CHAPTER I. THE IDEOLOGICAL, SOCIAL, AND POLITICAL BACKGROUND.

The Political Doctrines of Sun Yat-sen

An Exposition of the _Sun Min Chu I_

By

Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger, Ph.D.

The Department of Government, Harvard University

Greenwood Press, Publishers

Westport, Connecticut

Copyright 1937, The Johns Hopkins Press

First Greenwood Reprinting 1973

CONTENTS

Foreword.

Preface.

Introduction.

The Problem of the _San Min Chu I_.

The Materials.

The Necessity of an Exposition.

Chapter I. The Ideological, Social, and Political Background.

The Rationale of the Readjustment.

Nation and State in Chinese Antiquity.

The Theory of the Confucian World-Society.

The Chinese World-Society of Eastern Asia.

The Impact of the West.

The Continuing Significance of the Background.

Chapter II The Theory of Nationalism.

The Emergence of the Chinese Race-Nation.

The Necessity of Nationalism.

The Return to the Old Morality.

The Return to the Ancient Knowledge.

Western Physical Science in the New Ideology.

The Consequences of the Nationalist Ideology.

Chapter III. The Theory of Democracy.

Democracy in the Old World-Society.

Five Justifications of a Democratic Ideology.

The Three Natural Classes of Men.

Ch’üan and Nêng.

The Democratic Machine State.

Democratic-Political Versus Ideological Control.

Chapter IV. The Theory of _Min Shêng_.

_Min Shêng_ in the Ideology.

The Economic Background of _Min Shêng_.

The Three Meanings of _Min Shêng_.

Western Influences: Henry George, Marxism and Maurice William.

_Min Shêng_ as a Socio-Economic Doctrine.

_Min Shêng_ as an Ethical Doctrine.

Chapter V. The Programs of Nationalism.

Kuomintang.

The Dragon Throne and State Allegiance.

Economic Nationalism.

Political Nationalism for National Autonomy.

The Class War of the Nations.

Racial Nationalism and Pan-Asia.

The General Program of Nationalism.

Chapter VI. The Programs of Democracy.

The Three Stages of Revolution.

The Adjustment of Democracy to China.

The Four Powers.

The Five Rights.

Confederacy Versus Centralism.

The _Hsien_ in a Democracy.

The Family System.

Chapter VII. The Programs of _Min Shêng_.

The Three Programs of _Min Shêng_.

The National Economic Revolution.

The Industrial Revolution.

The Social Revolution.

The Utopia of _Min Shêng_.

Bibliography.

Chinese-English Glossary.

Index.

Footnotes

FOREWORD.

The importance of introducing Western political thought to the Far East

has long been emphasized in the West. The Chinese conception of a rational

world order was manifestly incompatible with the Western system of

independent sovereign states and the Chinese code of political ethics was

difficult to reconcile with the Western preference for a reign of law. No

argument has been necessary to persuade Westerners that Chinese political

philosophy would be improved by the influence of Western political

science.

The superior qualifications of Sun Yat-sen for the interpretation of

Western political science to the Chinese have also been widely recognized

in the West, particularly in the United States. Dr. Sun received a modern

education in medicine and surgery and presumably grasped the spirit of

Western science. He read widely, more widely perhaps than any contemporary

political leader of the first rank except Woodrow Wilson, in the

literature of Western political science. He was thoroughly familiar with

the development of American political thought and full of sympathy for

American political ideals. His aspiration to build a modern democratic

republic amidst the ruins of the medieval Manchu Empire, Americans at

least can readily understand.

What is only beginning to be understood, however, in the West is, that it

is equally important to interpret Chinese political philosophy to the rest

of the world. Western political science has contributed a great deal to

the development of political power. But it has failed lamentably to

illuminate the ends for which such power should be used. Political ethics

is by no means superfluous in lands where a government of law is supposed

to be established in lieu of a government of men. The limitation of the

authority of sovereign states in the interest of a better world order is

an enterprise to which at last, it may be hoped not too late, Westerners

are beginning to dedicate themselves.

As an interpreter of Chinese political philosophy to the West Dr. Sun has

no peer. Better than any other Chinese revolutionary leader he appreciated

the durable values in the classical political philosophy of the Far East.

He understood the necessity for preserving those values, while introducing

the Western political ideas deemed most proper for adapting the Chinese

political system to its new place in the modern world. His system of

political thought, therefore, forms a blend of Far Eastern political

philosophy and Western political science. It suggests at the same time

both what is suitable in Western political science for the use of the Far

East and what is desirable in Far Eastern political philosophy for the

improvement of the West.

Dr. Linebarger has analyzed Dr. Sun’s political ideas, and also his plans

for the political rehabilitation of China, with a view to the interests of

Western students of politics. For this task his training and experience

have given him exceptional competence. The result is a book, which not

only renders obsolete all previous volumes in Western languages on modern

Chinese political philosophy, but also makes available for the political

scientists and politicians of the West the best political thought of the

Far East on the fundamental problems of Western politics.

ARTHUR N. HOLCOMBE

_Harvard University_

PREFACE.

This book represents an exploration into a field of political thought

which is still more or less unknown. The Chinese revolution has received

much attention from publicists and historians, and a vast number of works

dealing with almost every phase of Chinese life and events appears every

year in the West. The extraordinary difficulty of the language, the

obscurity—to Westerners—of the Chinese cultural background, and the

greater vividness of events as compared with theories have led Western

scholars to devote their attention, for the most part, to descriptions of

Chinese politics rather than to venture into the more difficult field of

Chinese political thought, without which, however, the political events

are scarcely intelligible.

The author has sought to examine one small part of modern Chinese

political thought, partly as a sample of the whole body of thought, and

partly because the selection, although small, is an important one. Sun

Yat-sen is by far the most conspicuous figure in recent Chinese history,

and his doctrines, irrespective of the effectiveness or permanence of the

consequences of their propagation, have a certain distinct position in

history. The _San Min Chu I_, his chief work, not only represents an

important phase in the revolution of Chinese social and political thought,

but solely and simply as doctrine, may be regarded as a Chinese expression

of tendencies of political thought current in the Western world.

The personal motives, arising out of an early and rather intimate family

relationship with the Chinese nationalist movement centering around the

person of Sun Yat-sen, that led the author to undertake this subject, have

their advantages and disadvantages. The chief disadvantage lies in the

fact that the thesis must of necessity treat of many matters which are the

objects of hot controversy, and that the author, friendly to the movement

as a whole but neutral as between its factions, may seem at times to deal

unjustly or over-generously with certain persons and groups. The younger

widow of Sun Yat-sen (née Soong Ching-ling) may regard the mention of her

husband and the Nanking government in the same breath as an act of

treachery. Devoted to the memory of her husband, she has turned,

nevertheless, to the Left, and works on cordial terms with the Communists.

She said: “... the Nanking Government has crushed every open liberal,

democratic, or humanitarian movement in our country. It has destroyed all

trade unions, smashed every strike of the workers for the right to

existence, has thrown hordes of criminal gangsters who are simultaneously

Fascist ‘Blue Shirts’ against every labor, cultural, or national

revolutionary movement in the country.”(1) The author, from what he

himself has seen of the National Government, is positive that it is not

merely dictatorial, ruthless, cruel, treacherous, or historically

unnecessary; nor would he, contrarily, assert that the National Government

lives up to or surpasses the brilliant ideals of Sun Yat-sen. He seeks to

deal charitably with all factions, to follow a middle course whenever he

can, and in any case to state fairly the positions of both sides.

The advantages may serve to offset the disadvantages. In the first place,

the author’s acquaintance with the Nationalist movement has given him

something of a background from which to present his exposition. This

background cannot, of course, be documented, but it may serve to make the

presentation more assured and more vivid. In the second place, the author

has had access to certain private manuscripts and papers, and has had the

benefit of his father’s counsel on several points in this work.(2) The

author believes that on the basis of this material and background he is

justified in venturing into this comparatively unknown field.

The primary sources for this work have been Sun Yat-sen’s own works. A

considerable number of these were written originally in the English

language. Translations of his major Chinese works are more or less fully

available in English, German, French, or Spanish. The author’s highly

inadequate knowledge of the Chinese written language has led him to depend

almost altogether upon translations, but he has sought—in some cases,

perhaps, unsuccessfully—to minimize the possibility of misunderstanding or

error by checking the translations against one another. Through the

assistance of his Chinese friends, he has been able to refer to Sun’s

complete works in Chinese and to Chinese books on Sun wherever such

reference was imperatively necessary. A list of the Chinese titles thus

made available is included in the bibliography. The language difficulty,

while an annoyance and a handicap, has not been so considerable as to give

the author reason to suppose that his conclusions would have been

different in any significant respect had he been able to make free and

continuous use of Chinese and Russian sources.

The author has thought of the present work as a contribution to political

theory rather than to sinology, and has tried to keep the discussion of

sinological questions at a minimum. In the transliteration of Chinese

words and names he has adhered more or less closely to the Wade system,

and has rendered most terms in the _kuo yü_, or national language. Despite

this rule, he gives the name of President Sun in its more commonly known

Cantonese form, Sun Yat-sen, rather than in the _kuo yü_, Sun I-hsien.

In acknowledging assistance and encouragement received, the author must

first of all turn to his father, Judge Paul Myron Wentworth Linebarger,

Legal Advisor to The National Government of China, counsellor to and

biographer of Sun Yat-sen during the latter’s lifetime. Without his

patient encouragement and his concrete assistance, this book could neither

have been begun nor brought to a conclusion after it was started. The

author desires, however, to make it perfectly clear that this work has no

relation to the connections of Judge Linebarger with the Chinese

Government or with the Nationalist Party. No information coming to the

knowledge of Judge Linebarger in the course of his official duties has

been here incorporated. Anxiously scrupulous to maintain a completely

detached point of view, the author has refrained from communicating with

or submitting the book to Chinese Government or Party officials, and

writes purely as an American student of China.

Professor James Hart, formerly at The Johns Hopkins University and now at

The University of Virginia, Professor Arthur O. Lovejoy, The Johns Hopkins

University, Professor Harley Farnsworth MacNair and Dr. Ernest Price, both

of The University of Chicago, have rendered inestimable assistance by

reading the manuscript and giving the author the benefit of their advice.

