5. The Pre-Confucian Philosophers
The “Book of Changes”—The “yang” and the “yin”—The Chinese Enlightenment—Teng Shih, the Socrates of China
The characteristic production of this epoch is philosophy. It is no discredit to our species that in all ages its curiosity has outrun its wisdom, and its ideals have set an impossible pace for its behavior. As far back as 1250 B.C. we find Yu Tze sounding the keynote in a pithy fragment then already stale, and now still fresh in counsel to laborious word-mongers who do not know that all glory ends in bitterness: “He who renounces fame has no sorrow”30—happy the man who has no history! From that time until our own, China has produced philosophers.
As India is par excellence the land of metaphysics and religion, China is by like preëminence the home of humanistic, or non-theological, philosophy. Almost the only important work of metaphysics in its literature is the strange document with which the recorded history of Chinese thought begins—the I-Ching, or “Book of Changes.” Tradition insists that it was written in prison by one of the founders of the Chou Dynasty, Wen Wang, and that its simplest origin went back as far as Fu Hsi: this legendary emperor, we are told, invented the eight kua, or mystic trigrams, which Chinese metaphysics identifies with the laws and elements of nature. Each trigram consisted of three lines—some continuous and representing the male principle or yang, some broken and representing the female principle or yin. In this mystic dualism the yang represented also the positive, active, productive and celestial principle of light, heat and life, while the yin represented the negative, passive and earthly principle of darkness, cold and death. Wen Wang immortalized himself, and racked the head of a billion Chinese, by doubling the number of strokes, and thereby raising to sixty-four the number of possible combinations of continuous and broken lines. To each of these arrangements some law of nature corresponded. All science and history were contained in the changeful interplay of the combinations; all wisdom lay hidden in the sixty-four hsiangs, or ideas symbolically represented by the trigrams; ultimately all reality could be reduced to the opposition and union of the two basic factors in the universe—the male and the female principles, the yang and the yin. The Chinese used the Book of Changes as a manual of divination, and considered it the greatest of their classics; he who should understand the combinations, we are told, would grasp all the laws of nature. Confucius, who edited the volume and adorned it with commentaries, ranked it above all other writings, and wished that he might be free to spend fifty years in its study.31
This strange volume, though congenial to the subtle occultism of the Chinese soul, is alien to the positive and practical spirit of Chinese philosophy. As far back as we can pry into the past of China we find philosophers; but of those who preceded Lao-tze time has preserved only an occasional fragment or an empty name. As in India, Persia, Judea and Greece, the sixth and fifth centuries saw, in China, a brilliant outburst of philosophical and literary genius; and as in Greece, it began with an epoch of rationalist “enlightenment.” An age of war and chaos opened new roads to the advancement of unpedigreed talent, and established a demand, among the people of the towns, for instructors skilled in imparting the arts of the mind. These popular teachers soon discovered the uncertainty of theology, the relativity of morals and the imperfections of governments, and began to lay about them with Utopias; several of them were put to death by authorities who found it more difficult to answer than to kill. According to one Chinese tradition Confucius himself, during his tenure of office as Minister of Crime in the Duchy of Lu, condemned to death a seditious officer on the ground that “he was capable of gathering about him large crowds of men; that his arguments could easily appeal to the mob and make perversity respectable; and that his sophistry was sufficiently recalcitrant to take a stand against the accepted judgments of right.”32 Szuma-Ch’ien accepts the story; some other Chinese historians reject it;33 let us hope that it is not true.
The most famous of these intellectual rebels was Teng Shih, who was executed by the Duke of Cheng during the youth of Confucius. Teng, says the Book of Lieh-tze, “taught the doctrines of the relativity of right and wrong, and employed inexhaustible arguments.”34 His enemies charged him with being willing to prove one thing one day and its opposite the next, if proper remuneration were forthcoming; he offered his services to those who were trying their cases in court, and allowed no prejudice to interfere with serviceability. A hostile Chinese historian tells a pretty story of him:
A wealthy man of Teng’s native state was drowned in the Wei River, and his body was taken up by a man who demanded of the bereaved family a large sum of money for its redemption. The dead man’s family sought Teng’s counsel. “Wait,” said the Sophist; “no other family will pay for the body.” The advice was followed, and the man who held the corpse became anxious and also came to Teng Shih for advice. The Sophist gave the same counsel: “Wait; nowhere else can they obtain the body.”35
Teng Shih composed a code of penology that proved too idealistic for the government of Cheng. Annoyed by pamphlets in which Teng criticized his policies, the prime minister prohibited the posting of pamphlets in public places. Teng thereupon delivered his pamphlets in person. The minister forbade the delivery of pamphlets. Teng smuggled them to his readers by concealing them in other articles. The government ended the argument by cutting off his head.36