I. ON GETTING BIOLOGICAL
IT has seemed to me that the final test of any civilization is, what type of husbands
and wives and fathers and mothers does it turn out? Besides the austere simplicity
of such a question, every other achievement of civilization art, philosophy,
literature and material living pales into insignificance.
This is a dose of soothing medicine that I have always given to my countrymen engaged
in the head-racking task of comparing Chinese and Western civilizations, and it has
become a trick with me, for the medicine always works. It is natural that the Chinese
student of Western life and learning, whether in China or studying abroad, is dazzled
by the brilliant achievements of the West, from medicine, geology, astronomy to tall
skyscrapers, beautiful motor highways and natural-color cameras. He is either
enthusiastic about such achievements, or ashamed of China for not having made such
achievements, or both. An inferiority complex sets in, and in the next moment you
may find him the most arrogant, chauvinistic defender of the Oriental civilization,
without knowing what he is talking about. Probably as a gesture, he will condemn the
tall skyscrapers and the beautiful motor highways, although I haven't yet found one
that condemns a good camera. His plight is somewhat pathetic , for that disqualifies
him for judging the East and the West sanely and dispassionately. Perplexed and
dazzled and harrassed by such thoughts of inferiority, he has great need of what the
Chinese call a medicine for "calming the heart" to allay his fever.
The suggestion of such a test as I propose has the strange effect of leveling all
mankind by brushing aside all the non-essentials of civilization and culture and
bringing all under a simple and clear equation. All the other achievements of
civilization are then seen as merely means toward the end of turning out better
husbands and wives and fathers and mothers. Insofar as ninety per cent of mankind
are husbands or wives and one hundred per cent have parents, and insofar as marriage
and the home constitute the most intimate side of a man's life, it is clear that that
civilization which produces better wives and husbands and fathers and mothers makes
for a happier human life, and is therefore a higher type of civilization. The quality
of men and women we live with is much more important than the work they achieve, and
every girl ought to be grateful for any civilization that can present her with a better
husband. Such things are relative, and ideal husbands and wives and fathers and
mothers are to be found in every age and country. Probably the best way to get good
husbands and wives is by eugenics, which saves us a great deal of trouble in educating
wives and husbands. On the other hand, a civilization which ignores the home or
relegates it to a minor position is apt to turn out poorer products.
I realize that I am getting biological. I am biological, and so is every man and woman.
There is no use saying, "Let's get biological, " because we are so whether we like
it or not. Every man is happy biologically, angry biologically, or ambitious
biologically, or religious or peace-loving biologically, although he may not be aware
of it. As biological beings, there is no getting around the fact that we are all born
as babies, suck at mothers' breasts and marry and give birth to other babies. Every
man is born of a woman, and almost every man lives with a woman through life and is
the father of boys and girls, and every woman is also born of a woman, and almost
every woman lives with a man for life and gives birth to other children. Some have
refused to become parents, like trees and flowers that refuse to produce seeds to
perpetuate their own species, but no man can refuse to have parents, as no tree can
refuse to grow from a seed. So then we come to the basic fact that the most primary
relationship in life is the relationship between man and woman and the child, and
no philosophy of life can be called adequate or even called philosophy at all unless
it deals with this essential relationship.
But the mere relationship between man and woman is not sufficient; the relationship
must result in babies, or it is incomplete. No civilization has any excuse for
depriving a man or woman of his or her right to have babies. I understand that this
is a very real problem at present, that there are many men and women today who don't
get married, and many others who, after getting married, refuse to have babies for
one reason or another. My point of view is, whatever the reason may be, the fact of
a man or woman leaving this world without children is the greatest crime he or she
can commit against himself or herself. If sterility is due to the body, then the body
is degenerate and wrong; if it is due to the high cost of living, then the high cost
of living is wrong; if it is due to a too high standard of marriage, then the too
high standard of marriage is wrong; if it is due to a false philosophy of individualism,
then the philosophy of individualism is wrong; and if it is due to the entire fabric
of social system, then the entire fabric of social system is wrong. Perhaps men and
women of the twenty-first century will come to see this truth when we have made better
progress in the science of biology and there is a better understanding of ourselves
as biological beings. I am quite convinced that the twentieth century will be the
century of biology, as the nineteenth century was the century of comparative natural
science. When man comes to understand himself better and realizes the futility of
warring against his own instincts, with which nature has endowed him, man will
appreciate more such simple wisdom. We see already signs of this growing biological
and medical wisdom, when we hear the Swiss psychologist Jung advise his rich women
patients to go back to the country and raise chickens, children and carrots. The
trouble with rich women patients is that they are not functioning biologically, or
their biological functioning is disgracefully low-grade.
Man has not learned to live with woman, since history began. The strange thing is
that no man has lived without a woman, in spite of that fact. No man can speak
disparagingly of woman if he realizes that no one has come into this world without
a mother. From birth to death, he is surrounded by women, as mother, wife and daughters,
and even if he does not marry, he has still to depend on his sister, like William
Wordsworth, or depend on his housekeeper, like Herbert Spencer. No fine philosophy
is going to save his soul if he cannot establish a proper relationship with his mother
or his sister, and if he cannot establish a proper relationship even with his
housekeeper, may God have pity on him!
There is a certain pathos in a man who has not arrived at a proper relationship with
woman and who has led a warped moral life, like Oscar Wilde, who still exclaims, "Man
cannot live with a woman, nor can he live without her! " So that it seems human wisdom
has not progressed an inch farther between the writer of a Hindu tale and Oscar Wilde
at the beginning of the twentieth century, for that writer of the Hindu tale of the
Creation expressed essentially the same thought four thousand years ago. According
to this story of the Creation, in creating woman. God took of the beauty of the flowers,
the song of the birds, the colors of the rainbow, the kiss of the breeze, the laughter
of the waves, the gentleness of the lamb, the cunning of the fox, the waywardness
of the clouds and the fickleness of the shower, and wove them into a female being
and presented her to man as his wife. And the Hindu Adam was happy and he and his
wife roved about on the beautiful earth. After a few days, Adam came to God and said,
" Take this woman away from me, for I cannot live with her." And God listened to his
request and took Eve away. Adam then became lonely and was still unhappy, and after
a few days he came to God again and said, "Give me back my woman, for I cannot live
without her. " Again God listened to his request and returned him Eve. After a few
days again, Adam came to God and asked, "Please take back this Eve that Thou has created,
for I swear I cannot live with her." In His infinite wisdom God again consented. When
finally Adam came a fourth time and complained that he could not live without his
female companion, God made him promise that he was not going to change his mind again
and that he was going to throw in his lot with her, for better and for worse, and
live together on this earth as best they knew how. I do not think the picture has
essentially changed much, even today.

II. CELIBACY A FREAK OF CIVILIZATION
The taking of such a simple and natural biological viewpoint implies two conflicts,
first, the conflict between individualism and the family, and second, a deeper
conflict between the sterile philosophy of the intellect and the warmer philosophy
of the instinct. For individualism and worship of the intellect are likely to blind
a man to the beauties of home life, and of the two, I think the first is not so wicked
as the second. A man believing in individualism and carrying it to its logical
consequences can still be a very intelligent being, but a man believing in the cold
head as against the warm heart is a fool. For the collectivism of the family as a
social unit, there can be substitutes, but for the loss of the mating and
paternal-maternal instincts, there can be none.
