第九十三章《胡适英文论著：中国哲学史》（3）

  第九十三章《胡适英文论著：中国哲学史》（3）

  He published a Commentary on the I ching and a little book entitled “A Primer on the Study of the I ching .” And he left a number of letters and discussions on that classic.
  His most daring thesis about the I ching was that that book, which had always been regarded as a sacred book of profound philosophical truth, was originally devised as a text of divination and fortune-telling, and could be understood only if it were studied as a book of divination and no more than a book of divination. “The sentences or judgments for every kua (hexagram), of which there were 64, and every line (of which there were 384) were meant to be used as answers to people who wanted to know whether it was propitious to do such-and-such a thing or not. Some answers were for sacrifices, others for hunting, others for traveling, or for war, or emigration. If the sages had intended to talk about philosophy, why should they not simply write a philosophy book; why should they talk always in terms of fortune-telling?” “If the book is studied merely as a text for the diviner, then so many passages which had been wrongly explained as mysterious and profound wisdom immediately become quite plain, simple, and intelligible.”

  This common-sense theory was the most courageous doubt ever uttered about that strange book. But it was rejected by his friends as an “oversimplification.” But Chu Hsi replied: “It is just like this big lantern. Every strip of bamboo added to the lantern frame simply takes away that much of the light. If we could only get rid of all those light-covering devices, how much more light there would be, and how much better it would be for all of us!”

  That was a truly revolutionary theory which illustrates one of his great remarks, that “the simplest theory is usually the true theory.” But Chu Hsi realized that his view of the I ching as nothing more than a text for divination was too radical for his time. He sadly said, “It is difficult to talk to people about this theory. They would not believe it. Many distinguished people have argued so vehemently against me, and I have spent so much energy to explain and analyze my view to them. As I now look back, it is better to say nothing more. I shall leave it here, regardless of whether people believe it or not. I shall waste no more strength arguing for it.”

  Chu Hsi was justly proud of his Commentary on The Book of Odes (1177), which was to remain a standard text for many centuries after him. Two features of this work have been fruitful in leading to future developments in research. One was his courageous discarding of the traditional interpretation as represented in the so-called “Prefaces to the Poems” and his insistence that the songs and poems should be read with an open mind and independent judgment. The other feature was his recognition of the “ancient pronunciation” of the end-rhymes, a recognition that was at least indirectly responsible for the future development of a more exact study of the entire field of ancient pronunciation, leading to the beginnings of a science of Chinese phonology.
  When The Book of Odes became a major Classic of the Confucian Canon under the Han empire, there were four different schools of textual reading and interpretation. After the first two centuries of the Christian era, only one school, the Mao school, was in the ascendency, overshadowing all the other schools. This Mao school claimed to have based its interpretation of the poems on the authority of the “Prefaces,” which were supposedly handed down from Tzu-hsia, a great disciple of Confucius, but which were probably the work of some Han scholar who had taken the trouble to assign each poem to some historical occasion or event, or even to some historic personage as its author. Some of the historical assignments were taken from the Tso chuan , one of the three commentaries of the Confucian Ch’un ch’iu Annals , in which the origin of a few “Poems” was specifically mentioned. This display of historical erudition was quite impressive and probably accounted for the success of the Mao school in gradually winning general acceptance and official recognition. The “Prefaces to the Poems,” therefore, were regarded as having sacrosanct authority throughout more than a millennium before the time of Chu Hsi.
  Chu Hsi’s senior contemporary, Cheng Ch’iao (1104-1162), the learned author of the encyclopedic Tung chih , published a little book with the title, “An Examination of the Absurdities about The Book of Odes ,” in which he strongly attacked the “Prefaces” as absurd interpretations by vulgar and ignorant persons with no sense of literary and poetic appreciation. Cheng Ch’iao’s vehemence of language at first shocked our philosopher Chu Hsi, but, he confessed, “After reading several of his criticisms and checking them with historical works, I soon came to the conclusion that the ‘Prefaces’ of those poems were really not reliable. When I went on to compare some other poems with their Prefaces, I found the content and meaning of the poems did not tally at all with their Prefaces. I was finally convinced that most of the ‘Prefaces’ were not trustworthy.”

