kexue,” in Zhang et al., Kexue yu rensheng guan 2: 1–19—WTC]

These excerpts are from a long essay by Wu Zhihui (1865–1953), which Hu Shi hailed as “the most significant event” in the controversy over science and metaphysics. “With one stroke of the pen he ruled out God, banished the soul, and punctured the metaphysical idea that man is the most spiritual of all things.” Wu, an iconoclast who had a reputation as something of a wit and satirist, is remembered for his declaration, which became a virtual battle cry among the anti-Confucianists: “All thread-bound [old-style] books should be dumped in the lavatory.”

After taking the first steps up the old civil service ladder under the Manchus, Wu had become involved in the reform movement and then had studied for many years in Japan, England, and France, where he espoused anarchism. Acquaintance with Sun Yat-sen led him eventually into the revolutionary movement. He became a confidant of Sun and Chiang Kai-shek, and in his later years he was a sort of elder statesman among the Nationalists.

Zhang Junmai has mobilized his soldiers of science to protect his specter of metaphysics and engage in warfare with Ding Wenjiang. Liang Qichao has formulated for them “laws of the war of words” in preparation for stepped-up mobilization on both sides and for a prolonged struggle. . . . To some extent I feel that even if the struggle lasted for a hundred years, there would be no conclusion. [pp. 24–25]

What philosophy of life have you, oldster? Well, friends, let me tell you. . . .

We need only say that “the universe is a greater life.” Its substance involves energy at the same time. To use another term, it may also be called power. From this power the will is produced. . . . When the will comes into contact with the external world, sensations ensue, and when these sensations are welcomed or resisted, feelings arise. To make sure that the feelings are correct, thought arises to constitute the intellect. When the intellect examines again and again a certain feeling to see to it that it is natural and proper or to correct the intellect’s own ignorance, this is intuition. [pp. 28–30]

What is the need of any spiritual element or the so-called soul, which never meets any real need anyway? [p. 32]

I strongly believe (1) that the spirit cannot be separated from matter . . . , (2) that the universe is a temporary thing . . . ,(3) that people today are superior to people in the past and that people in the future will be superior to people today . . . , (4) that they are so in both good and evil . . . , (5) that the more advanced material civilization becomes, the more plentiful will material goods be, the human race will tend more and more to unity, and complicated problems will be more and more easily solved . . . , (6) that morality is the crystallization of civilization and that there has never been a low morality when civilization reached a higher state . . . , and (7) that all things in the universe can be explained by science. [pp. 112–137]

[Wu, “Yige xinxinyang,” in Zhang et al., Kexue yu rensheng guan 2: 24–137—WTC]

The Chinese people’s philosophy of life has not yet been brought face-to-face with science. At this moment we painfully feel that science has not been sufficiently promoted, that scientific education has not been developed, and that the power of science has not been able to wipe out the black smoke that covers the whole country. To our amazement there are still prominent scholars [like Liang Qichao] who shout, “European science is bankrupt; blame the cultural bankruptcy of Europe on science, deprecate it, score the sins of the scientists’ philosophy of life, and do not let science exert any influence on a philosophy of life.” Seeing this, how can those who believe in science not worry? How can they help crying out loud to defend science? This is the motive that has given rise to this big battle of “science versus philosophy of life.” We must understand this motive before we can see the position the controversy occupies in the history of Chinese thought. . . .

Zhang Junmai’s chief point is that “the solution of problems pertaining to a philosophy of life cannot be achieved by science.” In reply to him, we should make clear what kind of philosophy of life has been produced when science was applied to problems pertaining to a philosophy of life. In other words, we should first describe what a scientific philosophy of life is and then discuss whether such a philosophy of life can be established, whether it can solve the problems pertaining to a philosophy of life, and whether it is a plague on Europe and poison to the human race, as Liang Qichao has said it is. I cannot help feeling that in this discussion consisting of a quarter of a million words, those who fight for science, excepting Mr. Wu Zhihui, share a common error, namely, that of not stating in concrete terms what a scientific philosophy of life is, but merely defending in an abstract way the assertion that science can solve the problems of a philosophy of life. . . . They have not been willing publicly to admit that the concrete, purely materialistic and purely mechanistic philosophy of life is the scientific philosophy of life. We say they have not been willing; we do not say they have not dared. We merely say that with regard to the scientific philosophy of life, the defenders of science do not believe in it as clearly and firmly as does Mr. Wu Zhihui and therefore they cannot publicly defend their view. . . .

In a word, our future war plan should be to publicize our new belief, to publicize what we believe to be the new philosophy of life. The basic ideas of this new philosophy of life have been declared by Mr. Wu. We shall now summarize these general ideas, elaborate and supplement them to some extent, and present here an outline of this new philosophy of life:

1. On the basis of our knowledge of astronomy and physics, we should recognize that the world of space is infinitely large.

2. On the basis of our geological and paleontological knowledge, we should recognize that the universe extends over infinite time.

3. On the basis of all our verifiable scientific knowledge, we should recognize that the universe and everything in it follow natural laws of movement and change—“natural” in the Chinese sense of “being so of themselves”—and that there is no need for the concept of a supernatural Ruler or Creator.

4. On the basis of the biological sciences, we should recognize the terrific wastefulness and brutality in the struggle for existence in the biological world, and consequently the untenability of the hypothesis of a benevolent Ruler who “possesses the character of loving life.”

5. On the basis of the biological, physiological, and psychological sciences, we should recognize that man is only one species in the animal kingdom and differs from the other species only in degree but not in kind.

6. On the basis of the knowledge derived from anthropology, sociology, and the biological sciences, we should understand the history and causes of the evolution of living organisms and of human society.

7. On the basis of the biological and psychological sciences, we should recognize that all psychological phenomena are explainable through the law of causality.

8. On the basis of biological and historical knowledge, we should recognize that morality and religion are subject to change and that the causes of such change can be scientifically discovered.

9. On the basis of our newer knowledge of physics and chemistry, we should recognize that matter is not dead or static but living and dynamic.

