Our Oriental Heritage

by Will Durant

  The disunity of China reflects and follows from the division that lies in the Chinese soul. The most powerful feeling in China today is hatred of foreigners; the most powerful process in China today is imitation of foreigners. China knows that the West does not deserve this flattery, but China is forced by the very spirit and impetus of the times to give it, for the age offers to all nations the choice of industrialism or vassalage. So the Chinese of the eastern cities pass from fields to factories, from robes to trousers, from the simple melodies of the past to the saxophone symphonies of the West; they surrender their own fine taste in dress and furniture and art, adorn their walls with European paintings, and erect office buildings in the least attractive of American styles. Their women have ceased to compress their feet from north to south, and begin, in the superior manner of the Occident, to compress them from east to west. † Their philosophers abandon the unobtrusive and mannerly rationalism of Confucius, and take up with Renaissance enthusiasm the pugnacious rationalism of Moscow, London, Berlin, Paris and New York.

  The dethronement of Confucius has something of the character of both the Renaissance and the Enlightenment; it is at once the overthrow of the Chinese Aristotle, and the rejection of the racial gods. For a time the new state persecuted Buddhism and the monastic orders; like the Revolutionists of France, the Chinese rebels were freethinkers without concealment, openly hostile to religion, and worshiping only reason. Confucianism tolerated the popular faiths on the assumption, presumably, that as long as there is poverty there will be gods; the Revolution, fondly believing that poverty can be destroyed, had no need of gods. Confucianism took agriculture and the family for granted, and formulated an ethic designed to maintain order and content within the circle of the home and the field; the Revolution is bound for industry, and needs a new morality to accord with urban and individual life. Confucianism endured because access to political office and scholarly occupations demanded a knowledge and acceptance of it; but the examinations are gone, and science takes the place of ethical and political philosophy in the schools; man is now to be moulded not to government but to industry. Confucianism was conservative, and checked the ideals of youth with the caution of old age; the Revolution is made of youth, and will have none of these ancient restraints; it smiles at the old sage’s warning that “he who thinks the old embankments useless and destroys them is sure to suffer from the desolation caused by overflowing water.”*27

  The Revolution has, of course, put an end to official religion, and no sacrifice mounts any longer from the Altar of Heaven to the impersonal and silent T’ien. Ancestor worship is tolerated, but visibly decays; more and more the men tend to leave it to the women, who were once thought unfit to officiate at these sacred rites. Half of the Revolutionary leaders were educated in Christian schools; but the Revolution, despite the Methodism of Chiang Kai-shek, is unfavorable to any supernatural faith, and gives to its schoolbooks an atheistic tint.29 The new religion, which tries to fill the emotional void left by the departure of the gods, is nationalism, as in Russia it is communism. Meanwhile this creed does not satisfy all; many proletaires seek in the adventure of oracles and mediums a refuge from the prose of their daily toil; and the people of the village still find some solace from their poverty in the mystic quiet of the ancient shrines.

  Shorn of its sanctions in government, religion and economic life, the traditional moral code, which seemed a generation ago unchangeable, disintegrates with geometrical acceleration. Next to the invasion of industry the most striking change in the China of today is the destruction of the old family system, and its replacement with an individualism that leaves every man free and alone to face the world. Loyalty to the family, on which the old order was founded, is superseded in theory by loyalty to the state; and as the novel loyalty has not yet graduated from theory into practice, the new society lacks a moral base. Agriculture favors the family because, before the coming of machinery, the land could most economically be tilled by a group united by blood and paternal authority; industry disrupts the family, because it offers its places and rewards to individuals rather than to groups, does not always offer them these rewards in the same place, and recognizes no obligation to aid the weak out of the resources of the strong; the natural communism of the family finds no support in the bitter competition of industry and trade. The younger generation, always irked by the authority of the old, takes with a will to the anonymity of the city and the individualism of the “job.” Perhaps the omnipotence of the father helped to precipitate the Revolution; the reactionary is always to blame for the excesses of the radical. So China has cut itself off from all roots, and no one knows whether it can sink new roots in time to save its cultural life.

  The old marriage forms disappear with the authority of the family. The majority of marriages are still arranged by the parents, but in the city marriage by free choice of the young tends more and more to prevail. The individual considers himself free not only to mate as he pleases, but to make experiments in marriage which might shock the West. Nietzsche thought Asia right about women, and considered their subjection the only alternative to their unchecked ascendancy; but Asia is choosing Europe’s way, not Nietzsche’s. Polygamy diminishes, for the modern wife objects to a concubine. Divorce is uncommon, but the road to it is wider than ever before.* Co-education is the rule in the universities, and the free mingling of the sexes is usual in the cities. Women have established their own law and medical schools, even their own bank.31 Those of them that are members of the Party have received the franchise, and places have been found for them on the highest committees of both the Party and the Government.32 They have turned their backs upon infanticide, and are beginning to practise birth control,† Population has not noticeably increased since the Revolution; perhaps the vast tide of Chinese humanity has begun to ebb.33

