第九十三章《胡适英文论著：中国哲学史》（2）

  第九十三章《胡适英文论著：中国哲学史》（2）

  But the naturalistic conception of the universe, as it was germinated in The Book of Lao Tzu and more fully developed in subsequent centuries, has been a most important philosophical heritage from the Classical Age. Naturalism itself best exemplifies the spirit of courageous doubt and constructive postulation. Its historical importance fully equals that of the humanist heritage left by Confucius. Whenever China has sunk deep into irrationality, superstition, and otherworldliness, as she has done several times in her long history, it was always the naturalism of Lao Tzu and the philosophical Taoists, or the humanism of Confucius, or a combination of the two, that would arise and try to rescue her from her sluggish slumbers.
  The first great movement “to use the human reason critically and to probe deeply without fear and favor” in the face of the State Religion of the Han empire was such a combination of the naturalistic philosophy of Taoism and the spirit of doubt and intellectual honesty that was the most valuable heritage handed down from Confucius and Mencius. The greatest representative of that movement of criticism was Wang Ch’ung (A.D. 27-ca . 100), author of a book of 85 essays called the Lun heng (Essays in Criticism).
  Wang Ch’ung spoke of his own essays in these words, “One sentence sums up my essays: I hate falsehood.” “Right is made to appear wrong, and falsehood is regarded as truth. How can I remain silent! When I read current books of this kind, when I see truth overshadowed by falsehood, my heart beats violently, and my brush trembles in my hand. How can I be silent! When I criticize them, I examine them in my reasoning power, check them against facts, and show up their falsehood by setting up proofs.”

  He was criticizing the superstitions and falsehoods of his age, of which the greatest and most powerful were the central doctrines of catastrophes (tsai ) and anomalies (i ), which the state religion of the Han empire, under the name of Confucianism, interpreted as warnings sent by a benevolent and all-seeing God (or Heaven) (T’ien ) to terrify the rulers and governments so that they might repent and reform their acts of misrule. This religion of Han Confucianism had been formulated by a number of philosopher-statesmen of the second and first centuries B.C. who were justifiably worried by the real problem of how to deal with the unlimited power of the absolute monarchy in a vast unified empire, and who, consciously or semiconsciously, had hit upon the religious weapon and had worked out an elaborate theology of “reciprocal relationship between Heaven (T’ien ) and the rulers of men” which seemed to have been able to hold the absolute sovereigns in awe throughout the several centuries of the Han dynasties.
  This theology of the state religion of catastrophes and anomalies was best expressed by Tung Chung-shu (ca . 179-ca . 104 B.C.), who spoke like a prophet and with authority: “The action of man, when it reaches the highest level of good and evil [that is, when it becomes government action affecting vast numbers], will flow into the course of Heaven and Earth and cause reciprocal reverberations in their manifestations.” “When a state is on the verge of ruin, Heaven will cause catastrophes [such as floods, famines, great fires] to befall earth as warnings to the ruler. When these are not hearkened to, Heaven will cause strange anomalies [such as sun eclipses, comets, unusual movements of planets] to appear to terrify the ruler into repentance. But, when even these anomalies fail to check his misrule, then ruin will come. All this shows that Heaven is always kind to the ruler and anxious to protect him from destruction.” This theology of intimate reciprocal reverberations between Heaven and the rulers of men was supposedly based on an elaborate interpretation of the pre-Confucian Book of History and the Confucian Ch’un ch’iu Annals (Spring and Autumn Annals , which recorded numerous unusual events on earth and in the heavens, including thirty-six eclipses of the sun and five earthquakes between 722 and 481 B.C.). But the canonical Classics of established Confucianism were not enough for the support of this fanatic and fantastic theology, which had to be reinforced by an ever-increasing crop of apocryphal works known as the wei (woofs or interweaving aids to the Canon) and the ch’an (prophecies), which are collections of bits of empirical knowledge intermixed with hundreds of astrological fantasies.
  It is a historical fact that this state religion of pseudo-Confucianism, at the height of its glory, was taken so seriously that many a prime minister was dismissed, and one was forced by the Emperor to commit suicide, all because of the belief in Heaven’s warning in the form of catastrophes and abnormalities. One of the three great medieval religions was in full sway over the empire.
  It was against the basic idea of a reciprocal responsive relationship between a teleological God and the rulers of men that Wang Ch’ung was directing his main criticism. He was criticizing the theology of the established religion of the empire. The world view with which he set out to attack the current theology was the naturalistic philosophy of Lao Tzu and the Taoists. He said:
  The Way (Tao ) of Heaven is that it does nothing and all things become so by themselves. If Heaven were to give warnings to men or mete out punishments, that would be “doing” things and not things “becoming so of themselves.” … Those who hold that catastrophic and abnormal occurrences were purposeful warnings from Heaven are in reality degrading the dignity of the great Heaven by interpreting natural phenomena in terms of human action. They are therefore not convincing at all.
  For, he pointed out,
  Heaven is most exalted, and man is tiny. Man’s place between Heaven and Earth is like that of a flea inside one’s clothes, or that of an ant in an anthill… Surely it is absolutely impossible for man with his tiny body of seven feet to hope to bring about any response from the vast atmosphere of the great firmament.
  That is why Wang Ch’ung said that the doctrine of reciprocal response between Heaven and man was in reality “degrading the dignity of the great Heaven.”

