Brett, After expressing his appreciation the opportunity provided by the Club to address such a cosmopolitan, gathering, Mr. Yeh said in part:
understand a great deal of Uiterature has appeared in the foreign press dealing with the various phases of China and the Chinese and after the Great War, terest has been so enhanced that some writers have named it the "Asiatic Fever." Certain _cosmopolitan thinkers have heralded this ow interest in the East as an inward orientation of life and others have called it the real beginning of great transformation in the entire spiritual adjustment of the Western World. To most of us who are in the midst of China's own tragic transformation accompanied by great po-Vitieal unrest and economic conusion, we are apt to consider the mims' of those writers as fanciful and idealistic. It may therefore be opportune at this moment to examine the basic foundation of Chi-bose culture itself in order to determine more adequately whether the age-long civilization of China contains any element which might contribute towards international cooperation, From an historical standpoint, China has seen the rise and fall of many dynasties, the golden ages of peace and prosperity, relapses into disorder and chaos, the Seven Waring States, the Three Kingdoms, court corruption leading to coups a'etat, recurring disintegration and Uunifeation of the State, conquests and invasions, dethronements and revolutions, feudal lords, and imperfalistic pomp and glory. From the cultural standpoint, China has had. her discoverers and inventors, there have been men of fine arts, philosophers, poets and scholars. Over and above all, the grent sage Confucius taught the central doctrine of being sincere in thought so as to rectify the heart, to cultivate the person, to order well the state, and to pacify the world, He taught also that within the four seas all are brothers which implies that all men are equal. The younger generation often indules in superficial and nationalistic slogans but according to Dr. Sun Yat-sen the Kuomintang's ultimate aim is internationalls It is necessary to observe at Point that according to the doctrine of personal and political philosophy', Confucius bogan with thought, then heart, person, state, and finally, the world, This is the ideal development of a gentleman or of the superior man, "In chronological order, the yulers and sages who have typified this ideal were Yao, Shun, Vu, Tang, Wen, Wu, Chow-kung, Confu-dus and Mencius. The successors who were followers of Confucius endeavoured to live up to that standard, and, according to Chinese opinion, it ix failure to adhere to this Chi ordinary course of events when, affairs have reached the limit there will be a change for the better, simp-because in the depth of human suffering the soul yearns for inward orientation of life. The Eastern philosophy as distinguished from the {Western philosophy has its source from within the human foul, Therefore, judging from China's past history, salvation would naturally take such a course, ut as the Chinese-civilisation has received the impact of the Western civilisation with, its -attendent complications, the future development: eapnot be adequately judged by historical' experience,, After. giving the Chinese. estimupon China and her history; it might be' of interest: pinions of China's great sage. In introduction' to the. Novissi ica,' which: Leibniz published in 1697, he describes to-a special dispensation safi providence the.' fact that from the tws'ehdé-of the: earth, Europe" and. Chiniay-rtw8? "great civilizations had at that particular epoch met and fertilized one another, He said that the West certainly surpasses the East in the theoretic! and philosophical sciences (in mathematics, astronomy, logic, metaphysies); but on the other hand, China is undoubtedly superior to us in practical philosophy, in political morality. It was astonishing, what beneficent effects the rules of Confucius had had on the ordering of private and public life. Without the gracious intervention of Heaven, such virtue in the Chinese was in explicable. According to the School of Physiocrats, one writer says, The whole teaching of Confucius restoring to human nature that first radiance, that first beauty, which it had received from Heaven, and which had become obscured by: ignorance and passion. He therefore exhorted his countrymen to obey the Lord of Heaven, to honour and fear him, to love their neighbours as themselves, to overcome their inclinations, never to make passion the measure of action, but rather to subject it to reason, and not to do, or think, or say anything contrary to reason.' It would be impossible to add anything to this splendid diadem of religious morality; but, the most essential part still remained to be done—to bind it upon the brows of earth; and this was the work of our master, whose keen ear} caught from the lips of our common, mother Nature the secret of the net product'—meaning to bring men back to the original divine state of nature, In speaking of the 20 articles of the Lunyu or Confucian An-elects, he says, 'They all deal with good government, virtue and good works; this collection is full of principles and moral sentences, which surpass those of the Seven Sages Greece.' Such were the estimates of foreign writers in the seventeenth. and eighteenth centuries, The chief causes which the attitude of Europe towards China were, firstly the unhappy' controversies of the Jesuits over! ritual in Europe which made the Chinese consider them as apostles of discord, s0 these missionaries began to blame the Chinese. That gave the traders a chance to press their economic interests without any moral check. 'The spirit of the nineteenth' century viewed China as a first-rate world-market only and China's. minerals and other products began to attract more attention, Europe: generally went through the develop.
ent of modern sciences and enggineering, the growth of democracy gave its people greater rights and the governments sought for more outlets. On the part of China, after the reigns of Kang-hsi and Kien. lung, there was a gradual decline and Europe soon assumed the ascendency. At that time Greece and; Rome emerged from their ruins, and the tables were turned on China, Daring this period China learnt' many lessons from Europe which gradually implanted the seeds the dissatisfaction with the ruling dynasty that hastened the Revolution of 1911. What has happened in China since the Revolution is too recent to require any description. We: all know however, that all is not well. On the other hand, the Great War has exhausted the whole world generally and the task of rehabilitation is too stupendous. Both v and vanquished have suffered in life and mater-in the grip of Communism, China in political turmoil, India seething with unrest, the supply of world products is' greater than the demand which condition has produced over-production and. unemployment.
Due to such situation, there is a deeper appreciation of the necessity of international ce-operation. "Already the League of Nations, the: Locarno Conference, the
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.