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The Political Doctrines of Sun Yat-sen: An Exposition of the San Min Chu I

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Title: The Political Doctrines of Sun Yat-sen: An Exposition of the San Min Chu I

Author: Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger


        
Release date: April 2, 2012 [eBook #39356]
                Most recently updated: June 17, 2020

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE POLITICAL DOCTRINES OF SUN YAT-SEN: AN EXPOSITION OF THE SAN MIN CHU I ***





                  The Political Doctrines of Sun Yat-sen

                   An Exposition of the _Sun Min Chu I_

                                    By

                   Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger, Ph.D.

             The Department of Government, Harvard University

                       Greenwood Press, Publishers

                          Westport, Connecticut

                 Copyright 1937, The Johns Hopkins Press

                     First Greenwood Reprinting 1973





CONTENTS


Foreword.
Preface.
Introduction.
   The Problem of the _San Min Chu I_.
      The Materials.
      The Necessity of an Exposition.
Chapter I. The Ideological, Social, and Political Background.
   The Rationale of the Readjustment.
   Nation and State in Chinese Antiquity.
   The Theory of the Confucian World-Society.
   The Chinese World-Society of Eastern Asia.
   The Impact of the West.
   The Continuing Significance of the Background.
Chapter II The Theory of Nationalism.
   The Emergence of the Chinese Race-Nation.
   The Necessity of Nationalism.
   The Return to the Old Morality.
   The Return to the Ancient Knowledge.
   Western Physical Science in the New Ideology.
   The Consequences of the Nationalist Ideology.
Chapter III. The Theory of Democracy.
   Democracy in the Old World-Society.
   Five Justifications of a Democratic Ideology.
   The Three Natural Classes of Men.
   Ch’üan and Nêng.
   The Democratic Machine State.
   Democratic-Political Versus Ideological Control.
Chapter IV. The Theory of _Min Shêng_.
   _Min Shêng_ in the Ideology.
   The Economic Background of _Min Shêng_.
   The Three Meanings of _Min Shêng_.
   Western Influences: Henry George, Marxism and Maurice William.
   _Min Shêng_ as a Socio-Economic Doctrine.
   _Min Shêng_ as an Ethical Doctrine.
Chapter V. The Programs of Nationalism.
   Kuomintang.
   The Dragon Throne and State Allegiance.
   Economic Nationalism.
   Political Nationalism for National Autonomy.
   The Class War of the Nations.
   Racial Nationalism and Pan-Asia.
   The General Program of Nationalism.
Chapter VI. The Programs of Democracy.
   The Three Stages of Revolution.
   The Adjustment of Democracy to China.
   The Four Powers.
   The Five Rights.
   Confederacy Versus Centralism.
   The _Hsien_ in a Democracy.
   The Family System.
Chapter VII. The Programs of _Min Shêng_.
   The Three Programs of _Min Shêng_.
   The National Economic Revolution.
   The Industrial Revolution.
   The Social Revolution.
   The Utopia of _Min Shêng_.
Bibliography.
Chinese-English Glossary.
Index.
Footnotes






FOREWORD.


The importance of introducing Western political thought to the Far East
has long been emphasized in the West. The Chinese conception of a rational
world order was manifestly incompatible with the Western system of
independent sovereign states and the Chinese code of political ethics was
difficult to reconcile with the Western preference for a reign of law. No
argument has been necessary to persuade Westerners that Chinese political
philosophy would be improved by the influence of Western political
science.

The superior qualifications of Sun Yat-sen for the interpretation of
Western political science to the Chinese have also been widely recognized
in the West, particularly in the United States. Dr. Sun received a modern
education in medicine and surgery and presumably grasped the spirit of
Western science. He read widely, more widely perhaps than any contemporary
political leader of the first rank except Woodrow Wilson, in the
literature of Western political science. He was thoroughly familiar with
the development of American political thought and full of sympathy for
American political ideals. His aspiration to build a modern democratic
republic amidst the ruins of the medieval Manchu Empire, Americans at
least can readily understand.

What is only beginning to be understood, however, in the West is, that it
is equally important to interpret Chinese political philosophy to the rest
of the world. Western political science has contributed a great deal to
the development of political power. But it has failed lamentably to
illuminate the ends for which such power should be used. Political ethics
is by no means superfluous in lands where a government of law is supposed
to be established in lieu of a government of men. The limitation of the
authority of sovereign states in the interest of a better world order is
an enterprise to which at last, it may be hoped not too late, Westerners
are beginning to dedicate themselves.

As an interpreter of Chinese political philosophy to the West Dr. Sun has
no peer. Better than any other Chinese revolutionary leader he appreciated
the durable values in the classical political philosophy of the Far East.
He understood the necessity for preserving those values, while introducing
the Western political ideas deemed most proper for adapting the Chinese
political system to its new place in the modern world. His system of
political thought, therefore, forms a blend of Far Eastern political
philosophy and Western political science. It suggests at the same time
both what is suitable in Western political science for the use of the Far
East and what is desirable in Far Eastern political philosophy for the
improvement of the West.

Dr. Linebarger has analyzed Dr. Sun’s political ideas, and also his plans
for the political rehabilitation of China, with a view to the interests of
Western students of politics. For this task his training and experience
have given him exceptional competence. The result is a book, which not
only renders obsolete all previous volumes in Western languages on modern
Chinese political philosophy, but also makes available for the political
scientists and politicians of the West the best political thought of the
Far East on the fundamental problems of Western politics.

ARTHUR N. HOLCOMBE
_Harvard University_





PREFACE.


This book represents an exploration into a field of political thought
which is still more or less unknown. The Chinese revolution has received
much attention from publicists and historians, and a vast number of works
dealing with almost every phase of Chinese life and events appears every
year in the West. The extraordinary difficulty of the language, the
obscurity—to Westerners—of the Chinese cultural background, and the
greater vividness of events as compared with theories have led Western
scholars to devote their attention, for the most part, to descriptions of
Chinese politics rather than to venture into the more difficult field of
Chinese political thought, without which, however, the political events
are scarcely intelligible.

The author has sought to examine one small part of modern Chinese
political thought, partly as a sample of the whole body of thought, and
partly because the selection, although small, is an important one. Sun
Yat-sen is by far the most conspicuous figure in recent Chinese history,
and his doctrines, irrespective of the effectiveness or permanence of the
consequences of their propagation, have a certain distinct position in
history. The _San Min Chu I_, his chief work, not only represents an
important phase in the revolution of Chinese social and political thought,
but solely and simply as doctrine, may be regarded as a Chinese expression
of tendencies of political thought current in the Western world.

The personal motives, arising out of an early and rather intimate family
relationship with the Chinese nationalist movement centering around the
person of Sun Yat-sen, that led the author to undertake this subject, have
their advantages and disadvantages. The chief disadvantage lies in the
fact that the thesis must of necessity treat of many matters which are the
objects of hot controversy, and that the author, friendly to the movement
as a whole but neutral as between its factions, may seem at times to deal
unjustly or over-generously with certain persons and groups. The younger
widow of Sun Yat-sen (née Soong Ching-ling) may regard the mention of her
husband and the Nanking government in the same breath as an act of
treachery. Devoted to the memory of her husband, she has turned,
nevertheless, to the Left, and works on cordial terms with the Communists.
She said: “... the Nanking Government has crushed every open liberal,
democratic, or humanitarian movement in our country. It has destroyed all
trade unions, smashed every strike of the workers for the right to
existence, has thrown hordes of criminal gangsters who are simultaneously
Fascist ‘Blue Shirts’ against every labor, cultural, or national
revolutionary movement in the country.”(1) The author, from what he
himself has seen of the National Government, is positive that it is not
merely dictatorial, ruthless, cruel, treacherous, or historically
unnecessary; nor would he, contrarily, assert that the National Government
lives up to or surpasses the brilliant ideals of Sun Yat-sen. He seeks to
deal charitably with all factions, to follow a middle course whenever he
can, and in any case to state fairly the positions of both sides.

The advantages may serve to offset the disadvantages. In the first place,
the author’s acquaintance with the Nationalist movement has given him
something of a background from which to present his exposition. This
background cannot, of course, be documented, but it may serve to make the
presentation more assured and more vivid. In the second place, the author
has had access to certain private manuscripts and papers, and has had the
benefit of his father’s counsel on several points in this work.(2) The
author believes that on the basis of this material and background he is
justified in venturing into this comparatively unknown field.

The primary sources for this work have been Sun Yat-sen’s own works. A
considerable number of these were written originally in the English
language. Translations of his major Chinese works are more or less fully
available in English, German, French, or Spanish. The author’s highly
inadequate knowledge of the Chinese written language has led him to depend
almost altogether upon translations, but he has sought—in some cases,
perhaps, unsuccessfully—to minimize the possibility of misunderstanding or
error by checking the translations against one another. Through the
assistance of his Chinese friends, he has been able to refer to Sun’s
complete works in Chinese and to Chinese books on Sun wherever such
reference was imperatively necessary. A list of the Chinese titles thus
made available is included in the bibliography. The language difficulty,
while an annoyance and a handicap, has not been so considerable as to give
the author reason to suppose that his conclusions would have been
different in any significant respect had he been able to make free and
continuous use of Chinese and Russian sources.

The author has thought of the present work as a contribution to political
theory rather than to sinology, and has tried to keep the discussion of
sinological questions at a minimum. In the transliteration of Chinese
words and names he has adhered more or less closely to the Wade system,
and has rendered most terms in the _kuo yü_, or national language. Despite
this rule, he gives the name of President Sun in its more commonly known
Cantonese form, Sun Yat-sen, rather than in the _kuo yü_, Sun I-hsien.

In acknowledging assistance and encouragement received, the author must
first of all turn to his father, Judge Paul Myron Wentworth Linebarger,
Legal Advisor to The National Government of China, counsellor to and
biographer of Sun Yat-sen during the latter’s lifetime. Without his
patient encouragement and his concrete assistance, this book could neither
have been begun nor brought to a conclusion after it was started. The
author desires, however, to make it perfectly clear that this work has no
relation to the connections of Judge Linebarger with the Chinese
Government or with the Nationalist Party. No information coming to the
knowledge of Judge Linebarger in the course of his official duties has
been here incorporated. Anxiously scrupulous to maintain a completely
detached point of view, the author has refrained from communicating with
or submitting the book to Chinese Government or Party officials, and
writes purely as an American student of China.

Professor James Hart, formerly at The Johns Hopkins University and now at
The University of Virginia, Professor Arthur O. Lovejoy, The Johns Hopkins
University, Professor Harley Farnsworth MacNair and Dr. Ernest Price, both
of The University of Chicago, have rendered inestimable assistance by
reading the manuscript and giving the author the benefit of their advice.
Professor Hart has criticized the work as an enterprise in political
science. Professor Lovejoy assisted the author by reading the first third
of the work, and selections of the later parts, and applying his thorough
and stimulating criticism; the author regrets that he was unable to adopt
all of Professor Lovejoy’s suggestions in full, and is deeply grateful for
the help. Professor MacNair read the book as a referee for a dissertation,
and made a great number of comments which have made the book clearer and
more accurate; the author would not have ventured to present this work to
the public had it not been for the reassurances and encouragement given
him by Professor MacNair. Dr. Ernest Price, while at The Hopkins,
supervised the composition of the first drafts; his judicious and balanced
criticism, based upon sixteen years’ intimacy with the public and private
life of the Chinese, and a sensitive appreciation of Chinese values, were
of great value to the author in establishing his perspective and lines of
study. The author takes this opportunity to thank these four gentlemen for
their great kindness and invaluable assistance.

It is with deep regret that the author abbreviates his acknowledgments and
thanks for the inspiration and the favors he received in his study of
Chinese politics from Dr. C. Walter Young; Professor Frederic Ogg, of The
University of Wisconsin; Professors Kenneth Colegrove, William McGovern,
and Ikuo Oyama, of The Northwestern University; Dr. Arthur Hummel, of The
Library of Congress; Professor Frederick Dunn, of Yale University;
Professor Arthur Holcombe, of Harvard University; Professor Quincy Wright,
of The University of Chicago; and Dr. Wallace McClure, of The Department
of State. Many of the author’s Chinese friends assisted by reading the
manuscript and criticizing it from their more intimate knowledge of their
own country, among them being Messrs. Miao Chung-yi and Djang Chu, at The
Johns Hopkins University; Professor Jên T’ai, of Nankai University; and
Messrs. Wang Kung-shou, Ch’ing Ju-chi, and Lin Mou-sheng, of The
University of Chicago, made many helpful suggestions. The author must
thank his teachers at The Johns Hopkins University, to whom he is indebted
for three years of the most patient assistance and stimulating
instruction, in respect of both the present work and other fields in the
study of government: Dr. Johannes Mattern; Dr. Albert Weinberg; Mr. Leon
Sachs; and Professor W. W. Willoughby. Finally, he must acknowledge his
indebtedness to his wife, Margaret Snow Linebarger, for her patient
assistance in preparing this volume for the press.

PAUL M. A. LINEBARGER.

December, 1936.





INTRODUCTION.




The Problem of the _San Min Chu I_.



The Materials.


Sun Yat-sen played many rôles in the history of his times. He was one of
those dramatic and somewhat formidable figures who engage the world’s
attention at the very outset of their careers. In the late years of the
nineteenth century, he was already winning some renown in the West; it was
picturesque that a Cantonese, a Christian physician, should engage in
desperate conspiracies against the Manchu throne. Sun became known as a
political adventurer, a forerunner, as it were, of such mutually
dissimilar personages as Trotsky, Lawrence, and Major-General Doihara.
With the illusory success of the revolution of 1911, and his Presidency of
the first Republic, Sun ceased being a conspirator in the eyes of the
world’s press, and became the George Washington of China. It is in this
rôle that he is most commonly known, and his name most generally recalled.
After the world war, in the atmosphere of extreme tension developed,
perhaps, by the Bolshevik revolution, Sun was regarded as an enigmatic
leader, especially significant in the struggle between Asiatic
nationalisms allied with the Soviets against the traditional capitalist
state-system. It was through him that the Red anti-imperialist policy was
pushed to its greatest success, and he was hated and admired, ridiculed
and feared, down to the last moments of his life. When he died, American
reporters in Latvia cabled New York their reports of Russian comments on
the event.(3) More, perhaps, than any other Chinese of modern times, Sun
symbolized the entrance of China into world affairs, and the inevitable
confluence of Western and Far Eastern history.

It is characteristic of Sun that he should have appeared in another and
final rôle after his death. He had been thought of as conspirator,
statesman, and mass leader; but with the advent of his party to power it
became publicly apparent that he had also been a political philosopher.
The tremendous prestige enjoyed by him as state-founder and party leader
was enhanced by his importance as prophet and law-giver. His doctrines
became the state philosophy of China, and for a while his most zealous
followers sought to have him canonized in a quite literal fashion, and at
one stroke to make him replace Confucius and the Sons of Heaven. After the
extreme enthusiasms of the Sun Yat-sen cult subsided, Sun remained the
great national hero-sage of modern China. Even in those territories where
the authority of his political heirs was not completely effective, his
flag was flown and his doctrines taught.

His doctrines have provided the theories upon which the Nationalist
revolution was based; they form the extra-juridical constitution of the
National Government of China. When the forces hostile to Sun Yat-sen and
his followers are considered, it is amazing that his ideas and ideals
should have survived. An empire established with the aid of Japanese arms,
and still under Japanese hegemony, controls Manchuria; parts of north
China are ruled by a bastard government, born of a compromise between
enemies; a largely unrecognized but powerful Soviet Republic exists in
outer Mongolia; the lamaist oligarchy goes on in Tibet; and somewhere, in
central and western China, a Soviet group, not quite a government but more
than a conspiracy, is fighting for existence. It is quite probable that
nowhere else in the world can there be found a greater variety of
principles, each scheme of principles fostered by an armed organization
struggling with its rivals. In this chaos the National Government has made
the most effective bid for authority and the greatest effort for the
reëstablishment of order; through it the principles of Sun Yat-sen rule
the political life of a population greater than that of the United States
or of the Soviet Union.

It is difficult to evaluate the importance of political doctrines. Even if
_The Three Principles_ is judged by the extent of the population which its
followers control, it has achieved greater results in practical politics
in fifteen years than has Marxism in ninety. Such a criterion may well be
disputed, but, whatever the test, it cannot be denied that the thought of
Sun Yat-sen has played a major part in the political development of his
native land. It may continue into the indefinitely remote future, or may
succumb to the perils that surround its advocates; in any case, these
doctrines have been taught long enough and broadly enough to make an
impress on the age, and have been so significant in political and cultural
history that they can never sink into complete obscurity.

What are these doctrines? Sun Yat-sen was so voluminous a writer that it
would be impossible for his followers to digest and codify all his
writings into one neat and coherent handbook; he himself did not provide
one. Before printing became common, there was a certain automatic process
of condensation which preserved the important utterances of great men, and
let their trivial sayings perish. Sun, however, must have realized that he
was leaving a vast legacy of materials which are not altogether coherent
or consistent with one another. Certain of his works were naturally more
important than others, but, to make the choice definitive, he himself
indicated four sources which his followers might draw upon for a
definitive statement of his views.(4)

His _Political Testament_ cites the _Chien Kuo Fang Lo_ (_The Program of
National Reconstruction_), the _Chien Kuo Ta Kang_ (_The Outline of
National Reconstruction_), the _San Min Chu I_ (_The Triple Demism_, also
translated as _The Three Principles of the People_), and the _Manifesto_
issued by the first national congress of the Party.(5) These four items
differ quite sharply from one another in form. No one of them can be
relied upon to give the whole of Sun’s doctrines.

The _Chien Kuo Fang Lo_ (_The Program of National Reconstruction_) is in
reality three works, only remotely related to one another. The first item
in the trilogy is the _Sun Wên Hsüeh Shê_ (_The Philosophy of Sun Wên_);
it is a series of familiar essays on the Chinese way of thought.(6) The
second is the _Min Ch’üan Ts’u Pu_, _The Primer of Democracy_, which is
little more than a text on parliamentary law.(7) The third is the _Shih
Yeh Chi Hua_, known in English as _The International Development __ of
China_, which Sun wrote in both English and Chinese.(8) These three works,
under the alternate titles of “The Program of Psychological
Reconstruction,” “The Program of Social Reconstruction,” and “The Program
of Material Reconstruction” form _The Program of National Reconstruction_.

