China and the West

Pound, Ezra. Guide to Kulchur [ID D29122].
Section I
I. DIGEST OF THE ANALECTS
that is, of the Philosophic Conversations
Said the Philosopher: You think that I have learned a great deal, and kept the whole of it in my memory?
Sse replied with respect: Of course. Isn't that so?
It is not so. I have reduced it all to one principle.

一 以 貫 之
(yi yi guan zhi)

COMMENT: This passage from the XV chapter of Analects, that is of the Philosophic Conversations, gives me my warrant for making a digest. Rapacity is the main force in our time in the Occident. In measure as a book contains wisdom it is nearly impossible to force any printer to issue it. My usual publishers refused the Ta Hio. What hope have I with a translation of the whole Analects?
Fan Tchai asked Kung the master (viz Confucius) for instruction in farming. Said the Master: I know less than any old peasant. He made the same reply about gardening: An old gardener knows more than I do.
Tseu-Lou asked: If the Prince of Mei appointed you head of the government, to what wd. you first set your mind?
Kung: To call people and things by their names, that is by the correct denominations, to see that the terminology was exact.

正 名
(zheng ming)

"You mean that is the first?" Said Tseu-leu. "Aren't you dodging the question? What's the use of that?"
KUNG: You are a blank. An intelligent man hesitates to talk of what he don't understand, he feels embarrassment.
If the terminology be not exact, if it fit not the thing, the governmental instructions will not be explicit, if the instructions aren't clear and the names don't fit, you can not conduct business properly.
If business is not properly run the rites and music will not be honoured, if the rites and music be not honoured, penalties and punishments will not achieve their intended effects, if penalties and punishments do not produce equity and justice, the people won't know where to put their feet or what to lay hold of or to whom they shd. stretch out their hands.
That is why an intelligent man cares for his terminology and gives instructions that fit. When his orders are clear and explicit they can be put into effect. An intelligent man is neither inconsiderate of others nor futile in his commanding.
KUNG on the MAKE MORE WORK FALLACY
Analects XI
The inhabitants of Lou wished to put up a new public granary. Min-tseu-kian said: Isn't the old one still good enough?
Is there any need of a new one which will cost much sweat to the people?
Said Kung the Philosopher: If that man opens his mouth, he speaks to some purpose.
COMMENT: The old granary was still suited to its purpose. Kung is against superfluous labour that does not serve a purpose.
Said Szetsun, or rather so says his translator: 'The sayings of the great sages are ordinary.' This I take to mean that there is nothing superfluous or excessive in them. When one knows enough one can find wisdom in the Four Classics. When one does not know enough one' eye passes over the page without seeing it.
'NO', said the Philosopher.
May we not suppose that XII, 9 of the Analects teaches the folly of taxation?
May we not suppose that the last phrase of this paragraph denounces the futility of great stores without orderly distribution?
May we not suppose that the answers in XIY, 10 of the Analects have been treasured as examples that Kung employed the right word neither in excess nor less than his meaning?

知 人
(zhi ren)

Humanity? is to love men.
Knowledge, to know men.
It is written: Fan-tchi did not understand what Kung meant by these answers.

知 人
(zhi ren)

It is difficult to be poor and feel no resentment. It is by comparison easy to be rich and not be puffed up.
Said Kung the Master: I have passed whole days without food, entire nights without sleep for the sake of my meditation, and in this there was no real use. It wd. have been better to have studied something in particular.

知 人
(zhi ren)

XVI. I. I have heard ever that possessors of kingdoms and the chiefs of great families do not complain of small population, nor of exiguous territory, nor even of the poverty of their peoples, but of the discord between people and ruler. For if each has his part that is due him, there is no pauper, there is harmony, there is no want among the inhabitants.
In the first book of the Lun Yu it is written the lord of a feudal kingdom shd. not demand work of his people save at convenient and/or suitable time. I.5
Duty in the home, deference among all men. Affection among all men and attachment in particular to persons of virtu (or virtue).
Seek friends among equals.
I am pro-Tcheou (inpolitics) said Koung fu Tseu.
They examined their predecessors.
(The full text being: they examined the civilization and history of the Dynasties which preceded them.)
There is one chapter in the anonymous translation that I have tried in vain to improve, that is to say I can not find a more balanced translation:
You have heard the six words, and the six becloudings?
There is the love of being benevolent, without the love of learning, the beclouding here leads to foolish simplicity. The love of knowing without love of learning, whereof the beclouding brings dissipation of mind. Of being sincere without the love of learning, here the beclouding causes disregard of the consequence. Of straightforwardness without the love of learning, whereof the beclouding leadeth to rudeness. Of boldness without the love of learning, whereof the beclouding brings insubordination. The love of firmness without the love of learning, whereof the beclouding conduces to extravagant conduct.

