# A Text Dump on Mao Zedong’s Anarchist Beginnings

### 2024

A Critical Introduction

The Young Mao Zedong

Mao’s Anarchist Years

Young Mao’s Liberal Writings

A Study of Physical Education (April 1, 1917)

1. An explanation of physical education

2. The place of physical education in our life

3. Previous abuses of physical education and my method for remedying them

4. The utility of physical education

5. The reasons for disliking exercise

6. The methods of exercise should be few

7. The points to which we must pay attention when we exercise

8. Discussion of the modest results I have achieved in the domain of exercise

Marginal Notes to: Friedrich Paulsen, A System of Ethics (1917–1918)

Young Mao’s Social-Anarchist Writings

The Great Union of the Popular Masses: Part I (July 21, 1919)

Part II: Taking Small Unions as the Foundation (July 28, 1919)

Part III: The Present Status of China’s “Great Union of the Popular Masses” (August 4, 1919)

Mao’s Later Authoritarian Communist Writings

On the Relation Between Knowledge and Practice, Between Knowing and Doing (July 1937)

Combat Liberalism (September 7, 1937)

The Party’s Mass Line Must Be Followed in Suppressing Counter-Revolutionaries (May 1951)

### A Critical Introduction

#### The Young Mao Zedong

Source: Episode 12 of People’s History of Ideas Podcast. <peopleshistoryofideas.com/episode-12-the-young-mao-zedong>

Date: December 21, 2019

Synopsis: In this episode we look at Mao Zedong’s childhood, family background, and see what he was thinking in 1912.

Further reading:

- Edgar Snow, Red Star Over China

- Stuart Schram, ed., Mao’s Road to Power, vol. 1: The Pre-Marxist Period, 1912–1920

- Lee Feigon, Mao: A Reinterpretation

- Jonathan Spence, Mao Zedong: A Life

Some names from this episode:

- Ba Jin, anarchist novelist who wrote The Family

- Shang Yang, founder of the Legalist school

- Sima Qian, author of Records of the Grand Historian

Listen here: <buzzsprout.com/350771/episodes/2326625-the-young-mao-zedong.mp3>

This is episode 12 of the People’s History of Ideas Podcast, and this episode we’re going to check in on the young Mao, talk a little about his childhood, and look at what he was thinking as a young adult.

Mao was born on December 26, 1893 in Hunan Province, in the village of Shaoshan. Shaoshan was the ancestral home of the Mao clan, and so as the Mao clan village, just about everyone there was related to each other and had the family name Mao. Shaoshan was in a relatively prosperous farming region, with a range of hills that the young Mao would explore nearby. Mao’s father was a hard-working man who expanded the family’s farm and eventually hired a couple workers to do most of the farm labor, while focusing on selling grain and money lending himself.

According to the criteria that Mao laid out in “How to Differentiate Class Status in Rural Areas” in 1933, this would make his family a rich peasant family. This is how Mao defined rich peasants in that work:

> “The rich peasant as a rule owns land. But some rich peasants own only part of their land and rent the remainder. Others have no land of their own at all and rent all their land. The rich peasant generally has rather more and better instruments of production and more liquid capital than the average and engages in labor himself, but always relies on exploitation for part or even the major part of his income. His main form of exploitation is the hiring of labor (long-term laborers). In addition, he may let part of his land and practice exploitation through land rent, or may lend money or engage in industry and commerce. Most rich peasants also engage in the administration of communal land. A person who owns a fair amount of good land, farms some of it himself without hiring labor, but exploits other peasants by means of land rent, loan interest or in other ways, shall also be treated as a rich peasant. Rich peasants regularly practice exploitation and many derive most of their income from this source.”

It is important to remember, when you hear the term ‘rich peasant,’ that the adjective rich is only relative to other peasants. For someone listening to this podcast in a city in the industrialized world and trying to imagine how rich peasant families like Mao’s family lived in late 19th and early 20th century China, the key word here is ‘peasant,’ not ‘rich.’ In the case of Mao’s family, they owned about three and a half to four acres. Mao himself began doing some work in the fields when he was about six years old, and when he got older one of his main tasks was to haul heavy baskets of manure out to the fields. One of the best ways to measure standard of living is diet. According to Mao’s account of his childhood he ate eggs once a month and meat only three or four times a year. So, again, while his family was prosperous, the key word here to keep in mind is ‘peasant,’ not ‘rich.’

At this point, all biographies of Mao have to deal with the question of Mao’s relationship with his father. After all, just as the family predates the origin of the state as an institution in the history of humanity, most rebels begin with some form of rebellion against patriarchal authority before they get older and move on to rebel against society more broadly. In the case of Mao, the main source we have on his childhood is his own account from an important book titled Red Star Over China. In Red Star Over China, an American journalist named Edgar Snow traveled to the Chinese Communist base area in north-western China in 1936 and conducted a long series of interviews with Mao. This book was very important in spreading knowledge about and winning support for the Chinese Revolution as soon as it was published in 1937. Eventually, I’ll probably want to do an episode devoted to Red Star Over China, talking about how it was produced and how it was used and what effect it had over all. But for right now, what is important to us about it is that it is the main source available on Mao’s childhood, and what it contains is just what Mao said about his childhood, which was said in a highly politicized context in which Mao wanted this book to be useful for building support for his movement.

In Red Star Over China, Mao describes his father as a tyrant and says that he formed a ‘united front’ with his mother and brothers to defeat his father. He writes about his father as a severe taskmaster who would sometimes deprive him of food. But, what we also know, is that his father financially supported Mao through his studies later on and made sure that he got a good education, even though his father hoped Mao would carry on with the family farm and develop the family’s commercial enterprises. The evidence is that Mao was closer to his family than he lets on in his autobiographical account in Red Star Over China.

So, what’s going on there? There are two different, but similar, takes on this that I have found in the literature. In the more recent biographical takes on Mao, the interpretation that is usually given has to do with the fact that rebellion against familial authority was in vogue at the time. After all, radicals and intellectuals were rebelling against old Confucian ideas which championed family values, especially patriarchal authority. One popular expression of this was a novel published in the early 1930s by the anarchist writer Ba Jin, titled The Family. So in this interpretation, Mao exaggerated his conflict with his father in order to play to the trends popular with the audience who would read Red Star Over China (which, though it was written in English for an English-speaking audience, was immediately translated by the Communist Party into Chinese and used very effectively both within China and among overseas Chinese people around the world).

In the other interpretation, and this I’ve found mainly in works written in the 1960s and 1970s, Mao’s differences with his father are also considered to have been exaggerated. But rather than seeing Mao as cynically trying to play to radical intellectual trends at the time in order to garner political support, Mao’s take on his father is seen as a reflection of a broader generation gap in China that was felt by Chinese who had their childhoods between the 1890s and 1920s, and was compared to the generation gap in western societies that was felt in the 1960s and 1970s. Of course, it’s not an accident that the works advancing a ‘generation gap’ approach to interpreting Mao’s harsh take on his dad were written when a similar generation gap was felt in Europe and North America, and that more recent works advance a more cynical motive on Mao’s part. I just noticed this different while reviewing the biographical literature on Mao for this podcast episode, and even though you always know that the way history is written reflects the time the writer is writing in, you don’t always get such clear examples of that as we do here.

In order to get to go to school, Mao had to raise funds from friends and family to cover not only his tuition, but also the cost of a replacement laborer to work in his family fields. But eventually Mao’s father did warm up to the idea of Mao attending school, and he began to support him. In 1911, at age 17, about six months before the insurrection in Wuhan broke out, Mao went to the provincial capital of Changsha to continue his schooling. Even though it was far inland, Changsha had a foreign military garrison, and British and American gunboats patrolled the Xiang River, on which Changsha sat.

When the revolution broke out, Mao decided to go and join it in Wuhan. Having heard that the streets were very wet there, he went and borrowed some rain shoes from a friend just outside of town. On the way back in to Changsha, the revolution had broken out there, and Mao went up to a high point in the city and watched the fighting, until the Qing flag was taken down and the new Han flag, a white banner with the character for Han in it (for the Han Chinese nationality) was raised over the city.

Mao then joined one of the rebel units of the New Army, and I want to read you his account of his time in the army:

> Many students were now joining the army. A student army had been organized and among these students was T’ang Sheng-chih. I did not like the student army; I considered the basis of it too confused. I decided to join the regular army instead, and help complete the revolution. The Ch’ing Emperor had not yet abdicated, and there was a period of struggle.

> My salary was seven yuan a month—which is more than I get in the Red Army now, however—and of this I spent two yuan a month on food. I also had to buy water. The soldiers had to carry water in from outside the city, but I, being a student, could not condescend to carrying, and bought it from the water peddlers. The rest of my wages were spent on newspapers, of which I became an avid reader. Among journals then dealing with the revolution was the Hsiang Chiang Jih-pao [Hsiang River Daily News]. Socialism was discussed in it, and in these columns I first learned the term. I also discussed socialism, really social-reformism, with other students and soldiers. I read some pamphlets written by Kiang K’ang-hu about socialism and its principles. I wrote enthusiastically to several of my classmates on this subject, but only one of them responded in agreement.

> There was a Hunan miner in my squad, and an ironsmith, whom I liked very much. The rest were mediocre, and one was a rascal. I persuaded two more students to join the army, and came to be on friendly terms with the platoon commander and most of the soldiers. I could write, I knew something about books, and they respected my ‘great learning.’[1]

Great learning is in quotes, so you can tell he’s saying it ironically.

> I could help by writing letters for them or in other such ways.

> The outcome of the revolution was not yet decided. The Ch’ing had not wholly given up power, and there was a struggle within the Kuomintang concerning the leadership. It was said in Hunan that further war was inevitable. Several armies were organized against the Manchus and against Yuan Shih-k’ai. Among these was the Hunan army. But just as the Hunanese were preparing to move into action, Sun Yat-sen and Yuan Shih-k’ai came to an agreement, the scheduled war was called off, North and South were ‘unified,’ and the Nanking Government was dissolved. Thinking the revolution was over, I resigned from the army and decided to return to my books. I had been a soldier for half a year.

Here, one of the things you see at the beginning of this passage from Red Star Over China, you notice where he mentions how he refused to haul his own water because he was a student. This is a theme that we’re going to see repeated throughout the Chinese revolution, where this issue of intellectuals going through a reform process where they initially felt themselves to be above regular labor and the need for people to be transformed so that intellectuals don’t feel they’re above people who perform manual labor. This is a theme Mao returns to multiple times in his autobiographical portion of Red Star Over China.

After leaving the army, Mao explored some different schools before settling into the Hunan normal school, where he stayed for five years. He developed more politically there, and we will revisit him there in the not too distant future. But for now I want to leave off on telling Mao’s life story, and look at where he was at in terms of his development in 1912. The first extant writing we have from Mao is a short class essay that dates from June 1912, and because it is nice and short, I think it’s a nice opportunity to read it out and use it as kind of a snapshot for where he was at in his thinking at the point just after he left the army and had enrolled in school, when he was 18 years old.

The title of the work is “Essay on How Shang Yang Established Confidence by Moving the Pole.” So, some context: Shang Yang was one of the founders of the Legalist school of thought, all the way back in the back in the 4th century BC. The Legalists implemented a bunch of administrative and legal reforms which made the state of Qin (that’s Q-I-N, not to be confused with the Qing Dynasty that we have been talking about in the past), which made the state of Qin strong and which ultimately led to Qin winning out at the end of the Warring States period in China in the 3rd century BC.

So, one of the issues apparently at the beginning of the reforms that Shang Yang advocated for the state of Qin was that he thought no one was going to trust in the reforms. That people might distrust whether they would really be carried out, or that the state would really do what it was saying it would do. One of the main reforms was to make a set of laws, publicize them, and then to strictly enforce them and apply them universally. So, it was pretty important to Shang Yang that people understand that the laws would be applied, and that Legalist policies would actually be carried out.

So, he did this thing where he put up a pole, and said anyone who moved the pole would get 10 gold pieces. Let me read you a translation of the passage:[2]

> After the decree [incorporating his whole set of sweeping reforms] was drawn up Shang Yang did not at once publish it, fearing that the people did not have confidence in him. He therefore had a pole thirty feet long placed near the south gate of the capital. Assembling the people, he said that he would give ten measures of gold to anyone who could move it to the north gate. The people marveled at this, but no one ventured to move it. Shang Yang then said, ‘I will give fifty measures of gold to anyone who can move it.’ One man then moved it, and Shang Yang immediately gave him fifty measures of gold, to demonstrate that he did not practice deception.

So, by paying the guy 50 measures of gold, Shang Yang demonstrated that he would in fact do what he said he would do, so people knew to trust what he said, and they would believe in his reforms. That’s how the story goes, anyways. Keep in mind, this is from over almost 2300 years ago.

So, in this essay, Mao is giving his thoughts on reading about what Shang Yang did with the pole. He’s actually reading about it from a classic work by Sima Qian, the early Chinese historian, called the Records of the Grand Historian, which dates from about 94 BC.[3]

> When I read the Shi ji about the incident of how Shang Yang established confidence by the moving of a pole, I lament the foolishness of the people of our country, I lament the wasted efforts of the rules of our country, and I lament the fact that for several thousand years the wisdom of the people has not been developed and the country has been teetering on the brink of a grievous disaster. If you don’t believe me, please hear out what I have to say.

> Laws and regulations are instruments for procuring happiness. If the laws and regulations are good, the happiness of our people will certainly be great. Our people fear only that the laws and regulations will not be promulgated, or that, if promulgated, they will not be effective. It is essential that every effort be devoted to the task of guaranteeing and upholding such laws, never ceasing until the objective of perfection is obtained. The government and the people are mutually dependent and interconnected, so how can there be any reason for distrust? On the other hand, if the laws and regulations are not good, then not only will there be no happiness to speak of, but there will also be a threat of harm, and our people should exert their utmost efforts to obstruct such laws and regulations. Even though you want us to have confidence, why should we have confidence? But how can one explain the fact that Shang Yang encountered the opposition of so large a proportion of the people of Qin?

> Shang Yang’s laws were good laws. If you look today at the four thousand-odd years for which our country’s history has been recorded, and the great political leaders who have pursued the welfare of the country and the happiness of the people, is not Shang Yang one of the very first on the list? During the reign of Duke Xiao, the Central Plain was in great turmoil, with wars being constantly waged and the entire country was exhausted beyond description. Therefore, Shang Yang sought to achieve victory over all the other states and unify the Central Plain, a difficult enterprise indeed. Then he published his reforming decrees, promulgating laws to punish the wicked and rebellious, in order to preserve the rights of the people. He stressed agriculture and weaving, in order to increase the wealth of the people, and forcefully pursued military success, in order to increase the prestige of the state. He made slaves of the indigent and idle, in order to put an end to waste. This amounted to a great policy such as our country had never had before. How could the people not fear and trust him, so that he had to use the scheme of setting up the pole to establish confidence? From this we realize the wasted efforts of those who wield power. From this, we can see the stupidity of the people of our country. From this we can understand the origins of our people’s ignorance and darkness during the past several millennia, a tragedy that has brought our country to the brink of destruction.

> Nevertheless, at the beginning of anything out of the ordinary, the mass of the people always dislike it. The people being like this, and the law being like that (i.e., the people clinging to their old ways, and the law being directed toward radical change), what is there to marvel about? I particularly fear, however, that if this story of establishing confidence by moving the pole should come to the attention of the various civilized people of the East and the West, they will laugh uncontrollably so that they have to hold their stomachs, and make a derisive noise with their tongues. Alas, I had best say no more.

In 1912, we can see, Mao was pretty far from the iconoclastic rebel that he would become within a decade. It’s kind of funny, to see the 18-year-old Mao, whose most famous quote might be ‘It is Right to Rebel’ approving of the punishment of the rebellious by Shang Yang. And the contempt that Mao expresses in this essay for the masses of Chinese people is pretty far away from the Mao who pioneered the idea that communists needed to trust in the masses and who advocated the mass line method of political leadership, which is characterized by the method of gathering the ideas of the masses in order to distill them back to the masses at a higher level. We’ll talk about the idea of the mass line much more in the future, but suffice it to say for now that a key idea in that approach is that there is a deep understanding of the world inherent in the masses of people when taken as a group. So it will be an interesting question I hope to come back to in the future, to see how Mao’s understanding of the masses of Chinese people changes over time from being so pessimistic in 1912, to being so optimistic in the future.

If we look at Mao’s development during the period before he became a Communist, it can be divided into three different periods. The first period, here, when Mao was still just 18, Mao had the perspective of still supporting good rulers of a traditional type. This was followed up by an anarchist period, and then finally he went through a period of searching for a new, revolutionary politics and road to power, which ultimately led him to Marxism. We will take that process of development up in future episodes, although in our next few episodes we will be looking at some other thinkers who were a bit older than Mao, and who were more central to the initial development of Marxism in China, as well as the overall milieu in which radical politics developed in China during early Warlord Era.

#### Mao’s Anarchist Years

Date: February 20, 2020

Source: Episode 14 of the People’s History of Ideas Podcast. <peopleshistoryofideas.com/episode-14-maos-anarchist-years-the-young-mao-zedong-part-two>

Synopsis: In this episode we continue our examination of Mao Zedong’s ideological development by discussing his anarchist period.

Further reading:

- Stuart Schram, ed., Mao’s Road to Power, vol. 1: The Pre-Marxist Period, 1912–1920 is the indispensable source here.

Some names from this episode:

- Li Dazhao, leading proponent of learning from the Russian Revolution

- Hu Shi, student of John Dewey and advocate for pragmatism

- Chen Duxiu, editor of New Youth and leading New Culture intellectual

Listen here: <buzzsprout.com/350771/episodes/2794633-mao-s-anarchist-years-the-young-mao-zedong-part-two.mp3>

Welcome to Episode 14 of the People’s History of Ideas Podcast.

This episode, we will be picking up the story of Mao Zedong during his pre-Marxist years.

We last left off with Mao in episode 12 by looking at the first of his written works which has survived down to today, a school essay that he wrote in 1912, when he was 18 years old. He was just out of his short and uneventful time in the revolutionary army of 1911, and he was going to school and intended to use his education to find a way to further China’s progress, but was far from the Marxist revolutionary that he would later become. In fact, the way that we characterized his thinking in 1912 was that he had the perspective of supporting good rulers of a traditional type, and he showed this in his essay by his support for the policies of one of the founders of the Legalist school of statecraft from ancient China, Shang Yang.

So, let’s look at how Mao developed during the years between writing that essay, which we read and discussed in episode 12, and the May 4th Movement of 1919.

Mao spent most of this time at the Hunan Normal School (normal schools are teacher’s colleges, by the way, since I know many listeners will not be familiar with that term, which is now becoming antiquated). He graduated in June 1918. So, for most of this time, Mao was a student, although he did participate in some other extracurricular activities during this time, such as helping to start a night school for regular working people. And in 1917 he drew together other activist-minded Hunanese youth into the New People’s Study Society, which was a loose association for talking about progressive ideas, and was similar to a lot of other loose-knit groupings which came together around the New Culture Movement across China at the time.

The big intellectual transition that Mao made during these years as a student was away from supporting traditional Chinese political thinkers, such as the Legalists, to a form of individualism and self-cultivation that was heavily influenced by reading foreign writers, mainly in the European liberal tradition.

Mao’s first published article, “A Study of Physical Education,” was published in the New Culture Movement flagship journal, New Youth, in April 1917. This article was very much in line with the New Culture Movement avoidance of overtly, or narrowly, political topics in favor of discussing culture and education. To give you a sense of what Mao was doing in this article, I’ll read you the first paragraph:

> “Our nation is wanting in strength; the military spirit has not been encouraged. The physical condition of our people deteriorates daily. These are extremely disturbing phenomena. Those who promote [physical education] have not grasped the essence of the problem. Consequently their efforts, though prolonged, have proved ineffectual. If they refuse to change, the process of weakening will be aggravated. To attain our goals and exercise far-reaching influence is an external matter, an effect. The development of our bodily strength is an internal matter, a cause. If our bodies are not strong, we will tremble at the sight of [enemy] soldiers. How then can we attain our goals, or exercise far-reaching influence? Strength comes from drill, and drill depends on self-awareness. The [promoters of physical education] have not failed to develop many methods. The reason why they are ineffectual is that external forces are insufficient to move the heart. They do not understand the real meaning of physical education, its true value, its effects, or where one should start. In all of these aspects, they are ignorant and lost in a thick fog. Naturally they are ineffectual. If we want physical education to be effective, we must influence people’s subjective attitudes and stimulate their awareness of physical education. If one has self-awareness, a program of physical education will follow without further discussion; similarly, we will attain our goals and exert far-reaching influence as a matter of course. I am deeply concerned about the importance of physical education, and I regret that those who promote it fail to achieve the results that they should. I know there must be many comrades in our country who suffer from this as I do. I venture to offer my foolish opinions for debate. What I say here has not all been put into practice. Much of it consists of empty words and utopian ideas. I don’t dare to deceive you. I’ll humbly listen to whoever wishes to correct my errors, and bow to him a hundred times.”

So, that’s the first paragraph. And Mao goes on to continue to make the argument that physical education is necessary to cultivate the discipline and strength of will necessary for a regeneration of China’s youth. His main point is that the strength of mind necessary in the cultivation of new leaders, heroic men and women who will lead China out of the chaos of warlord rule and imperialist domination, is rooted in cultivating physical discipline. But, of course, it’s no accident that physical strength will also be necessary in the military battles to come. Even though he is very vague on what those battles will entail, there is clearly an underlying sense in Mao’s writing that some sort of military reckoning will be called for and that for once the forces of progress in China should be both physically and mentally prepared for those battles.

In the interview that Mao gave to Edgar Snow for Red Star Over China in 1936, Mao describes how he implemented his program of physical discipline and how it helped him later on during his years of guerrilla warfare (which were far from over at the time of the interview). Here’s what Mao said there:

> “We became ardent physical culturists. In the winter holidays we tramped through the fields, up and down mountains, along city walls, and across the streams and rivers. If it rained we took off our shirts and called it a rain bath. When the sun was hot we also doffed our shirts and called it a sun bath. In the spring winds we shouted that this was a new sport called ‘wind bathing.’ We slept in the open when frost was already falling and even in November swam in the cold rivers. All this went on under the title of ‘body training.’ Perhaps it helped much to build the physique which I was to need so badly later on in my many marches back and forth across South China, and on the Long March from Jiangxi to the Northwest.”

So while the ultimate goal of all this physical preparedness that Mao was advocating was the improvement of China, the reason that this is seen as part of a turn toward individualism had to do with how Mao situated all this into his vision for change at the time. It was clear in this article, and is even more clear in other writings of Mao’s from the time, that Mao saw himself as advocating for the development of heroic “superior men” or “sages,” who would rescue China through their powerful efforts of mental and physical heroism.

Here’s how Mao articulated his ideas about the differences between the “superior men” and the “little people,” in a letter he wrote in August 1917:

> “When little people burden superior men, the gentlemen should be benevolent and seek to save these little people. Politics, law, religion, rites, systems, and all the superfluous agriculture, industry, and commerce that keep us constantly occupied day by day are not established for the superior man; rather, they are established for the little people. Superior men already possess lofty wisdom and morality; if there were only superior men in the world, then politics, law, rites, systems, as well as superfluous agriculture, industry, and commerce could all be abolished, and would be of no use. It is different when there are too many little people. The world’s management follows the criterion of the majority, at the expense of the part made up of superior men; that is how little people burden superior men. But the little people are pitiable. If the superior men care only for themselves, they may leave the crowd and live like hermits… If they have compassionate hearts, then they [recognize] the little people as fellow countrymen and a part of the same universe. If we go off by ourselves, they will sink lower and lower. It is better for us to lend a helping hand, so that their minds may be opened up and their virtue be increased, so that we may share the realm of the sages with them.”

