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Confucianism, including such writings as the Mo-tzu, Hsiin-tzu and Han-fei-tzu, which had long been neglected. They worked to correct the many corruptions that had crept into the texts, and to explain the ancient usage of words and phrases. It is owing to their labors that these texts are today so much more readable than they were, for example, in the Ming dynasty. Their work did much to help the revival of interest in the philosophical study of these philosophers that has taken place in recent decades under the stimulus of the introduction of Western philosophy. This is a topic to which we shall now turn.
Movement for a Confucian Religion
It is not necessary to examine here precisely the manner in which the Chi-nese first came in contact with Western culture. Suffice it to say that already toward the end of the Ming dynasty, i.e., in the latter part of the sixteenth century and early part of the seventeenth, many Chinese scholars became impressed by the mathematics and astronomy that were introduced to China at that time by Jesuit missionary scholars. If Europeans call China and sur-rounding areas the Far East, the Chinese in the period of early Sino—Euro-pean contacts referred to Europe as the Far West or T cd Hsi. In earlier cen-turies they had spoken of India as "the West"; hence they could only refer to countries to the west of India as the Far West. This term has now been discarded, but it was in common usage as late as the end of the last century.
In chapter sixteen I said that the distinction which the Chinese have tra-ditionally made between themselves and foreigners or barbarians has been more cultural than racial. Their sense of nationalism has been more devel-oped in regard to culture than to politics. Being the inheritors of an ancient civilization, and one geographically far removed from any other of compara-ble importance, it has been difficult for them to conceive how any other peo-ple could be cultured and yet live in a manner different from themselves. Hence whenever they have come into contact with an alien culture, they have been inclined to despise and resist it—not so much as something alien, but simply because they have thought it to be inferior or wrong. As we have seen in chapter eighteen, the introduction of Buddhism stimulated the foun-dation of religious Taoism, which came as a sort of nationalistic reaction to the alien faith. In the same way, the introduction of Western culture, in which Christian missionaries played a leading part, created a very similar re-action.
In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, as just noted, the missionary scholars impressed the Chinese not so much by their religion as by their at-tainments in mathematics and astronomy. But later, especially during the nineteenth century, with the growing military,industrial, and commercial pre-530 THE INTRODUCTION OF WESTERN PHILOSOPHY L
dominance of Europe, and the coincident decline of China s political strength under the Manchus, the impetus of Christianity became increasingly felt by the Chinese.After several major controversies had broken out in the nineteenth century between missionaries and Chinese, a movement for a native Confucian religion to counteract the growing impact of the West started at the very end of that century by the famous statesman and reformer, K'ang Yu-wei (1858-192.7). This event was no mere accident—even from the point of view of the inner development of Chinese thought—because the scholars of the Hah hsileh had already paved the way.
In chapters seventeen and eighteen, we saw that the Han dynasty was dominated by two schools of Confucianism: one the Old Text and the other the New Text school. With the revival during the Ch'ing dynasty of the study of the works of the Han scholars, the old controversy between these two schools was also revived. We have also seen that the New Text school, headed by Tung Chung—shu, believed Confucius to have been the founder of an ideal new dynasty, and later even went so lar as to consider him as a su-pernatural being having a mission to perform on this earth, a veritable god among men. K' ang Yu-wei was a leader of the Ch' ing adherents of the New Text school in the Hah hsileh, and found in this school plenty of material for establishing Confucianism as an organized religion in the proper sense of the word.
In studying Tung Chung—shu, we have already read Tung s fantastic theo-ry about Confucius. The theory of K'ang Yu-wei is even more so. As we have seen, in the Ch'un Ch'iu or Spring and Autumn Annals, or rather in the theory of its Han commentators, as well as in the Li Chi or Book of Rites, there is the concept that the world passes through three ages or stages of progress. K ang Yu— wei now revived this theory, interpreting it to mean that the age of Confucius had been the first age of decay and disorder. In our own times, he maintained, the growing communications between East and West, and the political and social reforms in Europe and America, show that men are progressing from the stage of disorder to the second higher stage, that of approaching peace. And this in turn will be followed by the unity of the whole world, which will be the realization of the last stage of human progress, that of great peace. Writing in 1902, he said: "Confucius knew all these things beforehand." (Lun -yu Chu or Commentary to the Analects, chiian 1.)