  Here was a good illustration of conflicting ideas leading to doubt, and also of an open mind being receptive to new ideas and successful in resolving the doubt by evidence. Chu Hsi told how he had tried unsuccessfully to persuade his life-long friend and philosophical comrade, Lü Tsu-ch’ien (1137-1181), to reject the Prefaces. He pointed out to Lü that only a few Prefaces were confirmed by clear references in the Tso chuan , but most of them were grounded on no evidences. “But my friend said: ‘How can one expect to find so many documentary evidences!’ I said: ‘In that case, we shall have to leave out all those Prefaces not based on evidences. We cannot use the Prefaces as evidences for the interpretation of the poems.’ ‘But,’ said my friend Lü, ‘the Prefaces themselves are evidences!’ From our discussion, I realized that many people prefer to explain each poem by its Preface, and refuse to seek understanding by reading the poem itself.”

  In his courageous fight to overthrow the authority of the Prefaces and seek to understand the meaning of the poems by reading each poem with an open mind, Chu Hsi was only partially successful, both in his own new commentary and in leading future workers to go farther in the same direction. The weight of tradition was still too great for Chu Hsi himself and for future generations. But the great and creative doubt of Cheng Ch’iao and Chu Hsi will always be remembered whenever modern and unprejudiced scholarship undertakes to work on The Book of Odes with new tools and in an entirely free spirit.
  For the second new feature of Chu Hsi’s work on The Book of Odes , namely, the aspect of the ancient pronunciation of the rhymes, he was inspired and aided by the work of another learned contemporary of his, Wu Yü, who died in 1153 or 1154. Wu Yü was the real pioneer in the study of Chinese phonology in working out an inductive method of comparing rhymed lines in that ancient Classic among themselves and with other ancient and medieval rhymed poetry. He wrote quite a few books, including “A Supplement on the Rhymes of The Book of Odes ,” “Explaining the Rhymes in the Ch’u tz’u ,” and “A Supplement to the Standard Rhyme-Book” (Yün pu ). Only the last-named has survived to this day, through reprints.
  There is no doubt that Wu Yü had discovered that those many end-rhymes in The Book of Odes which did not seem to rhyme according to “modern” pronunciation were natural rhymes in ancient times and were to be read according to their “ancient pronunciation.” He therefore carefully listed all the end-rhymes in the 300-odd poems of The Book of Odes and worked out their ancient pronunciation with the aid of ancient and medieval dictionaries and rhyme-books. A preface written by Hsü Ch’an, a friend and distant relative of his, clearly described his patient method of collecting and comparing the vast number of instances. “The word now pronounced ‘fu ’ appears 16 times in The Book of Odes , all, without exception, pronounced ‘bek ’ [or ‘b’iuk ,’ according to Bernard Karlgren]. The word now pronounced ‘yu ’ appears 11 times in The Book of Odes , all, without exception, rhymed with words ending -i. ”

  This strict methodology impressed Chu Hsi so much that he decided to accept Wu Yü’s system of “ancient pronunciation” throughout his own Commentary. Probably with a view to the avoidance of unnecessary controversy, Chu Hsi did not call it “ancient pronunciation” but “rhyming pronunciation”—that is to say, a certain word should be pronounced in such a way as to rhyme with the other end-rhymes the pronunciation of which had apparently remained unchanged.
  But, in his conversation with his students, he frankly said that he had followed Wu Yü in most cases, making additions or modifications in only a few instances; and that the rhyming pronunciations were the natural pronunciations of the ancient poets, who, “like us in modern times, composed their songs in natural rhymes.” That is to say, the rhyming pronunciations were ancient pronunciations.
  When asked whether there was any ground for the rhyming pronunciation, Chu Hsi answered: “Mr. Wu produced proofs for all his pronunciations. His books can be found in Ch’üan-chou. For one word he sometimes quoted as many as over ten proofs, but at least two or three proofs. He said that he originally had even more evidences, but had to leave out many [in order to reduce the cost of copying and printing].” And in those cases in which Chu Hsi found it necessary to differ with Wu, he also cited examples for comparison in his “Classified Sayings” and in the Ch’u-tz’u chi-chu (An Annotated Edition of the Ch’u tz’u ).
  But because Chu Hsi used the expression “rhyming pronunciation” throughout his Commentary on The Book of Odes without ever referring to the expression “ancient pronunciation,” and because Wu Yü’s books were long lost or inaccessible, a discussion was started early in the sixteenth century in the form of a severe criticism of Chu Hsi’s improper use of the expression “rhyming pronunciation.” In 1580, Chiao Hung (1541-1620), a great scholar and philosopher, published in his “Notes” (Pi-ch’eng ) a brief statement of a theory (probably his friend Ch’en Ti’s [1541-1617] theory) that those end-rhymes in ancient songs and poems that did not fit into modern schemes of rhyming were all natural rhymes whose pronunciations happened to have changed in the course of time. He cited a number of instances to show that the words would rhyme perfectly if pronounced as the ancients sang them.
  It was Chiao Hung’s friend Ch’en Ti who undertook many years of patient research and published a series of books on the ancient pronunciation of hundreds of rhyming words in many ancient books of rhymed poetry. The first of these works was published in 1616 under the title: Mao-shih ku-yin k’ao (An Inquiry into the Ancient Pronunciation of The Book of Odes ), with a preface by Chiao Hung.
  In his own preface, Ch’en Ti proclaimed his main thesis that the end-rhymes in The Book of Odes were naturally rhymed in their original pronunciation, and that it was only the natural change of pronunciation which made some of them appear not to rhyme at all. What had been suggested by Chu Hsi as “rhyming pronunciations,” said Ch’en Ti, were in most cases the ancient or original pronunciations.
  “I have done some evidential investigation (k’ao-chü ),” he said, “and have grouped the evidences into two classes: internal evidences (pen-cheng ) and collateral evidences (p’ang-cheng ). Internal evidences are taken from The Book of Odes itself. Collateral evidences are taken from other ancient rhymed works of approximately the same age.”