Professor Hart has criticized the work as an enterprise in political

science. Professor Lovejoy assisted the author by reading the first third

of the work, and selections of the later parts, and applying his thorough

and stimulating criticism; the author regrets that he was unable to adopt

all of Professor Lovejoy’s suggestions in full, and is deeply grateful for

the help. Professor MacNair read the book as a referee for a dissertation,

and made a great number of comments which have made the book clearer and

more accurate; the author would not have ventured to present this work to

the public had it not been for the reassurances and encouragement given

him by Professor MacNair. Dr. Ernest Price, while at The Hopkins,

supervised the composition of the first drafts; his judicious and balanced

criticism, based upon sixteen years’ intimacy with the public and private

life of the Chinese, and a sensitive appreciation of Chinese values, were

of great value to the author in establishing his perspective and lines of

study. The author takes this opportunity to thank these four gentlemen for

their great kindness and invaluable assistance.

It is with deep regret that the author abbreviates his acknowledgments and

thanks for the inspiration and the favors he received in his study of

Chinese politics from Dr. C. Walter Young; Professor Frederic Ogg, of The

University of Wisconsin; Professors Kenneth Colegrove, William McGovern,

and Ikuo Oyama, of The Northwestern University; Dr. Arthur Hummel, of The

Library of Congress; Professor Frederick Dunn, of Yale University;

Professor Arthur Holcombe, of Harvard University; Professor Quincy Wright,

of The University of Chicago; and Dr. Wallace McClure, of The Department

of State. Many of the author’s Chinese friends assisted by reading the

manuscript and criticizing it from their more intimate knowledge of their

own country, among them being Messrs. Miao Chung-yi and Djang Chu, at The

Johns Hopkins University; Professor Jên T’ai, of Nankai University; and

Messrs. Wang Kung-shou, Ch’ing Ju-chi, and Lin Mou-sheng, of The

University of Chicago, made many helpful suggestions. The author must

thank his teachers at The Johns Hopkins University, to whom he is indebted

for three years of the most patient assistance and stimulating

instruction, in respect of both the present work and other fields in the

study of government: Dr. Johannes Mattern; Dr. Albert Weinberg; Mr. Leon

Sachs; and Professor W. W. Willoughby. Finally, he must acknowledge his

indebtedness to his wife, Margaret Snow Linebarger, for her patient

assistance in preparing this volume for the press.

PAUL M. A. LINEBARGER.

December, 1936.

INTRODUCTION.

The Problem of the _San Min Chu I_.

The Materials.

Sun Yat-sen played many rôles in the history of his times. He was one of

those dramatic and somewhat formidable figures who engage the world’s

attention at the very outset of their careers. In the late years of the

nineteenth century, he was already winning some renown in the West; it was

picturesque that a Cantonese, a Christian physician, should engage in

desperate conspiracies against the Manchu throne. Sun became known as a

political adventurer, a forerunner, as it were, of such mutually

dissimilar personages as Trotsky, Lawrence, and Major-General Doihara.

With the illusory success of the revolution of 1911, and his Presidency of

the first Republic, Sun ceased being a conspirator in the eyes of the

world’s press, and became the George Washington of China. It is in this

rôle that he is most commonly known, and his name most generally recalled.

After the world war, in the atmosphere of extreme tension developed,

perhaps, by the Bolshevik revolution, Sun was regarded as an enigmatic

leader, especially significant in the struggle between Asiatic

nationalisms allied with the Soviets against the traditional capitalist

state-system. It was through him that the Red anti-imperialist policy was

pushed to its greatest success, and he was hated and admired, ridiculed

and feared, down to the last moments of his life. When he died, American

reporters in Latvia cabled New York their reports of Russian comments on

the event.(3) More, perhaps, than any other Chinese of modern times, Sun

symbolized the entrance of China into world affairs, and the inevitable

confluence of Western and Far Eastern history.

It is characteristic of Sun that he should have appeared in another and

final rôle after his death. He had been thought of as conspirator,

statesman, and mass leader; but with the advent of his party to power it

became publicly apparent that he had also been a political philosopher.

The tremendous prestige enjoyed by him as state-founder and party leader

was enhanced by his importance as prophet and law-giver. His doctrines

became the state philosophy of China, and for a while his most zealous

followers sought to have him canonized in a quite literal fashion, and at

one stroke to make him replace Confucius and the Sons of Heaven. After the

extreme enthusiasms of the Sun Yat-sen cult subsided, Sun remained the

great national hero-sage of modern China. Even in those territories where

the authority of his political heirs was not completely effective, his

flag was flown and his doctrines taught.

His doctrines have provided the theories upon which the Nationalist

revolution was based; they form the extra-juridical constitution of the

National Government of China. When the forces hostile to Sun Yat-sen and

his followers are considered, it is amazing that his ideas and ideals

should have survived. An empire established with the aid of Japanese arms,

and still under Japanese hegemony, controls Manchuria; parts of north

China are ruled by a bastard government, born of a compromise between

enemies; a largely unrecognized but powerful Soviet Republic exists in

outer Mongolia; the lamaist oligarchy goes on in Tibet; and somewhere, in

central and western China, a Soviet group, not quite a government but more

than a conspiracy, is fighting for existence. It is quite probable that

nowhere else in the world can there be found a greater variety of

principles, each scheme of principles fostered by an armed organization

struggling with its rivals. In this chaos the National Government has made

the most effective bid for authority and the greatest effort for the

reëstablishment of order; through it the principles of Sun Yat-sen rule

the political life of a population greater than that of the United States

or of the Soviet Union.

It is difficult to evaluate the importance of political doctrines. Even if

_The Three Principles_ is judged by the extent of the population which its

followers control, it has achieved greater results in practical politics

in fifteen years than has Marxism in ninety. Such a criterion may well be

disputed, but, whatever the test, it cannot be denied that the thought of

Sun Yat-sen has played a major part in the political development of his

native land. It may continue into the indefinitely remote future, or may

succumb to the perils that surround its advocates; in any case, these

doctrines have been taught long enough and broadly enough to make an

impress on the age, and have been so significant in political and cultural

history that they can never sink into complete obscurity.

What are these doctrines? Sun Yat-sen was so voluminous a writer that it

would be impossible for his followers to digest and codify all his

writings into one neat and coherent handbook; he himself did not provide

one. Before printing became common, there was a certain automatic process

of condensation which preserved the important utterances of great men, and

let their trivial sayings perish. Sun, however, must have realized that he

was leaving a vast legacy of materials which are not altogether coherent

or consistent with one another. Certain of his works were naturally more

important than others, but, to make the choice definitive, he himself

indicated four sources which his followers might draw upon for a

definitive statement of his views.(4)

His _Political Testament_ cites the _Chien Kuo Fang Lo_ (_The Program of

National Reconstruction_), the _Chien Kuo Ta Kang_ (_The Outline of

National Reconstruction_), the _San Min Chu I_ (_The Triple Demism_, also

translated as _The Three Principles of the People_), and the _Manifesto_

issued by the first national congress of the Party.(5) These four items

differ quite sharply from one another in form. No one of them can be

relied upon to give the whole of Sun’s doctrines.

The _Chien Kuo Fang Lo_ (_The Program of National Reconstruction_) is in

reality three works, only remotely related to one another. The first item

in the trilogy is the _Sun Wên Hsüeh Shê_ (_The Philosophy of Sun Wên_);

it is a series of familiar essays on the Chinese way of thought.(6) The

second is the _Min Ch’üan Ts’u Pu_, _The Primer of Democracy_, which is

little more than a text on parliamentary law.(7) The third is the _Shih

Yeh Chi Hua_, known in English as _The International Development __ of

China_, which Sun wrote in both English and Chinese.(8) These three works,

under the alternate titles of “The Program of Psychological

Reconstruction,” “The Program of Social Reconstruction,” and “The Program

of Material Reconstruction” form _The Program of National Reconstruction_.

The _Chien Kuo Ta Kang, The Outline of National Reconstruction_, is an

outline of twenty-five points, giving the necessary steps towards the

national reconstruction in their most concise form.(9)

The _San Min Chu I_ is Sun’s most important work. It comprises sixteen

lectures setting forth his socio-political theories and his programs. The

title most commonly used in Western versions is _The Three Principles of

the People_.(10)

The last document mentioned in Sun Yat-sen’s will was the _Manifesto_ of

the first national congress of the Kuomintang. This was not written by

himself, but was drafted by Wang Ch’ing-wei, one of his closest followers,

and embodies essentially the same ideas as do the other three items, even

though Borodin—the emissary of the Third International—had been consulted

in its preparation.(11)

Sun undoubtedly regretted leaving such a heterogeneous and ill-assembled

group of works as his literary bequest. Throughout the latter years of his

life he was studying political science in the hope that he might be able

to complete a great treatise which he had projected, an analysis and

statement of the programs of the Chinese nationalists. One attempt toward

actualization of this work was frustrated when Sun’s manuscripts and a

great part of his library were burned in the attack launched against him

by Ch’en Ch’iung-ming in 1922. His apology for the makeshift volume on the

_San Min Chu I_ is pathetic: “As I had neither time to prepare nor books

to use as references, I could do nothing else in these lectures but

improvise after I ascended the platform. Thus I have omitted and forgotten

many things which were in my original manuscript. Although before having

them printed, I revised them, added (passages) and eliminated (others),

yet, those lectures are far from coming up to my original manuscripts,

either in the subject matter itself, or in the concatenations of the

discussion, or in the facts adduced as proofs.”(12) Sun was in all

probability a more assiduous and widely read student of political science

than any other world leader of his day except Wilson; he studied

innumerable treatises on government, and was surprisingly familiar with

the general background of Western politics, in theory and practice. He was

aware of the shabby appearance that these undigested occasional pieces

would present when put forth as the bible of a new China, and earnestly

enjoined his followers to carry on his labors and bring them to

fruition.(13)

The various works included in the _Chien Kuo Fang Lo_, while satisfactory

for the purposes Sun had in mind when he wrote them, are not enough to

outline the fundamentals both of political theory and a governmental plan.

The familiar essays have an important bearing on the formation of the

ideology of a new China; the primer of democracy, less; the industrial

plan is one of those magnificent dreams which, in the turn of a decade,

may inspire an equally great reality. The outline and the manifesto are no

more suited to the rôle of classics; they are decalogues rather than

bibles.(14) There remains the _San Min Chu I_.

