To effect this translation of ideas and values, several methods are available. The issue cannot be dodged by a denial of its existence; the mere act of explanation involves some process, whether deliberate or unconscious, of translation and transvaluation. If the interpreter refuses to deal with the problem consciously, he will nevertheless be guided by his unrevealed assumptions. To give an accounting for what he has done, he must, first, admit that he is interpreting, and second, seek to make plain what he is doing, so that his readers may allow for the process. The demonstration of the consequences of interpretation minimizes their possible adverse effects. The simplest way to allow for the alterations (beyond mere reproduction) arising from interpretation would be to adopt a technique so widely known that others could, in their own minds, try to re-trace the steps of the process and negate the changes. Among such widely known techniques are the Marxian and the sociological.
Both these scarcely seem adapted to the problems presented by an interpretation of Sun Yat-sen. The Marxian terminology is so peculiarly suited to the ulterior purposes the Marxians keep in mind, and is so esoteric when applied to matters not related to the general fields in which the Marxians are interested, that it could scarcely [pg 015] be applied in the present instance. A non-Marxian would find it a hazardous task. The interpreter of Sun Yat-sen must interpret into something; what, depends on the audience. Dialectical materialism, in the abstract excellent as a technique, would scarcely make Sun understandable to most Americans of the present day. Sun himself rejected the Marxian method of interpretation; an American audience would also reject it; these two factors outweigh all the conceivable advantages.
The sociological technique of interpretation is quite another question. The various methods of analysis developed by each of the schools of sociologists are still the objects rather than the tools of study. Such men as Max Weber and Vilfredo Pareto have made contributions to Western social thought which enrich the scope and method of the social studies. Their methods of analysis are not weighted down by a body of extraneous considerations, as is the Marxian, and they promise an objectivity not otherwise attainable. On the other hand, they are still at that stage of development where the technique obtrudes itself; it has not, as has the inductive method in general, become so much taken for granted as to be invisible.
The sociological approach need not, however, be carried to the full extent thought necessary by its advocates. In the study of law, the consideration of extra-juridical materials is called sociological in contrast to the strictly juristic. If the legal scholar goes beyond the strict framework of the law, and considers other elements in man's behavior and knowledge while dealing with legal problems, he is apt to be called a sociological jurist. In doing so he is not committed, however, to belief in or use of any particular form of what is known as the science of society or sociology. He may adopt almost any sort of social outlook, or may be committed to any one of many doctrines of social value and to any one of widely varying methods of social study.
This negative, broad sense of the sociological, when applied to the study of politics, has commonly meant that the scholars employing it began with the notion of the political, but, finding it too narrow, touched upon related fields. An interpretation of Sun Yat-sen's politics might be based on this method. It would still be a political work, in that it sought to associate his ideas with the ideas concerning government to be found in the West, but would be free, nevertheless, to touch upon non-political materials relevant to Sun's politics. The Chinese have had notions of authority and control radically different from those developed in the West; a purely juristic interpretation of the various Chinese politics would simply scrape the lacquer off the screen.
The Chinese have not had the sharp distinction of disciplines which runs through all Western learning. Since one of the most conspicuous ingredients in their thought—conspicuous, that is, to Westerners looking in from outside—has been the ethical, many Westerners have dismissed Chinese historical, political and more strictly philosophical thought as being loosely and amiably ethical but never getting anywhere. The Chinese did not departmentalize their learning to any considerable degree. Politics was not the special activity of a definite group of men, or the study of a select body of scholars. Politics ran through and across most of the activities in society, and was largely the interest of that intellectual élite by which China has been so distinguished on the roster of civilizations. In becoming everything, politics ceased being politics; that is, those elements in man's thought and behavior which Westerners have termed political were not separated and labelled. The Westerner must say that politics was everything in China, or that it was nothing.
An interpretation of Sun Yat-sen must keep in mind these differences between Chinese and Western categories. In doing so it will pass beyond the limits of what is commonly [pg 017] known as politics, since no sharp boundaries of “politics” are to be found in China. Yet, as an interpretation designed to serve Western readers, it must return again and again to Western politics, making comparisons when they are justified, pointing out differences between China and the West as they become relevant and clear. The interpretation will thus weave back and forth between conventional Western political science, with its state-mindedness, and the wholly different material of traditions and customs out of which Sun sought to construct an ideology and a system of working politics for China in the modern world.
How can this interpretation seek to avoid the misfortunes and errors into which so many similar attempts have fallen? It must proceed without the aid of such specialized techniques as dialectical-materialistic or Paretian analysis, and yet aim at the scientific, the rationally defensible, the objective. In seeking to apply a method in the interpretation of Sun Yat-sen, the work must face criticism of its method, must make the method explicit and simple enough to allow criticism. If the thought of Sun really is to emerge from the exposition, the exposition must allow itself to be judged, so that it can be appraised, and so that, one way or another, it may not interfere with the just evaluation of the materials which it seeks to present. Sun Yat-sen should not be judged poor because of a poor interpretation; nor, on the other hand, should his thought be adjudged more excellent or more exact than it seems to the Chinese, merely because the expositor has suggested an interpretation possibly more precise.
The technique adopted in the present work is a relatively simple one. It is an attempt to start de novo with certain concepts of society and government. Several simple although novel terms are introduced, to provide a foundation upon which the procedure may rest. One of [pg 018] these, for instance, is “ideology,” which in the present work refers to the whole psychological conditioning of a group of persons.[23] No attempt is made, at the beginning or at any later phase of the exposition, to distinguish between the ideology as belief and the ideology as truth. Whether the Chinese were and are right, or the Westerners, are questions, not for the student of comparative political science, but for the philosopher and the psychologist. The interpretation seeks, as far as possible, to transpose certain parts of the traditional Chinese ideology, as they were, and as Sun Yat-sen re-shaped them, into one frame of reference provided by the ideology of twentieth-century America. What the “real truth” is, does not matter; the Marxians would say that both ideologies were inexact; so might the Roman Catholics. If the [pg 019] ideology of old China, and the ideology that Sun wished to see developed in the minds of the Chinese people of the future, can be made comprehensible in terms of contemporary American beliefs, of fact or of value, this venture will have been successful.
The Chinese ideology cannot be explained in its own terms; these exist only in the Chinese language. If Sun Yat-sen's own arrangement of his works is inadequate for the Chinese, rearrangement is a task for the Chinese and not for the Western scholars to perform. The Westerners who deal with Sun can contribute substantially only if they give what the Chinese cannot—enough of a reference to their own ideology to permit a broader scale for the analysis and the appreciation of Sun's thought. Their knowledge of their own world of ideas is the special tool which justifies their intervention in this Chinese field of knowledge.