“Emerson and China : reflections on individualism” (Publication, 1992)
Year
1992
Text
Qian, Mansu. Emerson and China : reflections on individualism. (Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University, 1992). Diss. Harvard Univ., 1992. (Eme7)
Type
Publication
Contributors (1)
Qian, Mansu
(um 1992) : Anglistin, Research fellow Institute of Foreign Literature, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences
Mentioned People (1)
Emerson, Ralph Waldo
(Boston 1803-1882 Concord, Mass.) : Philosoph, Unitarier, Schriftsteller
Subjects
Literature : Occident : United States of America
/
References / Sources
Chronology Entries (2)
| # | Year | Text | Linked Data |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1822-1894 |
Ralph Waldo Emerson and China. [Primärliteratur]. 1822 Wide world 3 If divine Providence shall always mix the fates of man, if good & evil must ever encamp (together) side by side then Europe must decline as Asia rises & Civilization will not be propagated but only transferred. Travellers, those missionaries of science & scholars of Observation, have in the case of China rather added to the marvel than otherwise ; a case unusual… Our forefathers believed that the East was a great empire whose simple political institutions had a recorded antiquity (trip) at least triple the (poetical) fabled period of any other ; that this nation augmented its territory with its age, incorporating all it took by the inherent virtues of its policy ; that by reason of its perfect adaptation to human wants the paternal yoke of the government embraced the densest population in the world ; that this population had for ages enjoyed all the great inventions that had recently been imparted to Europe as the Compass, the Press, & Gunpowder, that it was possessed of science unknown in Europe & that the peasants of this sunny land lived in greater luxury than the privileged order in the Western nations. This plausible tale is true in the particular but false on the whole. The Celestial Empire, - hang the Celestial Empire ! I hate Pekin. I will not drink of the waters of the Yellow Sea. Exorciso tea, celestissime, even tea. One is apt to mix up an idea of the productions of a nation in our opinion of the producers, & Tea the insignificant sop of an herb, wholly a luxury in the West, the frivolous employment of millions in the making & tens of millions in the drinking is a fit representative of China. It is useful to know the (productions) state of man in circumstances widely dissimilar. It is a help to an inference concerning our progress. 'This like getting two angles to compute a third. But I hate China. 'Tis a tawdry vase. Out upon China. Words ! Words. - 1822 Wide world 3 : Italy. We judge of the value of every portion of history by its usefulness in application to our own and other times. Can we learn from the greatness, or the disasters it recounts, how to mould our own governments, in order to ensure the benefits and avoid the faults of the nation we see? – then the history is valuable. But the annals of the Chinese monarchy could be of little comparative advantage to the European Statesman; certainly of much less, than those of the ancient European dynasties. Exactly the opposite of the great Asiatic anomaly, is Italy. I cannot accurately judge of the Chronicles of China since they are little accessible to many, and less so, to me; but from the vague knowledge we possess of that empire, and from our minute acquaintance with Italian history, we may learn this; that both are insupportably tedious from different causes. 1822 Wide world 6 But in China, as in Venice, will faction & cabal always watch to check the continuance of every administration, good or bad? 1823 But private life hath more delicate varieties, which differ in unlike circumstances ; and the barbarian in his tent by the Rhine, the Tartar burrowing in the ground, the Spartan in the humble house of the Republic, the Roman in the luxurious palace of the Emperors, the Chinese in his floating house, & the Englishman in his comfortable tenement fill up the hours of the day with very different thoughts & different actions… 1824 Poems. To-day I laugh at those who, while they gape and gaze, The bald antiquity of China praise. Youth is (whatever cynic tubs pretend) The fault that boys and nations soonest mend. 1824 The theological notions of a Chinese are anomalous I trust in besotted perversity. 1824 Letter, Aug. 1824 “Friday ev.-g. Edward has just been home to say he has got a first prize for a Dissertation on China.” [Emerson, Edward. Antiquity, extent, cultivation, and present state of the Empire of China. In : Columbian centinel ; July 10, 1824]. 1824 Notebook, April 6, 1924. Indeed, the light of Confucius goes out in translation into the language of Shakespear [sic] & Bacon. The closer contemplation we condescend to bestow the more disgustful is that booby nation. The Chinese Empire enjoys precisely a Mummy's reputation, that of having preserved to a hair for 3 or 4,000 years the ugliest features in the world. I have no gift to see a meaning in the venerable vegetation of this extraordinary (nation) people. They are not tools for other nations to use. Even miserable Africa can say I have hewn the wood & drawn the water to promote the wealth & civilization of other lands. But, China, reverend dullness ! hoary ideot !, all she can say at the convocation of nations must be – 'I made the tea'. 1827 Letter to Miss Emerson, June 1827 In my frigidest moments, when I put behind me the subtler evidences, and set Christianity in the light of a piece of human history, much as Confucius or Solomon might regard it, I believe myself immortal. 1830 Journal. De Gerando I begin the Histoire Comparée des Systèmes de Philosophie par M. De Gérando. The first distinction that is made is that of Material and Work : changes, not creation. First come the Cosmogonies. Indians, Chinese, Chaldeans, Egyptians, Phoenicians, Persians, have a striking sameness in them, but all these are an intellectual offspring ; no utility, mere curiosity… The rule "Do as you would be done by" is found in the "Invariable Medium" of the Chinese, but thrown into the 3d paragraph of the 3d chap. So the Invariable Milieu begins with these promising definitions. "The order established by heaven is called Nature. What is conformed to nature is called Law, the establishment of law (in the mind ?) is called Instruction." (This Invariable Milieu M. Abel Remusat has translated into French in Tome II. Des Notices des manuscrits, 1818). 1830 Journal And let him change the names, and read it in Chinese in a bazar at Pekin, and he will find it is pertinent still to the human mind. So much for the doctrine so much prosed over of pertinent preaching. 1833 Journal Well, thou navigating muse of mine ; ‘t is now the hour of Chinese inspiration, the post-tea-cuptime… 1834 Journal What more sensible than what they say of Mr. -, that he sells his splendid Chinese house and goes to live at Watertown because he cannot make a bow and pleasantly entertain the crowd of company that visit him. 1835 George Fox : lecture, delivered Febr. 26, 1835. This alleged Light, or Conscience, or Spirit, takes different names in every new receiver, but its attributes are essentially the same. Zoroaster in Persia, Confucius in China, Orpheus in Greece, Numa in Italy, Manco Capac in Peru. 1835 Journal As he taught, it seemed pleasant, the tie of principle that holds as brothers, all men, to that when a stranger comes to me from the other side the globe, Otaheitan or Chinese, to buy or sell with me, he shall have that measure from me as shall fill his mind with pleasant conviction that he has dealt with a fellow man in the deepest and dearest sense. 