So, as you can see, when the Mao of 1917 advocated for the physical and mental self-cultivation of a new generation of Chinese leaders, he very much had in mind the self-cultivation of the superior men who would uplift the masses of little people.

It was also at this time that Mao came for a time under the influence of western liberal thinkers, and was for a bit aligned with the liberal modernizing trend in Chinese thought that we have discussed in past episodes.

One of our main sources on Mao’s thinking during this brief, liberal phase of his intellectual development is the set of copious study notes that he took on Friedrich Paulsen’s A System of Ethics during the winter of 1917–1918. Paulsen was a neo-Kantian German philosopher who was trendy about a hundred years ago, but who today we would definitely classify as not a very significant philosopher. Probably there are some trendy philosophers today who parallels could be drawn to, but I hesitate to speculate on who will be read a hundred years from now and who will not. In any case, while we know that Mao was intensively reading Aristotle, Bentham, Fichte, Goethe, Hobbes, Kant, Leibnitz, Mill, Nietzsche, Plato, Schopenhauer, Spencer, and Spinoza at this time, it’s his notes on Paulsen that have come down to us.

The notes that Mao made on Paulsen’s System of Ethics shed considerable light on his conception of heroic individualism. Here is one passage where he articulates his thinking:

> “The truly great person develops the original nature with which Nature endowed him, and expands upon the best, the greatest of the capacities of his original nature. This is what makes him great. Everything that comes from outside his original nature, such as restraints and restrictions, is cast aside… The great actions of the hero are his own, are the expression of his motive power, lofty and cleansing, relying on no precedent. His force is like that of a powerful wind arising from a deep gorge, like the irresistible sexual desire for one’s lover.”

In other lines, he wrote:

> “My desire to fulfill my nature and perfect my mind is the most precious of the moral laws… The value of the individual is greater than that of the universe. Thus there is no greater crime than to suppress the individual… The churches, the capitalists, the monarchy, and the state constitute the four evil demons of the world… The group in itself has no meaning, it only has meaning as a collectivity of individuals.”

The extreme individualism of these lines have a lot in common with individualist anarchism. They really serve to illustrate how anarchist ideas represent the radical extreme of Enlightenment liberal ideas, rather than representing a break with liberalism. Mao himself at this time did not consider himself an anarchist. But when the May 4th Movement broke out in 1919, Mao did initially move to embrace anarchism more overtly before eventually being won over to Marxism. The development of mass struggle and the movement of the masses served in the May 4th period to help break Mao away from his individualist thinking and to think more in terms of mass struggle, which initially led him to embrace more collectivist anarchist ideas before making the intellectual break with Enlightenment liberal thinking and embracing Marxism by the end of 1920.

So let’s look at what Mao was saying and doing, and how he expressed his transformation from an individualist to a more collectivist anarchist in the May 4th period.

After graduating from college in June 1918, Mao’s favorite professor, who had gotten a position at Beijing University, arranged for Mao to get a job in Beijing University’s library. As you may recall from our last episode, the head librarian at Beijing University was a man named Li Dazhao, who played a leading role in publicizing the ideas of the Russian Revolution and arguing for the relevance of the Russian Revolution for China. Now, the thing is, it’s really tempting to say, look, Li Dazhao said all these things about the importance of the peasantry and the countryside in China’s revolutionary process, and the importance of adapting Marxism to Chinese conditions, rather than just copying dogmatically from Russia. These were ideas that Mao would become known for developing in much greater detail and in practice later on, and so it’s very tempting to say that Li Dazhao had some sort of decisive influence on Mao. And maybe he did. But Mao returned to Hunan to care for his sick mother and take a teaching job in early 1919, before Li Dazhao really got going in talking about all this stuff, so the period in which Mao was at least physically close to Li was before Li really published a lot about this stuff. How much was he talking about things like this with Mao? It’s really hard to say. We’ll come back to this question in just a second here.

So, when Mao went back to Hunan, he lived in the capital, Changsha, and got a job as a teacher. Many of his friends from school who shared his commitment to reforming China had gone to study in France, and so Mao played an important role as a leader among reform-minded youth in Changsha. And when the May 4th Movement broke out in 1919, he founded a journal called the Xiang River Review, named for the river that flows through Changsha. Under the influence of the mass movement that was happening across China, in article that Mao published in the Xiang River Review, we see a dramatic change in Mao’s thinking on the importance of the masses as opposed to the heroic individual.

The major work of Mao’s from 1919 was called the “Great Union of the Popular Masses,” a series of three articles in the Xiang River Review. The first article began like this:

> “The decadence of the state, the sufferings of humanity, and the darkness of society have all reached an extreme. Where is the method of improvement and reform? Education, industrialization, strenuous efforts, rapid progress, destruction and construction are, to be sure, all right, but there is a basic method for carrying out all these undertakings, which is that of the great union of the popular masses.”

If the idea of a “great union of the popular masses,” sounds a lot like the anarcho-syndicalist concept of “One Big Union” which was advanced at the time by the Industrial Workers of the World, that is because the concept is in fact very similar, and had a similar theoretical origin. In these articles, Mao put forward that the organizational method for achieving the masses’ liberation would be a federation of smaller unions coming together to form, essentially, one big union. Unlike the IWW, Mao’s idea of one big union was one that would incorporate just about all the people, not just the working class. So for example, students would form their union and they would federate with workers in their union and rickshaw drivers in their union, and so on. To be absolutely clear about the anarcho-communist origins of his thinking on this question, Mao went on to favorably compare the anarchist thinker Kropotkin with Marx. Kropotkin was very popular in China at this time, and was principally identified there with his theory of ‘mutual aid.’ And while Kropotkin’s ideas of mutual aid have been interpreted by anarchists in different contexts in different ways, one of the main ways in which those ideas have been interpreted is precisely that different sectors of society could come together without the mediating influence of the state and cooperate directly to meet their needs in a better way than by having a state. Thus, one big union becomes not just a means of overthrowing capitalism, but also then of restructuring society in the wake of capitalism’s overthrow. (Which is why the phrase ‘building the new society in the shell of the old’ was very popular among anarchists at this time.)

So we can see that the mass movement of the May 4th Movement won Mao over to embrace a mass-oriented politics, and to think of politics in terms of masses liberating themselves from capitalist oppression, which was new. Before May 4th, he was more thinking in terms of heroic individuals exercising their efforts to better China’s situation in a kind of vague way. But clearly, even though he spent a bunch of time working with Li Dazhao in Beijing during his time there, and eventually Mao would take up and elaborate positions that echoed and built on Li Dazhao’s early ways of thinking about adapting Marxism to Chinese conditions, Mao initially went in a much more anarchist direction than Li did (even though Li himself sought to reconcile some of Kropotkin’s ideas with those of Marx when he first started thinking about adapting Marxism to Chinese conditions).

In fact, even though from a distant historical perspective the ideological affinities between Mao and Li Dazhao seem pretty clear, at the time Mao actually initially sided against Li in a major struggle that broke out in 1919 among intellectuals who had been part of the New Culture Movement.

In our last episode, I emphasized how many New Culture Movement intellectuals threw themselves into the May 4th Movement and began looking for revolutionary theories and strategies that would allow them to unite with the masses, particularly the workers, who began going on strike and protesting against Japanese imperialism in June of 1919. Well, as in any situation, when a major change takes places in a large movement or organization, there are those who decide to embrace the new direction, and those who decide that they won’t go forward. There were in fact many New Culture Movement intellectuals who saw where things were going with the May 4th Movement and decided that this was where they were going to get off the train.

In the second half of 1919, one of the major New Culture movement figures, Hu Shi, launched a polemic directed against Li Dazhao in an article titled “More Study of Problems, Less Talk of Isms.” Hu argued that all of this dabbling in Marxism that Li was doing was misguided, and that what China needed was for intellectuals to devote themselves to solving concrete, practical problems. Hu was in fact an adherent of an ism called pragmatism. He had been a student of the American pragmatist philosopher John Dewey’s at Cornell University, and then helped organize a tour that Dewey did in China starting in 1919. So, Hu’s ism was “concrete problem-solving,” taking as a given the overall organization of society and the world as it is. Li responded that the sorts of problems that Hu wanted to solve couldn’t be solved under capitalism and imperialism, and so it was necessary to embrace an ism, like Marxism, which reimagined how society could be organized and which would actually solve the problems that Hu wanted solved. This was a major debate between Marxism and pragmatism that played out over the second half of 1919 for the allegiance of the New Culture Movement intellectuals which was waged by two of China’s most brilliant thinkers.

Now, even though Mao had worked with Li in Beijing, he initially sided with Hu Shi. In September 1919 Mao set up the Problem Study Society, whose name is a give away as to where Mao stood on this controversy. And Mao continued to seek guidance from Hu for another year or so, almost right up to his conversion to Marxism at the very end of 1920. The closeness of Mao and Hu at this time was later embarrassing for both of them, as Hu became the academic leading light of post-1949 Taiwan, and they both played down their earlier closeness after the end of the Chinese Revolution. So it’s interesting to see that Mao had a very eclectic line at this time, vacillating between expressing anarchist ideas and siding with liberal pragmatism in a big national controversy, but also keeping up his ties with the figures who embraced and advocated for Marxism, such as Li Dazhao and Chen Duxiu.

We’ll pick up the story of Marxism’s advance in China in our next episode. If you have made it this far into the episode, I’d like to think that you’re getting something out of this podcast. If you do enjoy or feel like you are learning something from this podcast, I’d like to ask you to leave a review of the podcast, assuming you are listening on a platform that allows reviews or ratings. More reviews and ratings will help more people find the show. And as always, I’m happy to get emails from listeners letting me know about what you liked or didn’t like about the show, or what you have questions about. I am definitely still ‘learning podcasting through podcasting,’ to paraphrase Mao, so feedback is appreciated.

### Young Mao’s Liberal Writings

#### A Study of Physical Education (April 1, 1917)

Our nation is wanting in strength; the military spirit has not been encouraged. The physical condition of our people deteriorates daily. These are extremely disturbing phenomena. Those who promote [physical education] have not grasped the essence of the problem. Consequently their efforts, though prolonged, have proved ineffectual. If they refuse to change, the process of weakening will be aggravated. To attain our goals and exercise far-reaching influence is an external matter, an effect. The development of our bodily strength is an internal matter, a cause. If our bodies are not strong, we will tremble at the sight of [enemy] soldiers. How then can we attain our goals, or exercise far-reaching influence? Strength comes from drill, and drill depends on self-awareness. The [promoters of physical education] have not failed to develop many methods. The reason why they are ineffectual is that external forces are insufficient to move the heart. They do not understand the real meaning of physical education, its true value, its effects, or where one should start. In all of these respects, they are ignorant and lost in a thick fog. Naturally they are ineffectual. If we want physical education to be effective, we must influence people’s subjective attitudes and stimulate their awareness of physical education.[4] If one has self-awareness, a program of physical education will follow without further discussion; similarly, we will attain our goals and exert far-reaching influence as a matter of course. I am deeply concerned about the importance of physical education, and I regret that those who promote it fail to achieve the results they should. I know there must be many comrades in our country who suffer from this as I do. I venture to offer my foolish opinions for debate. What I say here has not all been put into practice. Much of it consists of empty words and utopian ideas. I don’t dare to deceive you. I’ll humbly listen to whoever wishes to correct my errors, and bow to him a hundred times.

##### 1. An explanation of physical education

Since mankind came into existence, there have been none, however limited their understanding, who did not know how to defend their lives. Thus it is that when hunger reached an extreme, they had to eat the fems of the Western Mountains,[5] and could not but gulp down the plums on the well.[6] They dwelt in trees and clothed themselves in skins. This was all a matter of instinct, and men did not know why they acted thus. It was spontaneous and unrefined. Then sages emerged, and there were the rites. Eating, drinking, rising, and retiring all were regulated. Thus “when the Master was unoccupied with business, his manner was easy, and he looked pleased.”[7] “He did not eat rice which had been injured by heat or damp and turned sour, nor fish or flesh which was gone.”[8] When he practiced archery in a vegetable garden in Juexiang, “spectators surrounded him like a wall.”[9] There is no difference between the construction of a human body and that of the myriad animals. If animals cannot live as long as man, this results from the fact that they have no rules to govern their lives. Men, however, do have such rules, which become clearer with each passing age. Thus it is that physical education appears. Physical education is simply the way for preserving life. East and West differ in their understanding of it. Zhuangzi took the cook as his model.[10] Zhongni [Confucius] drew his examples from the archer and the charioteer.[11] Among the civilized nations of today, it is in Germany that [physical education] most flourishes. Fencing has spread to all comers of the country. Japan, for its part, has bushidd. Recently, basing themselves on what survives of the traditions of our country, they have developed jujitsu to an admirable degree. When we examine these examples, we see that they all begin with the study of physiology. They know in detail the structure of the body, the circulation of the blood, what parts of the body are most developed, and what parts are defective. Their program of physical education is based on these facts, and aims to reduce what is overdeveloped and strengthen that which is underdeveloped. Their conclusion is that one must cause the human body to develop evenly. Thus we see that physical education is the method employed by human beings to nourish their lives and cause their bodies to develop evenly, and that it possesses rules and an order of progression that can be discussed.

##### 2. The place of physical education in our life

Physical education complements education in virtue and knowledge. Moreover, both virtue and knowledge reside in the body. Without the body there would be neither virtue nor knowledge. Those who understand this are rare. People stress either knowledge or morality. Knowledge is certainly valuable, for it distinguishes man from animals. But wherein is knowledge contained? Morality, too, is valuable; it is the basis of the social order and of equality between ourselves and others. But where does virtue reside? It is the body that contains knowledge and houses virtue. It contains knowledge like a chariot and houses morality like a chamber. The body is the chariot that contains knowledge, the chamber that houses virtue. Children enter primary school when they reach the proper age. In primary school, particular attention should be paid to the development of the body; progress in knowledge and moral training are of secondary importance. Nourishment and care should be primary, teaching and discipline complementary. At present, most people do not know this, and the result is that children become ill, or even die young, because of studying. In middle and higher schools, stress should be placed equally on all three aspects of education. At present, most people overemphasize knowledge. During the years of middle school, the development of the body is not yet completed. Since today the factors favoring physical development are few, and those deterring it numerous, won’t physical development tend to cease? In the educational system of our country, required courses are as thick as the hairs on a cow. Even an adult with a tough, strong body could not stand it, let alone those who have not reached adulthood, or those who are weak. Speculating on the intentions of the educators, one is led to wonder whether they did not design such an unwieldy curriculum in order to exhaust the students, to trample on their bodies and ruin their lives. If there is one who does not accept this, they punish him, and if someone has an above-average intelligence, they give him all sorts of supplementary readings. They fill his ears with sweet words and seduce him with generous rewards. Alas, is this not what is called “injuring a man’s son?”[12] How stupid! The only calamity that can befall a man is not to have a body. What else is there to worry about? If one seeks to improve one’s body, other things will follow automatically. For the improvement of the body, nothing is more effective than physical education. Physical education really occupies the first place in our lives. When the body is strong, then one can advance speedily in knowledge and morality and reap far-reaching advantages. It should be regarded as an important part of our study. Learning “has its roots and branches. Affairs have their end and their beginning. To know what is first and what is last will lead near to the way.”[13] This is exactly what I have been trying to say.

##### 3. Previous abuses of physical education and my method for remedying them

The three forms of education are equally important; students hitherto have paid much attention to moral and intellectual education but have neglected physical education. The unfortunate consequence has been that they bend their backs and bow their heads; they have “white and slender hands”;[14] when they climb a hill they are short of breath, and when they walk in the water they get cramps in their feet. That is why Master Yan[15] had a short life and Jia Yi[16] died young. As for Wang Bo and Lu Zhaolin,[17] the one died young, and the other became a paralytic. All these were men of high attainments in morality and knowledge. But there comes a day when the body cannot be preserved, and then morality and wisdom are destroyed along with it. Only the men of the north are able “to lie under arms and meet death without regret.”[18] In the regions of Yan and Zhao there were many heroes, and martyrs and warriors often came from Liangzhou. At the beginning of the Qing dynasty, Yan Xizhai and Li Gangzhu[19] practiced both the literary and military arts. Yan Xizhai traveled over a thousand li to the north of the Great Wall to leam the art of fencing. He contended with brave soldiers and won. Hence he said, “If one lacks either the literary or the military arts, is this the true way?” Gu Yanwu,[20] although he was from the south, liked to live in the north; he preferred riding on horseback to traveling in boats. All these men of old can serve as our teachers.

Since the introduction of [modem] schools, and the adaptation of the methods of various countries, customs have changed little by little. Nevertheless, those who are in charge of these schools belong to the category of those who are unwilling to give up the old habits. They are prisoners of the habits they have acquired, and are unable to change all at once. And if any of them devote a bit of attention [to this matter], they do so only superficially; they do not go to the root of things, but attach importance only to petty details. That is why, in my humble opinion, present-day physical education is in general formal rather than substantial. There is no lack of courses in gymnastics, or of teachers, but few are able to benefit from this. Not only is such physical education of no use, but it is even harmful. The teachers give orders, the students try to execute them, their bodies obey, but their hearts rebel. Their spirits suffer measureless misery, and when their spirits suffer, their bodies suffer too. As a result, when the gymnastics lessons are over, they are all exhausted and depressed. No attention is paid to the cleanliness of what they eat and drink, so inorganic matter and microbes get into their bodies, causing disease. In the classrooms the light is insufficient, thus causing serious harm to their eyesight. The tables and chairs are not of the right size, and their bodies are made to fit into this Procrustean bed.[21] Thus their bodies are harmed. There are innumerable such examples.

As far as we students are concerned, however, the installation of a school and the instruction given by its teachers are only the external and objective aspect. We also have the internal, the subjective aspect. When one’s decision is made in his heart, then all parts of the body obey its orders. Fortune and misfortune are of our own seeking. “I wish to be virtuous, and lo! virtue is at hand.”[22] How much more is this true of physical education! If we do not have the will to act, then even though the exterior and the objective are perfect, they still cannot benefit us. Hence, when we speak of physical education, we should begin with individual initiative.

##### 4. The utility of physical education

Because man is an animal, movement is most important for him.[23] And because he is a rational animal, his movements must have a reason. But why is movement deserving of esteem? Why is rational movement deserving of esteem? To say that movement helps in earning a living is trivial. To say that movement protects the nation is lofty. Yet neither is the basic reason. The object of movement is simply to preserve our life and gladden our hearts. Zhu Xi stresses respect, and Lu Jiuyuan[24] stresses stillness. Stillness is still, and respect is not action; it is also merely still. Laozi said that immobility was the ultimate goal; Sakyamuni[25] sought quiet and methods of contemplation. The method of meditation is esteemed by the disciples of Zhu and Lu. Recently there have been those who, following these masters, have spoken of methods of contemplation, boasted about the effectiveness of their methods, and expressed contempt for those who exercise, thereby ruining their own bodies. This is perhaps one way, but I would not venture to imitate it. In my humble opinion, there is only movement in heaven and on earth.

Movement as it applies to mankind, and when it is conducted according to rules, can be called physical education. As I have already stated, the efficacy of physical education consists in strengthening the muscles and bones. Formerly, I often heard it said that once the body and faculties of a man had been formed, nothing could be done to change them. By the age of twenty-five at most, a person was fully formed and could not change. Today, I know this is not so. A man’s body changes every day. One never ceases to benefit from the renewal of what is old, and from the replacement of what is defective, in any part of the organism. If the eye cannot see clearly, it can be made clear; if the ear does not hear, it can be made to hear. Even people of sixty or seventy can benefit from improving their bodies. There is another aspect that should be mentioned. It is often said that he who is weak can scarcely become strong. Today I know that this, too, is false. Those who are bom strong, if they misuse their strength, and do not resist all kinds of desires, can little by little ruin their bodies. Thus those who regard themselves as well endowed by nature, if they are satisfied with this and do not engage in training, may in the end change from strong to weak. As for the weak, if they consistently deplore the imperfection of their bodies, and are concerned about the brevity of their lives; if they cautiously and attentively exercise self-control, negatively by strictly restraining their appetites, and abstaining from harmful practices, and positively by diligently tempering themselves and remedying their incapacities, they can eventually become strong. Thus those who are bom strong should not necessarily congratulate themselves, and those who are bom weak should not necessarily despair. If I am bom weak, perhaps it is because Heaven wants to encourage me to become strong. You never know. Eminent advocates of physical education in the East and the West, such as [Theodore] Roosevelt in America, Sonntag in Germany, and Kano [Jigord] in Japan, all began with very weak bodies, and succeeded in making themselves very strong. One often hears it said that the mind and the body cannot both be perfect at the same time, that those who use their minds are deficient in physical health and those with a robust body are generally deficient in mental capacities. This kind of talk is also absurd and applies only to those who are weak in will and feeble in action, which is generally not the case of the superior man. Confucius died at the age of seventy-two, and I have not heard that his body was not healthy. Sakyamuni traveled continually, preaching his doctrine, and he, too, died veiy old. Jesus had the misfortune to die unjustly. As for Mohammed, he subjugated the world holding the Koran in his left hand and a sword in his right. All these men were called sages in olden times and are among the greatest thinkers. Mr. Wu Zhiyong,[26] who is still alive today, is over seventy and says he might live to be a hundred. He is also a thinker. Wang Xiangqi[27] was over seventy when he died, but his health was extremely robust. How can those who preach the view mentioned above account for these cases? To sum up, regular physical education strengthens the muscles and bones; and when muscles and bones are strengthened, the whole constitution of the body can change. The weak can become strong, and body and mind can be perfect at the same time. All this is not a question of destiny,[28] but depends entirely on human effort.

Physical education not only strengthens the body but also enhances our knowledge. There is a saying: Civilize the mind and make savage the body.[29] This is an apt saying. In order to civilize the mind, one must first make savage the body. If the body is made savage, then the civilized mind will follow. Knowledge consists in knowing the things in the world, and in discerning their laws. In this matter we must rely on our body, because direct observation depends on the ears and eyes, and reflection depends on the brain. The ears and eyes, as well as the brain, may be considered parts of the body. When the body is perfect, then knowledge is also perfect. Hence one can say that knowledge is acquired indirectly through physical education. Physical strength is required to undertake the study of the numerous modem sciences, whether in school or through independent study. He who is equal to this is the man with a strong body; he who is not equal to it is the man with a weak body. The division between the strong and the weak determines the area of responsibilities each can assume.

Physical education not only enhances knowledge, it also harmonizes the sentiments. The power of the sentiments is extremely great. The ancients endeavored to discipline them with reason. Hence they asked, “Is the master [i.e., reason] always alert?” They also said: “One should discipline the heart with reason.” But reason proceeds from the heart, and the heart resides in the body. We often observe that the weak are enslaved by their sentiments and are incapable of mastering them. Those whose senses are imperfect or whose limbs are defective are often enslaved by excessive passion, and reason is incapable of saving them. Hence it may be called an invariable law that when the body is perfect and healthy, the sentiments are also correct. For example, when we encounter certain misfortunes, we experience disagreeable emotions, our hearts are agitated, and we find it difficult to control ourselves. But if we undertake vigorous exercise, we are able immediately to dissipate these former attitudes and to make our minds clear once more. Thus rapid results can be obtained.