  And he offered to prove that man and all things in the universe were never purposefully (ku ) produced by Heaven and Earth, but were accidentally (yu ) so, of themselves:
  It is wrong to hold that man is born of Heaven and Earth purposely. Certain fluids are combined, and man is born accidentally… All things are formed of fluid (ch’i ), and each species reproduces itself… If it were true that Heaven purposely produced all living things in the world, then Heaven should make them all love each other and not allow them to injure or prey on each other… But there are tigers and wolves, poisonous snakes and insects, which prey on man. Can we say that it is the purpose of Heaven to create man for the use of those ferocious and poisonous animals?
  The first century of the Christian era was a period of calendar reform under the Han empire. And Wang Ch’ung made full use of the astronomical knowledge of his age to expose the folly of the current theological doctrine of catastrophes and anomalies as warnings from Heaven against the evil acts or policies of the rulers of the empire. He said:
  There is one eclipse of the sun in about forty-one or forty-two months, and there is one eclipse of the moon in about six months. Solar and lunar eclipses are regular occurrences which have nothing to do with government policies. And this is true of the hundreds of anomalies and thousands of calamities, none of which is necessarily caused by the action of the rulers of men.
  But Wang Ch’ung more frequently cited facts of everyday experience as proofs or evidences in his numerous criticisms of the superstitions or falsehoods of his age. He offered five “tests” (nien ) to prove that thunder was not the wrath of Heaven but only a kind of fire generated by the friction of the yin and yang fluids in the air. And he produced many a proof to support his thesis that there were no ghosts or spirits. One of those proofs is most ingenious and so far irrefutable: “If a ghost is the spirit of the dead man, then the ghost should be seen only in naked form and could not be seen with clothes on his body. For surely the cloth or silk can have no soul or spirit to survive destruction. How can it be explained that ghosts have never been seen in naked form, but always with clothes on?”

  So much for my favorite philosopher, Wang Ch’ung. I have told his story to show how the spirit of courageous doubt and intellectual honesty of the Classical Age of Chinese philosophy could survive centuries of oblivion and would arise to carry on the fight of human reason against ignorance and falsehood, of creative doubt and constructive criticism against superstition and blind authority. To dare to doubt and question without fear and favor is the spirit of science. “To check falsehoods against facts and to expose them by setting up proofs” constitute the procedure of science.
  Ⅳ

  The rest of my paper will be devoted to a brief interpretative report on a great movement in the history of Chinese thought which started out with the ambitious slogan of “investigation of the reason of all things and extension of human knowledge to the utmost” but which ended in improving and perfecting a critical method of historical research and thereby opening up a new age of revival of classical learning.
  That great movement has been called the Neo-Confucian movement, because it was a conscious movement to revive the thought and culture of pre-Buddhist China, to go back directly to the humanist teaching of Confucius and his school, in order to overthrow and replace the much Indianized, and therefore un-Chinese, thought and culture of medieval China. It was essentially a Confucian movement, but it must be noted that the Neo-Confucian philosophers frankly accepted a naturalistic cosmology which was at least partially of Taoist origin and which was preferred probably because it was considered to be more acceptable than the theological and teleological cosmology of the “Confucian” religion since the Han Dynasty (206 B.C-A.D. 220). Here was another case of a combination of the naturalism of Lao Tzu and the philosophical Taoists and the humanism of Confucius once more rising in protest and rebellion against what were considered as the un-Chinese otherworldly religions of medieval China.
  This new Confucian movement needed a new logical method, a “novum organum ,” which it found in a little essay of post-Confucian origin entitled The Great Learning , an essay of about 1,700 Chinese characters. From that little essay, the founders of Neo-Confucianism picked out one statement which they understood to mean that “the extension of knowledge lies in the investigation of things.” That soon became one of the central doctrines in the philosophy of the school of the Ch’eng brothers (Ch’eng Hao, also called Ch’eng Ming-tao, 1032-1085, and Ch’eng I, also called Ch’eng I-ch’uan, 1033-1107), especially as that philosophy was interpreted and reorganized by the great Chu Hsi (1130-1200). The investigation of things was further interpreted to mean “seeking exhaustively to investigate the reason (li ) in all things.”

