THE FEAST OF LIFE

I. THE PROBLEM OF HAPPINESS

THE enjoyment of life covers many things: the enjoyment of ourselves, of home life, of trees, flowers, clouds, winding rivers and falling cataracts and the myriad things in Nature, and then the enjoyment of poetry, art, contemplation, friendship, conversation, and reading, which are all some form or other of the communion of spirits. There are obvious things like the enjoyment of food, a gay party or family reunion, an outing on a beautiful spring day; and less obvious things like the enjoyment of poetry, art and contemplation.

I have found it impossible to call these two classes of enjoyment material and spiritual, first because I do not believe in this distinction, and secondly because I am puzzled whenever I proceed to make this classification. How can I say, when I see a gay picnic party of men and women and old people and children, what part of their pleasures is material and what part spiritual? I see a child romping about on the grass plot, another child making daisy chains, their mother holding a piece of sandwich, the uncle of the family biting a juicy, red apple, the father sprawling on the ground looking at the sailing clouds, and the grandfather holding a pipe in his mouth. Probably somebody is playing a gramophone, and from the distance there come the sound of music and the distant roar of the waves.

Which of these pleasures is material and which spiritual? Is it so easy to draw a distinction between the enjoyment of a sandwich and the enjoyment of the surrounding landscape, which we call poetry? Is it possible to regard the enjoyment of music which we call art, as decidedly a higher type of pleasure than the smoking of a pipe, which we call material? This classification between material and spiritual pleasures is therefore confusing, unintelligible and untrue for me. It proceeds, I suspect, from a false philosophy, sharply dividing the spirit from the flesh, and not supported by a closer direct scrutiny of our real pleasures.

Or have I perhaps assumed too much and begged the question of the proper end of human life? I have always assumed that the end of living is the true enjoyment of it. It is so simply because it is so. I rather hesitate at the word “end” or “purpose.” Such an end or purpose of life, consisting in its true enjoyment, is not so much a conscious purpose, as a natural attitude toward human life.

The word “purpose” suggests too much contriving and endeavor. The question that faces every man born into this world is not what should be his purpose, which he should set about to achieve, but just what to do with life, a life which is given him for a period of on the average fifty or sixty years? The answer that he should order his life so that he can find the greatest happiness in it is more a practical question, similar to that of how a man should spend his weekend, than a metaphysical proposition as to what is the mystic purpose of his life in the scheme of the universe.

On the contrary, I rather think that philosophers who start out to solve the problem of the purpose of life beg the question by assuming that life must have a purpose. This question, so much pushed to the fore among Western thinkers, is undoubtedly given that importance through the influence of theology. I think we assume too much design and purpose altogether. And the very fact that people try to answer this question and quarrel over it and are puzzled by it serves to show it up as quite vain and uncalled for. Had there been a purpose or design in life, it should not have been so puzzling and vague and difficult to find out.

The question may be divided into two: either that of a divine purpose, which God has set for humanity, or that of a human purpose, a purpose that mankind should set for itself. As far as the first is concerned, I do not propose to enter into the question, because everything that we think God has in mind necessarily proceeds from our own mind; it is what we imagine to be in God’s mind, and it is really difficult for human intelligence to guess at a divine intelligence. What we usually end up with by this sort of reasoning is to make God the color-sergeant of our army and to make Him as chauvinistic as ourselves; He cannot, so we conceive, possibly have a “divine purpose” and “destiny” for the world, or for Europe, but only for our beloved Fatherland. I am quite sure the Nazis can’t conceive of God without a swastika arm-band. This Gott is always mit uns and cannot possibly be mit ihnen. But the Germans are not the only people who think this way.

As far as the second question is concerned, the point of dispute is not what is, but what should be, the purpose of human life, and it is therefore a practical, and not a metaphysical question. Into this question of what should be the purpose of human life, every man projects his own conceptions and his own scale of values. It is for this reason that we quarrel over the question, because our scales of values differ from one another. For myself, I am content to be less philosophical and more practical. I should not presume that there must be necessarily a purpose, a meaning of human existence.

As Walt Whitman says, “I am sufficient as I am.” It is sufficient that I live-and am probably going to live for another few decades-and that human life exists. Viewed that way, the problem becomes amazingly simple and admits of no two answers. What can be the end of human life except the enjoyment of it?

It is strange that this problem of happiness, which is the great question occupying the minds of all pagan philosophers, has been entirely neglected by Christian thinkers. The great question that bothers theological minds is not human happiness, but human “salvation”-a tragic word. The word has a bad flavor for me, because in China I hear everyday some one talking about our “national salvation.” Everybody is trying to “save” China. It suggests the feeling of people on a sinking ship, a feeling of ultimate doom and the best method of getting away alive. Christianity, which has been described as “the last sigh of two expiring worlds” (Greek and Roman), still retains something of that characteristic today in its preoccupation with the question of salvation.

