Translated from the Russian by H. KASANINA, L. LEMPERT, O. SHARTSE, V. SHNEERSON

The Problem of Realism and the Literatures of the East . . Certain Questions concerning the History of World Literature The Substance of History.................

This volume includes some articles, written in post-war years, touching upon general questions of historical science and the history of literature—problems which might, in the author’s opinion, find fuller or different illumination through data on the history and literatures of the peoples of the East. The first article, “The Classical Oriental Studies and the New Problems”, serves as a general introduction to this collection.

In his historical articles the author has endeavoured to delineate, on the basis of the history of the East (principally China and Japan) and of the West (for the most part Western Europe), a general pattern of the historical process taking place in antiquity and the Middle Ages, that is, during mankind’s slave-owning and feudal stages (“The Slave-owning Formation”, “The ‘Middle Ages’ in Historical Science”). Taking as his starting point certain facts, now understood in a new light, of the cultural history of China during the period lasting from the 7th to the 12th centuries, the author suggests that one may discern in these the signs of that epoch known in the history of Europe from the 14th to the 16th centuries as the Renaissance (see the article on “The Philosophy of the Chinese Renaissance”). Then, drawing attention to certain phenomena in the cultural history of Western Turkistan and Iran in the period from the 9th to the 13th centuries, the author expresses the view that the conception of the Renaissance might be established in history as a worldwide phenomenon and not merely a localised one; as a phenomenon appearing in the natural course of the history of large civilised nations (“The Renaissance Epoch”, “Shakespeare and His Time”).

In articles on his researches in literature the author has sought— by juxtaposition of certain phenomena in the literatures of China and Japan, on the one hand, and the literatures of Europe, on the other—first, to trace the contacts existing between some literatures and to elucidate the nature of these contacts; second, to outline the traits that are common, or divergent, as the case may be, in the historical process of the rise and development of liter-

ature among different peoples (see the articles “Notes on Literary Contacts”, “The Problem of Realism in the Literatures of the East”). On the basis of this material the author has attempted to define important general questions of literature and to indicate the main paths of the history of literature (“Certain Questions concerning the History of World Literature”).

In every article in these two series the author has tried to show the part played by the humanistic principle in the historical process, its role as the eternal companion of mankind on its historic path, as the basic factor of social progress. The reader will find a generalised summary of the author’s view in the concluding article in the volume, “The Substance of History”.

It seems to the auther that the contents of this book as outlined above afford a reason for entitling it West—East: Inseparable Twain.

THE CLASSICAL ORIENTAL STUDIES AND THE NEW PROBLEMS

Oriental studies originated as part of philology, in its primary, historically traditional meaning as research in ancient writings.

This philology came into being in the West as well as in the East during late antiquity, which in the West corresponded to the Hellenistic period, and in the East, in China, to the time of the Han Empire. Alexandrian scholars collected literary works of the classical period—the city-state epoch—of their antiquity; the Chinese, those of the classical period—the lieh-ko epoch—of their antiquity. Not only were collections made, but work was inaugurated on the establishment of their true texts. This, in its turn, required research on the written work itself. Thus, the essential purpose of philological studies took shape and became classical: it consisted in the collecting of the writings of the past, the establishment of the true texts and their interpretation.

These essentials underwent no alteration in the Middle Ages and this applies equally to both West and East. Only the field became more extensive: in the West, it included not only Greek and Roman antiquity, but also Hebrew (the Bible); in the East, manuscripts included not only those of ancient Confucianism and Taoism, but also of Buddhism (the Tri-pitaka). New trends appeared in the work: the main purpose of study now became the interpretation—exegesis (as it was called in Europe), hsiin-ku (as it was called in China). The interpretation had to be correct—hermeneutic (the European term), cheng-i (the Chinese term). The objects of exegesis and hermeneutics also changed: they were for the most part those old writings upon which the ideology of the ruling classes of the time was based. In Europe, these were Christian writings; in China, Confucian. The interpretation that answered official ideology was considered to be the correct one.

new stage in philology was entered upon. Its modernity consisted in the substitution of criticism for exegesis, of the philosophical explication of the content of the writings in place of hermeneutics, an explication given now in the light of Renaissance humanism which had begun its long struggle with the dogmatism of of facial ideological orthodoxy—religious (Christian) in Europe, philosophical (Confucian) in China. A struggle was also waged against the spirit of scholasticism, the educational system that inculcated dogmatism Thus, the scholastic philology which was the final stage of philology in the Middle Ages was replaced by humanistic Renaissance philology. . , , _J. ..

In the new times, philology was to a certain extent the continuation of Renaissance philology, except that its range was extended to include the medieval classics. The spirit remained the same-the traditional humanistic. Rut the fundamentals of humanism changed: it became wholly converted to rationalistic philosophy which had then become the guiding principle of knowledge. In connection with this, the elements of criticism which had appeared in philology during the Renaissance epoch now gained strength, and, what was particularly important, the philologists attention was directed towards separating the genuine from the false in ancient writings and investigating their authenticity. This tendency was characteristic of the philology of the Enlightenment epoch both m West and East. It is plainly evident in, for example, the philological school (k ao-cheng) in China, in Sinology (kangaku) and home (Japanese) studies (,kokugaku) in Japan. In this way was the philology shaped that later became known as classical in Europe.

It will be understood that researches into the genuineness of the ancient writings and their various interpretations were associated with the social interests of the time. Since the historical purpose of the Enlightenment—the central epoch of modern history—was the struggle of the new, capitalist order then in process of formation against the old feudal order, the destructive and conservative tendencies acquired particular force. During the Enlightenment they were signalised in the efforts of some scholars to prove, by direct or indirect means, the historical legitimacy of the existing order, and in the efforts of others to prove the opposite. It was thus in the case of classical philology in France, it was thus m the case of the classical philology of China and Japan. Rut the object of philological studies remained the same—the writings of bygone ages; and the content of studies the examination ot these writings—also remained the same.

Philology as a whole is the offspring of all civilised peoples with an old culture, whether Western or Eastern, but Orientalist philology, or Oriental studies in their initial form, are the ou-

spring of the West, that is, of those countries for which the “Orient” constituted a different and peculiar world, the opposite of their

Oriental studies assumed their final form at the beginning ot the 19th century, but began to take shape earlier. In the modern period, intensive colonial expansion, capitalist by nature, was taking place for the second time in history, the first having been feudal.

It, was inaugurated by the West European states: either those which were already capitalist, such as Holland and England, or those which were rapidly becoming capitalist, such as France. The pnn-cipal targets for expansion were the old civilised countries of the East—India, Indo-China, Indonesia, China, Iran, as well as countries relatively young, but rapidly developing their culture-Turkey and the Arab domains on the Mediterranean seaboard of Africa. At different times, all these were included in the sphere of the colonial empires of Holland, England and France, either as colonies, semicolonies or dependencies (to a greater or lesser degree).

Colonial expansion required not only armies, but also the acquirement of a definite range of knowledge and information on the part of the colonisers about the countries to which they penetrated. This included information about the state of the Eastern countries at that time, with the addition of a knowledge of their history and culture. At a later period, it was known as the study of countries, and a special branch of it was the study of “living Oriental languages” This term was used to distinguish the modern tongues spoken by the peoples of the East from the “dead” languages (for instance, that of ancient Egypt), that is, the languages of extinct peoples, or the “classical” languages (such as Sanskrit), that is, the languages used in ancient times by peoples still in existence.

Parallel to practical Oriental studies, as this trend was termed, another branch developed, which became known as scientific Oriental studies. This received an impetus from the increasing and deepening interest in the East. Undoubtedly, this interest was dictated by practical considerations: the combination of military forces with technical and economic superiority was sufficient for colonial conquest, but for the administration of subjugated countries or maintaining as dependencies countries which had preserved their political independence, a comprehensive knowledge of these countries was a necessity. Here the justice was evident of an ancient truth formulated after the Mongol conquest of China by Yehliu Ch uts’ai, the learned K’itan counsellor of the Mongol khans: “Mounted on a horse, you may conquer a kingdom, but mounted on a horse you cannot govern it.”

It would be unjust, however, to the representatives of scientific Oriental studies, to attribute their efforts solely to the requirements described above. Apart from the question of whether their studies were of service to the politicians or not, a great many Orientalist philologists w^Tere inspired by a genuine and disinterested desire

for knowledge about the peoples of the East, their history and their culture. Their respect for the Eastern peoples is well known. In the case of some Orientalists there was even a touch of veneration, as though the ancient formula ex Oriente Zmr assumed new life in their minds. And, of course, the humanitarian sciences, bringing their own requirements and developing rapidly in the 19th century, played a part of immense importance. The common features of the historical life of many peoples, manifested in this century with new force, demanded the formulation and treatment of large-scale problems, which without a study of the East would be impossible. In view of this, Orientalists were confronted with a special task: existing knowledge had to be supplemented by more detailed, more exact and more fully elaborated information about the history, culture, and ideology of the peoples of the East.

Naturally, the best sources of information were the ancient writings of these peoples, and for that reason scientific Oriental studies were inevitably philological. Moreover, they had to be on a level and of a trend typical of the philological science of modern times: they had to be critical.

The writings studied by Orientalists were very different. If we were to classify them under headings familiar to us nowadays, they would include historical, economic, juridical, philosophical, religious and literary works. That is why the entire complex of the humanitarian sciences was to be found in Orientalist philology. It was an interrrelated complex, not a mechanical mixture. An understanding of ancient literature involved, first and foremost, an understanding of its script and language—the writing and language of the period to which it belonged, or the writing and language in use in the literature of the time. Therefore, the Orientalist-philologist needed not only a knowledge of the given Eastern language and its script, but also a historical knowledge of them. The understanding of an ancient text meant a grasp of its literary nature, since every written work, no matter what its content and form, is a literary work. (That is, if we do not regard the conception of “literature” within the narrow limits introduced in the 19th century, but view it in the traditional meaning, as the term for written works expressing a definite idea through the medium of language in its written form, expressing it precisely as the idea demands.) Therefore, every philologist should be a specialist in literature in the broad sense of the word. Furthermore, since comprehension of an old work meant a grasp of its content and since this content, no matter what it might concern, was always historical, the philologist had to be a historian on the widest scale.

Qualifications such as these called for specific knowledge on the part of an Orientalist-philologist. We often use the term “complex

knowledge”, and this is justified, on the whole, if the nature of this complex is rightly understood. A correct idea of it may be obtained if we understand its constituent parts. The constituents are the branches covering religious beliefs, philosophical views, scientific conceptions; branches examining cultural phenomena, both material and spiritual, and within the latter the phenomena of art and literature. It would be incorrect to suppose, however, that Oriental studies had not yet attained the level of special sciences, such as linguistics, literary studies, art studies, sociology, history, economics and philosophy, and for this reason were confined to a sphere where elements of all these sciences are found intermingled, but still lack the specific quality indispensable to every science. If opinions like these are held, the existence of Orientalists who specialise in linguistics, literature, economics, history, etc., should be regarded as a transition to a higher level of Oriental studies: or even more, perhaps, as a sign that the end of the Oriental studies of the past has arrived.