  Nevertheless fifty thousand new Chinese are born every day.34 They are destined to be new in every way: new in the cut of their clothes and their hair, new in education and occupation, in habits and manners, in religion and philosophy. The queue is gone, and so are the graceful manners of the older time; the hatreds of revolution have coarsened the spirit, and radicals find it hard to be courteous to conservatives.35 The phlegmatic quality of the ancient race is being changed by the speed of industry into something more expressive and volatile; these stolid faces conceal active and excitable souls. The love of peace that came to China after centuries of war is being broken down by the contemplation of national dismemberment and defeat; the schools are drilling every student into a soldier, and the general is a hero once more.

  The whole world of education has been transformed. The schools have thrown Confucius out of the window, and taken science in. The rejection was not quite necessary for the admission, since the doctrine of Confucius accorded well with the spirit of science; but the conquest of the logical by the psychological is the warp and woof of history. Mathematics and mechanics are popular, for these can make machines; machines can make wealth and guns, and guns may preserve liberty. Medical education is progressing, largely as the result of the cosmopolitan beneficence of the Rockefeller fortune.* Despite the impoverishment of the country, new schools, high schools and colleges have multiplied rapidly, and the hope of Young China is that soon every child will receive a free education, and that democracy may be widened as education grows.

  A revolution akin to that of the Renaissance has come to Chinese literature and philosophy. The importation of Western texts has had the fertilizing influence that Greek manuscripts had upon the Italian mind. And just as Italy, in her awakening, abandoned Latin to write in the vernacular, so China, under the leadership of the brilliant Hu Shih, has turned the popular “Mandarin” dialect into a literary language, the Pai Hua. Hu Shih took his literary fate in his hands by writing in this “plain language” a History of Chinese Philosophy (1919). His courage carried the day; half a thousand periodicals adopted Pai Hua, and it was made the official written language of the schools. Meanwhile the “Thou
sand Character Movement” sought to reduce the 40,000 characters of the scholars to some 1300 characters for common use. In these ways the Mandarin speech is being rapidly spread throughout the provinces; and perhaps within the century China will have one language, and be near to cultural unity again.

  Under the stimulus of a popular language and an eager people, literature flourishes. Novels, poems, histories and plays become almost as numerous as the population. Newspapers and periodicals cover the land. The literature of the West is being translated en masse, and American motion pictures, expounded by a Chinese interpreter at the side of the screen, are delighting the profound and simple Chinese soul. Philosophy has returned to the great heretics of the past, has given them a new hearing and exposition, and has taken on all the vigor and radicalism of European thought in the sixteenth century. And as Italy, newly freed from ecclesiastical leading-strings, admired the secularism of the Greek mind, so the new China listens with especial eagerness to Western thinkers like John Dewey and Bertrand Russell, whose independence of all theology and respect for experience and experiment as the only logic, accord completely with the mood of a nation that is trying to have its Reformation, Renaissance, Enlightenment and Revolution in one generation.* Hu Shih scorns our praise of the “spiritual values” of Asia, and finds more spiritual worth in the reorganization of industry and government for the elimination of poverty than in all the “wisdom of the East.”37 He describes Confucius as “a very old man,” and suggests that a better perspective of Chinese thought would appear if the heretical schools of the fifth, fourth and third centuries B.C. were given their due place in Chinese history.38 Nevertheless, in the midst of the swirling “New Tide” of which he has been one of the most active leaders, he has kept sufficient sanity to see the value even of old men, and he has formulated the problem of his country perfectly:

  It would surely be a great loss to mankind at large if the acceptance of this new civilization should take the form of abrupt displacement instead of organic assimilation, thereby causing the disappearance of the old civilization. The real problem, therefore, may be restated thus: How can we best assimilate modern civilization in such a manner as to make it congenial and congruous and continuous with the civilization of our own making?39

  All the surface conditions of China today tempt the observer to conclude that China will not solve the problem. When one contemplates the desolation of China’s fields, blighted with drought or ruined with floods, the waste of her timber, the stupor of her exhausted peasants, the high mortality of her children, the unnerving toil of her factory-slaves, the disease-ridden slums and tax-ridden homes of her cities, her bribe-infested commerce and her foreign-dominated industry, the corruption of her government, the weakness of her defenses and the bitter factionalism of her people, one wonders for a moment whether China can ever be great again, whether she can once more consume her conquerors and live her own creative life. But under the surface, if we care to look, we may see the factors of convalescence and renewal. This soil, so vast in extent and so varied in form, is rich in the minerals that make a country industrially great; not as rich as Richtofen supposed, but almost certainly richer than the tentative surveys of our day have revealed; as industry moves inland it will come upon ores and fuels as unsuspected now as the mineral and fuel wealth of America was undreamed of a century ago. This nation, after three thousand years of grandeur and decay, of repeated deaths and resurrections, exhibits today all the physical and mental vitality that we find in its most creative periods; there is no people in the world more vigorous or more intelligent, no other people so adaptable to circumstance, so resistant to disease, so resilient after disaster and suffering, so trained by history to calm endurance and patient recovery. Imagination cannot describe the possibilities of a civilization mingling the physical, labor and mental resources of such a people with the technological equipment of modern industry. Very probably such wealth will be produced in China as even America has never known, and once again, as so often in the past, China will lead the world in luxury and the art of life.