Physical education not only harmonizes the emotions, it also strengthens the will. The great utility of physical education lies precisely in this. The principal aim of physical education is military heroism. Such objects of military heroism as courage, dauntlessness, audacity, and perseverance are all matters of will. Let me explain this with an example. To wash our feet in ice water makes us acquire courage and dauntlessness, as well as audacity.[30] In general, any form of exercise, if pursued continuously, will help to train us in perseverance. Long-distance running is particularly good training in perseverance. “My strength uprooted mountains, my energy dominated the world”[31] — this is courage. “If I don’t behead the Loulan, I swear I will not return” — this is dauntlessness [32] To replace the family with the nation — this is audacity. “[Yu] was eight years away from his home, and though he thrice passed the door of it, he did not enter”[33] — this is perseverance. All these can be accomplished merely on the basis of daily physical education. The will is the antecedent of a man’s career.

Those whose bodies are small and frail are flippant in their behavior. Those whose skin is flabby are soft and dull in will. Thus does the body influence the mind. The purpose of physical education is to strengthen the muscles and the bones; as a result, knowledge is enhanced, the sentiments are harmonized, and the will is strengthened. The muscles and bones belong to our body; knowledge, sentiments, and will belong to our heart. When both the body and the heart are at ease, one may speak of perfect harmony. Hence, physical education is nothing else but the nourishing of our lives and the gladdening of our hearts.

##### 5. The reasons for disliking exercise

Exercise is the most important part of physical education. Nowadays students generally dislike exercise. There are four reasons for this:

1. They do not have self-awareness. If a thing is to be put into practice, one must first take pleasure in it. One must understand in detail the whys and the wherefores. To know in detail the whys and the wherefores is self-awareness. People generally do not know the interrelation between exercise and themselves — or they may know it in general terms but not intimately. They do not develop their wisdom because their emotions are not involved. Thus the person who studies all kinds of sciences without ever being wearied is he who understands their relation to himself, knowing that if he does not study today, he will not be able to earn a living tomorrow. But as regards exercise, people do not have this awareness. The fault lies partly in their failure to think seriously about it, and partly in the inability of the teachers to enlighten them.

2. They cannot change their long-established habits. Our country has always stressed literary accomplishment. People blush to wear short clothes.[34] Hence there is the common saying, “A good man does not become a soldier.” Even though they know why exercise should be carried out, and the effectiveness of exercise in strengthening a country, the force of the old ideas is still great. As regards the new conception of exercise, they half accept and half reject it. Thus there is nothing surprising in the fact that they do not like exercise.

3. Exercise has not been propagated forcefully. Here, too, there are two cases. On the one hand, those whom today we call educators are not well informed about physical education, do not know about it themselves, know about it only by hearsay, and engage in it only out of conformism. Thus those who speak of it are not sincere, and those who engage in it do not know the methods, and this deprives the students of the desire to study it. This is like a vagrant talking about independence, or a drunkard talking about sobriety; no one can take it seriously. On the other hand, teachers of exercise are often ill-educated, and vulgar in their mode of expression, so that the auditors close their ears. What they know is limited to this discipline alone, and even that they do not know very well. They see nothing every day but the mechanical movements of their students, and that is all. But if there is only outward form, without the essential spirit which animates it, the thing in question cannot survive even a single day. Thus it is today with exercise.

4. Students feel that exercise is shameful. According to my humble observation, this is really their major reason for disliking exercise. Flowing garments, a slow gait, a grave, calm gaze — these constitute a fine deportment, respected by society. Why should one suddenly extend an arm or expose a leg, stretch and bend down? Is this not strange? Hence there are those who know well that their bodies need exercise and, moreover, wish very much to engage in it, but they cannot. There are those who can exercise only with a group, not by themselves, and those who can exercise in privacy but not in public. In short, all this results from feelings of shame.

All four of these are reasons for disliking exercise. The first and the fourth are subjective, and changing them depends on ourselves; the second and third are objective, and changing them depends on others. “What the superior man seeks is in himself.”[35] That which depends on others is of lesser importance.

##### 6. The methods of exercise should be few

When I was myself distressed at the weakness of my body, and when I wanted to study the art of hygiene, I noted in looking at the writings of the ancients that already in former times it was much discussed. Modem schools have gymnasiums and books, but if hearts are not enlightened, and these facilities are treated negligently, it will be difficult to derive any benefit from them. For in such matters, the main thing is not words, but application. Zeng Wenzheng[36] practiced the method of washing his feet before going to bed and walking a thousand steps after meals, and derived great benefit from this. There was an eighty-year-old man who was still healthy. On being asked how he maintained his health, he replied, “I don’t eat hearty meals, that’s all.” Nowadays the methods of exercise are very diverse, more than I can count. But although there may be several score or even several hundred, “A branch in the forest is sufficient for a nest, and a sip from the river fills the belly.”[37] We have only this body and only these senses, bones, viscera, and veins. Even though there are several hundred methods of exercise, all of them are aimed at stimulating the circulation of the blood. If one method can accomplish this, the result of a hundred methods is the same as that of one. Therefore the other ninety-nine methods can be dispensed with. “Our eyes can see only one thing at a time; our ears can hear only one sound at a time.”[38] To employ a hundred different methods to train the muscles and bones only disturbs them. One would like them to be effective, but one cannot see how they could be. Furthermore, the methods used for different purposes are not all identical to those which are appropriate simply to strengthen the body. A swinging bridge helps to train us for navigation, and a bamboo pole helps us to jump high. Walks and games are suited to primary school, while military training is appropriate for middle school and above. These are methods useful in different ways. On the other hand, exercising the muscles and bones so as to promote the circulation of the blood serves to strengthen the body. It is appropriate to have different methods, useful for different purposes, but as far as strengthening one’s body is concerned, it is best to have only a small number of methods. Students today have often not grasped this. In consequence, they suffer loss in two respects. On the one hand, those who like exercise consider that the best solution is to apply many methods, and all these methods are applied to a single body; the result is that they do not benefit at all. On the other hand, those who do not like exercise, when they see that the others know many techniques, while they know little, give up and do nothing. Those who do a lot do not necessarily benefit from this. If their activities are extensive but sterile, what value do they have? And those who do little do not necessarily derive no benefit. Even if they do no more than stretch out an arm and a leg, if they do this regularly, even that will be useful. When one has understood that, it can be said that one has begun to make progress in physical education.

##### 7. The points to which we must pay attention when we exercise

We should have perseverance in all things. Exercise is no exception. Suppose there are two men who exercise. One practices and then stops, the other is unremitting in his practice. There will certainly be a difference in the results. First of all, perseverance in exercise gives rise to pleasure. In general, that which is at rest cannot set itself in motion; there must be something to move it. And this something can only be pleasure. All sciences must cause people to take pleasure in them in some respect, and this is even more true of exercise. When one is at rest, it is very agreeable, and it is most laborious to set oneself in motion. People always like to take their ease, and detest effort. If there is nothing pushing them forward, they cannot modify this fundamental tendency and change their natural penchant. Now, pleasure results from regular daily exercise. The best way is to exercise twice a day — on getting up and before going to bed — in the nude; the next best way is to wear light clothes. Too much clothing impedes movement. If one does this daily, the idea of exercise is continually present and never interrupted. Today’s exercise is a continuation of yesterday’s exercise, and thus leads to tomorrow’s exercise. The individual exercise periods need not be long; thirty minutes is sufficient. In this way, a certain interest will naturally arise. Second, perseverance in exercise can create pleasure. Exercise over a long time can produce great results and give rise to a feeling of personal worth. As a result, we will be able to study with joy, and every day will see some progress in our virtue. Our hearts are filled with boundless joy because we have persevered and obtained a result. Pleasure and interest are distinct. Interest is the origin of exercise, and pleasure its consequence. Interest arises from the action, and pleasure from the result. The two are naturally different.

Perseverance without concentration of mind can hardly produce results. If we look at flowers from horseback, even though we may look daily, it is like not having seen them at all. The person whose mind is on a swan in the sky, although he is learning along with another, does not come up to him.[39] Hence one should concentrate all one’s effort on exercise. During exercise, the mind should be on the exercise. Idle and confused thoughts should all be put aside. The mind should be concentrated on the problem of the circulation of the blood in the veins, on tensing and releasing the muscles, on the way the joints bend and straighten, on breathing in and out, and each exercise should be carried out rhythmically. The four actions of bending, stretching, advancing, and retreating should be carried out one after another. Zhu Xi explained that one must concentrate on one thing and ignore all the rest. He said that when you eat, you should think only of eating; when you get dressed, you should think only of getting dressed.[40] He who devotes himself with all his force to exercise is simply applying this principle.

The superior man’s deportment is cultivated and agreeable, but one cannot say this about exercise. Exercise should be savage and rude. To charge on horseback, amidst the clash of arms, and to be ever victorious; to shake the mountains by one’s cries, and the colors of the sky by one’s roars of anger; to have the strength to uproot mountains like Xiang Yu and the audacity to pierce the mark like You Ji[41] — all this is savage and rude and has nothing to do with delicacy. In order to progress in exercise, one must be savage. If one is savage, one will have great vigor and strong muscles and bones. The method of exercise should be rude; then one can apply oneself seriously and it will be easy to exercise. These two things are especially important for beginners.

There are three things to which we must pay attention in exercise: (1) perseverance, (2) concentration of all our strength, and (3) that it be savage and rude. There are many other things that require attention. Here I have merely indicated the most important ones.

##### 8. Discussion of the modest results I have achieved in the domain of exercise

I have already given a rough account of the various systems of exercise, but this has all been illumination from without, and not the fruit of my own thought. Adopting the strong points from each method of exercise, I have, however, put together a system of my own, from which I have derived considerable benefit. The system as a whole is divided into six parts: the arm section, the leg section, the trunk section, the head section, the section for striking movements, and the section for harmonizing movements. Within these larger divisions, there are twenty-seven subdivisions,[42] making up the six divisions. Hence I have called it the six-section system of exercise. I have set it out in detail below; I will be grateful to all those men of virtue[43] among our contemporaries who may correct my mistakes.

a. Arm exercises. Squatting[44] position.

1. Make fists, alternately extend the arms to the front and retract them. Left and right, successively, three times. (Left and right, successively, means that when you exercise the left you rest the right, and when you exercise the right you rest the left, one after the other.)

2. Make fists, bend the forearm, and then swing it to the rear in a semicircular movement. Left and right, successively, three times.

3. Make fists, extend the arms forward and down, and then retract. Left and right together, three times. (Left and right together means that you exercise them at the same time, and not successively.)

4. With the palms turned upward, make a movement as though grasping something toward the outside. Left and right successively, three times.

5. With the palms turned down, make a movement as though grasping something toward the outside. Left and right successively, three times.

6. Extend the fingers, bend the elbow, and make a piercing movement forward. Left and right successively, three times.

b. Leg exercises. Squatting position.

1. Make fists, and let the left and right arms hang at the sides. Leaving one leg in its original position, extend the other out to the rear. Left and right successively, three times.

2. Make fists and hold the arms straight out in front of you. Extend one leg to the side, and bend the other forward. The extended leg can be moved around, while you stand on the toes of the bent leg, with the heel touching the buttocks. Left and right successively, three times.

3. Make fists, and let the left and right arms hang at the sides. Supporting yourself on one leg, lift the other. Left and right successively, three times.

4. Make fists, and let the left and right arms hang at the sides. Supporting yourself on one leg, kick forward with the other. Left and right successively, three times.

5. Make fists, and let the left and right arms hang at the sides. Bend one leg forward, and extend the other to the rear. The bent leg remains in its original position, while the extended leg moves so that both are more or less in a straight line. Left and right successively, three times.

6. Unclench the fists. Alternately raise the whole body to a standing position, and return to a squatting position. While squatting, the heels should more or less touch the buttocks. Three times.

c. Exercises for the trunk. Standing position.

1. Bend the body forward, and then backward. Three times. (In this and the following exercises, the fists should be clenched.)

2. Raise one arm and let the other hang at the side. Tighten the chest muscles on the left and on the right. Once each on the left and on the right.

3. Let one arm hang at the side, and the other extend down obliquely forward. Tighten the shoulder muscles on the left and on the right. Once each on the left and on the right.

4. Place the feet in a “T” position. Swing the hands horizontally from side to side, twisting the waist and sides. Once each to the left and to the right.

5. Head exercises. Sitting position.

6. Bend the head forward, then back. Three times.

7. Turn the head to the left and to the right. Three times.

8. With the hands, massage the forehead, the cheeks, the nose, the lips, the throat, the ears, and the back of the neck.

9. Free exercises. Keeping the head in more or less the same position, concentrate on moving the skin and the lower jaw. Five times.

e. Striking exercises. No fixed position. (Striking exercises consist in using the fists to hit the body all over. Thus the circulation of the blood is speeded up. The main object of this exercise is to strengthen the muscles and the flesh.)

i. Arm exercise. The right hand is used to strike the left arm, and the left hand the right arm.

a) Forearm. Hit the top, the bottom, the left side and the right side.

b) Upper arm. Hit the top, the bottom, the left side and the right side.

ii. The shoulders.

iii. The chest.

iv. The sides.

v. The back.

vi. The abdomen.

vii. The buttocks.

viii. The legs. Upper leg, lower leg.

f. Harmonizing movements. No fixed position.

