It is beyond the scope of this chapter to enumerate evidences to prove the relationship between the geographic and economic conditions of Greece and England on the one hand, and the development of Western scientific thought and democratic institutions on the other. But the fact that the geographic and economic conditions of Greece and England are quite different from those of China suffices to constitute a negative proof for my thesis in regard to Chinese history as mentioned in this chapter.
The Permanent and the Changeable in Chinese Philosophy
The advancement of science hus conquered geography, and China is no longer isolated within the four seas. She is having her industrialization too, and though much later than the Western world, it is better late than never. It is not correct to say that the East has been invaded by the West. Rather it is a case in which the medieval has been invaded by the modern. In order to live in a modern world, China has to be modern.
One question remains to be asked: If Chinese philosophy has been so linked with the economic conditions of the Chinese people, does what has been expressed in Chinese philosophy possess validity only for people living under those conditions?
The answer is yes and no. In the philosophy of any people or any time, there is always a part that possesses value only in relation to the economic conditions of that people or of that time, but there is always another part that is more than this. That which is not relative has lasting value. 1 hesitate to say that it is absolute truth, because to determine what is absolute truth is too great a task for any human being, and is reserved for God alone, if there be one.
Let us take an instance in Greek philosophy. The rational justification of the slave system by Aristotle must be considered as a theory that is relative to the economic conditions of Greek life. But to say this is not to say that there is nothing that is not relative in the social philosophy of Aristotle. The
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same holds true for Chinese thought. When China is industrialized, the old family syslem must go, and with it will go its Confucianistic rational justification. But to say this is not to say that there is nothing that is not relative in the social philosophy of Confucianism.
The reason for this is that the society of ancient Greece and ancient China, though different, both belong to the general category which we call society. Theories which are the theoretical expression of Greek or Chinese society, are thus also in part expressions of society in general. Though there is in them something that pertains only to Greek or Chinese societies per se, there must also be something more universal that pertains to society in general. It is this latter something that is not relative and possesses lasting value.
The same is true of Taoism. The Taoist theory is certainly wrong which says that the Utopia of mankind is the primitivity of a bygone age. With the idea of progress, we moderns think that the ideal state of human existence is something to be created in the future, not something that was lost in the past. But what some moderns think of as the ideal slate of human existence, such as anarchism, is not wholly dissimilar from that thought of by the Taoists.
Philosophy also gives us an ideal of life. A part of that ideal, as given by the philosophy of a certain people or a certain time, must pertain only to the kind of life resulting from the social conditions of that people or that time. But there must also be a part that pertains to life in general, and so is not relative but has lasting value. This seems to be illustrated in the case of the Confucianist theory of an ideal life. According to this theory, the ideal life is one which, though having a very high understanding of the universe, yet remains within the bounds of the five basic human relationships. The nature of these human relationships may change according to circumstances. But the ideal itself does not change. One is wrong, then, when one insists that since some of the five human relationships have to go, therefore the Confucianist ideal of life must go as well. And one is also wrong when one insists that since this ideal of life is desirable, therefore all the five human relationships must likewise be retained. One must make a logical analysis in order to distinguish between what is permanent and what is changeable in the history of philosophy. Every philosophy has that which is permanent, and all philosophies have something in common. This is why philosophies, though different, can yet be compared with one another and translated one in terms of the other.
Will the methodology of Chinese philosophy change? That is to say, will the new Chinese philosophy cease to confine itself to concept by intuition? Certainly it will, and there is no reason why it should not. In fact, it is already changing. In regard to this change, I shall have more to say in the last chapter of this book.
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CHAPTER 3
THE ORIGIN OF THE SCHOOLS
In the last chapter I said that Confucianism and Taoism are the two main streams of Chinese thought. They became so only after a long evolution, however, and from the fifth through the third centuries B.C. they were only two among many other rival schools of thought. During that period the num-ber of schools was so great that the Chinese referred to them as the "hun-dred schools.
