But my confidence cantilevered dangerously beyond any base that it might have had. One reason was the provincialism that many of us possess because we have been obsessed with the conquest of our shining new continent. Dangers and hardships compelled us, the Big Barbecue of natural resources enticed us into a preoccupation with domestic problems. Another reason was what psychological warriors term "privatization," stemming from a man's tendency to take it for granted that the hub of the universe is humming right under his own shoe-soles. Essential as this feeling of self-importance is to survival, it can grow large enough to become the foothill that obscures the peak. It can make the individual American ignore the most numerous nation on earth, the people which Arnold Toynbee said were "the race of the future."
Before I went to Taiwan, I was one of some 160 million Americans who were more or less ignorant of the Chinese. Of course I had, in Isaacs' phrase, some "scratches on my mind," images of traits and customs which the Chinese were assumed to possess. In pre-school childhood I had wondered how long I would need to dig through the world to see a man with slant eyes and a pigtail. What I learned about the Orient in elementary school was largely extracurricular and wrong. From the spine-tingling Fu Manchu mysteries by Sax Rohmer. I formed the illusion that all Chinese gentlemen dressed in long gowns, grew stringy whiskers, and drew their hands out of their sleeves only to lift an opium pipe or a lethal weapon. They were inscrutable intrigants stalking in an aura of the occult.
My geography books devoted ten times as much space to the United States as to all the countries of Asia. Although that emphasis was, in a sense, justified by our need for local detail, the maps left me with distorted ideas. All Asia lay on its beam ends on one page; while the United States, with only a fraction of the Asiatic land area, stretched grandly across a "double spread," two full pages. Thus I was amazed decades later to spend four days and nights sailing down the South China Sea, which had appeared to occupy only a minor indentation in the continent.
Columbus discovered America by accident while seeking the Orient. In touring from Japan to Thailand, I discovered an Orient of splendid distances and vast multitudes about whom I had known little that was accurate.
Seeing ourselves as others see us was a minor bonus of enlightenment which resulted from my sojourn in Taiwan. Although the Chinese are courteous and tolerant, they can be frank on some subjects, and in a year they unsettled some images which I had made of my countrymen. Interviews which my graduate students conducted on national stereotypes were revelatory. Few of the Chinese respondents regarded us as particularly intelligent or emotionally mature as compared with the British. Few thought us notably peace-loving or hard-working—they reserved those traits for themselves.
That surprised me. I knew that we had emerged from World War II as the leading military power, at least temporarily; but I was convinced that we had reluctantly permitted mortal peril to force us into that position, and hard work and sacrifice had enabled us to salvage some liberties for the world.
The majority voted us the most progressive and practical of nationalities. But "practical" was not so complimentary as it seemed to me, my students told me gently. To a Chinese, they said, the word was likely to connote a system of values in which financial advantage might take precedence over loyalty or friendship. I resisted this notion. Also I did not think that the vision of Americans as persons rolling in idle luxury was just. America's vast production, I declared, came largely because of toil of mind and body. I was delighted when two young tillers returning from an "exchange" tour of the United States extolled the industriousness of American farmers.
Still, I could see how our admiration of the legendary two-gun man, the fearless fullback, the tough leatherneck could make our warships and warplanes and nuclear weapons appear as symbols of belligerency. And our undeniable emphasis upon material comforts and luxuries could persuade observers that we placed the acquisition of wealth higher than the claims of family affection and friendship. I pointed out the paradox that, despite our doting on physical pleasure and gadgetry, great numbers of our young men had died abroad in defense of democratic freedoms. But I had to admit that some of our peacetime representatives, official or unofficial, in China seemed to exemplify opinions which the Chinese had formed of us. Such incidents as the American sergeant's shooting of the window-peeper tend to confirm a certain unfavorable impression.
Our type of competitive spirit, fruitful as it is in some ways, drives many of us into fierce rivalries for top rewards not only in business but in education and the arts. Thus we live lies of unremitting tension, and the monotony of strain leads often to irascibility, perhaps also to ulcers, and to our high incidence of heart maladies.
What I admired most in the Chinese was, therefore, serenity. That was something worth bringing home. If I am not misled by their emotional control, they have a relaxed attitude which appears to reflect inner peace. But it is not a cow-like calmness. The Chinese are alive in the distinctively human way. Even after thousands of years of imbricate cultures which have had elaborate and sophisticated aspects, they have managed to retain a kinship with essential nature. They have, at their best, a strong sense of wonder at the universal tapestry into which their lives are woven. Like the classic Greeks, the Chinese of such periods as the Ming have achieved artistic heights because, through sensitive awareness of man's nature and physical nature, they have gained insight which has enabled them to symbolize profound meanings. Drawing upon a broad range of experience ranging from delight in sea and mountains and stars to the homely pleasures of family and friends, they often have a faith that life is worth sustaining in spite of war or exile or other changes of fortune.
Also as a result of travel in Asia I was stimulated to sample philosophies of the East, of India as well as China, as avenues to higher understanding of Orientals and enrichment of my own life. Before traveling to the East, I had known something of the teachings of Confucius and Mencius. Therefore there was some excuse for my learned Chinese friend's choice of "Admirer of Confucius' Thought" for my Chinese name. But not until later, following discussions with Chinese and some reading in America after my return, did I get glimpses of a sphere in which the East could contribute to balanced thought in the West.
Emerging for me is a view of limitations of the secular philosophies dominant in the West. To say this is not to imply apology for the West's contributions. Since mid-seventeenth century, the Occident has given richly to world progress in science, to the understanding of the physical universe and the application of scientific discoveries to improvement of human welfare. In these aspects of thought we have probably surpassed other civilizations. There are, therefore, excellent reasons why Occidental philosophy has become largely the handmaiden of science. It has sought, as H.H. Price wrote, "to make clear to us what we know already; and its chief means of doing so is to analyse the linguistic forms by which that knowledge is expressed, and to remove the confusions and inconsistencies to which they give rise." Nevertheless, we must recognize that the divergence of Western thought from the central tradition of Eastern philosophy has left scarcely any ground for discussion between the two, and that in this departure the West has cut itself off from sources of insight that it could use.
A result is, to quote Price again, that the West has "somehow become the prisoner of its own Naturalistic preconceptions. It may be that the success of the physical sciences has blinded us to some truths about the universe and also human personality which it greatly concerns us to know. If that is so, what we need is a radical change of outlook; and we can prepare the way for it by making an effort to assimilate whatever the religious and mystical tradition of the Far East has to teach us."
We can be proud that the West has produced such metaphysicians as Descartes, Spinoza, Leibnitz, Hegel. Today, however, their strongest influence seems to be along courses that they regarded somewhat as bypaths. It is not the great metaphysical concepts which have prevailed, but the empiricism of Locke and Kant. We may be able to proffer the East assistance on the semantic side, on the clarification of knowledge; and to exchange these for insights into self, into consciousness, into a realm of experience which our current concepts tend to rule out. As we uneasily fumble to restore a lost emphasis, as we grope along frontiers of discovery, we can probably gain helpful clues and hints from Far Eastern philosophy.