China and the West

M.M. [Pound, Ezra]. The words of Ming Mao [ID D29089].
Mr. Loftus Hare's article on Yang-Chu, in the last issue of The Egoist, is most interesting, but let me add here Ming-Mao's reply to Yang Chu, especially to the remarks on Confuciuas, as follows :
Yang-Chu says that Kung-fu-tse had never a day's joy in all his life, yet we read that the Master Kung was once rapt into three days' revery, or as the Taoists say, ecstasy by the mere sound of certain beautiful music. To say that a man so capable of aesthetic pleasure has never a day's joy, is manifest folly.
As for Yang and his relation to Egoism, it was Kung who gave true instruction, seeing that he taught that a man's joy should rest in the dignity of his own mind and not in the shilly-shally of circumstance. Thus he died serene though it were among fishermen.
As for Ch'ieh and Chow, their pleasures depended on their having been born to imperial position, their luxury was bestowed upon them, how shall hereditary emperors who are born with such opportunity for revels be set up as examples for men of common fortune, who, even if they had the capacity for debauch, would, if they desired to exercise it, spend all their lives in a vain desire for trappings and for numerous women in brocade, and for pavilions and caparisoned horses ?
The counsels of Yang-Chu are in no sense Egoism, since they teach a man to depend on all things save himself. This dependence on self is the core of Confucian philosophy.