Chin's description of the happy moments of his life must have al-
(D The hero, known as " Curly-Beard, " aided the escape of a pair of eloping lovers,
and after giving them his home in a distant city, then disappeared.ready convinced
us that in real human life, the mental and the physical pleasures are inextricably
tied up together. Mental pleasures are real only when they are felt through the body.
I would include even the moral pleasures, too. He who preaches any kind of doctrine
must be prepared to be misunderstood, as the Epicureans and Stoics were. How often
people fail to see the essential kindness of spirit of a Stoic, like Marcus Aurelius,
and how often the Epicurean doctrine of wisdom and restraint has been popularly
construed as the doctrine of the man of pleasure! It will at once be brought up against
this somewhat materialistic view of things, that it is selfish, that it lacks totally
a sense of social responsibility, that it teaches one to enjoy one's self merely.
This type of argument proceeds from ignorance; those who use it know not what they
are talking about. They know not the kindness of the cynic, not the gentleness of
temper of such a lover of life. Love of one's fellowmen should not be a doctrine,
an article of faith, a matter of intellectual conviction, or a thesis supported by
arguments. The love of mankind which requires reasons is no true love. This love should
be perfectly natural, as natural for man as for the birds to flap their wings. It
should be a direct feeling, springing naturally from a healthy soul, living in touch
with Nature. No man who loves the trees truly can be cruel to animals or to his
fellowmen. In a perfectly healthy spirit, gaining a vision of life and of one's
fellowmen and a true and deep knowledge of Nature, kindness is the natural thing.
That soul does not require any philosophy or man-made religion to tell him to be kind.
It is because his spirit has been properly nourished through his senses, somewhat
detached from the artificial life and the still more artificial learning of human
society, that he is able to retain a true mental and moral health. We cannot, therefore,
be accused of teaching unselfishness when we are scratching off the earth and
enlarging the opening from which this spring of kindness will naturally flow.
Materialism has been misunderstood, grievously misunderstood. In this matter I must
let George Santayana speak (or us, who describes himself as "a materialist perhaps
ihe only one living", and who,nevertheless, as we all know, is probably one of the
sweetest spirits of the present generation. He tells us that our prejudice against
the materialistic philosophy is a prejudice of one looking at it from the outside.
One gets a feeling of shock from certain deficiencies which are only apparent by
comparison with one's old creed. But one can truly understand any foreign creed or
religion or country only when one enters to live in spirit in that new world. There
is a bounce and a joy, a wholesomeness of feeling in this so-called "materialism"
which we usually fail to see entirely. As Santayana tells us, the true materialist
is always like Democritus, the laughing philosopher. It is we, the "unwilling
materialists", who aspire to spiritualism but nevertheless live a selfish
materialistic life, " that have generally been awkwardly intellectual and incapable
of laughter. "
But a thorough materialist, one born to the faith and not half plunged into it by
an unexpected christening in cold water, will be like the superb Democritus, a
laughing philosopher. His delight in a mechanism that can fall into so many marvellous
and beautiful shapes, and can generate so many exciting passions, should be of the
same intellectual quality as that which the visitor feels in a museum of natural
history, where he views the myriad butterflies in their cases, the flamingoes and
shell-fish, the mammoths and gorillas. Doubtless there were pangs in that
incalculable life, but they were soon over; and how splendid meantime was the pageant,
how infinitely interesting the universal interplay, and how foolish and inevitable
those absolute little passions. Somewhat of that sort might be the sentiment that
materialism would arouse in a vigorous mind, active, joyful, impersonal, and in
respect to private illusions not without a touch of scorn .
To the genuine sufferings of living creatures the ethics that accompanies materialism
has never been insensible; on the contrary, like other merciful systems, it has
trembled too much at pain and tended to withdraw the will ascetically, lest the will
should be defeated. Contempt for mortal sorrows is reserved for those who drive with
hosunnas the Juggernaut cur of absolute optimism . But against evils horn of pure
vanity and self-de-ceptzon, against the verbiage by which man persuades himself that
he is the goal and acme of the universe, laughter is the proper defence . Laughter
also has this subtle advantage, that it need not remain without an overtone of sympathy
and brotherly understanding; as the laughter that greets Don Quixote's absurdities
and misadventures does not mock the hero's intent. His ardour was admirable, but the
world must be known before it can be reformed pertinently, and happiness, to be
attained, must be placed in reason.