10. On the basis of biological and sociological knowledge, we should recognize that the individual—the “small self’—is subject to death and extinction, but humanity—the “Large Self’—does not die and is immortal and [we] should recognize that to live for the sake of the species and posterity is religion of the highest kind and that those religions that seek a future life either in Heaven or in the Pure Land are selfish religions.

This new philosophy of life is a hypothesis founded on the commonly accepted scientific knowledge of the last two or three hundred years. We may confer on it the honorable title of “scientific philosophy of life.” But to avoid unnecessary controversy, I propose to call it merely “the naturalistic philosophy of life.”

Intimately related to the debate on science and metaphysics was the controversy over Chinese and Western cultures, which arose from the apparent disillusionment with the West of some who not long before had been the strongest champions of Westernization. In 1919 Liang Qichao returned from Europe, where he had observed the aftermath of World War I. The picture he proceeded to give of the West was much in contrast to his early view of it as the vanguard of social progress and enlightened civilization. Now he saw it as sick and declining, the victim of its own obsession with science, materialism, and mechanization. The notion of inevitable progress, which had once inspired his belief that China could rise above its past and move forward to new greatness, was now bankrupt. Its bankruptcy, however, was all the West’s, not Liang’s. If Europe fell victim to its own shattered illusions, neither he nor China need suffer in the catastrophe, for the failure of science and materialism served only to vindicate China and its “spiritual” civilization.

Liang was by no means ready to forgo completely the benefits of science and material progress. The failure of the West he saw as resulting from its proclivity toward extremes, its current overemphasis on materialism being an excessive reaction to the exaggerated idealism and spirituality of medieval Europe. China’s historical mission had been to preserve a balance between the two, and in the modern world it was specially equipped to reconcile these divergent forces in a new humanistic civilization. Thus Liang arrived at a new synthesis. Whatever was of value in Western science and material progress China could claim for herself and blend with her own spiritual traditions.

Strong support for this view came from Liang Shuming (1893–1988), who likewise saw the superiority of Chinese civilization as lying in its capacity for harmonizing opposing extremes. As in the debate over science and metaphysics, however, the voices of those who spoke for progress and modernism—with Hu Shi again among the leaders—prevailed against the neo-traditionalists. The latter might appeal to national pride or self-respect and thus swell a growing sense of nationalism, but they could not arrest the steady disintegration of traditional Chinese civilization, which Liang himself had done much to hasten.

What is our duty? It is to develop our civilization with that of the West and to supplement Western civilization with ours so as to synthesize and transform them to make a new civilization. . . .

Recently many Western scholars have wanted to import Asian civilization as a corrective to their own. Having thought the matter over carefully, I believe we are qualified for that purpose. Why? In the past, the ideal and the practical in Western civilization have been sharply divided. Idealism and materialism have both gone to the extreme. Religionists have one-sidedly emphasized the future life. Idealistic philosophers have engaged in lofty talk about the metaphysical and mysterious, far, far removed from human problems. The reaction came from science. Materialism swept over the world and threw overboard all lofty ideals. Therefore I once said, “Socialism, which is so fashionable, amounts to no more than fighting for bread.” Is this the highest goal of mankind?

Now pragmatism and evolutionism are being promoted, the aim being to embrace the ideal in the practical and to harmonize mind and matter. In my opinion, this is precisely the line of development in our ancient systems of thought. Although the schools of the sages—Confucius, Laozi, and Mozi—are different, their common goal is to unify the ideal and the practical. . . . Also, although Buddhism was founded in India, it really flourished in China. . . . Take Chinese meditation Buddhism [Chan, Zen]. It can truly be considered as practical Buddhism and worldly Buddhism. Certainly it could have developed only outside India, and certainly it can reveal the special characteristics of the Chinese people. It enables the way of renouncing the world and the way of remaining in the world to go hand in hand without conflict. At present, philosophers like Bergson and Eucken want to follow this path but have not been able to do so. I have often thought that if they could have studied the works of the Buddhist Idealistic School, their accomplishments would surely have been greater, and if they could have understood Meditation Buddhism, their accomplishments would have been still greater.

Just think. Weren’t the pre-Qin philosophers and the great masters of the Sui and the Tang eras our loving and sagely ancestors who have left us a great heritage? We, being corrupted, do not know how to enjoy them and today we suffer intellectual starvation. Even in literature, art, and the rest, should we yield to others? Of course we may laugh at those old folks among us who block their own road of advancement and claim that we Chinese have all that is found in Western learning. But should we not laugh even more at those who are drunk with Western ways and regard everything Chinese as worthless, as though we in the last several hundred years have remained primitive and have achieved nothing? We should realize that any system of thought must have its own period as the background. What we need to learn is the essential spirit of that system and not the conditions under which it was produced, for once we come to the conditions, we shall not be free from the restrictions of time. For example, Confucius said a great deal about ethics of an aristocratic nature, which is certainly not suitable today. But we should not take Confucius lightly simply because of this. Shall we cast Plato aside simply because he said that the slavery system should be preserved? If we understand this point, we can study traditional Chinese subjects with impartial judgment and accept or reject them judiciously.

There is another very important matter. If we want to expand our civilization, we must borrow the methods of other civilizations because their methods of study are highly refined. . . . I therefore hope that our dear young people will, first of all, have a sincere purpose of respecting and protecting our civilization; second, that they will apply Western methods to the study of our civilization and discover its true character; third, that they will put our own civilization in order and supplement it with others’ so that it will be transformed and become a new civilization; and fourth, that they will extend this new civilization to the outside world so that it can benefit the whole human race.

[Liang, in Yinbing shi heji, vol. 5, juanji no. 23, part i, sec. 13, pp. 35–37—WTC]

At a time when Confucianism was being decried as decadent and outmoded, Liang Shuming (1893–1988), originally a Buddhist, endorsed Confucianism as the basis for a reconstruction of Chinese civilization and later for world civilization as well. In the first passage translated below, written in 1922, he is quite negative with regard to “Indian attitudes,” but later he saw them as still relevant to the evolution of the world at large.

