The Humanism of China教程.docVIP

The Humanism of China “Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay,” sang another Western poet. Time indeed marched slowly in the long ages of China. A troubled age of “Warring States” gave birth, in the sixth century B.C., to Confucius and Lao-tse, the heralds of a brilliant creative period in philosophy and literature. Several centuries later China was finally united in a great empire; and with the restoration of order creative thought ceased. For the next two thousand years the Chinese mulled over their Confucian classics. They produced new schools of poetry, painting, and ceramics; they made such “contributions” as silk, tea, china, paper, printing, gunpowder, and the compass; they tried some political experiments, including price control and the ever-normal granary (an idea Henry Wallace got from them); they had revolutions, saw dynasties rise and fall and invaders come and go; but through all these upheavals their basic social and political institutions and their basic mentality remained unchanged. While Jesus would have felt an utter stranger in every century of Europe, Confucius would have felt quite at home in any century of China until our own. Better fifty years of Europe, perhaps?but better first to recognize the phenomenal achievement represented by the cycle of Cathay. China is the oldest of living civilizations, with a cultural tradition going back almost two thousand years before Christ. When Rome was at its peak there was as great an empire in China, which contributed to the fall of the “Eternal City” by throwing back the Huns, who then turned West. (Later it presented Europe with the Turks.) When Europe was wallowing in the barbarism of the Dark Ages, China was the most civilized land on earth, enjoying one of the most enlightened, polished epochs known to history. When Europe later became aware of China it humbly recognized a superior civilization, and down to the nineteenth was pleased to learn rather than teach. No society has cultivat