There can be no doubt that the appearance of Orientalist specialists is an entirely new fact in the history of Oriental studies. Neither can there be any doubt that it evidences a step forward in Oriental studies. But to think that the specialised Orientalism can eliminate the “complex” would be a mistake. Neither the one nor the other eliminate, or can eliminate, each other. The objects of their research are totally different, and this leads to a difference in the methods and purposes of work. The object of scientific Orientalism in its traditional form is ancient writing, a definite literary work. When it is investigated, this study must of necessity be of the complex type, because the manuscript itself is complex. No matter what the content of a literary work may be, it is a fact of actual history, and every fact of actual history contains in itself, in one form or another, in one or another proportion, a number of elements of the historical reality of its own time. For this reason, it is impossible to study an old work as such from any other standpoint than as a unity of the various aspects of reality expressed in it, distinguishing these aspects, but making no artificial isolation of one from another.

A different situation arises when, because of some feature in a given work, it is accorded a place among others which, inasmuch as they manifest this feature, are regarded as kindred works, or at least as relatively close. Then, it is not the work itself that is being studied as a definite example of ancient literature, but a certain phenomenon manifested in this work and typified by its own definite feature. Since every phenomenon possessing a peculiar feature is of a specific nature, its study should be conducted by specific methods. If the given phenomenon is of a specifically economic nature, then the approach to it should be that of economic science; if it is of a linguistic nature, it should be treated as such, and so on.

In this lies the distinction between two branches of scientific Oriental studies, arising historically and coexisting naturally:

namely, the complex, acting within the bounds of philology as a general humanitarian science, and the specialised, acting within the bounds of certain sciences as parts of the humanitarian cycle.

What appears at first glance a perfectly clear picture may actually prove to be fairly complicated. The difficulty lies in this: it is not always possible to distinguish the feature especially typical of the given work; in other words, it is not always possible to make a definite division of the texts into historical, philosophical, literary, etc. If, for example, the documentary nature of the material is taken as a basis, then it may appear at once that the easiest of all to single out are legislative works. But among them are some in which articles of the law are accompanied by opinions, or are even stated in the form of opinions; this places them under the headings of juridical and philosophical. In other instances, a law or statute is supplemented by an account of the past history of that particular law: this places the work under the headings of both juridical and historical. If the historical nature of the material is taken as a basis, then the writing in question may be placed, it would appear, among historical works. But the point is that historical material in its pure and stark form may be found only in annals, chronicles, etc., that is, in the purely factual form; while in other works elements of reality are sometimes combined with elements of imagination, and, moreover, not unconscious invention (mistaken for reality by the author) but frank invention. These may be, for example, works wherein historical personages are made to deliver speeches which actually they never uttered, but which the author considers they might have uttered. In some works, historical data is presented not as a simple, straight, forward narrative of events, but is served up in a particularly elaborate form; this is because, in addition to narrative, the author wishes to produce the desired impression upon the reader and evoke the desired emotions. Consequently, works exist which would seem, by their data, to be historical, but which contain elements of a publicist nature and of creative art. Works exist that are characterised by a combination of philosophical judgements, publicist rhetoric and poetry. The essential point here is that the infeasibility of placing many ancient works under a definite heading as purely typical of that category is not an accidental phenomenon, but a structural one inherent in their specific nature; they are not a combination of different kinds of literature, but a particular type.

It is understood, of course, that the historical movement in literature consists in the creation of more and more new types of literary works, either stemming from the earlier, or connected with them, or emerging independently of these: new types sometimes more complex than the foregoing, occasionally simpler, but just as

complete and valuable. The conception of the literary value of a work has nothing to do with the type to which it belongs, but relates to its content and form.

Significant though the ideas in a work may be, they cannot ensure it high literary value if the form in which it is presented is unwieldy. On the other hand, no external perfection of form can endow a work with value if the underlying idea is insignificant, or the author has been unable to give it significance. Consequently, the fact that more and more new types of literary work are constantly appearing cannot be regarded merely as an indication of differentiation of literary work; particularly of the kind that, overcoming the preliminary complex character, supposed to be a sign of its primitiveness, raises literature to a new and far higher level. It would be erroneous to understand the historical process in this way. The genuinely historical nature of the research scholar’s position lies in his faculty for discerning the literary value of significant works of any type, any historical epoch, and in particular, in never considering the newer literary types as invariably superior to the earlier ones.

These things should be kept in mind not only by the Orientalist-philologist conducting research in ancient literature, but also by the Orientalist studying some particular science, such as history, literature, etc. The Orientalist-historian is not obliged to carry on research in a literary work as such, but must be fully aware of the literary nature of the work from which he draws data for his theories. In short, all the research done on original material should be coupled with a clear conception of the historical nature of this material; the content of philological and specialised Oriental studies remains different, of course. The former consists in the study of written works as evidences of the spiritual culture of a certain epoch; the latter consists not in the study of these literary evidences, but in the study of certain specific spheres of the historical and cultural life of peoples as reflected in these literary works. Both these branches of scientific Oriental studies afford answers, each from its own standpoint, to a general problem: the description and elucidation of the history and culture of Eastern peoples, taken as a whole, as well as in its various fields and epochs.

The question is: are Oriental studies, as a particular complex of sciences, dying out? This was a question of burning interest which arose at a time when the formation of special branches of these studies was complete. We may well ask ourselves, for example, whether the study of the history and fine literature qf Japan differs in principle from that of any other country. Is it because Japan’s history and literature are so profoundly indigenous, so individual? But,

after all, every people has its own individual history and literature. It was still possible to speak of the peculiar originality of the history and culture of Eastern peoples at a time when, in the West, the conception of “exoticism” was current, a conception of something very special, profoundly alien to everything European, and possessing a powerful attraction mainly because of its alien and mysterious character. This conception enjoyed especial popularity during the latter half of the 18th and the first half of the 19th century in France, England and Germany. It found reflection not only in belles-lettres but also in science. Later, the idea of the exotic aspect of the East disappeared from serious studies, and during the most recent period became particularly alien to us. Thus, even this ephemeral basis for the existence of Oriental studies as a special “complex” of sciences has long been non-existent.

The claim to existence of any science as an independent field of knowledge depends upon whether it has its own object of study. What particular object does the Orientalist keep in view in his studies of the history of an Eastern people, its literature or economics? The object is identical with that of the student of history, literature or economics of any of the Western peoples. True, a science may obtain the right to an exclusive position, if not to independent existence, when its researches are conducted according to its own methods and approaches, suitable to this science alone. But the whole history of scientific Oriental studies proves that they have not, nor ever had, any exclusive methods. Since Orientalists were scholars from different Western countries, and had received the general training customary for their time, they employed methods prevailing in science at that time. Another thing: it is utterly wrong in principle to assume that the study of, let us say, the history of Turkey, calls for methods totally different from those used in the study of France s history. In short, neither in the object of research, nor in its methods, does any branch of Oriental studies differ to any extent from a corresponding field of Occidental studies. Then why do we still talk of “Oriental studies”?

No foundation for the isolated existence of Oriental studies would remain if these studies continued to confine themselves to the same objectives that had been formulated traditionally. The task of studying old writings remains, of course, as important as ever, but in what way does research on these differ in principle from research on the old works of the West? The tasks of special study of the history, literature, economics, etc., of the peoples of the East may still be as necessary, but are not these branches of Oriental studies included in the corresponding disciplines—history, economics, literature, linguistics, and so on? These studies may retain their exclusive, independent place only when new tasks appear for them, tasks that are specific and peculiar to Oriental studies alone. Tasks such as these exist, it seems to me, and confront us with especial clarity at this time.

Actually, it is not a question of tasks but of one task, very complicated in content and very prominent in its significance. And it has taken shape in the course of the history of this branch of science.

It is hardly necessary to prove that the theoretical foundations of the humanitarian sciences recognised in our time by research scholars of every country were built up during the process of the study of the European peoples’ history and culture, supplemented by material on the history and culture of the peoples of the Asian and African Mediterranean regions (mainly when dealing with antiquity); the historical life of the latter peoples had been closely associated with Greek and Roman life, and for a definite period they were directly included in the sphere of the Graeco-Roman world. It is on the basis of these theoretical principles that the study of the history and culture of all other countries and peoples, including those of the East, has been conducted.

Historically, this is perfectly natural: the theoretical foundations of the humanitarian sciences, still in force, were laid down in Europe in modern times, that is, at the historical moment when the technical, economic and social progress of the European peoples began to surpass that in the Asian countries, even in those which, like Iran, India and China, could look back on a great and very ancient civilisation. On the basis of this progress in the advanced countries oi Europe, development was rapid in every field of knowledge, including the social sciences. The development of the science of society reached its highest level in Marxism. Historians, philosophers, sociologists, economists and specialists in literature in the U.S.S.R. and also many scientists in other countries, conduct their studies on the basis of the Marxist theory of the socio-historical process.

I ne validity of this theory is revealed by the fact that researches carried out on this basis yield the most exact knowledge, confirmed by actual historical facts.

nf _£^^c?^a .\^cie.^{nce ls not} stationary. It cannot be, since the outlook IiroLi^CL^{a 1£ts Various fields of this} science is continually being en-“^ew primarily those that are provided by the current

o hhtnrv , h- °^Pf^en‘ r^T,^{he ec>}'^{8 and} “^i <>“-«> °* the material _PT ■„ ^{y a}e shape before our eyes are eloquently shown by the

ever" rieed° ^{mankind durm}g the last half-century. New data, how-own-r, ^{n0t be} temporary, it may be far distant from our pa^t hpnrpt if*¹⁰® ^{1S Stead}!^ly discovering new aspects of life in the forv’m _eTpJ i^{6 Fange and 6Vel of our knowl}edge of mankind’s his-

to hotVoom¹p^tJ^{ieIdS exce}P^tionally important new data, in respect Oriental Sfp ^P°^ra/^y-^anp ^{kast life}‘ ^The tremendous strides That of the¹ 20th rpnt^{made m th}1^e,^{latter half of} the 19th and the first half

verv extensiv! f T ^{Wel1 known}- ^This development assumed a ery extensive scale between 1910 and the 1960’s in our country

Our knowledge of the past and present history and culture of the Eastern peoples attained impressive proportions and a high degree of accuracy. This last we owe to the fact that our studies are based on the Marxist theory of social development.

The expanding range and higher level of our knowledge makes its own claims on theory. As the history of Eastern peoples, both past and present, unfolds before us in all its increasing variety and complexity, we find that no theory could predict it, that it must be supplemented by propositions stemming from the study of new material. Another striking thing is that some well-known and seemingly fully verified scientific propositions may appear in the light of new data in an aspect other than that to which we have been accustomed. Here 1 will permit myself to quote a few instances which, to my mind, may illustrate this idea.

The Marxist standpoint concerning social-economic formations is well known. According to it, the emergence of various social formations was observed in history, each of these being in itself a complete social and economic system. These systems developed consecutively, the next in turn replacing the preceding; this succession represents the ascendant trend of social development.

The Marxist standpoint regarding social-economic formations was founded upon the data of European history, and only in passing did it touch upon data of Eastern (principally ancient) history, for which insufficient data were available at the time, and in many cases they were inaccurately interpreted. As may be understood, the history of European peoples affords superb material for the construction of a general historical theory. European peoples include some who are ancient — the Greeks and Italians, with a long and comprehensively developed antiquity—an epoch of the slave-owning formation. These old peoples, and likewise the younger, who entered the current of common historical life at a later period—the Germanic, Slav, and Romance peoples—have known a comprehensively developed medieval period, the feudal epoch. Subsequently, they all entered the capitalist epoch and in recent times some of them entered the socialist stage. Consequently, sufficient material for the construction of a theory on historical formations and their succession may be found in Europe.

