84 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



ily. The method which was devised to secure accurate information for 

 this purpose caused great confusion and misery. 



On the whole, AYang An-shih's attempted rationalization and social- 

 ization of conduct was not successful. He was unwise in some of his 

 efforts, and was vigorously opposed hy Sz-ma Kwan and other prominent 

 officials at the time. Nevertheless, certain permanent benefits from his 

 reforms came down to later generations, and, what is more, his effort 

 remains as one of the outstanding attempts to break the shackles of 

 custom. 



A second great moral reformer who broke with custom was AYang 

 Yang-ming, or Wang Shou-jen. He inculcated doctrines which have 

 had a profound effect upon the Japanese during the past one hundred 

 years, and which are to-day wielding a great influence upon the Chinese 

 mind. 



The date of Wang's life is approximately 1472-1 528. u As com- 

 pared with contemporary European history, he lived in the period of the 

 great maritime discoveries and at the beginning of the Eeformation. He 

 was fearlessly propounding his views in China shortly before Giordano 

 Bruno, after a life of restless wandering in search of truth, suffered 

 martyrdom for his philosophic exposition of the universe, and about a 

 century previous to Hobbes, Descartes and Spinoza. 



The most important thing about his philosophy is that it does not 

 unreservedly advocate the interpretation given to the classics by former 

 scholars, but insists on a rationalization which gives room for progres- 

 sive adjustment. For him, human life, both in the race and in the in- 

 dividual, was a developing thing. He insisted that the highest values 

 of life are realized only through development, and that apart from de- 

 velopment life must prove a miserable failure. That he failed to ap- 

 proach the problem from the modern scientific view does not detract from 

 the fact that he actually got a glimpse of the developmental character 

 of human institutions, and that such a standpoint will invariably result 

 in moral progress if thoroughly assimilated. 



The one sentence, "My nature is sufficient," gives the foundation 

 upon which the whole structure of his philosophy and ethics rests. Man's 

 mind holds the key to all the problems of the universe. Nature — ex- 

 perience, we would probably say — is the stuff out of which the universe is 

 made. This nature may be viewed from different aspects, but in what- 

 ever way it is approached, it is just this one nature. 



Beferring to its form and substance, it is Heaven; considered as ruler or 

 lord, it is Shangti (God); viewed as functioning, it is fate; as given to men, 

 it is disposition; and as controlling the person it is mind; manifested by mind 

 it is called filial piety when it meets parents, and loyalty when it meets the prince. 

 Proceeding from this on, it is inexhaustible, but it is all one nature.12 



11 Vide Monist, Vol. XXIV., No. 1, p. 17 ff. 



12 Wang Yang-ming, "Philosophy," Book I., p. 23. This reference is to 

 the Chinese edition published by the Commercial Press, Shanghai. 