The _Chien Kuo Ta Kang, The Outline of National Reconstruction_, is an
outline of twenty-five points, giving the necessary steps towards the
national reconstruction in their most concise form.(9)

The _San Min Chu I_ is Sun’s most important work. It comprises sixteen
lectures setting forth his socio-political theories and his programs. The
title most commonly used in Western versions is _The Three Principles of
the People_.(10)

The last document mentioned in Sun Yat-sen’s will was the _Manifesto_ of
the first national congress of the Kuomintang. This was not written by
himself, but was drafted by Wang Ch’ing-wei, one of his closest followers,
and embodies essentially the same ideas as do the other three items, even
though Borodin—the emissary of the Third International—had been consulted
in its preparation.(11)

Sun undoubtedly regretted leaving such a heterogeneous and ill-assembled
group of works as his literary bequest. Throughout the latter years of his
life he was studying political science in the hope that he might be able
to complete a great treatise which he had projected, an analysis and
statement of the programs of the Chinese nationalists. One attempt toward
actualization of this work was frustrated when Sun’s manuscripts and a
great part of his library were burned in the attack launched against him
by Ch’en Ch’iung-ming in 1922. His apology for the makeshift volume on the
_San Min Chu I_ is pathetic: “As I had neither time to prepare nor books
to use as references, I could do nothing else in these lectures but
improvise after I ascended the platform. Thus I have omitted and forgotten
many things which were in my original manuscript. Although before having
them printed, I revised them, added (passages) and eliminated (others),
yet, those lectures are far from coming up to my original manuscripts,
either in the subject matter itself, or in the concatenations of the
discussion, or in the facts adduced as proofs.”(12) Sun was in all
probability a more assiduous and widely read student of political science
than any other world leader of his day except Wilson; he studied
innumerable treatises on government, and was surprisingly familiar with
the general background of Western politics, in theory and practice. He was
aware of the shabby appearance that these undigested occasional pieces
would present when put forth as the bible of a new China, and earnestly
enjoined his followers to carry on his labors and bring them to
fruition.(13)

The various works included in the _Chien Kuo Fang Lo_, while satisfactory
for the purposes Sun had in mind when he wrote them, are not enough to
outline the fundamentals both of political theory and a governmental plan.
The familiar essays have an important bearing on the formation of the
ideology of a new China; the primer of democracy, less; the industrial
plan is one of those magnificent dreams which, in the turn of a decade,
may inspire an equally great reality. The outline and the manifesto are no
more suited to the rôle of classics; they are decalogues rather than
bibles.(14) There remains the _San Min Chu I_.

The _San Min Chu I_ is a collection of sixteen lectures delivered in
Canton in 1924. There were to have been eighteen, but Sun was unable to
give the last two. Legend has it that Borodin persuaded Sun to give the
series.(15) Whatever the cause of their being offered, they attracted
immediate attention. Interest in Sun and in his ideas was at a fever heat;
his friends turned to the printed lectures for guidance; his enemies, for
statements which could be turned against him. Both friends and enemies
found what they wanted. To the friends, the _San Min Chu I_ presented a
fairly complete outline of Sun’s political and social thought in such a
form that it could be preserved and broadcast readily. There was danger,
before the book appeared, that the intrinsic unity in Sun’s thinking would
be lost sight of by posterity, that his ideas would appear as a
disconnected jumble of brilliant inspirations. The sixteen lectures
incorporated a great part of the doctrines which he had been preaching for
more than a generation. To the enemies of Sun, the work was welcome. They
pointed out the numerous simplifications and inconsistencies, the frequent
contradictions in matters of detail, the then outrageous denunciations of
the economic and political system predominant in the Far East. They
ridiculed Sun because he was Chinese, and because he was not Chinese
enough, and backed up their criticisms with passages from the book.(16)

When Sun gave the lectures, he was a sick man. He carried an ivory-headed
sword cane with him on the platform; occasionally, holding it behind him
and locking his arms through it, he would press it against his back to
relieve the intolerable pain.(17) The business awaiting him after each
lecture was vitally important; the revolution was proceeding by leaps and
bounds. The lectures are the lectures of a sick man, given to a popular
audience in the uproar of revolution, without adequate preparation,
improvised in large part, and offered as one side of a crucial and
bitterly disputed question. The secretaries who took down the lectures may
not have succeeded in following them completely; Sun had no leisure to do
more than skim through the book before releasing it to the press.

These improvised lectures have had to serve as the fundamental document of
Nationalist China. Sun Yat-sen died without writing the treatise he had
planned. The materials he left behind were a challenge to scholars and to
his followers. Many persons set to work interpreting them, each with a
conscious or unconscious end in view. A German Marxian showed Sun to be a
forerunner of bolshevism; an American liberal showed Sun to be a bulwark
against bolshevism. A Chinese classicist demonstrated Sun’s reverence for
the past; a Jesuit father explained much by Sun’s modern and Christian
background. His works have been translated into Western languages without
notes; the improvised lectures, torn from their context of a revolutionary
crisis, have served poorly to explain the ideology of Sun Yat-sen, and his
long range political, social, and economic plans.



The Necessity of an Exposition.


Followers of Sun who knew him personally, or were members of that circle
in which his ideas and opinions were well known, have found the _San Min
Chu I_ and other literary remains helpful; they have been able to turn to
the documents to refresh their memories of Sun on some particular point,
or to experience the encouraging force of his faith and enthusiasm again.
They need not be reminded of the main tenets of his thought, or of the
fundamental values upon which he based his life and his political
activities. His sense of leadership, which strangers have at times thought
fantastic, is one which they admire in him, since they, too, have felt the
power of his personality and have experienced that leadership in the
course of their own lives. His voice is ringing in their consciences; they
feel no need of a guide to his mind. At the present day many members of
Sun’s own family, and a considerable number of his veteran disciples are
still living; the control of the National Government is in their hands.
They are people who need no commentary on Sun Yat-sen; to them, he died
only yesterday.

Others, who met Sun only casually, or who could know him only through his
writings, have a quite different impression of his thought. They perforce
assume that he thought as he wrote, and fail to realize that virtually all
his writings and speeches were occasional pieces, improvisations designed
as propaganda. One of the most respected American authorities on China
says that in the _San Min Chu I_ “... there is a combination of sound
social analysis, keen comment on comparative political science, and
bombast, journalistic inaccuracy, jejune philosophizing and sophomoric
economics.”(18) This view is one which can scarcely be attacked, if one
considers only the printed lectures, and overlooks the other utterances
and the personality of Sun. To apply this, or any similar estimate (and
there are many of them), to all of Sun Yat-sen’s thought would be woefully
inaccurate. It is not the critic’s fault that Sun never found time to
write a sober, definitive political treatise expressing his ideas; it is,
nevertheless, the critic’s responsibility to weigh the value of the _San
Min Chu I_, and consider the importance which Sun himself attached to it,
before judging Sun’s whole philosophy by a hastily-composed and poorly
written book.

Yet, if the Western student of modern Chinese history were to look
elsewhere for some general exposition of Sun Yat-sen’s political ideas, he
would find none. He could discover several excellent translations of the
sixteen lectures, and parts of the other work of Sun. He would be helped
by the prefatory notes to some of these translations.(19) A few treatises
would be available to him on special phases of Sun’s thought: the
influence of Maurice William, and the influence of the Russian
Communists.(20) In addition, there would be the biographies, of which
there are more than a dozen, and a few other useful although not general
works. None of these sifts Sun’s thought, seeking to separate the
transitory from the permanent in his ideas. For this the searcher would
have to rely on brief outlines of Sun’s ideas, to be found in works
dealing with modern China or the Chinese revolution.(21)

This relative scarcity of exegetic material concerning the ideology and
programs of Sun is not the result of any inadequacy on the part of those
persons, both Chinese and Western, who have devoted thought and time to
his life or to the translation of his works. It is one thing to point out
a task that has yet to be done; and quite another, actually to perform it.
An interpretation or exposition of Sun’s thought, to be worthy of the
great significance of the original, must be very thorough; but scarcely
enough time has elapsed to allow a perspective of all the materials, let
alone an orientation of Sun in the Far Eastern scene. Yet the importance
of Sun demands that something be done to bring his thought to the
attention of the world, so that the usual distortion of his
personality—arising from the lack of commentaries—may be avoided in
present day works. In a sense, the time is not ripe for a definitive
treatment of Sun, either as a figure in history or as a contributor to the
significant and enduring political thought of modern times; any work now
done will, as time passes, fall grotesquely far short of adequacy. On the
other hand, there is so much material of a perishable nature—anecdotes and
legends not yet committed to print, and the memories of living men—now
available, that a present-day work on Sun may gain in color and intimacy
what it loses in judgment and objectivity, may gain in proximity what it
has to forgo in detachment. And, lastly, the complete absence of any
systematic presentation of Sun’s ideas in any Western language is so great
a deficiency in the fields of Far Eastern history and world political
thought, that even a relatively inadequate exposition of the thought of
Sun Yat-sen may prove to be not without value. Sun himself never explained
his philosophy, whether theoretical or applied, in any broad, systematic
fashion; nor has anyone else done so.

If the permissibility of an exposition of Sun Yat-sen’s thought be
conceded, there still remains the vexing problem of a choice of method.
While the far-flung peripheries of Sun’s thought touch almost every field
of knowledge and opinion, a systematic condensation of his views cannot
hope to survey the same broad ranges. The problem of proportion, of just
emphasis, involves the nice appraisal of the degree of importance which
each of Sun’s minor rôles had in his intellectual career as a whole. Nor
do the difficulties concerning method end with the consideration of
proportion; they merely begin, for there remains the far more important
and perplexing problem of a technique of interpretation.

Interpretation obviously relates to the problem of language. The
translation of theoretical terms from Chinese into English constitutes a
formidable difficulty which proves, in several instances, to be
insuperable. No satisfactory equivalent for _min shêng_ (usually rendered
“livelihood”) can be found in English; even simpler and less specialized
terms are extremely difficult to render. Sometimes it would be convenient
to employ four or five alternative translations for one Chinese term. Sun
uses the word “nationalism” in the sense that a Westerner would, in
advocating national consciousness in a China hitherto unfamiliar with the
conception of nation-states; but, in a different context, he uses it in
the sense of “patriotism.”(22) These difficulties must be faced and,
somehow or other, overcome. When the Western reader encounters a familiar
term in an unexpected place, he must be prepared to meet a shift of
meaning. No amount of definition can make a Chinese term, which has no
exact Western equivalent, completely clear. It is simpler to grow
accustomed to the term, to gather together its connotations, to understand
something of the frame of reference wherein it is set, and thereby to
learn it as a child learns a word. A dictionary is no help to a baby; in a
realm of unfamiliar ideas even scholars must learn terms step by step.

Less obviously than language, the translation of ideas and of values is
also involved in interpretation. In dealing with the intellectual content
of a civilization as alien as that of China, the Westerner must be wary of
the easy analogy. The full, forceful application of Western ideas and
values in a world to which they are completely irrelevant produced strange
results during the nineteenth century. Western notions of goodness and
reasonableness did not fit the Chinese scheme of things. Under such a test
a wildly distorted image of China was obtained. China seemed peculiar,
topsy-turvy, fantastic. To themselves the Chinese still seemed quite
matter-of-fact, and the Westerners thought even this odd and ridiculous:
not only was China upside-down, but the Chinese did not know it! In any
case, the present-day scholar, to whom so much material concerning the
Chinese is available and China so near, has little justification for
applying Western tests of virtue and rationality to things Chinese.

If the application of Western values to China is avoided, there is still
the danger that the Chinese scheme of things may not be interpreted at
all. The literal translation of Chinese terms strips them of their
contexts. The result may be unintelligibility. The Chinese term _jên_ is
frequently rendered “benevolence,” a Western word which, while at times an
approximate equivalent, fails to carry the full burden of meaning. Sun
speaks of an interpretation of history antagonistic to dialectical
materialism—the interpretation of history by _jên_. A “benevolent”
interpretation of history means nothing whatever to a Westerner. If _jên_
is translated into a different configuration of words, and given as
“group-consciousness” or “social fellow-feeling,” the result, while still
not an exact equivalent of the Chinese, is distinctly more intelligible.

To effect this translation of ideas and values, several methods are
available. The issue cannot be dodged by a denial of its existence; the
mere act of explanation involves some process, whether deliberate or
unconscious, of translation and transvaluation. If the interpreter refuses
to deal with the problem consciously, he will nevertheless be guided by
his unrevealed assumptions. To give an accounting for what he has done, he
must, first, admit that he is interpreting, and second, seek to make plain
what he is doing, so that his readers may allow for the process. The
demonstration of the consequences of interpretation minimizes their
possible adverse effects. The simplest way to allow for the alterations
(beyond mere reproduction) arising from interpretation would be to adopt a
technique so widely known that others could, in their own minds, try to
re-trace the steps of the process and negate the changes. Among such
widely known techniques are the Marxian and the sociological.

Both these scarcely seem adapted to the problems presented by an
interpretation of Sun Yat-sen. The Marxian terminology is so peculiarly
suited to the ulterior purposes the Marxians keep in mind, and is so
esoteric when applied to matters not related to the general fields in
which the Marxians are interested, that it could scarcely be applied in
the present instance. A non-Marxian would find it a hazardous task. The
interpreter of Sun Yat-sen must interpret _into_ something; what, depends
on the audience. Dialectical materialism, in the abstract excellent as a
technique, would scarcely make Sun understandable to most Americans of the
present day. Sun himself rejected the Marxian method of interpretation; an
American audience would also reject it; these two factors outweigh all the
conceivable advantages.

The sociological technique of interpretation is quite another question.
The various methods of analysis developed by each of the schools of
sociologists are still the objects rather than the tools of study. Such
men as Max Weber and Vilfredo Pareto have made contributions to Western
social thought which enrich the scope and method of the social studies.
Their methods of analysis are not weighted down by a body of extraneous
considerations, as is the Marxian, and they promise an objectivity not
otherwise attainable. On the other hand, they are still at that stage of
development where the technique obtrudes itself; it has not, as has the
inductive method in general, become so much taken for granted as to be
invisible.

The sociological approach need not, however, be carried to the full extent
thought necessary by its advocates. In the study of law, the consideration
of extra-juridical materials is called sociological in contrast to the
strictly juristic. If the legal scholar goes beyond the strict framework
of the law, and considers other elements in man’s behavior and knowledge
while dealing with legal problems, he is apt to be called a sociological
jurist. In doing so he is not committed, however, to belief in or use of
any particular form of what is known as the science of society or
sociology. He may adopt almost any sort of social outlook, or may be
committed to any one of many doctrines of social value and to any one of
widely varying methods of social study.

This negative, broad sense of the sociological, when applied to the study
of politics, has commonly meant that the scholars employing it began with
the notion of the political, but, finding it too narrow, touched upon
related fields. An interpretation of Sun Yat-sen’s politics might be based
on this method. It would still be a political work, in that it sought to
associate his ideas with the ideas concerning government to be found in
the West, but would be free, nevertheless, to touch upon non-political
materials relevant to Sun’s politics. The Chinese have had notions of
authority and control radically different from those developed in the
West; a purely juristic interpretation of the various Chinese politics
would simply scrape the lacquer off the screen.

The Chinese have not had the sharp distinction of disciplines which runs
through all Western learning. Since one of the most conspicuous
ingredients in their thought—conspicuous, that is, to Westerners looking
in from outside—has been the ethical, many Westerners have dismissed
Chinese historical, political and more strictly philosophical thought as
being loosely and amiably ethical but never getting anywhere. The Chinese
did not departmentalize their learning to any considerable degree.
Politics was not the special activity of a definite group of men, or the
study of a select body of scholars. Politics ran through and across most
of the activities in society, and was largely the interest of that
intellectual élite by which China has been so distinguished on the roster
of civilizations. In becoming everything, politics ceased being politics;
that is, those elements in man’s thought and behavior which Westerners
have termed political were not separated and labelled. The Westerner must
say that politics was everything in China, or that it was nothing.

An interpretation of Sun Yat-sen must keep in mind these differences
between Chinese and Western categories. In doing so it will pass beyond
the limits of what is commonly known as politics, since no sharp
boundaries of “politics” are to be found in China. Yet, as an
interpretation designed to serve Western readers, it must return again and
again to Western politics, making comparisons when they are justified,
pointing out differences between China and the West as they become
relevant and clear. The interpretation will thus weave back and forth
between conventional Western political science, with its state-mindedness,
and the wholly different material of traditions and customs out of which
Sun sought to construct an ideology and a system of working politics for
China in the modern world.

How can this interpretation seek to avoid the misfortunes and errors into
which so many similar attempts have fallen? It must proceed without the
aid of such specialized techniques as dialectical-materialistic or
Paretian analysis, and yet aim at the scientific, the rationally
defensible, the objective. In seeking to apply a method in the
interpretation of Sun Yat-sen, the work must face criticism of its method,
must make the method explicit and simple enough to allow criticism. If the
thought of Sun really is to emerge from the exposition, the exposition
must allow itself to be judged, so that it can be appraised, and so that,
one way or another, it may not interfere with the just evaluation of the
materials which it seeks to present. Sun Yat-sen should not be judged poor
because of a poor interpretation; nor, on the other hand, should his
thought be adjudged more excellent or more exact than it seems to the
Chinese, merely because the expositor has suggested an interpretation
possibly more precise.

The technique adopted in the present work is a relatively simple one. It
is an attempt to start _de novo_ with certain concepts of society and
government. Several simple although novel terms are introduced, to provide
a foundation upon which the procedure may rest. One of these, for
instance, is “ideology,” which in the present work refers to the whole
psychological conditioning of a group of persons.(23) No attempt is made,
at the beginning or at any later phase of the exposition, to distinguish
between the ideology as belief and the ideology as truth. Whether the
Chinese were and are right, or the Westerners, are questions, not for the
student of comparative political science, but for the philosopher and the
psychologist. The interpretation seeks, as far as possible, to transpose
certain parts of the traditional Chinese ideology, as they were, and as
Sun Yat-sen re-shaped them, into one frame of reference provided by the
ideology of twentieth-century America. What the “real truth” is, does not
matter; the Marxians would say that both ideologies were inexact; so might
the Roman Catholics. If the ideology of old China, and the ideology that
Sun wished to see developed in the minds of the Chinese people of the
future, can be made comprehensible in terms of contemporary American
beliefs, of fact or of value, this venture will have been successful.

The Chinese ideology cannot be explained in its own terms; these exist
only in the Chinese language. If Sun Yat-sen’s own arrangement of his
works is inadequate for the Chinese, rearrangement is a task for the
Chinese and not for the Western scholars to perform. The Westerners who
deal with Sun can contribute substantially only if they give what the
Chinese cannot—enough of a reference to their own ideology to permit a
broader scale for the analysis and the appreciation of Sun’s thought.
Their knowledge of their own world of ideas is the special tool which
justifies their intervention in this Chinese field of knowledge.

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 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 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 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.

The old order that failed, the _interregnum_ (in the etymological sense of
the word), and the new order proposed by Sun must be taken all together in
order to obtain a just understanding of Sun’s thought. No vast history
need be written, no _Decline and Fall of the Chinese Empire_ is necessary,
but some indication of the age-old foundations and proximate conditions of
Sun’s thought must be obtained.

These may, perhaps, be found in a sampling of certain data from the
thought and behavior of the Chinese as a group under the old system, and
the selection of a few important facts from the history of China since the
first stages of the maladjustment. An exposition of Sun’s thought must not
slur the great importance of the past, yet it dare not linger too long on
this theme lest the present—in which, after all, uncounted millions of
Chinese are desperately struggling for life—come to seem insignificant.