1. Leaping. More than ten times.

2. Deep breathing. Three times.

#### Marginal Notes to: Friedrich Paulsen, A System of Ethics (1917–1918)

This says that ethics belongs to the arts. | Introduction 1. The concept of ethics. The place of ethics is among the sciences. There are two kinds of science: one mainly theoretical, the second mainly practical. The former is called the study of science, the latter is called the art of science; the former belongs just to knowledge, while the latter shows that man also uses his ability to manipulate things and make them suitable to the purposes of human life. Seen in this way, ethics without doubt belongs to the arts. Since ethics shows what human life should be, so that it will be suitable to the purposes of human life, ethics stands at the head of the arts, and broadly speaking, may indeed embrace all the arts. Why is this so? All those things that are called arts are used by man to achieve the perfection of his life. From commerce and industry to education and government, this is true for all of them. Hence, we can make the statement that all things called arts come within the jurisdiction of ethics, and are part of ethics.
This speaks of the relationship between the arts and learning. | All the arts are based on learning, since they apply theory to the solution of practical issues. And ethics is based on anthropology and psychology. The purpose of ethics is to determine our knowledge of human nature and the laws of human life, and to use it to explain in what way the life and actions of mankind as a whole and as individuals may contribute to or impede the development of human nature. This relationship will become clear by comparing it with other arts.... Based on a knowledge of the human body, the art of medicine is used to improve human bodily life, to make the body healthy. Based on a knowledge of human nature in general, especially its spiritual and social sides, ethics is used to improve and perfect all aspects of human life. We might therefore call ethics the art of universal hygiene, in which not only medicine, but all the other arts such as education and politics may be seen as parts of ethics, or as its auxiliary arts. The founder of the study of ethics, Aristotle also held this view.
This says that the arts are not a new science. | This is the difference between the arts and learning, but the arts are not an independent new science. Why is this? Science studies the nature of things, but the modifications of things made by man should not be regarded as part of their nature. Scientific writings may also add remarks about the corresponding applied arts. For example, a work on physics, after discussing the theory of steam, may add a comment on the applications of steam. It is quite natural to treat technologies as corollaries to theories.
This says that all learning comes from practical problems; thus it all comes under ethics. | If the essence [benti] of human beings were strictly theoretical, it would be sufficient to study theory alone. But such is not the case. What we call our essence is the practical side. Practical problems always occur before, and are more important than, theoretical problems. What we call the sciences come later, in the attempt to explain the practical problems.... Thus, the origin and end of all philosophy is to be sought in ethics, (pp. 1—3;Thilly 1–3)
This talks about our two kinds of knowledge. deduction induction | 4. The method of ethics. Our knowledge may be divided into two kinds: one is that obtained from experience, and the other that obtained from intuition.[45] Mathematics is the prototype of intuitive knowledge. It first sets up units from which, by deduction, it then logically proves various general rules[46] and, in accordance with the principles of thought, demonstrates their necessary causal relations. Empirical knowledge[47] is the opposite, as in the case of physics or chemistry which must first observe the general constitution of things, and seek the rules of their natural interrelationships, before attempting to reduce them to universal formulas, or causal laws. The proof of these formulas lies not in their logical connection with presupposed definitions, but in demonstrating that they agree with observed causalities.
This states that the study of ethics comes from experience. | I am convinced that the methodology of ethics is different from that of mathematics, and resembles rather that of physics and chemistry. The physicist or chemist does not deduce definitions from concepts, but rather demonstrates from actual experience the relations that exist among facts.... (p. 4; Thilly 6)
This explains the theory of intuitionism.[48] Mencius’ “Righteousness is internal,” and Wang Yangming’s “Mind is principle” both appear to be [forms of] intuitionism.[49] Not necessarily. | The view of intuitionism is that ethics does not deal with empirical knowledge, but that it sets up moral propositions that are neither capable nor in need of empirical proof. Ethical imperatives come from the human conscience [liangxin], which is a priori in nature, an innate faculty that judges and legislates. And it asserts that it is a fact that all persons have a concept of right and wrong without any experience. What is advantageous and what is disadvantageous is known through experience, but what is good and what is bad is fully known before experience. It is for this reason that neither man’s real actions nor his concepts of the various causal effects of his actions can in any way affect his intuitive knowledge.
This asserts that morality came before moral philosophy. Thus, moral philosophy comes from experience, as expanded upon below. Good and bad are born from advantage and disadvantage; advantage and disadvantage are born of joy and suffering; joy and suffering are born of life and death; life and death are born of formation and disintegration; formation and disintegration; formation and disintegration are born of attraction and repulsion; attraction and repulsion are born of small and great; small and great are born of being and nonbeing; being and non-being are born of mind and principle.[50] | The statement of intuitionism, that mankind did not await the coming of moral philosophy to distinguish between good and bad, is indeed true. What we call morality existed before there was moral philosophy, and if there had not first been what we call morality, there definitely could be no moral philosophy. Moral philosophy can only be established as a reflection on an already existing positive morality that governs our lives and wills. We do have an inner mind [xin] that indeed seems to give commands about what things we ought to do and what things we ought not do, which is called the conscience [liangxin]....(p.5; Thilly 7)
Both these passages assert that morality arose before moral philosophy. The origins of science. | Human beings did not await the discovery of moral philosophy before distinguishing between good and bad, just as they did not await the discovery of the art of hygiene before being able to take care of the body. Before the art of medicine existed, hungry men ate, those who were cold sought to clothe themselves, all of their own accord. If the question were asked, Why is it that eating cures hunger? or Why is it that clothing keeps out the cold? it would be like asking school children, Why is stealing wrong? They would think, Why bother asking further about something that is self-evident to everyone? Taking things that people had never thought worth inquiring about, as problems for investigation, is the work of science....
The formation of society comes from the moral instincts. Here and elsewhere I do not think it is the conscience, but rather the human desire to preserve one’s life that comes from the concept of advantage and disadvantage. | The same is true for moral philosophy, that before moral philosophy was invented, there already existed an unexamined, naturalistic morality that was publically accepted. Social life, like the human body, was also guided by a moral instinct that did not depend on science. It was from this moral instinct bringing together all kinds of life that society was formed. And the moral laws existed in our consciousness as unquestionable commands, no different from the laws of hygiene. For example, do not kill, do not steal, do not lie, all come simply from the conscience, and require no further justification but naturally must be obeyed, no differently from the cases of eating when hungry or putting on clothing when cold. (p. 6; Thilly 9)
This refers to the basic function of moral philosophy. The above says that the methodology of ethics is experiential, not intuitive. | Is it true, then, that what we call moral philosophy can do nothing but collect the various positive and negative commands given by the conscience, and that it cannot be called a science? I say: No, No, Not so. All natural morality frequently simplifies its truths and puts them into proverbs. As in the case of, the best staff is credibility. The saying that the best staff is credibility is not an imperative, but it indeed contains a truth. An analysis of it would show that it means, you should keep your word. You know that a walking staff will support you, and do you not know that credibility will support you even better? This illustrates a truth. The basic function of moral philosophy is to expand upon the truths contained within this kind of natural morality to determine the strengths and weakness of various kinds of actions, (p. 7; Thilly 9) ... Moral philosophy is based upon natural morality, which it then elaborates upon and develops, and shows that a particular action is permissible or impermissible, and determines the boundaries within which it may be applied, like demonstrating that lying is wrong but then pointing out that there are times when one must lie. Furthermore, when things get very complicated, natural morality inevitably leaves too many roads open, from among which only a very experienced person can choose the right one. In laying down the general rules of experience, moral philosophy too must leave particular decisions to someone familiar with the situation, but in comparison with natural philosophy, it makes the choices clearer.
What follows raises other issues. | The rules of experience are the function of the doctrine of virtues and the doctrine of duties. All propositions in the doctrine of virtues and the doctrine of duties are teleological and causal: in order to reach such and such a goal, such and such a behavior is necessary. But what really is the relationship between this goal and my knowledge? From what source does ethics derive knowledge of the perfect life? And how does it prove that its rules for attaining the highest good are correct?
These two passages say that purpose is unrelated to knowledge and is related only to feeling and will. | For such problems as these the case is inevitably somewhat different. Determining the character of the highest good is not a function of my intellect, but is actually a function of my will. I have an ideal of the perfect life, which appears before my eyes and which, without any thinking or deliberation, I believe to be my highest goal. Such ideals as these, although they appear within the realm of consciousness, they are definitely not intellectually arrived at, but in reality are a reflection of my inner essence [benti]. At this point, there are people whose ideas are very different from mine, whose errors I would like to correct, but neither the rules of logic nor empirical experience are sufficient to move them. I might try to move their feelings by revealing my highest ideal, and perhaps they will be won over. At this point, the value of the ideals they hold is not determined by their intellect but entirely by the force of their wills. The intellect determines truth and falsehood, but cannot distinguish good from bad. Is the source of morality the reason, or is it the feelings? This has been discussed by ethics since ancient times. But actually both are involved. The determination of what constitutes the perfect life comes entirely from the unquestioned feelings. Although various kinds of arguments might be raised, it is not these that arouse the feeling of respect for an ideal, just as the power of argument will not change a bitter taste into a sweet taste. Habit can change somewhat my taste in food, and the same is true of the taste of morality, but this can occur only by changing the internal content of the person who is doing the tasting. But once the ideal of the highest good is established, the intellect easily determines whether any action will help realize the greatest good or obstruct it.
This says that the ideal of the highest good is fixed in all people because human beings share common impulses. Scientific laws cannot be used to prove an ideal of the highest good. | What makes an ideal of the highest good most universal, most correct, is not something that can be proven by scientific law. The only thing that can prove it is those tendencies that are common to the human will. Human capabilities and his laws of living are common to all, so there is always a certain degree of common agreement, just as other animals to a certain degree have similar desires. But the study of such impulses belongs to natural history. It is the task of natural history to discover the common ways in which all human beings realize their ideals of the highest good. If the moralist were to engage in this task then he would not be any different from the biologist, in that his task would be not to prescribe the impulses of mankind but merely to discover them. If we could discover the common impulses of human beings, and then found an occasional few persons whose impulses varied greatly from the common ones, they would have to be regarded as abnormal.... (pp. 7–9; Thilly9-12)
This speaks of the broad and narrow definitions of natural law. | 5. Comparison between moral laws and natural laws. When I look at the various phenomena of the natural world and see that they change according to fixed laws, and then express these in terms of a general formula, this is a natural law. Natural law has two meanings, one broad, one narrow. Used in the narrow sense, a certain cause must have a certain effect, with no individual variation.... In the wider sense, although its formulas adequately embrace all things, this does not guarantee that there will not be a few variants.... (p. 10; Thilly 13)
This says that morality is also a natural law in the broader sense. I suspect that the words “what ought to be” should read “what is.” | Seen from this perspective, the moral laws may also be called natural laws. The laws of ethics are mainly involved with the circumstances of human life, and express the different kinds of human actions and the effects these actions usually have. For example, lying destroys trust, and when trust is broken social relations are damaged, much like the disorder that alcohol induces in the nervous system. Or, the fact that habitual idleness impairs the reason and weakens the will, which is a biological law that applies to psychology. Thus, we say that moral laws are natural laws in the broad sense. Some question this by saying that moral laws explain what ought to be, and not what is, as do natural laws. But, as in the case of the law, “Thou shall not lie,” although there may indeed be a few exceptions, it is indeed universally valid. Or, there are some who believe that moral laws are closely related to legal statutes, and unlike natural laws. Indeed, moral laws are related to legal statutes, and furthermore, proper and true legal statutes are perhaps simply a section of the moral law, but this does not stop them from being related to natural law. And the fact that legal statutes also express what ought to be, does not prevent them from having a few exceptions.... (pp. 10–11; Thilly 13–14)
This says that moral laws, like natural laws, describe what is. | This is also true of moral laws, that they describe not only what ought to be, but what is.... Moral law is based on laws of causality, just as in medicine and jurisprudence. If the connections between cause and effect, between the actions and life of the individual and society did not conform to natural law, there would be no moral law. Consequently, moral law is not invented by man himself, nor is it arbitrarily defined by divine command or by the conscience, but is indeed one of the inherent qualities of human life that conforms to natural law, and that is simply manifested as moral law.... (pp. 11–12; Thilly 15–16)
This states that grammar also describes what is. | The categoiy of moral law may be understood by comparison with grammar. Grammar is popularly thought to describe what ought to be. But when we study the history of language, we discover that what we call grammar was not created to prescribe a way to speak but is specifically a description of the rules inherent in language.... Thus the grammarian seeks to describe a real language and obtain its general rules, and when he has to select from among various different forms, he must take common usage as the standard, and he may adopt the forms that appear in the works of famous writers that are followed by many people. At which point, this form becomes the standard, and grammar becomes finally a normative science. When we correct a speech or article, we judge it against standard grammar. Here there is a very important connection, which is the purpose that makes this form necessary. The purpose of language is to communicate with others, and ungrammatical language, being incomprehensible, would be misunderstood and rejected.
Morals are not prescriptive; they are descriptive. | The same is true of moral philosophy. The average person believes that the task of moral philosophy is to prescribe to us the rules of living, but the evidence of anthropology and history reveals that the job of moral philosophy is not primarily to prescribe to us how we should act or how we should make judgments, but is actually simply to describe the most general forms of real life.... (pp. 12–13; Thilly 17)
The highest good can only be explained formally. | 6. The concept of perfection. Above, we said that the goal of ethics is the highest good, and that the highest good is the perfect life. What is the perfect life? The perfect life means developing all the human bodily and mental powers without exception to their highest, with no apologies for doing so. What the real content of this is, will be discussed later, but here I shall talk first of its formal connections.... Here I should like to show that it is impossible to give anything but a formal explanation of the highest good.... (pp. 13–14; Thilly 17–18)
There is no one perfect life, so ethics can only describe it formally and cannot set up a concrete model. Develop individuality. Perfect dissimilarity is perfect similarity; perfect non-unity is perfect unity. | It is impossible for there to be one and the same perfect life for everyone. If there were a nation of people in which everyone had the same perfect life, it would be a bore. What kind of a nation would it be in which all individuals had the same inner nature, the same life, and were distinguished only by their numbers. Thus, what is called the perfect human life is made up of the many different perfect lives of many different individuals, which are not identical with each other. Thus, if we wanted to describe the concrete perfect life, we would have to include all the many different forms of it conceptualized by mankind. We would have to include all the different ways of living of each individual, clan, and nation. This would be the function of a philosophy of history that had a creative goal. It would be extremely difficult for us just to list the life of people in the historical past, the life of all the nations of people in order to construct a concept of humanity, much less to construct the new forms of history and humanity in the future, (p. 14; Thilly 18)
General rules (the necessary conditions of the perfect life). | It would be impossible for aesthetics to attempt to list all the ideas of beauty of all the paintings, sculptures, poems, and musical compositions that exist, and of what should appear in the future. The creation of beauty is the business of the genius. Aesthetics takes what past genius has created and studies it, with the task of describing generally the necessary conditions of art. At this point, although ethics cannot suggest artistic phenomena for the future, it can help the artist know these necessary conditions and avoid mistakes. Ethics is the same. Although it cannot describe the content of the perfect life of the future, but rather sets out the general rules that describe the necessary conditions of the perfect life, so that we individuals in our particular lives may observe these conditions and not violate them.
In the broad sense, there is no universal human morality. The view of Kant This was also the view of our early Confucians. | 7. The universal types of ethics. There is no so-called universal morality for all humanity. What each nationality regards as the universal model comes from its own particular morality. For example, it is an undoubted fact that the Englishman and the African each has his own ways and virtues, and that since the circumstances of their lives are different they subsequently have different moralities. The question can also be asked whether their differences ought to be, or just are. Wise men in the past, such as Kant, have all thought that the essential meaning of morality lies within human rational nature, and that it must have one universal, unvarying reality. If morality can vary from place to place, then would there not be different moralities for men and for women, for artists and for merchants, according to their sex or occupations? I would reply that this is indeed so, but that different moralities for different people does not necessarily rule out an ideal of the perfect life. Since the circumstances of human life are different for each person, his rules of life must naturally also be different.... (p. 15; Thilly 19)
In the narrow sense, there is a universal human morality. But when it is put to direct use it must be flexible. | Although this is true in the broad sense, in the narrow sense it is possible to speak of a universal morality. Since the fundamental nature and laws of life are the same for all humanity, the guidelines for maintaining a healthy life are the same. Thus dietetics may prescribe universal rules, such as types and quantities of drink and food, certain amounts of activity and rest, that we should all observe. Likewise with morality, as in carefully considering and taking precautions, or as in educating the young, or as in resolving differences between husband and wife, or as in the prohibition against harming your own kind, all of which are universal rules, but which if abused may be very harmful. The fact that murder and adulteiy, robbeiy and cheating are bad, and that being upright and kind and truthful are good, also imply this. When these universal rules and their formulation as cautionary prescriptions are applied directly to actual affairs, they must be used flexibly, taking into consideration the differing qualities of the people involved and the differences in the everyday circumstances.... (p. 16; Thilly 2Q-21)
Morality differs with the times, but it none the less remains morality. This is not at all difficult to explain, and is in fact explained below. | Looked at in this way, morality inevitably changes with the changing times, and although the reasons for this may not be well understood, the fact that it occurs is indisputable, even though the wisest philosophers seem to have found it difficult to explain why it is that morals inevitably change with the times, and that even though morals do change, morals still continue to exist. The average person tends to feel that if what those in the past did is incompatible with today’s morality then it must be rejected as wrong. When we read the history of the Middle Ages, and see that Christians hated those of other beliefs and often arrested and tortured heretics and witches, and even killed and burned them, we strongly condemn them. Such brutality was truly barbarous. But the use of barbarous punishments in a barbarous age was not impermissible. And perhaps it was inevitable that such means were employed in the process of advancing from barbarism toward civilization. If the brutal punishments of the past had not existed, perhaps the cities of the Middle Ages would not have been able to move toward the complex social life of today....(p. 17; Thilly 21–22)
Morality is different in different societies, and with different persons. Few understand this principle. An important point. | We shall even further say that even the individual societies and individual persons within one nation may have their own particular moral codes. Different dispositions and conditions of life require different bodily diets, and also different spiritual morals to sustain them. It is often the case that what is beneficial and necessary for one may be unsuitable and injurious to another. This is also true when making real judgments. The same action may be permissible for this person but not for another. It would be impossible to have all individuals act the same.... When we see that the conduct of all persons is largely similar, we are looking only at the outside. When we seek to probe their inner feelings, we find that each one is unique. The inner feelings are man’s essense, and it is his unique individuality that makes him complete and real, and it should not be regarded as a defect. Only where the basic ethical meaning has disappeared, where it approaches the domain of law, does conduct become totally the same.
This asserts that individuals need moral teachers to admonish them, but that moral teachers must respect the uniqueness of each individual. This is why one should not rashly comment on others. The view of Kant Educators. | Every moral teacher emphasizes the universal nature within the special nature of the indivdual. Individuality comes from the human being’s natural constitution and temperament, but the general rules do not take into account the temperament. If human beings all took just their own particular dispositions into account when dealing with the external world, if on the grounds of their own special natures and positions in society, they each demanded a special moral code, it is very easy to see that, from the point of view of the judgments of others and of a conscience based upon a higher moral code, there would be frequent conflicts of all kinds. This being true, Kant’s rigorism is fully adequate to curbing his excesses. In the view of Kant, the will, which is the ruler of the senses, is subservient to universal laws, and this is indeed the origin of the individual’s realization of the highest moral code. This realization of the highest moral code is, in the words of the Christian Bible, not the destruction of the law but its fulfillment. But the moral code does not tell man how to fulfill it, as the above shows. The moral code simply points to the universal laws. Following these laws and adapting them to particular events is the task of the conscience and the knowledge of the individual. But the individual is not without need of guidance, so he needs a moral instructor, just as he needs a doctor to advise him on his medical health.... (pp. 17–18; Thilly 22–24)
This discusses the limits on the application of moral philosophy. | However, looking at the matter more carefully, the rules of moral philosophy are not valid for all. What we have called the universal human morality is a rational entity which, although everyone can conceive of it, in the last analysis, has never been realized. The feelings and thought of the moral philosopher cannot reach beyond the nation and era which define them. There are two reasons for this. The first is that since his childhood it is the ideals of his nation that have gradually molded his own ideals, and second, his ideas of good and bad are inevitably conditioned by his times. This went unnoticed by the rationalists of the eighteenth century, who thus committed this error, including Kant. As the age of history, the nineteenth century is no longer able to believe in a universal human morality. It is for this reason that the sphere to which a moral philosophy is applicable is limited to the civilization of this philosophy, and cannot transcend it, no matter whether its moralists are aware of this boundary or not. The task of the moral philosopher is limited to pointing out to his compatriots within his own culture the most suitable mode of life that will give them a healthy, peaceful, and happy existence.
The goal of ethics lies in practice, not in study. | 8. Why ethics is a practical science. It is asked, Can ethics be called a practical science, not only in that it deals with the methods of practice, but also in greatly influencing the practical world? Yes. And this was the original meaning of ethics. As Aristotle said, The goal of ethics is practice, not study.[51] Schopenhauer, in his work The Foundation of Morals, takes issue with this view. All philosophy, he says, is theoretical; upon mature reflection, it ought finally to abandon the old demand that it become practical, guide action, and transform character.[52] Morality is not constructed of concepts, nor judged by the reason. Morality This is what is meant by empty cannot be taught, just as genius cannot words are useless. be taught. Thus, moral philosophy cannot make one a virtuous or gentle person or a saint, just as aesthetics cannot make one a great poet or sculptor or painter or musician.
Knowledge assists the will. | But ethics definitely cannot be so fainthearted. The most important task of ethics is to offer man knowledge about action, that is, about what modes of action necessarily have what kinds of relations with the external world and events, and what their effects are upon the conditions of life of the individual and of society. All human knowledge is basically useful to action; why should ethics alone be different.... If human beings understand that the vices of indolence, hatred, indiscretion, envy, and falsehood are obstacles to life and that the virtues of prudence, politeness, modesty, uprightness, and amiability promote the development of life, how can this not but influence the will? The will cannot of course be totally determined by knowledge. Natural capacities, education, and examples, and the admiration and contempt of the external world, all play their part. Thus, knowledge assists the will, but cannot oppose it.
Ethics shows the goals of human life, and contributes to conduct. | Ethics contributes to conduct by causing us to have a real feeling for the goals of human life, rather than just giving them lip-service. It would be futile for a physician to advise a man who does not care about his health and bodily welfare. Similarly, it would be useless for the moral philosopher to advise someone on the importance of ethics who did not understand “the pleasure of righteousness.” But if one day such a person is enlightened, and shown what the goal of human life is, how do we know that he will not be converted and tum away from evil to follow the good? ... (pp. 19–21; Thilly 24–27)
The importance of moral philosophy in an enlightened [kaifang] age. All our nation’s two thousand years of scholarship may be said to be unthinking learning. This is the situation in our nation today. | The skeptic might again say that, moral philosophy not only is not beneficial to conduct, it is on the contrary dangerous. Why? Human beings are moral because they have faith in and obey the forces of conscience and custom. Any attempt to probe into its origins, and its meaning and value will kill that faith. I would reply: This too is not so. All such questions are not the product of philosophy, but rather it is indeed these questions that gave birth to philosophy. Although human beings may want to avoid probing, this is impossible. Whenever something happens or there is a decision the right and wrong of which must be determined, it is necessary to probe its principles. Moral philosophy simply follows this tendency to inquire and clarifies the principles involved. Furthermore, the clarification of such principles is an especially urgent task today. The contemporary social mind has an increasing tendency to seek what is new, to reject the old accepted a priori truths. There are many evidences of this tendency, such as the statements of Nietzsche, the view of the age of youth that everything should be transformed, of socialism that would change the old customs of state and society. These are but the most obvious examples. The contemporary age, whether in thought, in morality, or in life styles, is rejecting all things old and seeking the new. As for the authority of religion and its ancient proverbs, everyone regards them as worthless. Having been so excessively repressed, in reaction they rebel and become skeptics, and their subjective ideas are breaking down the walls and escaping in all directions, in reaction to the old unthinking learning and the religions of unquestioning faith. These are the characteristics of the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment of the past still exists, is reappearing again today. At first taking hold of the young people, today it is spreading among the common people. Those who have been oppressed by the thought and prescriptions on living of the past, regard this as the blind leading the blind, and inevitably want to do their own thinking and open up another world. Such is the right of freedom. Free thought, free living, is the first right of human life, and the first duty. The most precious quality of the realm of the spirit is none other than independence, independence of the spirit lies in the freedom to think, not in relying on ready-made beliefs. The problem of ethics is to help those who have fallen into skepticism to discover the true purpose and task of life and to give it a foundation in free investigation. (pp. 21–22; Thilly 28–29)
| FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTS Metaphysical and psychological introduction
This regards feelings as part of the will. All persons have the goal of self-preservation. The origin of pleasure and displeasure. | 7. Psychic life has two phases, will and knowledge. The will is expressed as impulses[53] and feelings. Knowledge manifests itself in sensation, perception, and thinking. ... 10. The development of the will has three stages: (1) unconscious impulses, (2) the desires of the senses, and (3) the rational will. And the goal at which it aims, throughout all three stages, is the preservation and promotion of the individual and the race. 11. The original form of the will is unconscious impulse. In consciousness, the unconscious impulses appear as conscious impulses. If our life activities satisfy our impulses, a feeling of pleasure accompanies them. If these activities are obstructed or go against our impulses, it is accompanied by a feeling of displeasure, (p. 24; Thilly 220) …
On the distinction between good and evil. | Chapter I: Good and Bad. Teleological and Formalistic Conceptions
What is the criterion for distinguishing between good and bad—one view is that it is only the motive, the other says that it includes the result. | 1. The distinction between conceptions of good and bad. Where does ethical thought come from? It springs from two questions. The first is, what is the ultimate ground of moral value distinctions? The second is, What is the ultimate end of human life? These two questions have often guided thinking people to the path of ethics. The former question springs from the function of moral judgment, while the latter has its origin in volition and action, (p. 26; Thilly 222)
The world view of these two philosophers. Purpose. Method. | ... What we call ethics originated in the Platonic and Aristotelian theory of the universe, which has often been thought of and called teleological because it is associated with purpose. In the view of these two philosophers, all existence, all human beings in the universe, have their own tasks. This is a fundamental insight of their ethics. And all the various problems of ethics address the elucidation of these tasks, and of the forms and functions of life that arise from them. (pp. 27–28; Thilly 223–24)
The sense of this section has already been outlined in the previous section. | 2. The meaning and power of the teleological view. Popular opinion inclines more to the formalistic view: Acts are not morally good or bad acccording to their results; they are good or bad in themselves. Differences in moral value depend upon intent, not the effects. Even if the compassion of the good Samaritan in the Gospel had not saved the man who fell among thieves, but on the contrary had caused his death, this would not diminish the moral worth of the act. Or again, if a slanderous remark on the contrary reveals the virtues of the person slandered and destroys the credibility of the slanderer, even though the result might be very good, this does not alter the fact that slander is evil.
This section repeats the objections to this view. | We would answer: This is indeed true, but this is not an objection against the teleological way of examining things. The teleological determination of whether a particular act is good or bad does not rest on its actual result, but upon the fact that acts of that type tend to produce certain results. It lies in the very nature of slander that it may have the effect of hurting another person’s credibility and good name. Where the effect is the opposite, as in the example raised above, this occurred for a particular reason, such as the conscience and caution of the listener and his experience and understanding of the world, and certainly not because of anything inherent in the nature of slander. In Aristotle’s terms, this slanderous remark was an accidental cause of the good effect, not its true cause. Thus morality has to do not with actual effects, but with the effects that may be expected to come from the very nature of the act. (pp. 28–29; Thilly 224–225)
The writer emphasizes objective, material judgments. | 3. Subjective, formal judgments, and objective material judgments. A further objection to my view might be: The facts are not like this. Moral judgments are concerned with intention, not with acts. If the motivation for an act is good, we know that it was done with good intentions. If the intent springs from a consciousness of duty, we need not inquire into its content or effects. This is what Kant meant when he said that there is no good other than what is a universally good intention, (p. 30; Thilly 226–27)