The _San Min Chu I_ is a collection of sixteen lectures delivered in

Canton in 1924. There were to have been eighteen, but Sun was unable to

give the last two. Legend has it that Borodin persuaded Sun to give the

series.(15) Whatever the cause of their being offered, they attracted

immediate attention. Interest in Sun and in his ideas was at a fever heat;

his friends turned to the printed lectures for guidance; his enemies, for

statements which could be turned against him. Both friends and enemies

found what they wanted. To the friends, the _San Min Chu I_ presented a

fairly complete outline of Sun’s political and social thought in such a

form that it could be preserved and broadcast readily. There was danger,

before the book appeared, that the intrinsic unity in Sun’s thinking would

be lost sight of by posterity, that his ideas would appear as a

disconnected jumble of brilliant inspirations. The sixteen lectures

incorporated a great part of the doctrines which he had been preaching for

more than a generation. To the enemies of Sun, the work was welcome. They

pointed out the numerous simplifications and inconsistencies, the frequent

contradictions in matters of detail, the then outrageous denunciations of

the economic and political system predominant in the Far East. They

ridiculed Sun because he was Chinese, and because he was not Chinese

enough, and backed up their criticisms with passages from the book.(16)

When Sun gave the lectures, he was a sick man. He carried an ivory-headed

sword cane with him on the platform; occasionally, holding it behind him

and locking his arms through it, he would press it against his back to

relieve the intolerable pain.(17) The business awaiting him after each

lecture was vitally important; the revolution was proceeding by leaps and

bounds. The lectures are the lectures of a sick man, given to a popular

audience in the uproar of revolution, without adequate preparation,

improvised in large part, and offered as one side of a crucial and

bitterly disputed question. The secretaries who took down the lectures may

not have succeeded in following them completely; Sun had no leisure to do

more than skim through the book before releasing it to the press.

These improvised lectures have had to serve as the fundamental document of

Nationalist China. Sun Yat-sen died without writing the treatise he had

planned. The materials he left behind were a challenge to scholars and to

his followers. Many persons set to work interpreting them, each with a

conscious or unconscious end in view. A German Marxian showed Sun to be a

forerunner of bolshevism; an American liberal showed Sun to be a bulwark

against bolshevism. A Chinese classicist demonstrated Sun’s reverence for

the past; a Jesuit father explained much by Sun’s modern and Christian

background. His works have been translated into Western languages without

notes; the improvised lectures, torn from their context of a revolutionary

crisis, have served poorly to explain the ideology of Sun Yat-sen, and his

long range political, social, and economic plans.

The Necessity of an Exposition.

Followers of Sun who knew him personally, or were members of that circle

in which his ideas and opinions were well known, have found the _San Min

Chu I_ and other literary remains helpful; they have been able to turn to

the documents to refresh their memories of Sun on some particular point,

or to experience the encouraging force of his faith and enthusiasm again.

They need not be reminded of the main tenets of his thought, or of the

fundamental values upon which he based his life and his political

activities. His sense of leadership, which strangers have at times thought

fantastic, is one which they admire in him, since they, too, have felt the

power of his personality and have experienced that leadership in the

course of their own lives. His voice is ringing in their consciences; they

feel no need of a guide to his mind. At the present day many members of

Sun’s own family, and a considerable number of his veteran disciples are

still living; the control of the National Government is in their hands.

They are people who need no commentary on Sun Yat-sen; to them, he died

only yesterday.

Others, who met Sun only casually, or who could know him only through his

writings, have a quite different impression of his thought. They perforce

assume that he thought as he wrote, and fail to realize that virtually all

his writings and speeches were occasional pieces, improvisations designed

as propaganda. One of the most respected American authorities on China

says that in the _San Min Chu I_ “... there is a combination of sound

social analysis, keen comment on comparative political science, and

bombast, journalistic inaccuracy, jejune philosophizing and sophomoric

economics.”(18) This view is one which can scarcely be attacked, if one

considers only the printed lectures, and overlooks the other utterances

and the personality of Sun. To apply this, or any similar estimate (and

there are many of them), to all of Sun Yat-sen’s thought would be woefully

inaccurate. It is not the critic’s fault that Sun never found time to

write a sober, definitive political treatise expressing his ideas; it is,

nevertheless, the critic’s responsibility to weigh the value of the _San

Min Chu I_, and consider the importance which Sun himself attached to it,

before judging Sun’s whole philosophy by a hastily-composed and poorly

written book.

Yet, if the Western student of modern Chinese history were to look

elsewhere for some general exposition of Sun Yat-sen’s political ideas, he

would find none. He could discover several excellent translations of the

sixteen lectures, and parts of the other work of Sun. He would be helped

by the prefatory notes to some of these translations.(19) A few treatises

would be available to him on special phases of Sun’s thought: the

influence of Maurice William, and the influence of the Russian

Communists.(20) In addition, there would be the biographies, of which

there are more than a dozen, and a few other useful although not general

works. None of these sifts Sun’s thought, seeking to separate the

transitory from the permanent in his ideas. For this the searcher would

have to rely on brief outlines of Sun’s ideas, to be found in works

dealing with modern China or the Chinese revolution.(21)

This relative scarcity of exegetic material concerning the ideology and

programs of Sun is not the result of any inadequacy on the part of those

persons, both Chinese and Western, who have devoted thought and time to

his life or to the translation of his works. It is one thing to point out

a task that has yet to be done; and quite another, actually to perform it.

An interpretation or exposition of Sun’s thought, to be worthy of the

great significance of the original, must be very thorough; but scarcely

enough time has elapsed to allow a perspective of all the materials, let

alone an orientation of Sun in the Far Eastern scene. Yet the importance

of Sun demands that something be done to bring his thought to the

attention of the world, so that the usual distortion of his

personality—arising from the lack of commentaries—may be avoided in

present day works. In a sense, the time is not ripe for a definitive

treatment of Sun, either as a figure in history or as a contributor to the

significant and enduring political thought of modern times; any work now

done will, as time passes, fall grotesquely far short of adequacy. On the

other hand, there is so much material of a perishable nature—anecdotes and

legends not yet committed to print, and the memories of living men—now

available, that a present-day work on Sun may gain in color and intimacy

what it loses in judgment and objectivity, may gain in proximity what it

has to forgo in detachment. And, lastly, the complete absence of any

systematic presentation of Sun’s ideas in any Western language is so great

a deficiency in the fields of Far Eastern history and world political

thought, that even a relatively inadequate exposition of the thought of

Sun Yat-sen may prove to be not without value. Sun himself never explained

his philosophy, whether theoretical or applied, in any broad, systematic

fashion; nor has anyone else done so.

If the permissibility of an exposition of Sun Yat-sen’s thought be

conceded, there still remains the vexing problem of a choice of method.

While the far-flung peripheries of Sun’s thought touch almost every field

of knowledge and opinion, a systematic condensation of his views cannot

hope to survey the same broad ranges. The problem of proportion, of just

emphasis, involves the nice appraisal of the degree of importance which

each of Sun’s minor rôles had in his intellectual career as a whole. Nor

do the difficulties concerning method end with the consideration of

proportion; they merely begin, for there remains the far more important

and perplexing problem of a technique of interpretation.

Interpretation obviously relates to the problem of language. The

translation of theoretical terms from Chinese into English constitutes a

formidable difficulty which proves, in several instances, to be

insuperable. No satisfactory equivalent for _min shêng_ (usually rendered

“livelihood”) can be found in English; even simpler and less specialized

terms are extremely difficult to render. Sometimes it would be convenient

to employ four or five alternative translations for one Chinese term. Sun

uses the word “nationalism” in the sense that a Westerner would, in

advocating national consciousness in a China hitherto unfamiliar with the

conception of nation-states; but, in a different context, he uses it in

the sense of “patriotism.”(22) These difficulties must be faced and,

somehow or other, overcome. When the Western reader encounters a familiar

term in an unexpected place, he must be prepared to meet a shift of

meaning. No amount of definition can make a Chinese term, which has no

exact Western equivalent, completely clear. It is simpler to grow

accustomed to the term, to gather together its connotations, to understand

something of the frame of reference wherein it is set, and thereby to

learn it as a child learns a word. A dictionary is no help to a baby; in a

realm of unfamiliar ideas even scholars must learn terms step by step.

Less obviously than language, the translation of ideas and of values is

also involved in interpretation. In dealing with the intellectual content

of a civilization as alien as that of China, the Westerner must be wary of

the easy analogy. The full, forceful application of Western ideas and

values in a world to which they are completely irrelevant produced strange

results during the nineteenth century. Western notions of goodness and

reasonableness did not fit the Chinese scheme of things. Under such a test

a wildly distorted image of China was obtained. China seemed peculiar,

topsy-turvy, fantastic. To themselves the Chinese still seemed quite

matter-of-fact, and the Westerners thought even this odd and ridiculous:

not only was China upside-down, but the Chinese did not know it! In any

case, the present-day scholar, to whom so much material concerning the

Chinese is available and China so near, has little justification for

applying Western tests of virtue and rationality to things Chinese.

If the application of Western values to China is avoided, there is still

the danger that the Chinese scheme of things may not be interpreted at

all. The literal translation of Chinese terms strips them of their

contexts. The result may be unintelligibility. The Chinese term _jên_ is

frequently rendered “benevolence,” a Western word which, while at times an

approximate equivalent, fails to carry the full burden of meaning. Sun

speaks of an interpretation of history antagonistic to dialectical

materialism—the interpretation of history by _jên_. A “benevolent”

interpretation of history means nothing whatever to a Westerner. If _jên_

is translated into a different configuration of words, and given as

“group-consciousness” or “social fellow-feeling,” the result, while still

not an exact equivalent of the Chinese, is distinctly more intelligible.

To effect this translation of ideas and values, several methods are

available. The issue cannot be dodged by a denial of its existence; the

mere act of explanation involves some process, whether deliberate or

unconscious, of translation and transvaluation. If the interpreter refuses

to deal with the problem consciously, he will nevertheless be guided by

his unrevealed assumptions. To give an accounting for what he has done, he

must, first, admit that he is interpreting, and second, seek to make plain

what he is doing, so that his readers may allow for the process. The

demonstration of the consequences of interpretation minimizes their

possible adverse effects. The simplest way to allow for the alterations

(beyond mere reproduction) arising from interpretation would be to adopt a

technique so widely known that others could, in their own minds, try to

re-trace the steps of the process and negate the changes. Among such

widely known techniques are the Marxian and the sociological.

Both these scarcely seem adapted to the problems presented by an

interpretation of Sun Yat-sen. The Marxian terminology is so peculiarly

suited to the ulterior purposes the Marxians keep in mind, and is so

esoteric when applied to matters not related to the general fields in

which the Marxians are interested, that it could scarcely be applied in

the present instance. A non-Marxian would find it a hazardous task. The

interpreter of Sun Yat-sen must interpret _into_ something; what, depends

on the audience. Dialectical materialism, in the abstract excellent as a

technique, would scarcely make Sun understandable to most Americans of the

present day. Sun himself rejected the Marxian method of interpretation; an

American audience would also reject it; these two factors outweigh all the

conceivable advantages.

