英文

The Need of Humanized Thinking
Lin Yutang

THINKING is an art, and not a science. One of the greatest contrasts between Chinese and Western scholarship is the fact that in the West there is so much specialized knowledge, and so little humanized knowledge, while in China there is so much more concern with the problems of living, while there are no specialized sciences. We see an invasion of scientific thinking into the proper realm of humanized knowledge in the West, characterized by high specialization and its profuse use of scientific or semi-scientific terminology. I am speaking of "scientific" thinking in its everyday sense, and not of true scientific thinking, which cannot be divorced from common sense. on the one hand, and imagination on the other. In its everyday sense, this " scientific" thinking is strictly logical, objective, highly specialized and "atomic" in its method and vision. The contrast in the two types of scholarship, Oriental and Occidental, ultimately goes back to the opposition between logic and common sense.Logic, deprived of common sense, becomes inhuman, and common sense, deprived of logic,is incapable of penetrating into nature's mysteries.
　　
What does one find as he goes through the field of Chinese literature and philosophy? One finds there are no sciences, no extreme theories, no dogmas, and really no great divergent schools of philosophy. Common sense and the reasonable spirit have crushed out all theories and all dogmas. Like the poet Po Chiiyi, the Chinese scholar "utilized Confucianism to order his conduct, utilized Buddhism to cleanse his mind, and then utilized history, paintings, mountains, rivers, 'wine, music and song to soothe his spirit.' He lived in the world and yet was out of it.
　　
China, therefore, becomes a land where no one is trying very hard to think and everyone is trying very hard to live. It becomes a land where philosophy itself is a pretty simple and common sense affair that can be as conveniently put in two lines of verse as in a heavy volume. It becomes a land where there is no system of philosophy, broadly speaking, no logic, no metaphysics, no academic jargon; where there is much less academic dogmatism, less intellectual or practical fanaticism, and fewer abstract terms and long words. No sort of mechanistic rationalism is ever possible and there is a strong hatred of the idea of logical necessity. It becomes also a land where there are no lawyers in business life, as there are no logicians in philosophy. In place of well thought out systems of philosophy, they have only an intimate feeling of life, and instead of a Kant or a Hegel, they have only essayists, epigram writers and propounders of Buddhist conundrums and Taoist parables.
　　
The literature of China as a whole presents us with a desert of short poems and short essays, seemingly interminable for one who does not appreciate them, and yet as full of variety and inexhaustible beauty as a wild landscape itself. We have only essayists and letter-writers who try to put their feeling of life in a short note or an essay of three or five hundred words, usually much shorter than the school composition of an American schoolboy. In these casual writings, letters, diaries, literary notes and regular essays, one finds here a brief comment on the vicissitudes of fortune, there a record of some woman who committed suicide in a neighboring village, or of an enjoyable spring party, or a feast in snow, or boating on a moonlight night, or an evening spent in a temple with a thunderstorm raging outside, generally including the remarks made during the conversation that made the occasion memorable. We find a host of essayists who are at the same time poets, and poets who are at the same time essayists, writing never more than five or seven hundred words, in which a whole philosophy of life is really expressed by a single line. We find writers of parables and epigrams and family letters who make no attempt to coordinate their thoughts into a rigid system. This has prevented the rise of schools and systems. The intellect is always held in abeyance by the spirit of reasonableness, and still more by the writer's artistic sensibility. Actually the intellect is distrusted.
　　
It is hardly necessary to point out that the logical faculty is a very powerful weapon of the human mind, making the conquests of science possible. I am also aware that human progress in the West is still essentially controlled by common sense and by the critical spirit, which is greater than the logical spirit and which I think represents the highest form of thinking in the West. It is unnecessary for me to admit that there is a very much better developed critical spirit in the West than in China. In pointing out the weaknesses of logical thinking, I am only referring to a particular deficiency in Western thought, and sometimes in Western politics also, e.g., the Macht-politik of the Germans and the Japanese. Logic has its charm also, and I regard the development of the detective story as a most interesting product of the logical mind, a form of literature which failed entirely to develop in China. But sheer preoccupation with logical thinking has also its drawbacks.
　　
The outstanding characteristic of Western scholarship is its specialization, and cutting up of knowledge into different departments. The over-development of logical thinking and specialization, with its technical phraseology, has brought about the curious fact of modern civilization, that philosophy has been so far relegated to the background, far behind politics and economics, that the average man can pass it by without a twinge of conscience. The feeling of the average man even of the educated person, is that philosophy is a "subject" which he can best afford to go without. This is certainly a strange anomaly of modern culture, for philosophy, which should lie closest to men's bosom and business, has become most remote from life. It was not so in the classical civilization of the Greeks and Romans, and it was not so in China, where the study of the wisdom of life formed the scholars' chief occupation.