  No victory of arms, or tyranny of alien finance, can long suppress a nation so rich in resources and vitality. The invader will lose funds or patience before the loins of China will lose virility; within a century China will have absorbed and civilized her conquerors, and will have learned all the technique of what transiently bears the name of modern industry; roads and communications will give her unity, economy and thrift will give her funds, and a strong government will give her order and peace. Every chaos is a transition. In the end disorder cures and balances itself with dictatorship; old obstacles are roughly cleared away, and fresh growth is free. Revolution, like death and style, is the removal of rubbish, the surgery of the superfluous; it comes only when there are many things ready to die. China has died many times before; and many times she has been reborn.

  B. JAPAN

  Great Yamato (Japan) is a divine country. It is only our land whose foundations were first laid by the Divine Ancestor. It alone has been transmitted by the Sun Goddess to a long line of her descendants. There is nothing of this kind in foreign countries. Therefore it is called the Divine Land.

  —Chikafusa Kitabatake, 1334, in Murdoch, History of Japan, i, 571.

  CHRONOLOGY OF JAPANESE CIVILIZATION *

  I. THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

  1. Primitive Japan:

  Ca. 660 B.C.: Entrance of the Mongols

  Ca. 660-585 B.C.: Jimmu, Emperor (?)

  412-53 A.D.: Inkyo, Emperor

  522 A.D.: Buddhism enters Japan

  592-621: Shotoku Taishi, Regent

  593-628: Suiko, Empress

  645: The Great Reform

  2. Imperial Japan:

  668-71: Tenchi Tenno, Emperor

  690-702: Jito, Empress

  697-707: Mommu, Emperor

  702: The Taiho Code of Laws

  710-94: The Heijo Epoch: Nara the capital

  724-56: Shomu, Emperor

  749-59, 765-70: Koken, Empress

  794-1192: The Heian Epoch: Kyoto the capital

  877-949: Yozei, Emperor

  898-930: Daigo, Emperor

  901-22: The Period of Engi

  3. Feudal Japan:

  1186-99: Yoritomo

  1203-19: Minamoto Sanetomo

  1200-1333: The Kamakura Bakufu

  1199-1333: The Hojo Regency

  1222-82: Nichiren, founder of the Lotus Sect

  1291: Kublai Khan invades Japan

  1318-39: Go Daigo, Emperor

  1335-1573: The Ashikaga Shogunate

  1387-95: Yoshimitsu

  1436-80: Yoshimasa

  1573-82: Nobunaga

  1581-98: Hideyoshi

  1592: Hideyoshi fails to conquer Korea

  1597: Hideyoshi expels the priests

  1600: Battle of Sekigahara

  1603-1867: The Tokugawa Shogunate

  1603-16: Iyeyasu

  1605: Siege of Osaka

  1614: Iyeyasu’s anti-Christian edict

  1605-23: Hidetada

  1623-51: Iyemitsu

  1657: The great fire of Tokyo

  1680-1709: Tsunayoshi

  1688-1703: The period of Genroku

  1709-12: Iyenobu

  1716-45: Yoshimune

  1721: Yoshimune codifies Japanese law

  1787-1836: Iyenari

  1853-8: Iyesada

  1858-66: Iyemochi

  1866-8: Keiki

  II. LITERATURE

  845-903: Sugawara Michizane, Patron of Letters

  1. Poetry:

  665-731: Tahito

  D. 737: Hitomaro

  724-56: Akahito

  750: The Manyoshu

  883-946: Tsurayaki

  905: The Kokinshu

  1118-90: Saigyo Hoshi

  1234: The Hyaku-nin-isshu

  1643-94: Matsura Basho

  1703-75: Lady Kaga no-Chiyo

  2. Drama:

  1350-1650: The No plays

  1653
-1724: Chikamatsu Monzayemon

  3. Fiction:

  978-1031?: Lady Murasaki no-Shikibu

  1001-4: The Genji Monogatari

  1761-1816: Santo Kioden

  1767-1848: Kyokutei Bakin

  D. 1831: Jippensha Ikku

  4. History and Scholarship:

  712: The Kojiki

  720: The Nihongi

  1334: Kitabatake’s Jintoshotoki

  1622-1704: Mitsu-kuni

  1630: Hayashi Razan founds University of Tokyo