We have to start with the assumption that man cannot live alone in this world and
be happy, but must associate himself with a group around him and greater than himself.
Man' s self is not limited by his bodily proportions, for there is a greater self
which extends as far as his mental and social activities go. In whatever age and
country and under whatever form of government, the real life that means anything to
a man is never co-extensive with his country or his age, but consists in that smaller
circle of his acquaintances and activities which we call the "greater self". In this
social unit he lives and moves and has his being. Such a social unit may be a parish,
or a school, or a prison, or a business firm, or a secret society or a philanthropic
organization. These may take the place of the home as a social unit, and sometimes
entirely displace it. Religion itself or sometimes a big political movement may
consume a man's whole being. But of all such groups, the home remains the only natural
and biologically real, satisfying and meaningful unit of our existence. It is natural
because every man finds himself already in a home when he is born, and also because
it remains with one for life; and it is biologically real because the blood
relationship lends the notion of such a greater self a visible reality. One who does
not make a success of this natural group life cannot be expected to make a success
of life in other groups. Confucius says, "The young should learn to be filial in the
home and respectful in society; they should be conscientious and honest, and love
all people and associate with the kindly gentlemen. If after acting on these precepts,
they still have energy left, let them read books . "  Apart from the importance of
this group life, man expresses and fulfils himself fully and reaches the highest
development of his personality only in the harmonious complementing of a suitable
member of the other sex.
Woman, who has a deeper biological sense than man, knows this. Subconsciously all
Chinese girls dream of the red wedding petticoat and the wedding sedan, and all Western
girls dream of the wedding veil and wedding bells. Nature has endowed women with too
powerful a maternal instinct for it to be easily put out of the way by an artificial
civilization. I have no doubt that nature conceives of woman chiefly as a mother,
even more than as a mate, and has endowed her with mental and moral characteristics
which are conductive to her role as mother, and which find their true explanation
and unity in the maternal instinct realism, judgment, patience with details, love
of the small and helpless, desire to take care of somebody, strong animal love and
hatred, great personal and emotional bias and a generally personal outlook on things.
Philosophy, therefore, has gone far astray when it departs from nature's own
conception and tries to make women happy without taking into account this maternal
instinct which is the dominant trait and central explanation of her entire being.
Thus with all uneducated and sanely educated women, the maternal instinct is never
suppressed, comes to light in childhood and grows stronger and stronger through
adolescence to maturity, while with man, the paternal instinct seldom becomes
conscious until after thirty-five, or in any case until he has a son or daughter five
years old. I do not think that a man of twenty-five ever thinks about becoming a father.
He merely falls in love with a girl and accidentally produces a baby and forgets all
about it, while his wife's thoughts are occupied with nothing else, until one day
in his thirties he suddenly becomes aware that he has a son or daughter whom he can
take to the market and parade before his friends, and only then does he begin to feel
paternal. Few men of twenty or twenty-five are not amused at the idea of their becoming
a father, and beyond amusement, there is little thought spent on it, whereas having
a baby, even anticipating one, is probably the most serious thing that ever comes
to a woman' s life and changes her entire being to the point of affecting a
transformation of her character and habits. The world becomes a different world for
her when a woman becomes an expectant mother. Thenceforth she has no doubt whatever
in her mind as to her mission in life or the purpose of her existence. She is wanted.
She is needed. And she functions. I have seen the most pampered and petted only
daughter of a rich Chinese family growing to heroic stature and losing sleep for months
when her child was ill. In nature's scheme, no such paternal instinct is necessary
and none is provided for, for man, like the drake or the gander, has little concern
over his offspring otherwise than contributing his part. Women, therefore, suffer
most psychologically when this central motive power of their being is not expressed
and does not function . No one need tell me how kind American civilization is to women,
when it permits so many nice women to go unmarried through no fault of their own.
I have no doubt that the maladjustment in American marriages is very largely due to
this discrepancy between the maternal instinct of women and the paternal instinct
of men. The so-called "emotional immaturity" of American young men can find no other
explanation than in this biological fact; the men being brought up under a social
system of over-pampering of youth do not possess the-natural check of responsible
thinking which the girls have through their greater maternal instinct. It would be
ruinous if nature did not provide women with sufficient soberness when they are
physiologically ready to become mothers, so nature just does it. Sons of poor families
have responsible thinking drilled into their system by harder circumstances,thus
leaving only the pampered sons of rich families, in a nation which worships and pampers
youth, in an ideal condition for developing into emotional and social incompetents.
After all, we are concerned only with the question: "How to live a happy life?" and
no one's life can be happy unless beyond the superficial attainments of the external
life, the deeper springs of his or her character are touched and find a normal outlet.
Celibacy as an ideal in the form of "personal career" carries with it not only an
individualistic, but also a foolishly intellectualistic taint, and is for the latter
reason to be condemned. I always suspect the confirmed bachelor or unmarried woman
who remains so by choice of being an ineffectual in-tellectualist, too much engrossed
with his or her own external achievements, believing that he or she can, as a human
being, find happiness in an effective substitute for the home life, or find an
intellectual, artistic or professional interest which is deeply satisfying.
I deny this. This spectacle of individualism, unmarried and childless, trying to find
a substitute for a full and satisfying life in "careers" and personal achievements
and preventing cruelty to animals has struck me always as somewhat foolish and comical.
It is psychologically symptomatic in the case of old maiden ladies trying to sue a
circus manager for cruelty to tigers because their suspicion has been aroused by
whipmarks on the animals' backs. Their protests seem to come out of a misplaced
maternal instinct, applied to a wrong species, as if true tigers ever thought anything
of a little whipping. These women are vaguely groping for a place in life and trying
very hard to make it sound convincing to themselves and to others.
The rewards of political, literary and artistic achievement produce in their authors
only a pale, intellectual chuckle, while the rewards of seeing one's own children
grow up big and strong are wordless and immensely real. How many authors and artists
are satisfied with their accomplishments in their old age, and how many regard them
as more than mere products of their pastime, justifiable chiefly as means of earning
a living? It is said that a few days before his death, Herbert Spencer had the eighteen
volumes of The Synthetic Philosophy piled on his lap and, as he felt their cold weight,
wondered if he would not have done better could he have a grandchild in their stead.
Would not wise Elia have exchanged the whole lot of his essays for one of his "dream
children?" It is bad enough to have ersatz -sugar, ersatz- butter and ersatz-cotton,
but it must be deplorable to have ersatz-children! I do not question that there was
a moral and aesthetic satisfaction to John D. Rockefeller in the feeling that he had
contributed so much to human happiness over such a wide area. At the same time, I
do not doubt that such a moral or aesthetic satisfaction was extremely thin and pale,
easily upset by a stupid stroke on the golf course, and that his real, lasting
satisfaction was John D., Jr.
To look at it from another aspect, happiness is largely a matter of finding one's
life work, the work that one loves. I question whether ninety per cent of the men
and women occupied in a profession have found the work that they really love. The
much vaunted statement, "I love my work, " I suspect, must always be taken with a
grain of salt. One never says, " I love my home, " because it is taken for granted.
The average business man goes to his office in very much the same mood as Chinese
women produce babies: everybody is doing it, and what else can I do? "I love my work,
" so says everybody. Such a statement is a lie in the case of elevator men and telephone
girls and dentists, and a gross exaggeration in the case of editors, real estate agents
and stock brokers. Except for the Arctic explorer or the scientist in his laboratory,
engaged in the work of discovery, I think, to like one's work, finding it congenial,
is the best we can hope for. But even allowing for the figure of speech, there is
no comparison between one's love of his work and the mother's love of her children.