1835 Journal Give me one single man, and uncover for me his pleasures and pains, let me minutely and in the timbers and ground-plan study his architecture, and you may travel all round the world and visit the Chinese, the Malay, the Esquimaux and the Arab. 1835-1837 1835 ? 1837 ? Date ? Silence is absolutely necessary to the wise man. Great speeches, elaborate discourses, pieces of eloquence ought to be a language unknown to him ; his actions ought to be his language. As for me, I would never speak more. Heaven speaks ; but what language does it use to preach to men that there is a sovereign principle (which makes them to act & move) from which all things depend ; a sovereign principle which makes them to act & move ? Its motion is its language ; it reduces the seasons to their time ; it agitates nature ; it makes it produce. This silence is eloquence. Confucius. 1836 Nature. (Boston : J. Munroe and Co., 1836). Chap. 4. Language 1. Words are signs of natural facts. 2. Particular natural facts are symbols of particular spiritual facts. 3. Nature is the symbol of spirit. 1836 Journal This is the effervescence & result of all religions. This is what remains at the core of each when all forms are taken away. This is the Law of Laws, Vedas, Zoroaster, Koran, Golden Verses of Pythagoras, Bible, Confucius. 1837 Journal I read with great content the August number of the Asiatic journal. Herein is always the piquancy of the meeting of civilization and barbarism. Calcutta or Canton are twilights were Night and Day contend. A very good paper is the narrative of Lord Napier's mission to China… There stand in close contrast the brief, wise English despatches, with the mountainous nonsense of Chinese diplomacy. 1838 Journal Amna comes now into the world a slave, he comes saddled with twenty or forty centuries. Asia has arrearages & Egypt arrearages ; not to mention all the subsequent history of Europe & America. 1838 Divinity School address : delivered before the senior class in Divinity College, Cambridge, Sunday Evening, July 15, 1838 The sentences of the oldest time, which ejaculate this piety, are still fresh and fragrant. This thought dwelled always deepest in the minds of men in the devout and contemplative East; not alone in Palestine, where it reached its purest expression, but in Egypt, in Persia, in India, in China. Europe has always owed to oriental genius, its divine impulses. 1838 War : delivered in March, 1838 in Boston. It weaned the Scythians and Persians from some cruel and licentious practices, to a more civil way of life. It introduced the sacredness of marriage among them. It built seventy cities, and sowed the Greek customs and humane laws over Asia, and united hostile nations under one code. 1838 Literary ethics : an oration delivered before the Literary Societies of Dartmouth College, July 24, 1838. What else are churches, literatures, and empires? The new man must feel that he is new, and has not come into the world mortgaged to the opinions and usages of Europe, and Asia, and Egypt. 1838 The heart : lecture delivered at the Masonic Temple, Boson, Jan. 3, 1838. "When a daughter is born," said the Chinese Sheking, "she sleeps on the ground ; she is clothed with a wrapper ; she plays with a tile ; she is incapable either of evil or of good." [Shi jing]. 1838 Journal The heart of Christianity is the heart of all philosophy. It is the sentiment of piety which Stoic & Chinese, Mahometan & Hindoo labor to awaken. 1838 Journal In order to present the bare idea of virtue, it is necessary that we should go quite out of our circumstance & custom, else it will be instantly confounded with the poor decency & inanition, the poor ghost that wears its name in good society. Therefore it is that we fly to the pagans & use the name & relations of Socrates, of Confucius, Menu, Zoroaster ; not that these are better or as good as Jesus & Paul, but because th3ey are good algebraic terms not liable, to confusion of thought like those we habitually use. 1838 Letter, Oct. 1838, discussed the religious literature of Germany and Chinese writing. 1838 Journal The only speech will at last be action, such as Confucius describes the speech of God. 1838-1842 Early lectures, vol. 3 (1838-1842). I may even say that not only in idea of the race but in actual history the emerging of each rare individual of a finished man always speaks to us a language of admonition & Hope. That wonderful sympathy & attraction which we find in each great man by which we prefer one eminent individual to nations of Chinese & Indians what does it say but this that we have n inextinguishable conviction that the powers which he was permitted to unfold he folded in us. 1840 Thoughts on modern literature. In : Dial ; vol. 1, no 2 (Oct. 1840). When one of these grand monads is incarnated whom Nature seems to design for eternal men and draw to her bosom, we think that the old weariness of Europe and Asia, the trivial forms of daily life will now end, and a new morning break on us all. Of the perception now fast becoming a conscious fact, — that there is One Mind, and that all the powers and privileges which lie in any, lie in all; that I as a man may claim and appropriate whatever of true or fair or good or strong has anywhere been exhibited; that Moses and Confucius, Montaigne and Leibnitz are not so much individuals as they are parts of man and parts of me, and my intelligence proves them my own, — literature is far the best expression. 1840 Journal What is the State ? The Hero is the State : The Soul should legislate, Postponing still the measure to the man ; One sage outweighs all China and Japan. 1841 Essays. (Boston : J. Munroe and Co., 1841). I. History The Chinese pagoda is plainly a Tartar tent. The Indian and Egyptian temples still betray the mounds and subterranean houses of their forefathers… I believe in Eternity. I can find Greece, Asia, Italy, Spain, and the Islands, -- the genius and creative principle of each and of all eras in my own mind. IV. Spiritual laws It is a Chinese wall which any nimble Tartar can leap over. It is a standing army, not so good as a peace. It is a graduated, titled, richly appointed empire, quite superfluous when town-meetings are found to answer just as well. Can a cook, a Chiffinch, an Iachimo be mistaken for Zeno or Paul? Confucius exclaimed, -- "How can a man be concealed! How can a man be concealed!" VIII. Heroism The first step of worthiness will be to disabuse us of our superstitious associations with places and times, with number and size. Why should these words, Athenian, Roman, Asia, and England, so tingle in the ear? Where the heart is, there the muses, there the gods sojourn, and not in any geography of fame. XII. Art Now that which is inevitable in the work has a higher charm than individual talent can ever give, inasmuch as the artist's pen or chisel seems to have been held and guided by a gigantic hand to inscribe a line in the history of the human race. This circumstance gives a value to the Egyptian hieroglyphics, to the Indian, Chinese, and Mexican idols, however gross and shapeless. 