This section develops these two statements. The above section says that objective material judgments have a teleological foundation, and this section says that subjective formal judgments also must be reduced to the teleological view. | Finally, the subjective, formal judgment itself is reduced to the teleological view. To act from conscientiousness or respect for duty is called good. This is upheld by the subjective formal view. But why is conscientiousness good? Some might say that this is an absurd question, but I do not think so. The answer to this question is that conscientious acts are objectively good. Why? Conscientious intentions, in determining our acts, have the effect of promoting the welfare of ourselves and our surroundings. Although inclinations are inevitably diverse, conscience is the same for all the individuals of a people, and therefore actions that are determined by the conscience have the quality of universality. Furthermore, the content of my conscience comes from the positive morality of the people to whom I belong, which is inculcated by education, example, and public opinion. But the general moral code simply contains the moral laws of a people or of an entire civilized society. The investigations of anthropology conclude that everything which is called morality is a moral instinct of social relations that impels one to act so as to preserve individual and social life. For this reason, the conscience simply determines the principles of action that promote my own most vital interests and the vital interests of the society to which I belong. I shall discuss this in detail in chapter five. (p. 35; Thilly 232–33)
This section says that only at the most appropriate times do the ends justify the means. | 4. The relationship between ends and means. Before further discussing the content of the highest good, I shall first raise and respond to a few objections to my view. The objection is made, Is not the general teleological principle the same as the saying of the Jesuits (a medieval Catholic sect that flourished in Spain, the strengh of whose disciples made the conquests of such places as the Philippines possible, whose teachings and actions have been rejected, and today no longer exist) that the ends justify the means. If the value of conduct depends upon its effects, does not the value of all kinds of particular acts depend upon their effects? I would reply that there are two interpretations of the Jesuit morality of what is called the ends justifying the means. One is that if the end is good then no matter what means are used to achieve it, these means must be good. Consequently, any improper illegal action could be regarded as good.
This is a particular proposition and does not mean that all homicide is wrong. | ... A contradiction in the meaning of the terms. The words murder and falsehood signify not merely an objective fact, intentional killing or intentional deception, but they likewise imply condemnation. The judgment “Murder is wrong” is an analytical judgment. This judgment can also be used in instances in which homicide is not considered legally or morally wrong. In order to make a pure judgment the implication of condemnation must be eliminated from the term, and judgment must be pronounced solely on the objective fact of intentional homicide. Then it becomes clear that some cases may be considered good.... (pp. 36–38; Thilly 233–36) 6. A brief discussion of egoism. Looked at from one aspect of moral philosophy, we can supplement the above. To the question: What is the ultimate objective of the will? the answer is simply, The welfare of the individual and of other human beings.
Hobbes’ theory. | There is also an opposing view which says that it is the nature of the will to regard the welfare of the individual as its end, not universal welfare. This view states that everyone strives for what is agreeable or useful to oneself, regardless of whether it furthers or detracts from the welfare of others. This view, formulated as a theory, is known as egoism; it is also called individualistic utilitarianism. In the early period of modem philosophy, Hobbs [szc] was a representative of this view. He stated that the real will of every animal takes self-preservation as its end, and that this is a natural law. Therefore, whatever really benefits oneself is good, and whatever benefits others is indirectly good if it also serves to preserve oneself indirectly.
I really feel that this explanation is incomplete. Since human beings have an ego, for which the self is the center of all things and all thought, self-interest is primary for all persons. That this serves the interests of others is due to the fact that those others who belong to the same category as the self share related interests. Thus we may say that the self cannot but benefit others. The starting point of altruism is the self, and altruism is related to the self. It is impossible to say that any mind is purely altruistic without any idea of self-interest. Nothing in the world takes the other as its starting point, and the self does not seek to benefit anything in the world that is totally unrelated to the self. Otherwise, such concepts as “individual personality”, “self-discipline”, and “freedom” would be absurd. These concepts are indeed a noble egoism, an egoism of the spirit. If I open my eyes wide and say that mankind is the greater self, and say that all living things are the greater self, and then say that the universe is the greater self, does this negate self-interest? Why should self-interest be unworthy? [Next to the words in the text, “the welfare of the individual and of others as its goal” is the comment:] Ultimately the individual comes first. | I do not believe that we can maintain this theory without flying in the face of the facts. The egoistic impulses of the mind [xzn] have as their goal self preservation, and are inherent in all human life. All human beings without exception tend to stress self-interest over the interests of others. But is there any human being who is only aware of what is beneficial or detrimental to himself, and is unaware of what is beneficial or detrimental to others? All human beings are as concerned about the welfare of kin and friends as about their own. And our feeling of concern for the welfare of society too is clearly obvious, as in the case of our extreme disgust and anger at someone who betrays his country for personal gain, which shows that this action is absolutely intolerable to our consciences. Thus we may say: The human will seeks the welfare of the individual and of others as its goal, and although the relationship between how much something benefits oneself and how much it benefits others may be highly complex and variable, there is nothing in which the two are not interrelated. Thus those we call unselfish33 tend to stress altruism, while the so-called egoist simply leans toward emphasizing self-interest, (p. 44; Thilly 244–45)
This is indeed so, but we cannot say that they are equal, but rather that one comes before the other. For animals the impulse for self-preservation comes first, and the impulse to preserve the species comes second. When young, animals cannot be said to have an impulse to preserve the species. Alas! At this point I have a very strong feeling that there are many who use the excuse of altruism to seek their own egoistic gain. Truth is good; falsehood is bad. To act in self-interest may be small-minded, but is at least true. To pretend to be benefiting others when really acting in self-interest is a great falsehood. To extend self-interest to the greater self of benefiting all mankind, to the greater self of benefiting all living things, and to the greater self of benefiting the universe, this is to go from a small truth to a great truth. The progress of human wisdom can achieve this. When self and other are equal, their order is not clear and it is easy to pretend to be acting for others when actually acting in self-interest, in which case it is impossible to achieve the highest self-interest. I think that the theories of our Confucian scholars are based on egoism, as in the saying, “The way of heaven and earth has its origin in the relation of man and wife,”[54] and can be seen in, “He who first cultivates himself may afterward bring peace to the world,”[55] and “He is first affectionate to his parents, and then benevolent to the people and kind to creatures.”[56] The theory of universal love[57] is not altruism, for universal love includes the self, is to extend the love of self to loving all men. By basing the theory on self, it has a starting point, a criterion. If self and other are treated as having equal weight, there is no starting point, and the criterion is lost. | In our consciousness, individual stimuli and social stimuli, egoistic feelings and altruistic feelings, are usually both present, mixed together. Human beings cannot live apart or in isolation from others; they can exist only as members of a whole society. This is a biological fact. Objective biological factors manifest themselves in the subjective psychological realm, in the constitution of the will and the feelings. The impulse of self-preservation in all animals coexists with the impulse to preserve the species, (p. 45; Thilly 245)
This kind of statement fully proves the validity of egoism. Quite true, quite true! Except for those who are sick and crazy, there definitely are no such persons. Love of wife and parents is inescapable. Lions and tigers seem to have this; can human beings not have it? | As animals evolved into homo sapiens, the impulse to preserve the species became stronger. All human beings regard themselves as being members of the entire society. Every human being thinks of himself as belonging to a clan or society or nationality, and consequently human beings always take the goals of their society as their own personal goals. It is indeed clear that the interests of the individual are mutually interwoven with the interests of society, so that it is impossible to draw a line demarcating the two. For this reason, it may be said that the goal of my will is the common shared welfare of the individual and of society, or we may say that the welfare of society includes the welfare of the individual. It is true that there are persons in this world who are totally devoid of feelings for the interests of others, who are oblivious to the interests of their neighbors, who even take pleasure in the suffering of others. But this does not threaten this view, any more than the existence of idiots in this world threatens the common principle that mankind possesses reason and speech. The person who lacks sympathetic feelings for others is ethically an abnormal person, just as the idiot is abnormal. Physicians and anthropologists would simply call them abnormal people.
This is treating others as I would want to be treated. To live in isolation divorced from others is indeed unbearable. Thus society is created by individuals, not individuals by society. This is what is meant by mutual assistance, and the basis of mutual assistance is fulfillment of the individual. This is what is meant by sympathy, and sympathy arises from the self. I too disagree with Schopenhauer. There are two points here. The first point is that natural man is only egoistic, and that since the existence of the individual is incompatible with the universe, he must preserve himself. I say this is not true. Self-interests are indeed primary for human beings, but it does not stop here. It is also of our nature to extend this to helping others. This is one and the same human nature, so working for the interests of others is in my own self-interest. Self-interest is primarily benefiting one’s own spirit, and the flesh is of no value in benefiting the spirit. Benefiting the spirit means benefiting the feelings and will. For example, since I cannot forget the feeling I have toward the one I love, my will desires to save her and I will do everything possible to save her, to the point that if the situation is desperate I would rather die myself than let her die. Only thus can my feelings be satisfied, and my will be fulfilled. In all times, there are filial sons, faithful widows, loyal ministers, and devoted friends, those who die for love, for their country, for the world, for their ideals—all to benefit their own spirits. I do not agree with the first point, that moral values apply only to those acts that are motivated by altruism. Morality does not necessarily depend on others. What depends on others is objective moral law; what is independent of others is subjective moral law. My desire to fulfill my nature and perfect my mind is the most precious of the moral laws. There are assuredly human beings and objects in the world, but they all exist because of the self, and the image I have of them disappears when I close my eyes; thus the objective moral law is also the subjective moral law. If I were the only person in the world, I could not fail to fulfill my nature and complete my mind, simply because it would be no loss to others. I would still have to fulfill and complete them. Such things are done not for others, but for ourselves. | After the concept of welfare has been more clearly defined, I shall come back to the antithesis between egoism and altruism. Here I should simply like to state that in my view the antithesis between these two is not as important as contemporary moral philosophers make it. Schopenhauer and his followers regard this as the foundation of moral philosophy. In their view, the natural man is simply and solely egoistic, and therefore without moral worth. To have moral worth, the motivation for an act must be the interests of others. But since such motivation necessarily cannot exist in the natural constitution of mankind, morality is supernatural. I do not think that this is true. Is the world in which we live really so degenerate? What we call compassion does indeed exist within the natural order. Only pessimists like Schopenhauer believe that compassion is supernatural. Schopenhauer once said that, “The natural man would, if forced to choose between his own destruction and that of the world, annihilate the whole universe merely for the sake of preserving himself.” If forced to make such a choice under the threat of imminent danger, perhaps there are some who would do this. But if the world were annihilated, how could I alone exist? The unbearable senselessness would make him regret the error of his choice and force him to seek an immediate end to his life. At this point, even the egoist would also realize that living in isolation from others is unbearable. The desires of human beings to be admired or feared or envied all depend on other people. Not only do we depend on others, it is also clear that there is no human being who can totally ignore the interests of others and deny human nature, (pp. 4546; Thilly 246)
| The welfare of the individual and the welfare of society are closely interwoven, in the narrow sense with family and friends, and in the larger sense with community and country. If others do not fare well, then the individual too cannot fare well. This is recognized by the great majority of the people. This is true not just for objective events, it is true also for the feelings. Such purely egoistical people may exist in theory, but they do not exist in reality. Thus the egoist school of ethics manufactures them in order to justify their false theory.
This, the narrowest form of egoism, does not exist in this world. Is this indeed the philosophy of Schopenhauer? The theories concocted by the abstract moral philosophers do not agree with reality. Why is conflict with the natural will a necessary characteristic of the fulfilment of duty? To take conflict as a characteristic is to take falseness as a characteristic. Is there really any morality that believes that it is an article of moral value that the self must have no sense of pleasure? When one already has a sense of pleasure, why get rid of it? This is an extreme kind of altruism. The abstract moral philosophers who are troubled by this, like Schopenhauer when he says that only an altruistic act has moral value, do not understand true egoism. | In a certain sense, egoistic feelings are humanly inevitable. Even the most unselfish person desires the welfare of others because he knows that it will also benefit himself. Alleviating the woe of others and bringing others happiness also brings one pride and satisfaction. If this were not true, if he were indifferent to the pain and pleasure of others, they could not become an object of his willing. My will can only be moved by my feelings; I cannot have and feel the feelings of others. Thus, the ego remains the center of things. This, however, is not the ordinary meaning of the word egoism, which is that one is not saddened by the misfortunes of others, nor pleased by their good fortunes. The abstract moral philosophers, who believe that conflict with one’s natural will is a characteristic of fulfilling one’s duty, and that it is an article of moral value that the self must have no sense of pleasure, will be troubled by the fact that giving happiness to others invariably gives oneself a feeling of pleasure. In order to maintain their false theories, they disregard the evidence of the facts.
In the past, teleology was called utilitarianism, to emphasize the result of actions. This was the inherent result of this kind of act. If you want to achieve a certain result, you must engage in an action that implies that result. Thus sacrificing oneself for a good cause is also respected by teleological ethics. | Let me add another statement. It has been said that utilitarian moral philosophy cannot explain self sacrifice, that the Roman legend of Regulus necessarily contradicts utilitarianism. However, if we do not regard pure egoism as central to the theory of utilitarianism, there is no contradiction. Having been captured by the Carthaginians, upon the conclusion of a cease-fire between the two states, Regulus returned to Rome where he argued against the peace agreement so that the Romans disavowed the agreement and declared war, whereupon he had to return to Carthage to meet his death. This act may be as easily explained by teleological moral philosophy as by the formalistic theory of ethics. Regulus’ martyrdom had indeed a high and lofty purpose, that of being willing to sacrifice himself for the good of his state as an example for citizens of his own state, and he also wanted to show the enemy the high and lofty character of the Roman people. I doubt that the idea of just rigidly abiding by an agreement could have prompted so lofty an act.
This statement is very well put. This statement shows that Paulsen, too, takes individualism as his foundation. This is an individualism of the spirit, and may be called spiritual individualism. There is no higher value than that of the individual. All values depend on the individual. If there were no individuals (particulars) there would be no universe. Thus, it can be said that the value of the individual is greater than that of the universe. Thus there is no greater crime than to suppress the individual or to violate particularity. Therefore our country’s three bonds[58] must go, and the churches, the capitalists, monarchy, and the state constitute the four evil demons of the world. Some say that the individual’s dependence on the group for his existence is as important as the fact that the group exists because of the individual, that they are mutually dependent on each other, and that neither should be over-emphasized. This is not true. It is a fact that there are individuals before there is a group, and that the individual cannot exist alone apart from the group, but the group in itself has no meaning, it only has meaning as a collectivity of individuals. The individual may rebel against the group, but there is no such thing as the group rebelling against the individual, since this would make the group meaningless. Furthermore, a group is an individual, a greater individual. The human body is constructed of the aggregation of a number of individual parts, and society is constructed of the aggregation of a number of individual persons, and the nation is constructed of the aggregation of a number of societies. Separated they are many, together they form a single whole. Thus the individual, society, and the state are individuals. The universe is also an individual. Thus, it is also possible to say that there are no groups in the world, only individuals. | Besides, every real sacrifice also implies preserving the ego, that is, it is a means of preserving that person’s concept of his ego. The reason that Regulus’ goal was not life, was simply because his goal was his spiritual life, rather than his material life. His service to his state, whether in peace or in war, required total dedication to his efforts, even unto death. Thus he felt that anything short of bringing honor to the Roman people, of glorifying their name, would have been not fulfilling his duty. And this is why for the Roman nation his name has remained immortal over the years.
These words contain the true features of Paulsen’s thought. | 7. Conclusion. The conduct of any person is morally good if, in the objective realm, it is able to increase the happiness of the self and others, and is directed toward perfecting life and if, subjectively, it is in conscious fulfillment of his duty. Otherwise it is bad. If just the objective quality is absent it is bad, but if it also lacks the subjective quality, then it is evil.
This passage again raises my doubts. Only when both the objective and subjective are satisfied is someone called good. | Thus, we call a person good or bad depending upon whether or not there was an objective quality, and virtues and vices are also explained in terms of the different kinds of good and bad. Corresponding to the many different problems of life there are forces of the will that are equally complex. The complexity of the virtues and vices is similar.
This term “point of relation” is most important. It is not that any particular thing in itself contains a transcendent good, rather it is called good simply because of its relationship to life. At this point, I also have a sense that people casually say that a particular thing is good or not good depending on the way in which it is related to human life, and that this does not refer to any intrinsic reality in the thing itself. Thus, people say that a particular event or thing or action, that may not be bad in itself, is bad because it hurts life. How unjust! | The concept of good, therefore, presupposes a point of relation, or point of reference; it means good for something. It is commonly said that something is good when it is proper for the use to which it is put, and that a person is good when he is able to fulfill his function. For example, a good businessman, a good official, a good father, a good friend, etc., means that that person is able to fulfill the function of businessman, official, father, or friend. The same is true in ethics. Good means that a certain action is proper. A good person is thus one who can fulfill his human function. These all refer to their particular points of reference. It is for this reason that something is regarded as good, when it is good not just for some particular thing but for the perfect life of society as a whole. Every particular action, every particular virtue, every particular person, is a reference point of goodness. The good person is the person who combines all these points of reference, takes them as his function or duty and is able to fulfill this function.
Each individual. Every virtue. Ends. This is excellent. It may be called one of the great discoveries of ethics. | But we must add that, in the moral world, each human being is one entity within the whole moral world, and thus each is part of the highest good. If we address those ends that are not relative to something else, then one’s own ends are also part of the highest good. The same is true of the virtues. All the virtues are aspects of the good person, and thus, referring to those ends that are not relative to something else, they are not just external functions, they are also themselves a part of the perfect life and also a kind of end in themselves. Therefore, moral actions are not just external means, they may also be said to be realizations of this end. As in a work of art or poetry, everything is both a means and an end. The same is true of the moral world. Thus nothing can be said to be exclusively an external function. Thus, from the perspective of the final end, a work of art, a poem, and morality are all part of the whole, and the value of each part is derived from their relationship with the whole. Just as when reading a poem we realize that a particular stanza is indispensible to the whole piece. So too, are virtue and duty indispensible to the perfect life of the individual and of society.
This section has the defect of praising blind morality. What people today call good deeds, such as building bridges and repairing roads, is just blind morality. A moral action depends on feeling and will, which must precede the moral action about which there must be a conscious decision followed by this action that is done voluntarily. Blind morality has no value at all. The discovery of the preceding section, that the spirit includes both means and ends, could bring about a change in the meaning of humanity’s view of life. How? In the past, everyone thought that ultimate ends have not much value before something occurs. Consequently, everything that takes place before the objective is attained is utterly meaningless, and the road traveled is seen as worthless. Now we know that both the ends and the means are ever enjoyable. Since every day of life is valuable, people will not fear death. Living another hundred years is fine, and dying today is fine. The above talks of the morality of the person of great wisdom, even though the average person, who for the most part just does things by instinct, is also able to lead a full life. This instinct is the experience of our ancestors passed down from generation to generation, which in the beginning was self-conscious, but which over time has become social habit that, in the brain of the individual, has become a kind of unthinking and automatic reflex that is called instinct. | However, we need not be conscious of this relation of ends for our actions to have moral value. As in the case of the good old mother mentioned above, who despised theft simply because it violates the Christian eighth commandmant [the Chinese has “seventh commandment”], not because it is her ideal, yet whose actions are moral. It is only the philosopher who comprehends the importance of the property system among the laws of human life, and abides by it. But what makes him abide by it is not his knowledge, but rather his instincts. But the moral value of his action is not thereby diminished. (pp. 44–50; Thilly 246–50)
On what the ends are. | Chapter II: The Highest Good. Hedonistic and Energistic Conceptions 1. For utilitarianism, pleasure is not the purpose of action.... There is a school of thought that is more influential than our view, which says that the highest good does not consist in the objective content of life, but in the feeling of pleasure which life produces, that the feeling of pleasure in itself has value, and that everything else has value only as it produces pleasure. This view we commonly call hedonism, and the theory opposed to it is energism. (p. 50; Thilly 251–52)
Here the schools of thought are described very clearly. | The antagonism between these two schools is of long standing; it runs throughout all of Greek philosophy. The former are the Cyrenaics and the Epicureans; the latter are the followers of Plato and Aristotle, and include the Stoics. This antithesis appears in the modem world, with on the one side the empirical psychologists, and on the other the seventeenth- and eighteenthcentury rationalists, and the German philosophers following Kant. According to the former, the subjective feeling of pleasure, regardless of how it is produced, is the highest good. According to the latter, the highest good lies in the objective condition of the individual and of society, regardless of whether it yields pleasure or not, though they do believe that actually it will bring a subjective sense of satisfaction.
This statement is very true. Whether or not something has value is man-made, while whether it is true or false is natural. Thus the scholar should seek the truth in the natural properties of something, and then ask whether or not it has value. | If we wish to understand hedonism better, we must ask whether the hedonistic view is true or false, not whether or not it has value. Scholars have long attempted to prove that hedonism is false by saying that it is worthless. A maxim of the Stoics that rejects both hedonism and atheism in the same breath is not a legitimate argument. Theories are worthless only if they are false. Any attempt to prove that something is false by saying that it is worthless is nonsense. The proponents of hedonism have never been lacking in fine upstanding persons. Epicurus lived a pure and blameless life. Bentham and Mill throughout their entire lives worked hard to realize their practical observations.
Hedonists believe that everything is a means to seek pleasure and avoid pain. | What proof is there that pleasure is the highest good? As I see it, only by showing that human nature actually values pleasure. The proponents of this view are ethicists, whose function is not to be lawgivers, but strictly to explain the natural world. It would be absurd to say that human nature seeks pleasure, but does not regard it as the highest good, and then to add that it ought to regard pleasure as the highest good. The arguments of all hedonists are generally of this sort. They all say that all human beings, all living things seek pleasure, that to seek pleasure and avoid pain is mankind’s greatest desire, and that all other things are simply the means by which human beings seek pleasure and avoid pain. (pp. 51–52; Thilly 252–53)
This section directly attacks the fallacies in the hedonist view. | ... Did Goethe (great German poet who believed in Mill’s theory, and said that whenever a person does something, he inevitably measures it by the criterion of what gives the greatest sense of pleasure), in his poetry, in his amours and travels, and in his studies of natural science and history, think that they were all means to the attainment of the greatest sense of pleasure? It is clear that this is absurd. There were in Goethe’s constitution impulses and powers that demanded development and exercise. These impulses and powers are like those contained within the sprouts of young plants. When these are developed and fulfilled, a feeling of pleasure naturally ensues, but this sense of pleasure is certainly not a pre-existing idea that is the end of which all other things are but the means. These impulses, and the desire to carry them out, precede the appearance of the idea of pleasure, and the idea of pleasure cannot come before, or be independent of, the impulse that gives a sense of pleasure. Only the indolent idlers of the world first experience a desire for pleasure and then seek a means to procure pleasure. Healthy persons do not act in this way.
This is similar to the story of Taigong going fishing in the River Wei. This says that the concept of a thing comes first, and that the desire for it occurs afterward. An idea is a concept.[59] | ... There was an Englishman who was seated on the bank of a lake, fishing. A German approached him and informed him that there were no fish in the lake, and asked, “Why are you fishing?” The Englishman calmly replied that he was fishing not for fish, but for pleasure. This Englishman had clearly transcended the common conceptual association in which the pleasurable end is attained only by the means of fishing for fish. Do other people have this feeling of seeking the pleasure and the fish? I think that upon hearing the words of this Englishman, all persons would laugh, which proves quite adequately that they have a different view. As I see it, the will and desires never take pleasure as their end, but rather the end is in an event, such as an activity or change of one’s condition. Thus, although the idea of a thing may indeed precede the desire, the idea of pleasure is not in the consciousness, and does not appear as a desire prior to the idea of the thing, (pp. 52–54; Thilly 254–55)
Objective facts are but pretexts to mislead the intellect. This is a very strange theory. This is not a common event. | Consequently, hedonism must modify somewhat its claim and say that pleasure is not the conscious goal, but is the actual goal or end. Although the actual goal does not appear in the consciousness, it is still the underlying goal or cause, like a mechanical weight that though unseen by the observer is really what makes a machine move. Although such things as food, riches, and honor appear in the consciousness as ends, they are but pretexts to mislead the intellect, while the true end of the will is really pleasure. A lover goes out on business and quite unconsciously passes by the home of his love, much to his surprise, whereupon he realizes that his reason for going out on business was a means, a deception by which his impulses anticipated the objections of his reason. Is it true that pleasure is the mistress of the will, and that the will then uses other pretexts to delude the reason?
Certainly not People cannot attain their fundamental desires, and it may be said that people cannot attain their fundamental ideals. People can only achieve those things that take the place of attaining ideals, and once achieved, the ideal is again one level higher. Thus ideals can never be attained; only things can be achieved. | Opponents of my view, wishing to prove that this theory is not false, must say that whatever we do realizes not the pretended goal but rather the goal of the hidden desire, as in the case of the lover whose pretext was going out on other business, but who unconsciously was seeking his love. Can this be proven in fact? Hardly. The human will always attains its ostensible goal, and seldom what it fundamentally desires. The miser may accumulate great wealth, but the happiness he had expected escapes him. The ambitious person may gain fame and honor, but his suffering from his worry about losing it, is probably greater than his concern about getting it. Sexual desire leads to the propagation of the species, but once satisfied, the happiness ends and feelings of sadness abound. This is not made very clear in their exposition. ...
Knowledge or knowing. The term “a sign” is really like making a report to the will that the goal has already been attained. | ... Several thousand years ago, Aristotle had already explained the relationship between pleasure and the will. He said: Pleasure is not an end, but a manifestation [in the consciousness].34 When the will is carried out, and it is accompanied by the appropriate manifestation, this is pleasure. Thus pleasure is simply a sign that the will has achieved its objective. Pleasure is that by which we recognize that the will has been satisfied. But hedonism regards this recognition as good, as if to say, value does not lie in things, but in being of value, that satisfaction is not in the activity but in being satisfactory. Is this not tautologous?
The statement of negative hedonism that what drives human beings to action comes entirely from dissatisfaction would also seem to be founded in part. | Hedonism also appears in a negative form which says that what drives living things to proper action is not our idea of pleasure, but our feeling of pain, or the sense of dissatisfaction. Thus, the end that motivates us to action is getting rid of pain.
The motivation for such things is indeed not pain. This has two interpretations: one says that it is determined by unfavorable conditions, and the other says that it is determined by favorable conditions. Pain arises when the impulses are not satisfied. To say that impulses arise from pain is to turn cause and effect upside down. | But this form of the theory likewise suggests that hedonism does not explain the facts. We know that the discomfort of pain may be a spur to action, as when ill we seek a doctor, or as when one who is idle seeks diversion or work. But is this the motivation for all activity? If we say that it is always discomfort that impels human beings to action, did Goethe write his poetry or did Durer35 paint just out of unhappiness? Is it pain that impels a child to play? I don’t think so. The impulses of the will have nothing to do with pain; it is when the impulses are not satisfied that pain ensues. Human activities arising from the impulses always occur before the onset of pain. The farmer does not wait until he is hungry before he plants the fields. He sees the sun rise and breathes the clear morning air, and without thinking about it picks up his hoe and goes out into the field. What does this have to do with pain? When obstacles come between the impulses and their fulfillment, this may give rise to a feeling of pain. Otherwise, how is it painful? The impulse to fulfill one’s hopes can only fill one with pleasure.
This paragraph is the conclusion of this section. | Thus, I do not believe that feelings, be they pleasure or pain, are the cause of action. For action in the basic sense, impulse and the will are primary, and feelings are secondary. The feeling of pleasure is a phenomenon that occurs when the will achieves its goal, and pain is the phenomenon that occurs when the will is unable to achieve its objective. This is what biology teaches, as I shall show presently, (pp. 54–57; Thilly 255–58)
This is the reason for our love of change, our sense of curiosity. Human beings cannot be without change for long. | 2. On the function of pain as a goal of human impulses. ... If all the causes of pain, all danger, all resistance, all failures, were to be avoided, then struggle, competition, the feeling of adventure, the longing for battle, the joy of victory and the loathing of defeat would all be eliminated. This is a natural principle. But we would then inevitably be terribly bored by satisfaction without obstacles, by success without resistance, as we are with a game that we always win. If a chess player knows that he will win every game, he takes no pleasure in the match. If the hunter knew that every shot would hit its mark, he would take no pleasure in the hunt. What makes the chess game or the hunt fun is the fact that the outcome cannot be anticipated, that victory or defeat, winning or losing, cannot be predicted, otherwise they would be of no interest. Human life, too, is like this.... (p. 58; Thilly 260)
This is true. | 3. Using the laws of biology to confirm the hedonistic view.... ... Biology says that pleasure attracts us, just as pain serves as a warning. Pain shows us what lessens life, while pleasure shows us what furthers life. The one warns us to flee, while the other guides us forward. The two may be said to be the primitive forms of the knowledge of good and bad.