Confucianism is a philosophy so broad and so highly developed that any
selection does violence to its balance and proportion, which are among its
chief merits.(24) Yet only those few facts can be taken from the history
and thought of the Chinese which may assist the Westerner in becoming
familiar with a few terms which recur again and again in the works of Sun
Yat-sen. If the present work purported to be a study of Chinese history,
or a complete analysis of the Chinese social system, such an extreme
selectivity could not be condoned; since it, however, tries only to
outline Sun’s thought, the selection of a few Confucian doctrines and the
complete ignoring of others, may be forgiven. All the schools of the past,
and the literary traditions which developed from them, and social
tendencies that were bound up with these have to be omitted, and those few
ideas and customs described which bear directly on one single point—the
most significant ideological differences between the Chinese and the West
with respect to the political order, i. e. the control of men in society
in the name of all society.(25)




Nation and State in Chinese Antiquity.


The Confucian system, against which Sun Yat-sen reacted in part and in
part sought to preserve, was a set of ideas and institutions developed as
a reaction against certain conditions in ancient China. These conditions
may be roughly described as having arisen from a system of
proto-nationalisms, at a time when the old—perhaps prehistorically
ancient—Chinese feudal system was rapidly declining and an early form of
capitalism and of states was taking its place. The Chou dynasty (ca.
1150-221 B.C.) was in power at the time of this transition; under its rule
the golden age of Chinese philosophy appeared—Confucius (552-479 B.C.) and
Lao Tzŭ (ca. 570-ca. 490 B.C.) lived and taught.

Their philosophies, contrary to the popular Western beliefs concerning
Chinese philosophies, were protests against a world which seemed to them
well-nigh intolerable. The old Chinese system, which may seem to
Westerners a highly mystical feudal organization, was in its century-long
death-agonies; the virtues it had taught were not the virtues of the hour;
the loyalties it had set up were loyalties which could scarcely be
maintained in a time when rising states, acting more and more as states
have acted in the West, were disrupting the earlier organization of
society, waging struggles—in the manner that, centuries later, Machiavelli
was to portray—of intrigue and warfare for the eventual hegemony over that
whole area of eastern Asia which the Chinese of that time regarded as the
civilized world.

The political aspects of the transition from the feudal to the
proto-national system is described by one of the most eminent of the
Western authorities on China in the following terms: “The aim of all the
Leaders was to control western Ho-nan. There is the heart of ancient
China.... All around about, in vaster regions occupied no doubt by less
dense and more shifting populations, great States formed, increasing first
towards the exterior, seeking (as we have seen in the case of China) to
cut the communication of their rivals with the Barbarians, mutually
forcing each other to change the directions of the expansion, exercising
on each other a pressure from behind, and a converging pressure on the
central overlordships. All schemed to conquer them. Thus an amalgamation
was achieved. Whilst in the centre the Chinese nation was coming into
being, on the outer borders States were being formed which, aiming at
annexing the centre of China, ended by themselves also becoming
Chinese.”(26) Not only did the newer, political organization of society
begin to make itself distinct from the family, feudal, and religious
organization; it began to engage in activities which increased its
resemblance to the Western system of nations. Tributes of textiles,
horses, and compulsory labor were demanded. A non-feudal economy was
encouraged; the state of Ch’i encouraged artisans and merchants, and
favored the trade in fish and salt. Mining, metallurgy and currency were
studied. State monopolies were created out of the products of forests,
lakes, marshes, shell-fish beds, and salt pans. Mines also became
“treasures of the state.”(27)

The history of these states reads like a page torn out of the history of
early modern Europe. The struggle was half diplomatic and half military.
From the beginning of the Spring and Autumn period (722-481 B.C.) to the
end of the Age of Warring States (491-221 B.C.), China was subject to
frequent war and unstable peace. The character of war itself changed, from
a chivalrous exercise almost ritualistic in nature, to a struggle of
unrestricted force. The units of government which were to develop into
states, and almost into nations, began as feudal overlordships;
traditional hatreds and sentiments were developed; diplomatic and military
policies crystallized and became consistent; and activities of a state
nature became increasingly prominent.

Concurrently, other factors operated to prevent an indefinite continuance
of these struggles of proto-national states and to avoid the appearance of
a permanent system of armed nations such as that which has appeared in
modern Europe. The feudal system of China left a strong ethnical,
linguistic and intellectual heritage of unity, which was stronger than the
cultural disunities and particularities appearing in certain of the
states. (The state of Chêng was particularly conspicuous in developing a
peculiar state culture.)(28) As the states became larger and larger with
the passing of time, they tended not only to develop certain large
differences between themselves, but to eradicate the minute local
peculiarities of the old system, and in so doing to increase the general
homogeneity which was also a heritage of the past ages. This general
homogeneity found a living symbol in the persons of the Chou Emperors who,
possessed of no more power than the Tennos under the Shogunate, acted, as
did their Japanese analogues two thousand years later, as the
quasi-religious personifications of the whole general community. It thus
occurred that the old feudal system was destroyed by the growth of a
general non-feudal economy and political order, which, in its turn, led to
the development of the great imperial system under which China continued
for many centuries. The period of the transition, during which the
traditional feudal unity had been shaken and the new imperial unity not
yet established, was a tumultuous and bloody one. The presence of a
confederation under the hegemony of some one state—the so-called
Presidency—provided a suitable framework for rivalries toward power,
without particularly increasing the general peace.

The transition, as it took place, was neither apparent nor agreeable. The
political turmoil was but slightly less than the intellectual unrest and
disturbance. Everywhere faith and acceptance seemed to have been lost to
humanity; licentiousness and impiety fed discord. The lack of harmony,
made doubly vivid by the presence of a strong tradition of primeval
Arcadian peace and unity under the mythological Emperors, was bitter to
the scholars and men of virtue of the time. It was quite inevitable that
protests should be raised which would hasten the advent, or return, of
unity and peace. These protests form the subject of the work of Confucius
and the other great philosophers, and schools of thinkers, of the Chou
dynasty. It was, in later ages, upon these philosophies that the great
structure of Chinese society developed and continued down until modern
times.




The Theory of the Confucian World-Society.


The various types of protest against the development of states and the
consequent anarchy of the Chinese society considered as a whole cannot be
considered in this work; many were primarily religious; Taoism, while
ranking as one of the most conspicuous religions of the world, has little
bearing on politics. Even Confucianism, which merits careful study, must
be summarized and re-stated as briefly as possible. Confucianism has
suffered from an ambiguity and exoticism of terms, when presented to the
West; its full significance as a political philosophy can become fully
apparent only when it is rendered in the words of the hour.

What was it that Confucius did in protest against the established discord
of the world he knew? He struck directly at the foundations of politics.
His criticisms and remedies can be fully appreciated only by reference to
a theory of ideology.

Confucius perceived that the underlying problem of society was that of
ideology; he seems to have realized that the character of a society itself
essentially depends upon the character of the moral ideas generally
prevalent among the individuals composing it, and that where there is no
common body of ideas a society can scarcely be said to exist.(29) He did
not consider, as did Han Fei-tzŭ and the legalist school of philosophers,
questions of law the preëminent social problem. He realized that state and
law were remedies, and that the prime questions of organization were those
anterior to the political, and that the state existed for the purpose of
filling out the shortcomings of social harmony.(30)

In a society—such as Confucius dreamed of—where there was no disagreement
in outlook, policy would not be a governmental question; if there were no
disharmony of thought and of behavior, there would be no necessity of
enforcing conformance to the generally accepted criteria of conduct. From
this standpoint, government itself is socially pathological, a remedy for
a poorly ordered society. Men are controlled indirectly by the examples of
virtue; they do good because they have learned to do good and do it
unquestioningly and simply. Whatever control is exercised over men is
exercised by their ideology, and if other men desire control they must
seek it through shaping the ideas of others. At its full expression, such
a doctrine would not lead to mere anarchy; but it would eliminate the
political altogether from the culture of man, replacing it with an
educational process. Ideological control would need to be supplemented by
political only if it failed to cover the total range of social behavior,
and left loopholes for conflict and dispute.

This doctrine is framed in quite different terms by Confucius, who spoke
and wrote in an age when the mystical elements of the old feudal ideology
still exercised powerful and persuasive influence, and when there was no
other society than his own which he might make the object of his study.
The central point of his teachings is the doctrine of _jên_. Liang
Ch’i-ch’ao, one of the most brilliant modern exponents of ancient Chinese
philosophy, wrote of this:


    In the simplest terms, “Jen” means fellow-feeling for one’s kind.
    Once Fan Chih, one of his disciples, asked Confucius what “Jen”
    meant. Confucius replied, “To love fellow-men”; in other words
    this means to have a feeling of sympathy toward mankind....

    Intellectually the relationship becomes common purpose;
    emotionally it takes the form of fellow-feeling.(31)


This doctrine appears more specific in its application when it is realized
that Confucius regarded his own society and mankind as coterminous.
Barbarians, haunting the fringes of the world, were unconscious of _jên_;
not being in sympathy with mankind, they were not as yet fully human.

_Jên_ is a word which cannot be exactly translated into English. It is
laden with a burden of connotations which it has acquired through the
centuries; its variability of translation may be shown by the fact that,
in the standard translations of the Chinese classics, it is written
“Benevolence.” It might equally well be given as “consciousness of one’s
place and function in society.” The man who followed _jên_ was one who was
aware of his place in society, and of his participation in the common
endeavors of mankind.

_Jên_, or society-mindedness, leads to an awareness of virtue and
propriety (_têh_ and _yi_). When virtue and propriety exist, it is
obligatory that men follow them. Behavior in accordance with virtue and
propriety is _li_. Commonly translated “ethics,” this is seen as the
fruition of the force of _jên_ in human society. _Jên_ underlies and
establishes society, from the existence of which spring virtue and
propriety; these prescribe principles for human conduct, the formulation
of which rules is _li_.(32) Auxiliary to _li_ is _chêng ming_. _Chêng
ming_ is the rightness of names: _li_, the appropriateness of
relationships. _Li_, it may be noted, is also translated “rites” or
“ceremonies”; a rendering which, while not inexact, fails to convey the
full import of the term.

_Chêng ming_, the rectification of names, may be regarded as a protest
against the discords in language that had developed during the
transitional period from feudalism to eventual unity. Confucius, of
course, did not have as sharp an issue confronting him as do the modern
Western innovators in social and political ideology. Nevertheless, the
linguistic difficulty was clear to him. The expansion of the Chinese
written language was so great at that time that it led to the
indiscriminate coining of neologisms, and there was a tendency towards a
sophisticated hypocrisy in the use of words.(33)

Confucius saw that, in obtaining harmony, language needed to be exact;
otherwise long and fruitless disputes over empty words might be engaged in
or, what was even worse, words might not conform to the realities of
social life, and might be used as instruments of ill-doing. Confucius did
not, however, present a scheme of word-worship. He wanted communication to
cement society, to be an instrument of concord. He wanted, in modern
terms, a terminology which by its exactness and suitability would of
itself lead to harmony.(34) In advocating the rectification of names,
Confucius differed from many other founders of philosophies and religions;
they, too, wanted names rectified—terminology reorganized—to suit their
particular doctrines; but there they stopped short. Confucius regarded the
rectification of names as a continuous process, one which had to be
carried on unceasingly if communication, for the sake of social harmony,
was to remain just and exact.

_Chêng ming_ is highly significant in Confucian thought, and exhibits the
striking difference between the Chinese and the older Western political
study. If the terms by means of which the communication within a society
is effected, and in which the group beliefs of fact or of value are to be
found, can be the subject of control, there is opened up a great field of
social engineering. _Chêng ming_ states, in recognizable although archaic
terms, the existence of ideology, and proposes the strengthening of
ideology. In recognizing the group (in his case, mankind) as dependent
upon ideology for group existence, Confucius delivered Chinese political
thought from any search for an ontology of the _real state_. It became
possible to continue, in the traditional pragmatic manner,(35) thinking of
men in simple terms referring only to individual men, avoiding the
hypostatizations common in the West. In pointing out the necessity for the
control of ideology by men, Confucius anticipated theories of the
“pedagogical state” by some twenty centuries.

_Li_, in the terminology of the present work, is the conformity of the
individual to the moral ideology, or, stated in another manner, the
control of men by the ideology.(36)

_Li_, conformity to the ideology, implies, of course, conformity to those
parts of it which determine value. _Li_ prescribes the do-able, the
thinkable. In so far as the ideology consists of valuations, so far do
those valuations determine _li_. Hsü lists the operations of _li_ in six
specific categories:


    (1) it furnishes the principles of political organization; (2) it
    furnishes details for the application of the doctrine of
    ratification; (3) it discusses the functions of government; (4) it
    prescribes the limitations of governmental authority; (5) it
    advances principles of social administration; and (6) it provides
    a foundation for crime and lawsuits. These are only the political
    functions of _li_. Its force is to be regarded as equally
    effective in every other type of human behavior.(37)


The approach to society contained in the doctrines of _jên_, _chêng ming_,
and _li_ is, therefore, one which largely eliminates the necessity for
politics. Its influence may be estimated from three points of view: (1) to
what degree was government different from what it might have been had it
followed the line of development that government did in the West? (2) what
was the range of governmental action in such a system? and (3) what was
the relation of government to the other institutions of a Confucian
society?

In regard to the first point, it will be seen immediately that government,
once _chêng ming_ has been set in motion, is not a policy-making body.
There is no question of policy, no room for disagreement, no alternative.
What is right is apparent. Politics, in the narrow sense of the word,
ceases to be a function of government; only administration remains.

Secondly, government needs to administer only for two purposes. The chief
of these is the maintenance of the ideology. Once right views are
established, no individual is entitled to think otherwise. Government must
treat the heterodox as malefactors. Their crime is greater than ordinary
crime, which is a mere violation of right behavior; they pollute right
thought, set in motion the forces of discord, and initiate evils which may
work on and on through the society, even after the evil-thinkers
themselves are dead. To protect the society actively against discord, the
government must encourage the utterance of the accepted truth. The scholar
is thus the highest of all the social classes; it is he who maintains
agreement and order. The government becomes, in maintaining the ideology,
the educational system. The whole political life is education, formal or
informal. Every act of the leader is a precept and an example. The ruler
does not compel virtue by law; he spreads it by his conspicuous example.

The other function of the government in maintaining the ideology lies in
the necessity of dealing with persons not affected by the ideology.
Barbarians are especially formidable, since both heretics and criminals
may be restored to the use of their reason, while barbarians may not, so
long as they remain barbarians. Accordingly, the government is also a
defense system. It is a defense against open and physical disruption from
within—as in the case of insurrectionaries or bandits—and a defense
against forces from without which, as veritable powers of darkness, cannot
be taught and are amenable only to brute force.

In connection with the third point, government itself appears as subject
to _li_. It has no right to do wrong. The truth is apparent to everyone,
and especially to the scholars. In this wise the Chinese governments were
at the mercy of their subjects. No divine right shielded them when public
opinion condemned them; ill-doing governments were twice guilty and
contemptible, because of the great force of their examples. An evil
emperor was not only a criminal; he was a heresiarch, leading many astray,
and corrupting the virtue upon which society rested—virtue being the
maintenance of a true and moral ideology, and conformity to it.

The consequence of these teachings was such that we may say, without
sacrificing truth to paradox, that the aim of Chinese government was
anarchy—not in the sense of disorder, but in the sense of an order so just
and so complete that it needed no governing. The _laissez-faire_ of the
Chinese was not only economic; it was political. The Great Harmony of
Confucius, which was his Utopia, was conceived of as a society where the
excellence of ideology and the thoroughness of conformity to ideology had
brought perfect virtue, perfect happiness.

The other doctrines of Confucius, his practical teachings on
statesmanship, his discourses on the family—these cannot be entered into
here. Enough has, perhaps, been shown to demonstrate the thoroughness of
Confucius’ reaction against state and nation.(38) This reaction was to
continue, and to become so typical that the whole Chinese system of
subsequent centuries was called Confucian,(39) until the exigencies of a
newer, larger, and more perilous world led to Sun Yat-sen’s teaching of
modern Chinese nationalism. Before taking up the doctrine of _min tsu_, it
may be worthwhile to summarize the manner in which Chinese society,
deliberately and accidentally, each in part, followed out the doctrines of
Confucius in its practical organization.




The Chinese World-Society of Eastern Asia.


It would be, of course, absurd to pretend to analyze the social system of
China in a few paragraphs; and yet it is necessary to the study of Sun
Yat-sen that certain characteristics be at least mentioned. Several
problems appear which are quite outstanding. What was the social position
and function of each individual? How were refractory individuals to be
disciplined in accordance with the requirements that the general opinion
of society imposed? What were the ultimate ends which the organization of
Chinese society was to realize? How were the educational system and the
frontier defenses to be maintained? What was to be the position and power
of the political organization?

At the outset it is necessary that a working demarcation of the political
be established. Accepting, by definition, those coercive controls as
political which are operated for the preservation of society as a whole,
and are recognized within the society as so doing, we see immediately that
the range of the political must have been much less in old China than it
has been in the West. Western societies tend, at least in law, to
emphasize the relationship between the individual and the society as a
whole; free and unassociated individuals tend to become extraordinarily
unstable. In the old Chinese society the control of the individual was so
much an ideological one, that political control was infinitely narrower
than in the West. But, in order to effectuate ideological control, there
must be an organization which will permit pressure to be exercised on the
individual in such a compelling manner that the exercise of external
coercion becomes unnecessary. In a society in which the state has withered
away, after an enormous expansion in the subject-matter of its
control,(40) the totalitarian state is succeeded by the totalitarian
tradition, if—and the qualification is an important one—the indoctrination
has been so effective that the ideology can maintain itself in the minds
of men without the continuing coercive power of the state to uphold it. If
the ideology is secure, then control of the individual will devolve upon
those persons making up his immediate social environment, who—in view of
the uniform and secure notions of right and justice prevailing—can be
relied upon to attend to him in a manner which will be approved by the
society in general.

In China the groups most conspicuous within the society were the family
system, the village and district, and the _hui_ (association; league;
society, in the everyday sense of the word).

The family was an intricate structure. A fairly typical instance of family
organization within a specific village has been described in the following
terms: “The village is occupied by one sib, a uni-lateral kinship group,
exogamous, monogamous but polygynous, composed of a plurality of kin
alignments into four families: the natural family, the economic-family,
the religious-family, and the sib.”(41) The natural family corresponded to
the family of the West. The economic family may have had a natural family
as its core, but commonly extended through several degrees of kinship, and
may have included from thirty to one hundred persons, who formed a single
economic unit, living and consuming collectively. The religious family was
an aggregate of economic families, of which it would be very difficult to
give any specified number as an average. It was religious in that it
provided the organization for the proper commemoration and reverence of
ancestors, and maintained an ancestral shrine where the proper
genealogical records could be kept; the cult feature has largely
disappeared in modern times. The sib corresponded roughly to the clan,
found in some Western communities; its rôle was determined by the
immediate environment. In some cases—as especially in the south—the sib
was powerful enough to engage in feuds; at times one or more sibs
dominated whole communities; in the greater part of China it was a loose
organization, holding meetings from time to time to unite the various
local religious families which constituted it.