K'ang Yu-wei was the leader of the notable political reforms of 1898, which, however, lasted only a few months, and were followed by his own flight abroad, the execution of several of his followers, and renewed political reaction on the part of the Manchu government. In his opinion, what he was advocating was not the adoption of the new civilization of the West, but rather the realization of the ancient and genuine teachings of Confucius. He
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wrote many commentaries on the Confucian Classics and read his new ideas into them. Besides these, he also in 1884 wrote a book titled the Ta T'ung Shu or Booh of the Great Unity, in which he gave a concrete picture of the Utopia that will be realized in the third stage of human progress, according to the Confucian scheme. Although this book is so bold and revolutionary that it will startle even most Utopian writers, K'ang Yu-wei himself was far from being a Utopian. He insisted that his program could not be put into practice except in the highest and last stage of human civilization. For his immediate practical political program he insisted on merely instituting a constitutional monarchy. Thus throughout his life he was hated first by the conservatives because he was too radical, and later by the radicals because he was too conservative.
But the twentieth century is not one of religion, and together with, or in ad-dition to, the introduction of Christianity into China, there also came modern science, which is the opposite of religion. Thus the influence of Christianity per se has been limited in China, and the movement for a Confucian religion suffered an early death. Nevertheless, with the overthrow of the Ch'ing dy-nasty and its replacement by the Republic in ICff^i there was a demand by K'ang Yu-wei s followers, when the first Constitution of the Republic was drafted in 1915, that it state that the Republic adopt Confucianism as the state religion. A vigorous controversy developed over this point, until a com-promise was reached, the Constitution asserting that the Chinese Republic would adopt Confucianism, not as a state religion, but as the fundamental principle for ethical discipline. This Constitution was never put into practice, and no more has since been heard about Confucianism as a religion in the sense intended by K ang Yu-wei.
It is to be noted that up to 1898, K'ang Yu-wei and his comrades knew very little, if anything, about Western philosophy. His friend T'an Ssu-t'ung (1865-1898), who died a martyr s death when the political reform movement failed, was a much more subtle thinker than K'ang himself. He wrote a book titled Jen Hsiieh or Science of Jen (human-heartedness), which introduces into Neo -Confucianism some ideas taken from modern chemistry and physics. In the beginning of his work, he lists certain books to be read be-fore one studies his Science of Jen. In that list, among books on Western thought, he mentions only the New Testament and some treatises on mathe-matics, physics, chemistry, and sociology. It is plain that men of his time knew very little about Western philosophy, and that their knowledge of Western culture, in addition to machines and warships, was confined primar-ily to science and Christianity.
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Introduction of Western Thought.
The greatest authority on Western thought at the beginning of the present century was Yen Fu (1853-1920). In his early years he was sent to England by the government to study naval science, and while there read some of the works on the humanities current ul the time. After returning to China, he translated into Chinese the following works: Thomas Huxley, Evolution and Ethics; Adam Smith, An Enquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations; Herbert Spencer, The Study of Sociology; John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, and half of his A System of Logic; E.Jenks, A History of Politics; Montesquieu, Esprit des Lois; and an adapted translation of Jevons, Lessons in Logic:. Yen Fu began to translate these works after the first Sino-Japanese war of l894~95- After that he became very famous and his translations were widely road.