General positions, deduced from the history of European peoples, have aided Orientalists to understand correctly what they have observed in the historical process unfolding in the Oriental countries. A signal success for Marxism was the discovery in the history of those countries of identical formations which had been established on the data of European history, in particular the slave-owning formation in antiquity and the feudal formation in the Middle Ages. But the history of the East permitted of obtaining a more

_P*_act idea of the succession of historical formations. The history of Japan for example, proves that there are cases when a tribal a liance gives place to statehood built not upon the slave-owning, bui upon the feudal basis, and this despite the existence of fairly well-defined slave-owning relationships. China s history shows that a country may pass from feudalism to socialism, skipping the capitalist stage, despite the existence of long-standing and well-advanced capitalist relations. From a study of even these two instances one mav observe the part played by external factors—things taking place in close proximity — in the historical path of a people, f or the history of every people is always hound up with that of neighbouring peoples This relationship, of course, may vary greatly in character, intensity and scale, but it is always there That is why factors arising out of the community of historical life are active m the history of peoples. This community may be narrow, regional, embracing^ definite group of neighbouring countries, but it may become “ery wide, including entire groups of countries. In our times it has become world-wide, reaching a universal scale. Both in scale and character this community is as historical as everything e se 1 -

Almost in each case such a community at a definite period embraces countries that are far advanced along the path of technical, economic, social and cultural progress, and countries ^ ^band are at different phases of this stage or at different levels of the same phase. There is usually no complete evenness m the historical movement, and it is this unevenness that conditions the different positions of countries that are members of one community. One or several countries may occupy a leading position and whatever takes place in it or in them, influences the ivhole situation within the bounds of the given community. During the 7th century, in Eastern Asia, a region where a whole group of countries shared a common history, the leading position was held by China, which by that time had already gone through a prolonged and comprehensively developed slave-owning stage, passed on to the feudal system and was already far advanced along this path. Korea became a feudal count y at that time, and Vietnam followed suit.

In these circumstances, could Japan, emerging at that time from the patriarchal-tribal stage, transform her tribal alliance into a state on a slave-owning basis? And accomplish this although as we have mentioned above—there existed slave-owning relationships which might lead to the establishment of a slave-owning fsystem if conditions permitted? These conditions had to exist both ternally and externally. But the long-established feudalism of neighbouring countries, particularly China, did away with condi tions favourable to the re-emergence, within the given regional bounds, of a slave-owning system. It was because of this that the slaveowning elements in Japan receded into the background, and elements

which, though they had arisen under tribal conditions, could be transformed into feudal elements, came to the fore. These proved to be the forms that relations assumed between the mass of tribesmen, on one hand, and the elders and chiefs, on the other: relations that were expressed in “tribute” (the products of agriculture, hunting and weaving) paid to their leaders by the rank-and-file, and also labour for the common weal under the guidance and direction of those same elders and chiefs. It is easy to see that the three forms of feudal obligations subsequently established in Japan—the food tax, the hunters and craftsmen s tribute, and labour duties — reproduced old institutions in another shape, on a different basis. The part the external situation played in China’s ability to pass from feudalism to socialism, omitting the capitalist stage (although capitalist relations in an advanced state existed in the country) is familiar to everyone.

Naturally, historical instances parallel to those present in the history of Japan and China, were to be observed in the history of some European peoples, and these prove that the thesis on the succession of social-economic formations is not a law of history, but a scientific postulate. This would not have become so clear without the study of the history of Oriental countries, and, above all, would not have been revealed in its fundamental theoretical significance.

Another illustration of how data for the improvement of the general historical theory may be obtained from material on the history of the East, is seen in the conception of the Oriental Renaissance which has appeared in Soviet science.

So far, the essential point is that scholars discerned signs of a Renaissance epoch in the history of certain Eastern peoples. In some cases, as for example, in Georgia, its features were traced in certain literary phenomena or in pedagogical works; in others, such as China, they were discerned in certain phenomena of philosophy and literature; in still other cases—for instance, Armenia—they were evident in the entire content of culture. It should be pointed out that Soviet scholars visualised the Renaissance in those countries in its scientific-historical plane, on the basis of a definite conception of the general-historical content in this stage of a people’s history. They did not discuss it in the purely figurative context, as many scholars in the West and the East are apt to do, applying the term “Renaissance” freely to every new flourishing of art and literature, ignoring the historical period, that is, ignoring the general-historical—and within these, the socio-economic foundations.

It goes without saying that the impetus to the ideas of the Renaissance in the East was given by the history of the West, the history of European peoples. A particular epoch, which was termed the Renaissance, had been discovered in the history of European peo-

pies. It is discussed both by non-Marxist and Marxist scholars, but in different ways, of course. The former couple Renaissance phenomena principally with the history of culture, particularly art; the latter connect it with general history, and in that sphere, with socio-economic history. But the existence of a Renaissance epoch in the history of Western countries remains undisputed. The chronological boundaries—its beginning in the 14th century and its ending in the 17th—are likewise generally accepted. The task of European history at present, then, is to illumine the Renaissance phenomena in various Western countries, to investigate the content of these phenomena and their history, to determine their peculiarities in various countries, to elucidate their contacts within the bounds of certain countries, and also within the bounds of the entire group of countries which knew a Renaissance epoch.

The situation with regard to the Renaissance in the East is totally different. Since the starting point for asserting the existence of Renaissance phenomena in some non-European country is invariably the resemblance between these phenomena and those regarded in Western countries as indubitably Renaissance, the question always arises: did the Renaissance phenomena in the given Eastern country arise in connection with the Renaissance in the West? Was there, perhaps, a simple geographical expansion of the European Renaissance zone?

The question may be posed in this way only if two conditions are present: the general coincidence of the time factor of the surmised Renaissance in the given Eastern country with the chronology of the Western Renaissance; and the presence of identical elements in the Renaissance culture of the juxtaposed Eastern and Western countries*. This fully applies to the question of the Renaissance in Georgia and Armenia. In the c.ase of Armenia, the “classical”, that is, the Graeco-Roman, heritage is as valid as in Italy; and in point of time, too, the phenomena regarded as Renaissance developed within the general time limit of the Renaissance epoch in Europe. Moreover, the history of Armenia from time immemorial pertains as much to the West as to the East. Consequently, the discovery of a Renaissance epoch in that country may be treated as a necessary extension of the Western Renaissance boundaries.

The position would be different if a Renaissance epoch had been discovered in some Eastern country which did not belong to the sphere of European culture, and if it should occur earlier than in the West; in other words, if any possibility of the transference of this Renaissance from the West was excluded. In a case like this we would have to acknowledge the total independence of Renaissance phenomena in that Eastern country. Such conditions did obtain trom the 10th to the 12th centuries in that region of the Middle East which included in a general cultural complex Iran, North-West India and Western Turkistan during the Middle Ages. In an instance uke this we would have to regard the Renaissance in that region

as a phenomenon emerging totally free of any dependence upon the European Renaissance. The more so in the case of China, if we are to speak of the period extending from the 8th the 12th century in its history. Any connection between Renaissance phenomena in the Chinese culture of those centuries and Renaissance phenomena in Europe and in the region indicated of the Middle East is excluded by the time factor. Renaissance phenomena arose in China many centuries previous to their rise in Europe and considerably earlier, even, than in the Middle East. The question might be posed in reverse: was the emergence of Renaissance phenomena in those countries where they appeared later connected with the appearance of Renaissance phenomena in the regions where they emerged earlier? But, in regard to China and Europe this question is futile, since connections require points of contact—historical and cultural. In the given instance neither the one nor the other existed on a sufficiently effective scale in those historical epochs.

A positive solution of the problem of the existence of Renaissance phenomena in the history of the peoples of Iran, North-West India and Western Turkistan, in the Middle East, and in the history of China, in the East, would be of immense importance not only for an understanding of the history of those countries, but also for a general evaluation of what was known in Europe as the Renaissance epoch. _

If we are not to apply the term to any epoch when science and culture and, in particular, art, literature and philosophy, were especially flourishing, and are to associate this propitious time with a definite stage in the general history of the country, then the Renaissance, as an epoch, becomes a strictly historical phenomenon, occupying its rightful place in the history of the given country. An understanding of this place and the content of the phenomenon itself is achieved through a study of the Renaissance in all the countries where it is observed. Then, the Renaissance epoch will be regarded as a natural and inevitable historical phenomenon. Otherwise, from the standpoint of world history, if this epoch is supposed to have existed in European history alone, it would appear entirely fortuitous. _

Further, we observe something else: the presence of an independent Renaissance and a “reflected” Renaissance. The factor of a common historical life among certain groups of peoples leads to the spread of phenomena that arise in a country with a progressive civilisation to other countries within the said community. So it was in the West, when the Renaissance that started in Italy, spread at different periods to the other countries of Western, Central and even Eastern Europe. In some of these, for instance, in England, the Renaissance began very late, in the 16th century, w^Then it had already ended in Italy. So it was in the East, where the Renaissance which had begun in China, spread to other countries of Eastern Asia—at all events, to Korea and Japan. As may be supposed, the

countries influenced by a Renaissance that arose in a different land, did not reproduce it literally. The Renaissance phenomena were essentially indigenous, conditioned by the general trend of a country’s history and the requirements of the time; but in their general character and social nature they reflected the Renaissance as it took shape in the country of its origin. Therefore, if it is established that the Renaissance was not historically fortuitous, but historically inevitable, then this phenomenon should be regarded as belonging to the history of those peoples who in the past went through their own antiquity and their own Middle Ages, and among whom these social and cultural-historical systems developed to the full. The peoples in question, it appears, were those of China, India, Iran and Western Turkistan, Greece and Rome. This, then, might constitute another contribution made by the history of the East to the general theory of social development.

It is quite impossible at the present time to calculate or even predict all that Oriental studies may contribute to the social sciences. I consider that it will be possible to bring greater exactitude into our conception of the actual order in which socio-economic formations replaced one another. Very likely it will be necessary to devote particular attention to the fact that the replacing of one formation by another is not a single act, but a process in which an essential and, of course, particular part is played by two things: the decisive break-up of the decedent system and the establishment of the new. A considerable time may elapse between these two' points. For example, the transition from the slave-owning formation to feudalism consisted not only in the decline of slave-owning as a system then determining the whole social order, but in the establishment of the dependent status of a once free population. In the establishment of the new formation this second point is no less important than the first. The idea might be prompted, or so it seems to me, by the history of China, where feudalism was consolidated after the Yellow Turban rebellion had been crushed at the end of the 2nd century of our era. This was a powerful movement of peasants and artisans, who, formerly freemen, were now fettered by feudalism.

It is possible that in connection with this, we shall have to investigate the question of the existence of the particular transitional epochs that covered the last stage of one formation and the initial stage of the next. The process of the decline of one and the shaping of another went on during these transitional epochs. One such, in Western history, was known as the Hellenistic period, that is, from the 3rd century B. C., when the Hellenistic kingdoms were formed, to the 7th century A. D., when the Asian and North African regions of the Hellenistic world passed into the hands of new conquer-

ors, the Arabs. In the course of these centuries, in that vast and old region of history, the system of the ancient slave-owning woiid te into decline and the new, medieval feudal system was established The second great transitional period for the West was the epoch of the Renaissance: this led the peoples of Western Europe towards capitalism—beginning not with the countries where elements of capitalist relations appeared earlier than in others, but with those countries where these elements appeared later than in others and developed more effectively and rapidly; that is to say, beginning not in Italy, but in Holland and England, which were followed by France. In the East, the Renaissance arose in China, but the country that first became capitalist was Japan, where the Renaissance had been of the “reflected” type.