Ssu-ma T'an and the Six Schools
Later historians have attempted to make a classification of these"hundred schools." The first to do so was Ssu-ma T'an (died HO B.C.), father of Ssu-ma Ch'ien (I45~ca. 86 B.C.), and the author with him of China's first great dynastic history, the Shih Chi or Historical Records. In the last chapter of this work Ssu-ma Ch'ien quotes an essay by his father, titled "On the Es-sential Ideas of the Six Schools." In this essay Ssu-ma T'an classifies the philosophers of the preceding several centuries into six major schools, as fol-lows:
The first is the Yin-Yang chia or Yin-Yang school, which is one of cos-mologists. It derives its name from the Yin and Yang principles, which in Chinese thought are regarded as the two major principles of Chinese cos-mology, Yin being the female principle, and Yang the male principle, the combination and interaction of which is believed by the Chinese to result in all universal phenomena.
The second school is the Ju chia or School of Literati. This school is known in Western literature as the Confucianist school, but the word ju lit-erally means literatus or scholar. Thus the Western title is somewhat mis-leading, because it misses the implication that the followers of this school were scholars as well as thinkers; they, above all others, were the teachers of
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the ancient classics and thus the inheritors of the ancient cultural legacy. Confucius, to be sure, is the leading figure of this school and may rightly be considered as its founder. Nevertheless the term^u not only denotes Confu-cian" or "Confucianist, but has a wider implication as well.
The third school is that of the Mo chia or Mohist school. This school had a close-knit organization and strict discipline under the leadership of Mo Tzu. Its followers actually called themselves the Mohists. Thus the title of this school is not an invention of Ssu-ma T'an, as were some of the other schools.
The fourth school is the Ming chia or School of Names. The followers of this school were interested in the distinction between, and relation of, what they called "names" and "actualities.
The fifth school is the Fa chia or Legalist school. The Chinese word fa means pattern or law. The school derived from a group of statesmen who maintained that good government must be one based on a fixed code of law instead of on the moral institutions which the literati stressed for government.
The sixth school is the Tao-Te chia or School of the Way and its Power. The followers of this school centered their metaphysics and social philosophy around the concept of Non-being, which is the Too or Way, and its concen-tration in the individual as the natural virtue of man, which is Te, translated as "virtue but better rendered as the "power" that inheres in any individual thing. This group, called by Ssu-ma T'an the Tao-Te school, was later known simply as the Too chia, and is referred to in Western literature as the Taoist school.As pointed out in the first chapter, it should be kept carefully distinct from the Taoist religion.
Liu Hsin and His Theory of the Beginning of the Schools
The second historian who attempted to classify the hundred schools was Liu Hsin (ca. 46 B.C.-A.D. 2.3). He was one of the greatest scholars of his day, and, with his father Liu Hsiang, made a collation of the books in the Imperial Library. The resulting descriptive catalogue of the Imperial Library, known as the "Seven Summaries," was taken by Pan Ku (A.D. 32.-92-) as the basis for the chapter, Yi Wen Chih or Treatise on Literature, contained in his dynastic history, the History of the Former Han Dynasty. In this "Trea-tise" we see that Liu Hsin classifies the "hundred schools into ten main groups. Out of these, six are the same as those listed by Ssu-ma T'an. The other four are the Tsung—Heng chia or School of Diplomatists, Tsa chia or School of Eclectics, Nung chia or School of Agrarians, and Hsiao-shuo chia or School of Story Tellers. In conclusion, Liu Hsin writes: "The various philosophers consist of ten schools, but there are only nine that need be no-ticed." By this statement he means to say that the School of Story Tellers
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L
lacks the importance of the other schools.
In this classification itself, Liu Hsin did not go very much further than Ssu-ma T'an had done. What was new, however, was his attempt for the first time in Chinese history to trace systematically the historical origins of the different schools.