Either the modern man is not interested in the problems of living, which are the proper subject of philosophy, or we have gone a long way from the original conception of philosophy. The scope of our knowledge has been so widened, and we have so many departments of knowledge zealously guarded over by their respective specialists, that philosophy, instead of being the first of man's studies, has left for it only the field no one is willing to specialize in. Typical of the state of modern education is the announcement of an American university that "the Department of Psychology has kindly thrown open the doors of Psychology 4 to the students of Economics 3. The professor of Economics 3 therefore commits the care of his students to the professor of Psychology 4 with his love and blessings, while as an exchange of courtesy, he allows the students of Psychology 4 to tread in the sacred precincts of Economics 3 with a gesture of friendly hospitality.

Meanwhile, Philosophy, the King of Knowledge, is like the Chinese Emperor in the times of the Warring Kingdoms, who instead of drawing tribute from the vassal states, found his authority and domain daily diminishing, and retained the allegiance of only a small population of very fine and loyal, but poorly fed subjects.
　　
For we have now come to a stage of human culture in which we have compartments of knowledge but not knowledge itself; specialization, but no integration; specialists but no philosophers of human wisdom. This over-specialization of knowledge is not very different from the over-specialization in a Chinese Imperial kitchen. Once during the collapse of a dynasty, a rich Chinese official was able to secure as his cook a maid who had escaped from the palace kitchen. Proud of her, he issued invitations for his friends to come and taste a dinner prepared by one he thought an Imperial cook. As the day was approaching, he asked the maid to prepare a royal dinner. The maid replied that she couldn't prepare a dinner. "What did you do, then?" asked the official. "Oh, I helped make the patties for the dinner, " she replied.

"Well, then, go ahead and make some nice patties for my guests. " To his consternation the maid announced: "Oh, no, I can't make patties. I specialized in chopping up the onions for the stuffing of the patties of the Imperial dinner. "
　　
Some such condition obtains today in the field of human knowledge and academic scholarship. We have a biologist who knows a bit of life and human nature; a psychiatrist who knows another bit of it; a geologist who knows mankind's early history; an anthropologist who knows the mind of the savage man; an historian who, if he happens to be a genial mind, can teach us something of human wisdom and human folly as reflected in mankind's past history; a psychologist who often can help us to understand our behavior, but who as often as not tells us a piece of academic imbecility, such as that Lewis Car-roll was a sadist," or emerges from his laboratory experiments on chickens and announces that the effect of a loud noise on chickens is that it makes their hearts jump. Some educational psychologists always seem to me stupefying when they are wrong, and still more stupefying when they are right. But along with the process of specialization, there has not been the urgently needed process of integration, the effort to integrate all these aspects of knowledge and make them serve the supreme end, which is the wisdom of life. Perhaps we are ready for some integration of knowledge today, as is evidenced by the Institute of Human Relations at Yale University and in the addresses at the Harvard Tercentenary. Unless, however, the Western scientists proceed about this task by a simpler and less logical way of thinking, that integration cannot be achieved. Human wisdom cannot be merely the adding up of specialized knowledge or obtained by a study of statistical averages; it can be achieved only by insight, by the general prevalance of more common sense, more wit and more plain, but subtle, intuition.
　　
There is clearly a distinction between logical thinking and reasonable thinking, which may be also expressed as the difference between academic thinking and poetic thinking. Of academic thinking we have a great deal, but of poetic thinking we find very little evidence in the modern world. Aristotle and Plato are strikingly modern, and that is so, perhaps not because the Greeks resembled the moderns, but because they were strictly the ancestors of modern thought. In spite of his humanistic point of view and his Doctrine of the Golden Mean,