1841 Journal Confucius/Chinese classic : Hea Lun being just one of the many subsections into which Collie's work is divided. With his increasing acquaintance with Confucianism, he saw more wisdom and greatness in the Chinese philosopher. Confucius found himself secure in his position as one of the ethical and contemplative geniuses of the Orient whose all-embracing apophthegms are like the profound moments of heavenly life. 1841 Journal Chang Tsoo & Kee Neih retired from the state to the fields on account of misrule & showed their displeasure at Confucius who remained in the world. Confucius sighed & said ; 'I cannot associate with birds & beasts. If I follow not men whom shall I follow ? If the world were in possession of right principles, I should not seek to change it'. 1841 Journal I find an analogy also in the Asiatic sentences to this fact of life. The Oriental genius has no dramatic or epic turn, but ethical, contemplative, delights in Zoroastrian oracles, in Vedas, & Menu & Confucius. These embracing apophthegms are like these profound moments of the heavenly life. 1841 Journal All your learning of all literatures and states of society, Platonistic, Calvinistic, English or Chinese, would never enable you to anticipate one thought or expression. 1841 The Conservative : a lecture delivered at the Masonic Temple, Boston, December 9, 1841. I understand well the respect of mankind for war, because that breaks up the Chinese stagnation of society, and demonstrates the personal merits of all men. 1841 Man the reformer : a lecture read before the Mechanics' Apprentices' Library Association, Boston, January 25, 1841. The women fought like men, and conquered the Roman men. They were miserably equipped, miserably fed. They were Temperance troops. There was neither brandy nor flesh needed to feed them. They conquered Asia, and Africa, and Spain, on barley. 1842 The transcendentalist : a lecture read at the Masonic Temple, Boston, Jan. 1842. The oriental mind has always tended to this largeness. Buddhism is an expression of it. The Buddhist who thanks no man, who says, "do not flatter your benefactors," but who, in his conviction that every good deed can by no possibility escape its reward, will not deceive the benefactor by pretending that he has done more than he should, is a Transcendentalist. 1842 Journal Naming, yes, that is the office of the newspapers of the world, these famous editors from Moses, Homer, Confucius, and so on, down to Goethe and Kant : the y name what the people already done, and the thankful people say, "Doctor, 't is a great comfort to know the disease whereof I die". 1843 Journal : The reformer (after the Chinese). Emerson supped up the Confucian idea into two paragraphs : There is a class whom I call the thieves of virtue. They are those who mock the simple & sincere endeavourers after a better way of life, & say, these are pompous talkers ; but when they come to act, they are weak, nor do they regard what they have said. These mockers are continually appealing to the ancients. And they say, Why make ourselves singular ? Let those who are born in this age, act as men of this age. – Thus they secretly obtain the flattery of the age. The inhabitants of the village & of the city, all praise them. Wherever they go they are attentive & generous. If you would blame them, there is nothing to lay hold of. They accord with prevailing customs & unite with a polluted age. They appear faithful & sincere, & act as if sober & pure. The multitude all delight in them but they confuse virtue. Chinese reformer. Chin Seang praised Heu Tsze to Mencius as a prince who taught and exemplified a righteous life. A truly virtuous prince, he added, will plough along with his people, and while he rules will cook his own food. Mencius. Does Heu Tsze sow the grain which he eats ? Seang. Yes. M. Does Heu Tsze weave cloth and then wear it ? S. No: Heu Tsze wears coarse hair-cloth. M. Does Heu Tsze wear a cap ? S. Yes. M. What sort of a cap ? S. A coarse cap. M. Does he make it himself? S. No : he gives grain in exchange for it. M. Why doesn't he make it himself? S. It would be injurious to his farming. M. Does he use earthenware in cooking his victuals, or iron utensils in tilling his farm ? S. Yes. M. Does he make them himself? S. No, he gives grain in barter for them. M. Why does not Heu Tsze act the potter, and take everything from his own shop he wants to use ? Why should he be in the confused bustle exchanging articles with the mechanics ? He is not afraid of labor, surely ? S. The work of the mechanic and that of the husbandman ought not to be united. M. Oh, then the government of the Empire and the labor of the husbandman are the only employments that ought to be united. Were every man to do all kinds of work, it would be necessary that he should first make his implements, and then use them : thus all men would constantly crowd the roads. Some men labor with their minds, and some with bodily strength. Those who labor with their strength are ruled by men. Those who are governed by others, feed others. This is a general rule under the whole heavens. [The Chinese Classical Work…, 1828, “Shang Mung”, pp. 78-79]. Mencius proceeds to instance Yu, who, after the deluge, was eight years abroad directing the opening of channels to let off the inundation into the sea, and the burning of forests and marshes to clear the land of beasts of prey, so that he had no time to go home even, but passed his own door repeatedly without entering; and asks if he had leisure for husbandry, if he had been inclined? Yu and Shun employed their whole minds in governing the Empire, yet they did not plough the fields. The antagonist urges again the leveling principles of Tsze, - saying that if these were followed, there would not be two market prices, nor any deceit in the country. Cloth of the same length would be of the same price. &c &c. Mencius replies ; Things are naturally unequal in value. Afterwards the defender of Tsze adduces for praise the (ex) behavior of Chung as an example of moderation (the highest virtue). Was not, he says Chin Chung Tsze a moderate scholar ? When in Ling, he was three days without food, till his ear heard not, nor did his eye see. On the side of the well was a Le (a sort of plum), which the Tsaou had more than half eaten : he crawled to it, attempted to eat it, &, after three efforts, managed to swallow it, after which his ear heard & his eye saw. Mencius replied ; I must consider Chung as chief among the scholar of Tsze, but I cannot deem him moderate. Were he to act up to his own principles, he ought to become an earthworm. Then he might be considered moderate. The worm above eats dry earth, & below, drinks muddy water. Was the house which Chung lived in built by Pih E (a sage) or by Taou Chih, (a robber some say) ? Was the grain he eat sown by Pih E. or by Taou Chih ? This he could not know. What (injury) harm can be in that ? said the other. He made shoes, & his wife prepared hemp, & gave these in exchange for food. Chung's brother had ten thousand chung of salary. He deemed it unjust, & would not eat of it. He considered his brother's house unjust, & would not live in it. He avoided his (mother) brother, left his mother, & dwelt in Woo Ling. Having afterwards returned, some one presented a live goose to his brother, on seeing which he gathered up his brows, & said, Why use that crackling thing ? Another day his mother killed this same goose, & gave it him to eat. His brother happening to come in, said, 'You are eating the flesh of that cackling thing'. On which he went out, & spewed out what he had eaten. Had he become an earthworm, then would he have acted up to his own tenets ? Yang taught that we should love ourselves only, Mih taught that we should love all men alike. Confucius taught the law of the Golden Mean, Tsze taught not to be dependent on any other. 