### Young Mao’s Social-Anarchist Writings

#### The Great Union of the Popular Masses: Part I (July 21, 1919)

The decadence of the state, the sufferings of humanity, and the darkness of society have all reached an extreme. Where is the method of improvement and reform? Education, industrialization, strenuous efforts, rapid progress, destruction, and construction are, to be sure, all right, but there is a basic method for carrying out all these undertakings, which is that of the great union of the popular masses.

If we look at the course of history as a whole, we find that all the movements which have occurred throughout history, of whatever type they may be, have all without exception resulted from the union of a certain number of people. A greater movement requires a greater union, and the greatest movement requires the greatest union. All such unions are more likely to appear in a time of reform and resistance. In all hitherto existing cases of reform and resistance in religion, science, politics, and society, the partisans on both sides necessarily had their great unions. Victory and defeat are decided by the solidity or fragility of the unions on each side, and by whether the ideologies which serve as their foundation are new or old, true or ill-founded. Both sides, however, are alike in that they must employ the technique of union.

Among the various unions that have existed since antiquity, those of the oppressors, the aristocrats, and the capitalists have been most numerous. For example, the various “alliances” and “ententes” in foreign relations are unions of the world’s great powers. The so-called “Beiyang Faction” and “Southwestern Faction” in our country, and the Satsuma and Choshu clans in Japan,[702] are unions of oppressors within a country. The political parties and legislative assemblies in various countries are unions of aristocrats and capitalists. (The upper house or senate is naturally a lair where aristocrats gather, similarly, the lower house, because of the property qualifications for the vote, is largely occupied by capitalists.) As for the so-called trusts (railroad trust, oil trust) and companies (Nippon

Yusen Kaisha, the Manchurian Railway Company), they are purely capitalist unions. In recent times, the union of the oppressors, the aristocrats, and the capitalists has reached an extreme, and in consequence the decadence of the state, the sufferings of humanity, and the darkness of society have also reached an extreme. It is then that reform and resistance arise; it is then that the great union of the popular masses is called into being.

After the victory of “political reform” had been obtained in France by the opposition of the great union of the popular masses to the great union of the adherents of the monarchy, many countries followed the French example and undertook all sorts of “political reforms.” After the victory of “social reform” had been obtained last year in Russia,[703] by the opposition of the great union of the popular masses to the great union of the aristocracy and the great union of the capitalists, many countries — Hungary, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Germany — likewise followed the Russian example and undertook all sorts of social reforms. Although this victory is not yet complete, it may certainly become so, and it is also conceivable that it will spread throughout the whole world.

Why is the great union of the popular masses so terribly effective? Because the popular masses in any country are necessarily more numerous than the aristocracy, the capitalists, and the other oppressors in a single country. Since the aristocrats, capitalists, and other oppressors are few in number, they rely, in order to maintain their own special interests and to exploit the collective assets of the majority of ordinary people, first on knowledge, second on money, and third on military force. Education in the past was the privilege of the aristocrats and capitalists; the ordinary people had absolutely no opportunity to get any. Since they were the only ones who had knowledge, there arose the classes of the wise and of the ignorant. Money is the intermediary in life. Originally, everyone could get it, but those aristocrats and capitalists with their knowledge thought up various methods for something called “the concentration of capital,” and as a result the money gradually flowed into the hands of the landlords and the factory bosses. They took all the land, machines, and houses for themselves, baptizing them “real property.” They also took the money, which they called movable property, and stored it up in their treasure-houses (the banks). Thus the millions of ordinary people who worked for them had, in contrast, nothing but a meager salary of a franc or a penny. Since those who worked had no money, the classes of the rich and the poor emerged. Having knowledge and money, the aristocrats and the capitalists set up military camps to train soldiers, and factories to make guns. Making use of the signboard of “foreign outrages,” they recruit dozens of divisions and hundreds of companies. They have even gone so far as to invent a method for levying more troops known as “conscription.” This means that strong vigorous sons become soldiers, and when a problem arises, they take their machine guns and go attack their feeble old fathers. For example, if we look at what happened last year, when the defeated southern army was retreating from southern Hunan, did they not kill a great many of their own fathers? When the aristocrats and capitalists employ such admirable schemes, the common people are even more afraid to raise their voices. Thus the classes of the strong and the weak emerge.

Now, it happens that these very three methods of theirs gradually cause the common people to learn a good deal in their turn. The common people, too, read a bit of these textbooks which they have made their “secret pillow books,” and gradually acquire knowledge. As for the land and factories which are the source of their wealth, the common people have long been entombed in them, and look with envy on the comfort of the capitalists, wanting to have a finger in the pie themselves. Even the soldiers in the military camps are, after all, their sons, brothers, or husbands. Should the soldiers turn their machine guns against them, they will let out a big shout, and at this their bullets will immediately turn to mud. Spontaneously they will join hands and turn the other way instead, becoming together valiant fighters resisting the aristocrats and the capitalists. We have, in fact, seen Russia’s hundred thousand brave warriors suddenly exchange the imperial standard for the red flag, and from this we may know that there is deep truth in what I say.

Thus the common people have seen through the three methods of the aristocrats and the capitalists, and they have also perceived that in order to apply these methods, the aristocrats and capitalists employ the technique of union. The common people are also conscious of the fact that the number on the other side is so small, and the number on our side is so big. Thus we must unite on a very large scale. As to the actions which should be undertaken once we have united, there is one extremely violent party, which uses the method “Do unto others as they do unto you”[704] to struggle desperately to the end with the aristocrats and capitalists. The leader of this party is a man named Marx who was bom in Germany. There is another party more moderate than that of Marx. It does not expect rapid results, but begins by understanding the common people. Men should all have a morality of mutual aid, and work voluntarily. As for the aristocrats and capitalists, it suffices that they repent and turn toward the good, and that they be able to work and to help people rather than harming them; it is not necessary to kill them. The ideas of this party are broader and more far-reaching. They want to unite the whole globe into a single country, unite the human race in a single family, and attain together in peace, happiness, and friendship — not friendship as understood by the Japanese — an age of prosperity. The leader of this party is a man named Kropotkin, who was born in Russia.

We must know that the affairs of this world are, in themselves, very easy to deal with. If there are cases when they are not easy to deal with, this is because of the difficulties caused by the force of history — habit. If we can only give a shout together, we will shatter this force of history. Let us forge an even greater union, coming together as we have never thought possible, and then we will draw up our ranks and give a great shout at the opposing side. We already have experience: the bullets of Lu Rongting[705] will never overcome traitors like Cao Rulin.[706] As soon as we arise and let out a shout, the traitors will get up and tremble and flee for their lives. We must know that our brothers of other lands have often employed this method to secure their interests. We must arise and imitate them; we must carry out our great union!

#### Part II: Taking Small Unions as the Foundation (July 28, 1919)

In the previous issue of this paper, I have already concluded my discussion of the possibility and the necessity of the “great union of the popular masses.” In the present issue, I shall consider what method we should employ for carrying out this great union. The method is that of “small democratic unions.”

If we truly want to achieve a great union, in order to resist the powerful people confronting us who harm their fellow men, and in order to pursue our own interests, we must necessarily have all sorts of small unions to serve as its foundation. The human race has an innate talent for uniting together, that is to say, a talent for constituting groups, a talent for organizing societies. “Groups” and “societies” are precisely the “unions” I am talking about. There are big groups and small groups, big societies and small societies, big unions and small unions — they are merely different names for the same thing. So if we want to establish groups, societies, unions, it is because we are desirous of securing our common interests. Because our circumstances and professions are different, there are also some differences, large or small, in the sphere of our common interests. Because there are differences, large or small, in our common interests, the method (union) for securing our common interests also displays certain differences, large or small.

Gentlemen! We are peasants, and so we want to establish a union with others who cultivate the land as we do, in order to promote the various interests of us tillers of the soil. It is only we ourselves who can pursue the interests of us tillers of the soil; others who do not cultivate the soil have interests different from ours and will certainly not help us to seek our interests. Gentlemen who cultivate the land! How do the landlords treat us? Are the rents and taxes heavy or light? Are our houses satisfactory or not? Are our bellies full or not? Is there enough land? Are there not some in the village who have no land to cultivate? We must constantly seek solutions to all these problems. We must establish a union with others like ourselves, to seek clear and effective solutions.

Gentlemen! We are workers. We wish to form a union with others who work like ourselves, in order to promote the various interests of us workers. We cannot fail to seek a solution to such problems concerning us workers as the level of our wages, the length of the working day, the equal or unequal sharing of bonuses, or the progress of recreation facilities. We cannot but establish a union with those like ourselves to seek clear and effective solutions to each of these problems.

Gentlemen! We are students. Our lives are extremely bitter; the professors who teach us treat us like criminals, humiliate us like slaves, lock us up like prisoners. The windows in our classrooms are so tiny that the light does not reach the blackboard, so that we become “nearsighted.” The desks are extremely ill-adapted, and if we sit in them for very long we get “curvature of the spine.” The professors are interested only in making us read a lot of books, and we do read a great many of them, but we don’t understand any of it, we merely exercise our memories to no good purpose. Our eyes are blurred, our brains are confused, our blood supply is insufficient, our faces are ashen and we become “anaemic.” We become “feebleminded.” Why are we so lethargic, so lacking in vivacity, so withered? Oh! It is all because the professors force us to refrain from moving or speaking out. And so we become “petrified unto death.” And yet this bodily suffering is only secondary, gentlemen! Look at our laboratories! How cramped they are! How lacking in equipment! Only a few worn out instruments, so that we cannot conduct experiments. Our teachers of Chinese are such obstinate pedants. They are constantly mouthing expressions such as “We read in the Book of Odes” [Shi yun], or “The Master says” [zi yue], but when you come right down to it, the fact is that they don’t understand a word. They are not aware that this is already the twentieth century, and they still compel us to observe the “old rites” and to follow the “old regulations.” They forcibly impregnate our minds with a lot of stinking corpse-like dead writings full of classical allusions. Our reading room is empty. Our recreation room is filthy. The country is about to perish, and yet they still stick up proclamations forbidding us to love our country. Just see, for example, what great favor they have shown to the present movement of national salvation! Alas! Who is it that has frustrated us and made us unhappy in both body and mind? If we do not unite in order to attend to our own “self-instruction,” then what are we waiting for? We are already sunk in an ocean of suffering, and we demand that attention be given to the means for saving ourselves. The “self-instruction” invented by Rousseau is most appropriate for this purpose. We will unite with as many comrades as possible and study by ourselves. As for those professors who bite people, we must not rely on them. If an event occurs such as the present trampling on our rights by the oppressors of Japan and of our own country, then we will marshal our forces and direct at them a great and powerful shout.

Gentlemen! We are women. We are sunk even more deeply in an ocean of suffering! We are also human beings, so why won’t they let us take part in politics? We are also human beings, so why won’t they let us participate in social intercourse? We are gathered together in our various separate dens, and we are not even allowed to go outside the front gate. The shameless men, the villainous men, make us into their playthings, and force us to prostitute ourselves to them indefinitely. The devils, who destroy the freedom to love! The devils, who destroy the sacredness of love! They keep us surrounded all day long, but so-called “chastity” is confined to us women! The “temples to virtuous women” are scattered all over the place, but where are the “pagodas to chaste men”? Among us there are some who are gathered together in schools for women, but those who teach us there are also a bunch of shameless and villainous men. All day long they talk about something called being “a worthy mother and a good wife.” What is this but teaching us to prostitute ourselves indefinitely to the same man? They are afraid that we will not allow ourselves to be fettered, so they intensify their indoctrination. O bitterness! Bitterness! Spirit of freedom! Where are you? Come quickly and save us! Today we are awakened! We want to establish a union of us women! We want to sweep away all those devils who rape us and destroy the liberty of our minds and of our bodies!

Gentlemen! We are primary school teachers. All day long we teach; we are terribly busy! All day long we eat chalk dust, and yet we have no place to relax. In a big city like this, there are several hundred, if not several thousand, primary school teachers, and yet there is no place of recreation specifically set aside for our use. If we are to teach, we must constantly increase our knowledge, and yet there is no study organization set up for our use. There are so many periods when we must go to teach precisely as the bell rings, we have absolutely no time left over, no energy left over, to study and acquire knowledge — our spirits are simply not up to it! Thus we turn into phonographs, doing nothing all day long but putting on a performance of the lectures correctly transmitted which the teachers of former days taught to us. Our bellies are hungry. Our monthly salaries are 8 or 10 yuan, and even on this there are deductions. Moreover, there are some of these gentlemen among the principals who imitate the method of “reducing the soldiers* pay” and take the money provided by the government to line their own pockets. Because we have no money, we find ourselves moreover in the position of widowers with wives. We and our beloved wives live in solitude, separated by several tens or hundreds of li, gazing toward one another. According to educational theory, teaching students in a primary school is the task of a lifetime; they can hardly expect us in addition to spend all our lives as widowers and widows, can they? According to educational theory, the teachers’ families should live at the school if they are to serve as a model for the students, but today this is not possible. Because we have no money, we can’t buy books either, nor can we travel and observe the world. There is no use saying any more. Primary school teachers are in all respects slaves, and that’s all there is to it! If we want to cease to be slaves, there is no way save to unite with others like ourselves and to realize a primary school teachers’ union.

Gentlemen! We are policemen. We also wish to unite with others like ourselves in order to realize a union which will benefit our bodies and our minds. The Japanese say that those whose lives are hardest are beggars, primary school teachers, and policemen. We are also inclined to feel somewhat the same.

Gentlemen! We are rickshaw boys. All day we pull our rickshaws until the sweat pours down like rain! The rent which goes to the owners of the rickshaws is so much! The fares we get are so small! How can we make a living? Is there not some way for us to form a union too?

The foregoing are the lamentations of the peasants, workers, students, women, primary-school teachers, rickshaw boys, and others of all sorts. They are unable to bear such hardship, and so they want to set up all sorts of small unions adapted to their interests.

Hitherto I have been talking about various small unions, such as the union of the workers. This is still a very broad and general term. If one goes into greater detail, such organizations as the following correspond to the lowest level of small unions:

- Union of railway workers

- Union of mine workers

- Union of telegraph employees

- Union of telephone employees

- Union of shipbuilding workers, union of merchant sailors

- Union of metal workers

- Union of textile workers

- Union of tram workers

- Union of rickshaw boys

- Union of construction workers ...

The workers in various Western countries all have small associations of the workers in each trade and industry. Everywhere there are to be found such organizations as the association of transport workers, the association of tram workers, etc. From many small unions one advances to form a great union, and from the many great unions, one advances to form the greatest union. It is thus that what are called “federations” or “alliances” come into being one after another. Because common interests are limited to a small part of the people, it is small unions that are set up. The interests of many small unions have points in common, so it is possible to set up big unions. For example, the pursuit of learning is the particular concern of us students, so we set up our unions for the pursuit of learning. Such things, on the other hand, as the pursuit of liberation and freedom are the concern of eveiyone, whoever he may be, and therefore people of every kind must be brought together to form a great union.

Thus, the great union must begin with small unions. We must arise and follow the example of our brothers in other lands. We must promote many, many small unions of our own.

#### Part III: The Present Status of China’s “Great Union of the Popular Masses” (August 4, 1919)

In the previous two issues of this paper, I have already discussed (1) the possibility and necessity of the great union of the popular masses, and (2) the fact that the great union of the popular masses must begin by taking small unions as its foundation. In continuing today my discussion of the great union of the popular masses of our country, I shall consider such questions as: Do we, in the last analysis, have the requisite consciousness? Do we have the requisite motive force? Do we have the requisite capacity? Can we succeed?

1. In the final analysis, do we have the requisite consciousness regarding the “great union of the popular masses” in our country? The 1911 revolution had the appearance of a union of the popular masses, but in reality it was not so. The 1911 revolution was the work of Chinese students abroad, who initially showed the way, of the Gelaohui, which responded with enthusiasm to their call, and of a few soldiers of the New Army and of the provincial forces who fought with their swords and crossbows. It had no connection whatsoever with the great majority of us popular masses. Although we approved of their principles, we nevertheless did not act. Nor did they need us to act. And yet we have acquired a certain level of consciousness. We know that even sage emperors (such as Wen and Wu) can be overthrown. Moreover, democracy, the great rebel [dani budao] can be established. If we have something we want to say or do, we can say or do it at any time. Following the 1911 revolution, we overthrew another emperor, the Hong- xian Emperor,[707] in 1916. Although this was still the work of a minority, once again we became conscious of the fact that the Hongxian Emperor, with all his awesome majesty, could nevertheless in fact be overthrown. And when we come down to the last few years, with the wars between the South and the North, and the World War, things have changed even more. As a result of the wars between the North and the South, it has been demonstrated even more irrefutably how the bureaucrats, military men, and politicians harm, poison, and mutilate us. As a result of the World War and the bitterness of their lives, the popular masses in various countries have suddenly undertaken all sorts of action. In Russia, they have overthrown the aristocrats and driven out the rich, and the toilers and peasants have jointly set up a Soviet government. The army of the red flag surges forward in the East and in the West, sweeping away numerous enemies. The countries of the Entente have been transformed as a result, and the whole world has been shaken. Hungary has risen up, and a new toilers’ and peasants’ government has also appeared in Budapest. The Germans, Austrians, and Czechs have done the same, exerting their utmost strength in the battle with the enemy party within each country. The raging torrent advances in the West, and then turns eastward. After many great strikes in England, France, Italy, and America, several great revolutions have also taken place in India and Korea. New forces have arisen, and within the area enclosed by the Great Wall and the China Sea, the May Fourth movement has broken out. Its banner has advanced southward, across the Yellow River to the Yangzi. From Guangzhou to Hankou, many real-life dramas are enacted; from Lake Dongting to the Min River, the tide rises ever higher. Heaven and earth are aroused by it, the wicked are put to flight by it! Ha! We know it! We are awakened! The world is ours, the state is ours, society is ours. If we do not speak, who will speak? If we do not act, who will act? We must act energetically to carry out the great union of the popular masses, which will not brook a moment’s delay!

2. Is there already the requisite motive force for the great union of the popular masses of our country? To this question I answer directly, “Yes.” If you gentlemen do not believe it, listen to what I have to say.

If we wish to go back to the source of the union of the popular masses of our country, we must look to the establishment of the provincial assemblies at the end of the Qing dynasty, and to the organization of the Revolutionary Party — the Tongmenghui. The provincial assemblies having been established, the assemblies of the various provinces allied themselves to petition for the early opening of a parliament. The Revolutionary Party having been established, it called on all those within and without the country to raise troops to fight the Manchus. The 1911 revolution was a drama entitled “Swallowing the Yellow Dragon” played in concert by the Revolutionary Party and the provincial assemblies. Afterward, the Revolutionary Party turned into the Nationalist Party [Guomindang], and the provincial assemblies turned into the Progressive Party [Jinbudang]; such was the origin of political parties among our Chinese people. From this time forward, the Republic was established, the central government convoked a parliament, and the various provinces also called together provincial assemblies. At this time, each province also set up three other bodies: a provincial education association, a provincial chamber of commerce, and a provincial agricultural association. (There are a number of provinces that have a provincial industrial association; in several of them, it is combined with the agricultural association, as in Hunan.) At the same time, each xian also set up a xian education association, a xian chamber of commerce, and a xian agricultural association. (There are a few xian that don’t have them.) This constitutes a very firm and powerful kind of union. In addition, bodies of various kinds have been set up according to the circumstances and position of each category of people, such as:

- Associations of alumni of various schools

- Associations of fellow villagers traveling outside their native places [Tongxianghui]

- General associations and branch associations of Chinese students abroad

- The General Association of Shanghai Newspapers

- The World Association of Chinese Students

- The associations of students [returned] from Europe and America in Beijing and Shanghai

- The Sino-French Educational Association in Beijing.

- The various study societies such as the Self-Strengthening Society [Qiangxuehui], the Christian Literature Society [Guangxuehui], the Southern Study Society [Nanxuehui], the Aspiration Society [Shangzhixuehui], the Chinese Professional and Educational Society, the Chinese Scientific Society, the General Association of Asian Culture....

- The various professional associations (of the various branches and professions of industry and commerce), such as the Banking Association, the Rice Dealers’ Association....

- The study societies in various schools, such as the Society for the Study of Painting and the Society for the Study of Philosophy at Beijing University —there are dozens of them....

- The various clubs....

All these are products of the recent flowering [kaifang] of political and intellectual activity, which were not allowed to exist and could not have existed in the era of autocracy. The examples listed above are all very simple, more or less like the “small unions” referred to in the previous issue of this paper. It is only recently, because of political disorder and foreign oppression and the resulting rise in consciousness, that there has been a motive for establishing great unions. Such organizations as the following all belong to this category:

- National Federation of Educational Associations

- National Federation of Chambers of Commerce

- The Guangzhou union of seventy-two guilds [hang], the Shanghai union of fifty-three public bodies

- Union of Commercial, Educational, and Industrial Journals

- National Union of Journalists

- National Association for Promoting Peace [Hepingjichenghui]

- National Union for Peace [Hepinglianhehui]

- Sino-French Association in Beijing

- Citizens’ Association for Foreign Affairs

- The Hunan Reconstruction [shanhou] Association (in Shanghai)

- The Shandong Association (in Shanghai)

- United students’ associations in Beijing, Shanghai, and various other places

- The Union of All Circles, the National Union of Students....

All such associations, societies, clubs, general associations, unions must inevitably include a considerable number of gentry [shenshi] and “politicians” who do not belong to the popular masses (such organizations as the parliament, the provincial assemblies, the provincial educational associations, the provincial agricultural associations, the National Association for Promoting Peace, the National Union for Peace, etc., are entirely associations of gentry or of politicians), but the associations of the various professions and industries, and the various study and research societies, are purely groupings of common people or of scholars. As for the recently created United Students’ Association, Union of All Circles, etc., they are even more purely great unions of the popular masses, who have risen up to resist the oppressors within and without the country, and in my opinion, the motive force for the great union of the popular masses of China is to be found precisely here.

3. Do we really have the capacity to carry out the “great union of the popular masses” in our country? Can we really succeed in this? When we come to talk about capacity, then some doubts may well be expressed. Hitherto the people of our country have known only individually run enterprises, with the unworthy aim of maximizing individual gain. Those engaged in business did not know how to set up a company; those engaged in labor did not know how to set up a Labor Party; those engaged in studies knew only the old method of working alone in one’s closet, and not joint research. Organized undertakings on a large scale were something of which the people of our country were quite simply incapable. As for how badly our political affairs were managed, that goes without saying. If there was a degree of success in the postal service and the salt monopoly, it was thanks to the foreigners. The prohibition of oceangoing trade has been lifted for such a long time, and still we have not even one little boat going to Europe. Even the few lone countrywide undertakings such as the “China Merchants’ Steamship Company” and the “Hanyeping Mines” show capital losses every year, and when the losses are too great they call on investment from abroad. On all those railroads managed by foreigners, the standard of cleanliness, equipment, and service is bound to be a bit better. As soon as a railroad comes under the control of the Ministry of Transport, it goes to pot [zaogao]. Among those who ride on the Beijing-Hankou, Tianjin-Pukou, and Wuchang-Changsha railroads, there is none who does not snort with contempt and gnash his teeth. Moreover, such things as schools are not well run, self-government is not well implemented, and even a single family or the life of an individual is not well ordered. It is all very much the same, monotonously uniform. Is it not all too easy, then, to talk about the great union of the popular masses? Is it so easy to stand up and resist the deeply entrenched and well-established oppressors? Although things are like this, we are not at all fundamentally incapable. There is a reason for our lack of capacity, namely, “We have had no practice.”