Though not unappreciative of certain Western values, such as individualism and science, which might be embraced in a synthesis with China’s own humanistic values, he condemned wholesale Westernization as impractical and undesirable. Instead he believed that underlying traditional values and orientations would constitute a more practical basis for building a cohesive modern society, as well as the basis for a future human culture.

According to Liang, the underlying bases of Western democracy—material, social, and spiritual—were totally lacking in China. Consequently, political democracy of the Western type could not possibly succeed there. Reformers and revolutionaries who tried arbitrarily to superimpose Western institutions on China failed to recognize the essentially rural and agrarian character of Chinese society. A sound program of reconstruction, Liang believed, could start only at the grass roots and slowly evolve a new socialist society, avoiding the excesses of both capitalism and communism.

To promote such reconstruction of agriculture and rural life, Liang founded the Shandong Rural Reconstruction Institute. He was one of the founders of the Democratic League and was prominent in the attempt to mediate between the Nationalist and Communist parties after World War II. Later, under the pressure of Communist ideological campaigns, he steadfastly refused to confess any errors.

There are three ways in human life: (1) to go forward; (2) to modify and to achieve harmony, synthesis, and the mean in the self; and (3) to go backward. . . . The fundamental spirit of Chinese culture is the harmony and moderation of ideas and desires, whereas that of Indian civilization is to go backward in ideas and desires [and that of the West is to go forward]. [pp. 54–55]

Generally speaking, Westerners have been too strong and too vigorous in their minds and intellect. Because of this they have suffered spiritually. This is an undeniable fact since the nineteenth century. [p. 63]

Let us compare Western culture with Chinese culture. First, there is the conquest of nature on the material side of Western culture—this China has none of. Second, there is the scientific method on the intellectual side of Western culture—this also China has none of. And third, there is democracy on the social side of Western culture—this, too, China has none of. . . . This shows negatively that the way of Chinese culture is not that of the West but is the second way [mentioned above—namely, achieving the mean]. . . . As to Indian culture . . . religion alone has flourished, subordinating to it philosophy, literature, science, and art. The three aspects of life [material, intellectual, and social] have become an abnormal spiritual development, and spiritual life itself has been an almost purely religious development. This is really most extraordinary. Indian culture has traveled its own way, different from that of the West. Needless to say, it is not the same as that of Chinese culture. [pp. 64–66]

In this respect Chinese culture is different from that of India, because of the weakness of religion, as we have already said. For this reason, there is not much to be said about Chinese religions. The most important thing in Chinese culture is its metaphysics, which is applicable everywhere. . . . Chinese metaphysics is different from that of the West and India. It is different in its problems. . . . The problems discussed in the ancient West and ancient India have in fact not existed in China. While the problems of the West and India are not really identical, still they are the same insofar as the search for the reality of the universe is concerned. Where they are the same is exactly where they are decidedly different from China. Have you heard of Chinese philosophers debating monism, dualism, or pluralism, or idealism and materialism? The Chinese do not discuss such static problems of tranquil reality. The metaphysics handed down from the greatest antiquity in China, which constituted the fundamental concept of all learning—great and small, high and low—is that completely devoted to the discussion of change that is entirely nontranquil in reality. [pp. 114–115]

The first point of the Confucian philosophy of life arising out of this type of Chinese metaphysics is that life is right and good. Basically, this metaphysics speaks in terms of “the life of the universe.” Hence it is said that “change means reproduction and reproduction.“²⁴ Confucius said many things to glorify life, like “The great characteristic of Heaven and earth is to give life,“²⁵ and “Does Heaven speak? All the four seasons pursue their course and all things are continually being produced.” . . .²⁶ Human life is the reality of a great current. It naturally tends toward the most suitable and the most satisfactory. It responds to things as they come. This is change. It spontaneously arrives at centrality, harmony, and synthesis. Hence its response is always right. This is the reason why the Confucian school said, “What Heaven has conferred is what we call human nature. To fulfill the law of human nature is what we call the Way.“²⁷ As long as one fulfills his nature, it will be all right. This is why it is said that it can be understood and put into practice even by men and women of the simplest intelligence. This knowledge and ability are what Mencius called the knowledge possessed by man without deliberation and the ability possessed by him without having been acquired by learning.²⁸ [pp. 121–125]

What attitude should we Chinese hold now? What should we select from the three cultures? We may say:

2. We must accept Western culture as a whole [including conquest of nature, science, and democracy] but make some fundamental changes. That is to say, we must change the Western attitude somewhat [from intellection to intuition].

3. We must renew our Chinese attitude and bring it to the fore, but do so critically. [p. 202]

The following excerpt is from Liang’s “Reconstruction of the Village Community.” In it he addresses the problem of community organization by reference to the original community compact (xiangyue) advocated by Zhu Xi on the basis of his reconstruction of the earlier compact of the Lu family in the eleventh century (chapter 21). In the form recommended by Zhu and adapted later by Wang Yangming and other sixteenth-century Neo-Confucian reformers, Liang saw a type of voluntary, cooperative organization that could be adapted to modern needs but would avoid the passivity of the authoritarian, bureaucratic “village lecture” system officially established under the Ming and Qing (chapter 25). In this he reflected a consciousness shared by many earlier twentieth-century reformers that traditional China was riven by a gap between the top-heavy power structure above and a fragmented, individualistic, politically inert society below. In other words, he was addressing the lack of a more active and involved infrastructure such as more recently has been referred to as “civil society.” What he says reverses the claims made in some quarters that the “individualism” of the West stands in contrast to the “communitarianism” of Asia.

In simple terms, we can indicate two points: one, the question of science and technology and two, the question of group organization. As for science and technology, everyone has seen how the West is superior and how we are deficient. . . . What I want to discuss now is the question of group organization.

