This recapitulation serves to show the curious developments of Sun Yat-sen’s nationalist program. Originally based upon his ideology, then influenced by the race-orientation of a good deal of his political thought, and finally reconciled to the programmatic necessities of his Communist allies, it is surprising not in its diversity but in its homogeneity under the circumstances. This mixture of elements, which appears much more distinctly in Sun’s own words than it does in a rephrasing, led some Western students who dealt with Sun to believe that his mind was a cauldron filled with a political witch-brew. If it is remembered that the points discussed were programmatic points, which changed with the various political developments encountered by Sun and his followers, and not the fundamental premises of his thought and action (which remained surprisingly constant, as far as one can judge, throughout his life), the inner consistency of Sun Yat-sen will appear. These plans could not have endured under any circumstances, since they were set in a particular time. The ideology may. In turning from the nationalist to the democratic plans of Sun Yat-sen, we encounter a distinct change in the type of material. Orderly and precise instead of chaotic and near-contradictory, the democratic plans of Sun Yat-sen present a detailed scheme of government based squarely on his democratic ideology, and make no concessions to the politics of the moment. Here his nationalism finds its clearest expression. The respective autonomies of the individual, the clan, the _hsien_ and the nation are accounted for; the nature of the democratic nationalist state becomes clear. Programmatically, it is the clearest, and, perhaps, the soundest, part of Sun’s work. CHAPTER VI. THE PROGRAMS OF DEMOCRACY. The Three Stages of Revolution. Sun Yat-sen’s doctrine of the three stages of revolution attracted a considerable degree of attention. By the three stages of the revolution he meant (1) the acquisition of political power by the teachers of the new ideology (the revolution), (2) the teaching of the new ideology (tutelage), and (3) the practice of government by the people in accord with the new ideology (constitutional democracy). Enough of Sun Yat-sen’s teaching concerning the new ideology has been shown to make clear that this proposal is merely a logical extension of his doctrine of the three classes of men.