The sociological technique of interpretation is quite another question.

The various methods of analysis developed by each of the schools of

sociologists are still the objects rather than the tools of study. Such

men as Max Weber and Vilfredo Pareto have made contributions to Western

social thought which enrich the scope and method of the social studies.

Their methods of analysis are not weighted down by a body of extraneous

considerations, as is the Marxian, and they promise an objectivity not

otherwise attainable. On the other hand, they are still at that stage of

development where the technique obtrudes itself; it has not, as has the

inductive method in general, become so much taken for granted as to be

invisible.

The sociological approach need not, however, be carried to the full extent

thought necessary by its advocates. In the study of law, the consideration

of extra-juridical materials is called sociological in contrast to the

strictly juristic. If the legal scholar goes beyond the strict framework

of the law, and considers other elements in man’s behavior and knowledge

while dealing with legal problems, he is apt to be called a sociological

jurist. In doing so he is not committed, however, to belief in or use of

any particular form of what is known as the science of society or

sociology. He may adopt almost any sort of social outlook, or may be

committed to any one of many doctrines of social value and to any one of

widely varying methods of social study.

This negative, broad sense of the sociological, when applied to the study

of politics, has commonly meant that the scholars employing it began with

the notion of the political, but, finding it too narrow, touched upon

related fields. An interpretation of Sun Yat-sen’s politics might be based

on this method. It would still be a political work, in that it sought to

associate his ideas with the ideas concerning government to be found in

the West, but would be free, nevertheless, to touch upon non-political

materials relevant to Sun’s politics. The Chinese have had notions of

authority and control radically different from those developed in the

West; a purely juristic interpretation of the various Chinese politics

would simply scrape the lacquer off the screen.

The Chinese have not had the sharp distinction of disciplines which runs

through all Western learning. Since one of the most conspicuous

ingredients in their thought—conspicuous, that is, to Westerners looking

in from outside—has been the ethical, many Westerners have dismissed

Chinese historical, political and more strictly philosophical thought as

being loosely and amiably ethical but never getting anywhere. The Chinese

did not departmentalize their learning to any considerable degree.

Politics was not the special activity of a definite group of men, or the

study of a select body of scholars. Politics ran through and across most

of the activities in society, and was largely the interest of that

intellectual élite by which China has been so distinguished on the roster

of civilizations. In becoming everything, politics ceased being politics;

that is, those elements in man’s thought and behavior which Westerners

have termed political were not separated and labelled. The Westerner must

say that politics was everything in China, or that it was nothing.

An interpretation of Sun Yat-sen must keep in mind these differences

between Chinese and Western categories. In doing so it will pass beyond

the limits of what is commonly known as politics, since no sharp

boundaries of “politics” are to be found in China. Yet, as an

interpretation designed to serve Western readers, it must return again and

again to Western politics, making comparisons when they are justified,

pointing out differences between China and the West as they become

relevant and clear. The interpretation will thus weave back and forth

between conventional Western political science, with its state-mindedness,

and the wholly different material of traditions and customs out of which

Sun sought to construct an ideology and a system of working politics for

China in the modern world.

How can this interpretation seek to avoid the misfortunes and errors into

which so many similar attempts have fallen? It must proceed without the

aid of such specialized techniques as dialectical-materialistic or

Paretian analysis, and yet aim at the scientific, the rationally

defensible, the objective. In seeking to apply a method in the

interpretation of Sun Yat-sen, the work must face criticism of its method,

must make the method explicit and simple enough to allow criticism. If the

thought of Sun really is to emerge from the exposition, the exposition

must allow itself to be judged, so that it can be appraised, and so that,

one way or another, it may not interfere with the just evaluation of the

materials which it seeks to present. Sun Yat-sen should not be judged poor

because of a poor interpretation; nor, on the other hand, should his

thought be adjudged more excellent or more exact than it seems to the

Chinese, merely because the expositor has suggested an interpretation

possibly more precise.

The technique adopted in the present work is a relatively simple one. It

is an attempt to start _de novo_ with certain concepts of society and

government. Several simple although novel terms are introduced, to provide

a foundation upon which the procedure may rest. One of these, for

instance, is “ideology,” which in the present work refers to the whole

psychological conditioning of a group of persons.(23) No attempt is made,

at the beginning or at any later phase of the exposition, to distinguish

between the ideology as belief and the ideology as truth. Whether the

Chinese were and are right, or the Westerners, are questions, not for the

student of comparative political science, but for the philosopher and the

psychologist. The interpretation seeks, as far as possible, to transpose

certain parts of the traditional Chinese ideology, as they were, and as

Sun Yat-sen re-shaped them, into one frame of reference provided by the

ideology of twentieth-century America. What the “real truth” is, does not

matter; the Marxians would say that both ideologies were inexact; so might

the Roman Catholics. If the ideology of old China, and the ideology that

Sun wished to see developed in the minds of the Chinese people of the

future, can be made comprehensible in terms of contemporary American

beliefs, of fact or of value, this venture will have been successful.

The Chinese ideology cannot be explained in its own terms; these exist

only in the Chinese language. If Sun Yat-sen’s own arrangement of his

works is inadequate for the Chinese, rearrangement is a task for the

Chinese and not for the Western scholars to perform. The Westerners who

deal with Sun can contribute substantially only if they give what the

Chinese cannot—enough of a reference to their own ideology to permit a

broader scale for the analysis and the appreciation of Sun’s thought.

Their knowledge of their own world of ideas is the special tool which

justifies their intervention in this Chinese field of knowledge.

In avoiding the unjustifiable imposition of Western ideas and values upon

the Chinese, and yet orienting Sun’s thought with respect to the West, the

interpretation will have to resort to several fairly evident means. In the

first place, it will have to transpose Chinese ideas into the Western

ideology, and yet avoid distortions of meaning. This can be partly done by

the use of neutral terms, of terms which are simple and clear enough to

reproduce the Chinese, and nevertheless not so heavily burdened with

connotations that they will cause a reading-in of Western ideas not

relevant to the point in question. More simply, the Chinese ideas must be

represented by terms which approximate the same set of values in the West

that their originals have in China. This will sometimes require the use of

unfamiliar periphrases: the words “music” and “rites” may be given as “the

rhythm of life” and “conformity to the ideology.” Secondly, the Chinese

ideology need not be given as a whole; it is improbable that it could,

without a terrific expansion of the Western ideology to accommodate it;

but enough of the Chinese ideology must be given to explain the

significant differences between the Chinese system of controlling the

behavior of men, and the Western. This latter involves the choice of

material, and is therefore by its nature challengeable.

Again, in demonstrating significant differences instead of merely seeking

analogous (and probably misleading) examples, the interpretation might

turn to certain aspects of Chinese philosophy which appear as strikingly

illustrative of the point of view of the Chinese. Confucius the political

thinker is only a small part of Confucius the man and the philosopher;

Chinese political thought, although a vast field, is only a small part of

the social thought of the Chinese. Only an infinitesimal part of this

comparatively minor area of Chinese study will suffice to make clear some,

at least, of the sharp differences of outlook between China and the West.

A recapitulation of this declaration of technique may be found helpful,

for an understanding of Sun Yat-sen by Westerners is necessary because of

the vastly different background of his thought. Even apart from the

strangeness of his thought to the West, it is scattered in the original,

and must be pieced together. An exposition of his ideas which would, at

one and the same time, present a systematic outline of his ideas, and

transpose them into a frame of reference where Western scholars might

grasp them, might be a labor meriting performance. His terms would have to

be rendered by neutral words (not overladen with particular Western

contexts) or by neologisms, or simply left in the original, to develop

meaning as a configuration of related ideas is built up about them. The

problem of interpretation cannot, however, be solved by settling the

difficulty of language: there still remains the question of a technique

which can pretend to the scientific, the exact, the rationally defensible.

Despite their great merits, the Marxian and Paretian techniques are not

suited to the present task. The point of view and means of study of

political science may be kept, if a few necessary borrowings from

sociological thought (not necessarily sociology) are introduced. Such

borrowing includes the use of notions such as non-political society,

patterns of authority, and ideology, none of which are to be found in the

more law-minded part of political science. By seeking to point out the

Chinese, then the Western, ideas involved, without confusing the two, the

presentation may succeed in transposing the ideology of Sun Yat-sen, as

well as his beliefs concerning working politics, into the English language

and into an explanatory but not distorting background. To do this, a small

sampling of certain aspects of old Chinese social thought and behavior

will be a required preliminary.

CHAPTER I. THE IDEOLOGICAL, SOCIAL, AND POLITICAL BACKGROUND.

The Rationale of the Readjustment.

The _San Min Chu I_ and related works of Sun Yat-sen represent in their

entirety one of the most ambitious bodies of doctrine ever set forth by a

political leader. They differ from such a document as the Communist

Manifesto in that they comprehend a much greater range of subject matter

and deal with it in much greater detail. They pertain not merely to the

reconstitution of an economic or political system; they propose a plan for

the reconstruction of a whole civilization, the reformation of a way of

thought customary among a great part of the human race, and a consequent

transformation of men’s behavior. Conceived in the bold flights of a

penetrating, pioneering mind, avowedly experimental at the time of their

first utterance, these works of Sun have already played a most significant

rôle in the Far East and may continue to affect history for a long time to

come. They may quite legitimately be called the bible of new China.

Social change is a consequence of maladjustment. The thought of Sun

Yat-sen is a program of change—change which, if it is to be understood,

must be seen at its beginning and its end. The background from which Sun

emerged and which was an implicit condition of all his utterances must be

mentioned, so that the problems he faced may be understood. Only then will

it be possible to turn to the plans he devised for the rethinking of

Chinese tradition and the reorganization of Chinese polity. A vast

maladjustment between the Chinese and the world outside led to the

downfall of the Manchu Empire in China and has threatened the stability of

every government erected since that time; Chinese society is in a state of

profound unrest and recurrent turmoil. Sun Yat-sen contributed to the

change, and sought a new order, to be developed from the disorder which,

voluntarily or not, he helped in part to bring about.

The old order that failed, the _interregnum_ (in the etymological sense of

the word), and the new order proposed by Sun must be taken all together in

order to obtain a just understanding of Sun’s thought. No vast history

need be written, no _Decline and Fall of the Chinese Empire_ is necessary,

but some indication of the age-old foundations and proximate conditions of

Sun’s thought must be obtained.