Westerners have always had everywhere group life, beginning from religion on to economics and government. Whereas Chinese have always lacked group life; everywhere it seems the whole is broken into parts. . . . [p. 51]

What is meant by construction is nothing but the construction of a new structure of social organization; that is, to construct new customs. Why? Because in the past our structure of social organization was shaped out of social customs; it was not shaped out of national laws. . . . [p. 40]

In the contemporary world, if the Chinese do not move toward group organization, in the future they will not be able to exist. Reality compels us toward organization, to turn in the direction of the West . . . but might the turn be incompatible with our old spirit? . . . Although Chinese lack group organization, they are not opposed to group organization; hence there is no necessary conflict.[p. 145]

This is a time of great distress for the Chinese, a time caught in contradiction on either side, coming and going. That is to say, on the one hand the Chinese lack group organization, and at the same time they lack the establishment of individual liberty and equality; the two [deficiencies] both urgently await being made up. But if we emphasize the aspect of liberty and equality . . . then it will be very difficult for us to attend to the aspect of combining into groups and will cause the Chinese to be even more dispersed. If we take care of the aspect of group organization, emphasizing the West’s most recent tendency, then liberty and equality cannot be given enough play. . . . Relational ethics should allow both aspects to be established. As a result of giving play to ethical relations, the individual will necessarily respect the group, fulfilling the requisite obligation; the group will necessarily respect the individual, according it due liberty and equality. . . .

[R]egarding the group organization we have just discussed, the principle of this organization is based in China’s idea of ethics. It is as if, to the five relationships of father-son, ruler-minister, husband-wife, friends, and elder brother-younger brother, there were added a relationship of group toward member, member toward group. . . .

Once we have resolved the several conflicts and difficulties between [the spirits of] China and the West, then we can discover a new social organization. This social organization will still take ethical sentiments as its source and take the upward movement of human life [rensheng xiangshang] as its aim.. .. This is purely a rational [lixing] organization; it fully gives play to humanity’s spirit (reason) and fully absorbs the strengths of the Westerners. Westerners’ strengths are four: first is group organization—this sets right our being dispersed; second is the active participation in group life by the members of the group—this sets right our defect of being passive; third is respect for the individual—this furthers the position of the individual relative to before, completes the character of the individual; fourth is the socialization of wealth—this enhances social relations. This organization of ours completely encompasses these four Western strengths without any omission, hence we say that this organization takes China’s ancient spirit as its basis and absorbs Westerners’ strengths. . . . [T]his organization is one that humanity has never known before. [pp. 174–176]

Above we discussed two aspects of our organization: one is to seek organization from reason [lixing], one is to start with the villages. . . . These two were originally the root of Chinese society. . . . What we are about now is to grow new sprouts from this root. . . . This new organization is just the supplementation and transformation of what earlier Chinese called “the community compact” [xiangyue]. . . . But the community compact referred to here is not the community compact promoted in the Ming and Qing dynasties by the government using political force; rather it refers to the community compact launched in the beginning by villagers themselves at the outset in the Song dynasty. That village covenant was the creation of Mr. Lü Heshu. [pp. 187–188]

[O]ur transformation is not strange; if the ancients were born today, they would certainly want to transform the community compact, and, further, the result of their transformation might be similar to ours. Because people are alive, they adapt; those living in today’s society are certainly like this. The direction of supplementation and transformation is all one—to transform inactive into active. And supplementation and transformation can be divided for purposes of discussion.

First: Turn inactive mutual relief into active undertaking. . . . We do not wait for disaster to come before providing relief; we want to be more active. For example, poverty is a large problem for the Chinese; we want to form producing and marketing cooperatives. We do not want merely to relieve poverty; we will actively make [society] unimpoverished. . . . The community compact is a bit inactive; we want to change it to be active, to add an active flavor; rather than wait until the last minute and give aid, the best would be not to let things come to this pass. . . . Earlier the Chinese did not much look for progress in their mode of life. For example, having hand carts and ox and horse carts, they could neglect to strive for cars and trains. This kind of attitude is also evident in the community compact. We, on the other hand, will change it into something active, encompassing the sense of striving for progress in active undertakings. . . .

Second: Note that in the community compact there is an upward movement of human life [rensheng xiangshang], the stirring up of aspiration [zhichi, ambition]. This is basic to the community compact. . . . Aspiration is most important; without aspiration everything will be fruitless. This is the original idea of the community compact. Our supplementation and transformation [are as follows]:

Our judgment is that earlier Chinese, in the community compact, overemphasized the goodness [shan] of the individual, how to perfect the moral character of the individual. Regarding the ideal of goodness, they seem a bit limited, as if goodness were not in an endless course of unfolding. That is to say, in the compact of the Chinese earlier, one can discern that they harbor a standard custom and think that it is enough to reach this standard. In fact goodness is inexhaustible, always in the course of unfolding. Yet in the community compact it is as if there is a set standard and as if it leans toward individual goodness. Its defects are leaning toward the individual and having limits. Our supplementing transformation is to regard society in place of the emphasis on the individual, to see an endless unfolding in place of what is limited. In other words, when we organize villages, right from the beginning we want to stir up aspiration, expand hopes. Expand what hopes? Just this: to transform society, create a new culture, create an ideal society, establish a new organization. . . .

Third: This is a concrete question. . . . Our community compact is not just the compact of a single village; it is not that those in one village can encourage each other to goodness and that is sufficient. We want to move outward, to connect with outside places, near and far. Although the past community compact also had this idea, it was not active. From connecting village with village, we want gradually to reach to the connection of county with county, province with province; to make connections everywhere, to have mutual intercourse, to communicate information. Why do we want this? Because we want to transform society, create a new culture; it is not merely to make the individual good. Merely to make the individual good, it would not be necessary to do all this. If we want to transform society, then we as individuals are unable to transform it; it is necessary to make connections. One point is to engage in making connections, and another point is to establish an organ to promote progress. Not only do we want mutual encouragement toward goodness, but we want to stress progress in the mode of life, the area that was not stressed earlier.

