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.