These may, perhaps, be found in a sampling of certain data from the

thought and behavior of the Chinese as a group under the old system, and

the selection of a few important facts from the history of China since the

first stages of the maladjustment. An exposition of Sun’s thought must not

slur the great importance of the past, yet it dare not linger too long on

this theme lest the present—in which, after all, uncounted millions of

Chinese are desperately struggling for life—come to seem insignificant.

Confucianism is a philosophy so broad and so highly developed that any

selection does violence to its balance and proportion, which are among its

chief merits.(24) Yet only those few facts can be taken from the history

and thought of the Chinese which may assist the Westerner in becoming

familiar with a few terms which recur again and again in the works of Sun

Yat-sen. If the present work purported to be a study of Chinese history,

or a complete analysis of the Chinese social system, such an extreme

selectivity could not be condoned; since it, however, tries only to

outline Sun’s thought, the selection of a few Confucian doctrines and the

complete ignoring of others, may be forgiven. All the schools of the past,

and the literary traditions which developed from them, and social

tendencies that were bound up with these have to be omitted, and those few

ideas and customs described which bear directly on one single point—the

most significant ideological differences between the Chinese and the West

with respect to the political order, i. e. the control of men in society

in the name of all society.(25)

Nation and State in Chinese Antiquity.

The Confucian system, against which Sun Yat-sen reacted in part and in

part sought to preserve, was a set of ideas and institutions developed as

a reaction against certain conditions in ancient China. These conditions

may be roughly described as having arisen from a system of

proto-nationalisms, at a time when the old—perhaps prehistorically

ancient—Chinese feudal system was rapidly declining and an early form of

capitalism and of states was taking its place. The Chou dynasty (ca.

1150-221 B.C.) was in power at the time of this transition; under its rule

the golden age of Chinese philosophy appeared—Confucius (552-479 B.C.) and

Lao Tzŭ (ca. 570-ca. 490 B.C.) lived and taught.

Their philosophies, contrary to the popular Western beliefs concerning

Chinese philosophies, were protests against a world which seemed to them

well-nigh intolerable. The old Chinese system, which may seem to

Westerners a highly mystical feudal organization, was in its century-long

death-agonies; the virtues it had taught were not the virtues of the hour;

the loyalties it had set up were loyalties which could scarcely be

maintained in a time when rising states, acting more and more as states

have acted in the West, were disrupting the earlier organization of

society, waging struggles—in the manner that, centuries later, Machiavelli

was to portray—of intrigue and warfare for the eventual hegemony over that

whole area of eastern Asia which the Chinese of that time regarded as the

civilized world.

The political aspects of the transition from the feudal to the

proto-national system is described by one of the most eminent of the

Western authorities on China in the following terms: “The aim of all the

Leaders was to control western Ho-nan. There is the heart of ancient

China.... All around about, in vaster regions occupied no doubt by less

dense and more shifting populations, great States formed, increasing first

towards the exterior, seeking (as we have seen in the case of China) to

cut the communication of their rivals with the Barbarians, mutually

forcing each other to change the directions of the expansion, exercising

on each other a pressure from behind, and a converging pressure on the

central overlordships. All schemed to conquer them. Thus an amalgamation

was achieved. Whilst in the centre the Chinese nation was coming into

being, on the outer borders States were being formed which, aiming at

annexing the centre of China, ended by themselves also becoming

Chinese.”(26) Not only did the newer, political organization of society

begin to make itself distinct from the family, feudal, and religious

organization; it began to engage in activities which increased its

resemblance to the Western system of nations. Tributes of textiles,

horses, and compulsory labor were demanded. A non-feudal economy was

encouraged; the state of Ch’i encouraged artisans and merchants, and

favored the trade in fish and salt. Mining, metallurgy and currency were

studied. State monopolies were created out of the products of forests,

lakes, marshes, shell-fish beds, and salt pans. Mines also became

“treasures of the state.”(27)

The history of these states reads like a page torn out of the history of

early modern Europe. The struggle was half diplomatic and half military.

From the beginning of the Spring and Autumn period (722-481 B.C.) to the

end of the Age of Warring States (491-221 B.C.), China was subject to

frequent war and unstable peace. The character of war itself changed, from

a chivalrous exercise almost ritualistic in nature, to a struggle of

unrestricted force. The units of government which were to develop into

states, and almost into nations, began as feudal overlordships;

traditional hatreds and sentiments were developed; diplomatic and military

policies crystallized and became consistent; and activities of a state

nature became increasingly prominent.

Concurrently, other factors operated to prevent an indefinite continuance

of these struggles of proto-national states and to avoid the appearance of

a permanent system of armed nations such as that which has appeared in

modern Europe. The feudal system of China left a strong ethnical,

linguistic and intellectual heritage of unity, which was stronger than the

cultural disunities and particularities appearing in certain of the

states. (The state of Chêng was particularly conspicuous in developing a

peculiar state culture.)(28) As the states became larger and larger with

the passing of time, they tended not only to develop certain large

differences between themselves, but to eradicate the minute local

peculiarities of the old system, and in so doing to increase the general

homogeneity which was also a heritage of the past ages. This general

homogeneity found a living symbol in the persons of the Chou Emperors who,

possessed of no more power than the Tennos under the Shogunate, acted, as

did their Japanese analogues two thousand years later, as the

quasi-religious personifications of the whole general community. It thus

occurred that the old feudal system was destroyed by the growth of a

general non-feudal economy and political order, which, in its turn, led to

the development of the great imperial system under which China continued

for many centuries. The period of the transition, during which the

traditional feudal unity had been shaken and the new imperial unity not

yet established, was a tumultuous and bloody one. The presence of a

confederation under the hegemony of some one state—the so-called

Presidency—provided a suitable framework for rivalries toward power,

without particularly increasing the general peace.

The transition, as it took place, was neither apparent nor agreeable. The

political turmoil was but slightly less than the intellectual unrest and

disturbance. Everywhere faith and acceptance seemed to have been lost to

humanity; licentiousness and impiety fed discord. The lack of harmony,

made doubly vivid by the presence of a strong tradition of primeval

Arcadian peace and unity under the mythological Emperors, was bitter to

the scholars and men of virtue of the time. It was quite inevitable that

protests should be raised which would hasten the advent, or return, of

unity and peace. These protests form the subject of the work of Confucius

and the other great philosophers, and schools of thinkers, of the Chou

dynasty. It was, in later ages, upon these philosophies that the great

structure of Chinese society developed and continued down until modern

times.

The Theory of the Confucian World-Society.

The various types of protest against the development of states and the

consequent anarchy of the Chinese society considered as a whole cannot be

considered in this work; many were primarily religious; Taoism, while

ranking as one of the most conspicuous religions of the world, has little

bearing on politics. Even Confucianism, which merits careful study, must

be summarized and re-stated as briefly as possible. Confucianism has

suffered from an ambiguity and exoticism of terms, when presented to the

West; its full significance as a political philosophy can become fully

apparent only when it is rendered in the words of the hour.

What was it that Confucius did in protest against the established discord

of the world he knew? He struck directly at the foundations of politics.

His criticisms and remedies can be fully appreciated only by reference to

a theory of ideology.

Confucius perceived that the underlying problem of society was that of

ideology; he seems to have realized that the character of a society itself

essentially depends upon the character of the moral ideas generally

prevalent among the individuals composing it, and that where there is no

common body of ideas a society can scarcely be said to exist.(29) He did

not consider, as did Han Fei-tzŭ and the legalist school of philosophers,

questions of law the preëminent social problem. He realized that state and

law were remedies, and that the prime questions of organization were those

anterior to the political, and that the state existed for the purpose of

filling out the shortcomings of social harmony.(30)

In a society—such as Confucius dreamed of—where there was no disagreement

in outlook, policy would not be a governmental question; if there were no

disharmony of thought and of behavior, there would be no necessity of

enforcing conformance to the generally accepted criteria of conduct. From

this standpoint, government itself is socially pathological, a remedy for

a poorly ordered society. Men are controlled indirectly by the examples of

virtue; they do good because they have learned to do good and do it

unquestioningly and simply. Whatever control is exercised over men is

exercised by their ideology, and if other men desire control they must

seek it through shaping the ideas of others. At its full expression, such

a doctrine would not lead to mere anarchy; but it would eliminate the

political altogether from the culture of man, replacing it with an

educational process. Ideological control would need to be supplemented by

political only if it failed to cover the total range of social behavior,

and left loopholes for conflict and dispute.

This doctrine is framed in quite different terms by Confucius, who spoke

and wrote in an age when the mystical elements of the old feudal ideology

still exercised powerful and persuasive influence, and when there was no

other society than his own which he might make the object of his study.

The central point of his teachings is the doctrine of _jên_. Liang

Ch’i-ch’ao, one of the most brilliant modern exponents of ancient Chinese

philosophy, wrote of this:

In the simplest terms, “Jen” means fellow-feeling for one’s kind.

Once Fan Chih, one of his disciples, asked Confucius what “Jen”

meant. Confucius replied, “To love fellow-men”; in other words

this means to have a feeling of sympathy toward mankind....

Intellectually the relationship becomes common purpose;

emotionally it takes the form of fellow-feeling.(31)

This doctrine appears more specific in its application when it is realized

that Confucius regarded his own society and mankind as coterminous.

Barbarians, haunting the fringes of the world, were unconscious of _jên_;

not being in sympathy with mankind, they were not as yet fully human.

_Jên_ is a word which cannot be exactly translated into English. It is

laden with a burden of connotations which it has acquired through the

centuries; its variability of translation may be shown by the fact that,

in the standard translations of the Chinese classics, it is written

“Benevolence.” It might equally well be given as “consciousness of one’s

place and function in society.” The man who followed _jên_ was one who was

aware of his place in society, and of his participation in the common

endeavors of mankind.

_Jên_, or society-mindedness, leads to an awareness of virtue and

propriety (_têh_ and _yi_). When virtue and propriety exist, it is

obligatory that men follow them. Behavior in accordance with virtue and

propriety is _li_. Commonly translated “ethics,” this is seen as the

fruition of the force of _jên_ in human society. _Jên_ underlies and

establishes society, from the existence of which spring virtue and

propriety; these prescribe principles for human conduct, the formulation

of which rules is _li_.(32) Auxiliary to _li_ is _chêng ming_. _Chêng

ming_ is the rightness of names: _li_, the appropriateness of

relationships. _Li_, it may be noted, is also translated “rites” or

“ceremonies”; a rendering which, while not inexact, fails to convey the

full import of the term.

