An Open-Hearted Scholar: Reading Hu Shi, Part One

Among all the gentlemen who wrote intellectual history in the Republican era, I like Hu Shi best. This thinker, brimming with the spirit of the scholar, had both a naive, simple side and a broad-minded, generous side. He dared to criticize, yet could modestly accept others' criticism of himself; fervent and high-spirited, yet never lacking in tolerance.

The brilliant Mr. Shizhi (Hu Shi's courtesy name) was neither obsessed with fame and gain nor content with mediocrity. In his writings, between the lines, there overflows his judgment of every attitude toward life.

Commenting on Zhuangzi's thought, for instance, he wrote: "But later, the influence of Zhuangzi's doctrine fostered an indelible attitude of accepting fate and being content. In society, its good effect is a kind of broad-minded optimism; its bad effect is a lazy, unenterprising frame of mind. The talents it produces, at their best, are Tao Yuanming and Su Dongpo; at their worst, they are broad-minded wastrels of the ilk of Liu Ling." Liu Ling—one of the free-spirited Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove, the drunkard later praised as "from of old the sages have been lonely, only drinkers keep their name"—became, in Mr. Shizhi's pen, a broad-minded wastrel.

I believe an intellectual needs exactly such a value orientation. If every intellectual, in the spiritual realm, held such a decadent, world-avoiding attitude, our society would be absurd beyond remedy. Even today, most of our intellectuals have sunk into the whirlwind of material worship; few are qualified to step forward as society's spiritual leaders, guiding the thought of an age.

Today, though we have many educated people, most have become rich wastrels who lose themselves in play, drown in luxury, and speculate in housing and stocks—no different from the wine-loving Liu Ling. Educated people are the moral backbone of society; if educated people themselves do not take conscience seriously, it is no wonder that decency lies in the dust. Our intellectuals today, at best, merely know a few characters; of moral responsibility they have almost nothing.

Again, consider Hu Shi's appraisal of Confucius: "'Knowing it cannot be done and yet doing it'—seven characters portray an earnest, lifelong untiring person of purpose." Although Hu Shi was somewhat displeased with certain overly pedantic aspects of Confucius, he fully affirmed this active attitude toward life.

This spirit of Confucius—of a person of purpose untiring to the end of life—has had a profound influence on China's educated class. Although, after Indian Buddhist philosophy entered China, ancient Chinese philosophy seemed to pale beside it, China's traditional spirit of purpose in turn greatly transformed Buddhism. Today's Chinese Buddhism hardly dares claim to be wholly unrelated to the Confucian spirit.

The self-sacrificing pursuit of the Dharma shown by Faxian in the Jin dynasty and Xuanzang in the Tang is precisely a true portrait of this Confucian spirit of "knowing it cannot be done and yet doing it." Without this spirit, it is hard for a person to overcome harsh natural conditions, a life of poverty, and the equally harsh inertia of human nature.

What shines through in Hu Shi himself is precisely this spirit of "knowing it cannot be done and yet doing it." In today's whole world this spirit is rare; what abound are all manner of optimists, pessimists, and wastrels who are neither optimistic nor pessimistic, merely numb and full of hot air. In such a cultural environment, masters are hard to produce. That Chinese intellectual life shone with a galaxy of stars during the May Fourth period had much to do with the ascendancy of this spirit of purpose.

The spirit of the person of purpose is an independent spirit not easily taken captive by the outside; a lifelong untiring spirit of relentless inquiry, sustained by willpower and faith; a fearless spirit of "though ten thousand stand in the way, I will go forward." This spirit is the very root of the Chinese nation's ceaseless self-strengthening and generous virtue that carries the world; upon it, the five-thousand-year cultural history of the Chinese nation has relied to continue and expand.

Lose the spirit of purpose, and no national hero capable of guiding the thought of the age can arise; without such a hero, the spiritual world is doomed to decline. Today, though our various stages are filled with people who can talk of thought nonstop, the great majority will vanish like meteors, flashing once and gone. Because what they preach, they themselves cannot do. They do not reach the standard of "learning to be a teacher of others, conduct to be a model for the age," lack persuasiveness, and their talk becomes empty.

Thus on our mainland, whether in religious or intellectual circles, what is produced today are nothing but second- and third-rate figures. Any thinker who cannot unite knowledge and action is no more than a braggart, repellent to behold and nauseating to hear. When a country's scholars have successively sunk into charlatans who live by glib talk, it is shameful indeed.

Hu Shi was naive and upright all his life. The free-speaking, even fabricating, Master Xuyun lied about his own age, rousing Hu Shi's indignation; with his solid historical training, Hu Shi dug up Master Xuyun's record from top to bottom, exposing the hypocrisy of one of the four great monks of the Republic—a warning to the world. Hu Shi criticized Chiang Kai-shek without the least restraint, enraging him greatly.

Chiang Ching-kuo, by contrast, was deeply influenced by Hu Shi and strongly pushed Taiwan onto the road of democracy. It is said that when Chiang Ching-kuo lifted the bans on political parties and newspapers, he was cursed until he vomited blood; his bodyguards, furious, wanted to seize the critics. Chiang Ching-kuo flew into a rage and rebuked them—essentially: I myself advocated opening up freedom of speech; if now, for my own private sake, I violate it, that would be what truly saddens me.

This breadth of heart in Mr. Chiang Ching-kuo was inherited from Mr. Hu Shi. Hu Shi spent his life criticizing many unreasonable phenomena, and in old age stood almost alone, estranged; the attacks on him piled up like a mountain. He sought them all out to read as best he could, and after reading merely smiled and let them pass. Such magnificent composure is precisely the lofty, detached character that a generous noble person, tempered by culture, cultivates within himself.

Such a character is enough to erect a monument that will long influence later ages.