The question of living is forgotten in the question of getting away alive from this world. Why should man bother himself so much about salvation, unless he has a feeling of being doomed? Theological minds are so much occupied with salvation, and so little with happiness, that all they can tell us about the future is that there will be a vague heaven, and when questioned about what we are going to do there and how we are going to be happy in heaven, they have only ideas of the vaguest sort, such as singing hymns and wearing white robes. Mohammed at least painted a picture of future happiness with rich wine and juicy fruits and black-haired, big-eyed, passionate maidens that we laymen can understand.

Unless heaven is made much more vivid and convincing for us, there is no reason why one should strive to go there, at the cost of neglecting this earthly existence. As some one says, “An egg today is better than a hen tomorrow.” At least, when we’re planning a summer vacation, we take the trouble to find out some details about the place we are going to. If the tourist bureau is entirely vague on the question, I am not interested; I remain where I am. Are we going to strive and endeavor in heaven, as I am quite sure the believers in progress and endeavor must assume? But how can we strive and make progress when we are already perfect? Or are we going merely to loaf and do nothing and not worry? In that case, would it not be better for us to learn to loaf while on this earth as a preparation for our eternal life?

If we must have a view of the universe, let us forget ourselves and not confine it to human life. Let us stretch it a little and include in our view the purpose of the entire creation-the rocks, the trees and the animals. There is a scheme of things (although “scheme” is another word, like “end” and “purpose,” which I strongly distrust)-I mean there is a pattern of things in the creation, and we can arrive at some sort of opinion, however lacking in finality, about this entire universe, and then take our place in it.

This view of nature and our place in it must be natural, since we are a vital part of it m our life and go back to it when we die. Astronomy, geology, biology and history all provide pretty good material to help us form a fairly good view if we don’t attempt too much and jump at conclusions. It doesn’t matter if, in this bigger view of the purpose of the creation, man’s place recedes a little in importance. It is enough that he has a place, and by living in harmony with nature around him, he will be able to form a workable and reasonable outlook on human life itself.

II. HUMAN HAPPINESS IS SENSUOUS

All human happiness is biological happiness. That is strictly scientific. At the risk of being misunderstood, I must make it clearer: all human happiness is sensuous happiness. The spiritualists will misunderstand me, I am sure; the spiritualists and materialists must forever misunderstand each other, because they don’t talk the same language, or mean by the same word different things. Are we, too, in this problem of securing happiness to be deluded by the spiritualists, and admit that true happiness is only happiness of the spirit?

Let us admit it at once and immediately proceed to qualify it by saying that the spirit is a condition of the perfect functioning of the endocrine glands. Happiness for me is largely a matter of digestion. I have to take cover under an American college president to insure my reputation and respectability when I say that happiness is largely a matter of the movement of the bowels. The American college president in question used to say with great wisdom in his address to each class of freshmen, “There are only two things I want you to keep in mind: read the Bible and keep your bowels open.” What a wise, genial old soul he was to have said that! If one’s bowels move, one is happy, and if they don’t move, one is unhappy. That is all there is to it.

Let us not lose ourselves in the abstract when we talk of happiness, but get down to facts and analyze for ourselves what are the truly happy moments of our life. In this world of ours, happiness is very often negative, the complete absence of sorrow or mortification or bodily ailment. But happiness can also be positive, and then we call it joy. To me, for instance, the truly happy moments are: when I get up in the morning after a night of perfect sleep and sniff the morning air and there is an expansiveness in the lungs, when I feel inclined to inhale deeply and there is a fine sensation of movement around the skin and muscles of the chest, and when, therefore, I am fit for work; or when I hold a pipe in my hand and rest my legs on a chair, and the tobacco burns slowly and evenly; or when I am traveling on a summer day, my throat parched with thirst,, and I see a beautiful clear spring, whose very sound makes me happy, and I take of? my socks and shoes and dip my feet in the delightful, cool water; or when after a perfect dinner I lounge in an armchair, when there is no one I hate to look at in the company and conversation rambles off at a light pace to an unknown destination, and I am spiritually and physically at peace with the world; or when on a summer afternoon I see black clouds gathering on the horizon and know for certain a July shower is coming in a quarter of an hour, but being ashamed to be seen going out into the rain without an umbrella, I hastily set out to meet the shower halfway across the fields and come home drenched through and through and tell my family that I was simply caught by the rain.

Just as it is impossible for me to say whether I love my children physically or spiritually when I hear their chattering voices or when I see their plump legs, so I am totally unable to distinguish between the joys of the mind and the joys of the flesh. Does anybody ever love a woman spiritually without loving her physically? And is it so easy a matter for a man to analyze and separate the charms of the woman he loves things like laughter, smiles, a way of tossing one’s head, a certain attitude toward things? And after all every girl feels happier when she is well-dressed. There is a soul-uplifting quality about lipstick and rouge and a spiritual calm and poise that comes from the knowledge of being well-dressed, which is real and definite for the girl herself and of which the spiritualist has no inkling of an idea. Being made of this mortal flesh, the partition separating our flesh from our spirit is extremely thin, and the world of spirit, with its finest emotions and greatest appreciations of spiritual beauty, cannot be reached except with our senses. There is no such thing as morality and% immorality in the sense of touch, o hearing and vision. There is a “great probability that our loss of capacity for enjoying the positive joys of life is largely due to the decreased sensibility of our senses and our lack of full use of them.