What then is this mental life, or this spiritual life, of which we have been always
so proud, and which we always place above the life of the senses? Unfortunately modern
biology has a tendency to track the spirit down to its lair, finding it to be a set
of fibers, liquids and nerves. I almost believe that optimism is a fluid, or at least
it is a condition of the nerves made possible by certain circulating fluids. Whence
does the mental life arise, and from what does it take its being and derive its
nourishment? Philosophers have long pointed out that all human knowledge comes from
sensuous experience. We can no more attain knowledge of any kind without the senses
of vision and touch and smell than a camera can take pictures without a lens and a
sensitive plate. The difference between a clever man and a dull fellow is that the
former has a set of finer lenses and perceiving apparatus by which he gets a sharper
image of things and retains it longer. And to proceed from the knowledge of books
to the knowledge of life, mere thinking or cogitation is not enough; one has to feel
one's way about to sense things as they are and to get a correct impression of the
myriad things in human life and human nature not from the essay on "Emotions of tbe
Materialist, " in l.ittle Essays 11) Suiiluyiiiui edited by Logan Pearsall Smith.
The italics arc mine.as unrelated parts, but as a whole. In this matter of feeling
about life and of gaining experience, all our senses cooperate, and it is through
the cooperation of the senses, and of the heart with the head, that we cap have
intellectual warmth. Intellectual warmth, after all, is the thing, for it is the sign
of life, like the color of green in a plant. We detect life in one's thought by its
presence or absence of warmth, as we detect life in a half dried-up tree struggling
after some unfortunate accident, by noting the greenness of its leaves and the
moisture and healthy texture of its fiber.

V. How ABOUT MENTAL PLEASURES?
Let us take the supposedly higher pleasures of the mind and the spirit, and see to
what extent they are vitally connected with our senses, rather than with our intellect.
What are those higher spiritual pleasures that we distinguish from those of the lower
senses? Are they not parts of the same thing, taking root and ending up in the senses,
and inseparable from them? As we go over these higher pleasures of the mind literature,
art, music, religion and philosophy we see what a minor role the intellect plays
in comparison with the senses and feelings. What does a painting do except to give
us a landscape or a portrait and recall in us the sensuous pleasures of seeing a real
landscape or a beautiful face? And what does literature do except to recreate a picture
of life, to give us the atmosphere and color, the fragrant smell of the pastures or
the stench of city gutters? We all say that a novel approaches the standard of true
literature in proportion as it gives us real people and real emotions. The book which
takes us away from this human life, or merely coldly dissects it, is not literature
and the more humanly true a book is, the better literature we consider it. What novel
ever appeals to a reader if it contains only a cold analysis, if it fails to give
us the salt and tang and flavor of life?
As for the other things, poetry is but truth colored with emotion, music is sentiment
without words, and religion is but wisdom expressed in fancy. As painting is based
on the sense of color and vision, so poetry is based on the sense of sound and tone
and rhythm,in addition to its emotional truth. Music is pure sentiment itself,
dispensing entirely with the language of words with which alone the intellect can
operate. Music can portray for us (he sounds of cowbells and fishmarkets and the
battlefield; it can portray for us even the delicacy of the flowers, the undulating
motion of the waves, or the sweet serenity of the moonlight; but the moment it steps
outside the limit of the senses and tries to portray for us a philosophic idea, it
must be considered decadent and the product of a decadent world.
And did not the degeneration of religion begin with reason itself? As Santayana says,
the process of degeneration of religion was due to too much reasoning: "This religion
unhappily long ago ceased to be wisdom expressed in fancy in order to become
superstition overlaid with reasoning. " The decay of religion is due to the pedantic
spirit, in the invention of creeds, formulas, articles of faith, doctrines and
apologies. We become increasingly less pious as we increasingly justify and
rationalize our beliefs and become so sure that we arc right. That is why every
religion becomes a narrow sect, which believes itself to have discovered the only
truth. The consequence is that the more we justify our beliefs, the more narrow-
minded we become, as is evident in all religious sects. This has made it possible
for religion to be associated with the worst forms of bigotry, narrow-mindedness and
even pure selfishness in personal life. Such a religion nourishes a man's selfishness
not only by making it impossible for him to be broad-minded toward other sects, but
also by turning the practice of religion into a private bargain between God and himself,
in which the party of the first part is glorified by the party of the second part,
singing hymns and calling upon His name on every conceivable occasion, and in return
the party of the first part is to bless the party of the second part, bless particularly
himself more than any other person and his own family more than any other family.
That is why we find selfishness of nature goes so well with some of the most "religious'
and regularly church-going old women. In the end, the sense of self-justification,
of having discovered the only truth, displaces all tlie finer emotions from which
religion took its rise.
I can see no other reason for the existence of art and poetry and religion except
as they tend to restore in us a freshness of vision and a more emotional glamour and
more vital sense of life. For as we grow older in life, our senses become gradually
benumbed, our emotions become more callous to suffering and injustice and cruelty,
and our vision of life is warped by too much preoccupation with cold, trivial realities.