_Chêng ming_, the rectification of names, may be regarded as a protest

against the discords in language that had developed during the

transitional period from feudalism to eventual unity. Confucius, of

course, did not have as sharp an issue confronting him as do the modern

Western innovators in social and political ideology. Nevertheless, the

linguistic difficulty was clear to him. The expansion of the Chinese

written language was so great at that time that it led to the

indiscriminate coining of neologisms, and there was a tendency towards a

sophisticated hypocrisy in the use of words.(33)

Confucius saw that, in obtaining harmony, language needed to be exact;

otherwise long and fruitless disputes over empty words might be engaged in

or, what was even worse, words might not conform to the realities of

social life, and might be used as instruments of ill-doing. Confucius did

not, however, present a scheme of word-worship. He wanted communication to

cement society, to be an instrument of concord. He wanted, in modern

terms, a terminology which by its exactness and suitability would of

itself lead to harmony.(34) In advocating the rectification of names,

Confucius differed from many other founders of philosophies and religions;

they, too, wanted names rectified—terminology reorganized—to suit their

particular doctrines; but there they stopped short. Confucius regarded the

rectification of names as a continuous process, one which had to be

carried on unceasingly if communication, for the sake of social harmony,

was to remain just and exact.

_Chêng ming_ is highly significant in Confucian thought, and exhibits the

striking difference between the Chinese and the older Western political

study. If the terms by means of which the communication within a society

is effected, and in which the group beliefs of fact or of value are to be

found, can be the subject of control, there is opened up a great field of

social engineering. _Chêng ming_ states, in recognizable although archaic

terms, the existence of ideology, and proposes the strengthening of

ideology. In recognizing the group (in his case, mankind) as dependent

upon ideology for group existence, Confucius delivered Chinese political

thought from any search for an ontology of the _real state_. It became

possible to continue, in the traditional pragmatic manner,(35) thinking of

men in simple terms referring only to individual men, avoiding the

hypostatizations common in the West. In pointing out the necessity for the

control of ideology by men, Confucius anticipated theories of the

“pedagogical state” by some twenty centuries.

_Li_, in the terminology of the present work, is the conformity of the

individual to the moral ideology, or, stated in another manner, the

control of men by the ideology.(36)

_Li_, conformity to the ideology, implies, of course, conformity to those

parts of it which determine value. _Li_ prescribes the do-able, the

thinkable. In so far as the ideology consists of valuations, so far do

those valuations determine _li_. Hsü lists the operations of _li_ in six

specific categories:

(1) it furnishes the principles of political organization; (2) it

furnishes details for the application of the doctrine of

ratification; (3) it discusses the functions of government; (4) it

prescribes the limitations of governmental authority; (5) it

advances principles of social administration; and (6) it provides

a foundation for crime and lawsuits. These are only the political

functions of _li_. Its force is to be regarded as equally

effective in every other type of human behavior.(37)

The approach to society contained in the doctrines of _jên_, _chêng ming_,

and _li_ is, therefore, one which largely eliminates the necessity for

politics. Its influence may be estimated from three points of view: (1) to

what degree was government different from what it might have been had it

followed the line of development that government did in the West? (2) what

was the range of governmental action in such a system? and (3) what was

the relation of government to the other institutions of a Confucian

society?

In regard to the first point, it will be seen immediately that government,

once _chêng ming_ has been set in motion, is not a policy-making body.

There is no question of policy, no room for disagreement, no alternative.

What is right is apparent. Politics, in the narrow sense of the word,

ceases to be a function of government; only administration remains.

Secondly, government needs to administer only for two purposes. The chief

of these is the maintenance of the ideology. Once right views are

established, no individual is entitled to think otherwise. Government must

treat the heterodox as malefactors. Their crime is greater than ordinary

crime, which is a mere violation of right behavior; they pollute right

thought, set in motion the forces of discord, and initiate evils which may

work on and on through the society, even after the evil-thinkers

themselves are dead. To protect the society actively against discord, the

government must encourage the utterance of the accepted truth. The scholar

is thus the highest of all the social classes; it is he who maintains

agreement and order. The government becomes, in maintaining the ideology,

the educational system. The whole political life is education, formal or

informal. Every act of the leader is a precept and an example. The ruler

does not compel virtue by law; he spreads it by his conspicuous example.

The other function of the government in maintaining the ideology lies in

the necessity of dealing with persons not affected by the ideology.

Barbarians are especially formidable, since both heretics and criminals

may be restored to the use of their reason, while barbarians may not, so

long as they remain barbarians. Accordingly, the government is also a

defense system. It is a defense against open and physical disruption from

within—as in the case of insurrectionaries or bandits—and a defense

against forces from without which, as veritable powers of darkness, cannot

be taught and are amenable only to brute force.

In connection with the third point, government itself appears as subject

to _li_. It has no right to do wrong. The truth is apparent to everyone,

and especially to the scholars. In this wise the Chinese governments were

at the mercy of their subjects. No divine right shielded them when public

opinion condemned them; ill-doing governments were twice guilty and

contemptible, because of the great force of their examples. An evil

emperor was not only a criminal; he was a heresiarch, leading many astray,

and corrupting the virtue upon which society rested—virtue being the

maintenance of a true and moral ideology, and conformity to it.

The consequence of these teachings was such that we may say, without

sacrificing truth to paradox, that the aim of Chinese government was

anarchy—not in the sense of disorder, but in the sense of an order so just

and so complete that it needed no governing. The _laissez-faire_ of the

Chinese was not only economic; it was political. The Great Harmony of

Confucius, which was his Utopia, was conceived of as a society where the

excellence of ideology and the thoroughness of conformity to ideology had

brought perfect virtue, perfect happiness.

The other doctrines of Confucius, his practical teachings on

statesmanship, his discourses on the family—these cannot be entered into

here. Enough has, perhaps, been shown to demonstrate the thoroughness of

Confucius’ reaction against state and nation.(38) This reaction was to

continue, and to become so typical that the whole Chinese system of

subsequent centuries was called Confucian,(39) until the exigencies of a

newer, larger, and more perilous world led to Sun Yat-sen’s teaching of

modern Chinese nationalism. Before taking up the doctrine of _min tsu_, it

may be worthwhile to summarize the manner in which Chinese society,

deliberately and accidentally, each in part, followed out the doctrines of

Confucius in its practical organization.

The Chinese World-Society of Eastern Asia.

It would be, of course, absurd to pretend to analyze the social system of

China in a few paragraphs; and yet it is necessary to the study of Sun

Yat-sen that certain characteristics be at least mentioned. Several

problems appear which are quite outstanding. What was the social position

and function of each individual? How were refractory individuals to be

disciplined in accordance with the requirements that the general opinion

of society imposed? What were the ultimate ends which the organization of

Chinese society was to realize? How were the educational system and the

frontier defenses to be maintained? What was to be the position and power

of the political organization?

At the outset it is necessary that a working demarcation of the political

be established. Accepting, by definition, those coercive controls as

political which are operated for the preservation of society as a whole,

and are recognized within the society as so doing, we see immediately that

the range of the political must have been much less in old China than it

has been in the West. Western societies tend, at least in law, to

emphasize the relationship between the individual and the society as a

whole; free and unassociated individuals tend to become extraordinarily

unstable. In the old Chinese society the control of the individual was so

much an ideological one, that political control was infinitely narrower

than in the West. But, in order to effectuate ideological control, there

must be an organization which will permit pressure to be exercised on the

individual in such a compelling manner that the exercise of external

coercion becomes unnecessary. In a society in which the state has withered

away, after an enormous expansion in the subject-matter of its

control,(40) the totalitarian state is succeeded by the totalitarian

tradition, if—and the qualification is an important one—the indoctrination

has been so effective that the ideology can maintain itself in the minds

of men without the continuing coercive power of the state to uphold it. If

the ideology is secure, then control of the individual will devolve upon

those persons making up his immediate social environment, who—in view of

the uniform and secure notions of right and justice prevailing—can be

relied upon to attend to him in a manner which will be approved by the

society in general.

In China the groups most conspicuous within the society were the family

system, the village and district, and the _hui_ (association; league;

society, in the everyday sense of the word).

The family was an intricate structure. A fairly typical instance of family

organization within a specific village has been described in the following

terms: “The village is occupied by one sib, a uni-lateral kinship group,

exogamous, monogamous but polygynous, composed of a plurality of kin

alignments into four families: the natural family, the economic-family,

the religious-family, and the sib.”(41) The natural family corresponded to

the family of the West. The economic family may have had a natural family

as its core, but commonly extended through several degrees of kinship, and

may have included from thirty to one hundred persons, who formed a single

economic unit, living and consuming collectively. The religious family was

an aggregate of economic families, of which it would be very difficult to

give any specified number as an average. It was religious in that it

provided the organization for the proper commemoration and reverence of

ancestors, and maintained an ancestral shrine where the proper

genealogical records could be kept; the cult feature has largely

disappeared in modern times. The sib corresponded roughly to the clan,

found in some Western communities; its rôle was determined by the

immediate environment. In some cases—as especially in the south—the sib

was powerful enough to engage in feuds; at times one or more sibs

dominated whole communities; in the greater part of China it was a loose

organization, holding meetings from time to time to unite the various

local religious families which constituted it.

Family consciousness played its part in sustaining certain elements of the

Confucian ideology. It stressed the idea of the carnal immortality of the

human race; it oriented the individual, not only philosophically, but

socially as well. The size of each family determined his position

spatially, and family continuity fixed a definite location in time for

him. With its many-handed grasp upon the individual, the family system

held him securely in place and prevented his aspiring to the arrogant

heights of nobility or falling to the degradation of a slavery in which he

might become a mere commodity. A Chinese surrounded by his kinsmen was

shielded against humiliations inflicted upon him by outsiders or the

menace of his own potential follies. It was largely through the family

system, with its religious as well as economic and social foundation, that

the Chinese solved the problem of adequate mobility of individuals in a

society stable as a whole, and gave to that stability a clear and

undeniable purpose—the continued generation of the human race through the

continuity of a multitude of families, each determined upon survival.

The family was the most obviously significant of the groupings within the

society, but it was equalled if not excelled in importance by the

village.(42)

Had the family been the only important social grouping, it might have been

impossible for any democracy to develop in China. It so occurred that the

family pattern provided, indeed, the model for the government, but the

importance of villages in Chinese life negated the too sharp influence of

a familistic government. It would have been the most awful heresy, as it

is in Japan today, to revolt against and depose an unrighteous father;

there was nothing to prevent the deposition or destruction of an evil

village elder. In times of concord, the Emperor was the father of the

society; at other times, when his rule was less successful, he was a

fellow-villager subject to the criticism of the people.