Why argue about it? Let us take concrete instances and cull examples from all the great lovers of life, Eastern and Western, and see what they describe as their own happy moments, and how intimately they are connected with the very senses of hearing and smelling and seeing. Here is a description of the high aesthetic pleasure that Thoreau¹ got from hearing the sound of crickets:

First observe the creak of crickets. It is quite general amid these rocks. The song of only one is more interesting to me. It suggests lateness, but only as we come to a knowledge of eternity after some acquaintance with time. It is only late for all trivial and hurried pursuits. It suggests a wisdom mature, never late, being above all temporal considerations, which possesses the coolness and maturity of autumn amidst the aspiration of spring and the heats of summer. To the birds they say: “Ah! you speak like children from impulse; Nature speaks through you; but with us it is ripe knowledge. The seasons do not revolve for us; we sing their lullaby.” So they chant, eternal, at the roots of the grass. It is heaven where they are, and their dwelling need not be heaved up. Forever the same, in May and in November (?). Serenely wise, their song has the security of prose. They have drunk no wine but the dew. It is no transient love-strain hushed when the incubating season is past, but a glorifying of God and enjoying of him forever. They sit aside from the revolution of the seasons. Their strain is unvaried as Truth, Only in their saner moments do men hear the crickets.

And see how Walt Whitman’s senses of smell and sight and sound contribute to his spirituality and what great importance he places upon them:

A snowstorm in the morning, and continuing most of the day. But I took a walk over two hours, the same woods and paths, amid the falling flakes. No wind, yet the musical low murmur through the pines, quite pronounced, curious, like waterfalls, now still’d, now pouring again. All the senses, sight, sound, smell, delicately gratified. Every snowflake lay where it fell on the evergreens, hollytrees, laurels, etc., die multitudinous leaves and branches pied, bulging-white, defined by edgelines of emerald-the tall straight columns of the plentiful bronze-topt pines-a slight resinous odor blending with that of the snow. (For there is a scent to everything, even the snow, if you can only detect it-no two places, hardly any two hours, anywhere, exactly alike. How different the odor of noon from midnight, or winter from summer, or a windy spell from a still one!)

How many of us are able to distinguish between the odors of noon and midnight, or of winter and summer, or of a windy spell and a still one? If man is so generally less happy in the cities than in the country, it is because all these variations and nuances of sight and smell and sound are less clearly marked and lost in the general monotony of gray walls and cement pavements.

The Chinese and the Americans are alike when it comes to the true limits and capacities and qualities of the happy moments. Before I translate the thirty-three happy moments given by a Chinese scholar, I want to quote by way of comparison another passage from Whitman, which will show the identity of our senses:

A clear, crispy day-dry and breezy air, full of oxygen. Out of the sane, silent, beauteous miracles that envelop and fuse me-trees, water, grass, sunlight, and early frost-the one I am looking at most today is the sky. It has that delicate, transparent blue, peculiar to autumn, and the only clouds are little or larger white ones, giving their still and spiritual motion to the great concave. All through the earlier day (say from 7 to n) it keeps a pure, yet vivid blue. But as noon approaches the color gets lighter, quite gray far two or three hours-then still paler for a spell, till sun-down–which last I watch dazzling through the interstices of a knoll of big trees–darts of fire and a gorgeous show of light-yellow, liver-color and red, with  vast silver glaze askant on the water-the transparent shadows, shafts, sparkle, and vivid colors beyond all the paintings ever made.

I don’t know what or how, but it seems to me mostly owing to these skies, (every now and then I think, while I have of course seen them every day of my life, I never really saw the skies before,) I have had this autumn some wondrously contented hours-may I not say perfectly happy ones? As I’ve read, Byron just before his death told a friend that he had known but three happy hours during his whole existence.

Then there is the old German legend of the king’s bell, to the same point. While I was out there by the wood, that beautiful sunset through the trees, I thought of Byron’s and the bell story, and the notion started in me that I was having a happy hour. (Though perhaps my best moments I never jot down; when they come I cannot afford to break the charm by inditing memoranda. I just abandon myself to the mood, and let it float on, carrying me in its placid extasy).

What is happiness, anyhow? Is this one of its hours, or the like of it?–so impalpable–a mere breath, an evanescent tinge? I am not sure–so let me give myself the benefit of the doubt. Hast Thou, pellucid, in Thy azure depths, medicine for case like mine? (Ah, the physical shatter and troubled spirit of me the last three years.) And dost Thou subtly mystically now drip it through the air invisibly upon me?

