The difference between man and the beasts of the field and the birds of the air consists just in this. We read in the classics of "a virtue of surpassing excellence, which is given to the people as a law of their being," and the virtue alluded to is this propensity to look after one's own welfare and at the same time the welfare of one's fellow-men. We are naturally endowed with the disposition to will the good of others and to act in their service. "Action," with the qualities I have sketched, is something primordially bound up with life.
The Revolution Demands Action of All Men at All Times
The essential meaning of action being once understood we may proceed to inquire into its spirit and wherein it finds its highest expression. How is it that men for all the apparent unity of their existence sometimes live lives of such devotion to the good of mankind and the world that they earn the admiration of posterity, while others live degenerate lives governed by the lowest desires, to the detriment of themselves and their neighbors? Education and environment are factors that play their part in this, but more important is what the ancient called "material desire"—the tendency to seek possession rather than creation, to enjoy rather than contribute. In the words of Dr. Sun, "making one's aim acquisition and not service" leads to degraded and uncontrolled conduct which is an obstacle to human progress and what we as comrades in Revolution must strive our utmost to avoid and eradicate.
Revolutionary motives are motives of service, of self-sacrifice for the good of others. The task the Revolution sets itself is the "practice of goodwill" in the broadest sense of those words,—action inspired by love for men to the exclusion of all that tends to their harm. In our revolutionary zeal to promote positive action throughout our world we aim to create an all-pervading moral attitude to life such as is rationally conformable to man's true nature; and we moreover seek to bring into full play the deep funds of humanity and benevolence in our own people. We push aside considerations of individual ability, of past education and environment, and of how far bad habits acquired may have become ingrained. We appeal to all as they are to take fresh stock of their lives and realize how from the very fact of their being alive they possess the ability to act,—to act in no less a sense than the great deliverers of mankind in their saintly and heroic deeds. The difference between such deeds and the actions of normal daily life is one of degree, not of kind. We are everyone men born of woman and passing our days between heaven and earth; not for us to vex ourselves with fear of failure; the only failure is in failing to act.
The Meaning of Ease
Let use take the three key-virtues of judgment, goodwill, and courage as our guides in the task of "playing the man." For the rest, let us follow the dictum of Sun Wên to the effect that "the very clever and able should strive to serve ten million fellow-men; a man of lesser ability may aspire to serve ten hundred men; while a man devoid of talent may content himself with doing the best he can for a single fellow-man." The highly talented may perform their duties with ease; the moderately gifted may make smooth progress with theirs; while the poorly gifted may do so with only a narrow margin of competence; but all that matters is our full use of our faculties in positive action for the good of others. If we advance without ever falling away from a pure and concentrated resolve to do our best, we shall certainly be able to realize the ideal of action. In a sense it will prove easy, though this does not of course mean that anything can be got without pains or anything managed in a facile and quiescent fashion. Nor does it mean that all will necessarily be plain sailing, fraught with no obstacles. Our path through life is strewn with dangers, hindrances and obstructions. Revolutionary action is attended by many risks; it requires the will to make great sacrifices. Nevertheless, man's capacity for positive action has achieved many a colossal feat in the course of his history, the prodigious hydraulic engineering of the ancients, ascent into the air and penetration of the earth, and revolutionary deeds that have transformed the face of human affairs. The ultimate consideration is always whether we possess thorough determination and a spirit of unflinching zeal, for with these we may overcome towering obstacles as it were "in our stride," and "face dangers with imperturbable calm." A man worthy of his place in the ranks of the Revolution will regard as nothing extraordinary difficulties and dangers that would daunt others. His revolutionary spirit, which is the very spirit of action, gives him a sublime indifference to whatever may be the magnitude of the demands his duty makes upon him; whatever his principles, faith and responsibility involve is "all in the day's work" for him, though it be ordeal by fire and water or the abnegation of everything dearest to him. He takes no account of difficulty, and fear is a thing still stranger to him. It is in the sense that to a man with such an attitude action is easy that I use the word.
Action born of that innate character given us with life, conceived in absolute sincerity, and aimed at the good of others treats things as "all of a piece." From beginning to end of an appointed task it maintains a uniform consistency and integrity of purpose. The seeds of its final success are inherent in its first beginnings. Difficulty and failure as I understand them can have no part in such action.
Positive action with a complete integrity of purpose produces that honesty and trustworthiness which are distinctive marks of all true action. It penetrates to the core of matters, and deals only in realities. It is free from superficial trappings and fuss; permits of no slack approximation and evasion of the point, all of which comes from that shrinking from effort and hardship that is so incompatible with the spirit of positive action. Whereas I have called all true action easy, those who go about things without its spirit find themselves confronted with seemingly insurmountable difficulties everywhere. When the ancients said: "There is nothing either difficult or easy in the world," they had in mind this way of thinking, as I had too when I said that wartime and peacetime were one and the same.