1843 Letter to Margaret Fuller, June 1843. I have the best of Chinese Confucian books lately, an octavo published at Malacca, in English. Much of it is th4e old Confucius more fully rendered ; but the book of Mencius is fully new to me, and in its quiet sunshine a dangerous foil to Carlyle's stormlights. 1843 Journal There is nothing in history to parallel the influence of Jesus Christ. The Chinese books say of Wen Wang on of their kings "From the west from the east from the south from the north there was not one thought not brought in subjection to him". This can be more truly said of Jesus than of any mortal. 1843 Journal. The Chinese are as wonderful for their etiquette as the Hebrews for their piety. 1843 Journal My Chinese book does not forget to record of Confucius, that his nightgown was one length and a half of his body. 1843 Journal Chinese reformer ; Mencius ; Gonzalo's Kingdom. 1844 Essays : second series. (Boston : J. Munroe and Co., 1844). New England reformers (Lecture at Amory Hall) II. Experience The Chinese Mencius has not been the least successful in his generalization. "I fully understand language," he said, "and nourish well my vast-flowing vigor." -- "I beg to ask what you call vast-flowing vigor?" -- said his companion. "The explanation," replied Mencius, "is difficult. This vigor is supremely great, and in the highest degree unbending. Nourish it correctly, and do it no injury, and it will fill up the vacancy between heaven and earth. This vigor accords with and assists justice and reason, and leaves no hunger (or deficiency)." - III. Character The virtuous prince confronts the gods, without any misgiving. He waits a hundred ages till a sage comes, and does not doubt. He who confronts the gods, without any misgiving, knows heaven ; he who waits a hundred ages until a sage comes, without doubting, know men. Hence the virtuous prince moves and for ages shows empire the way. [Mencius]. Confucius said one day to Ke Kang: "Sir, in carrying on your government, why should you use killing at all? Let your evinced desires be for what is good, and the people will be good. The grass must bend, when the wind blows across it." Ke Kang, distressed about the number of thieves in the state, inquired of Confucius how to do away with them. Confucius said, "If you, sir, were not covetous, although you should reward them to do it, they would not steal." A completed nation will not import its religion. Duty grows everywhere, like children, like grass ; and we need not go to Europe or to Asia to learn it… I find it more credible, since it is anterior information, that one man should know heaven, as the Chinese say, than that so many men should know the world… The sentiment, of course, is the judge and measure of every expression of it, - measures Judaism, Stoicism, Christianity, Buddhism, or whatever philanthropy, or politics, or saint, or seer pretends to speak in its name… Men may well come together to kindle each other to virtuous living. Confucius said, "If in the morning I hear of the right way, and in the evening lie, I can be happy." IV. Manners It is easy to push this deference to a Chinese etiquette; but coolness and absence of heat and haste indicate fine qualities. A gentleman makes no noise: a lady is serene. 1844 Emancipation in the British West Indies : address delivered in concord on the anniversary of the emancipation of the negroes, in the British West Indies, Aug. 1, 1844. That of Asia Minor in poetry, music and arts ; that of Palestine in piety ; that of Rome in military arts and virtues, exalted by a prodigious magnanimity ; that of China and Japan in the last exaggeration of decorum and etiquette. 1844 The young American : a lecture read before the Mercantile Library Association, Boston, February 7, 1844. Public gardens, on the scale of such plantations in Europe and Asia, are now unknown to us. 1845 Journal. Yes ; but Confucius. Confucius, glory of the nations. Confucius, sage of the Absolute East, was a middle man. He is the Washington of philosophy, the Moderator, the Meden agan of modern history. 1845 Journal I should say again that the East loved infinity, & the West delighted in boundaries. 1846 Poems : Monadnoc Sparta's stoutness, Bethlehem's heart, Asia's rancor, Athens' art, Slowsure Britain's secular might, And the German's inward sight… Earth smiled with flowers, and man was born. Then Asia yeaned her shepherd race.. 1847 Journal Crier, call Pythagoras, Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, Proclus, Plotinus, Spinoza, Confucius and Menu, Kepler, Friar Bacon. 1848 Journal To me it looks as if a wise Frenchman should say to his country, Leave Pland and China and Oregon to themselves. 1850 Representative men : seven lecture. (Boston : Phillips, Sampson and Co., 1850). Uses of great men. We cannot read Plutarch without a tingling of the blood; and I accept the saying of the Chinese Mencius: "A sage is the instructor of a hundred ages. When the manners of Loo are heard of, the stupid become intelligent, and the wavering, determined." Our colossal theologies of Judaism, Christism, Buddhism, Mahometism, are the necessary and structural action of the human mind. Plato ; or, the philosopher. The mind of Plato is not to be exhibited by a Chinese catalogue, but is to be apprehended by an original mind in the exercise of its original power. In him the freest abandonment is united with the precision of a geometer… Such is the history of Europe, in all points; and such in philosophy. Its early records, almost perished, are of the immigrations from Asia, bringing with them the dreams of barbarians; a confusion of crude notions of morals and of natural philosophy, gradually subsiding through the partial insight of single teachers… The unity of Asia and the detail of Europe ; the infinitude of the Asiatic soul and the defining, result-loving, machine-making, surface-seeking, opera-going Europe – Plato came to join, and, by contact, to enhance the energy of each. 1851 The fugitive slave law : address to citizens of Concord, 3 May, 1851. Europe is little compared with Asia and Africa ; yet Asia and Africa are its ox and its ass. Europe, the least of all the continents, has almost monopolized for twenty centuries the genius and power of them all. 1852 Journal In Massachusetts, every twelfth man is a shoemaker ; tea-plant for China ; oranges for Spain ; coal for England ; wheat for Canada. 1855 Woman : a lecture read before the Woman's rights convention, Boston, Sept. 20, 1855. The action of society is progressive. In barbarous society the position of women is always low - in the Eastern nations lower than in the West. "When a daughter is born," says the Shiking, the old Sacred Book of China," she sleeps on the ground, she is clothed with a wrap-per, she plays with a tile ; she is incapable of evil or of good." And something like that position, in all low society, is the position of woman ; because, as before remarked, she is herself its civilizer. 1855 Journal Connais les ceremonies. Si tu en pénètres le sens, tu gouverneras un royaume avec la même facilité que tu regards dans ta main. Confucius. 1855 Journal Confucius on ceremony. 