  To show how the word “fu ” was invariably rhymed in its original archaic pronunciation (bek , or b’iuk ), he listed 14 internal evidences and 10 collateral evidences, a total of 24. The same inductive method was applied to the study of ancient pronunciation in other rhymed literature of ancient China. To prove the ancient pronunciation of the word “hsing ,” he cited 44 instances from the rhymed sections of The Book of Changes , all rhyming with words ending in -ang . For the word “ming ,” he cited 17 evidences from the same book.
  Nearly half a century later, the patriot-scholar Ku Yen-wu (1613-1682) completed his Yin-hsüeh wu-shu (Five Books of Phonology). One of them was on “The Original Pronunciation of The Book of Odes ”; another on “The Pronunciation of The Book of Changes ”; and another on “The Rhyming Groups of the T’ang Period,” which is an attempt to compare the ancient pronunciation with that of the Middle Ages. Ku acknowledged his indebtedness to Ch’en Ti and adopted his method in classifying his proofs into internal and collateral evidences.
  Let us again use the word “fu ” as an example. In his “Original Pronunciations of The Book of Odes ,” Ku Yen-wu cited 17 internal evidences and 15 collateral evidences, a total of 32. In his larger work on the rhyming groups of the T’ang Dynasty (618-907), he listed a total of 162 evidences from available ancient rhymed literature to show how that word was rhymed and pronounced in ancient times.
  Such patient collecting and counting of instances was intended to serve a twofold purpose. In the first place, that was the only way to ascertain the ancient pronunciation of the words and also to find possible exceptions which may challenge the rule and demand explanation. Ku Yen-wu acknowledged that some exceptions could be explained by the possibility of local and dialectal deviations in pronunciation.
  But the most valuable use of this vast statistical material was to form a basis for systematic reconstruction of the actual groupings of ancient sounds. On the basis of his study of the rhymed literature of ancient China, Ku Yen-wu concluded that ancient pronunciations could be analyzed into ten general rhyming groups (yün p’u ).
  Thus was begun the deductive and constructive part of Chinese phonetics, namely, the continuous attempts, first, to understand the ancient “finals” (rhyming groups), and, in a later period, to understand the nature of the ancient initial consonants.
  Ku Yen-wu proposed ten general rhyming groups in 1667. In the following century, a number of scholars continued to work on the same problem and by the same inductive and deductive methods of evidential research. Chiang Yung (1681-1762) suggested 13 rhyming groups. Tuan Yü-ts’ai (1735-1815) increased the number to 17. His teacher and friend, Tai Chen (1724-1777), further increased it to 19. Wang Nien-sun (1744-1832) and Chiang Yu-kao (died in 1851), working independently, arrived at a more or less similar system of 21 rhyming groups.
  Ch’ien Ta-hsin (1728-1804), one of the most scientifically minded men of the eighteenth century, published in 1799 his “Notes,” which includes two papers on the results of his studies of ancient initial labials and dentals. These two papers are outstanding examples of the method of evidential investigation at its best. He collected over 60 groups of instances for the labials, and about the same number for the dentals. In the identifying of the ancient sound of the words in each group, each step was a skillful combination of induction and deduction, of generalization from particulars and application of general rules to particular instances. The final outcome was the formulation of two general laws of phonological change regarding labials and dentals.
  It is important for us to remind ourselves that those Chinese scholars working in the field of Chinese phonetics were so greatly handicapped that they seemed almost from the outset to be doomed to failure. They were without the minimum aid of an alphabet for the Chinese language. They had no benefit of the comparative study of the various dialects, especially of the older dialects in southern, southeastern, and southwestern China. Nor had they any knowledge of such neighboring languages as Korean, Vietnamese, and Japanese. Without any of these useful tools, those Chinese scholars, seeking to understand the phonetic changes of their language, were actually faced with an almost impossible task. Their successes or failures, therefore, must be evaluated in the light of their numerous and important disadvantages.
  The only dependable tool of those great men was their strict method of patiently collecting, comparing, and classifying what they recognized as facts or evidences, and an equally strict method of applying formulated generalizations to test the particular instances within the classified groups. It was indeed very largely this meticulous application of a rigorous method that enabled Wu Yü and Chu Hsi in the twelfth century, Ch’en Ti and Ku Yen-wu in the seventeenth century, and their successors in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to carry on their systematic study of Chinese phonetic problems and to develop it into something of a science—into a body of knowledge answering to the rigorous canons of evidence, exactitude, and logical systematization.
  I have sketched here what I have conceived as the story of the development of the scientific spirit and method in the Chinese thought of the past eight centuries. It began in the eleventh century with the ambitious ideal of extending human knowledge to the utmost by investigating the reason or law in all things of the universe. That grandiose ideal was by necessity narrowed down to the investigation of books—to the patient and courageous study of the few great books which formed the “sacred scripture” of the Chinese classical tradition. History saw the gradual development of a new spirit and a new method based on doubt and the resolution of doubt. The spirit was the moral courage to doubt even on questions touching sacred matters, and the insistence on the importance of an open mind and impartial and dispassionate search for truth. The method was the method of evidential thinking and evidential investigation (k’ao-chü and k’ao-cheng ).