Fourth: This idea is something that was originally part of the community compact . . . but it is easily overlooked and forgotten by people, easily gotten wrong. What is this point? That the community compact organization cannot be practiced by relying on political power. . . . [pp. 199–202]

In the practice of the community compact, relying on political power will not work, promotion by private individuals also will not work; hence, although in history many times there has been the intention to initiate it, however in reality none of these can be considered successful. I am afraid success could only be seen today. We understand that to rely on political power to do things—to use the power of command and coercion, if this kind of power is used, in each step it all is mechanical. . . . Each time it goes down a level, the further by a step it is from the place where it was initiated, the more it is passive, the more it becomes mechanical, the more it lacks vitality, the more it lacks energy, the more it is unable to fit the problems. . . . The more it is unable to fit problems, the more it loses its meaning, the more it becomes useless. . . .

Our village construction [rural reconstruction] is the construction of social organization, and we often like to say that this social organization is something that grows, something that gradually unfolds, that grows from sprouts, that unfolds from hints. Its sprouts and hints are in the village and from the village will slowly unfurl to form a whole society. This unfolding or growth must wait on the progress in reality (the reality of how we go about living in society). Organization grows out of the needs of social life; it cannot be tacked on suspended in thin air, cannot be arbitrarily tacked on. Whatever is really in the midst of unfolding must be a need of actual reality, hence we say that the unfolding of organization must await the progress in reality. More specifically, it must await economic progress. Once progress gradually unfolds in the techniques of economic production, methods of management, and economic relations, then it will be possible to have a new social organization unfold. . . . Economic progress awaits people, and if people are not enlivened, then the economy . . . cannot progress. How can people be enlivened? It is necessary to set in motion the Chinese people’s spirit. How can the Chinese people’s spirit be set in motion? It is necessary to rely on the strength of life’s upward motion, to stir up aspiration. Otherwise Chinese people will become even more narrow, more unable to move ahead. We want to stir up aspiration, place economics in this kind of human life, allow human life to drive economics, control economics, enjoy the use of economics, not to cause economics to control human life. (Among Westerners, it is economics that controls human life.) If we want to accomplish this, then it is all the more a question of spirit, a question of human life, or, we could say, a question of culture. [pp. 205–206]

[Liang, Xiangcun jianshe lilun, pp. 51, 140–145, 174–177, 187–188,199–202,205–106—CL]

The most surprising rejoinder to the critics of the West came from Hu Shi, who defended the “materialistic” West on the ground that it was indeed more spiritual than China.

At present the most unfounded and more harmful distortion is to ridicule Western civilization as materialistic and worship Eastern civilization as spiritual. . . . The modern civilization of the West, built on the foundation of the search for human happiness, not only has definitely increased material enjoyment to no small degree, but can also satisfy the spiritual needs of mankind. In philosophy it has applied highly refined methods to the search for truth and to investigation into the vast secrets of nature. In religion and ethics, it has overthrown the religion of superstitions and established a rational belief, has destroyed divine power and established a humanistic religion, has discarded the unknowable Heaven or paradise and directed its efforts to building a paradise among men and Heaven on earth. It has cast aside the arbitrarily asserted transcendence of the individual soul, has utilized to the highest degree the power of man’s new imagination and new intellect to promote a new religion and new ethics that are fully socialized, and has endeavored to work for the greatest amount of happiness for the greatest number of people.

The most outstanding characteristic of Eastern civilization is to know contentment, whereas that of Western civilization is not to know contentment.

Contented Easterners are satisfied with their simple life and therefore do not seek to increase their material enjoyment. They are satisfied with ignorance and “not understanding and not knowing“²⁹ and therefore have devoted no attention to the discovery of truth and the invention of techniques and machinery. They are satisfied with their present lot and environment and therefore do not want to conquer nature but merely [to] be at home with nature and at peace with their lot. They do not want to change systems, but rather to mind their own business. They do not want a revolution, but rather to remain obedient subjects.

The civilization under which people are restricted and controlled by a material environment from which they cannot escape, and under which they cannot utilize human thought and intellectual power to change environment and improve conditions, is the civilization of a lazy and nonprogressive people. It is truly a materialistic civilization. Such civilization can only obstruct but cannot satisfy the spiritual demands of mankind.

The increasing pace of Westernization in the early 1930s, especially in the universities, prompted further expressions of fear that Chinese culture might be wholly submerged. This 1935 declaration by ten university professors in the magazine Cultural Construction deplored the prevailing trend and, in the general vein of Liang Qichao and Liang Shuming, called for a synthesis of Chinese and Western cultures that would nevertheless be distinctively Chinese. Vague though this syncretism was, it attracted enough attention throughout the country that Hu Shi felt compelled to protest, as he did in the piece that follows the declaration here, this kind of “conservatism . . . hiding under the smoke screen of compromise.”

Some people think we should return to the past. But ancient China is already history, and history cannot and need not be repeated. Others believe that China should completely imitate England and the United States. These viewpoints have their special merits. But China, which is neither England nor the United States, should have its own distinctive characteristics. Furthermore, China is now passing from an agricultural feudal society to an industrial society and is in a different situation from England and the United States, which have been completely industrialized. We therefore definitely oppose complete imitation of them. Besides the proponents of imitating England and the United States, there are two other schools of thought, one advocating imitation of Soviet Russia, the other, of Italy and Germany. But they make the same mistake as those promoting the imitation of England and the United States; they likewise ignore the special spatial and temporal characteristics of China. . . .

We demand a cultural construction on the Chinese basis. In the process of reconstruction, we should realize that:

1. China is China, not just any geographical area, and therefore has its own spatial characteristics. At the same time, China is the China of today, not the China of the past, and has her own temporal characteristics. We therefore pay special attention to the needs of here and now. The necessity to do so is the foundation of the Chinese basis.