Family consciousness played its part in sustaining certain elements of the
Confucian ideology. It stressed the idea of the carnal immortality of the
human race; it oriented the individual, not only philosophically, but
socially as well. The size of each family determined his position
spatially, and family continuity fixed a definite location in time for
him. With its many-handed grasp upon the individual, the family system
held him securely in place and prevented his aspiring to the arrogant
heights of nobility or falling to the degradation of a slavery in which he
might become a mere commodity. A Chinese surrounded by his kinsmen was
shielded against humiliations inflicted upon him by outsiders or the
menace of his own potential follies. It was largely through the family
system, with its religious as well as economic and social foundation, that
the Chinese solved the problem of adequate mobility of individuals in a
society stable as a whole, and gave to that stability a clear and
undeniable purpose—the continued generation of the human race through the
continuity of a multitude of families, each determined upon survival.

The family was the most obviously significant of the groupings within the
society, but it was equalled if not excelled in importance by the
village.(42)

Had the family been the only important social grouping, it might have been
impossible for any democracy to develop in China. It so occurred that the
family pattern provided, indeed, the model for the government, but the
importance of villages in Chinese life negated the too sharp influence of
a familistic government. It would have been the most awful heresy, as it
is in Japan today, to revolt against and depose an unrighteous father;
there was nothing to prevent the deposition or destruction of an evil
village elder. In times of concord, the Emperor was the father of the
society; at other times, when his rule was less successful, he was a
fellow-villager subject to the criticism of the people.

The village was the largest working unit of non-political administration;
that is to say, groups within and up to the village were almost completely
autonomous and not subject to interference, except in very rare cases,
from outside. The village was the smallest unit of the political. The
District Magistrate, as the lowest officer in the political-educational
system, was in control of a district containing from one to twenty
villages, and negotiated, in performing the duties imposed upon him, with
the village leaders. The villages acted as self-ruling communes, at times
very democratic.(43)

Next in importance, among Chinese social groups, after the family and the
village was the _hui_. It was in all probability the last to appear.
Neither ordained, as the family seemed to be, by the eternal physical and
biological order of things, nor made to seem natural, as was the village,
by the geographic and economic environment, the association found its
justification in the deeply ingrained propensities of the Chinese to
coöperate. Paralleling and supplementing the former two, the _hui_ won for
itself a definite and unchallenged place in the Chinese social structure.
The kinds of _hui_ may be classified into six categories:(44) 1) the
fraternal societies; 2) insurance groups; 3) economic guilds; 4) religious
societies; 5) political societies; and 6) organizations of militia and
vigilantes. The _hui_ made up, in their economic form, the greater part of
the economic organization of old China, and provided the system of
vocational education for persons not destined to literature and
administration. Politically, it was the _hui_—under such names as the
Triad and the Lotus—that provided the party organizations of old China and
challenged the dynasties whenever objectionable social or economic
conditions developed.

The old Chinese society, made up of innumerable families, villages, and
_hui_, comprised a whole “known world.” Its strength was like that of a
dinosaur in modern fable; having no one nerve-centre, the world-society
could not be destroyed by inroads of barbarians, or the ravages of famine,
pestilence, and insurrection. The ideology which has been called Confucian
continued. At no one time were conditions so bad as to break the many
threads of Chinese culture and to release a new generation of persons
emancipated from the tradition. Throughout the centuries education and
government went forward, even though dynasties fell and the whole country
was occasionally over-run by conquerors. The absence of any juristically
rigid organization permitted the Chinese to maintain a certain minimum of
order, even in the absence of an emperor, or, as more commonly occurred,
in the presence of several.

The governmental superstructure cemented the whole Chinese world together
in a formal manner; it did not create it. The family, the village, and the
_hui_ were fit subjects for imperial comment, but there was nothing in
their organization to persuade the student that the Emperor—by virtue of
some Western-type _Kompetenz Kompetenz_—could remove his sanction from
their existence and thereby annihilate them. There was no precarious legal
personality behind the family, the village, and the _hui_, which could be
destroyed by a stroke of law. It was possible for the English kings to
destroy the Highland clan of the MacGregor—“the proscribed name”—without
liquidating the members of the clan _in toto_. In China the Emperor beheld
a family as a quasi-individual, and when enraged at them was prone to wipe
them out with massacre. Only in a very few cases was it possible for him
to destroy an organization without destroying the persons composing it; he
could, for example, remove the privilege of a scholarship system from a
district, prefecture, or province without necessarily disposing of all the
scholars involved in the move. The government of China—which, in the
normal run of affairs, had no questions of policy, because policy was
traditional and inviolable—continued to be an administration dedicated to
three main ends—the maintenance of the ideology (education), the defense
of the society as a whole against barbarians (military affairs) and
against the adverse forces of nature (public works on the most
extensive—and not intensive—scale), and the collection of funds for the
fulfillment of the first two ends (revenue). The Emperor was also the
titular family head of the Chinese world.

The educational system was identical with the administrative, except in
the case of the foreign dynasties. (Under the Manchus, for example, a
certain quota of Manchu officials were assigned throughout the government,
irrespective of their scholastic rank in contrast to the Chinese.) It was
a civil service, an educational structure, and a ritualist organization.
Selected from the people at large, scholars could—at least in
theory—proceed on the basis of sheer merit to any office in the Empire
excepting the Throne. Their advancement was graduated on a very elaborate
scale of degrees, which could be attained only by the passing of
examinations involving an almost perfect knowledge of the literature of
antiquity and the ability to think in harmony with and reproduce that
literature. The Chinese scholar-official had to learn to do his own
thinking by means of the clichés which he could learn from the classics;
he had to make every thought and act of his life conform to the pattern of
the ideology. Resourceful men may have found in this a proper
fortification for their originality, as soon as they were able to cloak it
with the expressions of respect; mediocre persons were helpless beyond the
bounds of what they had learned.

The combination of education and administration had one particular very
stabilizing effect upon Chinese society. It made literacy and rulership
identical. Every educated man was either a government official or expected
to become one. There was no hostile scholar class, no break with the
tradition. Struggle between scholars generally took the form of conflicts
between cliques and were not founded—except in rare instances—on any
cleavage of ideas. The Throne secured its own position and the continuity
of the ideology through establishing intellectuality as a government
monopoly. The consequences of the educational-administrative system
fostered democratic tendencies quite as much as they tended to maintain
the status quo. The scholars were all men, and Chinese, owing allegiance
to families and to native districts. In this manner a form of
representation was assured the government which kept it from losing touch
with the people, and which permitted the people to exercise influence upon
the government in the advancement of any special interests that could
profit by government assistance. The educational system also served as the
substitute for a nobility. Hereditary class distinctions existed in China
on so small a scale that they amounted to nothing. The way to power was
through the educational hierarchy.(45) In a society which offered no
financial or military short cuts to power, and which had no powerful
nobility to block the way upward, the educational system provided an
upward channel of social mobility which was highly important in the
organization of the Chinese world order.

The scholars, once they had passed the examinations, were given either
subsistence allowances or posts, according to the rank which they had
secured in the tests. (This was, of course, the theory; in actuality
bribery and nepotism played rôles varying with the time and the locality.)
They made up the administration of the civilized world. They were not only
the officials but the literati.

It would be impossible even to enumerate the many posts and types of
organization in the administration of imperial China.(46) Its most
conspicuous features may be enumerated as follows: China consisted of half
a million cities, towns, villages, and hamlets, each to a large extent
autonomous.(47) These were divided among, roughly, two thousand _hsien_,
in each of which an over-burdened District Magistrate sought to carry out
all the recognized functions of government in so far as they applied to
his locality. He did this largely by negotiation with the leaders of the
social groups in his bailiwick, the heads of families, the elders of
villages, the functionaries of _hui_. He was supervised by a variety of
travelling prefects and superintendents, but the next officer above him
who possessed a high degree of independence was the viceroy or
governor—whichever type happened to rule the province or group of
provinces. Except for their non-hereditability, these last offices were to
all intents and purposes satrapies. The enormous extent of the Chinese
civilized world, the difficulty of communicating with the capital, the
cumbersomeness of the administrative organization, the rivalry and
unfriendliness between the inhabitants of various provinces—all these
encouraged independence of a high degree. If Chinese society was divided
into largely autonomous communes, the Chinese political system was made up
of largely autonomous provinces. Everywhere there was elasticity.

At the top of the whole structure stood the Emperor. In the mystical
doctrines which Confucianism transmitted from the animism of the feudal
ages of China, the Emperor was the intermediary between the forces of
nature and mankind. The Son of Heaven became the chief ritualist; in more
sophisticated times he was the patron of civilization to the scholars, and
the object of supernatural veneration to the uneducated. His function was
to provide a constant pattern of propriety. He was to act as chief of the
scholars. To the scholars the ideology was recognized as an ideology,
albeit the most exact one; to the common people it was an objective
reality of thought and value. As the dictates of reason were not subject
to change, the power and the functions of the Emperor were delimited; he
was not, therefore, responsible to himself alone. He was responsible to
reason, which the people could enforce when the Emperor failed. Popular
intervention was regarded as _de jure_ in proportion to its effectiveness
_de facto_. The Imperial structure might be called, in Western terms, the
constitutionalism of common sense.(48) The Dragon Throne did not enjoy the
mysterious and awful prestige which surrounds the modern Tenno of Nippon;
although sublime in the Confucian theory, it was, even in the theory, at
the mercy of its subjects, who were themselves the arbiters of reason.
There was no authority higher than reason; and no reason beyond the reason
discovered and made manifest in the ages of antiquity.




The Impact of the West.


Mere physical shock could not derange the old Chinese society as easily as
it might some other, dependent for its stability upon complex, fragile
political mechanisms. China was over-run many times by barbarians; the
continuity of its civilization was undisturbed. Each group of conquerors
added to the racial composition of the Chinese, but contributed little to
the culture. The Ch’in, the Mongols, the Manchus—all ruled China as
Chinese rulers.

This strength of the Chinese society—in contrast to the Roman—must not,
however, lead us to suppose that there were any extraordinary virtues in
the Chinese social organization that made Chinese civilization
indestructible. On the contrary, the continued life of the Chinese society
may be ascribed, among others, to four conditions acting definitely and
overwhelmingly in its favor: China’s greater physical extent, homogeneity,
wealth, and culture.

No barbarian conqueror, with the possible exception of the Mongol, would
have been a match for an orderly and united China. Without exception, the
barbarian incursions occurred in times of social and political disorder
and weakness. That this is no freakish coincidence, may be shown by the
contrast between China and any of the peripheral realms. None approached
China in extent, in heaviness of population. Conquest of China was always
conquest by sufferance of the Chinese.

Second, China’s neighbors were divided among themselves. There was never
any coalition extensive enough to present a genuine threat to a thriving
China. The Chinese, in spite of diversities of spoken language, were
united—so far as they were literate—by a common writing and literature;
the common ideology had, moreover, fostered an extreme sympathy of thought
and behavior among the Chinese. Persons speaking mutually unintelligible
dialects, of different racial composition, and in completely different
economic and geographical environments displayed—and, for all that, still
display in modern times—an uncanny uniformity of social conditioning.
China faced barbarians on many fronts; China was coördinated, homogeneous;
the barbarians of North and South did not, in all probability, know
anything of each other’s existence, except what they heard from the
Chinese.

Third, China’s wealth was a socially fortifying factor. In all Eastern
Asia, no other society or form of social organization appeared which could
produce a higher scale of living. The Chinese were always materially
better off than their neighbors, with the possible exception of the
Koreans and Japanese.

Fourth, Eastern Asia was Chinese just as Europe was Graeco-Roman. The
peripheral societies all owed a great part, if not all, of their culture
to the Chinese. China’s conquerors were already under the spell of Chinese
civilization when they swept down upon it. None of them were anxious to
destroy the heritage of science, arts, and invention which the Chinese had
developed.

With these advantages in mind, it is easy to understand the peculiarity of
the Westerners, as contrasted with the other peoples whom the Chinese met
and fought. The formidable physical power of the Chinese was, after the
first few decades of intercourse, seen to be quite unequal to the superior
military technique of the West. The Westerners, although different from
one another at home, tended to appear as united in the Far East. In any
case, Chinese unity availed little in the face of greater military power.
The economic factor, while a great attraction to the Westerners, was no
inducement to them to become Chinese; they were willing to gain Chinese
wealth, and dreamed of conquering it, but not of making wealth in the
Chinese manner. And lastly, and most importantly, the Westerners presented
a culture of their own which—after the first beginnings of regular
intercourse—was quite well able to hold its own against the Chinese.(49)

To the utter certainty of the Chinese way of life, the Westerners
presented the equally unshakable dogma of Christianity. They regarded the
Chinese—as did the Chinese them—as outlanders on the edge of the known
world. They exhibited, in short, almost the same attitude toward the
Chinese that the Chinese had toward barbarians. Consequently, each group
regarded the other as perverse. The chief distinction between the Chinese
and the Westerners lay in the fact that the Chinese would in all
probability have been satisfied if the West had minded its own business,
while the West, feverish with expansionism, cajoled and fought for the
right to come, trade, and teach.(50)

At times, the two races met on agreeable and equal terms. The Jesuit
missionaries ingratiated themselves with the Chinese and, by respecting
Chinese culture, won a certain admiration for their own. The eighteenth
century in Europe was the century of _chinoiserie_, when Chinese models
exercised a profound influence on the fine and domestic arts of
Europe.(51) The great upsurge of economic power in the period of the
European industrial revolution led to increased self-assurance on the part
of the Europeans. The new standards of value alienated them from those
features of Chinese culture which the eighteenth century had begun to
appreciate, and placed them in a position to sell to the Chinese as well
as buy. More and more the economic position of the two societies changed
about; the Westerners had come to purchase the superior artizan-made goods
of China, giving in exchange metals or raw materials. A tendency now
developed for them to sell their own more cheaply, and, in some cases,
better manufactured products to the Chinese. The era of good feeling and
mutual appreciation, which had never been very strong, now drew to a
close.

The vassal states of China were conquered. The British fought the Chinese
on several occasions, and conquered each time. The full extent of Western
military superiority was revealed in the capture of Peking in 1860, and in
the effectiveness—entirely disproportionate to their numbers—that
Western-trained Imperial troops had in suppressing the Chinese T’ai-p’ing
rebels.

When Sun Yat-sen was a boy, the country was afire with fear and
uncertainty. Barbarians who could neither be absorbed nor defeated had
appeared. Instead of adopting Chinese thought and manners, they were
vigorously teaching their own to the Chinese. The traditional Chinese
mechanisms of defense against barbarians were not working.(52) Something
was vitally wrong. The Chinese could not be persuaded, as some other
non-European peoples conquered in the age of Western world-dominion seem
to have been, that all error lay with themselves, and that their own
ideology was not worth the saving; nor could they, in face of the
unfortunate facts, still believe that they themselves were completely
right, or, at least, that their own notions of rightness were completely
expedient. In view of the pragmatic foundations of the whole Chinese
ideology and way of life, the seriousness of these consequences cannot be
over-estimated. Little wonder that China was disturbed! The pragmatic,
realistic method of organization that the Chinese had had, no longer
worked in a new environment rising, as it were, from the sea.

The Western impact, consequently, affected China in two ways. In the first
place, the amorphous Chinese society was threatened and dictated to by the
strong, clearly organized states of the West. In the second place, the
introduction of disharmonious values from the West destroyed, in large
part, that appearance of universality, upon which the effectiveness of the
Chinese ideology depended, and shocked Chinese thought and action until
even their first premises seemed doubtful.

This, in short, was the dilemma of the Chinese at the advent of Sun
Yat-sen. His life was to be dedicated to its solution; it is his analyses
that are to be studied in the explanation of the Chinese society in the
modern world.




The Continuing Significance of the Background.


Before proceeding to the exposition of Sun Yat-sen’s theories and
programs, it is necessary that a superlatively important consideration be
emphasized: namely, that Sun Yat-sen was a Chinese, that the nation he
worked for was China, and that the intellectual and social background of
his labors was one completely different from that of the Euramerican
world. A great part of the vaporous disputation which has hidden Chinese
politics in a cloud of words has been the consequence of the ignoring, by
Westernized Chinese as well as by Westerners, of the monumental fact that
China is in only a few respects comparable to the West, and that the ideas
and methods of the West lose the greater part of their relevance when
applied to the Chinese milieu. Political dialecticians in China split
Marxian hairs as passionately and sincerely as though they were in
nineteenth-century Germany.(53) Sun Yat-sen, though accused of this
fantastic fault by some of his adversaries, was—as his theories show upon
close examination—much less influenced by Western thought than is commonly
supposed to be the case, and in applying Western doctrines to Chinese
affairs was apt to look upon this as a fortunate coincidence, instead of
assuming the universal exactness of recent Western social and political
thought.

What are the features of the Chinese background that must be remembered in
order to throw a just light upon the beliefs of Sun Yat-sen? Primarily, it
must have become apparent, from the foregoing discussion of Confucianism
and the old social order, that China, under the leadership of Sun Yat-sen,
was beginning to draw away from an order of things which the West—or at
least a part of the West—aspires to achieve: a world-society in which the
state had withered away. This ideal, while never completely realized in
China, was perhaps more closely attained than it has ever been in any
other society. Modern actualities led away from this ideal. The West,
dreaming of world unity, was divided and armed; China too had to abandon
the old notions of universal peace, and arm. The West, seeking social
stability, was mobile; China too had to move.

The old society was in its controls totalitarian. Diffuse and extensive
controls operated fairly evenly throughout the system. The West possessed
a state system which was fundamentally different. By limiting the range of
law to the reinforcement of certain particular _mores_, the Westerners
were able to obtain a terrific concentration of political power within the
sphere of what they conceived to be legitimate state control. On the other
hand the presence of a large number of activities not subject to state
control led individuals to cherish their freedom—a freedom which in most
cases did not impair the military and political effectiveness of the state
in external action.

Since Fascism seeks to reëstablish order and certainty, as does Communism
(although an order and certainty of a different kind), by the extension of
state activities; and since Sun Yat-sen proposed to improve the political
position of China by developing a modern state (of narrow, but intense
activities in contrast to the loose general controls of the old society),
the drift in China may be regarded, in this respect, as Fascism in
reverse. Beginning with the same premises—the regeneration of the
nation—Mussolini was led to a course of policy diametrically opposite to
that plotted by Sun Yat-sen.