Liu Hsin's theory has been greatly elaborated by later scholars, especially by Chang Hsileh -ch' eng (1738-1801) and the late Chang Ping -lin. In essence, it maintains that in the early Chou dynasty (llli?-256 B.C.), before the social institutions of that age disintegrated, there was "no separation be-tween officers and teachers.' In other words the officers of a certain depart-ment of the government were at the same time the transmitters of the branch of learning pertaining to that department. These officers, like the feudal lords of the day, held their posts on a hereditary basis. Hence there was then only "official learning but no private teaching. That is to say, nobody taught any branch of learning as a private individual. Any such teaching was car-ried on only by officers in their capacity as members of one or another de-partment of the government.
According to this theory, however, when the Chou ruling house lost its power during the later centuries of the Chou dynasty, the officers of the gov-ernmental departments lost their former positions and scattered throughout the country. They then turned to the teaching of their special branches of knowledge in a private capacity. Thus they were then no longer officers, but only private teachers. And it was out of this separation between teach-ers and officers that the different schools arose.
Liu Hsin's whole analysis reads as follows: 'The members of the Ju school had their origin in the Ministry of Education....This school delighted in the study of the Liu Yi [the Six Classics or six liberal arts] and paid at-tention to matters concerning human-heartedness and righteousness. They regarded Yao and Shun [two ancient sage emperors supposed to have lived in the twenty-fourth and twenty-third centuries B.C.] as the ancestors of their school, and King Wen [II2.O?-IIO8? B.C. of the Chou dynasty] and King Wu [son of King Wen] as brilliant exemplars. To give authority to their teaching, they honored Chung—ni LConfucius] as an exalted teacher. Their teaching is the highest truth. 'That which is admired must be tested. The glory of Yao and Shun, the prosperity of the dynasties of Yin and Chou, and the achievements of Chung-ni are the results discovered by testing their teaching.
"Those of the Taoist school had their origin in the official historians. By studying the historical examples of success and failure, preservation and de-struction, and calamity and prosperity, from ancient to recent times, they learned how to hold what is essential and to grasp the fundamental. They guarded themselves with purity and emptiness, and with humbleness and
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meekness maintained themselves....Herein lies the strong point of this school.
Those of the Yin-Yang school had their origin in the official astronomers. They respectfully followed luminous heaven, and the successive symbols of the sun and moon, the stars and constellations, and the divisions of times and seasons. Herein lies the strong point of this school.
'Those of the Legalist school had their origin in the Ministry of Justice. They emphasized strictness in rewarding and punishing, in order to support a system of correct conduct. Herein lies the strong point of this school.
"Those of the School of Names had their origin in the Ministry of Cere-monies. For the ancients, where titles and positions differed, the ceremonies accorded to them were also different. Confucius has said: ' If names be in-correct, speech will not follow its natural sequence. If speech does not follow its natural sequence, nothing can be established.' Herein lies the strong point of this school.
"Those of the Mohist school had their origin in the Guardians of the Tem-ple. The temple was built with plain wooden rafters and thatched roofs; hence their teaching emphasized frugality. The temple was the place where the Three Elders and Five Experienced Men were honored; hence their teaching emphasized universal love. The ceremony of selecting civil officials and that of military exercises were also held in the temple; hence their teaching emphasized the preferment of virtue and ability. The temple was the place for sacrifice to ancestors and reverence to fathers; hence their teaching was to honor the spirits. They accepted the traditional teaching of following the four seasons in one s conduct; hence their teaching was against fatalism. They accepted the traditional teaching of exhibiting filial piety throughout the world; hence they taught the doctrine of 'agreeing with the superior.' Herein lies the strong point of this school.
"Those of the Diplomatist school had their origin in the Ministry of Em-bassies.... [They taught the art of] following general orders [in diplomacy], instead of following literal instructions. Herein lies the strength of their teaching.