Many men have doubts about their true vocation, and shift from one to another, but
there is never a doubt in a mother's mind concerning her life work, which is the taking
care and guiding of the little ones. Successful politicians have thrown up politics,
successful editors have thrown up magazine work, successful aviators have given up
flying, successful boxers have given up the ring, and successful actors and actresses
have given up the stage, but imagine mothers, successful or unsuccessful, giving up
motherhood! It is unheard of. The mother has a feeling that she is wanted; she has
found a place in life, and has the deep conviction that no one in the world can take
her place, a conviction more profound than Hitler's that he must save Germany. And
what can give man or woman a greater, deeper happiness than the satisfaction of knowing
he or she has a definite place in life? Is it not common sense to say that whereas
less than five per cent are lucky enough to find and be engaged in the work they love,
a hundred per cent of parents find the work of looking after their children the most
deep and engrossing of their life motives? Is it not true, therefore, that the chance
of finding real happiness is surer and greater for a woman if she is engaged as a
mother rather than as an architect, since nature never fails? Is it not true that
marriage is the best profession for women ?
My feminist readers must have sensed this all along, and bit by bit have begun
trembling with rage as I grew more and more enthusiastic about the home, knowing that
the cross of the home eventually must be borne by women. Such is exactly my intention
and my thesis. It remains to be seen who is kinder to women, for it is with women's
happiness alone that we are concerned, happiness not in terms of social achievements,
but in terms of the depths of personal being. Even from the point of view of fitness
or competency, I have no doubt that there are fewer bank presidents really fit for
their jobs than women fit for mothers. We have incompetent department chiefs,
incompetent business managers, incompetent  bankers, and  incompetent presidents,
but we rarely have incompetent mothers. So then women are fit for motherhood, they
want it and they know it. I understand that there has been a swing in the right
direction away from the feminist ideal among the American college girls of today,
that the majority of them are able to look at life sanely enough to say openly that
they want to get married. The ideal woman for me is one who loves her cosmetics along
with her mathematics, and who is more feminine than feminist. Let them have their
cosmetics, and if they still have energy left, as Confucius would say, let them play
with mathematics nalso.
It is to be understood that we are talking of the average ideal of the average man
and woman. There are distinguished and talented women as there are distinguished and
talented men, whose creative ability accounts for the world's real progress. If I
ask the average woman to regard marriage as the ideal profession and to bear babies
and perhaps also wash dishes, I also ask the average man to forget the arts and just
earn the family bread, by cutting hair or shining shoes or catching thieves or
tinkering pots or waiting at tables. Since some one has to bear the babies and take
care of them and see them safely through measles and raise them to be good and wise
citizens, and since men are entirely ineffectual in bearing babies and frightfully
awkward in holding and bathing them, naturally I look to the women to do the job.
I'm not so sure which is the nobler work comparing the averages raising babies or
cutting people's hair or shining people's shoes or opening doors at department stores.
I don't see why women have to complain about washing dishes if their husbands have
to open doors for strangers at department stores. Men used to stand behind counters,
and now girls have rushed in to take their place behind counters while the men open
the doors, and they are welcome to it, if they think it is a nobler kind of work.
Considered as a means of living, no work is noble and no work is ignoble. And I am
not so sure that checking men's hats is necessarily more romantic than mending
husbands' socks. The difference between the hat-check girl and the sock darner at
home is that the sock darner has got a man over whose destiny it is her privilege
to preside, while the hat-check girl hasn't. It is to be hoped, of course, that the
wearer of the socks is worth the woman's labor, but it would be also unwarranted
pessimism to lay down as a general rule that his socks are not worth her mending.
Men are not all quite as worthless as that. The important point is that the general
assumption that home life, with its important and sacred task of raising and
influencing the young of the race, is too low for women can hardly be called a sane
social attitude, and it is possible only in a culture where woman and the home and
mothersufficiently respected.

Ill. ON SEX APPEAL
Behind the facade of woman's rights and increased social privileges for women, I
always think woman is not given her due even in modern America. Let us hope that my
impression is incorrect, and that with the increase of woman' s rights, chivalry has
not decreased. For the two things do not necessarily go together, chivalry or true
respect for women and allowing women to spend money, to go where they please, to hold
executive jobs and to vote. It has seemed to me (a citizen of the Old World with the
Old World outlook) that there are things which matter and things which don't, and
that American women are far ahead of their Old World sisters in all things that don't
matter, and remain very much in the same situation in all things that do. Anyway,
there is no clear index of a greater chivalry in America than in Europe. What real
authority the American woman does exercise is still from her traditional old
throne the hearth over which she presides as the happy ministering angel. I have seen
such angels, but only in the sanctity of a private home, where a woman glides along
in the kitchen or in the parlor, true mistress of a home consecrated to family love.
Somehow she suffuses a radiance which would be unthinkable or out of place in an
office.
Is it merely because woman is more charming and more graceful in a chiffon dress than
in a business jacket, or is it merely my imagination? The gist of the matter seems
to lie in the fact that women at home are like fish in water. Clothe women in business
jackets and men will regard them as co-workers with the right to criticize, but let
them float about in georgette or chiffon one out of the seven office hours in the
day and men will give up any idea of competing with them, and will merely sit back
and wonder and gasp. Submitted to business routine, women are disciplined quite easily
and make better routine workers than men, but the moment the office atmosphere is
changed, as when as a business staff meet at a wedding tea, and you will find that
women immediately come into their own by advising their men colleagues or their boss
to get a haircut, or where to get the best lotion for curing dandruff. In the office,
women talk with civility; outside the office, they talk with authority.
Frankly speaking from a man' s point of view there is no use in pretending to speak
otherwise I think that the appearance of women in public has added greatly to the
charm and amenities of life, life in the office and in the street, for the benefit
of men; that voices in the offices are softer, colors gayer and the desks neater.
I think also that not a whit of the sexual attraction or desire for sexual attraction
provided by nature has changed, but that in America, men are having a grander time
because American women are trying harder to please the men than, for instance, Chinese
women, so far as attention to sex appeal is concerned. And my conclusion is that in
the West, people think too much of sex and too little of women.
Western women spend almost as much time fixing their hair as Chinese women used to
do; attend to their make-up more openly, constantly and ubiquitously; diet, exercise,
massage and read advertisements for keeping the figure more assiduously; kick their
legs up and down in bed to reduce their waistline more religiously; lift their faces
and dye their hair, at an age at which no Chinese women ever think of doing such a
thing. They are spending more money, not less, on lotions and perfumes, and there
is a bigger business in beauty aids and day creams, night creams, vanishing creams,
foundation creams, face creams, hand creams, pore creams, lemon creams, sun-tan oils,
wrinkle oils, turtle oils, and every conceivable variety of perfumed oil. Perhaps
it is simply because American women have more time and more money to spend. Perhaps
they dress to please men and undress to please themselves, or the other way round,
or both. Perhaps the reason is merely that Chinese women have fewer available modern
beauty aids, for I hesitate very much to draw a distinction between races when it
comes to woman's desire to attract men. Chinese women were trying hard enough to please
men by binding their own feet half a century ago, and now they have gayly capered
their way from their "bow shoes" into high heels. I am not usually a prophet, but
I can say with prophetic conviction that in the immediate future, Chinese women will
be having their morning ten minutes of kicking their legs up and down in order to
please their husbands or themselves. Yet the obvious fact is there: American women
at present seem t'o be trying harder to please the men by spending more thought on
their bodily sex appeal and dress with better understanding of sex appeal. The net
result is that women as a whole, as seen in the parks and in the streets, have better
figures and are better dressed, thanks to the continuous tremendous daily efforts
of women to keep their figure to the great delight of men. But I imagine how it must
wear on their nerves. And when I speak of sex appeal, I mean it in contrast to
motherhood appeal, or woman's appeal as a whole. I suspect this phase of modern
civilization has stamped its character on modem love and marriage.