Even, however, with his plans for developing a “machine state” in a
society where states had long since perished, Sun Yat-sen did not propose
to destroy Chinese morality and non-political discipline for the sake of
instituting a sharp juristic law-and-order organization. He was anxious
that the old Chinese morality and social knowledge be applied. In this, he
differed from most of the other modern leaders of China, who were for
veneering China with a Parliament and police without delay. Sun Yat-sen
realized that a state was necessary in China, and hoped to establish one;
he also hoped that, beyond the limits of the new state activity,
individualism and disorder would not come to prevail, but that the old
controls would continue to operate.

Accordingly, Sun Yat-sen’s thought cannot be studied as a mere offshoot of
recent Western thought. It must be realized that he proposed two ends
which, of all the countries of the world, would be mutually compatible
only in China: the development of a state, and the full continuation of
non-political controls.(54)

In fostering the continuation of ideological control, Sun Yat-sen hoped to
modify the old ideology so that it would become applicable to the new
situations. As will be made clear later, he was redefining the old
world-view so that, without disturbing the consequences to which it would
lead, it might apply in a novel and unprecedentedly disturbed world. He
was, in short, switching the premises and trying to preserve the
conclusions, modifying the actual behavior of the Chinese only in so far
as it was necessary for the purpose of strengthening and invigorating the
whole body politic of China.

Another strain of the ancient thought penetrates Sun Yat-sen’s theories.
Ideological control was not to the Confucians, as some Marxian critics
aver,(55) a rather naïve duplicity by which the gentry of China could
maintain themselves in power indefinitely. Confucius can not be accused,
save on the basis of unwarrantable reading-in, of insincerity in his
teaching of order. He was conservative, and knew what he was doing, in
seeking for the general self-discipline of men, and the rule of precept
and virtue; but to believe that he desired one public philosophy and
another private one goes beyond the realm of historically justifiable
interpretation. An ideology may, of course, be deceptive to its
promulgators, but the absence of any genuine class-society—as known in the
West—must serve as a testimonial to the sincerity of Confucian teachings.
The Confucian ideology was to the ancients not only an instrument for
good; it was common sense.

Sun Yat-sen did not, as a Western leader in his position might have done,
seek to befuddle the masses for their own good. Since he proposed to
entrust China’s destinies to the votes of the masses, he could scarcely
have believed them liable to fall victims to deceit over a great length of
time. In teaching of the race-nation, and of the nature of Chinese
society, Sun Yat-sen was telling the people what it would be good for them
to believe; it was good for them because it was the truth—that is, most in
accord with the actual situation of China in the general society of the
world.

Few today would dare say what is really in the minds of European leaders
such as Stalin, Mussolini, and Hitler. These men may themselves believe
what they say; or, not believing it, say it nevertheless because they
think it the right thing for the masses, in the masses’ own interests, to
believe. Their respective enemies accuse them of saying what they do in
order to mislead the masses and to dominate the masses for hidden purposes
of their own. No such accusation has been levelled against Sun Yat-sen.
Apart from his personal sincerity, his belief in the qualities of the
common people was such that he did not consider it necessary to deceive
them, even for their own good.

Consequently, in dealing with the various doctrines that Sun preached, it
must be remembered that he himself believed what he was saying. He did not
merely think that the people should regard the Chinese society as a
race-nation; he thought that China _was_ a race-nation. The modifications
of the Confucian philosophy were to be contemplated, as was the original
philosophy, as pragmatically true.(56)

These two factors must be reckoned with—that Sun Yat-sen was teaching and
working in the Chinese milieu, and that his ideology was an ideology not
in the older pejorative sense of the word, which connoted duplicity, but
an ideology in the sense of a scheme of exact knowledge which, by its very
truthfulness, was a political and social instrument.





CHAPTER II THE THEORY OF NATIONALISM.




The Emergence of the Chinese Race-Nation.


It could, at first thought, be supposed that the reconstruction of Chinese
society might have been necessitated by internal weakness just as much as
by a changed environment. The process of organizing and developing a
tight, clear scheme of political control organizations within the society
(stateification), and delimiting the extent and aims of the society
(nationalism) were the chief characteristics of this reconstruction.

It is only by means of a disregard of actual conditions that the
supposition of an internal weakness so great as to require radical change
can be maintained. While the latter days of the Manchu Empire represented
a decline, it was a decline no more serious than others through which
Chinese culture had passed and resurged many times in its history. It is
still a debatable matter as to whether China had actually become
intellectually and artistically sterile during this period. In any event,
it is questionable whether the completely revolutionary reorganization of
Chinese society—of the type that Sun Yat-sen found it necessary to
support—would have been either worth-while or probable in the absence of
Euramerican aggression, and the appearance, all about China, of a new,
hostile, and unstable environment. If it had not been for the impact of
the West it is conceivable—although all comment on this must remain mere
speculation—that a social revolution such as those which occurred under
Wang Mang (usurper-founder of the unrecognized Hsin Dynasty, 9-25 A.D.),
Wang An-shih (prime minister, 1069-1076 A.D., under the Sung dynasty), or
Hung Hsiu-ch’üan (founder of the rebel T’ai P’ing dynasty, 1849-1865),
might have adjusted matters by a general redistribution of wealth and
administrative reorganization.

In his earliest agitations Sun Yat-sen was opposed to the Manchus.(57) In
this connection he developed a peculiar and interesting theory concerning
nationalism. He held, briefly, that the Chinese had, at the noon-day glory
of their Empire, fallen under the lure of a cosmopolitanism which was not
in accord with the realities of political existence. It was this lack of
distinction between themselves and outsiders which had permitted hundreds
of millions of Chinese to fall prey to one hundred thousand Manchus in the
early seventeenth century,(58) with the consequence that the Manchus, once
on the throne of China, made every effort to erase their barbarian origin
from the minds of the Chinese, and, with this end in view, did everything
possible, as modern Japan is doing in Korea, to destroy the national
consciousness of the Chinese.(59) China, to Sun Yat-sen, had always been a
nation, but its inhabitants did not believe it a nation. They had lost the
precious treasure of nationalism. Without contradicting Sun Yat-sen, but
differing from him only in the use of words, Westerners might say that the
Chinese had once known nationalism as members of the antique Chinese
states, but had later formed—in the place of a nation—a cosmopolitan
society which comprehended the civilized world of Eastern Asia.(60)

Sun Yat-sen did not blame Confucius for cosmopolitanism. There is, indeed,
nowhere in his works the implication that Confucianism was an evil in
itself, deserving destruction; why then did Sun Yat-sen believe that, even
though the old ideology was not invalid for the organization of China
internally, the old world-view had broken down as an effective instrument
for the preservation of China?

First of all, Sun stated, in terms more general than did the ancients, the
necessity of establishing the ideology on the basis of pragmatism. He
stated:


    We cannot say in general that ideas, as ideas, are good or bad. We
    must judge whether, when put into practice, they prove useful to
    us or not. If they are of practical value to us, they are good; if
    they are impractical, they are bad. If they are useful to the
    world, they are good; if they are not useful to the world, they
    are not good.(61)


He states, also, that if the Chinese race is to survive, it must adopt
nationalism. “... if we now want to save China, if we wish to see the
Chinese race survive forever, we must preach Nationalism.”(62) Hitherto
they had been no more conscious of race than were the Europeans of the
middle ages. To be sure, they were barbarians, whose features were
strange; but the Chinese were not conscious of themselves as a racial
unity in competition and conflict with other equal or superior racial
unities. The self-consciousness of the Chinese was a cultural rather than
a racial one, and the juxtaposition that presented itself to the Chinese
mind was between “Ourselves of the Central Realm” and “You the
Outsiders.”(63) Sun Yat-sen became intensely conscious of being a Chinese
by race,(64) and so did many other of his compatriots, by the
extraordinary race-pride of the _White Men_ in China. In common with many
others of his generation, Sun Yat-sen turned to race-consciousness as the
name for Chinese solidarity.

There is nowhere in his works, so far as the writer knows, any attempt to
find a value higher than the necessity of perpetuating the Chinese race.
Sun Yat-sen was a Chinese; his followers were Chinese; whatever benefits
they contemplated bestowing upon the world as a whole were incidental to
their work for a powerful and continued China. At various times Sun
Yat-sen and his followers expressed sympathy with the whole world, with
the oppressed of the earth, or with all Asia, but the paramount drive
behind the new movement has been the defense and reconstruction of China,
no longer conceived of as a core-society maintaining the flower of human
civilization, but regarded as a race abruptly plunged into the chaos of
hostile and greedy nations.

Throughout his life, Sun Yat-sen called China a nation. We may suppose
that he never thought that Chinese society need not necessarily be called
a nation, even in the modern world. What he did do, though, was to
conceive of China as a unique type of nation: a race-nation. He stated
that races could be distinguished by a study of physical characteristics,
occupation, language, religion and folkways or customs.(65) Dividing the
world first into the usual old-style five primary races (white, black,
yellow, brown, and red), he divides these races into sub-races in the
narrow sense of the term. The Chinese race, in the narrow sense of the
term, is both a race and a nation. The Anglo-Saxons are divided between
England and America, the Germans between Germany and Austria, the Latins
among the Mediterranean nations, and so forth; but China is at the same
time both the Chinese race and the Chinese nation. If the Chinese wish
their race to perpetuate itself forever, they must adopt and follow the
doctrine of Nationalism.(66) Otherwise China faces the tragedy of being
"despoiled as a nation and extinct as a race."(67)

Sun Yat-sen felt that China was menaced and oppressed ethnically,
politically and economically. Ethnically, he believed that the
extraordinary population increase of the white race within the past few
centuries represented a trend which, if not counterbalanced, would simply
result in the Chinese race being crowded off the earth. Politically he
observed that the Chinese dependencies had been alienated by the Western
powers and Japan; that China was at the mercy of any military nation that
chose to attack; that it was a temporary deadlock between the conquering
powers rather than any strength of China that prevented, at least for the
time being, the partition of China and that a diplomatic attack, which
could break the deadlock of the covetous states, would be even more deadly
and drastic than simple military attack.(68)

It must be remembered that Sun Yat-sen saw a nation while the majority of
his compatriots still envisioned the serene, indestructible society of the
Confucians. Others may have realized that the Western impact was more than
a frontier squabble on a grand scale; they may have thought it to have
assumed epic proportions. But Sun Yat-sen, oppressed by his superior
knowledge of the Western nations, obtained at the cost of considerable
sympathy with them, struggled desperately to make his countrymen aware of
the fact, irrefutable to him, that China was engaged in a conflict
different not only in degree but in kind from any other in Chinese
history. The Great Central Realm had become simply China. Endangered and
yet supine, it faced the imperative necessity of complete reconstitution,
with the bitter alternative of decay and extinction—a race tragedy to be
compounded of millions of individual tragedies. And yet reconstitution
could not be of a kind that would itself be a surrender and treason to the
past; China must fit itself for the modern world, and nevertheless be
China. This was the dilemma of the Chinese world-society, suddenly become
a nation. Sun Yat-sen’s life and thought were devoted to solving it.




The Necessity of Nationalism.


An abstract theorist might observe that the Chinese, finding their
loose-knit but stable society surrounded by compact and aggressive
nations, might have solved the question of the perpetuation of Chinese
society in the new environment by one of two expedients: first, by
nationalizing, as it were, their non-national civilization; or second, by
launching themselves into a campaign against the system of nations as
such. The second alternative does not seem to have occurred to Sun
Yat-sen. Though he never ventured upon any complete race-war theory, he
was nevertheless anxious to maintain the self-sufficient power of China as
it had been until the advent of the West. In his negotiations with the
Communists, for example, neither he nor they suggested—as might have been
done in harmony with communist theory—the fusion of China and the Soviet
Union under a nuclear world government. We may assume with a fair degree
of certainty that, had a suggestion been made, Sun Yat-sen would have
rejected it with mistrust if not indignation. He had spent a great part of
his life in the West. He knew, therefore, the incalculable gulf between
the civilizations, and was unwilling to entrust the destinies of China to
persons other than Chinese.(69)

Once the possibility of a successful counter-attack upon the system of
nations is discounted, nationalism is seen as the sole solution to China’s
difficulties. It must, however, be understood that, whereas nationalism in
the West implies an intensification of the already definite national
consciousness of the peoples, nationalism in China might mean only as
little as the introduction of such an awareness of nationality.
Nationalism in China might, as a matter of logic, include the possibility
of improved personal relations between the Chinese and the nationals of
other states since, on the one hand, the Chinese would be relieved of an
intolerable sense of humiliation in the face of Western power, and, on the
other, be disabused of any archaic notions they might retain concerning
themselves as the sole civilized people of the earth.(70)

A brief historical reference may explain the apparent necessity of
nationalism in China. In the nineteenth century foreigners in China
generally suffered reverses when they came into conflict with a village, a
family, or a guild. But when they met the government, they were almost
always in a position to bully it. It was commonly of little or no concern
to the people what their government did to the barbarians; the whole
affair was too remote to be much thought about. We find, for example, that
the British had no trouble in obtaining labor auxiliaries in Canton to
fight with the British troops against the Imperial government at Peking in
1860; it is quite probable that these Cantonese, who certainly did not
think that they were renegades, had no anti-dynastic intentions. Chinese
served the foreign enemies of China at various times as quasi-military
constabulary, and served faithfully. Before the rise of Chinese
nationalism it was not beyond possibility that China would be partitioned
into four or five colonies appurtenant to the various great powers and
that the Chinese in each separate colony, if considerately and tactfully
treated, would have become quite loyal to their respective foreign
masters. The menace of such possibilities made the need of Chinese
nationalism very real to Sun Yat-sen; the passing of time may serve
further to vindicate his judgment.

Sun Yat-sen’s nationalism, though most vividly clear when considered as a
practical expedient of social engineering, may also be regarded more
philosophically as a derivation of, or at least having an affinity with,
certain older ideas of the Chinese. Confucian thinking, as re-expressed in
Western terms, implants in the individual a sense of his responsibility to
all humanity, united in space and time. Confucianism stressed the
solidarity of humanity, continuous, immortal, bound together by the
closest conceivable ties—blood relationships. Sun Yat-sen’s nationalism
may represent a narrowing of this conception, and the substitution of the
modern Chinese race for Confucian humanity. In fairness to Sun Yat-sen it
must, however, be admitted that he liked to think, in Christian and
Confucian terms, of the brotherhood of man; one of his favorite
expressions was “under heaven all men shall work for the common good.”(71)

Nationalism was to Sun Yat-sen the prime condition of his movement and of
his other principles. The Communists of the West regard every aspect of
their lives significant only in so far as it is instrumental in the class
struggle. Sun Yat-sen, meeting them, was willing to use the term “class
struggle” as an instrument for Chinese nationalism. He thought of China,
of the vital and immediate necessity of defending and strengthening China,
and sacrificed everything to the effectuation of a genuine nationalism. To
him only nationalism could tighten, organize, and clarify the Chinese
social system so that China, whatever it was to be, might not be lost.

The early philosophers of China, looking upon a unicultural world, saw
social organization as the supreme criterion of civilization and humanity.
Sun Yat-sen, in a world of many mutually incomprehensible and hostile
cultures saw nationalism (in the sense of race solidarity) as the supreme
condition for the survival of the race-nation China. Democracy and social
welfare were necessary to the stability and effectiveness of this
nationalism, but the preservation and continuation of the race-nation was
always to remain the prime desideratum.




The Return to the Old Morality.


Sun Yat-sen quite unequivocally stated the necessity for establishing a
new Nationalist ideology in order to effectuate the purposes of China’s
regeneration. He spoke of the two steps of ideological reconstitution and
political reconstitution as follows: “In order today to restore our
national standing we must, first of all, revive the national spirit. But
in order to revive the national spirit, we must fulfill two conditions.
First, we must realize that we are at present in a very critical
situation. Second ... we must unite ... and form a large national
association.”(72) He evidently regarded the ideological reconstitution as
anterior to the political, although he adjusted the common development of
the two quite detailedly in his doctrine of tutelage.

He proposed three ideological methods for the regeneration of China, which
might again make the Chinese the leading society (nation) of the world.
There were: first, the return to the ancient Chinese morality; second, the
return to the ancient Chinese learning; and third, the adoption of Western
science.(73)

Sun Yat-sen’s never-shaken belief in the applicability of the ancient
Chinese ethical system, and in the wisdom of old China in social
organization, is such that of itself it prevents his being regarded as a
mere imitator of the West, a barbarized Chinese returning to barbarize his
countrymen. His devotion to Confucianism was so great that Richard
Wilhelm, the greatest of German sinologues, wrote of him: “The greatness
of Sun Yat-sen rests, therefore, upon the fact that he has found a living
synthesis between the fundamental principles of Confucianism and the
demands of modern times, a synthesis which, beyond the borders of China,
can again become significant to all humanity. Sun Yat-sen combined in
himself the brazen consistency of a revolutionary and the great love of
humanity of a renewer. Sun Yat-sen has been the kindest of all the
revolutionaries of mankind. And this kindness was taken by him from the
heritage of Confucius. Hence his intellectual work stands as a connecting
bridge between the old and the modern ages. And it will be the salvation
of China, if it determinedly treads that bridge.”(74) And Tai Chi-tao, one
of Sun Yat-sen’s most respected followers, had said: “Sun Yat-sen was the
only one among all the revolutionaries who was not an enemy to Confucius;
Sun Yat-sen himself said that his ideas embodied China, and that they were
derived from the ideas of Confucius.”(75) The invocation of authorities
need not be relied upon to demonstrate the importance of Sun Yat-sen’s
demand for ideological reconstruction upon the basis of a return to the
traditional morality; he himself stated his position in his sixth lecture
on nationalism: “If we now wish to restore to our nation its former
position, besides uniting all of us into a national body, we must also
first revive our own ancient morality; when we have achieved that, we can
hope to give back to our nation the position which she once held.”(76)

What are the chief elements of the old morality? These are: 1) loyalty and
filial piety, 2) humanity and charity, 3) faithfulness and justice, and 4)
peace. These four, however, are all expressions of _humanity_, to which
_knowledge_ and _valor_ must be joined, and _sincerity_ employed in
expressing them.

The problem of loyalty was one very difficult to solve. Under the Empire
it was easy enough to consider the Emperor as the father of the great
society, and to teach loyalty to him. This was easy to grasp, even for the
simplest mind. Sun Yat-sen urged loyalty to the people, and loyalty to
duty, as successors to the loyalty once owed to the sovereign. He deplored
the tendency, which appeared in Republican times, for the masses to assume
that since there was no more Emperor, there was no more loyalty; and it
has, since the passing of Sun Yat-sen, been one of the efforts of the
Nationalists to build up a tradition of loyalty to the spirit of Sun
Yat-sen as the timeless and undying leader of modern China.

Sun Yat-sen was also deeply devoted to filial piety in China, which was—in
the old philosophy—simply a manifestation, in another direction, of the
same virtue as loyalty. He called filial piety indispensable, and was
proud that none of the Western nations had ever approached the excellence
of the Chinese in this virtue.(77) At the time that he said this, Sun
Yat-sen was accused of being a virtual Communist, and of having succumbed
to the lure of Soviet doctrines. It is at least a little strange that a
man supposedly infatuated with Marxism should praise that most
conservative of all virtues: filial piety!