III. CHIN’S THIRTY-THREE HAPPY MOMENTS

We are now better prepared to examine and appreciate the happy moments of a Chinese, as he describes them. Chin Shengt’an, that great impressionistic critic of the seventeenth century, has given us, between his commentaries on the play Western Chamber, an enumeration of the happy moments which he once counted together with his friend, when they were shut up in a temple for ten days on account of rainy weather. These then are what he considers the truly happy moments of human life, moments in which the spirit is inextricably tied up with the senses:

I²: It is a hot day in June when the sun hangs still in the sky and there is not a whiff of wind or air, nor a trace of clouds; the front and back yards are hot like an oven and not a single bird dares to fly about. Perspiration flows down my whole body in little rivulets. There is the noon-day meal before me, but I cannot take it for the sheer heat. I ask for a mat to spread on the ground and lie down, but the mat is wet with moisture and flies swarm about to rest on my nose and refuse to be driven away. Just at this moment when I am completely helpless, suddenly there is a rumbling of thunder and big sheets of black clouds overcast the sky and come majestically on like a great army advancing to battle. Rain water begins to pour down from he eaves like a cataract. The perspiration stops. The clamminess of the ground is gone. All flies disappear to hide themselves and I can eat my rice. Ah, is this not happiness?

² When a Chinese draws up a set of seventeen or eighteen regulations, it is his custom (the idiom of our language) to set them down as “Articles I, I, I, I, I, I,” etc.

I: A friend, one I have not seen for ten years, suddenly arrives at sunset. I open the door to receive him, and without asking whether he came by boat or by land, and without bidding him to sit down on the bed or the couch, I go to the inner chamber and humbly ask my wife: “Have you got a gallon of wine like Su Tungp’o’s wife?” My wife gladly takes out her gold hairpin to sell it. I calculate it will last us three days. Ah, is this not happiness?
I: I am sitting alone in an empty room and I am just getting annoyed at a mouse at the head of my bed, and wondering what that little rustling sound signifies what article of mine he is biting or what volume of my books he is eating up. While I am in this state of mind, and don’t know what to do, I suddenly see a ferocious-looking cat, wagging its tail and staring with its wide open eyes, as if it were looking at something. I hold my breath and wait a moment, keeping perfectly still, and suddenly with a little sound the mouse disappears like a whiff of wind. Ah, is this not happiness?

I: I have pulled out the hait’ang and chihching³ in front of my studio, and have just planted ten or twenty green banana trees there. Ah, is this not happiness?

³Hait’ang is of the pyrus family, bearing fruits like crab-apples, and chihchtng blossoms in spring, with small violet flowers growing directly on the trunks and branches.

I: I am drinking with some romantic friends on a spring night and am just half intoxicated, finding it difficult to stop drinking and equally difficult to go on. An understanding boy servant at the side suddenly brings in a package of big fire-crackers, about a dozen in number, and I rise from the table and go and fire them off. The smell of sulphur assails my nostrils and enters my brain and I feel comfortable all over my body. Ah, is this not happiness?

I: I am walking in the street and see two poor rascals engaged in a hot argument of words with their faces flushed and their eyes staring with anger as if they were mortal enemies, and yet they still pretend to be ceremonious to each other, raising their arms and bending their waists in salute, and still using the most polished language of thou and thee and wherefore and is it not so? The flow of words is interminable. Suddenly there appears a big husky fellow swinging his arms and coming up to them, and with a shout tells them to disperse. Ah, is this not happiness?

I: To hear our children recite the classics so fluently, like the sound of pouring water from a vase. Ah, is this not happiness?

I: Having nothing to do after a meal I go to the shops and lake a fancy to a little thing. After bargaining for some time, we still haggle about a small difference, but the shop-boy still refuses to sell it. Then I take out a little thing from my sleeve, which is worth about the same thing as the difference and throw it at the boy. The boy suddenly smiles and bows courteously saying, “Oh, you are too generous!” Ah, is this not happiness?

I: I have nothing to do after a meal and try to go through the things in some old trunks. I see there are dozens or hundreds of I.O.U.’s from people who owe my family money. Some of them are dead and some still living, but in any case there is no hope of their returning the money. Behind people’s backs I put them together in a pile and make a bonfire of them, and I look up to the sky and see the last trace of smoke disappear. Ah, is this not happiness?

I: It is a summer day. I go bareheaded and barefooted, holding a parasol to watch young people singing Soochow folk songs while treading the water wheel. The water comes up over the wheel in a gushing torrent like molten silver or melting snow. Ah, is this not happiness?

I: I wake up in the morning and seem to hear some one in the house sighing and saying that last night some one died. I immediately ask to find out who it is, and learn that it is the sharpest, most calculating fellow in town. Ah, is this not happiness?

I: I get up early on a summer morning and see people sawing a large bamboo pole under a mat-shed, to be used as a water pipe. Ah, is this not happiness?

