Conscience and Virtue

Before formally writing this essay, I would like to recommend that readers first read two pieces: the preface to Wang Xiaobo's The Silent Majority, and Ji Xianlin's short essay "The Chills and Warmths of the World."

The following is excerpted from the preface to Mr. Wang Xiaobo's The Silent Majority:

When I was young I read George Bernard Shaw's play Major Barbara; one scene left a deep impression on me: the industrial magnate Undershell, meeting his son Stephen, whom he had not seen for years, asked him what he was interested in doing. The young man was good at nothing—not science, not literature, not law—but he said he had one strength: he could tell right from wrong. The old man savaged his son, saying that this very thing had stumped every scientist, statesman, and philosopher; how was it that, able to do nothing else, you alone can tell right from wrong? When I read this passage I was only in my twenties, and I at once resolved that in this life I could do anything, but I must never become a person who, good for nothing, can yet tell right from wrong. For this reason I became one of the silent majority. The people I knew when young had mastered only some crude—to put it mildly, not to say absurd—principles, and yet thought they knew everything, rashly judging the world, and the whole world suffered greatly as a result. Only when I reached forty did I realize that Mr. Shaw's view had its own bias; but that is another story—in any case, Shaw's remarks have always been an antidote to the shallow and the arrogant. Mr. Shaw said telling right from wrong is hard because these right and wrong lie within the realm of ethics. As the saying goes, one man's meat is another man's poison; a thing that benefits one person is bound to harm another. A true gentleman knows that his own opinions are swayed by his circumstances and may not be fair; that is why he finds telling right from wrong hard. If someone fancies himself an elite of society and assumes his own views must be right—though this borders on arrogance—he will find telling right from wrong very easy. Once I understood this point of Shaw's, I was deeply ashamed to pose as an expert on telling right from wrong—but that was already twenty years ago. I was young then, and felt it enough to keep myself clean and not harm others. Now I am a middle-aged man—in a society, middle-aged people bear heavy responsibilities: they must answer to society, answer to the young, and cannot look only to themselves. For this reason I began writing essays. This collection now offered to readers takes right and wrong as its subject in every piece, and every piece slaps my own face.

The following is excerpted from Mr. Ji Xianlin's short essay "The Chills and Warmths of the World":

I have reached my ninth decade. In the course of more than eighty years of life, full of twists and turns, good fortune mingled with hardship, smooth roads mixed with rough ones, falling several times and rising several times again to where I am today, I have truly fathomed the hidden workings of the world's chills and warmths, and tasted to the full its bitterness. Especially during the "ten-year catastrophe," because I was bold enough to jump out myself to oppose that red-hot "Old Buddha" of Peking University, I was loaded with all sorts of trumped-up labels, "struggled down" as a counter-revolutionary, and subjected to cruelties that still make my hair stand on end when I recall them.

After I was released from the "cowshed," for several years I became an "untouchable" on the campus of Yanyuan. Walking along the road, the people who in my glory days had bowed and scraped to me now treated me like a stranger; not one dared or cared to speak a word to me. I too was no longer used to looking up at people or talking with them. I had been alienated into a "non-person." One day my grandson ran a fever of forty degrees, and my mother and I pushed him on a broken bicycle to the university clinic for emergency care. A female colleague actually plucked up the courage to help me—a shuffling old man of sixty-plus—push the bike. I was moved to tears on the spot, as if drinking sweet dew, as if tasting the finest elixir. That event, that person, I shall never forget for the rest of my life.

After the rain cleared and the clouds parted, I was not only restored to my former "office" but promoted to higher rank, and began another spell of glory. Where before the gate stood deserted, now guests crowded in again. If you ask whether I have any thoughts, of course I have; how could a man who has been suddenly to heaven, suddenly to hell, and suddenly back to heaven again have no thoughts?

What I think is this: the world's chills and warmths have been the same from ancient times. Anyone, myself included, and any living being, instinctively always seeks the auspicious and avoids the harmful. Therefore I have blamed no one, not even those who beat me. I have not retaliated against anyone. Not because my tolerance is especially broad and can hold what the world finds hard to bear, but because I see the ways of the world clearly and also turn inward to examine myself. Had I stood in another's place, my conduct might not have been any better.

