I’ve long found it curious that the world has so many people undertaking to serve as mankind’s moral guide, and publishing essays every day to chide him. “That animal called man”4 cannot be completely written off, since a few are still capable of self-sacrifice. More puzzling to me is that with such an abundance of moral guides mankind still has not improved much. This is of course like asking why it is that with so many skillful and attentive doctors in active practice mankind still suffers from illness. For although the doctor cures illness, he hopes at the same time that more people will get sick, the better to get a sweet price for his bitter medicine. By saving other people’s lives he saves his own, since patients must eat medicine in order for him to eat food. It is thus completely unsurprising that human nature has not improved despite the existence of such leaders. What’s real food for thought is that people undertake the responsibility of instructing and guiding mankind despite the incorrigibility of human nature. Mankind may be impervious to moral instruction, but didactic essays about the current state of affairs fill a need even if they have no practical value. It’s akin to how we feel compelled to send for a doctor and take medicine when we get sick, even though doing so may not cure the illness. If man really was a quick study and no longer needed moral instruction, wouldn’t all those people die of idleness? Thus, they write about everything from the individual’s responsibilities in life to the attitude of the critic, their words flowing as volubly as an outdoor sermon. Their essays may not be worth a dime, but at least the ink and paper didn’t cost them a penny.5
Middle age and moral instruction appear to be intimately correlated. We can appreciate this curious fact just by looking at authors. Upon reaching forty or so, many men of letters suddenly task themselves with saving the world. Everything and everyone around them they curse and seek to put right. Well-known British examples include Matthew Arnold, John Ruskin, William Morris, T. S. Eliot6 (who is still living), and J. M. Murry. Even the aesthete Oscar Wilde had a change of heart on his deathbed and preached socialism. We can find more examples among our friends, should we be so inclined. The goals of such an honorable transformation are of course as pure as fresh-fallen snow: to rescue the world and educate mankind. Yet pure goals may well have complicated motives. Bellowing with the force of righteousness may be a cover-up for declining literary creativity, despair and frustration with life, a way of exploring a career change, or middle-aged envy toward one’s peers or juniors. When a middle-aged woman can no longer hide her loss of good looks with makeup, for instance, she naturally cuts down on socializing and willingly settles into the role of the proper housewife. What’s more, she will not abide the bizarre and sexy way that young women dress. Jules Janin called Balzac the Columbus who discovered forty-year-old women. Forty-year-old men, apparently, are still waiting to be discovered. Sages like Confucius didn’t really understand the particular nature of middle-aged people. As a result, the “Ji Family” chapter in The Analects records only three prohibitions in life: youthful lust, fighting in one’s prime, and old age covetousness—forgetting middle-aged moralizing. Of course, there are also those who enjoy preaching from an early age. At most this reveals that they were middle-aged at birth and should be congratulated on having reached ninety or one hundred when they turn sixty.
Just as one person’s idea of personal finance is simply to borrow money without repaying it, so another’s moral philosophy is to chide others even though he himself lacks moral character. Ancient books tell us that a “good man” is one who “doesn’t give better than he can take,” but this is an inescapably shallow view. A man who is truly good will give without taking and instruct others without ever accepting their instruction. This is what is known as “the spirit of self-sacrifice.”
One could say that the change from an artistic philosophy of life to a moralizing philosophy of life is the product of a new phase in life. Yet the beginning of each new phase also marks the end of another. For instance, to a man with a job, breakfast is the beginning of the day, and once he has eaten his fill he can go to work. But to a member of the leisure class who spends his whole night playing cards and dancing, breakfast is just the conclusion of the previous night, and once he has eaten his fill he is ready to sleep. The onset of moral instruction may well mark the death of literary creation, but here I have no intention of passing judgment on the relative merits of each, since that depends completely on the individual.7 Some people’s literary works essentially constitute preaching with a mask on, but this is inferior to flat out moralizing. Conversely, some people’s moralizing can make something out of nothing and pass off fiction as fact and thus can be dubbed “creation” as justifiably as poetry, fiction, rumors, and lies.