The village was the largest working unit of non-political administration;

that is to say, groups within and up to the village were almost completely

autonomous and not subject to interference, except in very rare cases,

from outside. The village was the smallest unit of the political. The

District Magistrate, as the lowest officer in the political-educational

system, was in control of a district containing from one to twenty

villages, and negotiated, in performing the duties imposed upon him, with

the village leaders. The villages acted as self-ruling communes, at times

very democratic.(43)

Next in importance, among Chinese social groups, after the family and the

village was the _hui_. It was in all probability the last to appear.

Neither ordained, as the family seemed to be, by the eternal physical and

biological order of things, nor made to seem natural, as was the village,

by the geographic and economic environment, the association found its

justification in the deeply ingrained propensities of the Chinese to

coöperate. Paralleling and supplementing the former two, the _hui_ won for

itself a definite and unchallenged place in the Chinese social structure.

The kinds of _hui_ may be classified into six categories:(44) 1) the

fraternal societies; 2) insurance groups; 3) economic guilds; 4) religious

societies; 5) political societies; and 6) organizations of militia and

vigilantes. The _hui_ made up, in their economic form, the greater part of

the economic organization of old China, and provided the system of

vocational education for persons not destined to literature and

administration. Politically, it was the _hui_—under such names as the

Triad and the Lotus—that provided the party organizations of old China and

challenged the dynasties whenever objectionable social or economic

conditions developed.

The old Chinese society, made up of innumerable families, villages, and

_hui_, comprised a whole “known world.” Its strength was like that of a

dinosaur in modern fable; having no one nerve-centre, the world-society

could not be destroyed by inroads of barbarians, or the ravages of famine,

pestilence, and insurrection. The ideology which has been called Confucian

continued. At no one time were conditions so bad as to break the many

threads of Chinese culture and to release a new generation of persons

emancipated from the tradition. Throughout the centuries education and

government went forward, even though dynasties fell and the whole country

was occasionally over-run by conquerors. The absence of any juristically

rigid organization permitted the Chinese to maintain a certain minimum of

order, even in the absence of an emperor, or, as more commonly occurred,

in the presence of several.

The governmental superstructure cemented the whole Chinese world together

in a formal manner; it did not create it. The family, the village, and the

_hui_ were fit subjects for imperial comment, but there was nothing in

their organization to persuade the student that the Emperor—by virtue of

some Western-type _Kompetenz Kompetenz_—could remove his sanction from

their existence and thereby annihilate them. There was no precarious legal

personality behind the family, the village, and the _hui_, which could be

destroyed by a stroke of law. It was possible for the English kings to

destroy the Highland clan of the MacGregor—“the proscribed name”—without

liquidating the members of the clan _in toto_. In China the Emperor beheld

a family as a quasi-individual, and when enraged at them was prone to wipe

them out with massacre. Only in a very few cases was it possible for him

to destroy an organization without destroying the persons composing it; he

could, for example, remove the privilege of a scholarship system from a

district, prefecture, or province without necessarily disposing of all the

scholars involved in the move. The government of China—which, in the

normal run of affairs, had no questions of policy, because policy was

traditional and inviolable—continued to be an administration dedicated to

three main ends—the maintenance of the ideology (education), the defense

of the society as a whole against barbarians (military affairs) and

against the adverse forces of nature (public works on the most

extensive—and not intensive—scale), and the collection of funds for the

fulfillment of the first two ends (revenue). The Emperor was also the

titular family head of the Chinese world.

The educational system was identical with the administrative, except in

the case of the foreign dynasties. (Under the Manchus, for example, a

certain quota of Manchu officials were assigned throughout the government,

irrespective of their scholastic rank in contrast to the Chinese.) It was

a civil service, an educational structure, and a ritualist organization.

Selected from the people at large, scholars could—at least in

theory—proceed on the basis of sheer merit to any office in the Empire

excepting the Throne. Their advancement was graduated on a very elaborate

scale of degrees, which could be attained only by the passing of

examinations involving an almost perfect knowledge of the literature of

antiquity and the ability to think in harmony with and reproduce that

literature. The Chinese scholar-official had to learn to do his own

thinking by means of the clichés which he could learn from the classics;

he had to make every thought and act of his life conform to the pattern of

the ideology. Resourceful men may have found in this a proper

fortification for their originality, as soon as they were able to cloak it

with the expressions of respect; mediocre persons were helpless beyond the

bounds of what they had learned.

The combination of education and administration had one particular very

stabilizing effect upon Chinese society. It made literacy and rulership

identical. Every educated man was either a government official or expected

to become one. There was no hostile scholar class, no break with the

tradition. Struggle between scholars generally took the form of conflicts

between cliques and were not founded—except in rare instances—on any

cleavage of ideas. The Throne secured its own position and the continuity

of the ideology through establishing intellectuality as a government

monopoly. The consequences of the educational-administrative system

fostered democratic tendencies quite as much as they tended to maintain

the status quo. The scholars were all men, and Chinese, owing allegiance

to families and to native districts. In this manner a form of

representation was assured the government which kept it from losing touch

with the people, and which permitted the people to exercise influence upon

the government in the advancement of any special interests that could

profit by government assistance. The educational system also served as the

substitute for a nobility. Hereditary class distinctions existed in China

on so small a scale that they amounted to nothing. The way to power was

through the educational hierarchy.(45) In a society which offered no

financial or military short cuts to power, and which had no powerful

nobility to block the way upward, the educational system provided an

upward channel of social mobility which was highly important in the

organization of the Chinese world order.

The scholars, once they had passed the examinations, were given either

subsistence allowances or posts, according to the rank which they had

secured in the tests. (This was, of course, the theory; in actuality

bribery and nepotism played rôles varying with the time and the locality.)

They made up the administration of the civilized world. They were not only

the officials but the literati.

It would be impossible even to enumerate the many posts and types of

organization in the administration of imperial China.(46) Its most

conspicuous features may be enumerated as follows: China consisted of half

a million cities, towns, villages, and hamlets, each to a large extent

autonomous.(47) These were divided among, roughly, two thousand _hsien_,

in each of which an over-burdened District Magistrate sought to carry out

all the recognized functions of government in so far as they applied to

his locality. He did this largely by negotiation with the leaders of the

social groups in his bailiwick, the heads of families, the elders of

villages, the functionaries of _hui_. He was supervised by a variety of

travelling prefects and superintendents, but the next officer above him

who possessed a high degree of independence was the viceroy or

governor—whichever type happened to rule the province or group of

provinces. Except for their non-hereditability, these last offices were to

all intents and purposes satrapies. The enormous extent of the Chinese

civilized world, the difficulty of communicating with the capital, the

cumbersomeness of the administrative organization, the rivalry and

unfriendliness between the inhabitants of various provinces—all these

encouraged independence of a high degree. If Chinese society was divided

into largely autonomous communes, the Chinese political system was made up

of largely autonomous provinces. Everywhere there was elasticity.

At the top of the whole structure stood the Emperor. In the mystical

doctrines which Confucianism transmitted from the animism of the feudal

ages of China, the Emperor was the intermediary between the forces of

nature and mankind. The Son of Heaven became the chief ritualist; in more

sophisticated times he was the patron of civilization to the scholars, and

the object of supernatural veneration to the uneducated. His function was

to provide a constant pattern of propriety. He was to act as chief of the

scholars. To the scholars the ideology was recognized as an ideology,

albeit the most exact one; to the common people it was an objective

reality of thought and value. As the dictates of reason were not subject

to change, the power and the functions of the Emperor were delimited; he

was not, therefore, responsible to himself alone. He was responsible to

reason, which the people could enforce when the Emperor failed. Popular

intervention was regarded as _de jure_ in proportion to its effectiveness

_de facto_. The Imperial structure might be called, in Western terms, the

constitutionalism of common sense.(48) The Dragon Throne did not enjoy the

mysterious and awful prestige which surrounds the modern Tenno of Nippon;

although sublime in the Confucian theory, it was, even in the theory, at

the mercy of its subjects, who were themselves the arbiters of reason.

There was no authority higher than reason; and no reason beyond the reason

discovered and made manifest in the ages of antiquity.

The Impact of the West.

Mere physical shock could not derange the old Chinese society as easily as

it might some other, dependent for its stability upon complex, fragile

political mechanisms. China was over-run many times by barbarians; the

continuity of its civilization was undisturbed. Each group of conquerors

added to the racial composition of the Chinese, but contributed little to

the culture. The Ch’in, the Mongols, the Manchus—all ruled China as

Chinese rulers.

This strength of the Chinese society—in contrast to the Roman—must not,

however, lead us to suppose that there were any extraordinary virtues in

the Chinese social organization that made Chinese civilization

indestructible. On the contrary, the continued life of the Chinese society

may be ascribed, among others, to four conditions acting definitely and

overwhelmingly in its favor: China’s greater physical extent, homogeneity,

wealth, and culture.

No barbarian conqueror, with the possible exception of the Mongol, would

have been a match for an orderly and united China. Without exception, the

barbarian incursions occurred in times of social and political disorder

and weakness. That this is no freakish coincidence, may be shown by the

contrast between China and any of the peripheral realms. None approached

China in extent, in heaviness of population. Conquest of China was always

conquest by sufferance of the Chinese.

Second, China’s neighbors were divided among themselves. There was never

any coalition extensive enough to present a genuine threat to a thriving

China. The Chinese, in spite of diversities of spoken language, were

united—so far as they were literate—by a common writing and literature;

the common ideology had, moreover, fostered an extreme sympathy of thought

and behavior among the Chinese. Persons speaking mutually unintelligible

dialects, of different racial composition, and in completely different

economic and geographical environments displayed—and, for all that, still

display in modern times—an uncanny uniformity of social conditioning.

China faced barbarians on many fronts; China was coördinated, homogeneous;

the barbarians of North and South did not, in all probability, know

anything of each other’s existence, except what they heard from the

Chinese.

Third, China’s wealth was a socially fortifying factor. In all Eastern

Asia, no other society or form of social organization appeared which could

produce a higher scale of living. The Chinese were always materially

better off than their neighbors, with the possible exception of the

Koreans and Japanese.