The essays of these two gentlemen are simply too well written; I could not help quoting rather freely, which may look like literary theft. Both gentlemen have since passed away, so I, this plagiarist, can only apologize to their spirits in the netherworld.

I now wish to write an essay on the theme of "conscience and virtue." The reason I quote Mr. Wang Xiaobo's and Mr. Ji Xianlin's essays before writing mine is to say that the topic of conscience and virtue really is not an easy one to discuss.

I was never qualified to speak on conscience and virtue in the first place: I am no moral paragon, nor an ethicist; on what grounds could I discuss this topic?

But now that I have reached the age of forty, and my son is right in the midst of adolescence, as a father I very much hope my son will not grow up to be a bad person, so it is necessary to educate him toward more conscience and virtue.

In my twenties I was terribly arrogant, thinking myself bright-gifted, and, having read a few books, complacently believing I knew what conscience and virtue are. I found much in society objectionable, came out to point the finger at the landscape and flourish my pen; now, looking back at much of what I wrote then, my face burns with shame, and I am utterly mortified by my own ignorance and arrogance.

After reading Mr. Wang Xiaobo's essay, I developed a sense of shame and thereafter did not dare to judge right and wrong at will. Now, feeling as Wang did that I bear the responsibility of educating the next generation, I have come to re-examine the question of conscience and virtue. I may not be able to educate my son well, but I cannot simply do nothing and let him grow into a morally corrupt scumbag.

After reading the old Mr. Ji Xianlin's short essay "The Chills and Warmths of the World," written in his eighties, I again felt deeply small and ashamed. Old Ji's essay is very short, a mere thousand-some words. Yet in these few words, his broad-minded magnanimity and worldly wisdom are fully on display.

Old Ji did not hold others to a high standard, but held himself to one. This is precisely what the ancients meant by "be strict with oneself and lenient toward others." So on the topic of conscience and virtue, I think it very necessary for an ordinary mortal like me to learn a little of it in order to restrain myself, discipline my children, and do less evil. But to use this conscience and virtue as a standard for judging the right and wrong of others is not what I want.

It was no easy thing for humankind to evolve from food-gatherers in the primeval jungle into modern people. The hardest part of it all is that we actually managed, bit by bit, to restrain the animal, savage nature within us.

Everyone comes into this world passively, and our basic needs arise passively too. Nature, with its marvelous and mighty power, made humankind, and gave us the basic physiological needs of eating, drinking, defecating, urinating, sleeping, and sex. All human behavior that develops out of these basic physiological needs is, in truth, produced involuntarily.

So it is not really blameworthy that a person lacks conscience and virtue. If one can recognize this, one becomes far more forgiving of others.

In a modern civilized society, eating human flesh is barely acceptable. But among the cannibal tribes that survived until not long ago, when a tribe killed people from an enemy tribe, the bodies of the slain were usually eaten as food.

A reporter once went to interview a cannibal chieftain. The chieftain sneered at modern people's refusal to eat human flesh, considering it hypocritical. In his view, if he himself were killed by enemies and they did not eat him, it would be a waste of good ingredients.

The British anthropologist Edward Tylor is known as the father of anthropology. He once studied the cultures of more than seven hundred primitive tribes; these tribes' cultures and beliefs differed, and a behavior regarded as a virtue in one tribe might not be so in another.

So it is that conscience and virtue are things that really cannot be pinned down by any single uniform standard. Socrates once conversed with Athenians of different classes in the square of Athens; using logical reasoning through dialogue, he would often disprove what a person took to be a morally noble act, leaving the listener speechless.

Not long ago I did this kind of thing too. The girlfriend of a late friend of mine is a devout Buddhist; on the way to his funeral we chatted about some topics. Her religious faith was very firm, and she was also very eager to promote her ideas.

She repeatedly stressed the importance of doing more good, so I pressed her on what the standard for a good deed was, and then, following her answers, kept pressing all the way to the end, until I finally stumped her. Under my questioning, she could not say whether the so-called good deeds she had long believed in actually counted as good deeds.