1855 Journal Shake off from your shoes the dust of Europe and Asia. 1856 English traits. (Boston : Phillips, Sampson, and Co., 1856). III. Land The Russian in his snows is aiming to be English. The Turk and Chinese also are making awkward efforts to be English… As America, Europe, and Asia lie, these Britons have precisely the best commercial position in the whole planet, and are sure of a market for all the goods they can manufacture. V. Ability The English trade does not exist for the exportation of native products, but on its manufactures, or the making well every thing which is ill made elsewhere. They make ponchos for the Mexican, bandannas for the Hindoo, ginseng for the Chinese, beads for the Indian, laces for the Flemings, telescopes for astronomers, cannons for kings. IX. Cockayne The same insular limitation pinches his foreign politics. He sticks to his traditions and usages, and, so help him God! he will force his island by-laws down the throat of great countries, like India, China, Canada, Australia, and not only so, but impose Wapping on the Congress of Vienna, and trample down all nationalities with his taxed boots… I suppose that all men of English blood in America, Europe, or Asia, have a secret feeling of joy that they are not French natives. XVI Stonehenge. For the science, he had, if possible, even less tolerance, and compared the savans of Somerset House to the boy who asked Confucius "how many stars in the sky?" Confucius replied, "he minded things near him:" then said the boy, "how many hairs are there in your eyebrows?" Confucius said, "he didn't know and didn't care." [Zitat von Thomas Carlyle]. 1856 Journal But the others (those wise hermits), who speak from their thought, speak from the deep heart of men, from a far wide public, the public of all sane and good men, from a broad humanity : and Greek and Syrian, Parthian and Chinese, Cherokee and Kanaka, hear them speaking in their own tongue. 1856 Journal Well, in England and in America there is the widest difference of altitude between the culture of their scholars and that of the Germans, and here are in America a nation of Germans living with the Organon of Hegel in their hands, which makes the discoveries and thinking of the English and American look of a Chinese narrowness, and yet, good easy dunces that we are, we never suspect our inferiority. 1859 Well, when India was explored, and the wonderful riches of Indian theologie literature found, that dispelled once for all the dream about Christinanity being the sole revelation, - for, here in India, there in China, were the same principles, the same grandeurs, the like depths, moral and intellectual. 1859 Art and criticism : lecture 13 April 1859 at the Music Hall Boston. The Chinese have got on so long with their solitary Confucius and Mencius ; the Arabs with their Mahomet; the Scandinavians with their Snorre Sturleson; and if the English island had been larger and the Straits of Dover wider, to keep it at pleasure a little out of the imbroglio of Europe, they might have managed to feed on Shakspeare for some ages yet; as the camel in the desert is fed by his humps, in long absence from food… He [George Borrwo] therefore mastered the patois of the gypsies, called Romany, which is spoken by them in all countries where they wander, in Europe, Asia, Africa. 1860 The conduct of life. (Boston : Ticknor and Fields, 1860). I Fate Mahometan and Chinese know what we know of leap-year, of the Gregorian calendar, and of the precession of the equinoxes. 1860 Reading. Laurence Oliphant, Narrative of the Earl of Elgin’s Mission to China. "The two mandarins (namely, Pihkwei and the Tartar General) were in full official costume, and retained throughout that chamred and delighted manner, which a Chinaman always puts on when he is powerless and alarmed. " When Lord Elgin put these two captured officials into temporary office again, after the taking of Canton. 1862 Journal. Correctness The Englishman in China, seeing a doubtful dish set before him inquired, "Quack-quack?" The Chinese replied, "Bow-wow". 1862 The emancipation proclamation : an address delivered in Boston in Sept. 1862. "Better is virtue in the sovereign than plenty in the season," say the Chinese. 1862 Perpetual forces : delivered on 18 Nov. 1862 before the Parker Fraternity, Boson. Certain thoughts, certain observations, long familiar to me in night-watches and daylights, would be my capital if I removed to Spain or China, or, by stranger translation, to the planet Jupiter or Mars, or to new spiritual societies. 1863 The wise Confucius. Sayings of Confucius. Confucius says, "Now all over the empire carriages have wheels of the same size, all writing is with the same characters ; and for conduct there are the same rules.” – Doctrine of the mean. (Confucius, apud Legge.) "Of their seeing and hearing, their thinking and revolving, their moving and acting, men all say, It is from Me. Every one thus brings out his self, and his smallness becomes known. But let the body be taken away, and all would be Heaven. How can the body be taken away ? Simply by subduing and removing that self-having of the Ego. This is the taking it away. That being done so wide and great as Heaven is, my mind is as wide and great, and production and transformation cannot be separated from me. Hence it is said, - how vast in his Heaven! " – Idem, note, vol. 1, p. 294. The text is, "Call him man in his ideal, how earnest is he! Call him an abyss, how deep is he! Call him Heaven, how vast is he !" I am reading a better Pascal. "It is said in the Book of poetry, "Over her embroidered robe she puts a plain single garment." So it is the way of the superior man to prefer the concealment of his virtue, while it daily becomes more illustrious, and the way of the mean man to seek notoriety ; while he daily goes more and more to ruin. It is characteristic of the superior man, appearing insipid, yet never to produce satiety ; while showing a simple negligence, yet to have his accomplishments recognized ; while seemingly plain, yet to be discriminating. He knows how what is distance lies in what is near, - whence the wind proceeds from, how what is minute becomes manifested." – Idem, vol. 1, p. 295. "In hewing an axe-handle, the patterns is not far off." We grasp one axe-handle to hew another. "Is virtue a thing remote ? I wish to be virtuous, and lo ! virtue is at hand." "If one's actions be previously determined, there will be no sorrow in connection with them. If principles of conduct be, the practice of them will be inexhaustible." "It is characteristic of entire sincerity to be able to foreknow. The indicifual possessed of complete sincerity is like a spirit." "The way of heaven and earth may be declared in a sentence : - They are without any doubleness, and so they produce things in a manner that is unfathombable. Heaven is a shining spot, yet sun, moon, stars, constellations, are suspended in it ; the earth is a handful of soil, but sustains mountains like Hwa and Yoh without feeling their weight, and contains rivers and seas without leaking away. " To the colleges : "Learning without Thought is labour lost ; Thought without Learning is perilous. The accomplished scholar is not a utensil." Here is an acute observation that belongs to "Classes of Men" : - "The Master said, The faults of men are characteristic of the class to which they belong. By observing a man's faults, it may be known that he is virtuous." "The superior man thinks of virtue ; the small man thinks of comfort." Culture. "It is from music that the finish is received." – Confucius. "The subjects on which the Master did not talk were – extraordinary things, feats of strength, disorder, and spiritual beings." – Legge, p. 65. He anticipated the speech of Socrates, and the Do as be done by, of Jesus. 