These are a few of the possible standpoints that the history of the East can suggest for the general theory of social development. Very likely, others—among them points ol a less general nature will be advanced. For example, it is possible that the centralisation of power in the feudal state will have to be examined in a new light. At the moment, scholars see this centralisation in so-called absolutism, in a particular political system which took form during the concluding phase of the feudal stage, lhis system is observed most vividly in France’s history during the 1/thand 18th centuries. The history of Japan during the period known as Tokugawa— from the 17th to the early 19th century—affords confirmation of the fact that centralisation of power might actually take shape during the last stage of feudalism. Confirmation is also found in the history of China from the 17th to the 19th centuries.

But, at the same time, the history of China shows the appearance of centralised power from the 7th to tlie 8th centuries at a far earlier stage of feudalism, during the period of general and comprehensive consolidation of feudal principles in economic, social and political life, when they reached the peak of their completeness and ' strength. From the 8th to the 10th centuries in the history of feudal Japan we encounter a parallel stage in the same system. And thus it appears that centralisation of political power may be not only a means of maintaining the already unstable and declining order, but also a weapon for the comprehensive establishment of the prevailing social-economic system.

The instances quoted will suffice, I think, to strengthen the validity of a thesis on the appearance of a new task confronting Orientalists: the task of reconstructing some positions in the general theory of social development, and through it some chapters in the science of society as a whole. I have limited myself to history, but corresponding viewpoints might be advanced also in the studies of lit-

erature, philosophy and, in general, in all humanities. One cannot but recognise the emergence of such a task at the present time, and this in itself creates a new justification for the existence of Oriental studies as a special branch of research, with a basis different in character to that upon which hitherto these studies have been built up and developed.

The accomplishment of a historical task such as this should leap to what I would call the surmounting of Europocentrism.

It would be as well to warn the reader that this is not a question of Europocentrism in the sense of a conception of the racial superiority of the “white” European peoples over the “coloured” peoples of other continents. The very notion of any such superiority seems absurd to scientists. Nor am I thinking of Europocentrism as the result of a conviction concerning the cultural superiority of European peoples over those of Asia and Africa. True scientists understand perfectly well that a conviction of this kind could arise only through lack of knowledge and lack of comprehension of even that which is known. The wide discussions recently conducted in various forums concerning the equality of West and East are profoundly alien to genuine scholars, and in particular to Orientalists. The mere suggestion of any inequality of peoples is both strange and incomprehensible, not to say harmful. Speaking of Europocentrism, I have in view our way of thinking: consciously or unconsciously we work on principles founded by European science. When I say “we”, I do not mean solely the scholars of this country or even of Europe and America, that is, the West in general; I include the scholars of the contemporary East, who do likewise.

This attitude is easily understandable and there is nothing wrong with it. It is accounted for by an indisputable fact—the level of world science at the present time. There can be no doubt that contemporary science in all its branches rests upon foundations created by science in European countries during the last centuries, at any rate since the 17th, the age of Descartes and Newton. The advanced nature of European science during these centuries is in itself a reflection of the general historical progress in these countries, which, during the above-mentioned period, led them to the forefront of the social and historical development of mankind. Therefore, it is quite natural that the science of physics at the moment is that same science which assumed form in modern times in Europe; that historical science is that same science which was founded by the historians of European countries, and so on. Since this is so, researches m the West are conducted on the level of European science; every tiue researcher must work on the highest level known in his science. It is understandable that scientists of the contemporary East do likewise, especially as many of them received their training in West-

ern universities. It is inconceivable that science should diverge from this path in the future, inconceivable because present-day science is a universal phenomenon, both as the result of the common activities of scientists of all civilised peoples, and as their common possession. If we can say that a common history exists then common science is, perhaps, the clearest expression of this, m the highest and truly humanist form. In some particular field science may struggle against one thing, and support another: ideals may be different, but the struggle for these ideals is conducted on the basis of generally accepted scientific principles, and if new ones are advanced, they must be on the level attained by the given science as a whole.

But when we come to consider the humanitarian sciences, scientific Europocentrism invariably remains fraught with the danger of the mechanical transference of categories discovered in the history and culture of the Western countries to phenomena observed in the history and culture of the Eastern countries. If, for example a category such as feudalism, stemming from Western history,'is legitimately used in the definition of certain phenomena m Eastern history, in no case can the identical Western forms of feudal rent be sought everywhere in the East, or, when these forms do prove to be identical in type, in the same correlation A category of social consciousness such as rationalism is justifiably found in the history of philosophical thought, not only in the West but also in the East, but this does not necessarily mean that rationalist phi losophy in India or China should take as its source the tormu a cogito ergo. sum. The same is true of any sphere of humanitarian

East of its own particular forms of general categories discovered in the history of the West: the majority of scholars understand this perfectly. The important thing is to become imbued with the idea that the modelling of such general categories should be done on the material of both West and East. The modelling of a general type of slave-owning formation, in the light of which the diversity o r s concrete historical varieties becomes clear, cannot be based on the data of the history of ancient Greece and Rome alone; it should be built up on the comparative study of material typifying the stave owning formation wherever it existed, particularly where it mew all-round development. Such conditions are found to the iulJest extent in the history of five peoples: in Greece, Rome, Iran, India and China—two traditionally Western, three traditionally Eastern peoples. A juxtaposition of the corresponding periods of history of these five countries will bring out the specific constituent parts o the slave-owning formation, that is to say, all that is necessary o justify our regarding the social system of the given period as a slaveowning formation; it will also bring out those elements that >pi fy and individualise it in each country—its specific characteristics in the given, concrete historical circumstances.

When we turn to history and philosophy, we find a category such as rationalism in the history of philosophical thought in both West and East. It finds its clearest definition in the philosophy of the period from the 10th to the 12th centuries in China, in that of the period from the 17th to the 18th centuries in France. As we study it, it becomes clear that rationalism emerged in the remarkable epoch of the renewal of human consciousness, known in Europe as the Renaissance, but could not attain full development until the epoch known in the history of the West as the Enlightenment. This explains the principal historical task of rationalism—to serve as a basis for the readjustment of people’s minds during the transition from medieval authoritarianism to modern criticism. It also explains the different stages of rationalistic thought; the natural, historically effective boundaries of it become clear. Hence, what I have called the modelling, that is, the definition of the essence of rationalism as a philosophical category, becomes possible not as a purely speculative definition, but one built upon data drawn from the history of rationalistic views in different countries wherever these views were formed.

Some more examples might be given to illustrate the idea just expressed regarding the importance of the study of the East in overcoming scientific Europocentrism, which would lead to the improvement of the general foundations of scientific knowledge, but I think, for the time being enough has been said. It is necessary, however, to direct attention to what might prove to be a substantial aid in this work—the history of science in the East.

It must be acknowledged that the great progress made in Europe in modern times has obscured in our minds all that was previously achieved in the world, including Europe. Whenever we refer to the science of the Middle Ages, it is mainly for the purpose of pointing out how very badly things were going then in science and how splendidly they went afterwards. In this respect we are the direct inheritors of Renaissance moods. Our attitude to the science of the Renaissance itself is respectful, because we consider that during that epoch, at any rate in some branches of scientific research, foundations were laid that are still valid in our own day. Usually, in this connection names such as Copernicus, Giordano Rruno, and Galileo come to mind. An echo of the Renaissance attitude to antiquity is heard in our views of the science of that time: it is always referred to in the highest terms. But here, too, this is chiefly because the source of many ideas and conceptions, valid in modern science, dates from Graeco-Roman antiquity. In short, the things of bygone days that bear some resemblance to those of today, are valued, while those that were different then remain unnoticed or are rejected. And, of course, the science of antiquity and the Middle Ages, those two great epochs in the life of mankind, are not re-

garded as phenomena that were independent, essentially organic, complete in themselves and therefore, from that standpoint, most important for our scientific thought.

This is the situation with regard to our own European scientific heritage; and how much less esteem is felt for the science that arose and developed beyond European frontiers, in India, China and the Arab countries! Where it is noticed and even studied, this is mainly in the sphere of the history of culture, education and science in those lands, while its importance for the general theoretical principles of scientific knowledge does not receive, as a rule, the attention it deserves.

Yet attention should be paid to it. Apart from natural science, it is sufficient to glance at all that has been achieved in some countries of the East in the science of man and society. The history of philosophical thought in India and China is fairly well known to us. But usually we study the emergence and development of ideas and conceptions, that is, the philosophical thought itself, and pay too little attention to the way in which these ideas and conceptions were understood and evaluated in these countries. In other words, we neglect to make a proper evaluation of a science which has for its object philosophical thought. We apply in the evaluation of the philosophical ideas of the East terms that were evolved in philosophical science in Europe: for example, materialism, idealism, rationalism, intuitivism, mysticism, criticism, monism, pluralism and all the rest, never pausing to consider seriously if these terms are applicable in general where we want to apply them. Would it not be better to make use of the terms and characterisations evolved by scientific thought in the East? Do not those terms correspond far more closely to the nature and content of the phenomena to which they have been applied? At any rate, the first thing we should do is to submit these terms to the closest scrutiny, striving to understand them by means of themselves, as they took shape in the history of philosophical thought in the country we are studying. It must be fully realised that in India and China, during antiquity . and the Middle Ages, a rich, comprehensively developed philosophical thought existed, and also studies of philosophy with their own terminology, their own working nomenclature. In recent years, some work has been undertaken to elucidate of all this, but there is still no estimation of the significance of the studies of philosophy, as they assumed form in the East, for the general theory of philosophy, that is, for us, too. The modelling of the basic philosophical categories should be accomplished by means of the juxtaposition and estimation of all the existent data, both Western and Eastern.

All that has been said about philosophical science is equally applicable to the science of history. The countries of the East possessed not only a rich historiography but also a historiology—the study of the knowledge of history. Both the facts of history and the

historical process were interpreted from the standpoint of definite conceptions. In China, for example, conceptions were evolved of the general historical process, outlines of historical development were created which retain their significance for Chinese history until now, though sometimes under new, hastily adapted European designations. These conceptions cannot be accepted unreservedly, but it is essential to understand what they mean, why they arose, and in what relation they stand to the actual historical process. Furthermore, it is necessary to ponder on what they contain that should be taken into consideration, along with European data, in the elaborating of general principles of historical science. In short, it is necessary to take into account the theoretical thought of the East in every field of the studies of man and society, always bearing in mind that these were the particular fields elaborated in the East on an exceptional scale and with exceptional detail.

Work in this direction I call the overcoming of Europocentrism in science, and I regard doing away with it as one of the most important tasks in our day in the science of man and society. By such means, this science may become of truly general significance, that is, valid for the study of life and the activity of mankind throughout the whole of its historic existence.

The mission of Orientalists is to supply material for this process of overcoming Europocentrism.To do this, they must possess not only a knowledge of the countries of the East—their history, culture, education and science, but also the ability to juxtapose what they have observed in the East with what they know of the West. Naturally, the Orientalists must have a knowledge of the foundations of science worked out in the West, and- understand their origin, otherwise they will be unable to understand the problems confronting them, and still less to contribute to their solution.

