Before long We were at the mercy of another teacher who conscientiously tried to make the course a real one on logic. There are many exercises at the end of Jevons book which this teacher did not ask us to do, but I nonethe-less prepared them on my own account. It so happened that there was one exercise that was beyond my understanding, which I requested the teacher to expound after class.After discussing it wilh me for half an hour without being able to solve il, he finally said: Let me think it over and I shall do it for you the next time I come. He never came again, and for this I felt rather sorry, for I had no desire to embarrass him.
The University of Peking was then the only national university in China which was supposed to have lliree departments of philosophy: Chinese, Western, and Indian. But as the University was then constituted, there was only the one department of Chinese philosophy. In 1915 it was stated that a department of Weslern philosophy would be established, since a professor had been engaged who had studied philosophy in Germany and presumably could teach courses in that subject. I accordingly went to Peking in that year and was admitted as an undergraduate, but to my disappointment the profes-sor who was to have taught us had just died, and I had therefore to study in the department of Chinese philosophy.
In this department we had professors who were scholars representing the Old Text, New Text, Ch eng—Chu, and Lu—Wang schools. One of them, a follower of the Lu—Wang school, taught us a course on the history of Chinese philosophy, a two—year course meeting four hours a week. He began with the traditional sage-kings, Yao and Shun, and by the end of the first semester had gone only as far as the Duke of Chou—that is to say, about five cen-turies before Confucius.We asked him how long, if he continued at this rate, it would take to finish the course. Well, he replied, in the study of phi-losophy there is no such thing as finishing or not finishing. If you want this course to be finished, I can finish it in one word; if you do not want it to be finished, it can never be finished.
Introduction of Western Philosophy
John Dewey and Bertrand Russell were invited in 1919-2.O to lecture at the University of Peking and other places. They were the first Western philoso-phers to come to China, and from them the Chinese for the first time re-ceived an authentic account of Western philosophy. But whal they lectured about was mostly their own philosophy. This gave their hearers the impression that the traditional philosophical systems had all been superseded and dis-carded. With but little knowledge of the history of Western philosophy, the great majority of the audience failed to see the significance of their theories.
540 THE INTRODUCTION OF WESTERN PHILOSOPHY
One cannot understand a philosophy unless one at the same time under-stands the earlier traditions which it either approves or refutes. So these two philosophers, though well received by many, were understood by few. Their visit to China, nevertheless, opened new intellectual horizons for most of the students at that time. In this respect, their stay had great cultural and edu-cational value.
In chapter twenty-one I have said that there is a distinction between Chi-nese Buddhism and Buddhism in China, and that the contribution of Bud-dhism to Chinese philosophy is the idea of Universal Mind. In the introduc-tion of Western philosophy there have been similar cases. Following the visit of Dewey and Russell, for example, there have been many other philosophi-cal systems that, at one time or another, have become popular in China. So far, however, almost all of them have simply represented Western philosophy in China. None has yet become an integral part of the development of the Chinese mind, as did Ch'an Buddhism.
So far as I can see, the permanent contribution of Western philosophy to Chinese philosophy is the method of logical analysis. In chapter twenty-one 1 have said that Buddhism and Taoism both use the negative method. The analytic method is just the opposite of this, and hence may be called the positive method. The negative method attempts to eliminate distinctions and to tell what its object is not, whereas the positive method attempts to make distinctions and tell what its object is. It is not very important for the Chi-nese that the negative method of Buddhism was introduced, because they had it already in Taoism, though Buddhism did serve to reinforce it. The in-troduction of the positive method, however, is really a matter of the greatest importance. It gives the Chinese a new way of thinking, and a change in their whole mentality. But as we shall see in the next chapter, it will not re-place the other method; it will merely supplement it.
It is the method, not the ready—made conclusions of Western philosophy, that is important. A Chinese story relates that once a man met an immortal who asked him what he wanted. The man said that he wanted gold. The im-mortal touched several pieces of stone with his finger and they immediately turned to gold. The immortal asked the man to take them but he refused. What else do you want? the immortal asked. I want your finger, the man replied. The analytic method is the finger of the Western philosophers, and the Chinese want the finger.
