Our Oriental Heritage

by Will Durant

  I pray you, dear,

  Steal not the garden down,

  Nor break my sandal trees;

  Not that I care for these,

  But oh, I dread the talk of town.

  Should lovers have their wilful way,

  Whatever would the neighbors say?28

  And another—the most nearly perfect, or the most excellently translated, of all—reveals to us the ageless antiquity of sentiment:

  The morning glory climbs above my head,

  Pale flowers of white and purple, blue and red.

  I am disquieted.

  Down in the withered grasses something stirred;

  I thought it was his footfall that I heard.

  Then a grasshopper chirred.

  I climbed the hill just as the new moon showed,

  I saw him coming on the southern road,

  My heart lays down its load.29

  5. The Pre-Confucian Philosophers

  The “Book of Changes”—The “yang” and the “yin”—The Chinese Enlightenment—Teng Shih, the Socrates of China

  The characteristic production of this epoch is philosophy. It is no discredit to our species that in all ages its curiosity has outrun its wisdom, and its ideals have set an impossible pace for its behavior. As far back as 1250 B.C. we find Yu Tze sounding the keynote in a pithy fragment then already stale, and now still fresh in counsel to laborious word-mongers who do not know that all glory ends in bitterness: “He who renounces fame has no sorrow”30—happy the man who has no history! From that time until our own, China has produced philosophers.

  As India is par excellence the land of metaphysics and religion, China is by like preëminence the home of humanistic, or non-theological, philosophy. Almost the only important work of metaphysics in its literature is the strange document with which the recorded history of Chinese thought begins—the I-Ching, or “Book of Changes.” Tradition insists that it was written in prison by one of the founders of the Chou Dynasty, Wen Wang, and that its simplest origin went back as far as Fu Hsi: this legendary emperor, we are told, invented the eight kua, or mystic trigrams, which Chinese metaphysics identifies with the laws and elements of nature. Each trigram consisted of three lines—some continuous and representing the male principle or yang, some broken and representing the female principle or yin. In this mystic dualism the yang represented also the positive, active, productive and celestial principle of light, heat and life, while the yin represented the negative, passive and earthly principle of darkness, cold and death. Wen Wang immortalized himself, and racked the head of a billion Chinese, by doubling the number of strokes, and thereby raising to sixty-four the number of possible combinations of continuous and broken lines. To each of these arrangements some law of nature corresponded. All science and history were contained in the changeful interplay of the combinations; all wisdom lay hidden in the sixty-four hsiangs, or ideas symbolically represented by the trigrams; ultimately all reality could be reduced to the opposition and union of the two basic factors in the universe—the male and the female principles, the yang and the yin. The Chinese used the Book of Changes as a manual of divination, and considered it the greatest of their classics; he who should understand the combinations, we are told, would grasp all the laws of nature. Confucius, who edited the volume and adorned it with commentaries, ranked it above all other writings, and wished that he might be free to spend fifty years in its study.31

  This strange volume, though congenial to the subtle occultism of the Chinese soul, is alien to the positive and practical spirit of Chinese philosophy. As far back as we can pry into the past of China we find philosophers; but of those who preceded Lao-tze time has preserved only an occasional fragment or an empty name. As in India, Persia, Judea and Greece, the sixth and fifth centuries saw, in China, a brilliant outburst of philosophical and literary genius; and as in Greece, it began with an epoch of rationalist “enlightenment.” An age of war and chaos opened new roads to the advancement of unpedigreed talent, and established a demand, among the people of the towns, for instructors skilled in imparting the arts of the mind. These popular teachers soon discovered the uncertainty of theology, the relativity of morals and the imperfections of governments, and began to lay about them with Utopias; several of them were put to death by authorities who found it more difficult to answer than to kill. According to one Chinese tradition Confucius himself, during his tenure of office as Minister of Crime in the Duchy of Lu, condemned to death a seditious officer on the ground that “he was capable of gathering about him large crowds of men; that his arguments could easily appeal to the mob and make perversity respectable; and that his sophistry was sufficiently recalcitrant to take a stand against the accepted judgments of right.”32 Szuma-Ch’ien accepts the story; some other Chinese historians reject it;33 let us hope that it is not true.