1863 Authors or Books quoted or referred to in Journal for 1863 Confucius, Book of poetry, apud James Legge… The Wise Confucius…. Etc. S. 533-535… I justified to W---- yesterday Confucius’s speech about making money, lest he should rashly resign his position at Chicago… 1863 Journal It is with difficulty that we wont ourselves in the language of the Eastern poets, in the melodramatic life, as if one should go down to Lewis’s Wharf and find an ivory boat and a ping sea. He thinks he is at the opera. As, for example, in the Chinese Two Fair Cousins… Life is ideal; Death is to break up our styles. This the use of war, to shatter your porcelain dolls; to break up in a nation Chinese conservatism, death in life. 1863 Journal Confucius, his Doctrine of the Mean, Book of Poetry, 1864 Journal 'This is bad omen for England, that, in these years, her foreign policy is ignominious, that she plays a sneaking part with Denmark, with France, with Russia, with China, with America. 1865 Journal Vishnu Purana bear witness-Socrates, Zeno, Menu, Zertushi, Confucius, Rabia are as tender as St. Francis, St. Augustine, and St. Bernard. 1867 Progress of culture : address read before The Phi Beta Kappa Society at Cambridge [Mass.], July 18, 1867. But if these works still survive and multiply, what shall we say of names more distant, or hidden through their very superiority to their coevals, - names of men who have left remains that certify a height of genius in their several directions not since surpassed, and which men in proportion to their wisdom still cherish, - as Zoroaster, Confucius, and the grand scriptures, only recently known to Western nations, of the Indian Vedas, the Institutes of Menu, the Puranas, the poems of the Mahabarat and the Ramayana ?... Our towns are still rude, - the make-shifts of emigrants, - and the whole architecture tent-like, when compared with the monumental solidity of medieval and primeval remains in Europe and Asia. 1868 Speech at Banquet in honor of the Chinese Embassy, Boston, 1868. [Speech of Ralph Waldo Emerson at the banquet given by the City of Boston, August 21, 1868, to the Hon. Anson Burlingame, Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary from China, and his associates, Chih Ta-Jin and Sun Ta-Jin, of the Chinese Embassy to the United States and the European powers. Mr. Emerson responded to the toast: "The union of the farthest East and the farthest West."] MR. MAYOR : I suppose we are all of one opinion on this remarkable occasion of meeting the embassy sent from the oldest Empire in the world to the youngest Republic. All share the surprise and pleasure when the venerable Oriental dynasty - hitherto a romantic legend to most of us - suddenly steps into the fellowship of nations. This auspicious event, considered in connection with the late innovations in Japan, marks a new era, and is an irresistible result of the science which has given us the power of steam and the electric telegraph. It is the more welcome for the surprise. We had said of China, as the old prophet said of Egypt, "Her strength is to sit still." Her people had such elemental conservatism that by some wonderful force of race and national manners, the wars and revolutions that occur in her annals have proved but momentary swells or surges on the pacific ocean of her history, leaving no trace. But in its immovability this race has claims. China is old, not in time only, but in wisdom, which is gray hair to a nation, or, rather, truly seen, is eternal youth. As we know, China had the magnet centuries before Europe ; and block-printing or stereotype, and lithography, and gunpowder, and vaccination, and canals ; had anticipated Linnus's nomenclature of plants ; had codes, journals, clubs, hackney coaches, and, thirty centuries before New York, had the custom of New Year's calls of comity and reconciliation. I need not mention its useful arts, - its pottery indispensable to the world, the luxury of silks, and its tea, the cordial of nations. But I must remember that she has respectable remains of astronomic science, and historic records of forgotten time, that have supplied important gaps in the ancient history of the western nations. Then she has philosophers who cannot be spared. Confucius has not yet gathered all his fame. When Socrates heard that the oracle declared that he was the wisest of men, he said, it must mean that other men held that they were wise, but that he knew that he knew nothing. Confucius had already affirmed this of himself: and what we call the GOLDEN RULE of Jesus, Confucius had uttered in the same terms five hundred years before. His morals, though addressed to a state of society unlike ours, we read with profit to-day. His rare perception appears in his GOLDEN MEAN, his doctrine of Reciprocity, his unerring insight, - putting always the blame of our misfortunes on ourselves ; as when to the governor who complained of thieves, he said, " If you, sir, were not covetous, though you should re-ward them for it, they would not steal." His ideal of greatness predicts Marcus Antoninus. At the same time, he abstained from paradox, and met the ingrained prudence of his nation by saving always, " Bend one cubit to straighten eight." China interests us at this moment in a point of politics. I am sure that gentlemen around me bear in mind the bill which the Hon. Mr. Jenckes of Rhode Island has twice attempted to carry through Congress, requiring that candidates for public offices shall first pass examinations on their literary qualifications for the same. Well, China has preceded us, as well as England and France, in this essential correction of a reckless usage ; and the like high esteem of education appears in China in social life, to whose distinctions it is made an indispensable passport. It is gratifying to know that the advantages of the new intercourse between the two countries are daily manifest on the Pacific coast. The immigrants from Asia come in crowds. Their power of continuous labor, their versatility in adapting themselves to new conditions, their stoical economy, are unlooked-for virtues. They send back to their friends, in China, money, new products of art, new tools, machinery, new foods, etc., and are thus establishing a commerce without limit. I cannot help adding, after what I have heard to-night, that I have read in the journals a statement from an English source, that Sir Frederic Bruce attributed to Mr. Burlingame the merit of the happy reform in the relations of foreign governments to China. I am quite sure that I heard from Mr. Burlingame in New York, in his last visit to America, that the whole merit of it belonged to Sir Frederic Bruce. It appears that the ambassadors were emulous in their magnanimity. It is certainly the best guaranty for the interests of China and of humanity. 1868 Journal Can anyone doubt that if the noblest saint among the Buddhists, the noblest Mahometan, the highest Stoic of Athens, the purest and wisest Christian, Menu in India, Confucius in China, Spinoza in Holland, could somewhere meet and converse together, they would all find themselves of one religion, and all would find themselves denounced by their own sects, and sustained by these believed adversaries of their sects ? 