This latter method may be taken first, since it will afford a general view of the three principles which will permit the orientation of _min shêng_ with reference to the nationalist ideology as a whole, and prepare the student for a solution of some of the apparent contradictions which are to be found in the various specific definitions of _min shêng_. Accepting the elementary thesis of the necessary awakening of the race-nation, and its equally necessary self-rule, both as a nation _vis-à-vis_ other nations, and as a world by itself, one may see that these are each social problems of organization which do not necessarily involve the physical conditions of the country, although, as a matter of application, they would be ineffectual in a country which did not have the adequate means of self-support. Sun Yat-sen was interested in seeing the Chinese people and Chinese civilization survive, and by survival he meant not only the continuation of social organization and moral and intellectual excellence, but, more than these, the actual continued existence of the great bulk of the population. The most vital problem was that of the continued existence of the Chinese as a people, which was threatened by the constant expansion of the West and might conceivably share the fate of the American Indians—a remnant of a once great race living on the charity of their conquerors. Sun Yat-sen expressly recognized this problem as the supreme one, requiring immediate attention.(144) Nationalism and democracy would have no effect if the race did not survive to practise them. The old Chinese society may be conceived as a vast system of living men, who survived by eating and breeding, and who were connected with one another in time by the proper attention to the ancestral cults, and in space by a common consciousness of themselves as the standard-bearers of the civilization of the world. Sun Yat-sen, although a Christian, was not unmindful of this outlook; he too was sensible of the meaning of the living race through the centuries. He dutifully informed the Emperor T’ai Tsung of Ming that the Manchus had been driven from the throne, and some years later he expressed the deepest reverence for the ancestral cult.(145) But in facing the emergency with which his race was confronted, Sun Yat-sen could not overlook the practical question of physical survival. He was, therefore, materialistic in so far as his recognition of the importance of the material well-being of the race-nation made him so. At this point he may be found sympathetic with the Marxians, though his ideology as a whole is profoundly Chinese. The destitution, the economic weakness, the slow progress of his native land were a torture to his conscience. In a world of the most grinding poverty, where war, pestilence, and famine made even mere existence uncertain, he could not possibly overlook the problem of the adequate material care of the vast populace that constituted the race-nation.