Art has made the modern man sex conscious. I have no doubt about it. First art and
then commercial exploitation of the woman's body, down to its last curve and muscular
undulation and the last painted toe-nail. I have never seen every part of a woman's
body so completely exploited commercially, and find it hard to understand how American
women have submitted so sweetly to this exploitation of their bodies. To an Oriental,
it is hard to square this commercial exploitation of the female body with respect
for women. Artists call it beauty, theater-goers call it art, only producers and
managers honestly call it sex appeal, and men generally have a good time. It is typical
of a man-made and man-ruled society that women are stripped for commercial
exploitation and men almost never, outside a few acrobats. On the stage, one sees
women nearly undressed, while the men still keep their morning coats and black ties;
in a woman-ruled world, one would certainly see the men half undressed while the women
kept their skirts. Artists study male and female anatomy equally, but somehow find
it difficult to turn their study of the male body beautiful to commercial account.
The theater strips to tease, but generally strips the women to tease the men, and
does not strip the men to tease the women. Even in the higher-class shows, where
they try to be both artistic and moral, people allow the women to be artistic and
the men to be moral, but never insist on the women being moral and the men artistic.
(All men actors in vaudeville shows merely try to be funny, even in dancing, which
is supposed to be "artistic.") The commercial advertisements pick up the theme and
play it up in endless variations, so that today all a man needs to do when he wants
to be "artistic" is to take a copy of a magazine and run through the advertising section.
The result is, the women themselves are so impressed with the duty of being artistic
that they unconsciously accept the doctrine and starve themselves or submit to massage
and rigorous discipline, in order to contribute toward a more beautiful world. The
less clear-minded are almost led to think that their only way of getting a man and
holding him is by sex appeal.
I consider that this over-emphasis on sex appeal involves an adolescent and inadequate
view of the entire nature of woman, with certain consequences upon the character of
love and marriage, whose conception becomes also false or inadequate. Woman is thus
more thought of as a mating possibility than as a presiding spirit over the hearth.
Woman is wife and mother both, but with the emphasis on sex as such, the notion of
a mate displaces the notion of the mother, and I insist that woman reaches her noblest
status only as mother, and that a wife who by choice refuses to become a mother
immediately loses a great part of her dignity and seriousness and stands in danger
of becoming a plaything. To me, any wife without children is a mistress, and any
mistress with children is a wife, no matter what their legal standing is. The children
ennoble and sanctify the mistress, and the absence of children degrades the wife.
It is a truism that many modern women refuse to have babies because pregnancy would
spoil their figures.
The amorous instinct has its proper contribution to make to the enrichment of life,
yet it can be overdone to the detriment of woman herself. The strain of keeping up
sex appeal necessarily falls upon the nerves of women and not of men. It is also unfair,
for by placing a premium upon beauty and youth, middle-aged women are confronted
with the hopeless task of fighting their gray hair and time's course. A Chinese poet
has already warned us that the fountain of youth is a hoax, that no man can yet "tie
a string to the sun" and hold back its course. Middle-aged woman's effort to keep
up sex appeal thus becomes an arduous race with the years, which is quite senseless.
Only humor can save the situation. If there is no use carrying on a hopeless fight
against old age and white hair, why then not call the white hair beautiful? So sings
Chu Tu:
I've gained white hairs, some hundreds, on my head. As often as they're plucked, still
more grow in their stead. Why not stop plucking, then, and let the white alone? Who
has the time to fight against the silvery thread?
The whole thing is unnatural and unfair. It is unfair to the mother and older women,
because as surely as a heavyweight champion must hand over his title in a few years
to a younger challenger and an old champion horse must yield in a few years to a younger
horse, so must the old women fight a losing battle against the younger women, and
after all they are all fighting against their own sex. It is foolish, dangerous, and
hopeless for middle-aged women to meet younger women on the issue of sex appeal. It
is also foolish because there is more to a woman than her sex, and while wooing and
courtship are necessarily largely based on physical attraction, maturer men and women
should have outgrown it.
Man, we know, is the most amorous animal in the zoological kingdom. Besides this
amorous instinct, however, there is an equally strong parental instinct, resulting
in the human family life. The amorous and paternal instincts we share in common with
most of the animals, but the beginnings of a human family life seem to be found among
the gibbons. There is a danger, however, of the amorous instinct subjugating the
family instinct in an oversophisticated culture surrounding man with constant sexual
stimuli in art, the movies and the theatre. In such a culture, the necessity of the
family ideal can be easily forgotten, especially when in addition there is a current
of individualistic ideas. In such a society, therefore, we get a strange view of
marriage, as consisting of eternal kissing, generally ending with the wedding bells,
and a strange view of woman, chiefly as man's mate and not as mother. The ideal woman,
then, becomes a young woman with perfect physical proportions and physical charm,
whereas for me, woman is never more beautiful than when she is standing over a cradle,
never more serious and dignified than when she is holding a baby in her breast and
leading a child of four or five years by the hand, and never more happy than, as I
have seen in a Western painting, when she is lying in bed against a pillow and playing
with a baby at her breast. Perhaps I have got a motherhood complex, but that is all
right because psychological complexes never do a Chinese any harm. Any suggestion
of an Oedipus complex or father-and-daughter complex, or of a son-and-mother complex,
in a Chinese always seems to me ridiculous and unconvincing. I suggest that my view
of woman is not due to a motherhood complex, but is due to the influence of the Chinese
family ideal.

IV. THE CHINESE FAMILY IDEAL
I rather think that the Genesis story of the Creation needs to be rewritten all over
again. In the Chinese novel Red Chamber Dream, the boy hero, a sentimental mollycoddle
very fond of female company and admiring his beautiful female cousins intensely and
all but sorry for himself for being a boy, says that, "Woman is made of water and
man is made of clay, " the reason being that he thinks his female cousins are sweet
and pure and clever, while he himself and his boy companions are ugly and muddle-headed
and bad-tempered. If the writer of the Genesis story had been a Paoyu and knew what
he was talking about, he would have written a different story. God took a handful
of mud, molded it into human shape and breathed into its nostrils a breath, and there
was Adam. But Adam began to crack and fall to pieces, and so He took some water, and
with the water He molded the clay, and this water which entered into Adam's being
was called Eve, and only in having Eve in his being was Adam's life complete. At least
that seems to me to be the symbolic significance of marriage. Woman is water and man
is clay, and water permeates and molds the clay, and the clay holds the water and
gives its substance, in which water moves and lives and has its full being.
