Dominant Ideas in the Formation of Chinese Culture

Innumerable difficulties beset the man daring enough to attempt a subject such as this, quite aside from the obvious ones of facile generalization and limitations of space. Should we, for example, consider as dominant ideas those that have been expressed by the relatively small group of articulate Chinese known to us through literature, or should the heterogeneous and often contradictory beliefs held by the anonymous masses also be included? And if the latter, how are we to evaluate their importance as compared with those of the minority? In reply, I can merely say that I shall attempt to present as dominant only those concepts that I feel have had genuine importance for a very large number of Chinese, both literate and illiterate; that go far back into the roots of Chinese civilization and are presumably truly Chinese in origin; and that at the same time have continued over long epochs to exert a powerful influence in Chinese thought, in many cases unto the present day. This last criterion means that we shall be forced to disregard certain very early and in themselves interesting concepts (such as some of the magical beliefs current during the Shang dynasty, 1766 ?-1123? B. C.), simply because, important as they were in their own age, they either disappeared or became greatly changed by the time Chinese civilization assumed a well defined pattern or norm. As a convenient method of procedure I propose to treat our subject under three heads: (1) the basic concepts of the Chinese as regards the world of the supernatural; (2) as regards the world of nature; and (3) as regards the world of man. In other words, what has been the prevailing Chinese attitude toward religion, toward the physical universe, and toward themselves? Adoption of such a division will give us a convenient framework within which to move, even though we must recognize that some ideas cannot be readily confined to any one of these three categories, while others may conceivably escape the bounds of all of them together

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