2. It is useless merely to glorify ancient Chinese systems and thought. It is equally useless to curse them. We must examine our heritage, weed out what should be weeded out, and preserve what should be preserved. Those good systems and great doctrines that are worthy of praise should be brought to greater light with all our might and be presented to the whole world, while evil systems and inferior thoughts that are worthy of condemnation should be totally eliminated without the slightest regret.

3. It is right and necessary to absorb Western culture. But we should absorb what is worth absorbing and not, with the attitude of total acceptance, absorb its dregs also.

4. Cultural construction on the Chinese basis is a creative endeavor, one that is pushing ahead. Its objective is to enable China and the Chinese, who are backward and have lost their unique qualities in the cultural sphere, not only to keep pace with other countries and peoples but also to make valuable contributions to a world culture.

5. To construct China in the cultural sphere is not to abandon the idea of the world as a Grand Commonality. Rather, it is first to reconstruct China and make her a strong and complete unit so that she may have adequate strength to push forward the Grand Commonality of the world.

Essentially speaking, China must have both self-recognition and a world perspective, and must have neither any idea of seclusion nor any determination to imitate blindly. Such recognition is profound and precise recognition. Proceeding on such recognition, our cultural reconstruction should be not to adhere to the past, nor to imitate blindly, but to stand on the Chinese basis, keep a critical attitude, apply the scientific method, examine the past, hold on to the present, and create a future.

[Sa, He et al., “Zhongguo benwei di wenhua jianshe xuanyan,” Wenhua jianshe 1, no. 4 (January 1935): 3–5—WTC]

At the beginning of the year [1935] ten professors, Sa Mengwu, He Bingsong et al., issued a declaration on “cultural construction on a Chinese basis.” Considerable popular attention in the country has been attracted to it in the last several months. . . . I can’t help pointing out that while the ten professors repeatedly uttered the phrase “Chinese basis” and while they declared in so many words that they were “not conservatives,” in reality it is their conservative thinking that has been fooling them. The declaration is a most fashionable expression of a reactionary mood prevalent today. Of course, it is out of fashion for people conscientiously to advocate returning to the past and therefore their conservative thinking takes refuge under the smoke screen of compromise. With respect to indigenous culture, the professors advocated discarding the dregs and preserving the essence, and with respect to the new culture of the world, they advocated accepting the good and rejecting the bad and selecting what is best. This is the most fashionable tune of compromise. . . .

The fundamental error of Professors Sa, He, and others lies in their failure to understand the nature of cultural change. . . . Culture itself is conservative. . . . When two different cultures come into contact, the force of competition and comparison can partially destroy the resistance and conservatism of a certain culture. . . . In this process of survival of the fittest, there is no absolutely reliable standard by which to direct the selection from the various aspects of a culture. In this gigantic cultural movement, the “scientific method” the ten professors dream of does not work. . . . There is always a limit to violent change in the various spheres of culture, namely, that it can never completely wipe out the conservative nature of an indigenous culture. This is the “Chinese basis” the destruction of which has been feared by numerous cautious people of the past as well as the present. This indigenous basis is found in the life and habits produced by a certain indigenous environment and history. Simply stated, it is the people—all the people. This is the “basis.” There is no danger that this basis will be destroyed. No matter how radically the material existence has changed, how much intellectual systems have altered, and how much political systems have been transformed, the Japanese are still Japanese and the Chinese are still Chinese. . . . The ten professors need not worry about the “Chinese basis.” . . . Those of us who are forward-looking should humbly accept the scientific and technological world culture and the spiritual civilization behind it. . . . There is no doubt that in the future the crystallization of this great change will, of course, be a culture on the “Chinese basis.”

The radical critique of traditional culture led directly to the spawning of new political movements, often inspired by trends in the West and Japan, to remedy what were seen as social injustices and oppressive institutions in China. These were essentially intellectual movements, without popular support, but they had a profound influence on members of the educated elite who became leaders of revolutionary parties. Among these, anarchist, egalitarian, and feminist movements in the early decades of the twentieth century contributed to the ferment and discontent that stirred the founders of the Chinese Communist Party. In the essays that follow, the close association of feminism and liberationist ideals with anarchism and communism is evident.

The early anarchist movement in China produced a rigorous critique of the family system and the place of women in traditional society. Chinese feminism had been a distinct current since at least the 1880s, when Kang Youwei had organized a society against foot binding, and again in the 1890s, when Liang Qichao argued that women should become productive members of society and that as the first educators of China’s children, they needed to become educated themselves. The woman revolutionary Qiu Jin also eloquently spoke of the plight of women.

The essay below is by He Zhen, of whom little is known beyond the fact that she was the wife of Liu Shipei (1884–1917), a leader of the anarchist movement. The essay, probably originally a speech or lecture, was published in the journal Natural Justice (Tianyi bao), founded by He and Liu after they fled to Tokyo in 1907. Circulated for the most part on a monthly basis among the growing exile and student community in Tokyo, copies of the journal were also smuggled back to the mainland. Along with New Century (Xin shiji), published by Chinese exiles in Paris, it propagated anarcho-communism while advocating revolutionary action; it may be said to represent the most radical wing of the growing revolutionary movement. In this essay, He Zhen refused to justify feminism on grounds of its subserving the nationalist movement, instead demanding “women’s liberation” as an absolute right. Further, she argued that the state and society oppressed both men and women and that both would continue to be oppressed as long as capitalism survived. Revolutionary change was thus needed to create a new society on truly egalitarian principles; for a few women to join ruling-class men at the top of society would still leave the majority of women mired in misery at the very bottom.

What is the most important thing in the world? Eating is the most important. You who are women: what is it that makes one suffer mistreatment? It is relying on others in order to eat. Let us look at the most pitiable of women. There are three sorts. There are those who end up as servants. If their master wants to hit them, he hits them. If he wants to curse them, he curses them. They do not dare to offer the slightest resistance, but slave for him from morning to night. They get up at four o’clock and do not go to bed until midnight. What is the reason for this? It is simply that the master has money and you depend on him in order to eat.

