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1、Lin Yutangs Introduction to Chuangtse: Mystic and HumoristJesus was followed by St. Paul, Socrates by Plato, Confucius by Mencius, and Laotse by Chuangtse. In all four cases, the first was the real teacher and either wrote no books or wrote very little, and the second began to develop the doctrines
2、and wrote long and profound discourses. Chuangtse, who died about 275 B.C., was separated from Laotses death by not quite two hundred years, and was strictly a contemporary of Mencius. Yet the most curious thing is that although both these writers mentioned the other philosophers of the time, neithe
3、r was mentioned by the other in his works. On the whole, Chuangtse must be considered the greatest prose writer of the Chou Dynasty, as Chu: Yu:an must be considered the greatest poet. His claim to this position rests both upon the brilliance of his style and the depth of his thought. That explains
4、the fact that although he was probably the greatest slanderer of Confucius, and with Motse, the greatest antagonist of Confucian ideas, no Confucian scholar has not openly or secretly admired him. People who would not openly agree with his ideas would nevertheless read him as literature.Nor can it b
5、e said truly that a pure-blooded Chinese could ever quite disagree with Chuangtses ideas. Taoism is not a school of thought in China, it is a deep, fundamental trait of Chinese thinking, and of the Chinese attitude toward life and toward society. It has depth, while Confucianism has only a practical
6、 sense of proportions; it enriches Chinese poetry and imagination in an immeasurable manner, and it gives a philosophic sanction to whatever is in the idle, freedom-loving, poetic, vagabond Chinese soul. It provides the only safe, romantic release from the severe Confucian classic restraint, and hum
7、anizes the very humanists themselves; therefore when a Chinese succeeds, he is always a Confucianist, and when he fails, he is always a Taoist. As more people fail than succeed in this world, and as all who succeed know that they succeed but in a lame and halting manner when they examine themselves
8、in the dark hours of the night, I believe Taoist ideas are more often at work than Confucianism. Even a Confucianist succeeds only when he knows he never really succeeds, that is, by following Taoist wisdom. Tseng Kuofan, the great Confucian general who suppressed the Taiping Rebellion, had failed i
9、n his early campaign and began to succeed only one morning when he realized with true Taoist humility that he was no good, and gave power to his assistant generals.Chuangtse is therefore important as the first one who fully developed the Taoistic thesis of the rhythm of life, contained in the epigra
10、ms of Laotse. Unlike other Chinese philosophers principally occupied with practical questions of government and personal morality, he gives the only metaphysics existing in Chinese literature before the coming of Buddhism. I am sure his mysticism will charm some readers and repel others. Certain tra
11、its in it, like weeding out the idea of the ego and quiet contemplation and seeing the Solitary explain how these native Chinese ideas were back of the development of the Chan (Japanese Zen) Buddhism. Any branch of human knowledge, even the study of the rocks of the earth and the cosmic rays of heav
12、en, strikes mysticism when is reaches any depth at all, and it seems Chinese Taoism skipped the scientific study of nature to reach the same intuitive conclusion by insight alone. Therefore it is not surprising that Albert Einstein and Chuangtse agree, as agree they must, on the relativity of all st
13、andards. The only difference is that Einstein takes on the more difficult and, to a Chinese, more stupid work of mathematical proof, while Chuangtse furnishes the philosophic import of this theory of relativity, which must be sooner or later developed by Western philosophers in the next decades.A wo
14、rd must be added about Chuangtses attitude toward Confucius. It will be evident to any reader that he was one of the greatest romanticizers of history, and that any of the anecdotes he tells about Confucius, or Laotse or the Yellow Emperor must be accepted on a par with those anecdotes he tells abou
15、t the conversation of General Clouds and Great Nebulous, or between the Spirit of the River and the Spirit of the Ocean. It must be also plainly understood that he was a humorist with a wild and rather luxuriant fantasy, with an American love for exaggeration and for the big. One should therefore re
16、ad him as one would a humorist writer knowing that he is frivolous when he is profound and profound when he is frivolous.The extant text of Chuangtse consists of thirty-three chapters, all of them a mixture of philosophic disquisition and anecdotes or parables. The chapters containing the most virulent attacks on Confucianism (not included here) have been considered forgery, and a few Chinese textual critics have even considered all of them forgery except the first seve