That is the reason why among the different branches of philosophical study in the West, the first to attract the attention of the Chinese was logic. Even before Yen Fu's translation of J. S. Mill's System of Logic, Li Chih-tsao (died 1630) had already translated with the Jesuit Fathers a mediaeval textbook on Aristotelean logic. His translation was titled Ming-li T'an or An Investigation of Ming —li.We have seen in chapter nineteen that ming—li
542 . THE INTRODUCTION OF WESTERN PHILOSOPHY
means the analysis of principles through the analysis of names. Yen Fu translated logic as ming hsiieh or the Science of Names. As we have seen in chapter eight, the essence of the philosophy of the School of Names as rep-resented by Kung-sun Lung is precisely the analysis of principles through the analysis of names. But in that chapter I also pointed out that this philos-ophy is not exactly the same as logic. There is a similarity, however, and when the Chinese first heard something about Western logic, they immedi-ately noticed the similarity, and so connected it with their own School of Names.
Up to recent times the most fruitful result of the introduction of Western philosophy has been the revival of the study of Chinese philosophy, includ-ing Buddhism. There is nothing paradoxical in this statement. When one en-counters new ideas that are unfamiliar, it is only natural that one should turn to familiar ones for illustration, comparison, and mutual confirmation. And when one turns to these ideas, armed with the analytic method, it is only nat-ural that one should make an analysis of them. We have already seen at the beginning of this chapter that for the study of the ancient schools of thought other than Confucianist, the scholars of the Han hsiieh paved the way. Their interpretation of the ancient texts was primarily textual and philological, rather than philosophical. But that is exactly what is needed before one ap-plies the analytic method to analyze the philosophical ideas of the various ancient Chinese schools of thought.
Because logic was the first aspect of Western philosophy that attracted the attention of the Chinese, it is natural that among the ancient Chinese schools, the School of Names was also the first to receive detailed study in recent years. Dr. Hu Shih s book, The Development of the Logical Method in Ancient China, since its first publication in K)2.2 has been one of the im-portant contributions to this study. Scholars like Liang Ch i-chao (1873-1930) have also contributed much to the study of the School of Names and of the other schools.
The interpretation and analysis of the old ideas through use of the analytic method characterized the spirit of the age up to the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese war in 1937. Even Christian missionaries could not escape from the influence of this spirit. This may be why many missionaries in China have translated Chinese philosophical works and written books on Chinese philosophy in Western languages, whereas few have translated Western philosophical works and written books on Western philosophy in Chinese. Thus in the philosophical field they seem to have conducted what might be called a reverse form of missionary work. It is possible to have reverse missionary work, just as it is possible to have reverse lend—lease.
544 THE INTRODUCTION OF WESTERN PHILOSOPHY
CHAPTER 28
CHINESE PHILOSOPHY IN THE MODERN WORLD
AFTER all that has been said about the evolution and development of Chi-nese philosophy, readers may be inclined to ask such questions as: What is contemporary Chinese philosophy like, especially that of the war period? What will Chinese philosophy contribute to the future philosophy of the world? As a matter of fact, I have often been asked these questions, and have been somewhat embarrassed by them, because it is difficult to explain what a certain philosophy is to someone who is unfamiliar with the traditions that it either represents or opposes. However, now that the reader has gained some acquaintance with the traditions of Chinese philosophy, I am going to try to answer these questions by continuing the story of the last chapter.
The Philosopher and the Historian, of Philosophy
In so doing, I propose to confine myself to my own story, not at all be-cause I think this is the only story worth telling, but because it is the story I know best and it can, perhaps, serve as a sort of illustration. This, I think, is better than merely giving a list of names and "isms," without any fuller ex-position of any of them, a procedure which results in no kind of picture at all. By simply saying that a philosopher is a certain "ist," and nothing more, one usually creates misunderstanding instead of understanding.
My own larger History of Chinese Philosophy, the second and last volume of which was published in 1934, three years before the outbreak of the Sino— Japanese war, and the first volume of which was translated into English by Dr. Bodde and published in Peiping in 1937, three months after the war be-gan, is an expression of that spirit of the age mentioned by me at the end of the last chapter. In that work I utilized the results of the studies of the Han
546 CHINESE PHILOSOPHY IN THE MODERN WORLD
lisiheh scholars on the texts of the ancient philosophers, and at the same time applied the analytic method to clarify the ideas of these philosophers. From the point of view of the historian, the use of this method has its limits, be-cause the ideas of the ancient philosophers, in their original form, may not be as clear as in the presentation of their modern expositor. The function of a history of philosophy is to tell us what the words of the philosophers of the past actually meant to these men themselves, and not what we think they ought to mean. In my History I have tried my best to keep my use of the analytic method within its proper limits.