1868 Journal. Revolutions. When I see the Japanese building a steam navy, and their men of rank sending children to America for their education, the Chinese, instead of stoning an ambassador if he steps out of the walls of Canton, now choosing Mr. Burlingame as their ambassador to Western courts… 1868 Greatness : an address before the Amherst Social Union. This day-labor of ours, we confess, has hitherto a certain emblematic air, like the annual ploughing and sewing of the Emperor of China… Who can doubt the potency of an individual mind, who sees the shock given to torpid races---torpid for ages -- by Mahornet; a vibration propagated over Asia and Africa? What of Menu? What of Buddha? of Shakspeare? of Newton? of Franklin? 1870 Society and solitude : twelve chapters. (Boston : Fields, Osgood & Co., 1870). II Civilization Each nation grows after its own genius, and has a civilization of its own. The Chinese and Japanese, though each complete in his way, is different from the man of Madrid or the man of New York. VII Works and days Nature loves to cross her stocks, - and German, Chinese, Turk, Russ and Kanaka were putting out to sea,' and intermarrying race with race ; and commerce took the hint, and ships were built capacious enough to carry the people of a county.' VIII Books After the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures, which constitute the sacred books of Christendom, these are, the Desatir of the Persians, and the Zoroastrian Oracles ; the Vedas and Laws of Menu ; the Upanishads, the Vishnu Purana, the Bhagvat Geeta, of the Hindoos; the books of the Buddhists ; the Chinese Classic, of four books, containing the wisdom of Confucius and Mencius.' … As whole nations have derived their culture from a single book, - as the Bible has been the literature as well as the religion of large portions of Europe ; as Hafiz was the eminent genius of the Persians, Confucius of the Chinese, Cervantes of the Spaniards ; so, perhaps, the human mind would be a gainer if all the secondary writers were lost, - say, in England, all but Shakspeare, Milton and Bacon,-through the profounder study so drawn to those wonderful minds… The missionary must be carried by it, and find it there, or he goes in vain. Is there any geography in these things ? We call them Asiatic, we call them primeval ; but perhaps that is only optical, for Nature is always equal to herself, and there are as good eyes and ears now in the planet as ever were. Only these ejaculations of the soul are uttered one or a few at a time, at long intervals, and it takes millenniums to make a Bible. XI Success Thus we do not carry a counsel in our breasts, or do not know it; and because we cannot shake off from our shoes this dust of Europe and Asia, the world seems to be born old, society is under a spell, every man is a borrower and a mimic, life is theatrical and literature a quotation; and hence that depression of spirits, that furrow of care, said to mark every American brow. 1870 Journal Confucius and Menu had a deeper civilization than Paris or London. 1871 Journal The superior man thinks of virtue, the small man thinks of comfort. Confucius. 1875 Letters and social aims. (Boston : J. R. Osgood, 1875). Poetry and imagination As soon as a man masters a principle, and sees his facts in relation to it, fields, waters, skies, offer to clothe his thoughts in images. Then all men understand him : Parthian, Mede, Chinese, Spaniard, and Indian hear their own tongue. Social aims. Why have you statues in your hall, but to teach you that, when the door-bell rings, you shall sit like them. "Eat at your table as you would eat at the table of the king," said Confucius… The old Confucius in China admitted the benefit, but stated the limitation : "If the search for riches were sure to be successful, though I should become a groom with whip in hand to get them, I will do so. As the search may not be successful, I will follow after that which I love."… Resources We have seen China opened to European and American ambassadors and commerce ; the like in Japan : our arts and productions begin to penetrate both. As the walls of a modern house are perforated with water-pipes, sound-pipes, gas-pipes, heat-pipes, so geography and geology are yielding to man's convenience, and we begin to perforate and mould the old ball, as a carpenter does with wood… The disgust of California has not been able to drive nor kick the Chinaman back to his home; and now it turns out that he has sent home to China American food and tools and luxuries, until he has taught his people to use them, and a new market has grown up for our commerce. The emancipation has brought a whole nation of negroes as customers to buy all the articles which once their few masters bought, and every manufacturer and producer in the North has an interest in protecting the negro as the consumer of his wares. Quotation and originality The Patent-Office Commissioner knows that all machines in use have been invented and re-invented over and over; that the mariner's compass, the boat, the pendulum, glass, movable types, the kaleidoscope, the railway, the power-loom, etc., have been many times found and lost, from Egypt, China, and Pompeii down; and if we have arts which Rome wanted, so also Rome had arts which we have lost ; that the invention of yesterday of making wood indestructible by means of vapor of coal-oil or paraffine was suggested by the Egyptian method which has preserved its mummy-cases four thousand years… Now shall we say that only the first men were well alive, and the existing generation is invalided and degenerate ? Is all literature eavesdropping, and all art Chinese imitation ? Persian poetry. Enwerl. Body and soul. "A painter in China once painted a hall ;- Such a web never hung on an emperor's wall ;- One half from his brush with rich colors did run, The other he touched with a beam of the sun ; So that all which delighted the eye in one side, The same, point for point, in the other replied. "In thee, friend, that Tyrian chamber is found ; Thine the star-pointing roof, and the base on the ground : Is one half depicted with colors less bright? Beware that the counterpart blazes with light!" Inspirations The legends of Arabia, Persia and India are of the same complexion as the Christian. Socrates, Menu, Confucius, Zertusht, -- we recognize in all of them this ardor to solve the hints of thought. 1878 The sovereignty of ethics. In : North American review ; vol. 10, no 12 (1878). If I miss the inspiration of the saints of Calvinism, or of Platonism, or Buddhism, our times are not up to theirs, or, more truly, have not yet their own legitimate force. 1878 The fortune of the Republic : lecture delivered at the Old south church, Boston, March 30, 1878. They built great works and called their manufacturing village Etruria. Flaxman, with his Greek taste, selected and combined the loveliest forms, which were executed in English clay ; sent boxes of these as gifts to every court of Europe, and formed the taste of the world. It was a renaissance of the breakfast-table and china-closet. The brave manufacturers made their fortune. The jewellers imitated the revived models in silver and gold. 1894 Natural history of intellect & other papers. (Boston : Houghton, 1894). Concord walks I possess here all that I desire of the spoils of the East and the West, and, unless I am very much mistaken, what is far more beautiful than Babylonian robes, or vases of the Chinese. Here I learn what I teach. Boston Of these writers, of this spirit which deified them, I will say with Confucius, "If in the morning I hear of the right way, and in the evening die, I can be happy." |