  The most famous of these intellectual rebels was Teng Shih, who was executed by the Duke of Cheng during the youth of Confucius. Teng, says the Book of Lieh-tze, “taught the doctrines of the relativity of right and wrong, and employed inexhaustible arguments.”34 His enemies charged him with being willing to prove one thing one day and its opposite the next, if proper remuneration were forthcoming; he offered his services to those who were trying their cases in court, and allowed no prejudice to interfere with serviceability. A hostile Chinese historian tells a pretty story of him:

  A wealthy man of Teng’s native state was drowned in the Wei River, and his body was taken up by a man who demanded of the bereaved family a large sum of money for its redemption. The dead man’s family sought Teng’s counsel. “Wait,” said the Sophist; “no other family will pay for the body.” The advice was followed, and the man who held the corpse became anxious and also came to Teng Shih for advice. The Sophist gave the same counsel: “Wait; nowhere else can they obtain the body.”35

  Teng Shih composed a code of penology that proved too idealistic for the government of Cheng. Annoyed by pamphlets in which Teng criticized his policies, the prime minister prohibited the posting of pamphlets in public places. Teng thereupon delivered his pamphlets in person. The minister forbade the delivery of pamphlets. Teng smuggled them to his readers by concealing them in other articles. The government ended the argument by cutting off his head.36

  6. The Old Master

  Lao-tze—The “Tao”—On intellectuals in government—The foolishness of laws—A Rousseauian Utopia and a Christian ethic—Portrait of a wise man—The meeting of Lao-tze and Confucius

  Lao-tze, greatest of the pre-Confucian philosophers, was wiser than Teng Shih; he knew the wisdom of silence, and lived, we may be sure, to a ripe old age—though we are not sure that he lived at all. The Chinese historian, Szuma Ch’ien, tells how Lao-tze, disgusted with the knavery of politicians and tired of his work as curator of the Royal Library of Chou, determined to leave China and seek some distant and secluded countryside. “On reaching the frontier the warden, Yin Hsi, said to him: ‘So you are going into retirement. I beg you to write a book for me.’ Thereupon Lao-tze wrote a book, in two parts, on Tao and Te, extending to over five thousand words. He then went away, and no one knows where he died.”37 Tradition, which knows everything, credits him with living eighty-seven years. All that remains of him is his name and his book, neither of which may have belonged to him. Lao-tze is a description, meaning “The Old Master”; his real name, we are told, was Li—that is to say, a plum. The book which is ascribed to him is of such doubtful authenticity that scholars quarrel learnedly about its origin.* But all are agreed that the Tao-Te-Ching—i.e., the “Book of the Way and of Virtue”—is the most important text of that Taoist philosophy which, in the opinion of Chinese students, existed long before Lao-tze, found many firstrate defenders after him, and became the religion of a considerable minority of the Chinese from his time to our own. The authorship of the Tao-Te-Ching is a secondary matter; but its ideas are among the most fascinating in the history of thought.

  Tao means the Way: sometimes the Way of Nature, s
ometimes the Taoist Way of wise living; literally, a road. Basically, it is a way of thinking, or of refusing to think; for in the view of the Taoists thought is a superficial affair, good only for argument, and more harmful than beneficial to life; the Way is to be found by rejecting the intellect and all its wares, and leading a modest life of retirement, rusticity, and quiet contemplation of nature. Knowledge is not virtue; on the contrary, rascals have increased since education spread. Knowledge is not wisdom, for nothing is so far from a sage as an “intellectual.” The worst conceivable government would be by philosophers; they botch every natural process with theory; their ability to make speeches and multiply ideas is precisely the sign of their incapacity for action.