The analogy of clay and water in human marriage was long ago expressed by Madame Kuan,
wife of the great Yuan painter Chao Mengfu and herself a painter and teacher at the
Imperial Court. When in their middle age Chao's ardor was cooling, or anyway when
he was thinking of taking a mistress, Madame Kuan wrote the following poem, which
touched his heart and changed his mind:
'Twixt you and me There's too much emotion. That's the reason why There's such a
commotion! Take a lump of clay, Wet it, pat it,And make an image of me, And an image
of you. Then smash them, crash them, And add a little water. Break them and re-make
them Into an image of you, . And an image of me.
Then in my clay, there's a little of you. And in your clay, there's a little of me.
And nothing ever shall us sever;Living, we'll sleep in the same quilt, And dead, well
be buried together.
It is a well-known fact that Chinese society and Chinese life are organized on the
basis of the family system. This system determines and colors the entire Chinese
pattern of life. Whence came this family ideal of life ? It is a question that has
seldom been asked, for the Chinese seem to take it for granted, while foreign students
do not feel competent to enter into the question. Confucius is reputed to have provided
the philosophical foundation for the family system as the basis of all social and
political life, with its tremendous emphasis on the husband-wife relationship as  the
foundation of all  human relationships, on filial piety toward parents, annual visits
to ancestral graves, ancestor worship, and the institution of the ancestral hall.
Chinese ancestor worship has already been called a religion by certain writers, and
I believe this to a very great extent is correct. Its non-religious aspect is the
exclusion or the much less significant place of the supernatural element. The
supernatural is left almost untouched, and ancestor worship can go side by side with
belief in a Christian, a Buddhist, or a Mohammedan god. The rituals of ancestor worship
provide a form of religion and are both natural and justifiable because all beliefs
must have an outward symbol and form. As it is, I do not think the respect paid to
square wooden tablets about fifteen inches long, inscribed with the names of ancestors,
is more religious or less so than the use of the picture of the King on a British
postage stamp. In the first place, these ancestral spirits are conceived less as gods
than as human beings, continuing to be served as they were in their old age by their
descendants. There is no prayer for gifts and no prayer for cure of sickness, and
none of the usual bargaining between the worshiper and the worshiped. In the second
place, this ceremony of worship is no more than an occasion for pious remembrance
of one's departed ancestors, on a day consecrated to family reunion and reflections
of gratitude on what the ancestor has done for the family. At best, it is only a poor
substitute for celebrating the ancestor's birthday when he was alive, but in spirit
it differs in no way from the celebration of a parent's birthday, or of Mother's Day
in America.
The only objection which led Christian missionaries to forbid Chinese converts to
participate in the ceremonies and communal feasting and merrymaking of ancestor
worship is that the worshipers are required to kneel down before the ancestral tablets,
thus infringing upon the first of the Ten Commandments. This is about the most flagrant
instance of lack of understanding on the part of the Christian missionaries. Chinese
knees are not quite as precious as Western knees, for we kneel down before emperors,
magistrates and before our own parents on New Year's Day, when they are living.
Consequently Chinese knees are naturally more flexible, and one doesn't become a
heathen more or less by kneeling before an inscribed wooden tablet, resembling a
calendar block. On the other hand, Chinese Christians in the villages and towns are
forced to cut themselves off from the general community life by being forbidden to
participate in the general feasting and merrymaking, or even to contribute money
toward the theatrical performances usual on such an occasion. The Chinese Christians,
therefore, practically excommunicate themselves from their own clan.
There is hardly a question that, in many cases, this feeling of piety and of mystic
obligation toward one's own family actually amounted to a deeply religious attitude.
We have, for instance, the case of Yen Yuan, one of the greatest Confucianist leaders
in the seventeenth century, who in his old age started out on a pathetic journey of
search for his brother, in the hope that his brother might be found to have a son,
since he himself had none. This follower of Confucianism, who believed in conduct
more than in knowledge, was living in Szechuen. His brother had been missing for years.
Tired of teaching the doctrines of Confucius, one day he felt what among missionaries
would be regarded as a "divine call" to search for this lost brother. The situation
was practically hopeless. He had no idea where his brother might be, or even if he
were living. Travel was a highly perilous undertaking in those days, and the country
was in disorder because of the collapse of the Ming regime. Still this old man set
out on this truly religious journey, with no better means of locating his brother
than pasting placards on city gates and inns wherever he went. Thus he traveled from
Western China to the northeastern provinces, covering over a thousand miles, and only
after years of desperate search, was he brought to the home of his brother through
the latter's son recognizing his name on an umbrella left standing against a wall
while he was in a public privy. His brother was then dead, but he achieved his goal,
which was to find a male descendant for his ancestor's family.
Why Confucius laid such emphasis on filial piety nobody knows, but it has been
suggested by Dr. John C. H. Wu in an illuminating essay   that the reason was that
Confucius was born without a father. The psychological reason is therefore similar
to that of the writer of Home, Sweet Home, who never knew a home in his entire life.
Had Confucius' father been living when he was a child, the idea of fatherhood could
not have been invested with such romantic glamour, and if his father had been living
after he grew up, the result might have been still more disastrous. He would have
been able to see his father's foibles, and he might have found the precept of absolute
piety somewhat difficult to live up to. Anyway his father was dead when he was born,
and not only that, but Confucius did not even know where his father's grave was. He
had been born out of wedlock, and his mother refused to tell him who his father was.
When his mother died, he buried her (cynically, I suppose) at the "Road of the Five
Fathers, " and only after he had found out the location of his father's grave from
an old woman, did he provide for the burial of his parents together at another place.
We have to let this ingenious theory stand for what it is worth. But for the necessity
of the family ideal, there is no lack of reasons in Chinese literature. It starts
out with a view of man not as an individual, but as a member of a family unit, is
backed by the view of life which I may call the "stream-of-life" theory, and justified
by a philosophy which regards the fulfillment of man's natural instincts as the
ultimate goal of morals and politics.
The ideal of the family system is necessarily dead set against the ideal of personal
individualism. No man, after all, lives as an individual completely alone, and the
idea of such an individual has no reality to it. If we think of an individual and
regard him as neither a son, nor a brother, nor a father, nor a friend, then what
is he? Such an individual becomes a metaphysical abstraction. And being biologically
minded as the Chinese are, they naturally think of a man's biological relationships
first. The family then becomes the natural biological u-nit of our existence, and
marriage itself becomes a family affair, and not an individual affair.
In My Country and My People, I have pointed out the evils of this all-engrossing family
system, which can become a form of magnified selfishness, to the detriment of the
state. But such evils are inherent in all human systems, in the family system, as
well as in the individualism and nationalism of the West, because of defects in human
nature . In China, man is always thought of as greater and more important than the
state, but he is never thought of as greater and more important than the family,
because, apart from the family, he has no real existence. The evils of nationalism
are just as apparent in modern Europe. The state can be easily transformed into a
monster, as it already is in some countries, swallowing up the individual's liberty
of speech, his freedom of religious conscience and belief, his personal honor, and
even the last and final goal of individual happiness. . . . An American schoolboy
would have guessed that five thousand years were too short for the atrophy of an
instinct which had the momentum of a million years of development behind it. But such
an argument, strange as it may seem, could appeal to a Western intellect as strictly
logical. It is, in the words of the writer of the New York Times' "Topics",
"consistency gone mad". . . . According to such an extreme view, therefore, we have
even less individualism than under the family system.