The simpleminded might object that an immoral person who goes around chiding others is a hypocrite. To this we reply: what’s wrong with hypocrisy?8 Compared to true morality, hypocrisy is even more difficult to accomplish and therefore all the more estimable. A moral person offering moral instruction is unremarkable, but to lack morals and instruct others takes real skill. A man of learning can teach, but his learning is self-evident. To teach others despite being ignorant is like doing business without capital—a veritable art. A true moralist promoting morality, like a shopkeeper advertising his inventory of goods, cannot avoid self-promotion. It is only when someone absolutely lacking in morals talks of morality that we can understand the true meaning of selflessness, and the delight he takes in speaking of man’s goodness further attests to morality’s greatness. We might take this one step further and say that a truly moral person who trumpets morality will in fact see his original morality gradually erode. La Rochefoucauld writes in Maximes supprimées: “The moralists, and Sénèque above all, have not done away with men’s crimes through their precepts; all they have done is use them to build up their own pride.”9 Should you think that other people are bad and in need of your instruction, you cannot help but adopt a certain posture. You will say at first that other people lack ideals, and then gradually begin to think yourself an ideal character and force others to emulate you. Should you lord your learning and talent over other people, your pride will not cause you to forfeit your learning. Should you lord your poverty and lowliness over other people, your pride will not make you rich and noble. Morality and pride, however, cannot coexist. The greatest evils and cruelties in the world—and no evil is greater than cruelty—are mostly the work of people with genuine moral ideals. When the immoral man commits a crime he knows it’s a crime, but when the truly moral man hurts others he maintains that it is the price of morality. God sometimes punishes mankind with a famine year, sometimes with pestilence or war, and sometimes by producing a moralist who harbors ideals too lofty to be attained by ordinary mortals. Accompanying these are a confidence and zeal that are in direct proportion to his ideals, which merge into an unself-conscious pride. Christian philosophy holds pride to be one of the seven cardinal sins. Volume three of Wang Yangming’s Chuanxi lu says, “Life’s greatest affliction lies in one word: ‘pride.’ Self-pride is the chief of all evils.”10 Put this way, genuine morality can be considered the early stage of evil. Conversely, hypocrites who promote morality actually tend to turn fiction into reality, transform habit into second nature, and truly improve moral conduct. Flirting can turn into love; imitation leads to innovation; mingling with men of letters and posing as a lover of culture can cultivate expert appreciation; and numerous real goods start as bogus brands. Thus, hypocrisy can be said to be an apprenticeship for genuine morality. However, whether phony or genuine, goodness will be repaid in kind. Genuine morality may ascend to the halls of Heaven after death, but living hypocrisy ascends to the lecture hall. What a relief!
Thus, those least worthy to offer moral instruction are most likely to become moralists, and the bigger the hypocrite the more he ought to attack hypocrisy. Hypocrisy’s defining characteristic could be said to be shamelessness combined with an eagerness to preserve face. According to the words Prince Hamlet used to curse his
fiancée, women’s use of makeup represents a concern with face combined with shamelessness:11 “God has given you one face, but you make yourself another.”12 Hypocrisy, too, is a cosmetic art . . .13
Having written this far, I’m suddenly struck by a thought. Isn’t this essay filled with moral chiding? Have not I, too, reached middle age—walked half of life’s road! Words written in black and white cannot be retracted. Might as well make up some nonsense and wrap things up.