From the point of view of the pure philosopher, however, to clarify the ideas of the philosophers of the past, and push their theories to their logical conclusions in order to show their validity or absurdity, is certainly more in-teresting and important than merely to find out what they themselves thought about these ideas and theories. In so doing there is a process of development from the old to the new, and this development is another phase of the spirit of the age mentioned above. Such a work, however, is no longer the scholarly one of an historian, but the creative one of a philosopher. I share the feeling of Wang Kuo—wei, that is to say, I do not like to be simply an historian of philosophy. Therefore after I had finished the writing of my History, I imme-diately prepared for new work. But at this juncture the war broke out in the summer of 1937-
Philosophical Production in Wartime
Before the war, the philosophy departments of the University of Peking, from which I graduated, and of Tsing Hua University, where I am now teaching, were considered to be the strongest in China. Each of them has had its own tradition and emphasis. Those of the University of Peking have been toward historical studies and scholarship, with an idealistic philosophi-cal trend, which, in terms of Western philosophy, is Kantian and Hegelian, and, in terms of Chinese philosophy, is Lu Wang. The tradition and empha-sis of Tsing Hua, on the contrary, have been toward the use of logical analy-sis for the study of philosophical problems, with a realistic philosophical trend, which, in terms oi Western philosophy, is Platonic in the sense that the philosophy of neo -realism is Platonic, and in terms of Chinese philoso-phy, is Ch eng—Chu.
These two universities are both situated in Peiping (formerly known as Peking), and on the outbreak of the war they both moved to the southwest, where they combined with a third, the Nankai University of Tientsin, to form
548 CHINESE PHILOSOPHY IN THE MODERN WORLD
^
the Southwest Associated University throughout the entire war period. To-gether, their two Philosophy Departments formed a rare and wonderful com-bination, comprising nine professors representing all the important schools both of Chinese and Western philosophy. At first, the Associated University as a whole was situated in Changsha in Hunan province, but our Philosophy Department, together with the other Departments of the humanities, was sep-arately located in Hengshan, known as the South Holy Mountain.
We stayed there only about four months before moving again to Kunming, farther southwest, in the spring of 1938. These few months, however, were spiritually very stimulating. We were then in a national crisis which was the greatest in our history, and we were in the same place where Huai-jang had tried to grind a brick into a mirror, as mentioned in chapter twenty-two, and where Chu Hsi had also once lived. We were sufferers of the same fate met by the Southern Sung dynasty, that of being driven southward by a foreign army.Yet we lived in a wonderful society of philosophers, writers, and schol-ars, all in one building. It was this combination of the historical moment, the geographical location, and the human gathering, that made the occasion so exceptionally stimulating and inspiring.
During these few months, myself and my colleagues, Professors T ang Yung-t ung and Y. L. Chin, finished books on which we had been working. T ang s book is the first part of his History of Chinese Buddhism. Chin s book is titled On the Too, and mine the Hsin Li-hsUeh or New Li—hsileh. Chin and myself have many ideas in common, but my work is a development of the Ch eng—Chu school, as the title indicates, while his is the result of an independent study of metaphysical problems. Later in Kunming I wrote a se-ries of other books: the Hsin Shih-lun, also titled China's Road to Freedom; the Hsin Yuan-jen or New Treatise on the Nature of Man; the Hsin Yilan-tao, also titled The Spirit of Chinese Philosophy, which has been translated from the manuscript by Mr. E. R. Hughes of Oxford University and is pub-lished in London; and the Hsin Chih-yen or New Treatise on the Methodolo-gy of Metaphysics. (All these, in their original Chinese editions, have been published by the Commercial Press, Shanghai.) In the following, I shall try to summarize some of their results, as an illustration of one trend in contempo-rary Chinese philosophy, and in so doing we may perhaps get a partial glimpse of what Chinese philosophy can contribute to future philosophy.