Aristotle was strictly the grandfather of the modern textbook writers, being the first man to cut up knowledge into separate compartments from physics and botany to ethics and politics. As was quite inevitable, he was the first man also to start the impertinent a-cademic jargon incomprehensible to the common man, which is being outdone by the American sociologists and psychologists of today. And while Plato had real human insight, yet in a sense he was responsible for the worship of ideas and abstractions as such among the Neo- Pla-tonists, a tradition which, instead of being tempered with more insight, is so familiar among us today in writers who talk about ideas and ideologies as if they had an independent existence. Only modern psychology in very recent days is depriving us of the watertight compartments of "reason", "will" and "emotion" and helping to kill the " soul " which was such a real entity with the medieval theologians. . . .
　　
It seems that a regenerated form of thinking, a more poetic thinking, which can see life steadily and see it whole, is eminently desirable. As the late James Harvey Robinson warns us: "Some careful observers express the quite honest conviction that unless thought be raised to a far higher plane than hitherto, some great set-back to civilization is inevitable." Professor Robinson wisely pointed out that,

"Conscientiousness and Insight seem suspicious of one another, and yet they might be friends. " Modern economists and psychologists seem to me to have an overdose of conscientiousness and not enough of insight. This is a point which perhaps cannot be overemphasized, the danger of applying logic to human affairs. But the force and prestige of scientific thinking have been so great in the modern age, that in spite of all warnings, this species of academic thinking constantly encroaches upon the realm of philosophy, with the jejune belief that the human mind can be studied like a sewerage system and the waves of human thought measured like the waves of radio. The consequences are mildly disturbing in our everyday thinking, but disastrous in practical politics.