I: It has been raining for a whole month and I lie in bed in the morning like one drunk or ill, refusing to get up. Suddenly I hear a chorus of birds announcing a clear day. Quickly I pull aside the curtain, push open the window and see the beautiful sun shining and glistening and the forest looks like having a bath. Ah, is this not happiness?

I: At night I seem to hear some one thinking of me in the distance. The next day I go to call on him. I enter his door and look about his room and see that this person is sitting at his desk, facing south, reading a document. He sees me, nods quietly and pulls me by the sleeve to make me sit down, saying “Since you are here, come and look at this.” And we laugh and enjoy ourselves until the shadows on the walls have disappeared. He is feeling hungry himself and slowly asks me “Are you hungry, too?” Ah, is this not happiness?

I: Without any serious intention to build a house of my own, I happened, nevertheless, to start building one because a litte sum had unexpectedly come my way. From that day on, every morning and every night I was told that I needed to buy timber and stone and tiles and bricks and mortar and nails. And I explored and exhausted every avenue of getting some money, all on account of this house, without, however, being able to live in it all this time, until I got sort of resigned to this state o things. One day, finally, the house is completed, the walls have been whitewashed and the floors swept clean; the paper windows have been pasted and scrolls o paintings are hung up on the walls. All the workmen have left, and my friends have arrived, sitting on different couches in order. Ah, is this not happiness?

I: I am drinking on a winter’s night, and suddenly note that the night has turned extremely cold. I push open the window and see that snowflakes come down the size of a palm and there are already three or four inches of snow on the ground. Ah, is this not happiness?

I: To cut with a sharp knife a bright green watermelon on a big scarlet plate of a summer afternoon. Ah, is this not happiness?

I: I have long wanted to become a monk, but was worried because I would not be permitted to eat meat. If then I could be permitted to become a monk and yet eat meat publicly, why then I would heat a basin of hot water, and with the help of a sharp razor shave my head clean in a summer month! Ah, is this not happiness?

I : To keep three or four spots of eczema in a private part of my body and now and then to scald or bathe it with hot water behind closed doors. Ah, is this not happiness?

I : To find accidently a handwritten letter o some old friend in a trunk. Ah, is this not happiness?

I: A poor scholar comes to borrow money from me, but is shy about mentioning the topic, and so he allows die conversation to drift along on other topics. I see his uncomfortable situation, pull him aside to a place where we are alone and ask him how much he needs. Then I go inside and give him the sum and after having done this, I ask him: “Must you go immediately to settle this matter or can you stay a while and have a drink with me?” Ah, is this not happiness?

I: I am sitting in a small boat. There is a beautiful wind in our favor, but our boat has no sails. Suddenly there appears a big lorcha, coming along as fast as the wind. I try to hook on to the lorcha in the hope of catching on to it, and unexpectedly the hook does catch. Then I throw over a rope and we are towed along and I begin to sing the lines of Tu Fu: “The green makes me feel tender toward the peaks, and the red tells me there are oranges.” And we break out in joyous laughter. Ah, is this not happiness?

I: I have been long looking for a house to share with a friend but have not been able to find a suitable one. Suddenly some one brings the news that there is a house somewhere, not too big, but with only about a dozen rooms, and that it faces a big river with beautiful green trees around. I ask this man to stay for supper, and after the supper we go over together to have a look, having no idea what the house is like. Entering the gate, I see that there is a large vacant lot about six or seven mow, and I say to myself, “I shall not have to worry about the supply of vegetables and melons henceforth.” Ah, is this not happiness?

I: A traveller returns home after a long journey, and he sees the old city gate and hears the women and children on both banks of the river talking his own dialect. Ah, is this not happiness?

I: When a good piece of old porcelain is broken, you know there is no hope of repairing it. The more you turn it about and look at it, the more you are exasperated. I then hand it to the cook, asking him to use it as any old vessel, and give orders that he shall never let that broken porcelain bowl come within my sight again. Ah, is this not happiness?

I: I am not a saint, and am therefore not without sin. In the night I did something wrong and I get up in the morning and feel extremely ill at ease about it. Suddenly I remember what is taught by Buddhism, that not to cover one’s sins is the same as repentance. So then I begin to tell my sin to the entire company around, whether they are strangers or my old friends. Ah, is this not happiness?

I: To watch some one writing big characters a foot high. Ah, is this not happiness?

: To open the window and let a wasp out of the room. Ah, is this not happiness?

I: A magistrate orders the beating of the drum and calls it a day. Ah, is this not happiness?

I: To see some one’s kite line broken. Ah, is this not happiness?

i: To see a wild prairie fire. Ah, is this not happiness?

I: To have just finished repaying all one’s debts. Ah, is this not happiness?

i: To read the Story of Curly-Beard⁴ Ah, is this not happiness?

⁴ The hero, known as “Curly-Beard,” aided the escape of a pair of doping lovers, and after giving them his home in a distant city* then disappeared.