In reality, for thousands of years the Chinese people of several hundred millions all led a life of slaves. Only one person, the “emperor,” was not a slave (or rather one could say that even he was a slave of “Heaven”). When the emperor was in control of everything, we were not allowed to exercise our capacities. Whether in politics, study, society, or any other domain, we were not allowed to have either thought, organization, or practice.

Today things are different, and in every domain we demand liberation. Ideological liberation, political liberation, economic liberation, liberation [in the relations between] men and women, educational liberation are all going to burst from the deep inferno where they have been confined and demand to look at the blue sky. Our Chinese people possesses great inherent capacities! The more profound the oppression, the more powerful its reaction, and since this has been accumulating for a long time, it will surely burst forth quickly. I venture to make a singular assertion: one day, the reform of the Chinese people will be more profound than that of any other people, and the society of the Chinese people will be more radiant than that of any other people. The great union of the Chinese people will be achieved earlier than that of any other place or people. Gentlemen! Gentlemen! We must all exert ourselves! We must all advance with the utmost strength! Our golden age, our age of glory and splendor, lies before us!

### Mao’s Later Authoritarian Communist Writings

#### On the Relation Between Knowledge and Practice, Between Knowing and Doing (July 1937)

Source: <https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_16.htm>

Note: The editorial team of the People’s Publishing House, Beijing which published the selected works of Mao Zedong, commenting in their note while reproducing Mao’s lecture entitled On Practice stated the following:

> There used to be a number of comrades in our Party who were dogmatists and who for a long period rejected the experience of the Chinese revolution, denying the truth that “Marxism is not a dogma but a guide to action” and overawing people with words and phrases from Marxist works, torn out of context. There were also a number of comrades who were empiricists and who for a long period restricted themselves to their own fragmentary experience and did not understand the importance of theory for revolutionary practice or see the revolution as a whole, but worked blindly though industriously. The erroneous ideas of these two types of comrades, and particularly of the dogmatists, caused enormous losses to the Chinese revolution during 1931–34, and yet the dogmatists cloaking themselves as Marxists, confused a great many comrades. “On Practice” was written in order to expose the subjectivist errors of dogmatism and empiricism in the Party, and especially the error of dogmatism, from the standpoint of the Marxist theory of knowledge. It was entitled “On Practice” because its stress was on exposing the dogmatist kind of subjectivism, which belittles practice. The ideas contained in this essay were presented by Comrade Mao Tse-tung in a lecture at the Anti-Japanese Military and Political College in Yenan.

Before Marx, materialism examined the problem of knowledge apart from the social nature of man and apart from his historical development, and was therefore incapable of understanding the dependence of knowledge on social practice, that is, the dependence of knowledge on production and the class struggle.

Above all, Marxists regard man’s activity in production as the most fundamental practical activity, the determinant of all his other activities. Man’s knowledge depends mainly on his activity in material production, through which he comes gradually to understand the phenomena, the properties and the laws of nature, and the relations between himself and nature; and through his activity in production he also gradually comes to understand, in varying degrees, certain relations that exist between man and man. None of this knowledge can be acquired apart from activity in production. In a classless society every person, as a member of society, joins in common effort with the other members, enters into definite relations of production with them and engages in production to meet man’s material needs. In all class societies, the members of the different social classes also enter, in different ways, into definite relations of production and engage in production to meet their material needs. This is the primary source from which human knowledge develops.

Man’s social practice is not confined to activity in production, but takes many other forms--class struggle, political life, scientific and artistic pursuits; in short, as a social being, man participates in all spheres of the practical life of society. Thus man, in varying degrees, comes to know the different relations between man and man, not only through his material life but also through his political and cultural life (both of which are intimately bound up with material life). Of these other types of social practice, class struggle in particular, in all its various forms, exerts a profound influence on the development of man’s knowledge. In class society everyone lives as a member of a particular class, and every kind of thinking, without exception, is stamped with the brand of a class.

Marxists hold that in human society activity in production develops step by step from a lower to a higher level and that consequently man’s knowledge, whether of nature or of society, also develops step by step from a lower to a higher level, that is, from the shallower to the deeper, from the one-sided to the many-sided. For a very long period in history, men were necessarily confined to a one-sided understanding of the history of society because, for one thing, the bias of the exploiting classes always distorted history and, for another, the small scale of production limited man’s outlook. It was not until the modern proletariat emerged along with immense forces of production (large-scale industry) that man was able to acquire a comprehensive, historical understanding of the development of society and turn this knowledge into a science, the science of Marxism.

Marxists hold that man’s social practice alone is the criterion of the truth of his knowledge of the external world. What actually happens is that man’s knowledge is verified only when he achieves the anticipated results in the process of social practice (material production, class struggle or scientific experiment). If a man wants to succeed in his work, that is, to achieve the anticipated results, he must bring his ideas into correspondence with the laws of the objective external world; if they do not correspond, he will fail in his practice. After he fails, he draws his lessons, corrects his ideas to make them correspond to the laws of the external world, and can thus turn failure into success; this is what is meant by “failure is the mother of success” and “a fall into the pit, a gain in your wit”. The dialectical-materialist theory of knowledge places practice in the primary position, holding that human knowledge can in no way be separated from practice and repudiating all the erroneous theories which deny the importance of practice or separate knowledge from practice. Thus Lenin said, “Practice is higher than (theoretical) knowledge, for it has not only the dignity of universality, but also of immediate actuality.”[60] The Marxist philosophy of dialectical materialism has two outstanding characteristics. One is its class nature: it openly avows that dialectical materialism is in the service of the proletariat. The other is its practicality: it emphasizes the dependence of theory on practice, emphasizes that theory is based on practice and in turn serves practice. The truth of any knowledge or theory is determined not by subjective feelings, but by objective results in social practice. Only social practice can be the criterion of truth. The standpoint of practice is the primary and basic standpoint in the dialectical materialist theory of knowledge. [61]

But how then does human knowledge arise from practice and in turn serve practice? This will become clear if we look at the process of development of knowledge.

In the process of practice, man at first sees only the phenomenal side, the separate aspects, the external relations of things. For instance, some people from outside come to Yenan on a tour of observation. In the first day or two, they see its topography, streets and houses; they meet many people, attend banquets, evening parties and mass meetings, hear talk of various kinds and read various documents, all these being the phenomena, the separate aspects and the external relations of things. This is called the perceptual stage of cognition, namely, the stage of sense perceptions and impressions. That is, these particular things in Yenan act on the sense organs of the members of the observation group, evoke sense perceptions and give rise in their brains to many impressions together with a rough sketch of the external relations among these impressions: this is the first stage of cognition. At this stage, man cannot as yet form concepts, which are deeper, or draw logical conclusions.

As social practice continues, things that give rise to man’s sense perceptions and impressions in the course of his practice are repeated many times; then a sudden change (leap) takes place in the brain in the process of cognition, and concepts are formed. Concepts are no longer the phenomena, the separate aspects and the external relations of things; they grasp the essence, the totality and the internal relations of things. Between concepts and sense perceptions there is not only a quantitative but also a qualitative difference. Proceeding further, by means of judgement and inference one is able to draw logical conclusions. The expression in San Kuo Yen Yi, [62] “knit the brows and a stratagem comes to mind”, or in everyday language, “let me think it over”, refers to man’s use of concepts in the brain to form judgements and inferences. This is the second stage of cognition. When the members of the observation group have collected various data and, what is more, have “thought them over”, they are able to arrive at the judgement that “the Communist Party’s policy of the National United Front Against Japan is thorough, sincere and genuine”. Having made this judgement, they can, if they too are genuine about uniting to save the nation, go a step further and draw the following conclusion, “The National United Front Against Japan can succeed.” This stage of conception, judgement and inference is the more important stage in the entire process of knowing a thing; it is the stage of rational knowledge. The real task of knowing is, through perception, to arrive at thought, to arrive step by step at the comprehension of the internal contradictions of objective things, of their laws and of the internal relations between one process and another, that is, to arrive at logical knowledge. To repeat, logical knowledge differs from perceptual knowledge in that perceptual knowledge pertains to the separate aspects, the phenomena and the external relations of things, whereas logical knowledge takes a big stride forward to reach the totality, the essence and the internal relations of things and discloses the inner contradictions in the surrounding world. Therefore, logical knowledge is capable of grasping the development of the surrounding world in its totality, in the internal relations of all its aspects.

This dialectical-materialist theory of the process of development of knowledge, basing itself on practice and proceeding from the shallower to the deeper, was never worked out by anybody before the rise of Marxism. Marxist materialism solved this problem correctly for the first time, pointing out both materialistically and dialectically the deepening movement of cognition, the movement by which man in society progresses from perceptual knowledge to logical knowledge in his complex, constantly recurring practice of production and class struggle. Lenin said, “The abstraction of matter, of a law of nature, the abstraction of value, etc., in short, all scientific (correct, serious, not absurd) abstractions reflect nature more deeply, truly and completely.” [63] Marxism-Leninism holds that each of the two stages in the process of cognition has its own characteristics, with knowledge manifesting itself as perceptual at the lower stage and logical at the higher stage, but that both are stages in an integrated process of cognition. The perceptual and the rational are qualitatively different, but are not divorced from each other; they are unified on the basis of practice. Our practice proves that what is perceived cannot at once be comprehended and that only what is comprehended can be more deeply perceived. Perception only solves the problem of phenomena; theory alone can solve the problem of essence. The solving of both these problems is not separable in the slightest degree from practice. Whoever wants to know a thing has no way of doing so except by coming into contact with it, that is, by living (practicing) in its environment. In feudal society it was impossible to know the laws of capitalist society in advance because capitalism had not yet emerged, the relevant practice was lacking. Marxism could be the product only of capitalist society. Marx, in the era of laissez-faire capitalism, could not concretely know certain laws peculiar to the era of imperialism beforehand, because imperialism, the last stage of capitalism, had not yet emerged and the relevant practice was lacking; only Lenin and Stalin could undertake this task. Leaving aside their genius, the reason why Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin could work out their theories was mainly that they personally took part in the practice of the class struggle and the scientific experimentation of their time; lacking this condition, no genius could have succeeded. The saying, “without stepping outside his gate the scholar knows all the wide world’s affairs”, was mere empty talk in past times when technology was undeveloped. Even though this saying can be valid in the present age of developed technology, the people with real personal knowledge are those engaged in practice the wide world over. And it is only when these people have come to “know” through their practice and when their knowledge has reached him through writing and technical media that the “scholar” can indirectly “know all the wide world’s affairs”. If you want to know a certain thing or a certain class of things directly, you must personally participate in the practical struggle to change reality, to change that thing or class of things, for only thus can you come into contact with them as phenomena; only through personal participation in the practical struggle to change reality can you uncover the essence of that thing or class of things and comprehend them. This is the path to knowledge which every man actually travels, though some people, deliberately distorting matters, argue to the contrary. The most ridiculous person in the world is the “know all” who picks up a smattering of hearsay knowledge and proclaims himself “the world’s Number One authority”; this merely shows that he has not taken a proper measure of himself. Knowledge is a matter of science, and no dishonesty or conceit whatsoever is permissible. What is required is definitely the reverse--honesty and modesty. If you want knowledge, you must take part in the practice of changing reality. If you want to know the taste of a pear, you must change the pear by eating it yourself. If you want to know the structure and properties of the atom, you must make physical and chemical experiments to change the state of the atom. If you want to know the theory and methods of revolution, you must take part in revolution. All genuine knowledge originates in direct experience. But one cannot have direct experience of everything; as a matter of fact, most of our knowledge comes from indirect experience, for example, all knowledge from past times and foreign lands. To our ancestors and to foreigners, such knowledge was--or is--a matter of direct experience, and this knowledge is reliable if in the course of their direct experience the requirement of “scientific abstraction”, spoken of by Lenin, was--or is--fulfilled and objective reality scientifically reflected, otherwise it is not reliable. Hence a man’s knowledge consists only of two parts, that which comes from direct experience and that which comes from indirect experience. Moreover, what is indirect experience for me is direct experience for other people. Consequently, considered as a whole, knowledge of any kind is inseparable from direct experience. All knowledge originates in perception of the objective external world through man’s physical sense organs. Anyone who denies such perception, denies direct experience, or denies personal participation in the practice that changes reality, is not a materialist. That is why the “know-all” is ridiculous. There is an old Chinese saying, “How can you catch tiger cubs without entering the tiger’s lair?” This saying holds true for man’s practice and it also holds true for the theory of knowledge. There can be no knowledge apart from practice.

To make clear the dialectical-materialist movement of cognition arising on the basis of the practice which changes reality--to make clear the gradually deepening movement of cognition--a few additional concrete examples are given below.

In its knowledge of capitalist society, the proletariat was only in the perceptual stage of cognition in the first period of its practice, the period of machine-smashing and spontaneous struggle; it knew only some of the aspects and the external relations of the phenomena of capitalism. The proletariat was then still a “class-in-itself”. But when it reached the second period of its practice, the period of conscious and organized economic and political struggles, the proletariat was able to comprehend the essence of capitalist society, the relations of exploitation between social classes and its own historical task; and it was able to do so because of its own practice and because of its experience of prolonged struggle, which Marx and Engels scientifically summed up in all its variety to create the theory of Marxism for the education of the proletariat. It was then that the proletariat became a “class-for-itself”.

Similarly with the Chinese people’s knowledge of imperialism. The first stage was one of superficial, perceptual knowledge, as shown in the indiscriminate anti-foreign struggles of the Movement of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, the Yi Ho Tuan Movement, and so on. It was only in the second stage that the Chinese people reached the stage of rational knowledge, saw the internal and external contradictions of imperialism and saw the essential truth that imperialism had allied itself with China’s comprador and feudal classes to oppress and exploit the great masses of the Chinese people. This knowledge began about the time of the May 4th Movement of 1919.

Next, let us consider war. If those who lead a war lack experience of war, then at the initial stage they will not understand the profound laws pertaining to the directing of a specific war (such as our Agrarian Revolutionary War of the past decade). At the initial stage they will merely experience a good deal of fighting and, what is more, suffer many defeats. But this experience (the experience of battles won and especially of battles lost) enables them to comprehend the inner thread of the whole war, namely, the laws of that specific war, to understand its strategy and tactics, and consequently to direct the war with confidence. If, at such a moment, the command is turned over to an inexperienced person, then he too will have to suffer a number of defeats (gain experience) before he can comprehend the true laws of the war.

“I am not sure I can handle it.” We often hear this remark when a comrade hesitates to accept an assignment. Why is he unsure of himself? Because he has no systematic understanding of the content and circumstances of the assignment, or because he has had little or no contact with such work, and so the laws governing it are beyond him. After a detailed analysis of the nature and circumstances of the assignment, he will feel more sure of himself and do it willingly. If he spends some time at the job and gains experience and if he is a person who is willing to look into matters with an open mind and not one who approaches problems subjectively, one-sidedly and superficially, then he can draw conclusions for himself as to how to go about the job and do it with much more courage. Only those who are subjective, one-sided and superficial in their approach to problems will smugly issue orders or directives the moment they arrive on the scene, without considering the circumstances, without viewing things in their totality (their history and their present state as a whole) and without getting to the essence of things (their nature and the internal relations between one thing and another). Such people are bound to trip and fall.

Thus it can be seen that the first step in the process of cognition is contact with the objects of the external world; this belongs to the stage of perception. The second step is to synthesize the data of perception by arranging and reconstructing them; this belongs to the stage of conception, judgement and inference. It is only when the data of perception are very rich (not fragmentary) and correspond to reality (are not illusory) that they can be the basis for forming correct concepts and theories.

Here two important points must be emphasized. The first, which has been stated before but should be repeated here, is the dependence of rational knowledge upon perceptual knowledge. Anyone who thinks that rational knowledge need not be derived from perceptual knowledge is an idealist. In the history of philosophy there is the “rationalist” school that admits the reality only of reason and not of experience, believing that reason alone is reliable while perceptual experience is not; this school errs by turning things upside down. The rational is reliable precisely because it has its source in sense perceptions, other wise it would be like water without a source, a tree without roots, subjective, self-engendered and unreliable. As to the sequence in the process of cognition, perceptual experience comes first; we stress the significance of social practice in the process of cognition precisely because social practice alone can give rise to human knowledge and it alone can start man on the acquisition of perceptual experience from the objective world. For a person who shuts his eyes, stops his ears and totally cuts himself off from the objective world there can be no such thing as knowledge. Knowledge begins with experience--this is the materialism of the theory of knowledge.

The second point is that knowledge needs to be deepened, that the perceptual stage of knowledge needs to be developed to the rational stage--this is the dialectics of the theory of knowledge. [64] To think that knowledge can stop at the lower, perceptual stage and that perceptual knowledge alone is reliable while rational knowledge is not, would be to repeat the historical error of “empiricism”. This theory errs in failing to understand that, although the data of perception reflect certain realities in the objective world (I am not speaking here of idealist empiricism which confines experience to so-called introspection), they are merely one-sided and superficial, reflecting things incompletely and not reflecting their essence. Fully to reflect a thing in its totality, to reflect its essence, to reflect its inherent laws, it is necessary through the exercise of thought to reconstruct the rich data of sense perception, discarding the dross and selecting the essential, eliminating the false and retaining the true, proceeding from the one to the other and from the outside to the inside, in order to form a system of concepts and theories--it is necessary to make a leap from perceptual to rational knowledge. Such reconstructed knowledge is not more empty or more unreliable; on the contrary, whatever has been scientifically reconstructed in the process of cognition, on the basis of practice, reflects objective reality, as Lenin said, more deeply, more truly, more fully. As against this, vulgar “practical men” respect experience but despise theory, and therefore cannot have a comprehensive view of an entire objective process, lack clear direction and long-range perspective, and are complacent over occasional successes and glimpses of the truth. If such persons direct a revolution, they will lead it up a blind alley.

Rational knowledge depends upon perceptual knowledge and perceptual knowledge remains to be developed into rational knowledge-- this is the dialectical-materialist theory of knowledge. In philosophy, neither “rationalism” nor “empiricism” understands the historical or the dialectical nature of knowledge, and although each of these schools contains one aspect of the truth (here I am referring to materialist, not to idealist, rationalism and empiricism), both are wrong on the theory of knowledge as a whole. The dialectical-materialist movement of knowledge from the perceptual to the rational holds true for a minor process of cognition (for instance, knowing a single thing or task) as well as for a major process of cognition (for instance, knowing a whole society or a revolution).

But the movement of knowledge does not end here. If the dialectical-materialist movement of knowledge were to stop at rational knowledge, only half the problem would be dealt with. And as far as Marxist philosophy is concerned, only the less important half at that. Marxist philosophy holds that the most important problem does not lie in understanding the laws of the objective world and thus being able to explain it, but in applying the knowledge of these laws actively to change the world. From the Marxist viewpoint, theory is important, and its importance is fully expressed in Lenin’s statement, “Without revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement.” [65] But Marxism emphasizes the importance of theory precisely and only because it can guide action. If we have a correct theory but merely prate about it, pigeonhole it and do not put it into practice, then that theory, however good, is of no significance. Knowledge begins with practice, and theoretical knowledge is acquired through practice and must then return to practice. The active function of knowledge manifests itself not only in the active leap from perceptual to rational knowledge, but--and this is more important--it must manifest itself in the leap from rational knowledge to revolutionary practice. The knowledge which grasps the laws of the world, must be redirected to the practice of changing the world, must be applied anew in the practice of production, in the practice of revolutionary class struggle and revolutionary national struggle and in the practice of scientific experiment. This is the process of testing and developing theory, the continuation of the whole process of cognition. The problem of whether theory corresponds to objective reality is not, and cannot be, completely solved in the movement of knowledge from the perceptual to the rational, mentioned above. The only way to solve this problem completely is to redirect rational knowledge to social practice, apply theory to practice and see whether it can achieve the objectives one has in mind. Many theories of natural science are held to be true not only because they were so considered when natural scientists originated them, but because they have been verified in subsequent scientific practice. Similarly, Marxism-Leninism is held to be true not only because it was so considered when it was scientifically formulated by Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin but because it has been verified in the subsequent practice of revolutionary class struggle and revolutionary national struggle. Dialectical materialism is universally true because it is impossible for anyone to escape from its domain in his practice. The history of human knowledge tells us that the truth of many theories is incomplete and that this incompleteness is remedied through the test of practice. Many theories are erroneous and it is through the test of practice that their errors are corrected. That is why practice is the criterion of truth and why “the standpoint of life, of practice, should be first and fundamental in the theory of knowledge”.[66] Stalin has well said, “Theory becomes purposeless if it is not connected with revolutionary practice, just as practice gropes in the dark if its path is not illumined by revolutionary theory.” [67]

When we get to this point, is the movement of knowledge completed? Our answer is: it is and yet it is not. When men in society throw themselves into the practice of changing a certain objective process (whether natural or social) at a certain stage of its development, they can, as a result of the reflection of the objective process in their brains and the exercise of their subjective activity, advance their knowledge from the perceptual to the rational, and create ideas, theories, plans or programmes which correspond in general to the laws of that objective process. They then apply these ideas, theories, plans or programmes in practice in the same objective process. And if they can realize the aims they have in mind, that is, if in that same process of practice they can translate, or on the whole translate, those previously formulated ideas, theories, plans or programmes into fact, then the movement of knowledge may be considered completed with regard to this particular process. In the process of changing nature, take for example the fulfilment of an engineering plan, the verification of a scientific hypothesis, the manufacture of an implement or the reaping of a crop; or in the process of changing society, take for example the victory of a strike, victory in a war or the fulfilment of an educational plan. All these may be considered the realization of aims one has in mind. But generally speaking, whether in the practice of changing nature or of changing society, men’s original ideas, theories, plans or programmes are seldom realized without any alteration.

This is because people engaged in changing reality are usually subject to numerous limitations; they are limited not only by existing scientific and technological conditions but also by the development of the objective process itself and the degree to which this process has become manifest (the aspects and the essence of the objective process have not yet been fully revealed). In such a situation, ideas, theories, plans or programmes are usually altered partially and sometimes even wholly, because of the discovery of unforeseen circumstances in the course of practice. That is to say, it does happen that the original ideas, theories, plans or programmes fail to correspond with reality either in whole or in part and are wholly or partially incorrect. In many instances, failures have to be repeated many times before errors In knowledge can be corrected and correspondence with the laws of the objective process achieved, and consequently before the subjective can be transformed into the objective, or in other words, before the anticipated results can be achieved in practice. But when that point is reached, no matter how, the movement of human knowledge regarding a certain objective process at a certain stage of its development may be considered completed.

However, so far as the progression of the process is concerned, the movement of human knowledge is not completed. Every process, whether in the realm of nature or of society, progresses and develops by reason of its internal contradiction and struggle, and the movement of human knowledge should also progress and develop along with it. As far as social movements are concerned, true revolutionary leaders must not only be good at correcting their ideas, theories, plans or programmes when errors are discovered, as has been indicated above; but when a certain objective process has already progressed and changed from one stage of development to another, they must also be good at making themselves and all their fellow-revolutionaries progress and change in their subjective knowledge along with it, that IS to say, they must ensure that the proposed new revolutionary tasks and new working programmes correspond to the new changes in the situation. In a revolutionary period the situation changes very rapidly; if the knowledge of revolutionaries does not change rapidly in accordance with the changed situation, they will be unable to lead the revolution to victory.

