eam the hours away. The
American is after all not as bad as all that. It is only a question whether he will
have more or less of that sort of thing, and how he will arrange to make it possible.
Perhaps the American is merely ashamed of the word "loafing" in a world where everybody
is doing something, but somehow, as sure as I know he is also an animal, he likes
sometimes to have his muscles relaxed, to stretch on the sand, or to lie still with
one leg comfortably curled up and one arm placed below his head as his pillow. If
so, he cannot be very different from Yen Huei, who had exactly that virtue and whom
Confucius desperately admired among all his disciples. The only thing I desire to
see is that he be honest about it, and that he proclaim to the world that he likes
it when he likes it, that it is not when he is working in the office but when he is
lying idly on the

sand that his soul utters, "Life is beautiful. "
We are, therefore, about to see a philosophy and art of living as the mind of the
Chinese people as a whole has understood it. I am inclined to think that, in a good
or bad sense, there is nothing like il in the world. For here we come to an entirely
new way of looking at life by an entirely different type of mind. It is a truism lo
say that the culture of any nation is the product of its mind. Consequently, where
there is a national mind so racially different and historically isolated from the
Western cultural world, we have the right to expect new answers to the problems of
life, or what is better, new methods of approach, or, still better, a new posing of
the problems themselves. We know some of the virtues and deficiencies of that mind,
at least as revealed to us in the historical past. It has a glorious an and a
contemptible science, a magnificent common sense and an infantile logic, a fine
womanish chatter about life and no scholastic philosophy. Il is generally known that
the Chinese mind is an intensely practical, hard-headed one, and it is also known
to some lovers of Chinese art that it is a profoundly sensitive mind; by a still smaller
proportion of people, it is accepted as also a profoundly poetic and philosophical
mind. At least the Chinese are noted for taking things philosophically, which is
saying more than the statement that the Chinese have a great philosophy or have a
few great philosophers. F'or a nation to have a few philosophers is not so unusual,
bul for a nation to take things philosophically is terrific. It is evident anyway
that the Chinese as a nation are more philosophic than efficient, and that if it were
otherwise, no nation could have survived the high blood pressure of an efficient life
for four thousand years. Four thousand years of efficient living would ruin any
nation.
An important consequence is that, while in the West, the insane are so many th;n they
are put in an asylum, in China the insane are so unusual that we worship them, asのの
any body who has a knowledge of Chinese literature will testify. And that, after all,
is what I am driving at. Yes, the Chinese have a light, an almost gay, philosophy,
and the bcsl proof of their philosophic temper is to be found in this wise and merry
of living.

II. A PSEUDOSCIENTIFIC FORMULA
Let us begin with an examination of the Chinese mental make-up which produced this
philosophy of living: great realism, inadequate idealism, a high sense of humor, and
a high poetic sensitivity to life and nature.
Mankind seems to be divided into idealists and realists, and idealism and realism
are the two great forces molding human progress. The clay of humanity is made soft
and pliable by the water of idealism, but the stuff that holds it together is after
all the clay itself, or we might all evaporate into Ariels. The forces of idealism
and realism tug at each other in all human activities, personal, social and national,
and real progress is made possible by the proper mixture of these two ingredien