  What are “things”? According to the Ch’eng-Chu school, the scope of “things” was as extensive as Nature itself, including “every grass and every shrub” as well as “the height of the heavens and the thickness of the earth.” But such a conception of the “things” to be investigated was beyond the capability of the philosophers, who were men of affairs and politicians as well as thinkers and teachers of men. They were more vitally interested in the moral and political problems of men than in the investigation of the reason or law in every grass or shrub. So Ch’eng I himself began to narrow down the scope of “things” to three categories: the study of books, the study of men of the past and the present, and the study of what is right in dealing with practical affairs. “Always begin with what is nearest to you,” he said. And Chu Hsi, the greatest of the Sung (960-1279) philosophers and the most eloquent and untiring exponent of the philosophy of the investigation of the reason in all things, devoted his whole life to the study and exposition of the Classics of Confucianism. His Commentary on The Four Books (the “New Testament” of Neo-Confucianism) and his Commentaries on The Book of Odes and The Book of Changes were accepted as the standard texts for seven centuries. The philosophy of the investigation of the reason in all things was now definitely applied to the limited field of classical studies.
  Truly inspired by the “Socratic tradition” of Confucius, Chu Hsi worked out a set of principles on the spirit, the method, and the procedure of investigation and research. He said, “Investigate with an open mind. Try to see the reason (li ) with an open mind. And with an open mind follow reason wherever it leads you.” What is an open mind? Chu Hsi said, “Retreat one step back, and think it over: that is the open mind.” “Do not press your own opinion too much forward. Suppose you put your own opinion aside for a while, and try to see what the other side has to say. Just as in hearing a case of litigation, the mind is sometimes prejudiced in favor of A, and you are inclined to seek evidences against his opponent B, or vice versa. It is better to step aside and calmly and slowly study what both sides have to say. Only when you can step aside can you see things more clearly. The Master Chang Tsai (also called Chang Heng-ch’ü, 1020-1077) said, ‘Wash away your old ideas to let new ideas come in.’ If you do not put aside your preconceived notions, where and how can you get new ideas?”

  The Neo-Confucians of the eleventh century often stressed the importance of doubt in thinking. Chang Tsai had said, “The student must first learn to be able to doubt. If he can find doubt where no doubt was found before, then he is making progress.” As an experienced worker in textual and semantic researches, Chu Hsi was able to develop a more practical and constructive methodology out of the idea of doubt. He realized that doubt did not arise of itself, but would come only when a situation of perplexity or difficulty was present. He said: “I used to tell students to think and to seek points of doubt. But I have come to understand that it is not fruitful to start out with the intention of finding things to doubt. Just study with an open mind. After working hard at a text, there will be places which block your path and cause you perplexity. That’s where doubts naturally come up for you to compare, to weigh, to ponder over.” “The student [as it has been said] should learn to find doubt where no doubt had previously existed, but he should also learn to resolve the doubt after it has arisen. Then he is making real progress.”

  Doubt would arise in a situation in which conflicting theories simultaneously claimed credulity and acceptance. Chu Hsi told of his early doubts when he found that “the same passage in The Analects had been given widely different explanations by various commentators.” “That,” said he, “led me to doubt.” How is doubt to be resolved? “By keeping one’s mind open,” he said. “You may have your own view, but it may not be the correct view. Do not hold it dogmatically. Put it aside for a while, and search for more and more instances to be placed side by side, so that they may be compared. Then you may see through and understand.” In one of his letters to his friend and philosophical opponent, Lu Chiu-yuan (also called Lu Hsiang-shan, 1139-1193), he again used the example of the judge trying a case of litigation: “Just like the judge trying a difficult case, one should keep his mind open and impartial, and must not let his own inclination or disinclination influence his thinking. He can then carefully listen to the pleading of both sides, seek evidences for cross-checking, and arrive at a correct judgment of right and wrong.”

  What Chu Hsi was saying amounts to a method of resolving doubt by first suggesting a hypothetical view and then searching for more instances or evidences for comparison and for checking the hypothesis “which may not be correct” and which Chu Hsi sometimes described as “a temporarily formed doubting thesis” (ch’üan-li i-i ). In short, the method of doubt and resolution of doubt was the method of hypothesis and verification by evidence.
  Chu Hsi told his students: “The trouble with you is that you are not capable of doubting; that’s why you do not make progress. As for myself, I have my doubt even in the least significant matters. As soon as one begins to doubt, one has to go on [thinking] until the doubt is completely resolved.”

