Page:The Spirit of the Chinese People.djvu/68

 wants of their actual life; that, for them, it was customary, not rational. Now the awakening of this sense in the Chinese people 2,500 years ago was the awakening of what in Europe to-day is called the modern spirit—the spirit of liberalism, the spirit of enquiry, to find out the why and the wherefore of things. This modern spirit in China then, seeing the want of correspondence of the old order of society and civilisation with the wants of their actual life, set itself not only to reconstruct a new order of society and civilisation, but also to find a basis for this new order of society and civilisation. But all the attempts to find a new basis for society and civilisation in China then failed. Some, while they satisfied the head—the intellect of the Chinese people, did not satisfy their heart; others, while they satisfied their heart, did not satisfy their head. Hence arose, as I said, this conflict between the heart and the head in China 2,500 years ago, as we see it now in Europe. This conflict of the heart and head in the new order of society and civilisation which men tried to reconstruct made the Chinese people feel dissatisfied with all civilisation, and in the agony and despair which this dissatisfaction produced, the Chinese people wanted to pull down and destroy all civilisation. Men, like Laotzu, then in China as men like Tolstoi in Europe to-day, seeing the misery and suffering resulting from the conflict between the heart and the head, thought they saw something radically wrong in the very nature and constitution of society and civilisation. Laotzu and Chuang-tzu, the most brilliant of Laotzu's