ts,
so that the clay is kept in the ideal pliable, plastic condition, half moist and half
dry, not hardened and unmanageable, nor dissolving into mud. The soundest nations,
like the English, have realism and idealism mixed in proper proportions, like the
clay which neither hardens and so gets past the stage for the artist's molding, nor
is so wishy-washy that it cannot retain its form. . . .
A vague, uncritical idealism always lends itself to ridicule and too much of it might
be a danger to mankind, leading it round in a futile wild-goose chase for imaginary
ideals. If there were too many of these visionary idealists in any society or people,
revolutions would be the order of the day. Human society would be like an idealistic
couple forever getting tired of one place and changing their residence regularly once
every three months, for the simple reason that no one place is ideal and the place
where one is not seems always better because one is not there. Very fortunately, man
is also gifted with a sense of humor, whose function, as I conceive it, is to exercise
criticism of man's dreams, and bring them in touch with the world of reality. It is
important that man dreams, but it is perhaps equally important that he can laugh at
his own dreams. That is a great gift, and theChinese have plenty of it.
The sense of humor, which I shall discuss at more length in a later chapter, seems
to be very closely related to the sense of reality, or realism. If the joker is often
cruel in disillusioning the idealist, he nevertheless performs a very important
function right there by not letting the idealist bump his head against the stone wall
of reality and receive a ruder shock. He also gently eases the tension of the
hot-headed enthusiast and makes him live longer. By preparing him for disillusion,
there is probably less pain in the final impact, for a humorist is always like a man
charged with the duty of breaking a sad news gently to a dying patient. Sometimes
the gentle warning from a humorist saves the dying patient's life. If idealism and
disillusion must necessarily go together in this world, we must say that life is cruel,
ratlier than the joker who reminds us of life's cruelty.
I have often thought of formulas by which the mechanism of human progress and
historical change can be expressed. They seem to be as follows:
Reality Dreams = Animal Being
Reality + Dreams = A Heartache (usually called Idealism)
Reality + Humor = Realism (also called Conservatism)
Dreams ~ Humor = Fanaticism
Dreams + Humor = Fantasy
Reality + Dreams + Humor = Wisdom
So then, wisdom, or the highest type of thinking, consists in toning down our dreams
or idealism with a good sense of humor, supported by reality itself.¤¤
As pure ventures in pseudoscientific formulations, we may proceed to analyze national
characters in the following manner. I say "pseudoscientific" because I distrust all
dead and mechanical formulas for expressing anything connected with human affairs
or human personalities. Putting human affairs in exact formulas shows in itself a
lack of the sense of humor and therefore a lack of wisdom. I do not meanthat these
things are not being done: they are. That is why we get so much pseudoscience today.
When a psychologist can measure a man's I. Q. or P. Q., it is a pretty poor world,
and specialists have risen to usurp humanized scholarship. But if we recognize that
these formulas are no more than handy, graphic ways of expressing certain opinions,
and so long as we don't drag in the sacred name of science to help advertise our goods,
no harm is done. The following are my formulas for the characters of certain nations,
entirely personal and completely incapable of proof or verification. Anyone is free
to dispute them and change them or add his own, if he does not claim that he can prove
his private opinions by a mass of statistical facts and figures. Let "R" stand for
a sense of reality (or realism),