There are also women workers. Everywhere in Shanghai there are silk factories, cotton mills, weaving factories, and laundries. I don’t know how many women have been hired by these places. They too work all day into the evening, and they too lack even a moment for themselves. They work blindly, unable to stand straight. What is the reason for this? It is simply that the factory owner has money and you depend on him in order to eat.

There are also prostitutes. Every day they are beaten by their pimps. Whatever the customer is like, they must service him if he wants to be serviced, or they must gamble with him if he wants to gamble. People despise them. The “wild chickens” of Shanghai have to stand in the streets waiting for customers at midnight in the wind and snow. What is the reason for this? It is simply that since your family is poor you must sell yourself in this way in order to eat.

Aside from these three kinds of people, there are also concubines. They must swallow their resentment no matter how the first wife mistreats them. This too is because they depend on men in order to eat. As for widows, a very few who are from rich families will die to protect their virtue. Very many who are from poor families will die because they have no children [to support them] and cannot remarry. This too is because they have nothing to eat. But even if they survive, their lives are still bitter and so they actively seek to die. As for women who farm the fields or raise silkworms, their lives are also very bitter. The things they have to do are just enough to let them scrape by. Moreover, women who marry are beaten and cursed by their husbands or else ignored, and they dare not make trouble. [This is] not because they want to gaze upon their husband’s face but because they want to gaze upon a bowl of rice.

Thus those of us who are women suffer untold bitterness and untold wrongs in order to get hold of this rice bowl. My fellow women: do not hate men! Hate that you do not have food to eat. Why don’t you have any food? It is because you don’t have any money to buy food. Why don’t you have any money? It is because the rich have stolen our property. They have forced the majority of people into poverty and starvation. Look at the wives and daughters in the government offices and mansions. They live extravagantly with no worries about having enough to eat. Why are you worried every day about starving to death? The poor are people just as the rich are. Think about it for yourselves; this ought to produce some disquieting feelings.

There is now a kind of person who says that if women only had a profession, they would not fear starvation. Middle-class families, for example, are sending their daughters to school, either to study a general course or to learn a little of handicrafts. Then if they get married they can become teachers. They won’t need to rely on men in order to survive. Likewise, families that are very poor are sending their daughters and daughters-in-law to work in factories. As long as they stay there day after day, they will have a way of making a living. They won’t have to become maids or prostitutes. This point of view has some truth in it. However, as I see it, schools too are owned and operated by certain people, and if you teach in a school, then you are depending on those people in order to eat. Factories too are built by investors, and if you work in a factory, you are depending on its owners in order to eat.

As long as you depend on others, you cannot be free. This is not much different from those who depended on others in previous ages and thus were subject to oppression. How could they be called independent? Moreover, when you depend on a school or a factory for your living, won’t you end up jobless if they close down or if your boss decides he has too many workers or if no one wants your skills? Therefore, in the final analysis depending on others is dangerous and not at all a good idea. . . .

I have a good idea that will exempt you from relying on others while still finding food naturally. How? By practicing communism. Think of all the things in the world. They were either produced by nature or by individual labor. Why can rich people buy them but poor people cannot? It is because the world trades with money. It is because people seize the things they have bought with money for their exclusive use. If every single woman understands that nothing is more evil than money, and they all unite together to cooperate with men to utterly overthrow the rich and powerful and then abolish money, then absolutely nothing will be allowed for individuals to own privately. Everything from food to clothes and tools will be put in a place where people—men and women alike, as long as they perform a little labor—can take however much of whatever they want just like taking water from the ocean. This is called communism.

At this time, not only will we be free of depending on others for food to eat, but also the food will all be good to eat. It will be possible to have good things to wear, good things to use, and good things to play with. Think about it: will this be a better future or not? I am not lying to you. If we only unite together, with this method [communism] we can naturally have a good future. There is no doubt about it. As we say colloquially, “the good times are coming.” This is what I have to say today.

The learning of Confucianism has tended to be oppressive and to promote male selfishness. Therefore, Confucianism marks the beginning of justifications for polygamy and chastity. People of the Han dynasty studied Confucianism and felt free to twist the meaning of the ancient writings as they pertained to women in order to extend their own views. The Discourses in the White Tiger Hall is a good example of this. The people who proposed these doctrines were simply pursuing their selfish interests. For example, from Wang Mang, who dressed up the Rites of Zhou to have more imperial concubines, ordinary wives, and empresses, down to the likes of Zhang You and Ma Rong, everyone increased the number of their wives and concubines.

Song dynasty Confucians continued [these doctrines]. They further supported this system of oppression and denigrated women, placing them outside of the “human way.” Ever since, every single man of learning has praised the theories of the Han and the Song as priceless beyond jade and gold. These attitudes have reinforced each other, and the faults of the theory have never been understood. Cunning people have dressed up these theories to their own advantage. Stupid people believe in these theories with a superstitious force impregnable to skepticism. I don’t know how many of us women have died as a result. Therefore, the entire learning of Confucianism is a murderous learning. . . .

The ancients said that the relationship between the wife and her husband was like that of the minister and his ruler, and so men took precedence over women and men were honorable while women were contemptible. From this, every evil theory designed to keep women from having freedom followed; for example, the theories that the yang force leads while the yin force follows and that men take action while women follow. Precisely because of the theory that men were honorable while women were contemptible, every evil theory making men into Heaven followed: men were to Heaven as women were to earth and men were yang while women were yin. An absolute inequality was accordingly formed between men and women. Alas! . . .

Since men practiced polygamy and feared that women would want more than one husband, they therefore made women’s morality a matter of diligence, chastity, and purity. They also feared that women would not be able to control themselves and so guided them with doctrines of prudence and staying at home, treating women like prisoners. Men also feared that after they died, their women would no longer be theirs. So “honoring chastity” is simply a euphemism [for preventing remarriage]. This is like an autocrat encouraging loyalty and constancy to himself because he wants his ministers to be willing to die for him. The subtlety of these phrases is magnificent. However, the women of ancient times did not regard remarriage as taboo. The Rites therefore spoke of the mourning required after the death of a father, and the prohibition against remarriage after the death of a husband arose. Later, the Confucians of the Song dynasty all in a great wave agreed that starving to death was but a small matter compared to the loss of a woman’s virtue [through remarriage]. Is this not treating women like private property?

