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 [pg 048] 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, [pg 052] 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 [pg 053] 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.
Chapter II The Theory of Nationalism.
The Emergence of the Chinese Race-Nation.
It could, at first thought, be supposed that the reconstruction of Chinese society might have been necessitated by internal weakness just as much as by a changed environment. The process of organizing and developing a tight, clear scheme of political control organizations within the society (stateification), and delimiting the extent and aims of the society (nationalism) were the chief characteristics of this reconstruction.
It is only by means of a disregard of actual conditions that the supposition of an internal weakness so great as to require radical change can be maintained. While the latter days of the Manchu Empire represented a decline, it was a decline no more serious than others through which Chinese culture had passed and resurged many times in its history. It is still a debatable matter as to whether China had actually become intellectually and artistically sterile during this period. In any event, it is questionable whether the completely revolutionary reorganization of Chinese society—of the type that Sun Yat-sen found it necessary to support—would have been either worth-while or probable in the absence of Euramerican aggression, and the appearance, all about China, of a new, hostile, and unstable environment. If it had not been for the impact of the West it is conceivable—although all comment on this must remain mere speculation—that a social revolution such as those which occurred under Wang Mang (usurper-founder of the unrecognized Hsin Dynasty, 9-25 A.D.), Wang An-shih (prime minister, 1069-1076 A.D., under the Sung dynasty), or Hung Hsiu-ch'üan (founder of the rebel T'ai P'ing dynasty, 1849-1865), [pg 059] might have adjusted matters by a general redistribution of wealth and administrative reorganization.
In his earliest agitations Sun Yat-sen was opposed to the Manchus.[57] In this connection he developed a peculiar and interesting theory concerning nationalism. He held, briefly, that the Chinese had, at the noon-day glory of their Empire, fallen under the lure of a cosmopolitanism which was not in accord with the realities of political existence. It was this lack of distinction between themselves and outsiders which had permitted hundreds of millions of Chinese to fall prey to one hundred thousand Manchus in the early seventeenth century,[58] with the consequence that the Manchus, once on the throne of China, made every effort to erase their barbarian origin from the minds of the Chinese, and, with this end in view, did everything possible, as modern Japan is doing in Korea, to destroy the national consciousness of the Chinese.[59] China, to Sun Yat-sen, had always been a nation, but its inhabitants did not believe it a nation. They had lost the precious treasure of nationalism. Without contradicting Sun Yat-sen, but differing from him only in the use of words, Westerners might say that the Chinese had once known nationalism as members of the antique Chinese states, but had later formed—in the place of a nation—a cosmopolitan society which comprehended the civilized world of Eastern Asia.[60]
Sun Yat-sen did not blame Confucius for cosmopolitanism. There is, indeed, nowhere in his works the implication that Confucianism was an evil in itself, deserving destruction; why then did Sun Yat-sen believe that, even though the old ideology was not invalid for the organization of China internally, the old world-view had broken down as an effective instrument for the preservation of China?
First of all, Sun stated, in terms more general than did the ancients, the necessity of establishing the ideology on the basis of pragmatism. He stated:
We cannot say in general that ideas, as ideas, are good or bad. We must judge whether, when put into practice, they prove useful to us or not. If they are of practical value to us, they are good; if they are impractical, they are bad. If they are useful to the world, they are good; if they are not useful to the world, they are not good.[61]
He states, also, that if the Chinese race is to survive, it must adopt nationalism. “... if we now want to save China, if we wish to see the Chinese race survive forever, we must preach Nationalism.”[62] Hitherto they had been no more conscious of race than were the Europeans of the middle ages. To be sure, they were barbarians, whose features were strange; but the Chinese were not conscious of themselves as a racial unity in competition and conflict with other equal or superior racial unities. The self-consciousness of the Chinese was a cultural rather than a racial one, and the juxtaposition that presented itself to the Chinese mind was between “Ourselves of the Central Realm” and “You the Outsiders.”[63] Sun Yat-sen became intensely conscious of being a Chinese by race,[64] and so did many other of his compatriots, by the extraordinary race-pride of the White Men in China. In common with many others of his generation, Sun Yat-sen turned to race-consciousness as the name for Chinese solidarity.
There is nowhere in his works, so far as the writer knows, any attempt to find a value higher than the necessity of perpetuating the Chinese race. Sun Yat-sen was a Chinese; his followers were Chinese; whatever benefits they contemplated bestowing upon the world as a whole were incidental to their work for a powerful and continued [pg 062] China. At various times Sun Yat-sen and his followers expressed sympathy with the whole world, with the oppressed of the earth, or with all Asia, but the paramount drive behind the new movement has been the defense and reconstruction of China, no longer conceived of as a core-society maintaining the flower of human civilization, but regarded as a race abruptly plunged into the chaos of hostile and greedy nations.
Throughout his life, Sun Yat-sen called China a nation. We may suppose that he never thought that Chinese society need not necessarily be called a nation, even in the modern world. What he did do, though, was to conceive of China as a unique type of nation: a race-nation. He stated that races could be distinguished by a study of physical characteristics, occupation, language, religion and folkways or customs.[65] Dividing the world first into the usual old-style five primary races (white, black, yellow, brown, and red), he divides these races into sub-races in the narrow sense of the term. The Chinese race, in the narrow sense of the term, is both a race and a nation. The Anglo-Saxons are divided between England and America, the Germans between Germany and Austria, the Latins among the Mediterranean nations, and so forth; but China is at the same time both the Chinese race and the Chinese nation. If the Chinese wish their race to perpetuate itself forever, they must adopt and follow the doctrine of Nationalism.[66] Otherwise China faces the tragedy of being "despoiled as a nation and extinct as a race."[67]
Sun Yat-sen felt that China was menaced and oppressed ethnically, politically and economically. Ethnically, he believed that the extraordinary population increase of the [pg 063] white race within the past few centuries represented a trend which, if not counterbalanced, would simply result in the Chinese race being crowded off the earth. Politically he observed that the Chinese dependencies had been alienated by the Western powers and Japan; that China was at the mercy of any military nation that chose to attack; that it was a temporary deadlock between the conquering powers rather than any strength of China that prevented, at least for the time being, the partition of China and that a diplomatic attack, which could break the deadlock of the covetous states, would be even more deadly and drastic than simple military attack.[68]
It must be remembered that Sun Yat-sen saw a nation while the majority of his compatriots still envisioned the serene, indestructible society of the Confucians. Others may have realized that the Western impact was more than a frontier squabble on a grand scale; they may have thought it to have assumed epic proportions. But Sun Yat-sen, oppressed by his superior knowledge of the Western nations, obtained at the cost of considerable sympathy with them, struggled desperately to make his countrymen aware of the fact, irrefutable to him, that China was engaged in a conflict different not only in degree but in kind from any other in Chinese history. The Great Central Realm had become simply China. Endangered and yet supine, it faced the imperative necessity of complete reconstitution, with the bitter alternative of decay and extinction—a race tragedy to be compounded of millions of individual tragedies. And yet reconstitution could not be of a kind that would itself be a surrender and treason to the past; China must fit itself for the modern [pg 064] world, and nevertheless be China. This was the dilemma of the Chinese world-society, suddenly become a nation. Sun Yat-sen's life and thought were devoted to solving it.
The Necessity of Nationalism.