When I speak of Orientalists, I do not mean only scholars of Western countries; I have in mind also the scholars of Eastern countries who study the history and culture of their peoples not only in the interests of science in their own country, but in the interests of international science. In cooperative work such as this the isolated position of the learned Orientalist as it took shape in the history of science in Europe will no longer exist; Oriental studies will acquire new significance. Not only will they be in no danger of extinction, they will acquire new foundation for their existence.

But will it be for long? The question is a perfectly natural one. The answer might be as follows: Oriental studies as a special branch of scientific research will continue to exist until they attain their new purpose, which is to contribute through its data to the elaboration of a general theory, embracing every aspect of the history and culture of mankind, a theory built upon the history of all peoples, regardless of whether they are Eastern or Western, and verified by the historical experience available to us.

This purpose will not only eliminate the danger of scientific Europocentrism; Asia-centrism will also become impossible. In the West, a kind of Asia-centrism might make its appearance among those Orientalists who still consider that all light comes from the Orient, forgetting the great light of the West. As to Asia-centrists in the East, who are imbued with a perfectly natural pride in the thousands of years of their countries’ history, the vast and comprehensive development of culture in them, they cease to see the same progress, on a scale by no means smaller, in other countries, above all in Europe. As there are no intrinsically progressive peoples, so there are none who are intrinsically backward. All the large civilised nations of East and West have known periods in their history when rapid progressive strides were made, and periods when the pace of progress slackened until, perhaps, it ceased altogether, resulting in temporary stagnation. No nation has the right to consider itself unique, superior to all others. Every nation should possess the sense of its own dignity and worth, but megalomania in a nation is as erroneous, dangerous and ridiculous as in an individual.

THE SLAVE-OWNING FORMATION

The existence of the slave-owning formation, i. e., a society whose economic activity was based on slavery and slave ownership, is an indisputable fact of mankind’s history. Historians have opened up to us various aspects of this formation: its economic organisation, social system, political forms, legal rules, systems of world outlook and the pattern and content of the culture associated with it. History also reveals the process of its birth, crystallisation, development and disintegration. By comparing this system with its predecessor and those that succeeded it, we can see the place of the slave-owning formation in mankind’s general development and thereby appreciate its significance from the philosophical and historical angles.

History tells us that it is not slavery as such which is the determining feature of the slave-owning formation. Slavery—the labour of some people for others combined with the personal, so to say, material possession of the toiler by the one who appropriated the product of his labour—is a phenomenon which existed in different historical conditions, not to speak of the different degrees of personal ownership of the slave by his master, different scale and level of the socio-economic importance of slave labour in the general production structure of the given society. The slave-owning formation is characterised not by slavery as such, but by the social system in which slave labour is the mode of production determining the economic basis of life at a given stage in a people’s history. Slavery in ancient Egypt, for example, characterises the very nature of the social system in Egypt of those days; on the other hand, slavery at the plantations of European settlers in North America in the 17th and 18th centuries was not the basis of the socio-economic (capitalist) system established at that time. Slavery was there merely a local specific feature which arose in the peculiar conditions of the capitalist economy in some of the newly developing distant territories, or colonies.

The countries in whose history scientists have found the slavery system are those of the Ancient East—Egypt, Babylonia, Assyria and Persia; the states of Crete and Mycenae; ancient Creece and Italy; ancient India and ancient China. This enumeration shows that the slave-owning formation existed at the time which we have long been calling antiquity; that it is connected with the initial forms of state organisation in the history of society; that it arose among peoples who in those days were in the van of cultural-historical development and that it was a world system which held a dominating position. From this follows the conclusion that the rise of the slaveowning formation was not a historical accident but a historical regularity.

This, however, is the case only within the bounds of the worldwide historical process and not of processes in the history of an individual people or country. To put it differently, mankind as a whole in its general history passed through the stage of the slaveowning formation, and this stage was inevitable for it, but separate parts of mankind did not pass through it, and it was not historically necessary. In Africa and South America today, for example, there are peoples who still live in tribes, i. e., who are passing through some stage of the primitive-communal formation. This, however, does not mean that they must go on to the slave-owning formation, then to feudalism, etc. In present-day conditions of international contacts, when the life of each people is in one or another way intertwined with the life of other peoples, when the historical process as a whole is directed by nations who have advanced to the forefront of social development and civilisation, each people that has fallen behind on this general road and wishes to survive as a historical entity must strive and reach the highest stage of social development and civilisation of its time. This process naturally must differ in degree, intensity and duration.

The rise of the slave-owning formation among some people at the time when other peoples have already had the feudal system was possible only if the given people was fully isolated from the others. It was this isolation that made possible the existence of slavery states in Central and South America at a time when the great civilised peoples of Europe, Asia and North Africa were already in the stage of feudalism. And these slavery states disintegrated the moment they came in contact with Spain, a country which had long been feudal. In Japan the state was fully shaped in the 7th century. It was based on a feudal foundation, although slavery had existed previously and slave labour even held an important place in economic life. In the 7th century China, Avhich was at a high level of feudal development, held a leading place in East Asia. For the Japanese people connected with countries in this part of Asia by a certain community of historical life, it was simply impossible to go over then to slavery. It would have been a real historical anachronism for 9th-century Russia to create a state on a

slavery basis when the leading country in that part of Europe was feudal Byzantium.

In brief, in conditions of international community, backward peoples either lose an independent place in world historical life and even entirely disappear or they try to reach the advanced level attained within this community. In the preceding epochs this community was regional, but in our epoch it is world-wide. The backward states, as it were, are trying to “catch up” with the advanced ones. This is not a mechanical transfer of the social forms of the advanced states into the lagging ones. The creation of a state at once on a feudal, and not on a slave-owning, basis (by historical-sociological standards, acceleration of the social process) was a result either of the more intensive development of feudal elements, which to some extent originated in the preceding history of the given people, or of directing towards feudalism the development, of those elements of the slave-owning system which could be reconstructed along feudal lines. For example, feudal exploitation in Japan, which embarked on the feudal road in the 7th century, rested on the system of “three duties”: land tax, occupation tax and labour duty— the obligation to work a definite number of days annually on public projects. It is not difficult to see in these three duties modified phenomena characteristic of patriarchal-tribal relations, when the tribesmen gave to their elders and chiefs part of the produce of their fields and their occupations (chiefly hunting and weaving), and, when necessary, engaged in work in the common interest of the given tribal group.

Thus, a study of the slave-owning formation should be conducted only on the basis of the history of slavery states. These were the states of antiquity enumerated earlier. For history as such, it is equally important to study the slavery system, for example, in ancient Egypt and in ancient Greece. But to establish the socio-historic content of the slave-owning formation, its place and role in the general historical process and to bring out its philosophical and historical meaning, we must study those ancient slave-owning states where the slavery system developed to the full and where we know the preceding and subsequent stages in the history of the people who created it.

In view of this, we should attach special importance and take as a model, as it were, the history of the slave-owning formation of peoples who underwent a fully developed epoch of the primitive-communal system, went over to a long and eventful epoch of the slavery system and then embarked on the road of feudalism; to put it diffierently, the history of peoples that lived the course of history iully and consecutively without bypassing any stages. These were the Greeks, Italians, Persians, Indians and Chinese. The peoples of the Ancient East created slave-owning states earlier than all others, but these states, except Persia, vanished in antiquity, and the history of the peoples that created them merged with the history

of other peoples. Naturally, what these ancient peoples had created did not vanish without trace. Ancient Hellas and, through it, ancient Rome were the heirs of a still older civilisation. But since that civilisation, together with the states which created it, itself had no continuation, the slave-owning formation is represented with the necessary completeness only in the history of these five peoples. That is why in the historical-philosophical aspect this formation should be studied by data from the history of these peoples.

A further limitation of the material, however, is possible. For a historical modelling of the slave-owning formation it is important to take strikingly expressed and eventful manifestations which arose and developed quite independently of each other. We regard as such cases the slave-owning formation in two areas of the Old World, geographically far removed from each other and not connected by any direct community: the slave-owning formation of China’s peoples and of the peoples of Greece and Italy. The slavery system in each of these areas undoubtedly had its distinctive features. For example, the scale and level of slave exploitation in China was lower than in Greece and Rome, but this difference did not alter the essence of the production relations themselves.

For any judgement of the slave-owning formation as a whole it is necessary to review its history. Such a review reveals first of all that this history is a movement and this movement has its own stages. There are three of them: the first is the period of emergence of the slavery system, the second is the time of its rooting and development and the third is the period when it reached its zenith and at the same time began to disintegrate. The historical characteristic of the first stage can be constructed on material from the history of China in the days of the Chou kingdom, which was a totality of many semi-patriarchal, semi-slave kingdoms of varying size (llth-8th centuries B.C.); the history of Greece—-the ancient Greek states of the “Homer epoch” (8th-6th centuries B.C.) and the history of Italy—the ancient states of the Apennine Peninsula (8th-6th centuries B.C.). A characteristic of the second stage can be based on material from the history of China in the lieh-kuo epoch— the slave-owning kingdoms of the so-called Ch’un-ch’iu—Chan-kuo period (7th-3rd centuries B.C.); Greece—the city-states epoch in the period of their florescence (6th-3rd centuries B.C.) and Italy— the later period of the Roman Republic (5th-2nd centuries B.C.). A characteristic of the third stage can be based on material from the history of two empires: the Han in the East (2nd century B.C.-3rd century A.D.) and the Roman in the West (1st century B.C.-5th century A.D.).

The first stage is the period of the emergence of the slavery system. It is marked by four processes. The first is the gradual but ever more stable conversion of slave labour, which until then existed at the level of domestic slavery, into a means of intensifying agriculture and partly handicraft production. This intensifica-

tion became necessary in view of the bigger requirements—quantitative, owing to the growing size of the family and clan, and qualitative, caused by higher material requirements. The second process is a development of production through the wider application of slave labour, the consequent appearance of the possibility of accumulating and appropriating the goods produced, which served as the basis for the rise of private property. The third process is the appearance of property differentiation within the community: some members, who inherited the performance of public duties, gained the opportunity to appropriate the goods produced, to seize slaves and then the land. The fourth process is the crystallisation within the community of the first classes, slaves and slave-owners, antithetical in their relation to production, and at the same time the emergence of antagonistic relations between the big owners of slaves and the land, on the one hand, and the small producers, on the other.

These processes developed in an atmosphere of contradiction between slave labour and the labour of the free small producers; between the latter and the big slave- and land-owners; between the latter and the tribal nobility of the communal-tribal epoch. The struggle caused by these contradictions and the disintegration of institutions of the tribal system and their conversion into administrative bodies, brought about the birth of the state as the stabiliser and regulator of relations between the antagonistic classes in the interests of the dominating class. The feature which indicates this situation is: in the history of China, the reforms carried out in the Ch’i kingdom (7th century B.C.) in the Lu, Ch’u and Cheng kingdoms (6th century B.C.); in the history of Greece, the reforms of Solon and Cleisthenes (6th century B.C.); in the history of Italy, the reforms of Servius Tullius.

