In avoiding the unjustifiable imposition of Western ideas and values upon the Chinese, and yet orienting Sun's thought with respect to the West, the interpretation will have to resort to several fairly evident means. In the first place, it will have to transpose Chinese ideas into the Western ideology, and yet avoid distortions of meaning. This can be partly done by the use of neutral terms, of terms which are simple and clear enough to reproduce the Chinese, and nevertheless not so heavily burdened with connotations that they will cause a reading-in of Western ideas not relevant to the point in question. More simply, the Chinese ideas must be represented by terms which approximate the same set of values in the West that their originals have in China. This will sometimes require the use of unfamiliar periphrases: the words “music” and “rites” may be given as “the rhythm of life” and “conformity to the ideology.” Secondly, the Chinese ideology need not be given as a whole; it is improbable that it could, without a terrific expansion [pg 020] of the Western ideology to accommodate it; but enough of the Chinese ideology must be given to explain the significant differences between the Chinese system of controlling the behavior of men, and the Western. This latter involves the choice of material, and is therefore by its nature challengeable.
Again, in demonstrating significant differences instead of merely seeking analogous (and probably misleading) examples, the interpretation might turn to certain aspects of Chinese philosophy which appear as strikingly illustrative of the point of view of the Chinese. Confucius the political thinker is only a small part of Confucius the man and the philosopher; Chinese political thought, although a vast field, is only a small part of the social thought of the Chinese. Only an infinitesimal part of this comparatively minor area of Chinese study will suffice to make clear some, at least, of the sharp differences of outlook between China and the West.
A recapitulation of this declaration of technique may be found helpful, for an understanding of Sun Yat-sen by Westerners is necessary because of the vastly different background of his thought. Even apart from the strangeness of his thought to the West, it is scattered in the original, and must be pieced together. An exposition of his ideas which would, at one and the same time, present a systematic outline of his ideas, and transpose them into a frame of reference where Western scholars might grasp them, might be a labor meriting performance. His terms would have to be rendered by neutral words (not overladen with particular Western contexts) or by neologisms, or simply left in the original, to develop meaning as a configuration of related ideas is built up about them. The problem of interpretation cannot, however, be solved by settling the difficulty of language: there still remains the question of a technique which can pretend to the scientific, the exact, the rationally defensible. Despite their great [pg 021] merits, the Marxian and Paretian techniques are not suited to the present task. The point of view and means of study of political science may be kept, if a few necessary borrowings from sociological thought (not necessarily sociology) are introduced. Such borrowing includes the use of notions such as non-political society, patterns of authority, and ideology, none of which are to be found in the more law-minded part of political science. By seeking to point out the Chinese, then the Western, ideas involved, without confusing the two, the presentation may succeed in transposing the ideology of Sun Yat-sen, as well as his beliefs concerning working politics, into the English language and into an explanatory but not distorting background. To do this, a small sampling of certain aspects of old Chinese social thought and behavior will be a required preliminary.
Chapter I. The Ideological, Social, and Political Background.
The Rationale of the Readjustment.
The San Min Chu I and related works of Sun Yat-sen represent in their entirety one of the most ambitious bodies of doctrine ever set forth by a political leader. They differ from such a document as the Communist Manifesto in that they comprehend a much greater range of subject matter and deal with it in much greater detail. They pertain not merely to the reconstitution of an economic or political system; they propose a plan for the reconstruction of a whole civilization, the reformation of a way of thought customary among a great part of the human race, and a consequent transformation of men's behavior. Conceived in the bold flights of a penetrating, pioneering mind, avowedly experimental at the time of their first utterance, these works of Sun have already played a most significant rôle in the Far East and may continue to affect history for a long time to come. They may quite legitimately be called the bible of new China.
Social change is a consequence of maladjustment. The thought of Sun Yat-sen is a program of change—change which, if it is to be understood, must be seen at its beginning and its end. The background from which Sun emerged and which was an implicit condition of all his utterances must be mentioned, so that the problems he faced may be understood. Only then will it be possible to turn to the plans he devised for the rethinking of Chinese tradition and the reorganization of Chinese polity. A vast maladjustment between the Chinese and the world outside led to the downfall of the Manchu Empire in China and has threatened the stability of every government [pg 023] erected since that time; Chinese society is in a state of profound unrest and recurrent turmoil. Sun Yat-sen contributed to the change, and sought a new order, to be developed from the disorder which, voluntarily or not, he helped in part to bring about.