An abstract theorist might observe that the Chinese, finding their loose-knit but stable society surrounded by compact and aggressive nations, might have solved the question of the perpetuation of Chinese society in the new environment by one of two expedients: first, by nationalizing, as it were, their non-national civilization; or second, by launching themselves into a campaign against the system of nations as such. The second alternative does not seem to have occurred to Sun Yat-sen. Though he never ventured upon any complete race-war theory, he was nevertheless anxious to maintain the self-sufficient power of China as it had been until the advent of the West. In his negotiations with the Communists, for example, neither he nor they suggested—as might have been done in harmony with communist theory—the fusion of China and the Soviet Union under a nuclear world government. We may assume with a fair degree of certainty that, had a suggestion been made, Sun Yat-sen would have rejected it with mistrust if not indignation. He had spent a great part of his life in the West. He knew, therefore, the incalculable gulf between the civilizations, and was unwilling to entrust the destinies of China to persons other than Chinese.[69]
Once the possibility of a successful counter-attack upon the system of nations is discounted, nationalism is seen as the sole solution to China's difficulties. It must, however, be understood that, whereas nationalism in the West implies an intensification of the already definite national consciousness of the peoples, nationalism in China might mean only as little as the introduction of such an awareness of nationality. Nationalism in China might, as a matter of logic, include the possibility of improved personal relations between the Chinese and the nationals of other states since, on the one hand, the Chinese would be relieved of an intolerable sense of humiliation in the face of Western power, and, on the other, be disabused of any archaic notions they might retain concerning themselves as the sole civilized people of the earth.[70]
A brief historical reference may explain the apparent necessity of nationalism in China. In the nineteenth century [pg 066] foreigners in China generally suffered reverses when they came into conflict with a village, a family, or a guild. But when they met the government, they were almost always in a position to bully it. It was commonly of little or no concern to the people what their government did to the barbarians; the whole affair was too remote to be much thought about. We find, for example, that the British had no trouble in obtaining labor auxiliaries in Canton to fight with the British troops against the Imperial government at Peking in 1860; it is quite probable that these Cantonese, who certainly did not think that they were renegades, had no anti-dynastic intentions. Chinese served the foreign enemies of China at various times as quasi-military constabulary, and served faithfully. Before the rise of Chinese nationalism it was not beyond possibility that China would be partitioned into four or five colonies appurtenant to the various great powers and that the Chinese in each separate colony, if considerately and tactfully treated, would have become quite loyal to their respective foreign masters. The menace of such possibilities made the need of Chinese nationalism very real to Sun Yat-sen; the passing of time may serve further to vindicate his judgment.
Sun Yat-sen's nationalism, though most vividly clear when considered as a practical expedient of social engineering, may also be regarded more philosophically as a derivation of, or at least having an affinity with, certain older ideas of the Chinese. Confucian thinking, as re-expressed in Western terms, implants in the individual a sense of his responsibility to all humanity, united in space and time. Confucianism stressed the solidarity of humanity, continuous, immortal, bound together by the closest conceivable ties—blood relationships. Sun Yat-sen's nationalism may represent a narrowing of this conception, and the substitution of the modern Chinese race [pg 067] for Confucian humanity. In fairness to Sun Yat-sen it must, however, be admitted that he liked to think, in Christian and Confucian terms, of the brotherhood of man; one of his favorite expressions was “under heaven all men shall work for the common good.”[71]
Nationalism was to Sun Yat-sen the prime condition of his movement and of his other principles. The Communists of the West regard every aspect of their lives significant only in so far as it is instrumental in the class struggle. Sun Yat-sen, meeting them, was willing to use the term “class struggle” as an instrument for Chinese nationalism. He thought of China, of the vital and immediate necessity of defending and strengthening China, and sacrificed everything to the effectuation of a genuine nationalism. To him only nationalism could tighten, organize, and clarify the Chinese social system so that China, whatever it was to be, might not be lost.
The early philosophers of China, looking upon a unicultural world, saw social organization as the supreme criterion of civilization and humanity. Sun Yat-sen, in a world of many mutually incomprehensible and hostile cultures saw nationalism (in the sense of race solidarity) as the supreme condition for the survival of the race-nation China. Democracy and social welfare were necessary to the stability and effectiveness of this nationalism, but the preservation and continuation of the race-nation was always to remain the prime desideratum.
The Return to the Old Morality.
Sun Yat-sen quite unequivocally stated the necessity for establishing a new Nationalist ideology in order to effectuate the purposes of China's regeneration. He spoke of the two steps of ideological reconstitution and political reconstitution [pg 068] as follows: “In order today to restore our national standing we must, first of all, revive the national spirit. But in order to revive the national spirit, we must fulfill two conditions. First, we must realize that we are at present in a very critical situation. Second ... we must unite ... and form a large national association.”[72] He evidently regarded the ideological reconstitution as anterior to the political, although he adjusted the common development of the two quite detailedly in his doctrine of tutelage.
He proposed three ideological methods for the regeneration of China, which might again make the Chinese the leading society (nation) of the world. There were: first, the return to the ancient Chinese morality; second, the return to the ancient Chinese learning; and third, the adoption of Western science.[73]
Sun Yat-sen's never-shaken belief in the applicability of the ancient Chinese ethical system, and in the wisdom of old China in social organization, is such that of itself it prevents his being regarded as a mere imitator of the West, a barbarized Chinese returning to barbarize his countrymen. His devotion to Confucianism was so great that Richard Wilhelm, the greatest of German sinologues, wrote of him: “The greatness of Sun Yat-sen rests, therefore, upon the fact that he has found a living synthesis between the fundamental principles of Confucianism and the demands of modern times, a synthesis which, beyond the borders of China, can again become significant to all humanity. Sun Yat-sen combined in himself the brazen consistency of a revolutionary and the great love of humanity of a renewer. Sun Yat-sen has been the kindest of all the revolutionaries of mankind. And this kindness [pg 069] was taken by him from the heritage of Confucius. Hence his intellectual work stands as a connecting bridge between the old and the modern ages. And it will be the salvation of China, if it determinedly treads that bridge.”[74] And Tai Chi-tao, one of Sun Yat-sen's most respected followers, had said: “Sun Yat-sen was the only one among all the revolutionaries who was not an enemy to Confucius; Sun Yat-sen himself said that his ideas embodied China, and that they were derived from the ideas of Confucius.”[75] The invocation of authorities need not be relied upon to demonstrate the importance of Sun Yat-sen's demand for ideological reconstruction upon the basis of a return to the traditional morality; he himself stated his position in his sixth lecture on nationalism: “If we now wish to restore to our nation its former position, besides uniting all of us into a national body, we must also first revive our own ancient morality; when we have achieved that, we can hope to give back to our nation the position which she once held.”[76]
What are the chief elements of the old morality? These are: 1) loyalty and filial piety, 2) humanity and charity, 3) faithfulness and justice, and 4) peace. These four, however, are all expressions of humanity, to which knowledge [pg 070] and valor must be joined, and sincerity employed in expressing them.
The problem of loyalty was one very difficult to solve. Under the Empire it was easy enough to consider the Emperor as the father of the great society, and to teach loyalty to him. This was easy to grasp, even for the simplest mind. Sun Yat-sen urged loyalty to the people, and loyalty to duty, as successors to the loyalty once owed to the sovereign. He deplored the tendency, which appeared in Republican times, for the masses to assume that since there was no more Emperor, there was no more loyalty; and it has, since the passing of Sun Yat-sen, been one of the efforts of the Nationalists to build up a tradition of loyalty to the spirit of Sun Yat-sen as the timeless and undying leader of modern China.
Sun Yat-sen was also deeply devoted to filial piety in China, which was—in the old philosophy—simply a manifestation, in another direction, of the same virtue as loyalty. He called filial piety indispensable, and was proud that none of the Western nations had ever approached the excellence of the Chinese in this virtue.[77] At the time that he said this, Sun Yat-sen was accused of being a virtual Communist, and of having succumbed to the lure of Soviet doctrines. It is at least a little strange that a man supposedly infatuated with Marxism should praise that most conservative of all virtues: filial piety!