The second stage is the period when there throve the state form named polis (city-state) in Greece, civitas in Italy and kuo in China. These names in general designate one and the same thing: a state with one centre, a city dominating over the entire subjugated territory; moreover, such a city-state was an economic as well as a political entity. It is in this sense that the city-state was the basis of property on tbe scale it assumed at that time: this property included, first, the slaves and, second, the land. The prevailing form of owning slaves was private: the public ownership of slaves (state slaves) appeared at a later stage of the slave-owning formation and even then this form related to the non-productive categories of slaves—auxiliary personnel of state institutions.The form of property in land was dual—communal and private, with the latter being mediated by the former: to own land privately, one had to belong to the civic community, which was the polis in Greece, the civitas in Italy and the kuo in China.

It should be noted, however, that slave labour at that time by far did not have the importance in the economy it gained later. It

is to this stage of antiquity that we can apply Marx’s well-known statement that “peasant agriculture on a small scale, and the carrying on of independent handicrafts” was the economic foundation of “the classical communities at their best”, after the communal form of ownership had disappeared and “before slavery had seized on production in earnest”.¹ This characteristic applies to Greece and Rome of the classical epoch, but it is also applicable to the second stage in the history of the slave-owning formation in China: here the epoch of lieh-kuo, or city-states (7th-3rd centuries B.C.) can rightfully be called classical.

The main factor making for the transition to the third stage— the epoch of large slave-owning empires—was the crisis of the city-state of the classical epoch. The developed productive forces, improved technology of production and its greater quantitative potentialities demanded a different scale of production itself and of its purpose, consumption. The closed spheres of the city-states, isolated politically and to a certain extent economically, did not offer the necessary prospects. An alternative arose: either to preserve isolation and consequently stagnation, and this also spelled degradation, or to abolish isolation, i. e., to emerge beyond the bounds of the city-state and, consequently, to gain the possibility of further development. It is the operation of this economic demand that probably explains the tendency to form broader economic and political communities which arose already at the end of the classical epoch, either in the form of alliances as the Achaean League, the first Athenian and Corinthian leagues in Greece of the 5th-4th centuries B.C., or in the form of federations like the federations of Italian city-states under the hegemony of Rome in 4th-century Italy, or in the form of absorption of some.states by other, stronger states, as was the case in China; there from the mid-4th to the mid-3rd century Han, Ch’i, Ch’in and Ch’u, four big city-states, arose in place of the many relatively small ones.

The end of this process of political and economic integration can be dated as follows. In one part of the Old World it was the formation of the so-called Hellenistic states in the 3rd century B.C., particularly such large ones as Egypt, Syria and Macedonia, which shared hegemony throughout the eastern Mediterranean region, and also the formation in the 3rd century B.C. of the Roman Republic not only as a large Italian state, but, after the Second Punic War, also as the state dominating throughout the Western Mediterranean area. In another part of the Old World, it was the formation at the end of the 3rd century B.C. in China of a single large empire, which at first was ruled for about two decades by emperors of the Ch’in dynasty and then by the Han dynasty. This empire gained hegemony over a huge area from the Baikal in the north

to the Tibetan plateau in the south, from the Pacific in the east to Western Turkistan in the west. In the 1st century B.C. the Roman Empire became just as huge in the other half of the Old World; it united under its power the entire Mediterranean region, both Eastern and Western (the latter with all the adjoining territories of Southern and Western Europe).

It was within the bounds of these large world empires that the slave-owning formation reached its apex. Its essence was the conversion of slave labour into the main factor in all production. Slave labour now played a part it did not have in the epoch of the city-states, in the second stage of this formation. Slave labour was employed on the widest scale in diverse branches of agriculture, thereby undermining the position of free small producers. This process was combined with the growth of large land ownership based on private property in the land. The consolidation of the Ch’in kingdom in China shows what importance the establishment of private property in this sphere had: the consolidation enabled this kingdom at the end of the 3rd century B.C. to unite the entire country under its rule. In the 4th century B.C. land transactions (sale and mortgaging) were allowed in the Ch’in kingdom and restrictions on the size of land holdings were abolished. This was a decisive blow at communal land ownership, which undermined its importance in the Ch’in economy.

The growth of slave-owning latifundia is a phenomenon characteristic of slave-owning empires, both in the East and the West. It was naturally accompanied by an increase in the number of slaves and this, in turn, led to wider use of slave labour in industrial production too. This was prompted by the bigger demand for industrial goods on the part of the numerous and culturally advancing population of cities which were steadily expanding in number and size. Another factor was the greatly increased exchange between areas which had been isolated, but now were united in one state — both in the Europo-Afro-Asian lands in the days of the Hellenistic states and later under the Roman Empire, and in the eastern and central parts of Asia subordinated to the Han Empire. This exchange in the first place assumed the form of trade. Industrial goods were the main object of trade transactions: at that time there was an international demand for them, within their regional bounds. By the way, in a later period of these empires an international demand arose beyond regional bounds: suffice it to recall the Silk Route from China to the Eastern domains of Rome.

Growing trade stimulated handicraft production; it also demanded an improvement of techniques and higher labour productivity.

The sum total of these conditions could arise only in a city and that is why the trading and industrial city became the main seat of civilisation. On the other hand, it w^Tas possible for agriculture to remain at a technical level not far advanced from the old standards: the necessary expansion of output was achieved mainly by

increasing the labour force, the slaves. That is why civilisation of this later stage in the history of the slave-owning formation is above all urban civilisation. Of course, on a world historical scale the development in this stage was uneven. Urban civilisation of antiquity shone in all its splendour in the age-old centre of man’s cultural life—the East Mediterranean countries, which were converted in the age of empires into Rome’s Eastern provinces. Suffice it to recall that Alexandria, Pergamum, Antioch, Athens and Rhodes were located in this area. Nothing resembling these urban centres of education and culture existed either in Italy, in the Western domains of Rome or in the Han Empire, this vast agricultural country. Rut there too, naturally, seats of urban civilisation of their own arose: in Italy, Syracuse in the earlier period and Rome in the later; in China, Ch’ang-an and Loyang. In the later period of these empires, cities which arose on the periphery, especially in the Western Roman provinces of Gaul and Spain, became seats of civilisation.

A number of developments marked the end of the third stage of the slave-owning formation in the two largest areas of world history. The first is the loss by slave labour of its former significance in its, so to say, “machine” form. This labour ceased to ensure the necessary development of the economy and even to maintain it at the level of the greater requirements. To raise productivity not only in the crafts, but also in agriculture, society needed not a living machine but an individual who could organise his work. In view of this, a cultured, intellectually developed stratum appeared among the slave population. It was not inferior to the ordinary workingmen among the free population, especially agricultural. Rut since the position of the slave did not change, the significance and role of slave labour in production came into glaring contradiction with the position of the slave in society. To equalise the slaves in the sphere of their labour activity with the free workingmen became a pressing economic necessity. Such was the first symptom of the socio-economic crisis in the slavery system.

The crisis was also evidenced hy an increase in property differentiation. It is characteristic that the existence of so-called proletarians in the Roman civic community, i. e., in the free population, was noted as early as in the Servius Tullius reforms. The “proletarians” were people who had nothing except their offspring. Thus, even at the beginning of the second stage in the history of the slavery system, pauperisation of certain sections of the free population became evident. As the slave-owning economy developed, the threat of pauperisation hung over a considerable part of the free working population engaged both in the crafts and agriculture, especially in the latter, because it was the small production of the free peasant that was undermined by the large-scale slave-owning estate, and even by the average slave-owning villa, this most wide

spread form of agricultural production. Since the free producers comprised the majority of the population, their economic position brought them into conflict with the socio-economic system as such, inasmuch as it did not ensure them even a minimum subsistence.

The economic crisis thus grew over into a social crisis, and ultimately led to the disintegration of the slavery system. The slaveowning formation—a socio-economic system which at one time created the conditions for the tremendous economic, social and cultural development of mankind—exhausted its possibilities and turned into the main obstacle to further progress. It had to be abolished, and it was abolished.

Some historians claim that the main force which overthrew the slavery system was the slaves. There is even the expression, “revolution of slaves”. That such assertions do not conform to reality is demonstrated by a review of the concrete historical process which led to the replacement of slavery by the feudal system. Outbursts of spontaneous struggle by slaves are, of course, an indisputable fact. At times these outbursts turned into regular rebellions as, for example, the movement of slaves led by Spartacus in Rome. But these rebellions could have a serious effect only if they merged with the struggle of the working population, i.e., with the struggle of the freemen. These free peasants and artisans, i.e., the bulk of the working population, whose economic existence was threatened, were the main force which put an end to the slavery system.

A comparison of what existed under slavery and what arose in the feudal system which replaced it brings out the essence of the tremendous reconstruction of all social life which occurred at that time. The loss by slave labour of its significance as the main economic force led to the disappearance of slaves as a class: ultimately the slaves merged with the mass of free small producers. The economic collapse of the old agricultural latifundia and industrial establishments based on slave labour enhanced the social significance of the labour of small producers, removed the threat of pauperisation which constantly hung over them and enabled them to extend their economic initiative. But the time of free labour had not yet arrived. Economic life of society could still develop only with the ruling class—the feudal lords—regulating the economic activity of the working population, primarily in its own interests. This regulation was exercised by methods of compulsion, and since it was still far from the time when such compulsion could be effected by economic means, it was done by coercion, whose instruments were the force of arms and the force of law. The small producers, the working people, were obligated to produce goods and hand over a part of the output to those who administrated the state; they were made to yield this part of the product by force.

Hence, it is not the movement of slaves that is a sign of collapse of the slave-owning formation and transition from slavery to feudalism, but the movement of the free producers in a slave-own-

ing country, a movement of resistance to the new oppression imposed upon them. Such a movement occurred in China at the junction between the slavery and feudal periods of its history. We refer to the Yellow Turban rebellion, which broke out at the end of the 2nd century A.D. Brutal suppression of this uprising by the Han Empire generals, particularly by one of them, Ts’ao Ts’ao, who was the actual supreme ruler, established new forms of exploitation. This implied new legal and political institutions called upon to support the new, feudal, economic order. In the history of Rome such movements were the uprisings in the 3rd century in different parts of the empire, especially in African provinces and in Gaul. The brutal suppression of these uprisings by the generals of the Roman empire, governed at that time by Diocletian, and this emperor’s subsequent “reforms”, i. e., the legal measures which changed the position of the peasants and were combined with a reconstruction of the political and military organisation, initiated the transition from slavery to feudalism in this area of the Old World.

Such was the historical process which developed in the slaveowning formation, as seen in the history of the two largest areas of the world, fully independent of each other.

What is the historical meaning of this formation? It is very great and very complicated.

The slave-owning formation reveals above all the process of the birth of a class society. The subsequent history of mankind up to recent decades was the history of a class society; even in our time this society, though it is no longer the only form of socio-economic organisation, continues to exist. This shows how great is the importance of the epoch during which class society originated.

The slave-owning formation demonstrates that the rise of classes is closely connected with the system of production and is associated with definite relations of production. The first classes, slaves and slave-owners, arose on the basis of exploitation, i. e., the use of the labour of some people by other people. In the slave-owning formation this use involved treatment of the workingman as a living tool. That is why the antagonistic nature of relations between the classes of the exploiters and the exploited in the slave-owning formation was displayed to the maximum, as it has never been displayed subsequently. In view of this, it is exceedingly important to know this initial point of all subsequent development.