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Ralph Waldo Emerson und China : Allgemein Quellen Abel-Rémusat, Jean-Pierre. L'invariable milieu, ouvrage morale Tséu-ssê [ID D1943]. The Chinese classical work commonly called the Four books. Transl. by David Collie. [ID D22647]. Iu-kiao-li, ou, Les deux cousines : roman chinois. Trad by Abel-Rémusat. [ID D5232]. Davis, John Francis. The Chinese [ID D2017]. Gérando, Joseph-Marie de. Histoire comparée des systèmes de philosophie, considérés relativement aux principes des connaissances humaines. (Paris : A. Eymery, 1822-1823). [Confucius]. [ID D29658]. Huc, Evariste Régis. Souvenirs d'un voyage dans la Tartarie, le Thibet et la Chine pendant les années 1844, 1845 et 1846 [ID D2107]. The She king or the book of poetry. Transl. by James Legge. Marshman, Joshua. The works of Confucius [ID D1909]. Marshman, Joshua. Dissertation on the characters and sounds of the Chinese language [ID D1908]. Oliphant, Laurence. Narrative of the Earl of Elgin's mission to China and Japan in the years 1857 [ID D2188]. Perry, M[atthew] C[albraith]. Narrative of the expedition of an American squadron to the China seas and Japan, performed in the years 1852, 1853, and 1854 [ID D4578]. The Phenix : a collection of old and rare fragments [ID D29682]. Ansom Burlingame Senator Charles Sumner sent Emerson Senate documents on Chinese correspondence. Sekundärliteratur 1930 Frederic Ives Carpenter : Chinese literature and Buddhism were the only two Oriental systems which Emerson did not wholly welcome. Buddhism epitomized for him the quietism of the East, and its passiveness. Chinese literature epitomized its formalism, and its lack of the progressive element. 1932 Arthur Christy : The tie that bound Emerson to Confucius was their common belief in the goodness of man. When the responsibilities of manhood were on his shoulders and when he faced economic necessities, he found, after browsing among his books, that Confucius could speak to his condition. The simplest exposition of further influence from the reading of the Confucian books is the most significant instances in the essays in which Confucian thought is apparent. Confucius gave Emerson moral corroboration of his observations on men – not the universe. 1944 Chang Chi-yun : Emerson took the personality of Confucius as an example of human greatness. The great man was he who embodied in himself to the highest degree the virtue, the vital force of the universe. Emerson was one of the first American to take the trouble to acquaint himself with the thought and civilization of the East. His interest in Chinese literature remained constant ; and so, to a high degree, he qualified himself to be the announcer and the interpreter of this 'New era'. 1956 Donald M. Murray : One of the more exotic facts about 19th-century American culture is that transcendental New England imported intellectual cargoes from the Orient. Scholars have several times weighed and gauged this philosophical freight, and Emerson received and assimilated certain Confucian ideas. This interest continued over many years. There is a remarkable analogy between the structure of written Chinese and Emerson's theory of language and poetry. The ideographs, as explained in the books of his own time, offer an illuminating parallel with the theories expresses in Nature and The poet. Emerson's belief in the special efficacy of words conveying hard, sharp images of things ; his preference for words denoting the simple and even 'mean' objects of ordinary life ; and his interest in compressed, succinct language, like that of proverbs. (Eme9) Wong Kin-yuen : Emerson's first impression that Confucianism was absolute, that it was inimical to the system of Western thinking, was gradually substituted by a better understanding of its real nature and spirit. As to Emerson himself, the transition had been made. Having learned to probe from within himself for solution, he was apt to grant substance to what was happening in this world. Thus it was Confucius' practical ethics which places a value of goodness done in this world that attracted Emerson. His interest in the Confucian classics incessantly grew. He came to recognize that Confucianism also had its progressiveness, it was Confucianism that inherited and fully developed the humanistic tendency. He sees in Mencius a way to break down the barrier between human nature and the divine decree. 1985 Chang Yao-hsin : Confucianism proved to be part of the inexhaustible source of human wisdom from which Emerson never tired of drawing. Another reason for Emerson's interest in Confucius is to be sought in the nature of his philosophy. He did not recognize the Chinese sage at once. He knew at first little or nothing about China and Confucius. The three points which Confucius made accord well with what Emerson was to say all his life, namely, the divine nature of man, the possibility of achieving perfection by being true to one's nature, and the important role of the great man in the culture of men in general. These are the areas where Confucius exerted some influence on Emerson. 1992 Qian Mansu : Although Confucianism, with its practical orientation, was not Emerson's favorite, He read the Confucian Four Books in several editions and quoted from them for almost a hundred times in various speeches and writings. The part of Confucianism that he most willingly accepted was the attitude towards moral principles and self-cultivation. Emerson appreciated Confucius as an outstanding individual and rejected China as a nation. His criticism was quite representative of the prevalent Western image of China of the time : an ancient society caught in stagnation and self-complacency, unable to walk out of her own past. Emerson was most critical of China for her despotic system and her lack of individualism. Emerson's understanding of religion far outreached Christianity. Although he did not deny God, religion to him has nothing to do with a personified God – God of tradition or God of rhetoric, nor anything to do with church, or doctrines and rituals. His interest in Asia covers many fields, including the Indian Vedas, Hinduism, Menu, Zoroaster, Persian poetry, and Confucianism. For a long time, Emerson had no direct knowledge of Oriental philosophy. His idea of the Orient came mainly from impression and intuition. But with the maturity of his own philosophy, his prejudice relaxed and his vision broadened. Interest in the East was part of his search for new sources of ideas in order to draw inspiration and arguments to reinforce his newly-built system. A long time Confucius was the only Chinese philosopher Emerson was familiar with. Later Mencius became known to him. But Laozi and Zhuangzi were never mentioned by him. Self-reliance is Emerson's most important teaching. He found in Mencius a fellow exponent of the principle. 2003 Chen, Li-jen : For Emerson, Confucius was the greatest thinker in Chinese history. Emerson clearly showed his respect and admiration for Confucius. He quoted the Sayings of Confucius and Mencius as illustrations of his ideas. He copied a passage from the Chinese Classics explaining well the action of Confucius into his Journals. |
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