In place of this individualism and nationalism of the West, there is then the family
ideal in which man is not regarded as an individual but as a member of a family and
an essential part of the great stream of family life. That is what I mean by the
"stream-of-life" theory. Human life as a whole may be regarded as consisting of
different racial streams of life, but it is the stream of life in the family that
a man feels and sees directly. In accordance with both a Chinese and Western analogy,
we speak of the "family tree", and every man's life is but a section or a branch of
that tree, growing upon the trunk and contributing by its very existence to its further
growth and continuation. Human life, therefore, is inevitably seen as a growth or
a continuance, in which every man plays a part or a chapter in the family history,
with its obligations toward the family as a whole, bringing upon itself and upon the
family life shame or glory.
This sense of family consciousness and family honor is probably the only form of team
spirit or group consciousness in Chinese life. In order to play this game of life
as well as, or better than, another team, every member of the family must be careful
not to spoil the game, or to let his team down by making a false move. He should,
if possible, try to bring the ball further down the field. A derelict son is a shame
to himself and to his family in exactly the same sense as a quarterback who makes
a fumble and loses the ball. And he who comes out on top in the civil examinations
is like a player who makes a touchdown. The glory is his own and at the same time
that of his family. The benefits of one's becoming a chuangyiian ("No. 1" in the
Imperial examinations), or even a third-class chinshih, are both sentimentally and
materially shared by members of his immediate family, his relatives, his clan, and
even his town. For a hundred or two hundred years afterwards, the townspeople will
still boast that they produced a chuangyuan in such and such a reign. In comparison
with the family and town rejoicing when a man got a chuangyuan or chinshih and came
home to place a golden-painted tablet of honor high upon his ancestral hall, with
his mother probably shedding tears and the entire clan feeling themselves honored
by the great occasion, the getting of a college diploma today is a pretty dull and
tame affair.
In this picture of the family life, there is room for the greatest variety and color.
Man himself passes through the stages of childhood, youth, maturity and old age: first
being taken care of by others, then taking care of others, and in old age again being
taken care of by others; first obeying and respecting others, and later being obeyed
and respected in turn in proportion as he grows older. Above all, color is lent to
this picture by the presence of women. Into this picture of the continuous family
life comes woman, not as a decoration or a plaything, nor even essentially as a wife,
but as a vital and essential part of the family tree the very thing which makes
continuity possible. For the strength of any particular branch of a family depends
so much upon the woman married into the home and the blood she contributes to the
family heritage. A wise patriarch is pretty careful to select women of sound heritage,
as a gardener is careful to select the proper strain for grafting a branch. It is
pretty well suspected that a man's life, particularly his home life, is made or unmade
by the wife he marries, and the entire character of the future family is determined
by her. The health of one's grandchildren and the type of family breeding that they
are going to receive (upon which great emphasis is laid) depend entirely upon the
breeding of the daughter-in-law herself. Thus there is a kind of amorphous and
ill-defined eugenic system, based on belief in heredity and often placing great
emphasis on menti (literally "door and home" or lineage or family standing), but in
any case based on standards of desirability in the health, beauty and breeding of
the bride as seen by the eyes of the parents or grandparents of the family. In general,
the emphasis is upon family breeding (in the same sense that a Westerner would choose
a girl from a " good home"), representing the fine old traditions of thrift, hard
work, good manners and civility. And when sometimes a parent discovers to his sorrow
that his son has married a worthless daughter-in-law with no manners, he always
secretly curses the other family for not training their daughter better. Hence upon
the mother and father devolves the duty of training their daughters so that they shall
not be ashamed of them when they marry into another household  as, for instance, when
they do not know how to cook or how to make a good New Year pudding.
According to the stream-of-life theory as seen in the family system, immortality is
almost visible and touchable. Every grandfather seeing his grandchild going to school
with a satchel feels that truly he is living over again in the life of the child,
and when he touches the child's hand or pinches his cheeks, he knows it is flesh of
his own flesh and blood of his own blood. His own life is nothing but a section of
the family tree, or of the great family stream of life flowing on forever, and
therefore he is happy to die. That is why a Chinese parent's greatest concern is to
see that his sons and daughters are properly married before he dies, for that is an
even more important concern than the site of his own grave or the selection of a good
coffin. For he cannot know what kind of life his children are going to have until
he sees with his own eyes what type of girls and men his sons and daughters marry,
and if the daughters-in-law and sons-in-law look pretty satisfactory, he is quite
willing to "close his eyes without regret" on his deathbed.
The net result of such a conception of life is that one gets a lengthened outlook
on everything, for life is no more regarded as beginning and ending with that of the
individual. The game is continued by the team after the center or the quarterback
is put out of action. Success and failure begin to take on a different complexion.
The Chinese ideal of life is to live so as not to be a shame to one' s ancestors and
to have sons of -whom one need not be ashamed. A Chinese official when resigning office
often quotes the line:
Having sons, I am content with life;
Without office, my body is light.
The worst thing that can happen to a man, probably, is to have unworthy sons who cannot
"maintain the family glory" or even the family fortune. The millionaire father of
a gambling son sees his fortune dispersed already, the fortune that he has taken a
life time to build up. When the son fails, the failure is absolute. On the other hand,
a farsighted widow is able to endure years of misery and ignominy and even persecution,
if she has a good boy of five. Chinese history and literature are full of such widows
who endured all kinds of hardships and persecutions, but who lived for the day when
their sons should do well and prosper,  and perhaps even become prominent
citizens. . . . The success of widows in giving their children a perfect education
of character and morals, through woman's generally more realistic sense, has often
led me to think that fathers are totally unnecessary, so far as the upbringing of
children is concerned. The widow always laughs the loudest because she laughs last.
Such an arrangement of life in the family then, is satisfying because a man's life
in all its biological aspects is well taken care of. That, after all, was Confucius'
chief concern. The final ideal of government, as Confucius conceived it, was curiously
biological: "The old shall be made to live in peace and security, the young shall
learn to love and be loyal, that inside the chamber there may be no unmarried maids,
and outside the chamber there may be no unmarried males." This is all the more
remarkable because it is not merely a statement of a side issue, but of the final
goal of government. This is the humanist philosophy known as tach'ing, or "fulfillment
of instincts". Confucius wanted to be pretty sure that all our human instincts are
satisfied, because only thus can we have moral peace through a satisfying life, and
because only moral peace is truly peace. It is a kind of political ideal which aims
at making politics unnecessary, because it will be a peace that is stable and based
upon the human heart.

V. ON GROWING OLD GRACEFULLY
The Chinese family system, as I conceive it, is largely an arrangement of particular
provision for the young and the old, for since childhood and youth and old age occupy
half of our life, it is important that the young and the old live a satisfactory life.
It is true that the young are more helpless and can take less care of themselves,
but on the other hand, they can get along better without material comforts than the
old people. A child is often scarcely aware of material hardships, with the result
that a poor child is often as happy as, if not happier than, a rich child. He may
go barefooted, but that is a comfort, rather than a hardship to him, whereas going
barefooted is often an intolerable hardship for old people. This comes from the
child's greater vitality, the bounce of youth. He may have his temporary sorrows,
but how easily he forgets them. He has no idea of money and no millionaire complex,
as the old man has. At the worst, he collects only cigar coupons for buying a pop-gun,
whereas the dowager collects Liberty Bonds. Between the fun of these two kinds of
collection there is no comparison. The reason is the child is not yet intimidated
by life as all grown-ups are. His personal habits are as yet unformed and he is not
a slave to a particular brand of coffee, and he takes whatever comes along. He has
very little racial prejudice and absolutely no religious prejudice. His thoughts and
ideas have not fallen into certain ruts. Therefore, strange as it may seem, old people
are even more dependent than the young because their fears are more definite and their
desires are more delimited.