蔽
(bi)

Here in the ideogram called 'beclouding' we find confusion, an overgrowing with vegetation. Yet there is no better word for this in english than beclouding. 'Extravagant conduct' is shown in a dog pawing a king or trying to lick the king's ear, which is said to mean a dog wanting to rule. In the other ideograms there is nothing to give better meaning than the words used by my predecessor.
In the 'ONE PRINCIPLE' text we have four common signs: one, by, passing through, emerging. And Pauthier is deeper than the translator who has chosen to interpret this 'pervading'.
The second sign is said to be the reverse of fixed, or stopped, in the third sign we have the string passing through the holes in the coins, in the fourth we have the earth, the stem and the leaf.
The ch'ing ming text can mean also that functionaries shd. be called by their proper titles, that is to say a man should not be called controller of currency unless he really controls it. The ch'ing is used continually against ambiguity.
The dominant element in the sign for learning in the love of learning chapter is a mortar. That is, the knowledge must be ground into fine powder.

學
(xue)

2. The new learning. Part one.
Kung (Confucius) we receive as wisdom… The distinction I am trying to make is this. Rightly or wrongly we feel that Confucius offers a way of life, an Anschauung or disposition toward nature and man and a system for dealing with both… If you consider the occident, or all European or Mediterranean life for 2500 years, as something to be watches in a text-tube, you might make the following clinical observations on successive phases of process. As against China or as much as France knew of China in 1837 when Pauthier and Bazin pooled the results of their research… Let us say roughly that Kung lived on into the time of Pythagoras and of Aeschylus, 469 B.C. to 399, 427 to 347, 384 to 322, carry on from the birth of Socrates to Aristotle's death, Plato between them… And herein is clue to Confucius' reiterated commendation of such of his students as studied the Odes. He demanded or commended a type of perception, a kind of transmission of knowledge obtainable only from such concrete manifestation. Not without reason. The whole tone, disposition, Anschauung of Confucius recommending the Odes, of Confucius speaking of music, differs fundamentally, if not from what Pythagoras meant, at least from the way the unfortunate occidental usually supposes Pythagoras to have advised an examination of harmony… Take the whole ambience of the Analects (of Kung fu Tseu), you have the main character filled with a sense of responsibility. He and his interlocutors live in a responsible world, they think for the whole social order…Yet after 2000 and more years, Fontenelle observed that not even a half-masted tyrant wd. give Plato a ten acre lot whereon to try out his republic. In contrast we hear that whenever and wherever order has been set up in china ; whenever there has been a notable reform or constructive national action, you find a group of Confucians ‘behind it’, or at the centre...
3. Sparta 776 B.C.
Rome was the responsible ruler. The concentration or emphasis on eternity is not social. The sense of responsibility, the need for coordination of individuals expresses in Kung's teaching differs radically both from early Christian absolution and from the maritime adventure morals of Odysseus… They were serious characters as Confucius, St Ambrose or his Excellency Edmondo Rossoni could and would recognize serious characters…
5. ZWECK or the AIM
CH'ING MING, a new Paideuma will start with that injunction as has every conscious renovation of learning.
Section II
6. VORTEX
The Shang and Chow dynasties produced the convex bronze vases. The features of Tao-t'ie were inscribed inside of the square with the rounded corners – the centuple spherical frog presided over the bronze war drum… The force relapsed and they accumulated wealth, forsook their work, and after losing their form-understanding through the Han and T'ang dynasties, they founded the Ming and found artistic ruin and sterility… When the Ming were losing their conception, these neo-Mongols had a flourishing state. Through the strain of warfare they submitted the Chinese sphere to horizontal treatment much as the Semites had done…
PART II
Section IV
The history of philosophy is… ?
In any case, -ologies come out of greek separation and dilettantism. 'Occupy leisure with the arts'. For Kung and co. the arts included riding horses and using the bow and arrow. Kung 'fished occasionally with book and line, never with a net. He used a bow now and then but not snares to take birds'. What China is and came out of, can be divined from the 187th ideogram (MA) meaning horse, 22 pages double column of Morrison of words with the radical horse, and 'all of'em doin' wiff'orses, sir' unless I have missed an exception.
PART III
17. SOPHISTS