Fourth, Eastern Asia was Chinese just as Europe was Graeco-Roman. The

peripheral societies all owed a great part, if not all, of their culture

to the Chinese. China’s conquerors were already under the spell of Chinese

civilization when they swept down upon it. None of them were anxious to

destroy the heritage of science, arts, and invention which the Chinese had

developed.

With these advantages in mind, it is easy to understand the peculiarity of

the Westerners, as contrasted with the other peoples whom the Chinese met

and fought. The formidable physical power of the Chinese was, after the

first few decades of intercourse, seen to be quite unequal to the superior

military technique of the West. The Westerners, although different from

one another at home, tended to appear as united in the Far East. In any

case, Chinese unity availed little in the face of greater military power.

The economic factor, while a great attraction to the Westerners, was no

inducement to them to become Chinese; they were willing to gain Chinese

wealth, and dreamed of conquering it, but not of making wealth in the

Chinese manner. And lastly, and most importantly, the Westerners presented

a culture of their own which—after the first beginnings of regular

intercourse—was quite well able to hold its own against the Chinese.(49)

To the utter certainty of the Chinese way of life, the Westerners

presented the equally unshakable dogma of Christianity. They regarded the

Chinese—as did the Chinese them—as outlanders on the edge of the known

world. They exhibited, in short, almost the same attitude toward the

Chinese that the Chinese had toward barbarians. Consequently, each group

regarded the other as perverse. The chief distinction between the Chinese

and the Westerners lay in the fact that the Chinese would in all

probability have been satisfied if the West had minded its own business,

while the West, feverish with expansionism, cajoled and fought for the

right to come, trade, and teach.(50)

At times, the two races met on agreeable and equal terms. The Jesuit

missionaries ingratiated themselves with the Chinese and, by respecting

Chinese culture, won a certain admiration for their own. The eighteenth

century in Europe was the century of _chinoiserie_, when Chinese models

exercised a profound influence on the fine and domestic arts of

Europe.(51) The great upsurge of economic power in the period of the

European industrial revolution led to increased self-assurance on the part

of the Europeans. The new standards of value alienated them from those

features of Chinese culture which the eighteenth century had begun to

appreciate, and placed them in a position to sell to the Chinese as well

as buy. More and more the economic position of the two societies changed

about; the Westerners had come to purchase the superior artizan-made goods

of China, giving in exchange metals or raw materials. A tendency now

developed for them to sell their own more cheaply, and, in some cases,

better manufactured products to the Chinese. The era of good feeling and

mutual appreciation, which had never been very strong, now drew to a

close.

The vassal states of China were conquered. The British fought the Chinese

on several occasions, and conquered each time. The full extent of Western

military superiority was revealed in the capture of Peking in 1860, and in

the effectiveness—entirely disproportionate to their numbers—that

Western-trained Imperial troops had in suppressing the Chinese T’ai-p’ing

rebels.

When Sun Yat-sen was a boy, the country was afire with fear and

uncertainty. Barbarians who could neither be absorbed nor defeated had

appeared. Instead of adopting Chinese thought and manners, they were

vigorously teaching their own to the Chinese. The traditional Chinese

mechanisms of defense against barbarians were not working.(52) Something

was vitally wrong. The Chinese could not be persuaded, as some other

non-European peoples conquered in the age of Western world-dominion seem

to have been, that all error lay with themselves, and that their own

ideology was not worth the saving; nor could they, in face of the

unfortunate facts, still believe that they themselves were completely

right, or, at least, that their own notions of rightness were completely

expedient. In view of the pragmatic foundations of the whole Chinese

ideology and way of life, the seriousness of these consequences cannot be

over-estimated. Little wonder that China was disturbed! The pragmatic,

realistic method of organization that the Chinese had had, no longer

worked in a new environment rising, as it were, from the sea.

The Western impact, consequently, affected China in two ways. In the first

place, the amorphous Chinese society was threatened and dictated to by the

strong, clearly organized states of the West. In the second place, the

introduction of disharmonious values from the West destroyed, in large

part, that appearance of universality, upon which the effectiveness of the

Chinese ideology depended, and shocked Chinese thought and action until

even their first premises seemed doubtful.

This, in short, was the dilemma of the Chinese at the advent of Sun

Yat-sen. His life was to be dedicated to its solution; it is his analyses

that are to be studied in the explanation of the Chinese society in the

modern world.

The Continuing Significance of the Background.

Before proceeding to the exposition of Sun Yat-sen’s theories and

programs, it is necessary that a superlatively important consideration be

emphasized: namely, that Sun Yat-sen was a Chinese, that the nation he

worked for was China, and that the intellectual and social background of

his labors was one completely different from that of the Euramerican

world. A great part of the vaporous disputation which has hidden Chinese

politics in a cloud of words has been the consequence of the ignoring, by

Westernized Chinese as well as by Westerners, of the monumental fact that

China is in only a few respects comparable to the West, and that the ideas

and methods of the West lose the greater part of their relevance when

applied to the Chinese milieu. Political dialecticians in China split

Marxian hairs as passionately and sincerely as though they were in

nineteenth-century Germany.(53) Sun Yat-sen, though accused of this

fantastic fault by some of his adversaries, was—as his theories show upon

close examination—much less influenced by Western thought than is commonly

supposed to be the case, and in applying Western doctrines to Chinese

affairs was apt to look upon this as a fortunate coincidence, instead of

assuming the universal exactness of recent Western social and political

thought.

What are the features of the Chinese background that must be remembered in

order to throw a just light upon the beliefs of Sun Yat-sen? Primarily, it

must have become apparent, from the foregoing discussion of Confucianism

and the old social order, that China, under the leadership of Sun Yat-sen,

was beginning to draw away from an order of things which the West—or at

least a part of the West—aspires to achieve: a world-society in which the

state had withered away. This ideal, while never completely realized in

China, was perhaps more closely attained than it has ever been in any

other society. Modern actualities led away from this ideal. The West,

dreaming of world unity, was divided and armed; China too had to abandon

the old notions of universal peace, and arm. The West, seeking social

stability, was mobile; China too had to move.

The old society was in its controls totalitarian. Diffuse and extensive

controls operated fairly evenly throughout the system. The West possessed

a state system which was fundamentally different. By limiting the range of

law to the reinforcement of certain particular _mores_, the Westerners

were able to obtain a terrific concentration of political power within the

sphere of what they conceived to be legitimate state control. On the other

hand the presence of a large number of activities not subject to state

control led individuals to cherish their freedom—a freedom which in most

cases did not impair the military and political effectiveness of the state

in external action.

Since Fascism seeks to reëstablish order and certainty, as does Communism

(although an order and certainty of a different kind), by the extension of

state activities; and since Sun Yat-sen proposed to improve the political

position of China by developing a modern state (of narrow, but intense

activities in contrast to the loose general controls of the old society),

the drift in China may be regarded, in this respect, as Fascism in

reverse. Beginning with the same premises—the regeneration of the

nation—Mussolini was led to a course of policy diametrically opposite to

that plotted by Sun Yat-sen.

Even, however, with his plans for developing a “machine state” in a

society where states had long since perished, Sun Yat-sen did not propose

to destroy Chinese morality and non-political discipline for the sake of

instituting a sharp juristic law-and-order organization. He was anxious

that the old Chinese morality and social knowledge be applied. In this, he

differed from most of the other modern leaders of China, who were for

veneering China with a Parliament and police without delay. Sun Yat-sen

realized that a state was necessary in China, and hoped to establish one;

he also hoped that, beyond the limits of the new state activity,

individualism and disorder would not come to prevail, but that the old

controls would continue to operate.

Accordingly, Sun Yat-sen’s thought cannot be studied as a mere offshoot of

recent Western thought. It must be realized that he proposed two ends

which, of all the countries of the world, would be mutually compatible

only in China: the development of a state, and the full continuation of

non-political controls.(54)

In fostering the continuation of ideological control, Sun Yat-sen hoped to

modify the old ideology so that it would become applicable to the new

situations. As will be made clear later, he was redefining the old

world-view so that, without disturbing the consequences to which it would

lead, it might apply in a novel and unprecedentedly disturbed world. He

was, in short, switching the premises and trying to preserve the

conclusions, modifying the actual behavior of the Chinese only in so far

as it was necessary for the purpose of strengthening and invigorating the

whole body politic of China.

Another strain of the ancient thought penetrates Sun Yat-sen’s theories.

Ideological control was not to the Confucians, as some Marxian critics

aver,(55) a rather naïve duplicity by which the gentry of China could

maintain themselves in power indefinitely. Confucius can not be accused,

save on the basis of unwarrantable reading-in, of insincerity in his

teaching of order. He was conservative, and knew what he was doing, in

seeking for the general self-discipline of men, and the rule of precept

and virtue; but to believe that he desired one public philosophy and

another private one goes beyond the realm of historically justifiable

interpretation. An ideology may, of course, be deceptive to its

promulgators, but the absence of any genuine class-society—as known in the

West—must serve as a testimonial to the sincerity of Confucian teachings.

The Confucian ideology was to the ancients not only an instrument for

good; it was common sense.

Sun Yat-sen did not, as a Western leader in his position might have done,

seek to befuddle the masses for their own good. Since he proposed to

entrust China’s destinies to the votes of the masses, he could scarcely

have believed them liable to fall victims to deceit over a great length of

time. In teaching of the race-nation, and of the nature of Chinese

society, Sun Yat-sen was telling the people what it would be good for them

to believe; it was good for them because it was the truth—that is, most in

accord with the actual situation of China in the general society of the

world.

Few today would dare say what is really in the minds of European leaders

such as Stalin, Mussolini, and Hitler. These men may themselves believe

what they say; or, not believing it, say it nevertheless because they

think it the right thing for the masses, in the masses’ own interests, to

believe. Their respective enemies accuse them of saying what they do in

order to mislead the masses and to dominate the masses for hidden purposes

of their own. No such accusation has been levelled against Sun Yat-sen.

Apart from his personal sincerity, his belief in the qualities of the

common people was such that he did not consider it necessary to deceive

them, even for their own good.

Consequently, in dealing with the various doctrines that Sun preached, it

must be remembered that he himself believed what he was saying. He did not

merely think that the people should regard the Chinese society as a

race-nation; he thought that China _was_ a race-nation. The modifications

of the Confucian philosophy were to be contemplated, as was the original

philosophy, as pragmatically true.(56)

These two factors must be reckoned with—that Sun Yat-sen was teaching and

working in the Chinese milieu, and that his ideology was an ideology not

in the older pejorative sense of the word, which connoted duplicity, but

an ideology in the sense of a scheme of exact knowledge which, by its very

truthfulness, was a political and social instrument.