osophy of the Chinese art of living can certainly
be called the "gay science, " if anything can be called by that phrase used by
Nietzsche.
After all, only a gay philosophy is profound philosophy; the serious philosophies
of the West haven't even begun to understand what life is. To me personally, the only
function of philosophy is to teach us to take life more lightly and gayly than the
average business man does, for no business man who does not retire at fifty, if he
can, is in my eyes a philosopher. This is not merely a casual thought, but is a
fundamental point of view with me. The world can be made a more peaceful and more
reasonable place to live in only when men have imbued themselves in the light gayety
of this spirit. The modern man takes life far too seriously, and because he is too
serious, the world is full of troubles. We ought, therefore, to take time to examine
the origin of that attitude which will make possible a whole-hearted enjoyment of
this life and a more reasonable, more peaceful and less hot-headed temperament.
I am perhaps entitled to call this the philosophy of the Chinese people rather than
of any one school. It is a philosophy that is greater than Confucius and greater than
Laotse, for it transcends these and other ancient philosophers; it draws from these
fountain springs of thought and harmonizes them into a whole, and from the abstract
outlines of their wisdom, it has created an art of living in the flesh, visible,
palpable and understandable by the common man. Surveying Chinese literature, art and
philosophy as a whole, it has become quite clear to me that the philosophy of a wise
disenchantment and a hearty enjoyment of life is their common message and teaching
the most constant, most characteristic and most persistent refrain of Chinese
thought.
THERE are several views of mankind, the traditional Christian theological view, the
Greek pagan view, and the Chinese Taoist-Confu-cianist view. (I do not include the
Buddhist view because it is too sad. ) Deeper down in their allegorical sense, these
views after all do not differ so much from one another, especially when the modern
man with better biological and anthropological knowledge gives them a broader
interpretation. But these differences in their original forms exist.
The traditional, orthodox Christian view was that man was created perfect, innocent,
foolish and happy, living naked in the Garden of Eden. Then came knowledge and wisdom
and the Fall of Man, to which the sufferings of man are due, notably (1) work by the
sweat of one's brow for man, and (2) the pangs of labor for women. In contrast with
man's original innocence and perfection, a new element was introduced to explain his
present imperfection, and that is of course the Devil, working chiefly through the`本`作`品`由``網`友`整`理`上`傳`
body, while his higher nature works through the soul. When the "soul" was invented
in the history of Christian theology I am not aware, but this "soul" became a something
rather than a function, an entity rather than a condition, and it sharply separated
man from the animals, which have no souls worth saving. Here the logic halts, for
the origin of the Devil had to be explained, and when the medieval theologians
proceeded with their usual scholastic logic to deal with the problem, they got into
a quandary. They could not have very well admitted that the Devil, who was Not-God,
came from God himself, nor could they quite a-gree that in the original universe,
the Devil, a Not-God, was co-eternal with God. So in desperation they agreed that
the Devil must have been a fallen angel, which rather begs the question of the origin
of evil (for there still must have been another Devil to tempt this fallen angel) ,
and which is therefore unsatisfactory, but they had to leave it at that. Nevertheless
from all this followed the curious dichotomy of the spirit and the flesh, a mythical
conception which is still quite prevalent and powerful