This kind of dialogue was Socrates' forte. Through similar dialogues he showed that many things taken to be wisdom might in fact be folly, and many acts taken to be morally noble were in fact cruel and unjust. In the end Socrates simply refused to call himself a wise man, and styled himself a "lover of wisdom"—one who loves to explore wisdom.

Conscience and virtue are like wisdom. Whether the many standards of conscience and virtue widely circulated among people can stand up to scrutiny is a big question. Many people confidently believe that the standards of conscience and virtue rooted in them since childhood are beyond reproach; perhaps a careful reflection would show they have problems too.

So on the question of conscience and virtue, I think our attitude should be like Socrates': we may only define ourselves as "those who aspire toward the good," and must not rashly define our own conduct as "good deeds."

I often hear some people boast of how kind they are. Though I stay silent, deep inside I am far from convinced. So many people do harm with good intentions—enough to prove that the standards of kindness many people advertise may not be right.

For example, only a few decades ago, homosexuality was still considered immoral; today, in most places, no one regards it as immoral any more. Because as human cognitive level rose, humankind came to recognize that homosexuality is a normal natural phenomenon.

Take Mr. Bertrand Russell again. Because some of his ethical views were too shocking for their time, he was regarded as a heretic in many places; the governments and universities there expelled him and barred him entry. But today those shocking ethical views of Russell's have become widely accepted new ethical standards.

So when we cultivate our own conscience and virtue, and educate the next generation to have conscience and virtue, we probably should not be as ignorant and fearless as Undershell's son, fancying that we can tell right from wrong.

Nor is it easy for us to accuse a person of betraying conscience or being morally corrupt. If we put ourselves in others' shoes, perhaps their conduct is understandable, just as the old Mr. Ji Xianlin bore no grudge against those who had once beaten him.

Saying this is not to deny the standards of conscience and virtue already recognized in society. In fact, helping others, treating people well, and treating nature well are regarded as virtues in every civilization. It is just that many other behaviors conventionally regarded as moral in the past may not, on close examination, be moral; many moral rules cannot stand up to scrutiny.

Human conscience and virtue arose in the process of human beings' dealings with nature, with one another, and with other species. In the final analysis, it arose only to create an environment in which all beings might coexist more harmoniously.

Precisely because of conscience and virtue, humans were able to go from being complete egoists to people who sometimes act altruistically. There are even people whose lives are spent, the great majority of the time, in altruistic deeds; such people are what we usually call morally noble people.

So, in short, altruism is the very root of conscience and virtue. But altruism requires wisdom; not all the altruistic acts we fancy ourselves to be doing are correct.

Behaviors that violate conscience, however, are easy to recognize. Every act that harms others, harms other living beings, or damages the natural environment violates conscience.

So, since conscience and virtue are hard to define, the Buddhist sutras simply define bad deeds first: stopping bad deeds is called a good deed. The teaching is "commit no evil, embrace all good."

For instance, in the Buddha's Sutra of Forty-two Sections, human bad deeds are summed up as the Ten Evils: "Three of the body, four of the mouth, three of the mind. The three of the body are killing, stealing, and lust; the four of the mouth are double-tongue, harsh speech, lying, and frivolous talk; the three of the mind are envy, malice, and delusion. These ten acts, which do not accord with the noble path, are called the Ten Evil Acts. If these evils are stopped, they are called the Ten Good Acts."

As Buddhism developed, before the Buddha passed away he simply left his last instruction: the Sutra of Bequeathed Teaching requires Buddhists to take the precepts as their teacher. So from this angle, the Buddha founded Buddhism with ardent hopes and the greatest goodwill.

Not only the Buddha, but Confucius, Laozi, Jesus, Socrates, the prophets of Islam, and countless other wise men—these people honored as sages—all had the most beautiful wishes. They all hoped there would be more conscientious people in our society, and that everyone would cultivate some altruistic virtue.

Because only thus can strife between people be reduced, and a peaceful human world built together.