  I have cited some examples of this spirit and method at work, notably in the development of a “Higher Criticism” in the form of investigations of the authenticity and dating of a part of the classical texts and in the development of a scientific study of the problems of Chinese phonology. But, as a matter of history, this method was fruitfully and effectually applied to many other fields of historical and humanistic research, such as textual criticism, semantics (i.e., the study of the historical changes of the meaning of words), history, historical geography, and archeology.
  The method of evidential investigation was made fully conscious by such men as Ch’en Ti and Ku Yen-wu in the seventeenth century, who first used the expressions “internal evidences” and “collateral evidences.” The efficacy of the method was so clearly demonstrated in the scientific works of the two great masters of the seventeenth century, Ku Yen-wu and Yen Jo-ch’ü, that by the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries practically all first-class minds in intellectual China were attracted to it and were devoting their lives to its application to all fields of classical and humanistic study. The result was a new age of Revival of Learning which has also been called the Age of Evidential Investigation.
  Even the most violent critics of this new learning had to admit the scientific nature of its rigorous and effective method. One such violent critic was Fang Tung-shu (1772-1851), who in 1826 published a book which was a vehement criticism and condemnation of the whole movement. Even Fang had to pay high tribute to the rigorous method as it was used by two of his contemporaries, Wang Nien-sun and his son, Wang Yin-chih (1766-1834). Fang said, “As a linguistic approach to the classics, there is nothing that surpasses the Ching-i shu-wen (Notes on the Classics as I Have Heard from My Father ) of the Wangs of Kao-yu. That work could actually make the great Cheng Hsüan (d. 200) and Chu Hsi bow their heads (in humble acknowledgment of their errors). Ever since the Han Dynasty (206 B.C-A.D. 220), there has never been anything that could compare with it.” Such a tribute from a violent critic of the whole movement is the best proof that the meticulous application of a scientific method of research is the most effective means to disarm opposition, to undermine authority and conservatism, and to win recognition and credence for the new scholarship.
  What was the historical significance of this spirit and method of “exact and impartial inquiry”?
  A brief but factual answer must be: It succeeded in replacing an age of subjective, idealistic, and moralizing philosophy (from the eleventh to the sixteenth century) by making it seem outmoded, “empty,” unfruitful, and no longer attractive to the best minds of the age. It succeeded in creating a new age of Revival of Learning (1600-1900) based on disciplined and dispassionate research. But it did not produce an age of natural science. The spirit of exact and impartial inquiry, as exemplified in Ku Yen-wu, Tai Chen, Ch’ien Ta-hsin, and Wang Nien-sun, did not lead to an age of Galileo, Vesalius, and Newton in China.
  Why? Why did this scientific spirit and method not result in producing natural science?
  Some time ago, I tried to offer a historical explanation by making a comparative chronology of the works of the intellectual leaders of China and of Europe in the seventeenth century. I said: If we make a comparative chronology of the leaders of Chinese and European learning during the seventeenth century—the formative period both for the new science in modern Europe and the new learning in China—we shall see that four years before Ku Yen-wu was born (1613), Galileo had invented his telescope and was using it to revolutionize the science of astronomy, and Kepler was publishing his revolutionary studies of Mars and his new laws of the movements of the planets. When Ku Yen-wu worked on his philological studies and reconstructed the archaic pronunciations, Harvey had published his great work on the circulation of blood [1628], and Galileo his two great works on astronomy and the new science [1630]. Eleven years before Yen Jo-ch’ü began his critical study of The Book of History , Torricelli had completed his great experiment on the pressure of air [1644]. Shortly after, Boyle announced the results of his experiments in Chemistry, and formulated the law that bears his name [1660-1661]. The year before Ku Yen-wu completed his epoch-making Five Books on philological studies [1667] Newton had worked out his calculus and his analysis of white light. In 1680, Ku wrote his preface to the final texts of his philological works; in 1687, Newton published his Principia .
  The striking similarity in the scientific spirit and method of these great leaders of the age of new learning in their respective countries makes the fundamental difference between their fields of work all the more conspicuous. Galileo, Kepler, Boyle, Harvey, and Newton worked with the objects of nature, with stars, balls, inclining planes, telescopes, microscopes, prisms, chemicals, and numbers and astronomical tables. And their Chinese contemporaries worked with books, words, and documentary evidences. The latter created three hundred years of scientific book learning; the former created a new science and a new world.
  That was a historical explanation, but was a little unfair to those great Chinese scholars of the seventeenth century. It was not enough to say, as I did, that “the purely literary training of the intellectual class in China has tended to limit its activities to the field of books and documents.” It should be pointed out that the books they worked on were books of tremendous importance to the moral, religious, and philosophical life of the entire nation. Those great men considered it their sacred duty to find out what each and every one of those ancient books actually meant. As Robert Browning sang of the Grammarian:
  “What’s in the scroll,” quoth he, “thou keepest furled?
  “Show me their shaping,
  “Theirs who most studied man, the bard and sage,—