Poor Byron, who had only three happy hours in his life! He was either of a morbid and enormously unbalanced spirit, or else he was affecting merely the fashionable Weltschmerz of his decade. Were the feeling of Weltschmerz not so fashionable, I feel bound to suspect that he must have confessed to at least thirty happy hours instead of three. Is it not plain from the above that the world is truly a feast of life spread out for us to enjoy merely through the senses, and a type of culture which recognizes these sensual pleasures therefore makes it possible for us frankly to admit them? My suspicion is, the reason why we shut our eyes willfully to this gorgeous world, vibrating with its own sensuality, is that the spiritualists have made us plain scared of them. A nobler type of philosophy should re-establish our confidence in this fine receptive organ of ours, which we call the body, and drive away first the contempt and then the fear of our senses. Unless these philosophers can actually sublimate matter and etherealize our body into a soul without nerves, without taste, without smell, and without sense of color and motion and touch, and unless we are ready to go the whole way with the Hindu mortifiers of the flesh, let us face ourselves bravely as we are. For only a philosophy that recognizes reality can lead us into true happiness, and only that kind of philosophy is sound and healthy

IV. MISUNDERSTANDINGS OF MATERIALISM

Chin’s description of the happy moments of his life must have already convinced us that in real human life, the mental and the physical pleasures are inextricably tied up together. Mental pleasures are real only when they are felt through the body. I would include even the moral pleasures, too. He who preaches any kind o doctrine must be prepared to be misunderstood, as the Epicureans and Stoics were. How often people fail to see the essential kindness of spirit of a Stoic, like Marcus Aurelius, and how often the Epicurean doctrine of wisdom and restraint has been popularly construed as the doctrine of the man of pleasure! It will at once be brought up Against this somewhat materialistic view of things, that it is selfish, that it lacks totally a sense of social responsibility, that it teaches one to enjoy one’s self merely. This type of argument proceeds from ignorance; those who use it know not what they are talking about. They know not the kindness of the cynic, not the gentleness of temper of such a lover of life. Love of one’s fellowmen should not be a doctrine, an article of faith, a matter of intellectual conviction, or a thesis supported by arguments.

The love of mankind which requires reasons is no true love. This love should be perfectly natural, as natural for man as for the birds to flap their wings. It should be a direct feeling, springing naturally from a healthy soul, living in touch with Nature. No man who loves the trees truly can be cruel to animals or to his fellowmen. In a perfectly healthy spirit, gaining a vision of life and of one’s fellowmen and a true and deep knowledge of Nature, kindness is the natural thing. .That soul does not require any philosophy or man-made religion tb tell him to be kind. It is because his spirit has been properly nourished through his senses, somewhat detached from the artificial life and the still more artificial learning of human society, that he is able to retain a true mental and moral health. We cannot, therefore, be accused of teaching unselfishness when we are scratching off the earth and enlarging the opening from which this spring of kindness will naturally flow.

Materialism has been misunderstood, grievously misunderstood. In this matter I must let George Santayana speak for us, who describes himself as “a materialist perhaps the only one living,” and who, nevertheless as we all know, is probably one of the sweetest spirits of the present generation. He tells us that our prejudice against the materialistic philosophy is a prejudice o one looking at it from the outside. One gets a feeling of shock from certain deficiencies which are only apparent by comparison with one’s old creed. But one can truly understand any foreign creed or religion or country only when one enters to live in spirit in that new world. There is a bounce and a joy, a wholesomeness of feeling in this so-called “materialism” which we usually fail to see entirely. As Santayana tells us, the true materialist is always like Democritus, the laughing philosopher. It is we, the “unwilling materialists,” who aspire to spiritualism but nevertheless live a selfish materialistic life, “that have generally been awkwardly intellectual and incapable of laughter.”

But a thorough materialist, one born to the faith and not half plunged into it by an unexpected christening in cold water, will be like the superb Democritus, a laughing philosopher. His delight in a mechanism that can fall into so many marvellous and beautiful shapes, and can generate so many exciting passions, should be of the same intellectual quality as that which the visitor feels in a museum of natural history, where he views the myriad butterflies in their cases, the flamingoes and shell-fish, the mammoths and gorillas. Doubtless there were pangs in that incalculable life, but they were soon over; and how splendid meantime was the pageant, how infinitely interesting the universal interplay, and how foolish and inevitable those absolute little passions. Somewhat of that sort might be the sentiment that materialism would arouse in a vigorous mind, active, joyful, impersonal, and in respect to private illusions not without a touch of scorn.

To the genuine sufferings of living creatures the ethics that accompanies materialism has never been insensible; on the contrary, like other merciful systems, it has trembled too much at pain and tended to withdraw the will ascetically, lest the will should be defeated. Contempt for mortal sorrows is reserved for those who drive with hosannas the Juggernaut car of absolute optimism. But against evils born of pure vanity and self-deception, against the verbiage by which man persuades himself that he is the goat and acme of the universe, laughter is the proper defence. Laughter also has this subtle advantage, that it need not remain without an overtone of sympathy and brotherly understanding; as the laughter that greets Don Quixote’s absurdities and misadventures does not mock the hero’s intent. His ardour was admirable, but the world must be known before it can be reformed pertinently, and happiness, to be attained, must be placed in reason.⁵

⁵ From the essay on “Emotions of the Materialist,” in Little Essays of Santayana. edited by Logan Pearsall Smith. The italics are mine.