Something of this tenderness toward old age existed already in the primeval
consciousness of the Chinese people, a feeling that I can compare only to the Western
chivalry and feeling of tenderness toward women. If the early Chinese people had any
chivalry, it was manifested not toward women and children, but toward the old people.
That feeling of chivalry found clear expression in Mencius in some such saying as,
"The people with grey hair should not be seen carrying burdens on the street, " which
was expressed as the final goal of a good government. Mencius also described the four
classes of the world's most helpless people as: "the widows, widowers, orphans and
old people without children". Of these four classes the first two were to be taken
care of by a political economy which should be so arranged that there would be no
unmarried men and women. What was to be done about the orphans Mencius did not say,
so far as we know, although orphanages have always existed throughout the ages, as
well as pensions for old people. Every one realizes, however, fhat orphanages and
old age pensions are poor substitutes for the home. The feeling is that the home alone
can provide anything resembling a satisfactory arrangement for the old and the young.
But for the young, it is to be taken for granted that not much need be said, since
there is natural paternal affection. "Water flows downwards and not upwards, " the
Chinese always say, and therefore the affection for parents and grandparents is
something that stands more in need of being taught by culture. A natural man loves
his children, but a cultured man loves his parents. In the end, the teaching of love
and respect for old people became a generally accepted principle, and if we are to
believe some of the writers, the desire to have the privilege of serving their parents
in their old age actually became a consuming passion. The greatest regret a Chinese
gentleman could have was the eternally lost opportunity of serving his old parents
with medicine and soup on their deathbed, or not to be present when they died. For
a high official in his fifties or sixties not to be able to invite his parents to
come from their native village and stay with his family at the capital, " seeing them
to bed every night and greeting them every morning", was to commit a moral sin of
which he should be ashamed and for which he had constantly to offer excuses and
explanations to his friends and colleagues. This regret was expressed in two lines
by a man who returned too late to his home, when his parents had already died:
The tree desires repose, but the wind will not stop;The son desires to serve, but
his parents are already gone.
It is to be assumed that if man were to live this life like a poem, he would be able
to look upon the sunset of his life as his happiest period, and instead of trying
to postpone the much feared old age, be able actually to look forward to it, and
gradually build up to it as the best and happiest period of his existence. In my efforts
to compare and contrast Eastern and Western life, I have found no differences that
are absolute except in this matter of the attitude towards age, which is sharp and
clear-cut and permits of no intermediate positions. The differences in our attitude
towards sex, toward women, and toward work, play and achievement are all relative.
The relationship between husband and wife in China is not essentially different from
that in the West, nor even the relationship between parent and child.
Not even the ideas of individual liberty and democracy and the relationship between
the people and their ruler are, after all, so very different . But in the matter of
our attitude toward age, the difference is absolute, and the East and the West take
exactly opposite points of view. This is clearest in the matter of asking about a
person's age or telling one's own. In China, the first question a person asks the
other on an official call, after asking about his name and surname is, "What is your
glorious age ?" If the person replies apologetically that he is twenty-three or
twenty-eight, the other party generally comforts him by saying that he has still a
glorious future, and that one day he may become old. But if the person replies that
he is thirty-five or thirty-eight, the other party immediately exclaims with deep
respect, "Good luck!"; enthusiasm grows in proportion as the gentleman is able to
report a higher and higher age, and if the person is anywhere over fifty, the inquirer
immediately drops his voice in humility and respect. That is why all old people, if
they can, should go and live in China, where even a beggar with a white beard is treated
with extra kindness. People in middle age actually look forward to the time when they
can celebrate their fifty-first birthday, and in the case of successful merchants
or officials, they would celebrate even their forty-first birthday with great pomp
and glory. But the fifty-first birthday, or the half-century mark, is an occasion
of rejoicing for people of all classes. The sixty-first is a happier and grander
occasion than the fifty-first and the seventy-first is still happier and grander,
while a man able to celebrate his eighty-first birthday is actually looked upon as
one specially favored by heaven. The wearing of a beard becomes the special
prerogative of those who have become grandparents, and a man doing so without the
necessary qualifications, either of being a grandfather or being on the other side
of fifty, stands in danger of being sneered at behind his back. The result is that
young men try to pass themselves off as older than they are by imitating the pose
and dignity and point of view of the old people, and I have known young Chinese writers
graduated from the middle schools, anywhere between twenty-one and twenty-five,
writing articles in the magazines to advise what "the young men ought and ought not
to read, " and discussing the pitfalls of youth with a fatherly condescension.
This desire to grow old and in any case to appear old is understandable when one
understands the premium generally placed upon old age in China. In the first place,
it is a privilege of the old people to talk, while the young must listen and hold
their tongue. "A young man is supposed to have ears and no mouth, " as a Chinese saying
goes. Men of twenty are supposed to listen when people of thirty are talking, and
these in turn are supposed to listen when men of forty are talking. As the desire
to talk and to be listened to is almost universal, it is evident that the further
along one gets in years, the better chance he has to talk and to be listened to when
he goes about in society . It is a game of life in which no one is favored, for everyone
has a chance of becoming old in his time. Thus a father lecturing his son is obliged
to stop suddenly and change his demeanor the moment the grandmother opens her mouth.
Of course he wishes to be in the grandmother's place. And it is quite fair, for what
right have the young to open their mouth when the old men can say, " I have crossed
more bridges than you have crossed streets! " What right have the young got to talk ?
In spite of my acquaintance with Western life and the Western attitude toward age,
I am still continually shocked by certain expressions for which I am totally
unprepared. Fresh illustrations of this attitude come up on every side. I have heard
an old lady remarking that she has had several grandchildren, but, "It was the first
one that hurt. " With the full knowledge that American people hate to be thought of
as old, one still doesn't quite expect to have it put that way. I have made allowance
for people in middle age this side of fifty, who, I can understand, wish to leave
the impression that they are still active and vigorous, but I am not quite prepared
to meet an old lady with gray hair facetiously switching the topic of conversation
to the weather, when the conversation without any fault of mine naturally drifted
toward her age. One continually forgets it when allowing an old man to enter an
elevator or a car first; the habitual expression after age comes up to my lips, then
I restrain myself and am at a loss for what to say in its place. One day, being forgetful,
I blurted out the usual phrase in deference to an extremely dignified and charming
old man, and the old man seated in the car turned to his wife and remarked jokingly
to her, "This young man has the cheek to think that he is younger than myself! "
The whole thing is as senseless as can be. I just don't see the point. I can understand
young and middle-aged unmarried women refusing to tell their age, because there the
premium upon youth is entirely natural. Chinese girls, too, get a little scared when
they reach twenty-two and are unmarried or not engaged. The years are slipping by
mercilessly. There is a feeling of fear of being left out, what the Germans call a
Torschlusspanik, the fear of being left in the park when the gates close at night.