Sun Yat-sen then commented on each of the other virtues, pointing out
their excellence in old China, and their necessity to modern China. In the
case of faithfulness, for example, he cited the traditional reliability of
the Chinese in commercial honor. Concerning justice, he pointed out that
the Chinese political technique was one fundamentally just; an instance of
the application of this was Korea, which was-allowed to enjoy peace and
autonomy as a Chinese vassal state for centuries, and then was destroyed
shortly after becoming a Japanese protectorate. Chinese faithfulness and
justice were obviously superior to that of the Japanese.

In politics the two most important contributions of the old morality to
the Nationalist ideology of Sun Yat-sen were (1) the doctrine of _wang
tao_, and (2) the social interpretation of history.

_Wang tao_ is the way of kings—the way of right as opposed to _pa tao_,
the way of might. It consisted, in the old ideology, of the course of
action of the kingly man, who ruled in harmony with nature and did not
violate the established proprieties of mankind. Sun Yat-sen’s teachings
afford us several applications of _wang tao_. In the first place, a group
which has been formed by the forces of nature is a race; it has been
formed according to _wang tao_. A group which has been organized by brute
force is a state, and is formed by _pa tao_. The Chinese Empire was built
according to _wang tao_; the British Empire by _pa tao_. The former was a
natural organization of a homogeneous race; the latter, a military outrage
against the natural order of mankind.(78)

_Wang tao_ is also seen in the relation between China and her vassal
states, a benevolent relationship which stood in sharp contrast, at times,
though not always, to the methods later to be used by the Europeans in
Asia.(79) Again, economic development on a basis of the free play of
economic forces was regarded as _wang tao_ by Sun Yat-sen, even though its
consequences might be adverse. _Pa tao_ appeared only when the political
was employed to do violence to the economic.(80) This doctrine of good and
bad aspects of economic relationships stands in distinct contrast to the
Communist theory. He believed that the political was frequently employed
to bring about unjust international economic relationships, and extenuated
adverse economic conditions simply because they were the free result of
the operations of a _laissez-faire_ economy.

Economically, the interpretation of history was, according to Sun Yat-sen,
to be performed through the study of consumption, and not of the means of
production. In this he was indebted to Maurice William—at least in
part.(81) The social interpretation of history is, however, associated not
only with economic matters, but with the ancient Chinese moral system as
well. Tai Chi-tao, whose work has most clearly demonstrated the
relationship between Confucianism and Sunyatsenism, points out in his
diagram of Sun Yat-sen’s ethical system that _humanity_ (_jên_) was to Sun
Yat-sen the key to the interpretation of history. We have already seen
that _jên_ is the doctrine of social consciousness, of awareness of
membership in society.(82) Sun Yat-sen, according to Tai Chi-tao, regarded
man’s development as a social animal, the development of his humanity, as
the key to history. This would include, of course, among other things, his
methods of production and of consumption. The distinction between Sun
Yat-sen and the Western Marxian thinkers lies in the fact that the latter
trace their philosophical genealogy back through the main currents of
Western philosophy, while Sun Yat-sen derives his from Confucius. Nothing
could be further from dialectical materialism than the socio-ethical
interpretation that Sun Yat-sen developed from the Confucian theories.

The rôle played by the old Chinese morality in the ideology of Sun Yat-sen
is, it is apparent, an important one. First, Sun Yat-sen believed that
Chinese nationalism and the regeneration of the Chinese people had to be
based on the old morality of China, which was superior to any other
morality that the world had known, and which was among the treasures of
the Chinese people. Second, he believed that, in practical politics as
well as national ideology, the application of the old virtues would be
fruitful in bringing about the development of a strong China. Third, he
derived the idea of _wang tao_, the right, the royal, the natural way,
from antiquity. He pointed out that violence to the established order—of
race, as in the case of the British Empire, of economics, as in the case
of the political methods of imperialism—was directly antithetical to the
natural, peaceful way of doing things that had led to the supreme
greatness of China in past ages. Fourth, he employed the doctrine of
_jên_, of social-consciousness, which had already been used, by the
Confucians, and formed the cornerstone of their teaching, as the key to
his interpretation. In regard to the individual, this was, as we have
seen, consciousness of social orientation; with regard to the group, it
was the development of strength and harmony. It has also been translated
_humanity_, which broadly and ethically, carries the value scheme with
which _jên_ is connected.

Even this heavy indebtedness to Chinese antiquity in adopting and adapting
the morality of the ancients for the salvation of their children in the
modern world, was not the total of Sun Yat-sen’s political traditionalism.
He also wished to renew the ancient Chinese knowledge, especially in the
fields of social and political science. Only after these did he desire
that Western technics be introduced.




The Return to the Ancient Knowledge.


Sun Yat-sen’s doctrine of the return to the ancient Chinese knowledge may
be divided into three parts. First, he praised the ancient Chinese
superiority in the field of social science, but distinctly stressed the
necessity of Western knowledge in the field of the physical and applied
sciences alone.(83) Second, he pointed out the many practical
accomplishments of the ancient Chinese knowledge, and the excellence and
versatility of Chinese invention.(84) Third, his emphasis upon the
development of talents in the material sciences hints at, although it does
not state, a theory of national wealth based upon labor capacity.

Sun Yat-sen said, “Besides reviving our ancient Chinese morality, we must
also revive our wisdom and ability.... If today we want to revive our
national spirit, we must revive not only the morality which is proper to
us, but we must revive also our own knowledge.”(85) He goes on to say that
the peculiar excellence of the ancient Chinese knowledge lay in the field
of political philosophy, and states that the Chinese political philosophy
surpassed the Western, at least in clearness.

He quotes _The Great Learning_ for the summation, in a few words, of the
highlights of this ancient Chinese social knowledge: “Investigate into
things, attain the utmost knowledge, make the thoughts sincere, rectify
the heart, cultivate the person, regulate the family, govern the country
rightly, pacify the world.”(86) This is, as we have seen, what may be
called the Confucian doctrine of ideological control. Sun Yat-sen lavished
praise upon it. “Such a theory, so detailed, minute, and progressive, was
neither discovered nor spoken of by any foreign political philosopher. It
is a peculiar intellectual treasure pertaining to our political
philosophy, which we must preserve.”(87) The endorsement is doubly
significant. In the first place, it demonstrates the fact that Sun Yat-sen
thought of himself as a rebuilder and not as a destroyer of the ancient
Chinese culture, and the traditional methods of organization and control.
In the second place, it points out that his Chinese background was most
clear to him, and that he was in his own mind the transmitter of the
Chinese heritage.

In speaking of Chinese excellence in the field of the social science, Sun
Yat-sen did not confine his discussion to any one time. Whenever he
referred to a political theory, he mentioned its Chinese origin if it were
one of those known to Chinese antiquity: anarchism, communism, democracy.
He never attacked Chinese intellectual knowledge for being what it was,
but only for what it omitted: physical science.(88) He was undoubtedly
more conservative than many of his contemporaries, who were actually
hostile to the inheritance.

The summary of Sun Yat-sen’s beliefs and position in respect to the
ancient intellectual knowledge is so well given by Tai Chi-tao that any
other statement would almost have to verge on paraphrase. Tai Chi-tao
wrote:


    Sun Yat-sen (in his teachings) completely includes the true ideas
    of China as they recur again and again from Yao and Shun,
    Confucius and Mencius. It will be clear to us, therefore, that Sun
    Yat-sen is the renewal of Chinese moral culture, unbroken for two
    thousand years ... we can see that Sun Yat-sen was convinced of
    the truth of his own words, and at the same time we can also
    recognize that his national revolution was based upon the
    re-awakening of Chinese culture. He wanted to call the creative
    power of China to life again, and to make the value of Chinese
    culture useful to the whole world, and in that way to realize
    cosmopolitanism.(89)


Accordingly, Sun Yat-sen’s doctrines may not only be regarded as having
been based upon the tacit premises of the Chinese intellectual milieu, but
as having been incorporated in them as supports. Sun Yat-sen’s theories
were, therefore, consciously as well as unconsciously Chinese.

Sun Yat-sen was proud of the accomplishment of the Chinese in physical and
applied knowledge. He praised Chinese craftsmanship and skill, and
extolled the talents of the people which had invented the mariner’s
compass, printing, porcelain, gunpowder, tea, silks, arches, and
suspension bridges.(90) He urged the revival of the talents of the
Chinese, and the return of material development. This teaching, in
conjunction with his advocacy of Western knowledge, leads to another
suggestive point.

Sun Yat-sen pointed out that _wealth_ was to the modern Chinese what
_liberty_ was to the Europeans of the eighteenth century—the supreme
condition of further progress.(91) The way to progress and wealth was
through social reorganization, and through the use of the capacities of
the people. It may be inferred, although it cannot be stated positively,
that Sun Yat-sen measured wealth not merely in metals or commodities, but
in the productive capacities of the country, which, as they depend upon
the labor skill of the workers, are in the last analysis cultural and
psychological rather than exclusively physical in nature.(92)

China, following the ancient morality, conscious of its intellectual and
social heritage, and of its latent practical talents, needed only one more
lesson to learn: the need of Western science.




Western Physical Science in the New Ideology.


The third element of the nationalist ideology proposed by Sun Yat-sen was
the introduction of Western science. It is upon this that his break with
the past arose; it is this that gives his ideology its partially
revolutionary character, for the ideology was, as we have seen, strongly
reconstitutional in two of its elements. Sun Yat-sen was, however, willing
to tear down if he could rebuild, and rebuild with the addition of Western
science. These questions immediately arise: why did he wish to add Western
science to the intellectual background of modern China? what, in Western
science, did he wish to add? to what degree did he wish Western science to
play its rôle in the development of a new ideology for China?

Sun Yat-sen did not have to teach the addition of Western science to the
Chinese ideology. In his own lifetime the terrific swing from arrogant
self-assurance to abject imitativeness had taken place. Sun Yat-sen said
that the Boxer Rebellion was the last surge of the old Chinese
nationalism, “But the war of 1900 was the last manifestation of
self-confidence thoughts and self-confidence power on the part of the
Chinese to oppose the new civilization of Europe and of America.... They
understood that the civilization of Europe and of America was really much
superior to the ancient civilization of China.”(93) He added that this
superiority was naturally evident in the matter of armaments. This
illustrates both consequences of the impact of the West—the endangered
position of the Chinese society, and the consequent instability of the
Chinese ideology.

Sun Yat-sen did not regard the introduction of Western science into
Chinese life as merely remedial in nature, but, on the contrary, saw much
benefit in it. This was especially clear to him as a physician; his
training led him to see the abominable practices of many of the Chinese in
matters of diet and hygiene.(94) He made a sweeping claim of Western
superiority, which is at the same time a sharp limitation of it in fields
which the conservative European would be likely to think of as
foremost—politics, ethics, religion. “Besides the matter of armaments, the
means of communication ... are far superior.... Moreover, in everything
else that relates to machinery or daily human labor, in methods of
agriculture, of industry, and of commerce, all (foreign) methods by far
surpass those of China.”(95)

Sun Yat-sen pointed out the fact that while manuals of warfare become
obsolete in a very few years in the West, political ideas and institutions
do not. He cited the continuance of the same pattern of government in the
United States, and the lasting authority of the _Republic_ of Plato, as
examples of the stagnation of the Western social sciences as contrasted
with physical sciences. Already prepossessed in favor of the Chinese
knowledge and morality in non-technical matters, he did not demand the
introduction of Western social methods as well. He had lived long enough
in the West to lose some of the West-worship that characterized so many
Chinese and Japanese of his generation. He was willing, even anxious, that
the experimental method, by itself, be introduced into Chinese thought in
all fields,(96) but not particularly impressed with the general
superiority of Western social thought.

Sun Yat-sen’s own exposition of the reasons for his desiring to limit the
rôle played by Western science in China is quite clear.(97) In the first
place, Sun Yat-sen was vigorously in favor of adopting the experimental
method in attaining knowledge. He stood firmly for the pragmatic
foundation of knowledge, and for the exercise of the greatest care and
most strenuous effort in discovering it. Secondly, he believed in taking
over the physical knowledge of the Westerners, although—in his emphasis on
Chinese talent—he by no means believed that Western physical knowledge
would displace that of the Chinese altogether. “We can safely imitate the
material civilization of Europe and of America; we may follow it blindly,
and if we introduce it in China, it will make good headway.”(98) Thirdly,
he believed that the social science of the West, and especially its
political philosophy, might lead the Chinese into gross error, since it
was derived from a quite different ideology, and not relevant to Chinese
conditions. “It would be a gross error on our part, if, disregarding our
own Chinese customs and human sentiments, we were to try to force upon
(our people) a foreign type of social government just as we copy a foreign
make of machinery.”(99) Fourthly, even apart from the difference between
China and the West which invalidated Western social science in China, he
did not believe that the West had attained to anything like the same
certainty in social science that it had in physical science.(100) Fifthly,
Sun Yat-sen believed that the Chinese should profit by observing the
experiments and theories of the West in regard to social organization,
without necessarily following them.

The great break between Sun Yat-sen’s acceptance of Western physical
science and his rejection of Western social science is demonstrated by his
belief that government is psychological in its foundations. “Laws of human
government also constitute an abstract piece of machinery—for that reason
we speak of the machinery of an organized government—but a material piece
of machinery is based on nature, whereas the immaterial machinery of
government is based on psychology.”(101) Sun Yat-sen pointed out, although
in different words, that government was based upon the ideology and that
the ideology of a society was an element in the last analysis
psychological, however much it might be conditioned by the material
environment.

Of these three elements—Chinese morality, Chinese social and political
knowledge, and Western physical science—the new ideology for the modern
Chinese society was to be formed. What the immediate and the ultimate
forms of that society were to be, remains to be studied.




The Consequences of the Nationalist Ideology.


What are the consequences of this Nationalistic ideology? What sort of
society did Sun Yat-sen envision? How much of it was to be Chinese, and
how much Western? Were the Chinese, like some modern Japanese, to take
pride in being simultaneously the most Eastern of Eastern nations and the
most Western of Western or were they to seek to remain fundamentally what
their ancestors had been for uncounted centuries?

In the first place, Sun Yat-sen’s proposed ideology was, as we have seen,
to be composed of four elements. First, the essential core of the old
ideology, to which the three necessary revivifying elements were to be
added. This vast unmentioned foundation is highly significant to the
assessment of the nature of the new Chinese ideology. (It is quite
apparent that Sun Yat-sen never dreamed, as did the Russians, of
overthrowing the _entire_ traditional order of things. His three
modifications were to be added to the existing Chinese civilization.)
Second, he wished to revive the old morality. Third, he desired to restore
the ancient knowledge and skill of the Chinese to their full creative
energy. Fourth, he desired to add Western science. The full significance
of this must be realized in a consideration of Chinese nationalism. Sun
Yat-sen did not, like the Meiji Emperor, desire to add the whole front of
Western culture; he was even further from emulating the Russians in a
destruction of the existing order and the development of an entirely new
system. His energies were directed to the purification and reconstitution
of the Chinese ideology by the strengthening of its own latent moral and
intellectual values, and by the innovation of Western physical science and
the experimental method. Of the range of the ideology, of the
indescribably complex intellectual conditionings in which the many
activities of the Chinese in their own civilization were carried on, Sun
Yat-sen proposed to modify only those which could be improved by a
reaction to the excellencies of Chinese antiquity, or benefited by the
influence of Western science. Sun Yat-sen was, as Wilhelm states, both a
revolutionary and a reconstitutionary. He was reconstitutionary in the
ideology which he proposed, and a revolutionary by virtue of the political
methods which he was willing to sanction and employ in carrying the
ideology into the minds of the Chinese populace.

In the second place, Sun Yat-sen proposed to modify the old ideology not
only with respect to content but also with regard to method of
development. The Confucians had, as we have seen, provided for the
continual modification and rectification of the ideology by means of the
doctrine of _chêng ming_. It is a matter of dispute as to what degree that
doctrine constituted a scientific method for propagating knowledge.(102)
Whatever the method of the ancients, Sun Yat-sen proposed to modify it in
three steps: the acknowledgment of the pragmatic foundations of social
ideas, the recognition of the necessity for knowledge before action, and
the introduction of the experimental method. His pragmatic position shows
no particular indication of having been derived from any specific source;
it was a common enough tendency in old Chinese thought, from the
beginning; in advocating it, Sun Yat-sen may have been revolutionary only
in his championing of an idea which he may well have had since early
childhood. His stress upon the necessity of ideological clarity as
antecedent to revolutionary or any other kind of action is negatively
derived from Wang Yang-ming, whose statement of the converse Sun Yat-sen
was wont to attack. The belief in the experimental method is clearly
enough the result of his Western scientific training—possibly in so direct
a fashion as the personal influence of one of his instructors, Dr. James
Cantlie, later Sir James Cantlie, of Queen’s College, Hongkong. Sun
Yat-sen was a physician; his degree _Dr._ was a medical and not an
academic one; and there is no reason to overlook the influence of his
vocation, a Western one, in estimating the influence of the Western
experimental method.(103)

The overwhelming preponderance of Chinese elements in the new ideology
proposed by Sun Yat-sen must not hide the fact that, in so stable an
ideology as that of old China, the modifications which Sun advocated were
highly significant. In method, experimentalism;(104) in background, the
whole present body of Western science—these were to move China deeply,
albeit a China that remained Chinese. There is a fundamental difference
between Sun’s doctrine of ideological extension (“the need for knowledge”)
and Confucius’ doctrine of ideological rectification (_chêng ming_).
Confucius advocated the establishment of a powerful ideology for the
purpose of extending ideological control and thereby of minimizing the
then pernicious effects of the politically active proto-nations of his
time. Sun Yat-sen, reared in a world subject to ideological control, saw
no real necessity for strengthening it; what he desired was to prepare
China psychologically for the development of a clear-cut conscious nation
and a powerful government as the political instrument of that nation. In
spite of the great Chinese emphasis which Sun pronounced in his ideology,
and in spite of his many close associations with old Chinese thought, his
governmental principles are in a sense diametrically opposed to
Confucianism. Confucius sought to establish a totalitarian system of
traditional controls which would perpetuate society and civilization
regardless of the misadventures or inadequacies of government. Sun Yat-sen
was seeking to build a strong liberal protective state within the
framework of an immemorial society which was largely non-political; his
doctrine, which we may call totalitarianism in reverse, tended to
encourage intellectual freedom rather than any rigid ideological
coördination. The mere fact that Sun Yat-sen trusted the old Chinese
ideology to the ordeal of free criticism is, of course, further testimony
to his belief in the fundamental soundness of the old intellectual
order—an order which needed revision and supplementation to guide modern
China through the perils of its destiny.