What then is this mental life, or this spiritual life, of which we have been always so proud, and which we always place above the life of the senses? Unfortunately modern biology has a tendency to track the spirit down to its lair, finding it to be a set of fibers, liquids and nerves. I almost believe that optimism is a fluid, or at least it is a condition of the nerves made possible by certain circulating fluids.

Whence does the mental life arise, and from what does it take its being and derive its nourishment? Philosophers have long pointed out that all human knowledge comes from sensuous experience. We can no more attain knowledge of any kind without the senses of vision and touch and smell than a camera can take pictures without a lens and a sensitive plate. The difference between a clever man and a dull fellow is that the former has a set of finer lenses and perceiving apparatus by which he gets a sharper image of things and retains it longer. And to proceed from the knowledge of books to the knowledge of life, mere thinking or cogitation is not enough; one has to feel one’s way about to sense things as they are and to get a correct impression of the myriad things in human life and human nature not as unrelated parts, but as a whole. In this matter of feeling about life and of gaining experience, all our senses cooperate, and it is through the cooperation of the senses, and of the heart with the head, that we can have intellectual warmth. Intellectual warmth, after all, is the thing, for it is the sign of life, like the color of green in a plant. We detect life in one’s thought by its presence or absence of warmth, as we detect life in a half dried-up tree struggling after some unfortunate accident, by noting the greenness of its leaves and the moisture and healthy texture of its fiber.

V. HOW ABOUT MENTAL PLEASURES?

Let us take the supposedly higher pleasures o the mind and the spirit, and see to what extent they are vitally connected with our senses, rather than with our intellect. What are those higher spiritual pleasures that we distinguish from those of the lower senses? Are they not parts of the same thing, taking root and ending up in the senses, and inseparable from them? As we go over these higher pleasures of the mind-literature, art, music, religion and philosophy-we see what a minor role the intellect plays in comparison with the senses and feelings. What does a painting do except to give us a landscape or a portrait and recall in us the sensuous pleasures of seeing a real landscape or a beautiful face? And what does literature do except to recreate a picture of life, to give us the atmosphere and color, the fragrant smell of the pastures or the stench of city gutters? We all say that a novel approaches the standard of true literature in proportion as it gives us real people and real emotions. The book which takes us away from this human life, or merely coldly dissects it, is not literature and the more humanly true a book is> the better literature we consider it. What novel ever appeals to a reader if it contains only a cold analysis, if it fails to give us the salt and tang and flavor of life?

As for the other things, poetry is but truth colored with emotion, music is sentiment without words, and religion is but wisdom expressed in fancy. As painting is based on the sense of color and vision, so poetry is based on the sense of sound and tone and rhythm, in addition to its emotional truth. Music is pure sentiment itself, dispensing entirely with the language of words with which alone the intellect can operate. Music can portray for us the sounds of cowbells and fishmarkets and the battlefield; it can portray for us even the delicacy of the flowers, the undulating motion of the waves, or the sweet serenity of the moonlight; but the moment it steps outside the limit of the senses and tries to portray for us a philosophic idea, it must be considered decadent and the product of a decadent world.

And did not the degeneration of religion begin with reason itself?

As Santayana says, the process of degeneration of religion was due to too much reasoning: “This religion unhappily long ago ceased to be wisdom expressed in fancy in order to become superstition overlaid with reasoning.” The decay of religion is due to the pedantic spirit, in the invention of creeds, formulas, articles of faith, doctrines and apologies. We become increasingly less pious as we increasingly justify and rationalize our beliefs and become so sure that we are right. That is why every religion becomes a narrow sect, which believes itself to have discovered the only truth. The consequence is that the more we justify our beliefs, the more narrow-minded we become, as is evident in all religious sects. This has made it possible for religion to be associated with the worst forms of bigotry, narrow-mindedness and even pure selfishness in personal life. Such a religion nourishes a man’s selfishness not only by making it impossible for him to be broad-minded toward other sects, but also by turning the practice of religion into a private bargain between God and himself, in which the party of the first part is glorified by the party of the second part, singing hymns and calling upon His name on every conceivable occasion, and in return the party of the first part is to bless the party o the second part, bless particularly himself more than any other person and his own family more than any other family. That is why we find selfishness of nature goes so well with some of the most “religious” and regularly church-going old women. In the end, the sense of self-justification, of having discovered the only truth, displaces all the finer emotions from which religion took its rise.