  It was because of this inner urge to resolve doubts that Chu Hsi often confessed that, from his younger years on, he was fond of making investigations based on evidences (k’ao-cheng ). He was one of the most brilliant minds in human history, yet he was never tired of hard work and patient research.
  His great achievement lies in two directions. In the first place, he was never tired of preaching the importance of doubt in thinking and investigation—doubt in the sense of a “tentatively formed doubting thesis,” doubt, not as an end in itself, but as a perplexity to be overcome, as a puzzling problem to be solved, as a challenge to be satisfactorily met. In the second place, he had the courage to apply this technique of doubt and resolution of doubt to the major Classics of the Confucian Canon, thereby opening up a new era of classical scholarship which did not attain its full development until many centuries after his death.
  He did not produce a commentary on The Book of History , but he made epoch-making contributions to the study of that classic by his great courage to doubt the authenticity of its so-called “ancient-script” portion consisting of 25 books which were apparently unknown to the classical scholars of the Han Dynasty, but which seemed first to appear in the fourth century A.D., and came to be accepted as an integral part of The Book of History after the seventh century. The 28 (actually 29) books that were officially recognized in the Doctors’ College of the Han empire had been transmitted orally through an old scholar, Fu (who survived the book-burning of 213 B.C.), and had been transcribed in the “modern script” of the second century B.C.
  Chu Hsi started out with a great doubt: “There are two distinct languages in these books—some of them are difficult to read and understand, others can be read and understood quite easily. It is very strange that the books which were transmitted from memory by the old scholar Fu are all hard to read, whereas the other books, which made their appearance much later, should all turn out to be quite easy to understand. How can we explain the strange fact that the old scholar Fu could memorize only those most difficult texts but could not transmit those that are so easy to read?”

  In his Chu Tzu yü-lei (Classified Sayings), he kept repeating this great doubt to every student who asked him about The Book of History . “All the books easy to understand are the ‘ancient-script’ texts; all those most difficult to read are the ‘modern-script’ texts.” Chu Hsi did not openly say that the former group of texts were later forgeries. He merely wanted to impress upon his students this most puzzling linguistic distinction. Sometimes he suggested a very mild explanation to the effect that those books most difficult to read probably represented the language actually spoken to the people in those public proclamations, whereas the books easy to read were the work of official historians who probably did some revising or even rewriting.
  Naturally such a mild theory did not explain away the doubt which, once raised, has persisted for many centuries to plague classical scholars.
  A century later, under the Mongol (Yüan) Dynasty (1279-1368) , Wu Ch’eng (1247-1331) took up Chu Hsi’s challenge and drew the logical conclusion that the so-called “ancient-script” books were not genuine parts of The Book of History , but were forgeries of a much later age. So, Wu Ch’eng, in writing a Commentary on that classic, accepted only 28 “modern-script” books, and excluded the 25 “ancient-script” books.
  In the sixteenth century, another scholar, Mei Tsu, also took up the question, and published in 1543 a book to prove that the “ancient-script” portion of The Book of History was a forgery by a fourth-century writer who apparently based his forgeries on the numerous passages found in ancient works wherein specific titles of “lost” books were mentioned as sources of the quotations. And Mei Tsu took the trouble to check the sources of those quotations which formed the kernel of the forged books.
  But it took another and greater scholar of the seventeenth century, Yen Jo-ch’ü (1636-1704), to put a finishing touch to the task of resolving the doubt raised by Chu Hsi in the twelfth century about the “ancient-script” portion of The Book of History . Yen devoted thirty years to the writing of a great book entitled “Inquiry into the Authenticity of the Ancient-Script Portion of The Book of History .” With his wonderful memory and great learning, Yen proved these books to be deliberate forgeries by tracing almost every sentence in them to its source and by showing how the forger had misquoted or misunderstood the meaning of the original passages. Altogether, Yen offered over a hundred proofs to expose the forgery. Although his views were vehemently attacked by conservative scholars of his day, it is now considered that Yen Jo-ch’ü’s book has convincingly rendered a final verdict, and that nearly one-half of a major book of the Confucian Canon, which had been accepted as sacred scripture for a thousand years, must be recognized as a proven forgery.
  And for this intellectual revolution of no small magnitude credit must be given to our philosopher Chu Hsi, who in the twelfth century expressed a courageous doubt and proposed a meaningful question which he himself was not yet fully prepared to answer.
  Chu Hsi’s treatment of the I ching (The Book of Changes ), another of the “sacred scriptures,” was even more daring, so daring indeed that it was never accepted and developed during the last seven centuries.