Sun Yat-sen then commented on each of the other virtues, pointing out their excellence in old China, and their necessity to modern China. In the case of faithfulness, for example, he cited the traditional reliability of the Chinese in commercial honor. Concerning justice, he pointed out that the Chinese political technique was one fundamentally just; an instance of the application of this was Korea, [pg 071] which was-allowed to enjoy peace and autonomy as a Chinese vassal state for centuries, and then was destroyed shortly after becoming a Japanese protectorate. Chinese faithfulness and justice were obviously superior to that of the Japanese.
In politics the two most important contributions of the old morality to the Nationalist ideology of Sun Yat-sen were (1) the doctrine of wang tao, and (2) the social interpretation of history.
Wang tao is the way of kings—the way of right as opposed to pa tao, the way of might. It consisted, in the old ideology, of the course of action of the kingly man, who ruled in harmony with nature and did not violate the established proprieties of mankind. Sun Yat-sen's teachings afford us several applications of wang tao. In the first place, a group which has been formed by the forces of nature is a race; it has been formed according to wang tao. A group which has been organized by brute force is a state, and is formed by pa tao. The Chinese Empire was built according to wang tao; the British Empire by pa tao. The former was a natural organization of a homogeneous race; the latter, a military outrage against the natural order of mankind.[78]
Wang tao is also seen in the relation between China and her vassal states, a benevolent relationship which stood in sharp contrast, at times, though not always, to the methods later to be used by the Europeans in Asia.[79] [pg 072] Again, economic development on a basis of the free play of economic forces was regarded as wang tao by Sun Yat-sen, even though its consequences might be adverse. Pa tao appeared only when the political was employed to do violence to the economic.[80] This doctrine of good and bad aspects of economic relationships stands in distinct contrast to the Communist theory. He believed that the political was frequently employed to bring about unjust international economic relationships, and extenuated adverse economic conditions simply because they were the free result of the operations of a laissez-faire economy.
Economically, the interpretation of history was, according to Sun Yat-sen, to be performed through the study of consumption, and not of the means of production. In this he was indebted to Maurice William—at least in part.[81] The social interpretation of history is, however, associated not only with economic matters, but with the ancient Chinese moral system as well. Tai Chi-tao, whose work has most clearly demonstrated the relationship between Confucianism and Sunyatsenism, points out in his diagram of Sun Yat-sen's ethical system that humanity (jên) was to Sun Yat-sen the key to the interpretation of history. We have already seen that jên is the doctrine of social consciousness, of awareness of membership in society.[82] Sun Yat-sen, according to Tai Chi-tao, regarded man's development as a social animal, the development of his humanity, as the key to history. This would include, of course, among other things, his methods of production [pg 073] and of consumption. The distinction between Sun Yat-sen and the Western Marxian thinkers lies in the fact that the latter trace their philosophical genealogy back through the main currents of Western philosophy, while Sun Yat-sen derives his from Confucius. Nothing could be further from dialectical materialism than the socio-ethical interpretation that Sun Yat-sen developed from the Confucian theories.
The rôle played by the old Chinese morality in the ideology of Sun Yat-sen is, it is apparent, an important one. First, Sun Yat-sen believed that Chinese nationalism and the regeneration of the Chinese people had to be based on the old morality of China, which was superior to any other morality that the world had known, and which was among the treasures of the Chinese people. Second, he believed that, in practical politics as well as national ideology, the application of the old virtues would be fruitful in bringing about the development of a strong China. Third, he derived the idea of wang tao, the right, the royal, the natural way, from antiquity. He pointed out that violence to the established order—of race, as in the case of the British Empire, of economics, as in the case of the political methods of imperialism—was directly antithetical to the natural, peaceful way of doing things that had led to the supreme greatness of China in past ages. Fourth, he employed the doctrine of jên, of social-consciousness, which had already been used, by the Confucians, and formed the cornerstone of their teaching, as the key to his interpretation. In regard to the individual, this was, as we have seen, consciousness of social orientation; with regard to the group, it was the development of strength and harmony. It has also been translated humanity, which broadly and ethically, carries the value scheme with which jên is connected.
Even this heavy indebtedness to Chinese antiquity in adopting and adapting the morality of the ancients for [pg 074] the salvation of their children in the modern world, was not the total of Sun Yat-sen's political traditionalism. He also wished to renew the ancient Chinese knowledge, especially in the fields of social and political science. Only after these did he desire that Western technics be introduced.
The Return to the Ancient Knowledge.
Sun Yat-sen's doctrine of the return to the ancient Chinese knowledge may be divided into three parts. First, he praised the ancient Chinese superiority in the field of social science, but distinctly stressed the necessity of Western knowledge in the field of the physical and applied sciences alone.[83] Second, he pointed out the many practical accomplishments of the ancient Chinese knowledge, and the excellence and versatility of Chinese invention.[84] Third, his emphasis upon the development of talents in the material sciences hints at, although it does not state, a theory of national wealth based upon labor capacity.
Sun Yat-sen said, “Besides reviving our ancient Chinese morality, we must also revive our wisdom and ability.... If today we want to revive our national spirit, we must revive not only the morality which is proper to us, but we must revive also our own knowledge.”[85] He goes on to say that the peculiar excellence of the ancient Chinese knowledge lay in the field of political philosophy, and states that the Chinese political philosophy surpassed the Western, at least in clearness.
He quotes The Great Learning for the summation, in a few words, of the highlights of this ancient Chinese social knowledge: “Investigate into things, attain the [pg 075] utmost knowledge, make the thoughts sincere, rectify the heart, cultivate the person, regulate the family, govern the country rightly, pacify the world.”[86] This is, as we have seen, what may be called the Confucian doctrine of ideological control. Sun Yat-sen lavished praise upon it. “Such a theory, so detailed, minute, and progressive, was neither discovered nor spoken of by any foreign political philosopher. It is a peculiar intellectual treasure pertaining to our political philosophy, which we must preserve.”[87] The endorsement is doubly significant. In the first place, it demonstrates the fact that Sun Yat-sen thought of himself as a rebuilder and not as a destroyer of the ancient Chinese culture, and the traditional methods of organization and control. In the second place, it points out that his Chinese background was most clear to him, and that he was in his own mind the transmitter of the Chinese heritage.
In speaking of Chinese excellence in the field of the social science, Sun Yat-sen did not confine his discussion to any one time. Whenever he referred to a political theory, he mentioned its Chinese origin if it were one of those known to Chinese antiquity: anarchism, communism, democracy. He never attacked Chinese intellectual knowledge for being what it was, but only for what it omitted: physical science.[88] He was undoubtedly more conservative than many of his contemporaries, who were actually hostile to the inheritance.
The summary of Sun Yat-sen's beliefs and position in respect to the ancient intellectual knowledge is so well given by Tai Chi-tao that any other statement would almost have to verge on paraphrase. Tai Chi-tao wrote:
Sun Yat-sen (in his teachings) completely includes the true ideas of China as they recur again and again from Yao and Shun, Confucius and Mencius. It will be clear to us, therefore, that Sun Yat-sen is the renewal of Chinese moral culture, unbroken for two thousand years ... we can see that Sun Yat-sen was convinced of the truth of his own words, and at the same time we can also recognize that his national revolution was based upon the re-awakening of Chinese culture. He wanted to call the creative power of China to life again, and to make the value of Chinese culture useful to the whole world, and in that way to realize cosmopolitanism.[89]
Accordingly, Sun Yat-sen's doctrines may not only be regarded as having been based upon the tacit premises of the Chinese intellectual milieu, but as having been incorporated in them as supports. Sun Yat-sen's theories were, therefore, consciously as well as unconsciously Chinese.