中文

合于人情的思想之必要
林语堂

思想是一种艺术，而不是一种科学。中国的和西方的学问之间，最大的对比就是：西方太多专门知识，而太少近于人情的知识；至于中国则富于对生活问题的关切，而欠于专门的科学。我们眼见在西方科学思想侵入了近于人情的知识的区域，其中的特点就是：十分专门化，和无处不引用科学的与半科学的名词。这里，我所谓“科学”的思想，是指它在一般的意义上而言，而尚不是真正的科学思想，因为真正的科学思想是不能从常识和幻想分析开来的。在一般的意义上，这种科学思想是严格的、合于逻辑的、客观的、十分专门化的，并在方式和幻想的景物中是“原子式”的。这东西两种形式的学问，其对比终还是归结于逻辑和常识的冲突。逻辑如若剥去了常识，它便成为不近人情；而常识如若剥去了逻辑，它便不能够深入大自然的神秘境界。
　　
当一个检视中国的文学和哲学界时，他将得到一些什么东西呢？他会察觉那里边没有科学，没有极端的理论，没有假说，而且并没真正的性质十分不同的哲学。例如中国诗人白居易，他不过藉儒道以正行为，藉佛教以净心胸，并藉历史、画、山、河、酒、音乐和歌曲以慰精神罢了。他生活在世界中，但也是出世的。
　　
所以，中国即成为一个人人不很致力于思想，而人人只知道尽力去生活的区域。在这里，哲学本身不过是一件很简单而是属于常识的事情，可以很容易地用一两句诗词包括一切。这区域里面没有什么哲学系；广泛地说起来，没有逻辑，没有形而上学，没有学院式的胡说；没有学院式专重假定主义，较少智力的和实际的疯狂主义，较少抽象的和冗长的字句。机械式的惟理主义在这里是永远不可能的，而且对于逻辑的必须概念都抱着一种憎恶的态度。这里的事业生活中没有律师，而哲学生活中也没有逻辑家。这里只有着一种对生活的亲切感觉，而没有什么设计精密的哲学系，这里没有一个康德或一个黑格尔，而只有文章家，警语作家，佛家禅语和道家譬喻的拟议者。
　　
中国的文学，以其全面而言，我们粗看似乎只见大量的短诗和短文，在不爱好的人们看起来，似乎是多得可厌，但其中实有种种的类别，和种种的美点，正如一幅野外景色一般。这里面有文章家和尺牍家，他们只需用五六百个宇，便能将生活的感觉表示于一篇短文或短札中，其篇幅比了美国低级学校儿童所做的论说更短。在这种随手写作的书札、日记、笔记和文章中，我们所看到的大概是对一次人生遭遇的评论，对邻村中一个女子自尽的记载，或对一次春游、一次雪宴、一次月夜荡桨、一次晚间在寺院里躲雨的记载，再加上一些这种时节各人谈话的记录。这里有许多散文家同时即是诗人，有许多诗人同时即是散文家，所有的著作每篇至多不过五七百宇，有时单用一句诗文即能表出整个的生活哲学。这里有许多警喻、警语和家信的作家，他们写作时都是乘兴之所到，随后写去，并不讲究什么严格的系统。这使系派难于产生。理智阶级常被合于情理的精神所压伏，尤其是被作家的艺术的感觉性所压伏，而无从活动。事实上，理智阶级在这里是最为人所不信任的。
　　
我无须指出逻辑本能乃是人类灵心的一种最有力的利器，因而科学的成就成为可能。我也知道西方的人类进步至今还是在根本上由常识和批判精神所统制着，这常识和批判精神是比逻辑精神更为伟大的东西，我以为实在是代表着西方思想的最高的形式。我也无需明说西方的批判精神比在中国更为发展。在指出逻辑的思想的弱点中，我不过是指着某一种特别的缺点而说的，即如他们的政治中也有着这一种的弱点，如：德国人和日本人的机械式政治，即属于此类。逻辑自有它的动人之处，我认为侦探小说的发展就是逻辑灵心的一种最令人感兴趣的产品，这种文字在中国完全没有发展过。但是过度耽于逻辑思想也自有其不利之处。
　　
西方学问杰出的特质就是专门化和分割知识，将它们归入各式各类的门类。逻辑思想和专门化的过于发展，再加上好用专门的名词，造成了现代文明的一个奇特事实，即哲学已和它的背景分隔得如此的遥远，已远落在政治学和经济学的后面，以致一般的人们都会走过它的旁边而竟觉着好似没有这样一件东西。在一个平常人的心目中，甚至在某些有教养的人的心目中，都觉得哲学实在是一种最好不必加以过问的学科。这显然是现代文化中的一种奇特的反常现象，因为哲学本应是最贴近人们的脑怀和事业的物事，但现在倒反而远在千里之外。希腊和罗马的古典型的文化便不是如此的，中国的文化也不是如此的。