Kung did not pester his son with questions. It is recorded that he once asked the boy had he read the Odes. Pythagoras imposed five years silence. Can't write a book about that. The reason for reading the Book of the Odes, the books of poetry, that is the books of basic poetry whether in Ideogram and collected by Kung (B.C. 500 or whatever) from the 15 hundred years before his time, or by me or even by Dr. Ward (English Poets) is that poetry is totalitarian in any confrontation with prose. There is MORE in and on two pages of poetry than in or on ten pages of any prose save the few books that rise above classification as anything save exceptions. Apart from the Four Classics : Ta Hio ('Great learning'), The Standing Fast in the Middle, the Analects, say the three classics, or tack on Mencius, and Papa Flaubert, certain things are SAID only in verse. You can't translate 'em…
18. KULCHUR : PART ONE
When you don't understand it, let it alone. This is the copy-book maxim whereagainst sin prose philosophers, though it is explicit in Kung on spirits. The mythological exposition permits this. It permits an expression of intuition without denting the edges or shaving off the nose and ears of a verity. Byron regretted that Kung hadn't committed his maxims to verse… A summary like the present sins worse than the professoriate, who however neglect Kung's first method of instruction (whereof 4 strands). Literature, practice of virtuous actions, no faking, fidelity. Kung's insistence on the ODES lifts him above all occidental philosophers…
19. KULCHUR : PART Two
The Analects have endured. I don't know how many purgatories a man need pass through before he comes to ask himself ; why ?... Kung said : 'This music is utterly beautiful but…' and so forth…
Section VI
22. SAVOIR FAIRE
I hope to know the Odyssey better. I hope to read the Odyssey and the Ta Hio, someday, without need to look into dictionaries, and, beyond the Ta Hio, the Odes, on Kung's recommendation. The first two I have by me, with such books of reference as allow me to get a good deal of their meaning. For the third, sic : the Odes, the English cribs give me NOTHING, or else a mere annoyance. Beyond the dead English something extends, per forza, extends or Kung wd. not have told his own son to read the old poems. Great intelligence attains again and again to great verity. The Duce and Kung fu Tseu equally perceive that their people need poetry ; that prose is NOT education but the outer courts of the same…
The stupidity of my age is nowhere more gross, blatant and futile than in the time-lag for getting Chinese texts into bilingual editions. The Ta hio is so edited… At leas we shd. have in current editions the Odes, the Ta Hio and the Four Classics, Li Po (Rihaku) and at least 400 pages of the post-Confucian great poets, and a few dozen Noh dramas. We shd. NOT be at the mercy of single translators. We shd. have bilingual editions of this lot and MORE done better than the few pages in my last edition of The Chinese Written Character, but on that system. The ideogramic text, and under or beside each ideogram an explanation. Or in case of very common words, an interlinear translation with notes on the less familiar signs…
26. ON ANSWERING CRITICS
When a Catholic critic 'makes allowance for' my love of Confucius, I wish I cd. Think he had thought it down and out to this point. If I could think that, I wd. then suggest he go further into the analogies between New Testament thought and that verywhere diffused through the Analects and the Ta Hio…
PART IV
32. THE NOVEL AND SO FORTH
There is a limited gamut of what will come over from Chinese verse WITHOUT the rigours of Chinese technique - acoustic technique, over and above the universal technique of matter and of visual suggestivity. There is a limited gamut of what will come over from primitive poetry.
CONFUCII CHI-KING
SIVE LIBER CARMINUM
Who, for that matter, will say something solvent and elucidative as to the Penelope web of European awareness ? P. Lacharme ex soc. Jesu. A very learned man most skilled in Chinese and Tartar languages, of whose life no trace remains save this notable work, begun in 1733 and not really finished when he left off about 1752. 71 sheets once belonged to a certain Delisle, later handed on to the ministry of marine, then to the society of Astronomers, Paris. Chinese words written in Portuguese style. Julius Mohl wrote 'em in French style when preparing his edition in Paris, 1829, printed or published Stuttgart and Tubingen sumptibus D.G. cotta, 1830… The weariness and fact of war already there in the Songs of Tsao, Odes I.15. Kong lieu etc. had this kingdom of Tcheou 670 years before the Tcheou came to Empire, and so forth. The translation lay 80 years in ms. And I suppose Mohl's edition missed the boat. Latin having by 1830 ceased to be the lingua franca of western culture. Now we WANT the ideograms, even where Lacharme is clear reading. At any rate 3000 years ago the Chinese poets were aware of the unutterable dullness of warfare…
36. TIME-LAG
There is at least enough in Lacharme's latin to give one an unde5rstanding of why Kung fu Tseu told his pupils to READ the Odes…
41. ODES : RISKS