Fortunately, we have a few poets and artists who have not lost that sharpened
sensibility, that fine emotional response and that freshness of vision, and whose
duties are therefore to be our moral conscience, to hold up a mirror to our blunted
vision, to tone up our withered nerves. Art should be a satire and a warning against
our paralyzed emotions, our devitalized thinking and our denaturalized living. It
teaches us unsophistication in a sophisticated world. It should restore to us health
and sanity of living and enable us to recover from the fever and delirium caused by
too much mental activity. It should sharpen our senses, re-establish the connection
between our reason and our human nature, and assemble the ruined parts of a dislocated
life again into a whole, by restoring our original nature. Miserable indeed is a world
in which we have knowledge without understanding, criticism without appreciation,
beauty without love, truth without passion, righteousness without mercy, and courtesy
without a warm heart!
As for philosophy, which is the exercise of the spirit par excellence ; the danger
is even greater that we lose the feeling of life itself. I can understand that such
mental delights include the solution of a long mathematical equation, or the
perception of a grand order in the universe. This perception of order is probably
the purest of all our mental pleasures and yet I would exchange it for a well prepared
meal. In the first place, it is in itself almost a freak, a byproduct of our mental
occupations, enjoyable because it is gratuitous, but not in any case as imperative
for us as other vital processes. That intellectual delight is, after all, similar
to the delight of solving a crossword puzzle successfully. In the second place, the
philosopher at this moment more often than not is likely to cheat himself, to fall
in love with this abstract perfection, and to conceive a greater logical perfection
in the world than is really warranted by reality itself. It is as much a false picture
of things as when we paint a star with five points a reduction to formula, an
artificial stylizing, an over-simplification. So long as we do not overdo it, this
delight in perfection is good, but let us remind ourselves that millions of people
can be happy without discovering this simple unity of design. We really can afford
lo live without it. I prefer talking with a colored maid to talking with a
mathematician; her words are more concrete, her laughter is more energetic, and I
generally gain more in knowledge of human nature by talking with her. I am such a
materialist that at any time I would prefer pork to poetry, and would waive a piece
of philosophy for a piece of filet, brown and crisp and garnished with good sauce.
Only by placing living above thinking can we get away from this heal and the re-
breathed air of philosophy and recapture some of the freshness and naturalness of
true insight of the child. Any true philosopher ought to be ashamed of himself when
he sees a child, or even a lion cub in a cage. How perfectly nature has fashioned
him with his paws, his muscles, his beautiful coat of fur, his pricking ears, his
bright round eyes, his agility and his sense of fun ! The philosopher ought to be
ashamed that God-made perfection has sometimes become man-made imperfection, ashamed
that he wears spectacles, has no appetite, is often distressed in mind and heart,
and is entirely unconscious of the fun in life. F'rom this type of philosopher nothing
is to be gained, for nothing that he says can be of importance to us. That philosophy
alone can be of use to us which joins hands merrily with poetry and establishes for
us a truer vision, first of nature and then of human nature.
Any adequate philosophy of life must be based on the harmony of our given instincts.
The philosopher who is too idealistic is soon tripped up by nature herself. The highest
conception of human dignity, according to the Chinese Confucianists, is when man
reaches ultimately his greatest height, an equal of heaven and earth, by living in
accordance with nature. This is the doctrine given in The Golden grandson of
Confucius.
What is God-given is called nature; to follow nature is called Tao (the Way) ; to
cultivate the Way is called culture. Before joy, anger, sadness and happiness are
expressed, they are called the inner self; when they are expressed to the proper degree,
they are called harmony. The inner self is the correct foundation of the world, and
harmony is the illustrious Way. When a man has achieved the inner self and harmony,
the heaven and earth are orderly and the myriad things are nourished and grow thereby.
To arrive at understanding from being one's true self is called nature, and to arrive
at being one's true self from understanding is called culture; he who is his true
self has thereby understanding, and he who has understanding finds thereby his true
self. Only those who are their absolute selves in the world can fulfil their own nature;
only those who fulfil their own nature can fulfil the nature of others; only those
who fulfil the nature of others can fulfil the nature of things; those who fulfil
the nature of things are worthy to help Mother Nature in growing and sustaining life;
and those who are worthy to help Mother Nature in growing and sustaining life are
the equals of heaven and earth.
CD There is a strong element of Taoism in Confucianism, perhaps due to the influence
of Taoistic thought, a fact which is not usually noticed. Anyway, here this passage
stands in one of the Confucian Four Books, and similar passages in the Analects can
be quoted.