Before passing to a brief consideration of the nature of the society to be
developed through this nationalist ideology, it may be interesting to note
the value-scheme in the ideology. There was but one value—the survival of
the Chinese people with their own civilization. All other considerations
were secondary; all other reforms were means and not ends. Nationalism,
democracy, and _min shêng_ were each indispensable, but none was superior
to the supreme desideratum, Chinese survival. That this survival was a
vivid problem to Sun, almost any of his lectures will testify. Tai
Chi-tao, one of the inner circle of Sun Yat-sen’s disciples, summarized
the spirit of this nationalism when he wrote; “We are Chinese, and those
things that we have to change first lie in China. But if all things in
China have become worthless, if Chinese culture no longer has any
significance in the cultural history of the world, if the Chinese people
has lost its power of holding its culture high, we might as well wait for
death with bound hands—what would be the use of going on with
revolution?”(105) Sun Yat-sen made concessions to cosmopolitanism, which
he saw as ideal to be realized in the remote future. First and last,
however, he was concerned with his own people, the Chinese.

What was to be the nature of the society which would arise from the
knowledge and application of the new ideology? Sun planned to introduce
the idea of a race-nation into the Chinese ideology, to replace the
definite but formless we-you outlook which the Chinese of old China had
had toward outsiders almost indiscriminately.(106) The old anti-barbarian
sentiment had from time to time in the past been very powerful; Sun
Yat-sen called this nationalism also, not distinguishing it from the new
kind of nationalism which he advocated—a modern nationalism necessarily
connoting a plurality of equal nations. The self-consciousness of the
Chinese he wished to restore, although on a basis of justice and the
mutual recognition by the nations of each other’s right to exist. But this
nationalism was not to be a complete break with the past, for the new
China was to continue the traditional function of old China—of being the
teacher and protectress of Eastern Asia. It was the duty of China to
defend the oppressed among the nations, and to smite down the Great Powers
in their oppressiveness. We may suppose that this benevolence of the
Chinese race-nation would benefit the neighbors of China only so long as
those neighbors, quickened themselves by nationalist resurgences, did not
see something sinister in the benevolent manifest destiny of the Chinese.

It was a matter of policy, rather than of ideology, as to what the Chinese
nation was to include. There were possibilities of a conflict with the
Communists over the question of Outer Mongolia. Physically, Sun saw the
Mongols as one of the five component peoples of the Great Chung-hua
Republic. At another time he suggested that they might become assimilated.
He never urged the Mongols to separate from China and join the Soviet
Union, or even continue as a completely independent state.(107) There was
always the possibility of uncertainty in the case of persons who were—by
the five principle elements of race (according to Sun Yat-sen, blood,
livelihood, language, religion, and mores)(108)—members of the Chinese
race-nation but did not consider themselves such.

Chinese nationalism was to lead to cosmopolitanism. Any attempt to foster
cosmopolitanism before solving the national problem was not only Utopian
but perverse. The weakness of the Chinese had in great part been derived
from their delusions of world-order in a world that was greater than they
imagined, and the true solution to the Chinese question was to be found,
not in any vain theory for the immediate salvation of the world as a
whole, but in the diligent and patriotic activities of the Chinese in
their own country. China was to help the oppressed nations of the earth,
not the oppressed classes. China was to help all Asia, and especially the
countries which had depended upon China for protection, and had been
failed in their hour of need by the impotent Manchu Dynasty. China was,
indeed, to seek the coöperation of the whole world, and the promotion of
universal peace. But China was to do all this only when she was in a
position to be able to do so, and not in the meantime venture forth on any
splendid fantasies which would profit no people.

The survival of China was the supreme aim of Sun Yat-sen. How did he
propose that China, once conscious of itself, should control itself to
survive and go onwards to the liberation and enrichment of mankind? These
are questions that he answered in his ideology of democracy and of _min
shêng_.





CHAPTER III. THE THEORY OF DEMOCRACY.




Democracy in the Old World-Society.


In describing a few of the characteristics of the old ideology and the old
society which may assist the clarification of the principle of democracy,
it may prove useful to enter into a brief examination of what the word may
mean in the West, to refer to some of the ideas and institutions of old
China that were or were not in accord with the Western notion of
democracy, and, finally, to see what connection Sun Yat-sen’s theory of
democracy may have either with the Western term or with elements in the
Chinese background. Did Sun Yat-sen propound an entirely new theory as the
foundation of his theory of democracy for the Chinese race-nation, or did
he associate several hitherto unrelated ideas and systems to make a new
whole?

The European word _democracy_ may, for the purposes of this examination,
be taken to have two parts to its meaning; first, with regard to the
status of individuals in society; second, with respect to the allocation
of political power in society. In the former sense, democracy may refer to
an equalitarianism of status, or to a social mobility so easy and so
general as to encourage the impression that position is a consequence of
the behavior of the individual, and a fair gauge to his merit. In the
latter part of the meaning, democracy may refer to the identification of
the governed and the governors, or to the coincidence of the actions of
the governors with the wishes of the governed. Each of these
ideas—equalitarianism, free mobility, popular government, and
representative government—has been referred to as the essence of
democracy. One of them may lead to the discovery of a significance for
democracy relevant to the scheme of things in the old Chinese society.

Egalitarianism and mobility were both present in old Chinese society. The
Chinese have had neither an hereditary aristocracy equivalent to the
Western, nor a caste-system resembling that of India or Japan, since the
breakdown of the feudal system twenty-three centuries ago.(109) The
extra-legal egalitarianism of the Chinese has been so generally remarked
upon by persons familiar with that nation, that further discussion of it
here is superfluous. Birth has probably counted less in China than it has
in any other country in the world.

The egalitarianism of intercourse was a powerful aid to social mobility.
The Chinese never pretended to economic, political, or intellectual
equality; the mere statement of such a doctrine would have been sufficient
refutation of it to the members of the old society. Yet there were no
gradations of weight beyond educational, political, and economic
distinctions, and the organization of the old society was such that
mobility in these was relatively free. Movement of an individual either
upwards or downwards in the economic, political, or academic scale was
retarded by the influence of the family, which acted as a drag either way.
Movement was nevertheless continuous and conspicuous; a proof of this
movement is to be found in the fact that there are really no supremely
great families in China, comparable to the great names of Japan or of the
Euramerican nations. (The closest approximation to this is the _K’ung_
family, the family of Confucius; since the family is large, its eminence
is scarcely more than nominal and it has no political power.).

Mobility in China was fostered by the political arrangements. The
educational-administrative system provided a channel upwards and
downwards. The government tended, for the most part, to be the way up,
while the economic system was the way down for prominent official
families. Few families managed to remain eminent for more than a few
generations, and—with the great size of families—there was always room at
the top. If a man were not advancing himself, there was always the
possibility that a kinsman might win preferment, to the economic and
political advantage of the whole family group.

Social relations—in the narrowest sense of the word—were characterized by
an extreme attention to form as such, and great contempt for it otherwise.
Ritualism never became a chivalry or a cult of honor. There was always the
emphasis upon propriety and courtesy but, once the formalities were done
with, there was little social distinction between members of different
economic, political, or academic classes.(110)

In connection with control and representation, a great deal more can be
said. In the first place, the relations between the governing ideologue in
the Confucian teachings,(111) and the governed accepters of the ideology
in the Confucian system were to be discovered through _yüeh_.

_Yüeh_, commonly translated “music” or “harmony,” plays a peculiar rôle in
the Confucian teachings. It is the mass and individual emotional pattern,
as _li_ is the behavior pattern. If the people follow the proper behavior
pattern, their emotional pattern must also be good. Consequently, the
function of a truly excellent ruler was the scrutiny of _yüeh_. If he were
a man of superior penetration, he should be able to feel the _yüeh_ about
him, and thus discover the temper of the populace, without reference to
electoral machinery or any other government instrumentality. _Yüeh_ is to
be seen in the tone of voices, in the rhythm of behavior. If it is good,
it will act with increasing effect upon itself. If bad, it serves as a
warning to the authorities. As Prof. Hsü says, “For rulers and
administrators _yüeh_ has two uses; first, it enables them to ascertain
the general sentiment of the people toward the government and political
life; and second, it cultivates a type of individual attitude that is most
harmonious with the environment. The joint work of _li_ and _yüeh_ would
produce social harmony and social happiness—which is the ultimate aim of
the State.”(112)

_Yüeh_ is, however, a peculiar phenomenon, which can scarcely be called
either representation or control. It is an idea rooted in the curiously
pragmatic-mystical world-view of the Confucians, that same world-view
which elevated virtue almost to the level of a physical substance, subject
to the same sort of laws of disruption or transmission. Nothing like
_yüeh_ can be found in Western political thought; however significant it
may have been in China, any attempt to deal with it in a Western language
would have more than a touch of futility, because of the great chasm of
strangeness that separates the two intellectual worlds at so many places.

A more concrete illustration of the old Chinese ideas of popular control
may be found in the implications of political Confucianism, as Hsü renders
them:


    From the Confucian doctrine of stewardship, namely, that the king
    is an ordinary person selected by God upon his merit to serve as
    the steward of God in the control of the affairs of the people for
    the welfare of the people, there are deduced five theories of
    political democracy. In the first place, the government must
    respect public opinion. The will of the people is the will of God,
    and thus the king should obey both the will of the people and the
    will of God....

    In the second place, government should be based upon the consent
    of the governed....

    In the third place, the people have a duty as well as a right to
    carry on revolution as the last resort in stopping tyranny....
    Revolution is regarded as a natural blessing; it guards against
    tyranny and promotes the vitality of the people. It is in complete
    harmony with natural law.

    In the fourth place, the government exists for the welfare of the
    people.

    In the fifth place, liberty, equality and equity should be
    preserved. The State belong equally to all; and so hereditary
    nobility, hereditary monarchy, and despotism are deplored.
    Confucius and his disciples seem to advocate a democracy under the
    form of an elective monarchy or a constitutional monarchy....

    Local self-government is recognized in the Confucian system of
    government.... The Confucian theory of educational election
    suggests the distinctly new idea of representation.(113)


This summary could scarcely be improved upon although it represents a
considerable latitude of interpretation in the subject-matter of the
classics. The voice of the people was the voice of God. From other
political writers of antiquity—Mêng Tzŭ, Mo Ti, Han Fei Tzŭ and the
Legalists, and others—the Chinese received a variety of political
interpretations, none of which fostered the development of autocracy as it
developed in Europe.

The reason for this is simple. In addition to the eventual popular control
of government, and the necessity for the close attention of the government
to the wishes of the people, the classical writers, for the most part, did
not emphasize the position of government. With the increasing ideological
solidarity of the Chinese world, the increasing antiquity and authority of
tradition, and the stability of the social system, the Chinese states
withered away—never completely, but definitely more so than their
analogues in the West. There appeared, consequently, in China a form of
laissez-faire that surpassed that of Europe completely in thoroughness.
Not only were the economic functions of the state reduced to a minimum—so
was its police activity. Old China operated with a government in reserve,
as it were; a government which was nowhere nearly so important to its
subjects as Western governments commonly are. The government system was
one democratic in that it was rooted in a society without intransigeant
class lines, with a considerable degree of social mobility for the
individual, with the total number of individuals exercising a terrific and
occasionally overwhelming pressure against the political system. And yet
it was not the governmental system upon which old China might have based
its claim to be a democracy. It could have, had it so wished, claimed that
name because of the weakness or the absence of government, and the
presence of other social organizations permitting the individual a
considerable amount of latent pressure to exercise upon his social
environment.

This arose from the nature of the large non-political organizations which
sustained Chinese civilization even more than did the
educational-administrative authorities. It is obvious that, in theory, a
free and unassociated individual in a laissez-faire polity would be
defenseless against extra-politically organized persons. The equities of
modern democracy lie largely in the development of a check and balance
system of pressure groups, affording each individual adequate means of
exercising pressure on behalf of his various interests. It was this
function—the development of a just statement of pressure-groups—which the
old Chinese world-society developed for the sufficient representation of
the individual.

There was no illusion of complete personal liberty. Such a notion was
scarcely thinkable. Every individual had his family, his village,
and—although this was by no means universally true—his _hui_, whether one
or, less commonly, several. He was never left solitary and defenseless
against powerfully organized interests. No more intimate community of
interests could be discovered than that of a family, since the community
of interests there would verge on the total. Ancient Chinese society
provided the individual with mechanisms to make his interests felt and
effective, through the family, the village, and the association.

In the West the line of influence runs from the individual, who feels a
want, to the group which assists him in expressing it, to the government,
upon which the group exercises pressure, in order that the government may
use its power to secure what the first group wants from some other group.
The line runs, as it were, in the following manner:
individual-group-government-group. In China the group exercised its
pressure for the most part directly. The individual need not incorporate
himself in a group to secure the recognition and fulfillment of his
interests; he was by birth a member of the group, and with the group was
mobile. In a sense old Chinese society was thoroughly democratic.

On the basis of such a background, Sun Yat-sen did not believe that the
Chinese had too much government, but, rather, too little. He did not cry
for liberty; he denounced its excess instead. On the basis of the old
social organization, which was fluid and yet stable, he sought to create a
democracy which would pertain to the interests of the nation as a whole,
not to the interests of individuals or groups. These could go on in the
traditional manner. The qualifications implicit in Sun Yat-sen’s
championship of democracy must be kept in mind, and his acquaintance with
the democratic techniques of the old society be allowed for. Otherwise his
advocacy of the recognition of nationalist rights and his neglect or
denunciation of individual liberties might be taken for the dogma of a
lover of tyranny or dictatorship.

Old China possessed a considerable degree of egalitarianism, of social
mobility, of popular control, and of popular participation, through the
civil service, in what little government there was. In addition,
ideological control ensured a minimum of conflicts of interests and
consequently a maximum facility for self-expression without conflict with
other individuals, groups, or society as a whole. Finally, the protection
and advancement of individuals’ rights and interests were fostered by a
system of group relationships which bound virtually every individual into
a group and left none to fall, solitary, at the mercy of others who were
organized.

Why then did Sun Yat-sen advocate democracy? What were his justifications
for it, in a society already so democratic?




Five Justifications of a Democratic Ideology.


Sun Yat-sen, realizing the inescapable necessity of nationalism, did not
immediately turn to democracy as a necessary instrument for its promotion.
He hated the Manchus on the Dragon Throne—human symbols of China’s
subjugation—but at first considered replacing them with a new Chinese
dynasty. It was only after he had found the heirs of the Ming dynasty and
the descendants of Confucius to be unworthy that he turned to
republicanism and found democracy, with its many virtues.(114) He early
became enamored of the elective system, as found in the United States, as
the only means of obtaining the best governors.(115) In the final stage he
had departed so far from his earlier way of thinking that he criticized
Dr. Goodnow severely for recommending the re-introduction of a monarchy in
China.

Sun Yat-sen, as a good nationalist, made earnest efforts to associate his
doctrines with those of the sages and to avoid appearing as a proponent of
Western civilization. It is, consequently, not unusual to discover him
citing Confucius and Mencius on _vox populi vox dei_, and saying,

“The government of Yao and Shun was monarchical in name but democratic in
practice, and for that reason Confucius honored these men.”(116)

He considered that democracy was to the sages an “ideal that could not be
immediately realized,”(117) and therefore implied that modern China, in
realizing democracy, was attaining an ideal cherished by the past.
Democracy, other things apart, was a filial duty. This argument, while
persuasive in Chinese, can scarcely be considered Sun Yat-sen’s most
important one in favor of democracy.

His most cogent and perhaps most necessary argument was based on his
conception of national liberty as opposed to the liberty of the
individual. He delivered a spirited denunciation of those foreigners who
criticized the Chinese for being without liberty, and in the next breath
complained that the Chinese had no government, that they were “loose
sand.” (Another fashionable way of expressing this idea is by saying that
“China is a geographical expression.”) He said: “If, for instance, the
foreigners say that China is ‘loose sand,’ what do they finally mean by
that expression? They mean to say that each individual is free, that
everybody is free, that each one takes the maximum of liberty, and that,
as a result, they are ‘loose sand’.”(118) He pointed out that the Chinese
had not suffered from the loose autocracy in the Empire, and that they had
no historical justification for parroting the cry “Liberty!” simply
because the Westerners, who had really lacked it, had cried and fought for
it. He cited John Millar’s definition of liberty, given in _The Progress
of Science Relative to Law and Government_, 1787: “True liberty consists
in this: that the liberty of each individual is limited by the
non-infringement on the liberty of others; when it invades the liberty of
others, it is no longer liberty.”(119) Sun Yat-sen had himself defined
liberty as follows: “Liberty consists in being able to move, in having
freedom of action within an organized group.”(120) China, disorganized,
had no problem of individual liberty. There was, as a matter of fact, too
much liberty.(121) What the Chinese had to do was to sacrifice some of
their individual liberty for the sake of the organized nation. Here we
find a curious turn of thought of which several other examples may be
found in the _San Min Chu I_: Sun Yat-sen has taken a doctrine which in
the West applies to the individual, and has applied it to the nation. He
believes in liberty; but it is not the liberty of the individual which is
endangered in China. It is the liberty of the nation—which has been lost
before foreign oppression and exploitation. Consequently he preaches
national and not individual liberty. Individual liberty must be sacrificed
for the sake of a free nation.(122) Without discipline there is no order;
without order the nation is weak and oppressed. The first step to China’s
redemption is _min tsu_, the union (nationalism) of the people. Then comes
_min ch’üan_, the power of the people. The liberty of the nation is
expressed through the power of the people.

How is the power of the people to be exercised? It is to be exercised by
democratic means. To Sun Yat-sen, the liberty of the nation and the power
of the people were virtually identical. If the Chinese race gained its
freedom, that freedom, exercised in an orderly manner, could mean only
democracy. It is this close association of nationalism (_min tsu_) and
democracy (_min ch’üan_), this consideration of democracy as the
expression of nationalism, that forms, within the framework of the _San
Min Chu I_, what is probably the best nationalist argument for
democracy—best, that is, in being most coherent with the Three Principles
as a whole.

If the view of democracy just expressed be considered an exposition of the
fundamental necessity of democracy, the third argument may be termed the
dialectical or historical championship of democracy. Sun Yat-sen believed
in the existence of progress, and considered that there was an inevitable
tendency toward democracy: the overthrow of the Manchus was a result of
the “... world tide. That world current can be compared to the course of
the Yangtze or the Yellow River. The flow of the stream turns perhaps in
many directions, now toward the north, now toward the south, but in the
end flows toward the east in spite of all obstacles; nothing can stem it.
In the same way the world-tide passes ...; now it has arrived at
democracy, and there is no way to stem it.”(123) This belief in the
inevitability as well as the justice of his cause encouraged Sun, and has
lent to his movement—as his followers see it—something of the impressive
sweep that the Communists see in their movement.