CONFUCIAN pedagogy in the home seems to have consisted in C's asking his son whether he had read a couple of books, one, the Book of the ODES, the other the Rites. (As recorded at the end of the XVIth chapter of the Lun Yu, second part of the Conversations.) Tching-kang asked Pe-yu (C's sun) whether he had heard 'extraordinary things' or anything his father 'don't tell the rest us us'. Pe-yu replied in the negative, and said : 'He is usually by himself. Onec when he was alone and I was hurrying through his room, he said : Have you studied the Odes ? I said : not yet. And he told me that if I didn't I wd. be unable to take part in conversation. Another time he said : Have you studied the Rites ? Our general notion of Confucius (kung) has perhaps failed to include a great sensibility. The Conversations are the record of a great sensibility.
PART V
46. DECLINE OF THE ADAMSES
The function of music is to present an example of order, or a less muddied congeries and proportion than we have yet about us in daily life. Hence the emphasis in Pytharoas and Confucius. The 'record of Confucius is the record of a very great sensibility', the history of western philosophers is preponderantly the record of defective sensibilities…
Section VI
48. ARABIA DESERTA
K. Carl's book on the Chinese court portrays a high culture. Wu Yung gives us perspective (The Flight of an Empress)… The general reflection on the contrasts in Wu's China, might be : A high civilization in decadence. A few people highly cultured, the probability of these people having constituted a very small percentage of the chinese population ? (That is an open question. No one who writes in English has tried to sort out the varying levels of chinese civilization in our time)…
49. KUNG
Knowledge is seldom lacking in the degree that will is lacking. Kung's life appears to be in conformity with the best modern views. I suspect that a minority has always held these views. Kung's first public job was a Douglasite assessment of the productivity of the province set for his inspection. Naturally he was the mover. He believed that travel broadens the mind, and that knowledge of local conditions is good antidote for theorists. He visited the best musician he had heard of… He did not bother go give advice on how to produce more to a minister whose sole aim was to push up the amount of tribute sweatable from the peasantry. Tuan Szetsun remarked that he found nothing unusual in the classic. Kung is modern in his interest in folk-lore. All this Frazer-Frobenius research is Confucian…The trial and condemnation of Chao-tcheng-mao a week after Kung accepted the Sse-keou (chief magistracy in Lou) still serves as paradigm for reformers. It was the one condition Kung made before he wd. accept the office… One might note that Wu Yung in the recent Boxer times and Kung B.C. found beheading prevalent. Nevertheless the Chinese chronicle records 'abolition of capital punishment'. It records a law that the Emperor shd. reflect three days in a sort of retreat, no jazz and only necessary food for three days, before pronouncing a death sentence. (Ordinance of Tai Tsoung 627/649). Tai cut down taxes. Tai remobilized the teaching of Kung fu Tseu. At his death the Tartar princes demanded the privilege of immolating themselves in order to serve their Lord in the next world. That might give one perspective, datum for a custom and a conviction that stretched from the Pacific to the Mediterranean. These Tartars were prevented from observing this antient custom only because Tai had foreseen that they wd. ask to do so, and dorbidden it. 1013 de notre ère Tchin Tcoung brought out a new edition of the classics and ordered their distribution. Before thinking that old-age pensions, medical relief, education endowments etc. etc. etc. are news, one shd. at least glance at a summary of the chinese story. To separate what is Chinese and what Japanese needs more knowledge than I yet have or am ever likely to come by. Harakiri for high nobles is pre-Confucian… We have had 150 to 200 years of Chinese scholarship printed in French and/or latin and we COULD have got on with it faster… Kung wnet for the big bad boss. Instant trial ended in seven days. He wnet for the meat monopoly. Tai Tsoung reduced taxes… As working hypothesis say that Kung is superior to Aristotle by totalitarian instinct. His thought is never something scaled off the surface of facts…
PART VI
54. AND THEREFORE TENDING
Ease might tempt me to use a Chinese philosopher recently edited. I have 40 pages of notes on him hanging at my right. A man's hand is stained in the clay he works with. I have in those 40 pates branded X. as a guide to counterfeiters. I see no excuse for filling the reader's mind, even a little, with refutation of X. 's doctrine. My most enjoyable moment of perusal was when I found his introducer saying that 'only the most rigid Confucians' had resisted the persuasiveness of X... In any case it is crapulous to continue basing curricula on material available 300 years ago, and neglecting all new knowledge. It is not as if Chinese were Fenollosa's discovery… My imaginary opponent may say : well, Aristotle preaches the doctrine of the mean. Kung, however, of the mean that stands fast… Both Kung and Dante have a much firmer hold on the real, and a much deeper intendimento… I am not attacking the conscious part of Aristotle, but the unconscious, the 'everyone says', or 'everyone admits', which wd. be inconceivable in the Ta Hio, in the Steadfast Mean, or in the Analects.
Section XIII
58. TO RECAPIULATE
I believe that the Ta Hio is veritably the Great Learning, to be taken with the Odes and the rest of Confucius' teaching.