也许是现代人对于生活问题――其实是哲学中的正常题旨――不感觉兴趣，或也许是我们已经走离哲学的原始概念太遥远了。我们的知识范围已经推广到如此的广大，由各类专家所热心守卫的知识门类已经如此的众多，以致哲学这一门，其实虽应是人们所宜最先研究的学问，倒反而被打入没有人愿意做专门研究的场地里边去了。美国某大学的布告可以作为现代教育状况的一个典型，这布告说：“心理学科现在已经开放，凡是经济学科的学生，愿意者都可以加入。”所以经济学科的教授已将自己一科里学生的友爱和幸福托付给心理学科的教授，同时为了答谢好意起见，他又容许心理学科的学生踏进经济学科的围场，以表示友谊。同时，知识之王的哲学则如战国时的君王一般，不但已不能从他的学科附庸各国收取贡礼，而且觉得他的权力和国土日渐减缩，只剩较少的食粮，不足的人民效忠于他了。
　　
因为现在我们已达到一个只有着知识门类而并没有着知识本身的人类文化梯阶；只是专门化，但没有完成其整体；只有专门家，而没有人类知识的哲学家。这种知识的过分专门化，实和中国皇宫中尚膳房的过分专门化并没有什么分别。当某一个朝代倾覆的时节，有一位贵官居然得到了一个从尚膳房里逃走出来的宫女。他得意极了，特地在某天邀请了许多朋友来尝尝这位御厨高手所做的莱肴。当设宴的日期快到时，他即吩咐这宫女去预备一桌最丰盛的御用式酒席。这宫女回说，她不会做这样的一席菜。
　　
“那么，你在宫中时，做些什么呢？”主人问。
　　
“噢，我是专做席面上所用的糕饼的。”她回答。
　　
“很好，那么你就替我做些上好的糕饼吧。”
　　
宫女的答语使他几乎跳起来，因为她回说：“不，我不会做糕饼，我是专切糕饼馅子里边所用的葱的。”
　　
现在的人类知识和学院式学问的场地里边，情形就和这个相仿佛。我们有着一位略晓得一些生命和人类性质的生物学家；有着一位略晓得一些同一题目的另一部分的精神病学家；有着一位通晓人类早年历史的地质学家；有着一位知悉野蛮人种的心性的人类学家；有着一位如若偶然是个心胸开通者的话，可以教给我们一些人类过去历史所反映出来的人类知识和人类愚行的历史学家；有着一个有时也能帮助我们认识我们的行为，但仍是偏于多告诉我们一种学院式的呆话，如：鲁易斯?卡罗尔乃是一个忧郁主义者，或从他的用鸡为试验的实验室里走出来，而宣布说，巨响对于一只鸡的影响是使它们的心跳跃的心理学家。有些以教授为业的心理学家，在我看来，当他们错误时，他们是使人昏迷的，而在不错误时则更其令人昏迷。但在专门化的程序中，同时并没有应该并进的完成整个的切要程序，即将这类知识的多方面综合成一个整体，以达到它们所拟达到的最高目的――生命的知识――的程序。现在我们或许已经做了将知识完成整个的预备，例如耶鲁大学校中的人类关系学会，和哈佛大学立校三百年纪念会中的演讲词都可以做这一点的证明。不过，除非西方的科学家能用一种较简单的、较不逻辑的思想方法去从事于这件工作，则完成整体这件事简直没有成功的日子。人类知识不单是将专门知识一件一件地加上去而成的，并且也不能单从统计式的平均数的研究中去获得它；这只能藉着洞察而获得成就，只能藉着更普通的常识、更多的智能，和更清楚的但是更锐敏的直觉方能获得成就。
　　
逻辑的思想和合理的思想之间，或也可称为学院式的思想和诗意的思想之间，有着一种很明显的区别。学院式的思想，我们所有的已很多了，但是诗意的思想则现代中尚还稀见。亚里士多德和柏拉图其实是很摩登的；他们所以如此，不但因为希腊人很近似现代人，而且因为他们实在是，严格的说法，现代思想的祖先。亚里士多德虽也有他的人性主义见解，和中庸之道的学说，但他确是现代教科书作家的祖师，他实在是首创将知识分割成许多门类者――从物理学和植物学直到伦理学和政治学。他显然也就是首创为普通人所不能了解的不相干的学院式胡说者，而后来的现代美国社会学家和心理学家则更助纣为虐，又比他更为厉害。柏拉图虽有着真正的人类洞察力，但在某种意义上，他实在应负如新柏拉图主义学派所崇尚的对于概念和抽象观念崇拜的责任，这个传统的思想不但没有被加些更多的洞察力以为调和，倒反而被现代专讲概念和主义的作者所熟习，而将它视做好似实有一个独立的存在性一般。最近的现代化心理学实是剥削了我们的“理智”、“意旨”和“情感”部门，并帮助杀害那个和中古时代的神学家在一起时尚还是一个整体的“灵魂”。我们已杀害了“灵魂”，而另造出许许多多社会的和政治的口号（“革命”、“反革命”、“布尔乔亚”、“帝国主义资本家”、“逃避主义”）以为替代，听任它们来统治我们的思想；并又造出相类的物事，如：“阶级”、“命运”和“国家”，很逻辑地听任这个国家变成一个巨魔而吞吃了个人。
　　
很明显地，现在所需要的似乎是一种需经过改造的思想方式，一种更为富有诗意的思想，方能更稳定地观察生命和观察它的整体。正如已过世的古姆斯?哈维?罗宾逊所警告我们的话：“有些谨慎的观察家很坦白地表示他的真诚意见说，除非将思想提升到比目下更高的平面之上，文明必然将要受到某种绝大的阻碍。”罗宾逊教授很智慧地指出，“良心的驱使和洞察力似乎是在彼此猜忌。但其实则它们很可以成为朋友的。”现代的经济学家和心理学家似乎有着大多的良心驱使而缺乏洞察力。对世事施用逻辑的危险这一点是不应该过分重视的。但因科学思想的力量和尊严在现代是如此地巨大，以致虽有人曾做种种的警告，然而这一类的学院式思想依旧不断的侵入哲学的区域，深信人类的灵心可以如一组沟渠一般的加以研究，和人类的思想浪潮可以如无线电波一般加以测量的。它的后果是逐渐地在那里扰乱我们的思想，同时于实用的政治学上有着极恶劣的影响。