Sun Yat-sen was proud of the accomplishment of the Chinese in physical and applied knowledge. He praised Chinese craftsmanship and skill, and extolled the talents of the people which had invented the mariner's compass, printing, porcelain, gunpowder, tea, silks, arches, and suspension bridges.[90] He urged the revival of the talents of the Chinese, and the return of material development. This teaching, in conjunction with his advocacy of Western knowledge, leads to another suggestive point.
Sun Yat-sen pointed out that wealth was to the modern Chinese what liberty was to the Europeans of the eighteenth century—the supreme condition of further progress.[91] The way to progress and wealth was through social reorganization, and through the use of the capacities of the people. It may be inferred, although it cannot be stated positively, that Sun Yat-sen measured wealth not merely in metals or commodities, but in the productive capacities of the country, which, as they depend upon the labor skill of the workers, are in the last analysis cultural and psychological rather than exclusively physical in nature.[92]
China, following the ancient morality, conscious of its [pg 078] intellectual and social heritage, and of its latent practical talents, needed only one more lesson to learn: the need of Western science.
Western Physical Science in the New Ideology.
The third element of the nationalist ideology proposed by Sun Yat-sen was the introduction of Western science. It is upon this that his break with the past arose; it is this that gives his ideology its partially revolutionary character, for the ideology was, as we have seen, strongly reconstitutional in two of its elements. Sun Yat-sen was, however, willing to tear down if he could rebuild, and rebuild with the addition of Western science. These questions immediately arise: why did he wish to add Western science to the intellectual background of modern China? what, in Western science, did he wish to add? to what degree did he wish Western science to play its rôle in the development of a new ideology for China?
Sun Yat-sen did not have to teach the addition of Western science to the Chinese ideology. In his own lifetime the terrific swing from arrogant self-assurance to abject imitativeness had taken place. Sun Yat-sen said that the Boxer Rebellion was the last surge of the old Chinese nationalism, “But the war of 1900 was the last manifestation of self-confidence thoughts and self-confidence power on the part of the Chinese to oppose the new civilization of Europe and of America.... They understood that the civilization of Europe and of America was really much superior to the ancient civilization of China.”[93] He added that this superiority was naturally evident in the matter of armaments. This illustrates both consequences of the impact of the West—the endangered position of the Chinese society, and the consequent instability of the Chinese ideology.
Sun Yat-sen did not regard the introduction of Western science into Chinese life as merely remedial in nature, but, on the contrary, saw much benefit in it. This was especially clear to him as a physician; his training led him to see the abominable practices of many of the Chinese in matters of diet and hygiene.[94] He made a sweeping claim of Western superiority, which is at the same time a sharp limitation of it in fields which the conservative European would be likely to think of as foremost—politics, ethics, religion. “Besides the matter of armaments, the means of communication ... are far superior.... Moreover, in everything else that relates to machinery or daily human labor, in methods of agriculture, of industry, and of commerce, all (foreign) methods by far surpass those of China.”[95]
Sun Yat-sen pointed out the fact that while manuals of warfare become obsolete in a very few years in the West, political ideas and institutions do not. He cited the continuance of the same pattern of government in the United States, and the lasting authority of the Republic of Plato, as examples of the stagnation of the Western social sciences as contrasted with physical sciences. Already prepossessed in favor of the Chinese knowledge and morality in non-technical matters, he did not demand the introduction of Western social methods as well. He had lived long enough in the West to lose some of the West-worship that characterized so many Chinese and Japanese of his generation. He was willing, even anxious, that the experimental method, by itself, be introduced into Chinese thought in all fields,[96] but not particularly impressed with the general superiority of Western social thought.
Sun Yat-sen's own exposition of the reasons for his desiring to limit the rôle played by Western science in China is quite clear.[97] In the first place, Sun Yat-sen was vigorously in favor of adopting the experimental method in attaining knowledge. He stood firmly for the pragmatic foundation of knowledge, and for the exercise of the greatest care and most strenuous effort in discovering it. Secondly, he believed in taking over the physical knowledge of the Westerners, although—in his emphasis on Chinese talent—he by no means believed that Western physical knowledge would displace that of the Chinese altogether. “We can safely imitate the material civilization of Europe and of America; we may follow it blindly, and if we introduce it in China, it will make good headway.”[98] Thirdly, he believed that the social science of the West, and especially its political philosophy, might lead the Chinese into gross error, since it was derived from a quite different ideology, and not relevant to Chinese conditions. “It would be a gross error on our part, if, disregarding our own Chinese customs and human sentiments, we were to try to force upon (our people) a foreign type of social government just as we copy a foreign make of [pg 081] machinery.”[99] Fourthly, even apart from the difference between China and the West which invalidated Western social science in China, he did not believe that the West had attained to anything like the same certainty in social science that it had in physical science.[100] Fifthly, Sun Yat-sen believed that the Chinese should profit by observing the experiments and theories of the West in regard to social organization, without necessarily following them.
The great break between Sun Yat-sen's acceptance of Western physical science and his rejection of Western social science is demonstrated by his belief that government is psychological in its foundations. “Laws of human government also constitute an abstract piece of machinery—for that reason we speak of the machinery of an organized government—but a material piece of machinery is based on nature, whereas the immaterial machinery of government is based on psychology.”[101] Sun Yat-sen pointed out, although in different words, that government was based upon the ideology and that the ideology of a society was an element in the last analysis psychological, however much it might be conditioned by the material environment.
Of these three elements—Chinese morality, Chinese social and political knowledge, and Western physical science—the new ideology for the modern Chinese society [pg 082] was to be formed. What the immediate and the ultimate forms of that society were to be, remains to be studied.
The Consequences of the Nationalist Ideology.
What are the consequences of this Nationalistic ideology? What sort of society did Sun Yat-sen envision? How much of it was to be Chinese, and how much Western? Were the Chinese, like some modern Japanese, to take pride in being simultaneously the most Eastern of Eastern nations and the most Western of Western or were they to seek to remain fundamentally what their ancestors had been for uncounted centuries?
In the first place, Sun Yat-sen's proposed ideology was, as we have seen, to be composed of four elements. First, the essential core of the old ideology, to which the three necessary revivifying elements were to be added. This vast unmentioned foundation is highly significant to the assessment of the nature of the new Chinese ideology. (It is quite apparent that Sun Yat-sen never dreamed, as did the Russians, of overthrowing the entire traditional order of things. His three modifications were to be added to the existing Chinese civilization.) Second, he wished to revive the old morality. Third, he desired to restore the ancient knowledge and skill of the Chinese to their full creative energy. Fourth, he desired to add Western science. The full significance of this must be realized in a consideration of Chinese nationalism. Sun Yat-sen did not, like the Meiji Emperor, desire to add the whole front of Western culture; he was even further from emulating the Russians in a destruction of the existing order and the development of an entirely new system. His energies were directed to the purification and reconstitution of the Chinese ideology by the strengthening of its own latent moral and intellectual values, and by the innovation of Western [pg 083] physical science and the experimental method. Of the range of the ideology, of the indescribably complex intellectual conditionings in which the many activities of the Chinese in their own civilization were carried on, Sun Yat-sen proposed to modify only those which could be improved by a reaction to the excellencies of Chinese antiquity, or benefited by the influence of Western science. Sun Yat-sen was, as Wilhelm states, both a revolutionary and a reconstitutionary. He was reconstitutionary in the ideology which he proposed, and a revolutionary by virtue of the political methods which he was willing to sanction and employ in carrying the ideology into the minds of the Chinese populace.