There are three reasons to account for this popularity. The first is thai China s defeat in the Sino—Japanese war, following a series of earlier humil-iations at the hands of the West, shook the confidence of the Chinese people in the superiority of their own ancient civilization, and therefore gave them a desire to know something about Western thought. Before that time they fan-cied that Westerners were only superior in science, machines, guns, and warships, but had nothing spiritual to offer. The second reason is that Yen Fu wrote comments on many passages of his translations, in which he com-pared certain ideas of his author with ideas in Chinese philosophy, in order to give a better understanding to his readers. This practice is something like the ko yi or interpretation by analogy, which was mentioned in chapter twen-ty in connection with the translation of Buddhist texts. And the third reason is that in Yen Fu's translations, the modern English of Spencer, Mill, and others was converted into Chinese of the most classical style. In reading these authors in his translation, one has the same impression as that of read-ing such ancient Chinese works as the Mo-tzu or Hsun-tzu. Because of their traditional respect for literary accomplishment, the Chinese of Yen Fu s time still had the superstition that any thought that can be expressed in the clas-sical style is ipso facto as valuable as are the Chinese classical works them-selves.
But the list of his translations shows that Yen Fu introduced very little Western philosophy. Among them, the ones really concerned with the subject are Jevons' Lessons in Logic and Mill s System of Logic, of which the for-mer was an abridged summary, and the latter was lefl unfinished. Yen Fu recommended Spencer as the greatest Western philosopher of all time, ihus showing that his knowledge of Western philosophy was rather limited.
There was another scholar of Yen Fu s time who in this respect had a
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better understanding and deeper insight, but who did not become known to the public until after he gave up the study of philosophy. He was Wang Kuo— wei (i%JJ-\()Tj), a scholar renowned as one of the greatest historians, archaeologists, and literary writers of recent times. Before he was thirty, he had already studied Schopenhauer and Kant, in this respect differing from Yen Fu, who studied almost none but English thinkers. But after he became thirty, Wang Kuo-wei gave up the study of philosophy, for a reason men-tioned in one of his writings titled "A Self-Account at the Age of Thirty." In this he says:
"I have been tired of philosophy for a considerable time. Among philo-sophical theories, it is a general rule that those that can be loved cannot be believed, and those that can be believed cannot be loved. I know truth, and yet I love absurd yet great metaphysics, sublime ethics, and pure aesthetics. These are what I love most. Yet in searching for what is believable, I am in-clined to believe in the positivistic theory of truth, the hedonistic theory of ethics, and ihe empiricist theory of aesthetics. I know these are believable, but I cannot love them, and I feel the other theories are lovable, but 1 cannot believe in them. This is the great vexation that I have experienced during the past two or three years. Recently my interest has gradually transferred it-self from philosophy to literature, because I wish to find in the latter direct consolation." *
He says again that such men as Spencer in England and Wundt in Ger-many arc but second-rate philosophers, their philosophies being but a syn-cretism of science or of earlier systems. Other philosophers known to him at that time were only historians of philosophy. He said that he himself could become a competent historian of philosophy, if he continued to study it. But, said he, I cannot be a pure philosopher, and yet I do not like to be an historian of philosophy. This is another reason why I am tired of philoso-phy." (Ibid.)
I have quoted Wang Kuo-wei at length, because judging from these quota-tions, I think he had some insight into Western philosophy. He knew, as a Chinese expression says, what is sweet and what is bitter in it. Bui on the whole, ut the beginning of this century, there were very few Chinese who knew anything about Western philosophy. When I myself was an undergrad-uate student in Shanghai, we had a course on elementary logic, but there was no one in Shanghai at the time capable of teaching such a course. At last a teacher was found who asked us to buy a copy of Jevons Lessons in Logic and to use it as a textbook. He asked us to read it in the way a teacher of English expects his pupils to go through an English reader. When we came to the lesson on judgment, he called on me to spell the word judgment, in or—
* Ching-on. Wen-chi or Collected Literary Writings of Wang Kuo-wei, Second Collection.
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der to make sure that I would not insert an e between the g and m !
