China and the West

Lin, Yutang. On Bertrand Russell's divorce [ID D28025].
Bertrand Russell's divorce is none of my business. On the other hand, my thoughts on Bertrand Russell's divorce are none of his business. The short item of news that appeared in The China Press about two months ago made me think a great deal. In fact, it made me think furiously. To those acquainted with the liberal views of marriage taken both by Bertrand and Dora Russell, which to my mind, would make marriage considerably easier, the news must have come as a surprise. In fact, the situation is a little invested with humour, as the personal distresses of all great men are invested with humour. This sort of humour is of the best, for it comes from the Defeat of Theories. The cosmic enginge grinds on, taking its toll form among prince and pauper, and from the shop-keeper to the modern sage, and shows us up as a couple of human mortals that must eternally flounder along. For life is victorious over human philosophy.
Perhaps, if the news is true, the divorce mustn't be taken as a defeat of Bertrand Russell, but only as a defeat of marriage. Perhaps Bertrand Russell is greater than the institution of marriage. For if Russell's marriage was a failure, he was, and is, in good company. All great men's marriage are failures. You say, what about Tolstoy and Goethe ? That is very well ; but I was thinking of the great sages of the past – Buddha, Confucius, Jesus and Mohammed. Jesus never married, so that proves nothing, unless it be taken as a practical comment on marriage on his part. Buddha, as we are told in The light of Asia, literally walked over the graceful sleeping body of his beautiful wife and became the first monk. It makes me wonder what he must have gone through. It seems to me that all these great men and sages are half crazy people : the common feelings of pain and suffering, of pity for the beggar, of the little annoyances in marriage and the great 'ennui' of life, which to the common man are no sooner felt than forgotten, must have struck their more highly sensitized souls with the power of an exaggerated illusion. From this exaggerated illusion, usually a religion was created. In fact, all founders of a special favorite theory, like Freud, Karl Marx and D.H. Lawrence, must have suffered from a type of mental myopia or astigmatism, which enables them to 'carry it through to its logical conclusion' and beyond all limits of reasonableness. To come back – Confucius and Mencius divorced their wives, and Mohammed took to concubines. All their marriages were failures. Only Socrates, that old Greek with a large measure of common sense, stood his marriage as well as any middle-class John Smith. We are told that, after being scolded by his wife and when he was leaving his house, his wife poured a pail of cold water over his head, he merely muttered, 'After the storm, the rain !' In other words, he had very robust, healthy nerves ; he stood marriage with the same physical courage as he stood cold, hardship and physical fatigue, for which he had extraordinary powers, and he faced his wife with the same moral courage with which he faced the cup of hemlock at the end of his seventy years. Socrates had that secret of happiness which is the essences of Chinese culture: Endure and conquer.
Why didn't Russell do it, and why didn't Confucius do it ? Confucius had the same humour and the same common sense as Socrates. But we have no sufficient evidence to determine whether Confucius divorced his wife or his wife divorced him. My conviction is that his wife merely ran away. Turn up Chapter Ten of The Analects, and you will understand why it must be so. Any woman who could stand Confucius as husband could stand the Spanish Inquisitions. 'He did not talk at dinner table, and did not talk in bed'. Many wives who face the back of their husband's morning paper every breakfast must know what that first part means ; for he second part, they can only imagine. Then he was extremely fastidious about the matching of colours in his dress. 'A fur gown of black sheep should be matched with a black material, a fur gown of white deer should be matched with a black material, a fur gown of white deer should be matched with white material, and a fur gown of fox should be matched with chocolate material'. Like all great men, he had original personal habits. 'He must have the right sleeve of his working gown made shorter' than the left sleeve, and he 'insisted on changing into a sleeping gown, which was longer by half than his body'. All these were practical hygienic innovations, but to the wife of Confucius, who was just a conventional woman, they might have just seemed like sheer nonsense. Equally fastidious was he with his food. 'Rice could never be too white, and mince meat could never be too fine', and who bore the burden except the wife in the kitchen ? The ten conditions under which Confucius refused to eat must have hanged over the mind of his wife at the kitchen like the sword of Damocles, and eventually caused her to make up her mind one fine morning. It was quite within reason, for instance, that 'when fish was not fresh, and meat was bad-smelling, he would not eat ; when the colour was bad, he would not eat ; when the flavor was bad, he would not eat'. But when 'he would not eat because a dish was overdone or underdone', was the wife of Confucius to stand over the boiling pot like a guard over a nationally well-known gangster, at the risk of seeing her man starve for another fine half day ? The article that he would not eat 'when a thing was not in season' meant extra time and caution at buying in the market. But when 'he would not eat, when the meat was not cut into perfect squares, and he would not ear, when it was not served with its proper sauce', the idea of running away must have already dawned in her mind. The worm was turning. And when, for one reason or another, she could not get up a proper meal, but could ask her son, Li, to run across and get some bacon and some wine to humour him and be through with the darned meal, she might still consent to stay. As it happened, she learned that 'he would not take wine that was not home-brewed or pickled meat that was bought from the streets', so what could the wife do except pack up and go away ? That last scene with Confucius, in which she delivered her mind of Confucius, is waiting for some great playwright to write up as the climax of a modern feminist drama. Greater, infinitely greater, than Dora's speech in leaving the Doll's House.
This instance of Confucius is given to illustrate the kind of problems that lie back of marriage and its failures. Two beings, biologically dissimilar, and actually leading two lives, are constrained to lead one. The response to surroundings must necessarily be dissimilar, and only an old couple, with a fundamental respect and liking for each other, and willing to give and take, can, with the exercise of vigilant common sense, toleration and subtle understanding, ever make a go of it. When this condition fails, the marriage breaks, and for it there is no remedy. The East, which regard the family as a social affair and the basis of society, take to concubinage, keeping the family as a social unit intact, while the West, which regard marriage as an individual, sentimental and romantic affair (sic !) go for divorce. Now the East are copying the West, but whoever believes that divorce is a true solution ? It is merely as we say in Chinese, 'a solution of no solution', like concubinage itself. There is no such thing as fairness or equality, for it is invariably the woman who suffers. The question is under which system she suffers more. Under the old system, when the man gets tired of his wife and takes his favorite home as concubine, the wife still retains her high position in the family, surrounded by her children, and holding at least a theoretic supremacy over the concubine. Above all, her personal position in the family is kept, and her home is not broken up. In the West, the woman sues for divorce, gets her alimony and goes away to live alone, or re-marry, or become a social lioness. In China, where women have not the spirit of independence of their western sisters, the situation is quite different. It has sometimes seemed to me that the old wife who is cast away to live a solitary life, with her home broken and her position as matriarch lost, is an infinitely pathetic spectacle. In olden days, when a maiden was, by the force of circumstances, involved with a married man, she was, if she was really in love with him, willing to go to his home as his concubine and serve the wife with respect and honour. Now driving one another out in the name of monogamy seems to be the modern fashionable was. It is the so-called emancipated, civilized way. In this battle against their own sex, the young must win out against the old. But if the women prefer it that way, let them have it, since it is they who are primarily affected by it. In any case, there is a happy and an unhappy woman in it. The problem is so new and yet so old. There is no such thing as fairness and equality. I hear Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks are estranged. I am interested not in what Doug thinks, but in what Mary thinks about this internecine war of the fair sex. If Mary were a good Chinese girl, she would let Doug take his concubine, watch how his passion cools after a time, and retain her lordship over Doug. Doug would then have plenty of time to learn what is love and some day come to his senses. Again, this is their own business, but again my thoughts are my own.