In the second place, Sun Yat-sen proposed to modify the old ideology not only with respect to content but also with regard to method of development. The Confucians had, as we have seen, provided for the continual modification and rectification of the ideology by means of the doctrine of chêng ming. It is a matter of dispute as to what degree that doctrine constituted a scientific method for propagating knowledge.[102] Whatever the method of the ancients, Sun Yat-sen proposed to modify it in three steps: the acknowledgment of the pragmatic foundations of social ideas, the recognition of the necessity for knowledge before action, and the introduction of the experimental method. His pragmatic position shows no particular indication of having been derived from any specific source; it was a common enough tendency in old Chinese thought, from the beginning; in advocating it, Sun Yat-sen may have been revolutionary only in his championing of an idea which he may well have had since early childhood. His stress upon the necessity of ideological clarity as antecedent [pg 084] to revolutionary or any other kind of action is negatively derived from Wang Yang-ming, whose statement of the converse Sun Yat-sen was wont to attack. The belief in the experimental method is clearly enough the result of his Western scientific training—possibly in so direct a fashion as the personal influence of one of his instructors, Dr. James Cantlie, later Sir James Cantlie, of Queen's College, Hongkong. Sun Yat-sen was a physician; his degree Dr. was a medical and not an academic one; and there is no reason to overlook the influence of his vocation, a Western one, in estimating the influence of the Western experimental method.[103]
The overwhelming preponderance of Chinese elements in the new ideology proposed by Sun Yat-sen must not hide the fact that, in so stable an ideology as that of old China, the modifications which Sun advocated were highly significant. In method, experimentalism;[104] in background, the whole present body of Western science—these were to move China deeply, albeit a China that remained [pg 085] Chinese. There is a fundamental difference between Sun's doctrine of ideological extension (“the need for knowledge”) and Confucius' doctrine of ideological rectification (chêng ming). Confucius advocated the establishment of a powerful ideology for the purpose of extending ideological control and thereby of minimizing the then pernicious effects of the politically active proto-nations of his time. Sun Yat-sen, reared in a world subject to ideological control, saw no real necessity for strengthening it; what he desired was to prepare China psychologically for the development of a clear-cut conscious nation and a powerful government as the political instrument of that nation. In spite of the great Chinese emphasis which Sun pronounced in his ideology, and in spite of his many close associations with old Chinese thought, his governmental principles are in a sense diametrically opposed to Confucianism. Confucius sought to establish a totalitarian system of traditional controls which would perpetuate society and civilization regardless of the misadventures or inadequacies of government. Sun Yat-sen was seeking to build a strong liberal protective state within the framework of an immemorial society which was largely non-political; his doctrine, which we may call totalitarianism in reverse, tended to encourage intellectual freedom rather than any rigid ideological coördination. The mere fact that Sun Yat-sen trusted the old Chinese ideology to the ordeal of free criticism is, of course, further testimony to his belief in the fundamental soundness of the old intellectual order—an order which needed revision and supplementation to guide modern China through the perils of its destiny.
Before passing to a brief consideration of the nature of the society to be developed through this nationalist ideology, it may be interesting to note the value-scheme in the ideology. There was but one value—the survival of the Chinese people with their own civilization. All [pg 086] other considerations were secondary; all other reforms were means and not ends. Nationalism, democracy, and min shêng were each indispensable, but none was superior to the supreme desideratum, Chinese survival. That this survival was a vivid problem to Sun, almost any of his lectures will testify. Tai Chi-tao, one of the inner circle of Sun Yat-sen's disciples, summarized the spirit of this nationalism when he wrote; “We are Chinese, and those things that we have to change first lie in China. But if all things in China have become worthless, if Chinese culture no longer has any significance in the cultural history of the world, if the Chinese people has lost its power of holding its culture high, we might as well wait for death with bound hands—what would be the use of going on with revolution?”[105] Sun Yat-sen made concessions to cosmopolitanism, which he saw as ideal to be realized in the remote future. First and last, however, he was concerned with his own people, the Chinese.
What was to be the nature of the society which would arise from the knowledge and application of the new ideology? Sun planned to introduce the idea of a race-nation into the Chinese ideology, to replace the definite but formless we-you outlook which the Chinese of old China had had toward outsiders almost indiscriminately.[106] The old anti-barbarian sentiment had from time to time in the past been very powerful; Sun Yat-sen called this nationalism also, not distinguishing it from the new kind of nationalism which he advocated—a modern nationalism [pg 087] necessarily connoting a plurality of equal nations. The self-consciousness of the Chinese he wished to restore, although on a basis of justice and the mutual recognition by the nations of each other's right to exist. But this nationalism was not to be a complete break with the past, for the new China was to continue the traditional function of old China—of being the teacher and protectress of Eastern Asia. It was the duty of China to defend the oppressed among the nations, and to smite down the Great Powers in their oppressiveness. We may suppose that this benevolence of the Chinese race-nation would benefit the neighbors of China only so long as those neighbors, quickened themselves by nationalist resurgences, did not see something sinister in the benevolent manifest destiny of the Chinese.
It was a matter of policy, rather than of ideology, as to what the Chinese nation was to include. There were possibilities of a conflict with the Communists over the question of Outer Mongolia. Physically, Sun saw the Mongols as one of the five component peoples of the Great Chung-hua Republic. At another time he suggested that they might become assimilated. He never urged the Mongols to separate from China and join the Soviet Union, or even continue as a completely independent state.[107] There was always the possibility of uncertainty in the case of persons who were—by the five principle elements of race (according to Sun Yat-sen, blood, livelihood, language, religion, and mores)[108]—members of the Chinese race-nation but did not consider themselves such.
Chinese nationalism was to lead to cosmopolitanism. Any attempt to foster cosmopolitanism before solving the [pg 088] national problem was not only Utopian but perverse. The weakness of the Chinese had in great part been derived from their delusions of world-order in a world that was greater than they imagined, and the true solution to the Chinese question was to be found, not in any vain theory for the immediate salvation of the world as a whole, but in the diligent and patriotic activities of the Chinese in their own country. China was to help the oppressed nations of the earth, not the oppressed classes. China was to help all Asia, and especially the countries which had depended upon China for protection, and had been failed in their hour of need by the impotent Manchu Dynasty. China was, indeed, to seek the coöperation of the whole world, and the promotion of universal peace. But China was to do all this only when she was in a position to be able to do so, and not in the meantime venture forth on any splendid fantasies which would profit no people.
The survival of China was the supreme aim of Sun Yat-sen. How did he propose that China, once conscious of itself, should control itself to survive and go onwards to the liberation and enrichment of mankind? These are questions that he answered in his ideology of democracy and of min shêng.
Chapter III. The Theory of Democracy.
Democracy in the Old World-Society.
In describing a few of the characteristics of the old ideology and the old society which may assist the clarification of the principle of democracy, it may prove useful to enter into a brief examination of what the word may mean in the West, to refer to some of the ideas and institutions of old China that were or were not in accord with the Western notion of democracy, and, finally, to see what connection Sun Yat-sen's theory of democracy may have either with the Western term or with elements in the Chinese background. Did Sun Yat-sen propound an entirely new theory as the foundation of his theory of democracy for the Chinese race-nation, or did he associate several hitherto unrelated ideas and systems to make a new whole?