Hence it has been said that the longest year of a woman' s life is when she is
twenty-nine ; she remains twenty-nine for three or four or five years. But apart from
this, the fear of letting people know one's age is nonsensical. How can one be thought
wise unless one is thought to be old ? And what do the young really know about life,
about marriage and about the true values ? Again I can understand thai the whole
pattern of Western life places a premium on youth and therefore makes men and women
shrink from telling people their age. A perfectly efficient and vigorous woman
secretary of forty-five is, by a curious twist of reasoning, immediately thought of
as worthless when her age becomes known. What wonder that she wants to hide her age
in order to keep her job? But then the pattern of life itself and this premium placed
upon youth are nonsensical. There is absolutely no meaning to it, so far as I can
see. This sort of thing is undoubtedly brought about by business life, for I have
no doubt there must be more respect for old age in the home than in the office. I
see no way out of it until the American people begin somewhat to despise work and
efficiency and achievement. I suspect when an American father looks upon the home
and not the office as his ideal place in life, and can openly tell people, as Chinese
parents do, with absolute equanimity that now he has a good son taking his place and
is honored to be fed by him, he will be anxiously looking forward to that happy time,
and will count the years impatiently before he reaches fifty.
It seems a linguistic misfortune that hale and hearty old men in America tell people
that they are "young", or are told that they are "young" when really what is meant
is that they are healthy. To enjoy health in old age, or to be "old and healthy",
is the greatest of human luck, but to call it "healthy and young" is but to detract
from that glamour and impute imperfection to what is really perfect. After all, there
is nothing more beautiful in this world than a healthy wise old man, with "ruddy cheeks
and white hair", talking in a soothing voice about life as one who knows it. The Chinese
realize this, and have always pictured an old man with "ruddy cheeks and white hair"
as the symbol of ultimate earthly happiness. Many Americans must have seen Chinese
pictures of the God of Longevity, with his high forehead, his ruddy face, his white
beard and how he smiles! The picture is so vivid. He runs his fingers through the
thin flowing beard coming down to the breast and gently strokes it in peace and
contentment, dignified because he is surrounded with respect, self-assured because
no one ever questions his wisdom, and kind because he has seen so much of human sorrow.
To persons of great vitality, we also pay the compliment of saying that "the older
they grow, the more vigorous they are", and a person like David Lloyd George would
be referred to as "Old Ginger", because he gains in pungency with age.
On the whole, I find grand old men with white beards missing in the American picture.
I know that they exist, but they are perhaps in a conspiracy to hide themselves from
me. Only once, in New Jersey, did I meet an old man with anything like a respectable
beard. Perhaps it is the safety razor that has done it, a process as deplorable and
ignorant and stupid as the deforestation of the Chinese hills by ignorant farmers,
who have deprived North China of its beautiful forests and left the hills as bald
and ugly as the American old men's chins. There is yet a mine to be discovered in
America, a mine of beauty and wisdom that is pleasing to the eye and thrilling to
the soul, when the American has opened his eyes to it and starts a general program
of reclamation and reforestation. Gone are the grand old men of America ! Gone is
Uncle Sam with his goatee, for he has taken a safety razor and shaved it off, to make
himself look like a frivolous young fool with his chin sticking out instead of being
drawn in gracefully, and a hard glint shining behind horn-rimmed spectacles. What
a poor substitute that is for the grand old figure! My attitude on the Supreme Court
question (although it is none of my business) is purely determined by my love for
the face of Charles Evans Hughes. Is he the only grand old man left in America, or
are there more of them? He should retire, of course, for that is only being kind to
him, but any accusation of senility seems to me an intolerable insult. He has a face
that we would call "a sculptor's dream".
I have no doubt that the fact that the old men of America still insist on being so
busy and active can be directly traced to individualism carried to a foolish extent.
It is their pride and their love of independence and their shame of being dependent
upon their children. But among the many human rights the American people have provided
for in their Constitution, they have strangely forgotten about the right to be fed
by their children, for it is a right and an obligation growing out of service. How
can any one deny that parents who have toiled for their children in their youth, have
lost many a good night's sleep when they were ill, have washed their diapers long
before they could talk and have spent about a quarter of a century bringing them up
and fitting them for life, have the right to be fed by them and loved and respected
when they are old ? Can one not forget the individual and his pride of self in a general
scheme of home life in which men are justly taken care of by their parents and, having
in turn taken care of their children, are also justly taken care of by the latter ?
The Chinese have not got the sense of individual independence because the whole
conception of life is based upon mutual help within the home;
hence there is no shame attached to the circumstance of one's being served by his
children in the sunset of one's life. Rather it is considered good luck to have
children who can take care of one. One lives for nothing else in China.
In the West, the old people efface themselves and prefer to live alone in some hotel
with a restaurant on the ground floor, out of consideration for their children and
an entirely unselfish desire not to interfere in their home life. But the old people
have the right to interfere, and if interference is unpleasant, it is nevertheless
natural, for all life, particularly the domestic life, is a lesson in restraint.
Parents interfere with their children anyway when they are young, and the logic of
non-interference is already seen in the results of the Behavior -ists, who think that
all children should be taken away from their parents. If one cannot tolerate one's
own parents when they are old and comparatively helpless, parents who have done so
much for us, whom else can one tolerate in the home? One has to leam self-restraint
anyway, or even marriage will go on the rocks. And how can the personal service and
devotion and adoration of loving children ever be replaced by the best hotel waiters?
The Chinese idea supporting this personal service to old parents is expressly defended
on the sole ground of gratitude. The debts to one's friends may be numbered, but the
debts to one's parents are beyond number. Again and again, Chinese essays on filial
piety mention the fact of washing diapers, which takes on significance when one
becomes a parent himself. In return, therefore, is it not right that in their old
age, the parents should be served with the best food and have their favorite dishes
placed before them? The duties of a son serving his parents are pretty hard, but it
is sacrilege to make a comparison between nursing one's own parents and nursing a
stranger in a hospital. For instance, the following are some of the duties of the
junior at home, as prescribed by T'u Hsishih and incorporated in a book of moral
instruction very popular as a text in the old schools:
In the summer months, one should, while attending to his parents, stand by their side
and fan them, to drive away the heat and the flies and mosquitoes. In winter, he should
see that the bed quilts are warm enough and the stove fire is hot enough, and see
that it is just right by attending to it constantly. He should also see if there are
holes or crevices in the doors and windows, that there may be no draft, to the end
that his parents are comfortable and happy.
A child above ten should get up before his parents in the morning, and after the toilet
go to their bed and ask if they have had a good night. If his parents have already
gotten up, he should first curtsy to them before inquiring after their health, and
should retire with another curtsy after the question. Before going to bed at night,
he should prepare the bed, when the parents are going to sleep, and stand by until
he sees that they have fallen off to sleep and then pull down the bed curtain and
retire himself.
Who, therefore, wouldn't want to be an old man or an old father or grandfather in
China ?
This sort of thing is being very much laughed at... but there is a charm to it which
makes any old gentleman inland cling to it. ... The important point is that every
man grows old in time, if he lives long enough, as he certainly desires to. If one
forgets this foolish individualism which seems to assume that an individual can exist
in the abstract and be literally independent, one must admit that we must so plan
our pattern of life that the golden period lies ahead in old age and not behind us
in youth and innocence. For if we take the reverse attitude, we are committed without
our knowing to a race with the merciless course of time, forever afraid of what lies
ahead of us a race, it is hardly necessary to point out, which is quite hopeless and
in which we are eventually all defeated. No one can really stop growing old; he can
only cheat himself by not admitting that he is growing old. And since there is no
use fighting against nature, one might just as well grow old gracefully. The symphony
of life should end with a grand finale of peace and serenity and material comfort
and spiritual contentment, and not with the crash of a broken drum or cracked cymbals.