The slave-owning formation also shows us how various social groups arose among the population. This is very distinctly reflected in the Chinese treatise Kuan-tzii, the material of which dates back to the 5th-4th centuries B.C.—to the time when the second stage of the slave-owning formation in China developed to the full. This treatise names four kinds of people: warriors and state officials, peasants, artisans and merchants. Since that time we meet such groups in all subsequent history of mankind.Their place in economic life, their relation to production and their position in the so-

cial system naturally changed. Some of these social groups turned intn Hasses All the more important is it to know the origin of the class structure in general and the social history of these groups.

The slave-owning formation reveals the process of shaping the _state as"a political organisation, which arose on the basis of the emerging class structure of society and its concomitant—property differentiation and social inequality. Politically, this inequality was expressed in the division of society into rulers and ruled, lo rule, a political organisation—the state—was needed.

The slave-owning formation also elaborated the mam forms of state power. The Greek historian Polybius (210-122 B.C.) gave a striking and precise definition of these forms. On the basis of the historical experience of his people, Polybius established that three forms of rule exist: a kingdom, when one man is ruler; aristocracy, when a few rule; democracy, when many rule. But he was quick to point to the possibility of each of these three forms degenerating and arriving at self-negation. At first royal power was beneficial for the people, inasmuch as the king, the only one vested with power, was chosen by the people as the best and wisest of all. bubse-quenty it turned into monarchy, i. e., into a purely personal ru e which was fraught with arbitrary action and usually turned into a social evil. In that case the people, who at one time empowered one man to rule over all, overthrew the tyrant and, fearing to leave power in the hands of one man, delegated it to a few men, the best in their midst. This was the origin of aristocracy, the rule ol tiie best, the chosen. But aristocracy, too, subsequently turned into an oligarchy, into the rule of a handful who pursue their own ends, in this case the people overthrew them too and, fearing from past experience to leave power in the hands of a few, delegated it to many, to the entire people in principle. Polybius called this form of rule democracy. But here too there was danger: power m the hands of all led to ochlocracy, the rule of the mob, which identified its narrow interests with the interests of society and the state as a whole.

What came next? Do the people again return to rule by a king, and so on and so forth? Usually this place in Polybius’ History is treated as the concept of a cycle. It would be more correct, however, to consider that Polybius, speaking of monarchy, aristocracy and democracy, as three specific forms of rule, held that they had been tested by history which demonstrated that each one was fraught with the danger of turning from a sensible into a harmful rule. Therefore society needs neither monarchy nor aristocracy nor democracy, but a form of rule that would combine the good features which each of these three forms had at the outset. Polybius saw such a synthesis in the organisation of state administration elaborated in the Roman Republic. He saw here one-man rule, personified by the consuls; the rule of the few, personified by the Senate; and the rule of the people, represented by the comitias, assemblies ol people.

thinker the historical cycle is displayed not in the forms of rule, but in its principles. It is the principles that recur.

The well-established categories of the “national” and “universally human” are also part of the universally significant heritage, dating from the epoch of the slave-owning formation. These concepts are rooted in ideas that originated in antiquity. The stage of the slave-owning formation associated with the city-state created the idea of the local human community on the scale of the given tribal group; during the period of alliances and federations the scale of this local community was widened, inasmuch as it represented a sum total of tribal groups. With the formation of empires the place of the tribal community was taken by an inter-ethnic community, which was even then perceived as a universal human community. It was then that the idea of mankind as a single great entity appeared. This idea was manifested in the concept of universe which received a fully real meaning. For the Greeks it was ofxovpsvv], for the Romans, orbis terrarum, and for the Chinese it was T'ien-hsia.

The idea of mankind which arose in this ancient epoch of human history is one of the most essential contributions by the people of that period to the history of the human race. Similarly essential was the idea of humanism, which also crystallised at that time. Humanism is above all the concept of man as the supreme value, as the bearer of all the basic principles of social life and as the maker of culture. This idea was most vividly expressed in the Greek myth about Prometheus, the titan who stole from Zeus the heavenly fire, the symbol of omnipotence.

This was the basis for settling the question of man’s role in the general process of being and, consequently, of his nature, a question of primary importance for man’s activity. The problem of man’s nature was solved in the ethical plane. Man was recognised to be the bearer of the highest ethical principle—good. In China Meng-tse (Mencius) understood this as a quality of human nature itself; he held that good is an innate quality of man. In Rome Cicero, summing up the Hellenistic ideas, asserted that moral law is dictated by human nature itself. In China, Hsiin-tzu thought that human nature as such was evil, but he also assumed that by his actions man could overcome this innate evil and arrive at good.

Historical reality confronted man with a no less difficult and acute question. The social system evolved during the slave-owning stage laid bare the inequality of people, even among the freemen. In view of this, the idea of inequality was carried over to human nature too. Inasmuch as human nature was treated in the ethical plane, inequality promoted the division of people into morally full-fledged and morally inferior. Confucius called the former chun-tzu (“masters”) and the latter hsiao-jen (“little people”). Cicero regarded the former as the chosen minority guided in its actions by lofty moral principles, and the latter as a mass in the grip of instincts.

Polybius thought that these three reciprocally controlled organs of administration were the new form of power which took the place of the old. Thereby he not only formulated the three forms of rule which became so customary for subsequent generations, not only revealed their positive and negative aspects, but also proclaimed the idea of their evolution, the transition from some, which did not justify themselves, to others.

A younger contemporary of Polybius, the Chinese historian Ssii-ma Ch’ien (145-86 B.C.), approached the problem of administration from an entirely different angle. He examined not the forms of administration but its principles. Like Polybius, he based himself on the historical experience of his people. The principle of “straightforwardness”, spiritual directness and simplicity, he claimed, was the basis oi administration in the Hsia kingdom which, in his opinion, was China’s first state. What happened? It turned out that this principle reduced the “little people”, i. e., the bulk of the population, to “savagery”, to a primitive condition. But the life of the people, the life of society demanded definite social rules and standards.

In view of this, the Yin kingdom, which replaced Hsia, accepted “reverence” as the principle of administration, an instinct inherent in human nature and determining man’s attitude first of all to his parents, and then to all kinds of “supreme forces”, to deities. This principle was to underlie social rules of general importance, binding on all. But what happened? For the “little people”, “reverence” turned into a “cult”. A cult, as shown by all history, is associated with ideas of deities, and deities are both “gods” and “demons”. It is characteristic that, to designate the concept of “cult”, Ssu-ma Ch’ien chose a hieroglyph which denotes “demon”, that is, an adverse deity. This signified that a cult of power is not merely a “superstition”, but opens the way to evil.

“Culture”, all kinds of rules of social life created by man, became the principle of administration in the Chou kingdom which replaced the Yin kingdom. In this way it was expected to eliminate the very possibility of a cult of power. What happened? “Culture”, the sum total of forms and rules of social life created by society, turned into something imposed on man from the outside, suppressing the natural traits and manifestations of his character. At the same time these rules began to hamper political power. The ruler of the Ch in Empire, which replaced the Chou kingdom, began to fight “culture” which impeded his autocratic regime: he employed a very simple means—execution of the principal makers of culture, the “learned men”, or the intellectuals. This policy led to the fall of the Ch’in emperor and his dynasty. Power in the empire passed to the Han dynasty, which again based its administration on the principle of “straightforwardness”. Thus, it is not Polybius, but Ssu-ma Ch’ien who is the father of the cycle theory in history. We should bear in mind, however, that in the concept of the Chinese

But the human mind could not stop at this point. People dwelling in the land “amidst the four seas”, that is, all mankind, were called brothers by Confucius. He defined the “human principle”, (jen) in each man as “love for people”.

That was the pinnacle of humanism reached by society in the slave-owning world during its heyday. When this society entered the phase of crisis, the humanist idea rose to a new level. It advanced because at the last stage of the slave-owning formation social inequality became especially acute in its most glaring form, in the form of division of people into full-fledged, human in the full sense of the word, and into inferior, into chattel which the slaves were.

It was this maximally sharp counterposing of some people to others that gave rise to the next stage of humanism—moreover, in a similarly sharp form, leaving no room for compromise; it was the idea of the full equivalence of all people as individuals, both slaves and freemen. The urgency of the thesis about the human equivalence of all, the desire to make it a categoric imperative, was dictated by the fact that this thesis was crystallised in categories of religious consciousness, which in those days possessed the force of an imperative. This was the case in two of the biggest religious systems which arose in the times of slavery: in Buddhism and Christianity.

The idea of the human equivalence of all people without any distinction—freemen or slaves—was incorporated above all in the concept of their equality by nature. In Christianity this concept was formulated in the proposition about the common origin of all people from God, and in Buddhism, in the idea of the moulding of man, of every human being, in the common stream of being.

The idea of the equivalence of people was also expressed in the aspect of human relations, i. e., in the socio-ethical plane. The proposition of the love for people was created in this plane and it was proclaimed with different degrees of intensity by Buddhism, Christianity and Confucianism.

Such was the greatest spiritual attainment of mankind in the epoch of slavery. It provided the ideological foundation for the rise of the slave-owning system and its ultimate fall.

The humanist concept of antiquity was of great importance for the entire subsequent activity of mankind, particularly after the idea of the human equivalence of all people engendered the idea of social equivalence of people, of their social equality. This latter idea became the spiritual corner-stone of all movements aimed at combating the various kinds, forms and degrees of exploitation of man by man. This struggle did not produce the results the people wanted. The idea of the human equality of all was later on cunningly transferred by the ruling classes, whose privileged position it threatened, from the practical, mundane sphere into the ideal, spiritual sphere. But even this did not rob it of its significance and power.

The basic foundations for the scientific cognition of both nature and human life were laid during the epoch of the slave-owning formation. The opposite nature of the two social classes in the epoch of slavery, which was of a maximally sharp character, combined with observations of the simplest phenomena in nature, led to the idea of opposites. In the I-ching, one of the oldest books of China, these opposites were designated as yang and yin. At first ^ these meant the lighted and unlighted side of a mountain, then light and darkness, and subsequently any pair of opposites: heat and cold, heaven and earth, male and female, and so on. An unbroken line which serves as a divide became the symbol of opposites among the Chinese. Pythagoras, the Greek philosopher and mathematician, regarded as opposites light and darkness, rest and motion, right and left, male and female, etc. The odd and even numbers became symbols of opposites for him.

" The idea of opposites serves as a basis for the idea that everything is interconnected—the starting point of any dialectics. In China the idea of this connection was expressed in the Eight Trigrams of the I-ching, which establish the main elements of nature, the elements of being: heaven, lowland, fire, thunder, wind, water, mountain, earth. The Eight Trigrams served as the basis for 64 Hexagrams, showing the combinations of the primary elements and their transmutation, i. e., giving a picture of the universal connection of nature’s phenomena. In Greek philosophy this idea was formulated by Heraclitus, who said that all things pass one into another: day into night, cold into heat, winter into summer, hunger into satiety. The same idea of universal connection was extended to the human world, to society. According to the I-ching philosophy, the world consists of “three forces”: heaven, earth and man. Helienic wisdom, as voiced by Cicero of Rome, proclaimed that the world is a common state of the gods and men. Thus, the concept which became the basis of all subsequent scientific knowledge was created at this ancient stage of human society.

Such was the first step towards cognising the external world. The second step was the idea that certain primary elements of nature exist. This step in a very distinct form was made by three ancient peoples: the Greeks, Indians and Chinese.