It often happens, however, that thinking lags behind reality; this is because man’s cognition is limited by numerous social conditions. We are opposed to die-herds in the revolutionary ranks whose thinking fails to advance with changing objective circumstances and has manifested itself historically as Right opportunism. These people fail to see that the struggle of opposites has already pushed the objective process forward while their knowledge has stopped at the old stage. This is characteristic of the thinking of all die-herds. Their thinking is divorced from social practice, and they cannot march ahead to guide the chariot of society; they simply trail behind, grumbling that it goes too fast and trying to drag it back or turn it in the opposite direction.

We are also opposed to “Left” phrase-mongering. The thinking of “Leftists” outstrips a given stage of development of the objective process; some regard their fantasies as truth, while others strain to realize in the present an ideal which can only be realized in the future. They alienate themselves from the current practice of the majority of the people and from the realities of the day, and show themselves adventurist in their actions.

Idealism and mechanical materialism, opportunism and adventurism, are all characterized by the breach between the subjective and the objective, by the separation of knowledge from practice. The Marxist-Leninist theory of knowledge, characterized as it is by scientific social practice, cannot but resolutely oppose these wrong ideologies. Marxists recognize that in the absolute and general process of development of the universe, the development of each particular process is relative, and that hence, in the endless flow of absolute truth, man’s knowledge of a particular process at any given stage of development is only relative truth. The sum total of innumerable relative truths constitutes absolute truth. [68] The development of an objective process is full of contradictions and struggles, and so is the development of the movement of human knowledge. All the dialectical movements of the objective world can sooner or later be reflected in human knowledge. In social practice, the process of coming into being, developing and passing away is infinite, and so is the process of coming into being, developing and passing away in human knowledge. As man’s practice which changes objective reality in accordance with given ideas, theories, plans or programmes, advances further and further, his knowledge of objective reality likewise becomes deeper and deeper. The movement of change in the world of objective reality is never-ending and so is man’s cognition of truth through practice. Marxism-Leninism has in no way exhausted truth but ceaselessly opens up roads to the knowledge of truth in the course of practice. Our conclusion is the concrete, historical unity of the subjective and the objective, of theory and practice, of knowing ant doing, and we are opposed to all erroneous ideologies, whether “Left” or Right, which depart from concrete history.

In the present epoch of the development of society, the responsibility of correctly knowing and changing the world has been placed by history upon the shoulders of the proletariat and its party. This process, the practice of changing the world, which is determined in accordance with scientific knowledge, has already reached a historic moment in the world and in China, a great moment unprecedented in human history, that is, the moment for completely banishing darkness from the world and from China and for changing the world into a world of light such as never previously existed. The struggle of the proletariat and the revolutionary people to change the world comprises the fulfilment of the following tasks: to change the objective world and, at the same time, their own subjective world--to change their cognitive ability and change the relations between the subjective and the objective world. Such a change has already come about in one part of the globe, in the Soviet Union. There the people are pushing forward this process of change. The people of China and the rest of the world either are going through, or will go through, such a process. And the objective world which is to be changed also includes all the opponents of change, who, in order to be changed, must go through a stage of compulsion before they can enter the stage of voluntary, conscious change. The epoch of world communism will be reached when all mankind voluntarily and consciously changes itself and the world.

Discover the truth through practice, and again through practice verify and develop the truth. Start from perceptual knowledge and actively develop it into rational knowledge; then start from rational knowledge and actively guide revolutionary practice to change both the subjective and the objective world. Practice, knowledge, again practice, and again knowledge. This form repeats itself in endless cycles, and with each cycle the content of practice and knowledge rises to a higher level. Such is the whole of the dialectical-materialist theory of knowledge, and such is the dialectical-materialist theory of the unity of knowing and doing.

#### Combat Liberalism (September 7, 1937)

Source: <marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-2/mswv2_03.htm>

We stand for active ideological struggle because it is the weapon for ensuring unity within the Party and the revolutionary organizations in the interest of our fight. Every Communist and revolutionary should take up this weapon.

But liberalism rejects ideological struggle and stands for unprincipled peace, thus giving rise to a decadent, Philistine attitude and bringing about political degeneration in certain units and individuals in the Party and the revolutionary organizations.

Liberalism manifests itself in various ways.

To let things slide for the sake of peace and friendship when a person has clearly gone wrong, and refrain from principled argument because he is an old acquaintance, a fellow townsman, a schoolmate, a close friend, a loved one, an old colleague or old subordinate. Or to touch on the matter lightly instead of going into it thoroughly, so as to keep on good terms. The result is that both the organization and the individual are harmed. This is one type of liberalism.

To indulge in irresponsible criticism in private instead of actively putting forward one’s suggestions to the organization. To say nothing to people to their faces but to gossip behind their backs, or to say nothing at a meeting but to gossip afterwards. To show no regard at all for the principles of collective life but to follow one’s own inclination. This is a second type.

To let things drift if they do not affect one personally; to say as little as possible while knowing perfectly well what is wrong, to be worldly wise and play safe and seek only to avoid blame. This is a third type.

Not to obey orders but to give pride of place to one’s own opinions. To demand special consideration from the organization but to reject its discipline. This is a fourth type.

To indulge in personal attacks, pick quarrels, vent personal spite or seek revenge instead of entering into an argument and struggling against incorrect views for the sake of unity or progress or getting the work done properly. This is a fifth type.

To hear incorrect views without rebutting them and even to hear counter-revolutionary remarks without reporting them, but instead to take them calmly as if nothing had happened. This is a sixth type.

To be among the masses and fail to conduct propaganda and agitation or speak at meetings or conduct investigations and inquiries among them, and instead to be indifferent to them and show no concern for their well-being, forgetting that one is a Communist and behaving as if one were an ordinary non-Communist. This is a seventh type.

To see someone harming the interests of the masses and yet not feel indignant, or dissuade or stop him or reason with him, but to allow him to continue. This is an eighth type.

To work half-heartedly without a definite plan or direction; to work perfunctorily and muddle along--“So long as one remains a monk, one goes on tolling the bell.” This is a ninth type.

To regard oneself as having rendered great service to the revolution, to pride oneself on being a veteran, to disdain minor assignments while being quite unequal to major tasks, to be slipshod in work and slack in study. This is a tenth type.

To be aware of one’s own mistakes and yet make no attempt to correct them, taking a liberal attitude towards oneself. This is an eleventh type.

We could name more. But these eleven are the principal types.

They are all manifestations of liberalism.

Liberalism is extremely harmful in a revolutionary collective. It is a corrosive which eats away unity, undermines cohesion, causes apathy and creates dissension. It robs the revolutionary ranks of compact organization and strict discipline, prevents policies from being carried through and alienates the Party organizations from the masses which the Party leads. It is an extremely bad tendency.

Liberalism stems from petty-bourgeois selfishness, it places personal interests first and the interests of the revolution second, and this gives rise to ideological, political and organizational liberalism.

People who are liberals look upon the principles of Marxism as abstract dogma. They approve of Marxism, but are not prepared to practice it or to practice it in full; they are not prepared to replace their liberalism by Marxism. These people have their Marxism, but they have their liberalism as well--they talk Marxism but practice liberalism; they apply Marxism to others but liberalism to themselves. They keep both kinds of goods in stock and find a use for each. This is how the minds of certain people work.

Liberalism is a manifestation of opportunism and conflicts fundamentally with Marxism. It is negative and objectively has the effect of helping the enemy; that is why the enemy welcomes its preservation in our midst. Such being its nature, there should be no place for it in the ranks of the revolution.

We must use Marxism, which is positive in spirit, to overcome liberalism, which is negative. A Communist should have largeness of mind and he should be staunch and active, looking upon the interests of the revolution as his very life and subordinating his personal interests to those of the revolution; always and everywhere he should adhere to principle and wage a tireless struggle against all incorrect ideas and actions, so as to consolidate the collective life of the Party and strengthen the ties between the Party and the masses; he should be more concerned about the Party and the masses than about any private person, and more concerned about others than about himself. Only thus can he be considered a Communist.

All loyal, honest, active and upright Communists must unite to oppose the liberal tendencies shown by certain people among us, and set them on the right path. This is one of the tasks on our ideological front.

#### The Party’s Mass Line Must Be Followed in Suppressing Counter-Revolutionaries (May 1951)

Source: <marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-5/mswv5_13.htm>

Note: These are instructions added by Mao Tsetung when he revised the draft resolution of the Third National Conference on Public Security.

1. The movement to suppress counter-revolutionaries now going on throughout the country is a great, intense and complex struggle. The line for this work that has proved effective everywhere is the Party’s mass line. This means leadership by Party committees, mobilization of the entire Party membership, mobilization of the masses participation by the democratic parties and by personages from all circles, unified planning, unified action, strict examination of the lists of persons to be arrested or executed, attention to tactics in different phases of the struggle, widespread propaganda and education (holding various kinds of conferences, cadre meetings, forums and mass rallies at all of which victims can bring their accusations and evidence of crimes can be displayed, and making propaganda through films lantern-slides, stage performances, newspapers, pamphlets and leaflets in order to make the movement known to every household and individual), a break with the practice of working behind closed doors and being secretive, and determined opposition to the deviation of rashness. Wherever this line is completely adhered to, the work is completely correct. Wherever this line is not adhered to, the work it wrong. Wherever this line is adhered to generally but not completely, the work is generally but not completely correct. We believe this line for the work is a guarantee for deepening the struggle to suppress counter-revolutionaries and for achieving full success. In the days ahead it is essential to adhere completely to this line in suppressing counter-revolutionaries. What is most important here is strictly to examine the lists of persons to be arrested or executed and to do a good job of widespread propaganda and education. Do both well and mistakes will be avoided.

2. The number of counter-revolutionaries to be killed must be kept within certain proportions. The principle to follow here is that those who owe blood debts or are guilty of other extremely serious crimes and have to be executed to assuage the people’s anger and those who have caused extremely serious harm to the national interest must be unhesitatingly sentenced to death and executed without delay. As for those whose crimes deserve capital punishment but who owe no blood debts and are not bitterly hated by the people or who have done serious but not extremely serious harm to the national interest, the policy to follow is to hand down the death sentence, grant a two-year reprieve and subject them to forced labour to see how they behave. In addition, it must be explicitly stipulated that in cases where it is marginal whether to make an arrest, under no circumstances should there be an arrest and that to act otherwise would be a mistake, and that in cases where it is marginal whether to execute, under no circumstances should there be an execution and that to act otherwise would be a mistake.

3. To prevent “Left” deviations in the heat of the movement to suppress counter-revolutionaries, it has been decided that as of June 1, in all localities across the country, including those places where very few executions have so far been carried out, the power to sanction arrests shall without exception revert to the prefectural authorities and the power to sanction executions shall without exception revert to the provincial authorities, who shall send representatives to deal with such cases in places remote from the provincial capital. No locality is to ask for modification of this decision.

4. As of now it is necessary to start a planned screening of counter-revolutionaries hidden in the “middle layer” and the “inner layer”. In accordance with the directive of the Central Committee it has been decided that a preliminary screening in the form of rectification will be conducted this summer and autumn among all the personnel who have been retained since liberation and among the intellectuals recently drawn into our work. The aim is to size up the situation and deal with a number of conspicuous cases. The procedure to follow is to study documents on the suppression of counter-revolutionaries, call on those among the above-mentioned personnel and intellectuals (not all of them) whose records are questionable to adopt a sincere and honest attitude, give a clear account of their history and make a clean breast of what they have hitherto kept to themselves. This campaign to “clear oneself” must be put in charge of the leading member of the organization concerned; the voluntary principle must be applied and coercion must not be used. For each organization the duration should be short, not drawn out. The tactics to adopt are to win over the many and isolate the few, in preparation for a further screening in the winter. This screening must first be conducted in the leading organs, the public security organs and other sensitive departments, and then the experience gained should be popularized. During such screening in government departments, schools and factories, it is necessary to have non-Party people sit on the committees in charge of this work so as to avoid having Party members act in isolation.

5. In the current great struggle to suppress counter-revolutionaries public security committees must be organized among the masses everywhere. Such committees should be elected by the people in every township in the countryside and in every department and organization, school, factory and neighbourhood in the cities. The number of committee members may be as small as three and as large as eleven and must include reliable non-Party patriots so as to make the committee a united front type of organization for safeguarding public security. Under the leadership of the government and public security organs at the basic level, such committees have the responsibility of assisting the people’s government in eliminating counter-revolutionaries, guarding against traitors and spies and safeguarding our national and public security. Their establishment must proceed in a well-guided way in those rural areas where the agrarian reform has been completed or in cities where the work of suppressing counter-revolutionaries is well under way, so as to prevent bad elements from seizing the opportunity to worm their way in.

[1] pp. 142–143 from Red Star Over China. <https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Library:Red_Star_over_China>

[2] Translation by Creel in Chinese Thought from Confucius to Mao Tse-tung. <https://www.worldfuturefund.org/wffmaster/reading/china/Mao%20on%20Shang%20Yang.htm>

[3] Mao’s essay on pp. 5–6 of Mao’s Road to Power volume one

[4] This sentence, and all subsequent words and passages set in bold, were underscored by Mao in the original, using circles beside the characters.

[5] The reference is to the brothers Bo Yi and Shu Qi, who, after the Zhou dynasty had overthrown the Shang, “disdained to eat the grain of Zhou” and stole away to the Shouyang Mountain where they “plucked the fems and ate them.” (Records of the Historian, Vol. 61.)

[6] See the Mencius, III, II, X, 1 (Legge, Vol. II, p. 284).

[7] Analects VII, IV (Legge, Vol. I, p. 196).

[8] Analects X, VIII, 2 (Legge, Vol. I, p. 232).

[9] Book of Rites, Chapter XLIII, “Shi yi” (Significance of Ceremonies Relating to Archery), par. 7. See Couvreur, M&noires sur les bienstances et les cfr&nonies. Vol. II, part 2, p. 674.

[10] See the story of Cook Ding in the Zhuangzi, III b (Graham, Chuang-tzu, pp. 63–64).

[11] Analects IX, II, 2 (Legge, Vol. I, p. 216).

[12] The words quoted are from the Analects, XI, XXIV, 2 (Legge, Vol. I, p. 246).

[13] The Great Learning, I, 3 (Legge, Vol. I, p. 357).

[14] An allusion to no. 10 of the Gu shi shijiu shou (Nineteen Old Poems), a famous collection of poems of the Han dynasty.

[15] Yan Hui, Confucius’ favorite disciple. (See the note to Mao’s letter of December 9, 1916.)

[16] On this Han dynasty philosopher and poet, see the note to Mao’s letter of December 9, 1916, to Li Jinxi.

[17] On these two Tang dynasty scholars, see the note to Mao’s letter of December 9, 1916.

[18] The Doctrine of the Mean, X, 4 (Legge, Vol. I, p. 390).

[19] Yan Yuan (1635–1704), zi Yizhi, hao Xizhai, and his disciple Li Gong (1659— 1733), zi Gangzhu, hao Shugu, were leading figures among the Ming loyalists of the early Qing period.

[20] See above, note 126 to Mao’s “Classroom Notes.”

[21] The corresponding Chinese metaphor, used here by Mao, is “cut the foot to fit the shoe.”

[22] Analects, VII, XXIX (Legge, Vol. I, p. 204).

[23] “Animal” in Chinese is dongwu, literally “moving thing.” Mao’s statement is therefore rather like saying “An animal is naturally animated.”

[24] Lu Jiuyuan (1140–1192), zi Yujing, hao Xiangshan, was a successful official who entertained views which placed him in conflict with Zhu Xi, with whom he conducted a long and celebrated controversy. The essence of his views was that personal, subjective education, coupled with reflection, is the foundation of mental progress. The jing in his style Yujing is, obviously not by accident, the character which we have translated as “stillness” in Mao’s discussion of his ideas. It is also part of the compound jingzuo, literally sitting in stillness or immobility, which signifies the “meditation” which Mao says characterizes the disciples of Zhu and Lu.

[25] Mao here refers to the founder of Buddhism as “Mr. Shi,” using only the first of the four characters (Shijiamouni) commonly employed to transcribe his name.

[26] Wu Tingfang (1842–1922), zi Zhiyong, hao Wenjue, was a lawyer, journalist and diplomat. He had been foreign minister of the republican government in late 1911, and occupied the same post at the time Mao wrote this article. Shortly afterward, he was dismissed because he had supported President Li Yuanhong in removing the premier, Duan Qirui.

[27] Wang Kaiyun. See the note to Mao’s letter of December 9,1916, to Li Jinxi.

[28] Literally, tianming (the decree of Heaven).

[29] This view may be compared with Chen Duxiu’s advocacy, in an article published in issue no. 2 of New Youth, which Mao had certainly read, of the doctrine of the “savage” or “beastly” nature (shouxing zhuyi), which he attributed to Fukuzawa Yukichi.

[30] This practice had been recommended to Mao by Yang Changji.

[31] From a poem attributed to Xiang Yu, the rival of Liu Bang, founder of the Han dynasty, in the Records of the Historian.

[32] This statement is attributed to the famous commander Fu Jiezi, who served the Han emperor Zhao Di (86–73 B.C.). Fu volunteered for a mission to the king of the Loulan, in Central Asia, to punish him for killing some Chinese envoys, and returned with the king’s head as proof he had accomplished his purpose.

[33] Mencius, III, I, IV, 7 (Legge, Vol. 2, p. 251).

[34] The dress of the swordsmen of King Wen of Zhao, according to the Zhuangzi, I, 4. For the whole of this picturesque episode, see Graham, Chuang-tzu, pp. 244—47.

[35] Analects, XV, XX (Legge, Vol. I, p. 300).

[36] Yet again, Mao refers to Zeng Guofan by the honorific title bestowed on him posthumously, thus underscoring his respect for this great Hunanese predecessor.

[37] This is a condensed paraphrase from the Zhuangzi, I, 4. The original reads: “The tit that nests in the deep forest wants no more than one branch, the mole that drinks in the Yellow River no more than a bellyful” (Graham, Chuang-tzu, p. 45).

[38] Xunzi, Vol. 1.

[39] This sentence evokes a paragraph in the Mencius, VI, I, IX, 3 (Legge, Vol. 2, p. 410) about two men learning chess, one of whom gives the subject his whole mind, while the other is thinking of shooting an approaching swan.

[40] Reflections on Things at Hand, Vol. 4 (p. 86 of the Commercial Press edition).

[41] Celebrated archer of the Spring and Autumn period.

[42] In fact, there are, as will be seen, thirty subdivisions.

[43] Junzi.

[44] Here, and in section b below, Mao uses the Chinese word zuo, which commonly means “sit.” As pointed out by M. Henri Day, however, many of the exercises he describes simply could not be performed from a seated position. We have therefore followed ay (Mdo Ztdbng, pp. 30–31, and note 55, p. 38) in translating “squatting.”

[45] Thilly’s English text (p. 6) has “empirical and rational.”

[46] See Thilly, p. 6: “... mathematics ... deduces propositions from definitions and axioms, and demonstrates them logically ...”

[47] Here Cai Yuanpei uses the standard Chinese term for empirical, which more literally means “experiential.”

[48] Here Thilly has “rationalism.”

[49] For Mencius’ view that not only benevolence, but righteousness, are “not infused into us from without,” put forward in a discussion with the philosopher Gaozi, see the Mencius, VI, I, IV-VIII, especially VI, 7 (Legge, Vol. II, pp. 394–95, 397–409). On Wang Shouren, commonly referred to as Wang Yangming, see note 16 to Mao’s “Classroom Notes” of 1913 and note 8 to Mao’s “Letter to a Friend” of summer 1915.

[50] Xin li.

[51] Jiangqiu, literally attempt to understand; here the Thilly translation has “theorize.”

[52] Here, exceptionally, we have reinstated the preceding two sentences, beginning “Schopenhauer,” which are omitted from the extracts given in the Wengao, because otherwise the impression is created that the conclusion of this paragraph represents the ideas of Aristotle.

[53] Chongdong is used here where Thilly has “strivings”; throughout the work, Cai Yuanpei employs it variously for “impulses,” “instincts,” or even “inclinations.”

[54] See The Doctrine of the Mean, XIII, 4 (Legge, Vol. I, p. 393). Mao has recast the citation and presented it in such a way as to stress the central importance of family relationships like that between husband and wife. The point of the original text is rather that, as Legge translates, “The way of heaven and earth may be found, in its simple elements, in the intercourse of common men and women.” Cf. also Couvreur’s Latin version, which says the way “habet initium in vulgaribus viris et mulieribus.” (S. Couvreur, “L’invariable milieu,” in Les quatre livres [Paris: Cathasia], p. 35.)

[55] A reference to the Great Learning, 4–5 (Legge, Vol. I, pp. 357–59). This passage, one of the most famous in the entire Confucian canon, reads as follows: “The ancients who wished to illustrate illustrious virtue throughout the kingdom, first ordered well their own States. Wishing to order well their States, they first regulated their families. Wishing to regulate their families, they first cultivated their persons. Wishing to cultivate their persons, they first rectified their hearts. Wishing to rectify their hearts, they first sought to be sincere in their thoughts. Wishing to be sincere in their thoughts, they first extended to the utmost their knowledge. Such extension of knowledge lay in the investigation of things. Things being investigated, knowledge became complete. Their knowledge being complete, their thoughts were sincere. Their thoughts being sincere, their hearts were then rectified. Their hearts being rectified, their persons were cultivated. Their persons being cultivated, their families were regulated. Their families being regulated, their States were rightly governed. Their States being rightly governed, the whole kingdom was made tranquil and happy.” The cultivation of the self, or person (xiushen) alluded to here is the same concept on which Yang Changji had lectured to Mao in 1913.

[56] The reference is to the Mencius, VII, I, XLV (Legge, Vol. II, p. 476). Mao’s paraphrase is reasonably close to the meaning of the original.

[57] Jian’ai, the doctrine of Mozi (468–376 B.C.).

[58] The relations between prince and minister, father and son, and husband and wife, which constituted the core of Confucian morality.

[59] Here, and in Cai Yuanpei’s text, on which Mao is commenting, the Chinese used for “idea” in Thilly’s English version is xiexiang, which has a literal meaning closer to “image.” The same two characters in Japanese, read shasho, stand quite definitely for image, as in “imagists.”

[60] V. I. Lenin, “Conspectus of Hegel’s The Science of Logic”. Collected Works, Russ. ed., Moscow, 1958, Vol. XXXVIII, p. 205.

[61] See Karl Marx, “Theses on Feuerbach”. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Selected Works, in two volumes, Eng. ed., FLPH, Moscow, 1958, Vol. II, p. 403, and V. I. Lenin, Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, ring. ed., FLPH, Moscow, 1952, pp. 136–4.

[62] San Kuo Yen Yi (Tales of the Three Kingdoms) is a famous Chinese historical nova by Lo Kuan-chung (late 14th and early 15th century).

[63] V. I. Lenin, “Conspectus of Hegel’s The Science of Logic”, Collected Works, Russ. ed., Moscow, 1958, Vol. XXXVIII, p. 161.

[64] “In order to understand, it is necessary empirically to begin understanding, study, to rise from empiricism to the universal.” (Ibid., p. 197.)

[65] V. I. Lenin, “What Is to Be Done?”, Collected Works, Eng. ed., FLPH, Moscow, 1961, Vol. V, p. 369.

[66] V. I. Lenin, Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, Eng. ed., FLPH, Moscow, p. 141.

[67] J. V. Stalin, “The Foundations of Leninism”, Problems of Leninism, Eng. ed., FLPH, Moscow, 1954, p. 31.

[68] See V. I. Lenin, Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, Eng. ed., FLPH, Moscow, pp. 129–36.

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