The European word democracy may, for the purposes of this examination, be taken to have two parts to its meaning; first, with regard to the status of individuals in society; second, with respect to the allocation of political power in society. In the former sense, democracy may refer to an equalitarianism of status, or to a social mobility so easy and so general as to encourage the impression that position is a consequence of the behavior of the individual, and a fair gauge to his merit. In the latter part of the meaning, democracy may refer to the identification of the governed and the governors, or to the coincidence of the actions of the governors with the wishes of the governed. Each of these ideas—equalitarianism, free mobility, popular government, and representative government—has been referred to as the essence of democracy. One of them [pg 090] may lead to the discovery of a significance for democracy relevant to the scheme of things in the old Chinese society.
Egalitarianism and mobility were both present in old Chinese society. The Chinese have had neither an hereditary aristocracy equivalent to the Western, nor a caste-system resembling that of India or Japan, since the breakdown of the feudal system twenty-three centuries ago.[109] The extra-legal egalitarianism of the Chinese has been so generally remarked upon by persons familiar with that nation, that further discussion of it here is superfluous. Birth has probably counted less in China than it has in any other country in the world.
The egalitarianism of intercourse was a powerful aid to social mobility. The Chinese never pretended to economic, political, or intellectual equality; the mere statement of such a doctrine would have been sufficient refutation of it to the members of the old society. Yet there were no gradations of weight beyond educational, political, and economic distinctions, and the organization of the old society was such that mobility in these was relatively free. Movement of an individual either upwards or downwards in the economic, political, or academic scale was retarded by the influence of the family, which acted as a drag either way. Movement was nevertheless continuous and conspicuous; a proof of this movement is to be found in the fact that there are really no supremely great families in China, comparable to the great names of Japan or of the Euramerican nations. (The closest approximation to this is the K'ung family, the family of Confucius; since the family is large, its eminence is scarcely more than nominal and it has no political power.).
Mobility in China was fostered by the political arrangements. The educational-administrative system provided a [pg 091] channel upwards and downwards. The government tended, for the most part, to be the way up, while the economic system was the way down for prominent official families. Few families managed to remain eminent for more than a few generations, and—with the great size of families—there was always room at the top. If a man were not advancing himself, there was always the possibility that a kinsman might win preferment, to the economic and political advantage of the whole family group.
Social relations—in the narrowest sense of the word—were characterized by an extreme attention to form as such, and great contempt for it otherwise. Ritualism never became a chivalry or a cult of honor. There was always the emphasis upon propriety and courtesy but, once the formalities were done with, there was little social distinction between members of different economic, political, or academic classes.[110]
In connection with control and representation, a great deal more can be said. In the first place, the relations between the governing ideologue in the Confucian teachings,[111] and the governed accepters of the ideology in the Confucian system were to be discovered through yüeh.
Yüeh, commonly translated “music” or “harmony,” plays a peculiar rôle in the Confucian teachings. It is the mass and individual emotional pattern, as li is the behavior pattern. If the people follow the proper behavior pattern, their emotional pattern must also be good. Consequently, the function of a truly excellent ruler was the scrutiny of yüeh. If he were a man of superior penetration, he should be able to feel the yüeh about him, and thus discover the temper of the populace, without reference to electoral machinery or any other government instrumentality. Yüeh is to be seen in the tone of voices, in the rhythm of behavior. If it is good, it will act with increasing effect upon itself. If bad, it serves as a warning to the authorities. As Prof. Hsü says, “For rulers and administrators yüeh has two uses; first, it enables them to ascertain the general sentiment of the people toward the government and political life; and second, it cultivates a type of individual attitude that is most harmonious with the environment. The joint work of li and yüeh would produce social harmony and social happiness—which is the ultimate aim of the State.”[112]
Yüeh is, however, a peculiar phenomenon, which can scarcely be called either representation or control. It is an idea rooted in the curiously pragmatic-mystical world-view of the Confucians, that same world-view which elevated virtue almost to the level of a physical substance, subject to the same sort of laws of disruption or transmission. Nothing like yüeh can be found in Western political thought; however significant it may have been in China, any attempt to deal with it in a Western language would have more than a touch of futility, because of the great chasm of strangeness that separates the two intellectual worlds at so many places.
A more concrete illustration of the old Chinese ideas of [pg 093] popular control may be found in the implications of political Confucianism, as Hsü renders them:
From the Confucian doctrine of stewardship, namely, that the king is an ordinary person selected by God upon his merit to serve as the steward of God in the control of the affairs of the people for the welfare of the people, there are deduced five theories of political democracy. In the first place, the government must respect public opinion. The will of the people is the will of God, and thus the king should obey both the will of the people and the will of God....
In the second place, government should be based upon the consent of the governed....
In the third place, the people have a duty as well as a right to carry on revolution as the last resort in stopping tyranny.... Revolution is regarded as a natural blessing; it guards against tyranny and promotes the vitality of the people. It is in complete harmony with natural law.
In the fourth place, the government exists for the welfare of the people.
In the fifth place, liberty, equality and equity should be preserved. The State belong equally to all; and so hereditary nobility, hereditary monarchy, and despotism are deplored. Confucius and his disciples seem to advocate a democracy under the form of an elective monarchy or a constitutional monarchy....
Local self-government is recognized in the Confucian system of government.... The Confucian theory of educational election suggests the distinctly new idea of representation.[113]
This summary could scarcely be improved upon although it represents a considerable latitude of interpretation in the subject-matter of the classics. The voice of the people was the voice of God. From other political writers of antiquity—Mêng Tzŭ, Mo Ti, Han Fei Tzŭ and the Legalists, and others—the Chinese received a variety of political interpretations, none of which fostered the development of autocracy as it developed in Europe.
The reason for this is simple. In addition to the eventual popular control of government, and the necessity for the close attention of the government to the wishes of the people, the classical writers, for the most part, did not emphasize the position of government. With the increasing ideological solidarity of the Chinese world, the increasing antiquity and authority of tradition, and the stability of the social system, the Chinese states withered away—never completely, but definitely more so than their analogues in the West. There appeared, consequently, in China a form of laissez-faire that surpassed that of Europe completely in thoroughness. Not only were the economic functions of the state reduced to a minimum—so was its police activity. Old China operated with a government in reserve, as it were; a government which was nowhere nearly so important to its subjects as Western governments commonly are. The government system was one democratic in that it was rooted in a society without intransigeant class lines, with a considerable degree of social mobility for the individual, with the total number of individuals exercising a terrific and occasionally overwhelming pressure against the political system. And yet it was not the governmental system upon which old China might have based its claim to be a democracy. It could have, had it so wished, claimed that name because of the weakness or the absence of government, and the presence of other social organizations permitting the individual a considerable amount of latent pressure to exercise upon his social environment.
This arose from the nature of the large non-political organizations which sustained Chinese civilization even more than did the educational-administrative authorities. It is obvious that, in theory, a free and unassociated individual in a laissez-faire polity would be defenseless against extra-politically organized persons. The equities [pg 095] of modern democracy lie largely in the development of a check and balance system of pressure groups, affording each individual adequate means of exercising pressure on behalf of his various interests. It was this function—the development of a just statement of pressure-groups—which the old Chinese world-society developed for the sufficient representation of the individual.
There was no illusion of complete personal liberty. Such a notion was scarcely thinkable. Every individual had his family, his village, and—although this was by no means universally true—his hui, whether one or, less commonly, several. He was never left solitary and defenseless against powerfully organized interests. No more intimate community of interests could be discovered than that of a family, since the community of interests there would verge on the total. Ancient Chinese society provided the individual with mechanisms to make his interests felt and effective, through the family, the village, and the association.