  “Give!”—So, he gowned him,
  Straight got by heart that book to its last page. …

  ………………………………………………………

  “Let me know all! …

  “Even to the crumbs I’d fain eat up the feast.” …

  ………………………………………………………

  “… What’s time? Leave Now for dogs and apes!
  “Man has Forever.” …

  Browning’s tribute to the spirit of the humanist age was: “This man decided not to Live but Know.”

  The same spirit was expressed by Confucius: “Study as if life were too short and you were on the point of missing it.” “He who learns the truth in the morning may die in the evening without regret.” The same spirit was expressed by Chu Hsi in his age. There is no end to knowledge. I can only devote my whole energy to study: death alone will end my toil.”

  But Chu Hsi went further: “My friends, you are not making progress, because you have not learned to doubt. As soon as you begin to doubt, you will never stop until your doubt is resolved at last.” And his true successors, the founders and workers of the new age of Revival of Learning, were men who had learned to doubt—to doubt with an open mind and to seek ways and means to resolve the doubt, to dare to doubt even when they were dealing with the great books of the Sacred Canon. And, precisely because they were all their lives dealing with the great books of the Sacred Canon, they were forced always to stand on solid ground: they had to learn to doubt with evidence and to resolve doubt with evidence. That, I think, is the historical explanation of the remarkable fact that those great men working with only “books, words, and documents” have actually succeeded in leaving to posterity a scientific tradition of dispassionate and disciplined inquiry, of rigorous evidential thinking and investigation, of boldness in doubt and hypotheses coupled with meticulous care in seeking verification—a great heritage of scientific spirit and method which makes us, sons and daughters of present-day China, feel not entirely at sea, but rather at home, in the new age of modern science.
  An Appeal for a Systematic Search in Japan for Long-Hidden T’ang Dynasty Source-Materials of the Early History of Zen Buddhism
  Susumu Yamaguchi, ed., Buddhism and Culture.
  Kyoto: Nakano Press, 1960. pp. 15-23.
  Social Changes and Science
  Free China Review
  Mar., 1962. Vol. 12. No. 3. pp. 39-41.