I can see no other reason for the existence of art and poetry and religion except as they tend to restore in us a freshness of vision and a more emotional glamour and more vital sense of life. For as we grow older in life, our senses become gradually benumbed, our emotions become more callous to suffering and injustice and cruelty, and our vision of life is warped by too much preoccupation with cold, trivial realities. Fortunately, we have a few poets and artists who have not lost that sharpened sensibility, that fine emotional response and that freshness of vision, and whose duties are therefore to be our moral conscience, to hold up a mirror to our blunted vision, to tone up our withered nerves. Art should be a satire and a warning against our paralyzed emotions, our devitalized thinking and our denaturalized living. It teaches us unsophistication in a sophisticated world. It should restore to us health and sanity of living and enable us to recover from the fever and delirium caused by too much mental activity. It should sharpen our senses, re-establish the connection between our reason and our human nature, and assemble the ruined parts of a dislocated life again into a whole, by restoring our original nature. Miserable indeed is a world in which we have knowledge without understanding, criticism without appreciation, beauty without love, truth without passion, righteousness without mercy, and courtesy without a warm heart!

As for philosophy, which is the exercise of the spirit far excellence, the danger is even greater that we lose the feeling of life itself. I can understand that such mental delights include the solution of a long mathematical equation, or the perception of a grand order in the universe. This perception of order is probably the purest of all our mental pleasures and yet I would exchange it for a well prepared meal. In the first place, it is in itself almost a freak, a byproduct of our mental occupations, enjoyable because it is gratuitous, but not in any case as imperative for us as other vital processes. That intellectual delight is, after all, similar to the delight of solving a crossword puzzle successfully. In the second place, the philosopher at this moment more often than not is likely to cheat himself, to fall in love with this abstract perfection, and to conceive a greater logical perfection in the world than is really warranted by reality itself. It is as much a false picture of things as when we paint a star with five points a reduction to formula, an artificial stylizing, an over-simplification. So long as we do not overdo it, this delight in perfection is good, but let us remind ourselves that millions of people can be happy without discovering this simple unity of design.

We really can afford to live without it. I prefer talking with a colored maid to talking with a mathematician; her words are more concrete, her laughter is more energetic, and I generally gain more in knowledge o human nature by talking with her. I am such a materialist that at any time I would prefer pork to poetry, and would waive a piece of philosophy for a piece of filet, brown and crisp and garnished with good sauce.

Only by placing living above thinking can we get away from this heat and the re-breathed air of philosophy and recapture some of the freshness and naturalness of true insight of the child. Any true philosopher ought to be ashamed of himself when he sees a child, or even a lion cub in a cage. How perfectly nature has fashioned him with his paws, his muscles, his beautiful coat of fur, his pricking ears, his bright round eyes, his agility and his sense of fun! The philosopher ought to be ashamed that God-made perfection has sometimes become man-made imperfection, ashamed that he wears spectacles, has no appetite, is often distressed in mind and heart, and is entirely unconscious of the fun in life. From this type of philosopher nothing is to be gained, for nothing that he says can be of importance to us. That philosophy alone can be of use to us which joins hands merrily with poetry and establishes for us a truer vision, first of nature and then of human nature.

Any adequate philosophy of life must be based on the harmony of our given instincts. The philosopher who is too idealistic is soon tripped up by nature herself. The highest conception of human dignity, according to the Chinese Confucianists, is when man reaches ultimately his greatest height, an equal of heaven and earth, by living in accordance with nature. This is the doctrine given in The Golden Mean, written by the grandson of Confucius.

What is God-given is called nature; to follow nature is called Tao⁶ (the Way); to cultivate the Way is called culture. Before joy, anger, sadness and happiness are expressed, they are called the inner self; when they are expressed to the proper degree, they are called harmony. The inner self is the correct foundation o the world, and harmony is the illustrious Way. When a man has achieved the inner self and harmony, the heaven and earth are orderly and the myriad things are nourished and grow thereby.

To arrive at understanding from being one’s true self is called nature, and to arrive at being one’s true self from understanding is called culture; he who is his true self has thereby understanding, and he who has understanding finds thereby his true self. Only those who are their absolute selves in the world can fulfil their own nature; only those who fulfil their own nature can fulfil the nature of others; only those who fulfil the nature of others can fulfil the nature of things; those who fulfil the nature of things are worthy to help Mother Nature in growing and sustaining life; and those who are worthy to help Mother Nature in growing and sustaining life are the equals of heaven and earth.

To be continued…

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1 Thoieau is the most Chinese of all American authors in his entire view of life and being a Chinese, I feel much akin to him in spirit. I discovered him only a few months ago, and the delight of the discovery is stall fresh in my mind. I could translate passages of Thoreau into my own language and pass them of as original writing by a Chinese poet, without raising any suspicion.

⁶ There is a strong element of Taoism in Confucianism, perhaps due to the influence of Taoistic thought, a fact which is not usually noticed. Anyway, here this passage stands in one of the Confucian Four Books and similar passages in the Analects can be quoted.