  Those who are skilled do not dispute; the disputatious are not skilled. . . . When we renounce learning we have no troubles. . . . The sage constantly keeps men without knowledge and without desire, and where there are those who have knowledge, keeps them from presuming to act. . . . The ancients who showed their skill in practising the Tao did so not to enlighten the people, but to make them simple and ignorant. . . . The difficulty in governing the people arises from their having too much knowledge. He who tries to govern a state by his wisdom is a scourge to it, while he who does not do so is a blessing.40

  The intellectual man is a danger to the state because he thinks in terms of regulations and laws; he wishes to construct a society like geometry, and does not realize that such regulation destroys the living freedom and vigor of the parts. The simpler man, who knows from his own experience the pleasure and efficacy of work conceived and carried out in liberty, is less of a peril when he is in power, for he does not have to be told that a law is a dangerous thing, and may injure more than it may help.41 Such a ruler regulates men as little as possible; if he guides the nation it is away from all artifice and complexity towards a normal and artless simplicity, in which life would follow the wisely thoughtless routine of nature, and even writing would be put aside as an unnatural instrument of befuddlement and deviltry. Unhampered by regulations from the government, the spontaneous economic impulses of the people—their own lust for bread and love—would move the wheels of life in a simple and wholesome round. There would be few inventions, for these only add to the wealth of the rich and the power of the strong; there would be no books, no lawyers, no industries, and only village trade.

  In the kingdom the multiplication of prohibitions increases the poverty of the people. The more implements to add to their profit the people have, the greater disorder is there in the state and clan; the more acts of crafty dexterity men possess, the more do strange contrivances appear; the more display there is of legislation, the more thieves and robbers there are. Therefore a sage has said: “I will do nothing, and the people will be transformed of themselves; I will be fond of keeping still, and the people will of themselves be correct. I will take no trouble about it, and the people will of themselves become rich; I will manifest no ambition, and the people will of themselves attain to the primitive simplicity. . . .

  In a little state with a small population I would so order it that though there would be individuals in it with the abilities of ten or a hundred men, there should be no employment for them; I would make the people, while looking upon death as a grievous thing, yet not remove elsewhere (to avoid it). Though they had boats and carriages, they should have no occasion to ride in them; though they had buff coats and sharp weapons, they should have no occasion to don or use them. I would make the people return to the use of knotted cords.* They should think their (coarse) food sweet, their (plain) clothes beautiful, their (poor) dwellings places of rest, and their common ways sources of enjoyment. There should be a neighboring state within sight, and the voices of the fowls and dogs should be heard all the way from it to us; but I would make the people to old age, even to death, not have any intercourse with it.”42

  But what is this nature which Lao-tze wishes to accept as his guide? The Old Master draws as sharp a distinction between nature and civilization as Rousseau was to do in that gallery of echoes called “modern thought.” Nature is natural activity, the silent flow of traditional events, the majestic order of the seasons and the sky; it is the Tao, or Way, exemplified and embodied in every brook and rock and star; it is that impartial, impersonal and yet rational law of things to which the law of conduct must conform if men desire to live in wisdom and peace. This law of things is the Tao or way of the universe, just as the law of conduct is the Tao or way of life; in truth, thinks Lao-tze, both Taos are one, and human life, in its essential and wholesome rhythm, is part of the rhythm of the world. In that cosmic Tao all the laws of nature are united and form together the Spinozistic substance of all reality; in it all natural forms and varieties find a proper place, and all apparent diversities and contradictions meet; it is the Absolute in which all particulars are resolved into one Hegelian unity43

  In the ancient days, says Lao, nature made men and life simple and peaceful, and all the world was happy. But then men attained “knowledge,” they complicated life with inventions, they lost all mental and moral innocence, they moved from the fields to the cities, and began to write books; hence all the misery of men, and the tears of the philosophers. The wise man will shun this urban complexity, this corrupting and enervating maze of law and civilization, and will hide himself in the lap of nature, far from any town, or books, or venal officials, or vain reformers. The secret of wisdom and of that quiet content which is the only lasting happiness that man can find, is a Stoic obedience to nature, an abandonment of all artifice and intellect, a trustful acceptance of nature’s imperatives in instinct and feeling, a modest imitation of nature’s silent ways. Perhaps there is no wiser passage in literature than this:

  All things in nature work silently. They come into being and possess nothing. They fulfil their function and make no claim. All things alike do their work, and then we see them subside. When they have reached their bloom each returns to its origin. Returning to their origin means rest, or fulfilment of destiny. This reversion is an eternal law. To know that law is wisdom.44

  Quiescence, a kind of philosophical inaction, a refusal to interfere with the natural courses of things, is the mark of the wise man in every field. If the state is in disorder, the proper thing to do is not to reform it, but to make one’s life an orderly performance of duty; if resistance is encountered, the wiser course is not to quarrel, fight, or make war, but to retire silently, and to win, if at all, through yielding and patience; passivity has its victories more often than action. Here Lao-tze talks almost with the accents of Christ:

  If you do not quarrel, no one on earth will be able to quarrel with you. . . . Recompense injury with kindness. . . . To those who are good I am good, and to those who are not good I am also good; thus (all) get to be good. To those who are sincere I am sincere, and to those who are not sincere I am also sincere; and thus (all) get to be sincere. . . . The softest thing in the world dashes against and overcomes the hardest. . . . There is nothing in the world softer or weaker than water, and yet for attacking things that are firm and strong there is nothing that can take precedence of it.*45

  All these doctrines culminate in Lao’s conception of the sage. It is characteristic of Chinese thought that it speaks not of saints but of sages, not so much of goodness as of wisdom; to the Chinese the ideal is not the pious devotee but the mature and quiet mind, the man who, though fit to hold high place in the world, retires to simplicity and silence. Silence is the beginning of wisdom. Even of the Tao and wisdom the wise man does not speak, for wisdom can be transmitted never by words, only by example and experience. “He who knows (the Way) does not speak about it; he who speaks about it does not know it. He (who knows it) will keep his mouth shut and close the portals of his nostrils.”47 The wise man is modest, for at fifty† one should have discovered the relativity of knowledge and the frailty of wisdom; if the wise man knows more than other men he tries to conceal it; “he will temper his brightness, and bring himself into agreeme
nt with the obscurity (of others);49 he agrees with the simple rather than with the learned, and does not suffer from the novice’s instinct of contradiction. He attaches no importance to riches or power, but reduces his desires to an almost Buddhist minimum:

  I have nothing that I value; I desire that my heart be completely subdued, emptied to emptiness. . . . The state of emptiness should be brought to the utmost degree, and that of stillness guarded with unwearying vigor. . . . Such a man cannot be treated familiarly or distantly; he is beyond all considerations of profit or injury, of nobility or meanness; he is the noblest man under heaven.50

  It is unnecessary to point out the detailed correspondence of these ideas with those of Jean-Jacques Rousseau; the two men were coins of the same mould and mint, however different in date. It is a philosophy that periodically reappears, for in every generation many men weary of the struggle, cruelty, complexity and speed of city life, and write with more idealism than knowledge about the joys of rustic routine: one must have a long urban background in order to write rural poetry. “Nature” is a term that may lend itself to any ethic and any theology; it fits the science of Darwin and the unmorality of Nietzsche more snugly than the sweet reasonableness of Lao-tze and Christ. If one follows nature and acts naturally he is much more likely to murder and eat his enemies than to practise philosophy; there is small chance of his being humble, and less of his being silent. Even the painful tillage of the soil goes against the grain of a species primordially wont to hunt and kill; agriculture is as “unnatural” as industry.—And yet there is something medicinal in this philosophy; we suspect that we, too, when our fires begin to burn low, shall see wisdom in it, and shall want the healing peace of uncrowded mountains and spacious fields. Life oscillates between Voltaire and Rousseau, Confucius and Lao-tze, Socrates and Christ. After every idea has had its day with us and we have fought for it not wisely or too well, we in our turn shall tire of the battle, and pass on to the young our thinning fascicle of ideals. Then we shall take to the woods with Jacques, Jean-Jacques and Lao-tze; we shall make friends of the animals, and discourse more contentedly than Machiavelli with simple peasant minds; we shall leave the world to stew in its own deviltry, and shall take no further thought of its reform. Perhaps we shall burn every book but one behind us, and find a summary of wisdom in the Tao-Te-Ching.