A PREJUDICE
Prejudice can be said to be a vacation from thinking.1 For the unthinking man it is a daily necessity, while for the thinking man it is a Sunday amusement. If we were unable to harbor prejudices and always had to be objective, fair, upright, and serious, it would be like building a house with a living room but no bedroom, or being obliged to strike photogenic poses in front of the bathroom mirror. In canto 27 of Dante’s Inferno, the Devil is quoted as remarking: “Maybe thou didst not consider that I was a logician!”2 From this one can see that Hell was made for the reasonable sort, and that in the current age it is completely unnecessary to focus one’s words and deeds solely on the pursuit of rationality. Of course, “correctness” and “common sense” are basically also prejudices. The fundamentals of biology hold that the position of the human heart is not actually in the center, but slightly to one side—and, most fashionable of all, it inclines slightly to the left. It appears that the ancients’ referring to the deviant path as the “left path” has some scientific basis. That said, many opinions nevertheless retain what the Zen sect calls “inclination to the central and upright”—academic theories, for example. Only jottings in the margins of life,3 love letters written in the throes of passion, and the like are honest-to-goodness, out-and-out prejudices.
The world is too vast. We face it squarely with our eyes wide open, but our field of vision is still pitifully narrow. When a dog has its eyes fixed on a meaty bone, does it ever notice the other dog at its side? What we commonly refer to as prejudice is best likened to using one eye to take aim at a target. Some people actually believe this is the way to see the true core of things. Plato, for instance, defined mankind as “a featherless biped.” Objective in the extreme! But according to Diogenes Laertius’s Lives of Eminent Philosophers (volume 6, chapter 2), Plato found himself being cross-examined by a man carrying a plucked chicken. The fool in Beaumarchais’ Le Mariage de Figaro declares that “man is that animal which drinks without thirst and is lustful year-round.” We know perfectly well that this is the jest of a wine-loving, womanizing clown, but we must still admit that this novel theory exposes a fundamental part of human nature. The characters ‘partial’ [pian] and ‘stimulate’ [ji] that make up the word ‘extreme’ [pianji] are related to begin with, since our views become especially partial when we are stimulated. Perhaps we could say that “man is the animal that makes noise whether day or night, winter or summer.” And why not, after all?
Birds twitter in spring, crickets chirp in autumn, and mosquitoes gather before thunderstorms in the summer.4 At night insects awake and birds sleep. Not every day sees wind and rain. The dog does not bark unless someone comes, nor does the hen cluck unless it has laid. Man is alone in that, whenever and wherever he is, he makes noise with speech, movement, and machinery. Even when he is alone in a room without someone to banter with, he can turn on the phonograph or listen to the wireless. Even while sleeping he emits thunderous snores. Speech is more than mere sound, of course. But when speech is not worth listening to, or should we not care to listen to it, or if we cannot hear it clearly due to distance or obstruction, the words lose their edges and contours and turn into a ball of undulating racket that is as meaningless as a chicken’s clucking or a dog’s barking. Such is the so-called “piping of man!”5 It ruins sleep, shatters thought, and induces neurasthenia.
This world is, after all, ruled by humans. The human voice overcomes all. The myriad voices of Mother Nature combined cannot stand up to the hubbub of two people talking at the same time, at least as it sounds to the ears of a third person. The famous line in Tang Zixi’s poem “Drunken Sleep” [Zui mian], “the mountains are as still as in ancient times,” no doubt refers to the age of high antiquity, before humans appeared.6 Otherwise, the mountain would have a monk living on top, tourists arriving at its base, and restaurants and tea shops open for business midway up its slopes. Tranquillity would be impossible. The piping of man is a mortal wound to silence, while the piping of Heaven can melt into one with silence. The sounds of wind and waves are to silence as the wind is to the air and the waves to the sea. These are but two examples. Each day at the east’s first light we awaken from our dreams, still groggy, to the sound of innumerable birds welcoming the dawn. At this time, before night has completely disappeared, silence still lingers, harboring unfinished dreams. The chirping of countless sparrows adds to a cacophony that seems ready to peck through the silence. The call of the magpie, clear and sharp as a pair of scissors, and of the stork, slow and grating as a saw, both try to cut