The Political Doctrines of Sun Yat-sen: An Exposition of the San Min Chu ILinebarger, Paul Myron Anthony
History
The Political Doctrines of Sun Yat-sen: An Exposition of the San Min Chu I
Linebarger, Paul Myron Anthony
Sun, Yat-sen, 1866-1925. San min zhu yi
The physical immortality of the Chinese race was not the only sort of
immortality Sun Yat-sen wished China to have. His stress on the peculiar
virtues of the Chinese intellectual culture has been noted. The Chinese
literati had sought an immortality of integrity and intellect, a
continuity of civilization without which mere physical survival might seem
brutish. In the teleology of Sun’s ideal society, there would no doubt be
these two factors: filial piety, emphasizing the survival of the flesh;
and _jên_, emphasizing the continuity of wisdom and honor. Neither could
aptly continue unless China remained Chinese, unless the particular
virtues of the Chinese were brought once again to their full potency.(328)
The family system was to continue to the _min shêng_ Utopia. So too were
the three natural orders of men. Sun Yat-sen never advocated that the
false inequality of the present world be thrown down for the purpose of
putting in its place a false equality which made no distinction between
the geniuses, the apostles, and the unthinking. The Chinese world was to
be Chinese to the end of time. In this the narrowness of Sun Yat-sen’s
ideals is apparent; it is, perhaps, a narrowness which limits his
aspirations and gives them strength.
The Chinese Utopia which was to be at the end of _min shêng_ was to be
established in a world, moreover, which might not have made a complete
return to ideological control, in which the state might still survive. The
requirements of an industrial economy certainly presupposes an enormous
length of time before the ideology and the society shall have been
completely adjusted to the peculiarities of life in a world not only of
working men but of working machines. The state must continue until all men
are disciplined to labor: "When all these vagrants will be done away with
and when all will contribute to production, then clothing will be abundant
and food sufficient; families will enjoy prosperity, and individuals will
be satisfied.
“Then the question of the ‘people’s life’ will be solved.”(329)
Thus Sun Yat-sen concluded his last lecture on _min shêng_.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.
The bibliography of works in Western languages dealing with Sun Yat-sen is
short. The author has made no attempt to gather various fugitive pieces,
such as newspaper clippings. He believes, however, that the following
bibliography of Western works on Sun is the most nearly complete which has
yet appeared, and has listed, for the sake of completeness, two Russian
items as yet unavailable in the United States.
The first half of the bibliography presents these Western materials,
arranged according to their subject. Within each category, the individual
items are presented in chronological order; this has been done in order to
make clear the position of the works in point of time of publication—a
factor occasionally of some importance in the study of these materials.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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