In the West the line of influence runs from the individual, who feels a want, to the group which assists him in expressing it, to the government, upon which the group exercises pressure, in order that the government may use its power to secure what the first group wants from some other group. The line runs, as it were, in the following manner: individual-group-government-group. In China the group exercised its pressure for the most part directly. The individual need not incorporate himself in a group to secure the recognition and fulfillment of his interests; he was by birth a member of the group, and with the group was mobile. In a sense old Chinese society was thoroughly democratic.
On the basis of such a background, Sun Yat-sen did not believe that the Chinese had too much government, but, rather, too little. He did not cry for liberty; he denounced its excess instead. On the basis of the old social organization, which was fluid and yet stable, he sought to create a [pg 096] democracy which would pertain to the interests of the nation as a whole, not to the interests of individuals or groups. These could go on in the traditional manner. The qualifications implicit in Sun Yat-sen's championship of democracy must be kept in mind, and his acquaintance with the democratic techniques of the old society be allowed for. Otherwise his advocacy of the recognition of nationalist rights and his neglect or denunciation of individual liberties might be taken for the dogma of a lover of tyranny or dictatorship.
Old China possessed a considerable degree of egalitarianism, of social mobility, of popular control, and of popular participation, through the civil service, in what little government there was. In addition, ideological control ensured a minimum of conflicts of interests and consequently a maximum facility for self-expression without conflict with other individuals, groups, or society as a whole. Finally, the protection and advancement of individuals' rights and interests were fostered by a system of group relationships which bound virtually every individual into a group and left none to fall, solitary, at the mercy of others who were organized.
Why then did Sun Yat-sen advocate democracy? What were his justifications for it, in a society already so democratic?
Five Justifications of a Democratic Ideology.
Sun Yat-sen, realizing the inescapable necessity of nationalism, did not immediately turn to democracy as a necessary instrument for its promotion. He hated the Manchus on the Dragon Throne—human symbols of China's subjugation—but at first considered replacing them with a new Chinese dynasty. It was only after he had found the heirs of the Ming dynasty and the descendants [pg 097] of Confucius to be unworthy that he turned to republicanism and found democracy, with its many virtues.[114] He early became enamored of the elective system, as found in the United States, as the only means of obtaining the best governors.[115] In the final stage he had departed so far from his earlier way of thinking that he criticized Dr. Goodnow severely for recommending the re-introduction of a monarchy in China.
Sun Yat-sen, as a good nationalist, made earnest efforts to associate his doctrines with those of the sages and to avoid appearing as a proponent of Western civilization. It is, consequently, not unusual to discover him citing Confucius and Mencius on vox populi vox dei, and saying,
“The government of Yao and Shun was monarchical in name but democratic in practice, and for that reason Confucius honored these men.”[116]
He considered that democracy was to the sages an “ideal that could not be immediately realized,”[117] and therefore implied that modern China, in realizing democracy, was attaining an ideal cherished by the past. Democracy, other things apart, was a filial duty. This argument, while persuasive in Chinese, can scarcely be considered Sun Yat-sen's most important one in favor of democracy.
His most cogent and perhaps most necessary argument was based on his conception of national liberty as opposed to the liberty of the individual. He delivered a spirited denunciation of those foreigners who criticized the Chinese for being without liberty, and in the next breath complained that the Chinese had no government, that they were “loose sand.” (Another fashionable way of expressing this idea is by saying that “China is a geographical expression.”) He said: “If, for instance, the foreigners say that China is ‘loose sand,’ what do they finally mean by that expression? They mean to say that each individual is free, that everybody is free, that each one takes the maximum of liberty, and that, as a result, they are ‘loose sand’.”[118] He pointed out that the Chinese had not suffered from the loose autocracy in the Empire, and that they had no historical justification for parroting the cry “Liberty!” simply because the Westerners, who had really lacked it, had cried and fought for it. He cited John Millar's definition of liberty, given in The Progress of Science Relative to Law and Government, 1787: “True liberty consists in this: that the liberty of each individual is limited by the non-infringement on the liberty of others; when it invades the liberty of others, it is no longer liberty.”[119] Sun Yat-sen had himself defined liberty as [pg 099] follows: “Liberty consists in being able to move, in having freedom of action within an organized group.”[120] China, disorganized, had no problem of individual liberty. There was, as a matter of fact, too much liberty.[121] What the Chinese had to do was to sacrifice some of their individual liberty for the sake of the organized nation. Here we find a curious turn of thought of which several other examples may be found in the San Min Chu I: Sun Yat-sen has taken a doctrine which in the West applies to the individual, and has applied it to the nation. He believes in liberty; but it is not the liberty of the individual which is endangered in China. It is the liberty of the nation—which has been lost before foreign oppression and exploitation. Consequently he preaches national and not individual liberty. Individual liberty must be sacrificed for the sake of a free nation.[122] Without discipline there is no order; without order the nation is weak and oppressed. The first step to China's redemption is min tsu, the union (nationalism) of the people. Then comes min ch'üan, the power of the people. The liberty of the nation is expressed through the power of the people.
How is the power of the people to be exercised? It is to be exercised by democratic means. To Sun Yat-sen, the liberty of the nation and the power of the people were virtually identical. If the Chinese race gained its freedom, that freedom, exercised in an orderly manner, could mean only democracy. It is this close association of nationalism (min tsu) and democracy (min ch'üan), this consideration of democracy as the expression of nationalism, that forms, within the framework of the San Min Chu I, what is probably the best nationalist argument for democracy—best, that is, in being most coherent with the Three Principles as a whole.
If the view of democracy just expressed be considered an exposition of the fundamental necessity of democracy, the third argument may be termed the dialectical or historical championship of democracy. Sun Yat-sen believed in the existence of progress, and considered that there was an inevitable tendency toward democracy: the overthrow of the Manchus was a result of the “... world tide. That world current can be compared to the course of the Yangtze or the Yellow River. The flow of the stream turns perhaps in many directions, now toward the north, now toward the south, but in the end flows toward the east in spite of all obstacles; nothing can stem it. In the same way the world-tide passes ...; now it has arrived at democracy, and there is no way to stem it.”[123] This belief in the inevitability as well as the justice of his cause encouraged Sun, and has lent to his movement—as his followers see it—something of the impressive sweep that the Communists see in their movement.
Sun Yat-sen did not devise any elaborate scheme of dialectical materialism or economic determinism to bolster his belief in the irreversibility of the flow to democracy. With infinite simplicity, he presented an exposition of democracy in space and time. In time, he saw a change from the rule of force to theocracy, then to monarchy, and then to democracy; this change was a part of the progress of mankind, which to him was self-evident and inevitable.[124] In space he perceived that increasingly great numbers of people threw off monarchical rule and turned to democracy. He hailed the breakdown of the great empires, Germany and Russia, as evidence of the power of [pg 101] democracy. “... if we observe (things) from all angles, we see that the world progresses daily, and we realize that the present tide has already swept into the age of democracy; and that no matter how great drawbacks and failures may be, democracy will maintain itself in the world for a long time (to come). For that reason, thirty years ago, we promoters of the revolution, resolved that it was impossible to speak of the greatness of China or to carry out the revolution without advocating democracy.”[125]
A fourth argument in favor of democracy, and one which cannot be expanded here, since it involves reference to Sun Yat-sen's practical plans for the political regeneration of China, was his assertion that democracy was an adjunct to appropriate and effective public administration. Sun Yat-sen's plans concerning the selection of officials in a democratic state showed that he believed the merging of the Chinese academic-civil service technique with Western democracy would produce a paragon among practicable governments.