Aside from “virtuous wives” they spoke also of “chaste women.” Virtuous wives have to protect their virtue for their husbands. Chaste women have to protect their chastity for their fiances, once they are betrothed. . . . Jiao Xun also advocated virtue in women. He said a virtuous woman did not change her name (remarry), just as men loyal to a fallen dynasty went into hiding. Women should die faithful to their deceased husbands, like a loyalist giving his life to his dynasty. . . . Thus are women driven to their deaths with this empty talk of virtue. We can see that the Confucian insistence on ritual decorum is nothing more than a tool for murdering women. . . .

This proves that women have duties but no rights. Because household responsibilities cannot be assumed by men, all the tasks of managing the household are given to women. Out of fear that women might interfere with their concerns, men made up the theory that women had no business outside of the home. By doing so, they deprived women of their natural rights. Giving women duties without rights allowed men to live in idleness while condemning women to work. Keeping women at home allowed men to pursue education while women were trapped in ignorance. Isn’t this the greatest of injustices? . . .

This proves that the right of a woman to leave her husband resides with men. A husband can leave his wife, but a wife cannot leave her husband. Therefore, no matter how badly a husband treats his wife, there is nothing she can do about it. But if a wife behaves badly toward her husband, she becomes subject to the seven grounds for divorce. Isn’t this how the ancients augmented the rights of males? . . .

How did this poison fill the entire world? It can be traced to the doctrines of Ban Zhao of the Eastern Han. These have been taken as the last word on the subject ever since then, though they are completely ridiculous. An examination of her Admonitions for Women [chapter 23] shows that first of all she emphasizes the ignoble and weak nature of women. She says women are inferiors and should be humble and yielding as well as respectful and deferential. They should place others before themselves and must accept all insults and hardships, as if ever kneeling in fear.

Ban Zhao also said that if a wife did not serve her husband proper order would collapse and that the female principle of yin found its function in gentleness while women found their beauty in weakness. Women were prohibited from insulting their husbands, while virtue lay in their being pure and quiet. Alas! Once this doctrine was propagated women were subjected to men by a set of rules. This was called the doctrine of propriety, but it is nothing but humiliation! It was called “proper order” but is nothing but shamelessness! Isn’t this [actually] the Way of the concubine? . . .

This traitor Ban was herself a woman, but she was deluded by the false notions of Confucianism. . . . The reason why women’s rights never developed lay in the fact that everybody was reciting the books of the traitor Ban. People followed what was already written and the writings of the traitor Ban closely followed the Confucian books, also following what was already written. Thus the crime of the traitor Ban in fact originated in Confucianism.

Therefore, since this doctrine has been propagated by the Confucians, not only have men enjoyed and followed it but also women have sincerely believed in it. Not only has it harmed scholarship but it has also harmed the law. Look at recent laws. If a woman kills her husband, she is put to death by slow torture. If a woman is promised in marriage and betrothal gifts are received, but later the family changes its mind, they are flogged fifty times. The laws are based on the doctrine that men are superior while women are base. The law was thus based on scholarship while scholarship was based on Confucian writings. If we do not utterly abolish the false doctrines of the Confucian writings, the truth will never again be heard.

This essay, published in 1907 under the pseudonym Han Yi (“a member of the Han race”), was possibly written by Liu Shipei, who favored a Han Chinese revolution against the Manchu oppressors. It reflects a view radical for the time, but one already anticipated by Kang Youwei’s as yet unpublished Grand Commonality (Datong shu), which was equally critical of the family system, proposed one-year marriage contracts, and advocated public nurseries for the raising of children. Liu here attacks the family as the source of partiality, which he implicitly contrasts to the ideal of the public good.

All of society’s accomplishments depend on people to achieve, while the multiplication of the human race depends on men and women. Thus if we want to pursue a social revolution, we must start with a sexual revolution—just as if we want to reestablish the Chinese nation, expelling the Manchus is the first step to the accomplishment of other tasks. . . . Yet, whenever we speak of the sexual revolution, the masses doubt and obstruct us, which gives rise to problems. In bringing up this matter then we absolutely must make a plan that gets to the root of the problem. What is this plan? It is to destroy the family.

The family is the origin of all evil. Because of the family, people become selfish. Because of the family, women are increasingly controlled by men. Because of the family, everything useless and harmful occurs (people now often say they are embroiled in family responsibilities while in fact they are all just making trouble for themselves, and so if there were no families, these trivial matters would instantly disappear). Because of the family, children—who belong to the world as a whole—are made the responsibility of a single woman (children should be raised publicly since they belong to the whole society, but with families the men always force the women to raise their children and use them to continue the ancestral sacrifices). These examples constitute irrefutable proof of the evils of the family. . . .

Moreover, from now on in a universal commonwealth, everyone will act freely, never again will they live and die without contact with one another as in olden times. The doctrine of human equality allows for neither forcing women to maintain the family nor having servants to maintain it. The difficulties of life are rooted in the family. When land belongs to everyone and the borders between here and there are eradicated, then there will be no doubt that the “family” itself definitely should be abolished. As long as the family exists, then debauched men will imprison women in cages and force them to become their concubines and service their lust, or they will take the sons of others to be their own successors. If we abolish the family now, then such men will disappear. The destruction of the family will thus lead to the creation of public-minded people in place of selfish people, and men will have no way to oppress women. Therefore, to open the curtain on the social revolution, we must start with the destruction of the family.

20. Author of Ershi nian mu du zhi guai xianzhuang (Strange Phenomena Seen in Two Decades).

23. John Dewey, Creative Intelligence (New York: Henry Holt, 1917), pp. 8–9.