China and the West

Wang Guowei schreibt über westliche Philosophie : "In the spring of the following year (1902), I began to read Fairbanks' Introduction to sociology, Jevons' Logic, and Hoffding's Outlines of psychology. When I was half way through Hoffding's work, some philosophical books I had purchased earlier arrived. I therefore put aside Outlines of psychology for the time being and began to read Paulsen's Introduction to philosophy and Windleband's History of philosophy. I studied these books very much in the same way I studied English previously. But fortunately, since I had studied Japanese before, I was able to get the gist of these books by referring to Japanese works on similar subjects. Having finished Introduction to philosophy and History of philosophy, I began to read Kant in 1903 and found his analysis of genius in Critique of pure reason almost impossible to comprehend. I therefore put it aside for a while and began to read Schopenhauer's The world as will and idea and found its content cogent and style incisive ; I read it twice in that year. When I reached twenty-nine, I went back to Kant and found him not as difficult as before and began to read his theory on ethics and aesthetics besides his Critique of pure reason. This year [1907], I read Kant for the fourth time and found him even less difficult."