Fifthly and finally, Sun regarded democracy as an essential modernizing force.[126] In the introduction of Western material civilization, which was always an important consideration to his mind, he felt that a certain ideological and political change had to accompany the economic and technological revolution that—in part natural and in part to be stimulated by nationalist political interference—was to revolutionize the min shêng of China, the economic and social welfare of the Chinese people. While this argument in favor of democracy is similar to the historical argument, it differs from the latter in that Sun Yat-sen saw the technique of democracy influencing not only the political, but the economic and social, life of the people as well. The growth of corporate responsibility, the development [pg 102] of a more rigid ethical system in matters of finance, the disappearance of too strict an emphasis upon the personal element in politics (which has clouded Chinese politics with a fog of conspiracy and intrigue for centuries), a trust in mathematics (as shown in reliance upon the voting technique for ascertaining public opinion), and the development of a new kind of individual aggressiveness and uprightness were among the changes which, necessary if China was to compete in the modern world, democracy might assist in effecting. While these desiderata do not seem large when set down in the vast field of political philosophy, they are of irritating importance in the inevitable trivalities upon which so much of day-to-day life depends, and would undoubtedly improve the personal tone of Sino-Western relations. Sun never divorced the theoretical aspects of his thought from the practical, as has been done here for purposes of exposition, and even the tiniest details of everyday existence were the objects of his consideration and criticism. In itself, therefore, the modernizing force of democracy, as seen in Sun's theory, may not amount to much; nevertheless, it must not be forgotten.[127]
Democracy, although secondary in point of time to his theory, is of great importance in Sun's plans for the political nature of the new China. He justified democracy because it was (1) an obligation laid upon modern China by the sages of antiquity; (2) a necessary consequence of nationalism, since nationalism was the self-rule of a free people, and democracy the effectuation of that self-rule, and democracy the effectuation of that self-rule; (3) the government of the modern age; China, along with the rest of the world, was drawn by the tide of progress into the [pg 103] age of democratic achievement; (4) the political form best calculated for the obtaining of good administration; and (5) a modernizing force that would stir and change the Chinese people so as to equip them for the competitions of the modern world.
In the lecture in which he criticized the inadequacies of democracy as applied in the West, Sun Yat-sen made an interesting comment on the proletarian dictatorship which had recently been established in Russia. “Recently Russia invented another form of government. That government is not representative; it is absolute popular government. In what does that absolute popular government really consist? As we know very little about it, we cannot judge it aright, but we believe that this (absolute popular government) is evidently much better than a representative government.”[128] He went on immediately to say that the Three Principles were what China needed, and that the Chinese should not imitate the political systems advocated in Europe and America, but should adapt democracy in their own way. In view of his objection to a permanent class dictatorship, as opposed to a provisional party dictatorship, and the very enthusiastic advocacy of democracy represented by the arguments described above, it appears unlikely in the extreme that Sun Yat-sen, had he lived beyond 1925, would have abandoned his own plan of democracy for China in favor of “absolute popular government.” The phrase was, at the time, since Sun Yat-sen was seeking Russian assistance, expedient for a popular lecture. Its importance might easily be exaggerated.
The Three Natural Classes of Men.
Having in mind the extreme peril in which the Chinese race-nation stood, its importance in a world of Western or [pg 104] Western-type states, and seeing nationalism as the sole means of defending and preserving China, Sun Yat-sen demanded that the Chinese ideology be extended by the acquisition of knowledge. If this modernizing and, if a neologism be permitted, stateizing process were to succeed, it must needs be fostered by a well-prepared group of persons within the society.
In the case of the Confucian social theory, it was the scholars who took the ideology from the beliefs and traditions of the agrarian masses or whole people, rectified it, and gave it back to them. This continuous process of ideological maintenance by means of conformity (li) and, when found necessary, rectification (chêng ming) was carried on by an educational-political system based upon a non-hereditary caste of academician-officials called Mandarins by the early Western travellers. In the case of those modern Western states which base their power upon peculiar ideologies, the philosophy-imposing caste has been a more or less permanent party- or class-dictatorship. Superficially, the party-dictatorship planned by Sun Yat-sen would seem to resemble these. His theory, however, presents two bases for a class of ideologues: one theoretical, and presumably based upon the Chinese; and one applied, which is either of his own invention or derived from Western sources. The class of ideological reformers proposed in what may be called the applied aspect of his theory was to be organized by means of the party-dictatorship of the Kuomintang. His other basis for finding a class of persons whose influence over the ideology was to be paramount was more theoretical, and deserves consideration among the more abstract aspects of his doctrines.
He hypothecated a tripartite division of men:
Men may be divided into three classes according to their innate ability or intelligence. The first class of men may be called hsien chih hsien cho or the “geniuses.” The geniuses are endowed with [pg 105]unusual intelligence and ability. They are the creators of new ideas, fathers of invention, and originators of new achievements. They think in terms of group welfare and so they are the promoters of progress. Next are the hou chih hou cho or the “followers.”Being less intelligent and capable than the hsien chih hsien cho, they do not create or invent or originate, but they are good imitators and followers of the first class of men. The last are the pu chih pu cho, or the “unthinking,” whose intelligence is inferior to that of the other two classes of men. These people do what the others instruct them to do, but they do not think about it. In every sphere of activity all three classes of men are present. In politics, for example, there are the creators or inventors of new ideas and movements, then the propagators of these ideas and movements, and lastly the mass of men who are taught to practice these ideas.[129]
The harmony of this conception with the views of Confucius is evident. Presbyter is Priest writ large; genius is another name for scholar. Sun, although bitterly opposed to the mandarinate of the Empire and the pseudo-Republic, could not rid himself of the age-old Chinese idea of a class organization on a basis of intellect rather than of property. He could not champion a revolutionary creed based upon an economic class-war which he did not think existed, and which he did not wish to foster, in his own country. He continued instead the consistent theory of an aristocracy of intellect, such as had controlled China before his coming.
The aristocracy of intellect is not to be judged, however, by the old criteria. Under the old regime, a scholar-ruler was one who deferred to the wisdom of the ancients, who was fit to perpetuate the mysteries of the written language and culture for the benefit of future ages, and who was [pg 106] meanwhile qualified by his training to assume the rôle of counsellor and authority in society. In the theory of Sun Yat-sen, the genius leader is not the perpetuator but the discoverer. He is the social engineer. His work is similar to that of the architect who devises plans for a building which is to be built by workers (the unthinking) under the guidance of foremen (the followers).[130] In this guise, the new intellectual aristocrat is a figure more akin to the romantic Western pioneers and inventors than to the serene, conservative scholars of China in the past.
The break with Western thought comes in Sun's distinguishing three permanent, natural classes of men. Though in their aptitudes the hsien chih hsien cho are more like modern engineers than like archaic literary historians, they form a class that is inevitably the ruling class. To Marxism this is anathema; it would imply that the Communist party is merely the successor of the bourgeoisie in leading the unthinking masses about—a more benevolent successor, to be sure, but still a class distinct from the led proletariat of the intellect. To Western democratic thought, this distinction would seem at first glance to invalidate any future advocacy of democracy. To the student interested in contrasting ideological control and political government, the tripartite division of Sun Yat-sen is significant of the redefinition in modern terms, and in an even more clear-cut manner, of the Confucian theory of scholarly leadership.
How were the geniuses of the Chinese resurgence to make their knowledge useful to the race-nation? How could democracy be recognized with the leadership and ideological control of an intellectual class? To what [pg 107] degree would such a reconciliation, if effected, represent a continuation, in different terms, of the traditions and institutions of the old Chinese world? Questions such as these arise from the fusion of the old traditions and new necessities.