a hole in the silence with each cry. But the silence seems too plentiful, too fluid and elastic. No sooner has its surface been broken by a birdcall then silence fills back in. Nor does the rooster’s ringing, melodious morning report leave any trace. Gradually, we forget that the twittering of birds is breaking the silence, as if silence had already absorbed and digested the bird chirps and turned them into a sort of silence with sound. At such a moment, the mere sound of a neighbor’s crying child, the coughing of a person sleeping upstairs, or the footsteps of an early-morning walker outside is enough to make the silence, like nighttime mist encountering morning sunlight, break apart and scatter completely. Once the piping of man begins and humans resume their affairs, don’t hope for any more peace and quiet. When, late some weary night or deep in meditation, one suddenly hears the racket of the piping of man, even the most compassionate humanist might momentarily be seized with murderous thoughts and lament that he can’t shut the person up so as to keep his ears free of worldly discord and preserve his peace of mind. Birds, beasts, wind, waves, and all the other pipings of Heaven can peacefully coexist with silence, as the ancient poets who appreciated the true nature of things realized long ago. In the Book of Odes, the line “As if at ease, the horses neighed / Long and slow fluttered the pennants and banners”7 is subsequently glossed as “noise without clamor.” Evidently, if a horse whinnies but no man shouts, it won’t create a din. Family Instructions of Master Yan also points out that Wang Ji’s famous line “Cicadas chirp, the grove turns quieter still / Birds sing, the mountain grows more remote” precisely captures the sense of “noise without clamor.”8 The chirping of insects and singing of birds actually add to the stillness. Shelley’s poem “To Jane: A Recollection” [sic] describes the woodpecker by saying that when the bird pecks the mountain grows more remote.9 Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem “The Æolian Harp” reads: “The stilly murmur of the distant Sea / Tells us of silence.” Should this sea be a sea of people, the poet would assuredly go deaf and suffer a headache. Thus, though we often liken the din of human voices to “the calls of crows and sparrows,” this is a misrepresentation that displays a certain degree of bias toward humanity. For us to always liken the sound of a group of women chatting and laughing to “orioles trilling and swallows twittering,” however, is tantamount to an insult to the bird kingdom.
Silence is not the complete absence of sound. The complete absence of sound is death, not silence. That’s why Dante said that in Hell even the sun “in silence rests” (dove il sole tace).10 Silence can be likened to auditory transparency, just as effulgence can be said to be visual quietude. Silence lets people hear noises they wouldn’t ordinarily hear. It lets philosophers hear the “still small voice” of the conscience and enables poets to hear faint sounds such as the stealthy onset of dusk or the sprouting of grasses.11 The more noise one hears, the harder it becomes to hear clearly. Humans alone are fond of making such a racket, so much so that when a group of people gathers together without making noise it
seems unnatural. The five minutes of silence before the start of a meeting, or long-lost relatives or friends meeting again and holding hands wordlessly are but two examples. This type of silence is like pregnancy—full of latent sound waiting to be emitted.
The piping of man is also frightening in one respect. Traffic may be noisy, but it occurs on the same plane as you, so it only disrupts your immediate environment. Only man will target his racket at your head from above. Let’s say, for example, that you live one floor below an upstairs neighbor. Leave the rest aside: the sound of a few footsteps will be enough to make you feel that someone is stomping on your head like Concubine Zhao in Dream of the Red Chamber. When you can’t tolerate it any longer, you will be seized by two great desires. First, you will hope that you, living downstairs, will transform into what The Classic of Mountains and Seas calls “a commoner who punishes Heaven,”12 with your head growing on your torso. This way, your head will be unlikely to bear the brunt13 of being trampled upon by your upstairs neighbors’ shoes. Second, you will hope that your neighbor will transform into something like a Christian angel, with a body that stops at the waist and two wings growing out of its back that obviate the need for legs and feet.14 Your intentions are so benevolent. You don’t wish your upstairs neighbor to suffer Sun Bin’s fate of having his feet chopped off, even though your neighbor has given no consideration to your head or to your being what Rodenbach called “a soul hurt by clamor.”15
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