Sun Yat-sen did not devise any elaborate scheme of dialectical materialism
or economic determinism to bolster his belief in the irreversibility of
the flow to democracy. With infinite simplicity, he presented an
exposition of democracy in space and time. In time, he saw a change from
the rule of force to theocracy, then to monarchy, and then to democracy;
this change was a part of the progress of mankind, which to him was
self-evident and inevitable.(124) In space he perceived that increasingly
great numbers of people threw off monarchical rule and turned to
democracy. He hailed the breakdown of the great empires, Germany and
Russia, as evidence of the power of democracy. “... if we observe (things)
from all angles, we see that the world progresses daily, and we realize
that the present tide has already swept into the age of democracy; and
that no matter how great drawbacks and failures may be, _democracy will
maintain itself in the world for a long time_ (_to come_). For that
reason, thirty years ago, we promoters of the revolution, _resolved that
it was impossible to speak of the greatness of China or to carry out the
revolution without advocating democracy_.”(125)

A fourth argument in favor of democracy, and one which cannot be expanded
here, since it involves reference to Sun Yat-sen’s practical plans for the
political regeneration of China, was his assertion that democracy was an
adjunct to appropriate and effective public administration. Sun Yat-sen’s
plans concerning the selection of officials in a democratic state showed
that he believed the merging of the Chinese academic-civil service
technique with Western democracy would produce a paragon among practicable
governments.

Fifthly and finally, Sun regarded democracy as an essential modernizing
force.(126) In the introduction of Western material civilization, which
was always an important consideration to his mind, he felt that a certain
ideological and political change had to accompany the economic and
technological revolution that—in part natural and in part to be stimulated
by nationalist political interference—was to revolutionize the _min shêng_
of China, the economic and social welfare of the Chinese people. While
this argument in favor of democracy is similar to the historical argument,
it differs from the latter in that Sun Yat-sen saw the technique of
democracy influencing not only the political, but the economic and social,
life of the people as well. The growth of corporate responsibility, the
development of a more rigid ethical system in matters of finance, the
disappearance of too strict an emphasis upon the personal element in
politics (which has clouded Chinese politics with a fog of conspiracy and
intrigue for centuries), a trust in mathematics (as shown in reliance upon
the voting technique for ascertaining public opinion), and the development
of a new kind of individual aggressiveness and uprightness were among the
changes which, necessary if China was to compete in the modern world,
democracy might assist in effecting. While these desiderata do not seem
large when set down in the vast field of political philosophy, they are of
irritating importance in the inevitable trivalities upon which so much of
day-to-day life depends, and would undoubtedly improve the personal tone
of Sino-Western relations. Sun never divorced the theoretical aspects of
his thought from the practical, as has been done here for purposes of
exposition, and even the tiniest details of everyday existence were the
objects of his consideration and criticism. In itself, therefore, the
modernizing force of democracy, as seen in Sun’s theory, may not amount to
much; nevertheless, it must not be forgotten.(127)

Democracy, although secondary in point of time to his theory, is of great
importance in Sun’s plans for the political nature of the new China. He
justified democracy because it was (1) an obligation laid upon modern
China by the sages of antiquity; (2) a necessary consequence of
nationalism, since nationalism was the self-rule of a free people, and
democracy the effectuation of that self-rule, and democracy the
effectuation of that self-rule; (3) the government of the modern age;
China, along with the rest of the world, was drawn by the tide of progress
into the age of democratic achievement; (4) the political form best
calculated for the obtaining of good administration; and (5) a modernizing
force that would stir and change the Chinese people so as to equip them
for the competitions of the modern world.

In the lecture in which he criticized the inadequacies of democracy as
applied in the West, Sun Yat-sen made an interesting comment on the
proletarian dictatorship which had recently been established in Russia.
“Recently Russia invented another form of government. That government is
not representative; it is _absolute popular government_. In what does that
absolute popular government really consist? As we know very little about
it, we cannot judge it aright, but we believe that this (absolute popular
government) is _evidently much better than a representative
government_.”(128) He went on immediately to say that the Three Principles
were what China needed, and that the Chinese should not imitate the
political systems advocated in Europe and America, but should adapt
democracy in their own way. In view of his objection to a permanent class
dictatorship, as opposed to a provisional party dictatorship, and the very
enthusiastic advocacy of democracy represented by the arguments described
above, it appears unlikely in the extreme that Sun Yat-sen, had he lived
beyond 1925, would have abandoned his own plan of democracy for China in
favor of “absolute popular government.” The phrase was, at the time, since
Sun Yat-sen was seeking Russian assistance, expedient for a popular
lecture. Its importance might easily be exaggerated.




The Three Natural Classes of Men.


Having in mind the extreme peril in which the Chinese race-nation stood,
its importance in a world of Western or Western-type states, and seeing
nationalism as the sole means of defending and preserving China, Sun
Yat-sen demanded that the Chinese ideology be extended by the acquisition
of knowledge. If this modernizing and, if a neologism be permitted,
stateizing process were to succeed, it must needs be fostered by a
well-prepared group of persons within the society.

In the case of the Confucian social theory, it was the scholars who took
the ideology from the beliefs and traditions of the agrarian masses or
whole people, rectified it, and gave it back to them. This continuous
process of ideological maintenance by means of conformity (_li_) and, when
found necessary, rectification (_chêng ming_) was carried on by an
educational-political system based upon a non-hereditary caste of
academician-officials called _Mandarins_ by the early Western travellers.
In the case of those modern Western states which base their power upon
peculiar ideologies, the philosophy-imposing caste has been a more or less
permanent party- or class-dictatorship. Superficially, the
party-dictatorship planned by Sun Yat-sen would seem to resemble these.
His theory, however, presents two bases for a class of ideologues: one
theoretical, and presumably based upon the Chinese; and one applied, which
is either of his own invention or derived from Western sources. The class
of ideological reformers proposed in what may be called the applied aspect
of his theory was to be organized by means of the party-dictatorship of
the Kuomintang. His other basis for finding a class of persons whose
influence over the ideology was to be paramount was more theoretical, and
deserves consideration among the more abstract aspects of his doctrines.

He hypothecated a tripartite division of men:


    Men may be divided into three classes according to their innate
    ability or intelligence. The first class of men may be called
    _hsien chih hsien cho_ or the “geniuses.” The geniuses are endowed
    with unusual intelligence and ability. They are the creators of
    new ideas, fathers of invention, and originators of new
    achievements. They think in terms of group welfare and so they are
    the promoters of progress. Next are the _hou chih hou cho_ or the
    “followers.” Being less intelligent and capable than the _hsien
    chih hsien cho_, they do not create or invent or originate, but
    they are good imitators and followers of the first class of men.
    The last are the _pu chih pu cho_, or the “unthinking,” whose
    intelligence is inferior to that of the other two classes of men.
    These people do what the others instruct them to do, but they do
    not think about it. In every sphere of activity all three classes
    of men are present. In politics, for example, there are the
    creators or inventors of new ideas and movements, then the
    propagators of these ideas and movements, and lastly the mass of
    men who are taught to practice these ideas.(129)


The harmony of this conception with the views of Confucius is evident.
Presbyter is Priest writ large; genius is another name for scholar. Sun,
although bitterly opposed to the mandarinate of the Empire and the
pseudo-Republic, could not rid himself of the age-old Chinese idea of a
class organization on a basis of intellect rather than of property. He
could not champion a revolutionary creed based upon an economic class-war
which he did not think existed, and which he did not wish to foster, in
his own country. He continued instead the consistent theory of an
aristocracy of intellect, such as had controlled China before his coming.

The aristocracy of intellect is not to be judged, however, by the old
criteria. Under the old regime, a scholar-ruler was one who deferred to
the wisdom of the ancients, who was fit to perpetuate the mysteries of the
written language and culture for the benefit of future ages, and who was
meanwhile qualified by his training to assume the rôle of counsellor and
authority in society. In the theory of Sun Yat-sen, the genius leader is
not the perpetuator but the discoverer. He is the social engineer. His
work is similar to that of the architect who devises plans for a building
which is to be built by workers (the unthinking) under the guidance of
foremen (the followers).(130) In this guise, the new intellectual
aristocrat is a figure more akin to the romantic Western pioneers and
inventors than to the serene, conservative scholars of China in the past.

The break with Western thought comes in Sun’s distinguishing three
permanent, natural classes of men. Though in their aptitudes the _hsien
chih hsien cho_ are more like modern engineers than like archaic literary
historians, they form a class that is inevitably the ruling class. To
Marxism this is anathema; it would imply that the Communist party is
merely the successor of the bourgeoisie in leading the unthinking masses
about—a more benevolent successor, to be sure, but still a class distinct
from the led proletariat of the intellect. To Western democratic thought,
this distinction would seem at first glance to invalidate any future
advocacy of democracy. To the student interested in contrasting
ideological control and political government, the tripartite division of
Sun Yat-sen is significant of the redefinition in modern terms, and in an
even more clear-cut manner, of the Confucian theory of scholarly
leadership.

How were the geniuses of the Chinese resurgence to make their knowledge
useful to the race-nation? How could democracy be recognized with the
leadership and ideological control of an intellectual class? To what
degree would such a reconciliation, if effected, represent a continuation,
in different terms, of the traditions and institutions of the old Chinese
world? Questions such as these arise from the fusion of the old traditions
and new necessities.




Ch’üan and Nêng.


The contrast between _ch’üan_ and _nêng_ is one of the few aspects of Sun
Yat-sen’s theory of democracy which persons not interested in China may,
conceivably, regard as a contribution to political science. There is an
extraordinarily large number of possible translations for each of these
words.(131) A version which may prove convenient and not inaccurate, can
be obtained by translating each Chinese term according to its context.
Thus, a fairly clear idea of _ch’üan_ may be obtained if one says that,
applied to the individual, it means “power,” or “right,” and when applied
to the exercise of political functions, it means “sovereignty” or
“political proprietorship.” _Nêng_, applied to the individual, may mean
“competency” (in the everyday sense of the word), “capacity” or “ability
to administer.” Applied to the individual, the contrast is between the
ability to have political rights in a democracy, and the ability to
administer public affairs. Applied to the nation, the contrast is between
sovereignty and administration.(132)

Without this contrast, the doctrine of the tripartite classification of
men might destroy all possibilities of a practical democracy. If the
Unthinking are the majority, how can democracy be trusted? This contrast,
furthermore, serves to illuminate a further problem: the paradoxical
necessity of an all-powerful government which the people are able to
control.

If this distinction is accepted in the establishment of a democracy, what
will the consequences be?(133)

In the first place, the masses who rule will not necessarily govern.
Within the framework of a democratic constitution, they will be able to
express their wishes, and make those wishes effective; but it will be
impossible for them to interfere in the personnel of government, whether
merely administrative or in the highest positions. It will be forever
impossible that a “swine-representative” should be elected, or that one of
those transient epochs of carpet-baggery, which appear from time to time
in most Western democracies, should corrupt the government. By means of
the popular rights of initiative, referendum, election and recall, the
people will be able to control their government in the broad sweep of
policy. The government will be beyond their reach insofar as petty
political interference, leading to inferiority or corruption, is
concerned.

In the second place, the benefits of aristocracy will be obtained without
its cost. The government will be made up of men especially fit and trained
to govern. There will, hence, be no difficulty in permitting the
government to become extraordinarily powerful in contrast with Western
governments. Since the masses will be able to choose between a wide
selection of able leaders, the democracy will be safeguarded.

Sun Yat-sen regarded this as one of the cardinal points in his doctrines.
In retaining the old Chinese idea of a scholar class and simultaneously
admitting Western elective and other democratic techniques, he believed
that he had found a scheme which surpassed all others. He saw the people
as stockholders in a company, and the administrators as directors; he saw
the people as the owner of an automobile, and the administrators as the
chauffeur.

A further consequence of this difference between the right of voting and
the right of being voted for, but one to which Sun Yat-sen did not refer,
necessarily arises from his postulation of a class of geniuses leading
their followers, who control the unthinking masses. That is the continuity
which such a group of ideological controllers would impart to a democracy.
Sun Yat-sen, addressing Chinese, took the Chinese world for granted. A
Westerner, unmindful of the background, might well overlook some
comparatively simple points. The old system, under which the Empire was a
sort of educational system, was a familiar feature in the politics which
Sun Yat-sen criticized. In arguing for the political acceptance of
inequality and the guarantee of government by a select group, Sun was
continuing the old idea of leadership, modifying it only so far as to make
it consistent with democracy. Under the system he proposed, the two great
defects of democracy, untrustworthiness and lack of continuity of policy,
would be largely eliminated.




The Democratic Machine State.


Throughout pre-modern Chinese thought there runs the idea of personal
behavior and personal controls. The Chinese could not hypostatize in the
manner of the West. Looking at men they saw men and nothing more.
Considering the problems and difficulties which men encountered, they
sought solutions in terms of men and the conditioning intimacies of each
individual’s life. The Confucian Prince was not so much an administrator
as a moral leader; his influence, extending itself through imitation on
the part of others, was personal and social rather than political.(134) In
succeeding ages, the scholars thought of themselves as the leaven of
virtue in society. They stressed deportment and sought, only too
frequently by means of petty formalities, to impress their own excellence
and pre-eminence upon the people. Rarely, if ever, did the
scholar-official appeal to formal political law. He was more likely to
invoke propriety and proceed to exercise his authority theoretically in
accordance with it.

Sun Yat-sen did not feel that further appeal to the intellectual leaders
was necessary. In an environment still dominated by the past, an
exhortation for the traditional personal aspect of leadership would
probably have appeared as a centuries-old triteness. The far-seeing men,
the geniuses that Sun saw in all society, owed their superiority not to
artificial inequality but to natural inequality;(135) by their ability
they were outstanding. Laws and customs could outrage this natural
inequality, or conceal it behind a legal facade of artificial inequality
or equally artificial equality. Laws and customs do not change the facts.
The superior man was innately the superior man.

Nevertheless, the geniuses of the Chinese revolution could not rely upon
the loose and personal system of influence hitherto trusted. To organize
Chinese nationalism, to give it direction as well as force, the power of
the people must be run through a machine—the State.

A distinction must be made here. The term “machine,” applied to
government, was itself a neologism introduced from the Japanese.(136) Not
only was the word but the thing itself was alien to the Chinese, since the
same term (_ch’i_) meant machinery, tool, or instrument. The introduction
of the view of the state as a machine does not imply that Sun Yat-sen
wished to introduce a specific form of Western state-machine into China—as
will be later explained (in the pages which concern themselves with the
applied political science of Sun Yat-sen).

Sun was careful, moreover, to explain that his analogy between industrial
machinery and political machinery was merely an analogy. He said, “The
machinery of the government is entirely composed of human beings. All its
motions are brought about by men and not by material objects. Therefore,
there is a very great difference between the machinery of the government
and the manufacturing machine ... the machinery of the government is moved
by human agency whereas the manufacturing machine is set in motion by
material forces.”(137)

Even after allowance has been made for the fact that Sun Yat-sen did not
desire to import Western governmental machinery, nor even to stress the
machine and state analogy too far, it still remains extraordinarily
significant that he should have impressed upon his followers the necessity
of what may be called a mechanical rather than an organic type of
government. The administrative machine of the Ch’ing dynasty, insofar as
it was a machine at all, was a chaotic mass of political authorities
melting vaguely into the social system. Sun’s desire to have a clear-cut
machine of government, while not of supreme importance in his ideological
projects, was of great significance in his practical proposal. In his
theory the state machine bears the same resemblance to the old government
that the Chinese race-nation bears to the now somewhat ambiguous civilized
humanity of the Confucians. In both instances he was seeking sharper and
more distinct lines of demarcation.

In putting forth his proposals for the reconstitution of the Chinese
government he was thinking, in speaking of a state-machine, of the more or
less clearly understood juristic states of the West.(138) His concrete
proposals dealing with the minutiae of administrative organization, his
emphasis on constitution and law, and his interest in the exact allocation
of control all testify to his complete acceptance of a sharply delimited
state. On the other hand, he was extraordinary for his time in demanding
an unusual extent, both qualitative and quantitative, of power for the
state which he wished to hammer out on the forges of the nationalist
social and political revolution.

In summarizing this description of the instrument with which Sun Yat-sen
hoped to organize the intellectual leaders of China so as to implement the
force of the revolution, it may be said that it was to be a state-machine,
as opposed to a totalitarian state, based upon Western juristic theory in
general but organized out of the materials of old Chinese political
philosophy and the Imperial experience in government.(139) The state
machine was to be built along lines which Sun Yat-sen laid out in some
detail. Yet, even with his elaborate plans already prepared, and in the
midst of a revolution, he pointed out the difficulty of political
experimentation, in the following words:


    ... the progress of human machinery, as government organizations
    and the like, has been very slow. What is the reason? It is that
    once a manufacturing machine has been constructed, it can easily
    be tested, and after it has been tried out, it can easily be put
    aside if it is not good, and if it is not perfect, it can easily
    be perfected. But it is very difficult to try out a human machine
    and more difficult still to perfect it after it has been tried
    out. It is impossible to perfect it without bringing about a
    revolution. The only other way would be to regard it as a useless
    material machine which can easily be turned into scrap iron. But
    this is not workable.(140)




Democratic-Political Versus Ideological Control.


Sun Yat-sen accepted an organization of society based upon intellectual
differences, despite his belief in the justifiability and necessity of
formal democracy, and his reconciliation of the two at first contradictory
theses in a plan for a machine state to be based upon a distinction
between _ch’üan_ and _nêng_. It may now be asked, why did Sun Yat-sen,
familiar with the old method of ideological control, and himself proposing
a new ideology which would not only restore internal harmony but also put
China into harmony with the actual political condition of the world,
desire to add formal popular control to ideological control?

The answer is not difficult, although it must be based for the most part
on inference rather than on direct citation of Sun Yat-sen’s own words. In
the consideration of the system of ideological control fostered by the
Confucians, ideological control presented two distinct aspects: the
formation of the ideology by men, and control of men by the ideology. The
ideology controlled men; some men sought to control the ideology; the
whole ideological control system was based upon the continuous interaction
of cause and effect, wherein tradition influenced the men who sought to
use the system as a means of mastery, while the same men succeeded in a
greater or less degree in directing the development of the ideology.

In the old Chinese world-society the control of the ideology was normally
vested in the _literati_ who were either government officials or hoped to
become such. The populace, however, acting in conformity with the
ideology, could overthrow the government, and, to that extent, consciously
control the content and the development of the ideology. Moreover, as the
efficacy of an ideology depends upon its greater acceptance, the populace
had the last word in control of the ideology both consciously and
unconsciously. Politics, however, rarely comes to the last word. In the
normal and ordinary conduct of social affairs, the populace was willing to
let the _literati_ uphold the classics and modify their teachings in
accordance with the development of the ideology—in the name of _chêng
ming_. The old ideology was so skilfully put together out of traditional
elements that are indissociable from the main traits of Chinese culture,
together with the revisions made by Confucius and his successors, that it
was well-nigh unchallengeable. The whole Confucian method of government
was based, as previously stated, on the control of men through the control
of their ideas by men—and these latter men, the ideologues, were the
scholar administrators of successive dynasties. The identification of the
_literati_ and officials, the respect in which learning was held, the
general distribution of a leaven of scholars through all the 

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