The four primary elements of Empedocles are well known. These were water, fire, earth and air. We find the same four primary elements in the natural philosophy of the Charvakas in India. In the Vedanta philosophy there are five primary elements: water, fire, earth, air and ether. There are also five of them in the Chinese Shu ching\ water, fire, wood, metal and earth.

The idea of the primary elements of material nature was combined with the idea of their cycle. According to Heraclitus, fire on extinguishing turns into water and through it into earth so that it might, igniting again, turn into earth and through it into water and, through water, again into its primary condition. The process

of “extinguishing” and “igniting” serves here as the motive force. The Indian Charvakas asserted that everything in the world was formed from various combinations of the four primary elements; moreover, death, which equally befalls people, animals and plants, reduces them to primary elements. The Chinese express the cycle in categories of “overpowering”. Each of the five primary elements passes into another as follows: water overpowers fire; fire, wood; wood, metal; metal, the earth; the earth, water, and so on. The concept of “overpowering” turns the transition of one prime element into another into a process that is not purely mechanical, but hears a definite content.

The third step in cognising the world was the idea of the tiniest particle of matter. Leucippus and Democritus called this particle “atom” and the Indians, “anu”.

We should not focus attention on the question, in what way man of that epoch conceived the opposites, the primary elements of material nature, the tiniest particles of matter and their transmutation? What is important is the idea, the concept that these categories exist. Knowing the subsequent history of scientific knowledge we will have no difficulty in realising that the greatest foundations of such knowledge were laid by man in the epoch of the slave-owning formation.

Another step of primary importance on the road of human knowledge was also made: the human mind turned not only to the content of knowledge, but also to the very process of knowledge. This is how logic as the doctrine of knowledge was created. It was developed by the Indians, Chinese and Greeks. The beginning was laid in India by Akshapada (2nd century A.D.), in China by Mo Ti (5th century B.C.) and in Greece by Aristotle (4th century B.C.).

Thus, antiquity, the epoch of the slave-owning formation, laid the foundations for the entire subsequent history of mankind, which it divided into classes, and determined the path mankind followed. It brought out with exceptional clarity and in bold relief the opposites, above all in the social sphere. It transpired that one of the opposites played a positive part, promoting mankind’s progress and social life, while the other hindered, impeded it. One was light, the other darkness; to put it differently, good and evil. These opposites were in a state of incessant struggle. But the way in which the conscience of the people of antiquity reacted to slavery—this darkest and most evil creation of antiquity, demonstrated that as early as then man was endowed with a force which fought this darkness. Mankind’s subsequent record has confirmed that this force has been preserved and acted at all stages of history.

The term “Middle Ages” first appeared in Europe in the 15th century. It was introduced hy scientists to designate a historical stage in the life of the European peoples between the “ancient world”, which came to an end in the 5th century with the fall of the Western Roman Empire, and the “new times”, as the 15th-century humanists regarded their epoch. This term in the same meaning was also used by philologists and historians in the 15th-l7th;centuries. They were followed by all subsequent historians in Europe, who finally accepted this term as part of the triad — Antiquity-Middle Ages-New Times. This is how a special branch, medieval history, appeared in historical science.

The origin of the concept and term “Middle Ages” is responsible for medieval history becoming the history of European countries and peoples. It dealt with the non-European peoples only to the extent to which they came in contact with the peoples of Europe. From medieval history we learn very little about the history of the peoples of India or the Chinese people in the period that corresponds to the Middle Ages in Europe; we learn absolutely nothing about the history of Japan. The Huns are mentioned only in connection with their invasion into the very heart of Europe; the history of Persia is linked with the history of Byzantium; the Arabs become dramatis personae in medieval history only after their conquests made the European peoples tangibly aware of their existence. The Mongols appear in history together with the detachments of Su-budai, who reached Hungary. No sooner had he withdrawn from there and the domination of the Golden Horde in Eastern Europe collapsed than the Mongols vanished from the pages of medieval history; the Turks entered it only in connection with the Crusades and the later period because they defeated Byzantium and themselves came to European soil. True, some general Histories of the Middle Ages, at least the best of them, give a brief outline of the preceding history of these non-European peoples, but this is usually limited to relevant historical information; no independent place

in the general history of the Middle Ages is held either by the history of the Huns or the Persians, Arabs, Mongols and Turks, not to speak of the peoples of India, China, Korea, Japan, Indo-China and Indonesia. All these peoples were regarded as belonging to another world, situated beyond the lands inhabited by the European peoples. This other world, according to an old tradition dating back to the days of European antiquity, was designated by a general term, “the East”.

This concept of the East led to the relegation of the history of the Asian and North African peoples to a special branch named “history of the East”. It includes the history of these peoples from the moment it becomes possible to reconstruct it. Consequently, it also includes the ancient history of these peoples, as much as we know of it.

A deeper study of the East resulted in the appearance, alongside the general “history of the East”, of separate parts and even separate branches, like the history of the Ancient East, the history of the Eastern Middle Ages and even the history of the New East. This, however, did not influence the general approach: historians of the European Middle Ages continue to speak simply of the history of the Middle Ages, without bothering to specify that they mean only the Middle Ages in Europe.

Perhaps, these historians are right? After all, the very concept “Middle Ages” historically arose in Europe; it was accepted and elaborated by European historical science as applied to the history of the European peoples. Historians of the East may sooner be asked whether they have a right to apply this term, which emerged in the historical science of the European peoples, to some stage in the history of the Eastern peoples. In our opinion, they have this right and, moreover, on the very same grounds on which the term is used by European scholars.

Let us draw attention to a well-known historical fact: the concept “Middle Ages” when it was introduced by the humanists designated not only a definite period, between the “ancient world” and the “new times”; this term also included a feature sharply differentiating the “Middle Ages” from “antiquity”. We know how this distinction was understood at the time: the West European humanists in the 15th-16th centuries regarded the Middle Ages as the period of deviation from culture, education and enlightenment, from the principles of social life characteristic of the ancient world— naturally, as the humanists understood them. They considered it a period in which the European peoples, as it were, had been plunged into darkness, from which they were extricated by “the Renaissance”, i. e., a return to what they thought was antiquity. It is this counterposing of the Middle Ages to the ancient world, on the one hand, and to the new times, on the other, as epochs differing in their historical content, that comprised the major element of the concept of “Middle Ages” for the humanists.

The East is vast and the development of historical science in different countries proceeded in intricate and diverse ways. In Europe we can speak of the Middle Ages, having in view all of Europe, in any case, most important and culturally advanced countries of those days. It is much more difficult to speak in such general terms about the East, but still it is possible to do so in a number of cases. Let us turn to the Eastern country most distant from the Western world—to China of the T’ang Empire, this largest and most powerful state from the 7th to the 9th centuries not only in the East, but, perhaps, throughout the world.

In the second half of the 8th century a trend arose in the T’ang Empire, which became the most powerful current of social thought in subsequent years up to the Mongol invasion, i. e., up to the 13th century. This movement was represented by such noted cultural figures as Han Yu, Liu Tsung-yiian, Ouyang Hsiu and Su Tung-p’o, and it brought into being its own philosophy and aesthetics, its own literature and art, science and publicist works, which radically differed from earlier developments in these spheres. The motto of this movement was a return to “ancient education” (ku-wen).

A direct answer to this question is given by the man who first advocated the return to ku-wen. That was Han Yu (768-824), a poet, publicist and philosopher. In one of his works, the treatise Advance in Learning (Chinhsueh chieh), he enumerates the writings which he considered to be ku-wen. These are major works of Chinese philosophers, historians and publicists, and poetry, from the earliest time to the end of the Han Empire, i. e., up to the 3rd century A.D.

This enumeration shows that Han Yii had a very definite idea of antiquity—above all, chronologically definite. Since he put up “ancient education” (ku-wen) in contrast to “contemporary education” (shih-wen), it is clear that the concept of new times existed for him. That was, naturally, the time closest to him, i. e., the second half of the 8th century and the first quarter of the 9th century. In the broader sense, for his contemporaries the new times were the T’ang Empire period, after the establishment of the T’ang dynasty in the early 7th century.

The existence of these two historical and chronological categories t>y itself shows that, alongside antiquity and new times, Han Yii and other like-minded people in his day and in the subsequent period definitely visualised an intermediate period between antiquity and the new times. This period was not named the “Middle Ages”, but the existence of a corresponding idea of this period is beyond doubt.

This concept was above all chronological and related to the period between the 3rd and 7th centuries. But the chronological con-

tent of the concept of the “Middle Ages” was by no means the main thing for the Chinese Renaissance thinkers: both Han Yu and others who held the same views regarded this intermediate period between antiquity and their time to be of a lower order as compared with antiquity. Had they thought otherwise, they would not have urged a return to ku-wen: one does not strive for something inferior. This applied to literature, philosophy and science. The negative attitude of the T’ang Renaissance thinkers to the preceding period was very strikingly manifested in the case of religion.

It will be recalled that the “Middle Ages” as understood by Han Yu, i. e., the period from the 3rd to the 6th century, was marked by the spread and consolidation in China of a new religion, Buddhism. It began to penetrate China from the Kushana kingdom in Western Turkistan as early as the 1st century A. D. In the T’ang Empire the influence of this religion, which enjoyed the patronage of the nobility and the emperors themselves, was not only preserved but even enhanced. The strength of this influence in the days of Han Yii is indicated by the moving of the “bone of Buddha” to China. Part of it was brought to Ch ’ang-an, the capital of the empire, and placed with great pomp in the palace temple.

Han Yii reacted to this ceremony by his famous pamphlet On the Bone of Buddha. He protested against encouragement of what he regarded as wild superstitions. “After all, Buddha”, Han Yii wrote, “died long ago. This is merely a fragment of decayed bone! It is merely filth and dirt. Why should it be placed in the palace?”

Han Yii held a sharply negative attitude to Buddhism and in general to the forms of religion current in China of his time. He was a Confucianist; the Lun-yii, the book expounding Confucius’teaching, states that the “teacher spoke neither of gods nor demons”. To a direct question how he regarded them Confucius had replied, “I revere the gods and demons, but keep away from them as far as possible.” Han Yii quoted these words in his pamphlet.

This, naturally, is not sufficient grounds for speaking of Han Yii as an atheist, but his contempt for religion as a collection of various superstitions is beyond doubt. Most of the other leaders of the ku-wen movement treated religion in the same way. We should bear in mind that the two widespread religions of China, Buddhism and Taoism, were in their prime at that time.

What in medieval China was called “Confucianism” was actually secular education. That was a doctrine of society and the state, of man and morals; it was a doctrine of nature and its cognition. In the T’ang Empire the educational system, which was in the hands of the Confucianists, was of a completely secular nature. All the leaders of the ku-wen movement were representatives of such secular education.

Han Yii also formulated the basic principle of this movement. He designated it with the word fen (“human") or, more fully, fen tao (“the human way”). One is tempted to translate this term by the

word “humanism”. And this is permissible not only etymologically, but also essentially: advocates of the T’ang Renaissance persistently put forward the proposition of man’s supreme value as the foun-da tion of social life, education and culture. Han Yu wrote a special treatise on the subject, which he named Yuan Jen {On Man).

This enables us to state that in the East, too, the concept of the “Middle Ages” arose in a definite historical period and was determined by the course of historical development; moreover, it had not only a chronological hut also a cultural-historical content. At least that was the case in the history of the Chinese people.

Let us turn to the Muslim world and first of all to the Muslim world of Western Turkistan between the 9th and 11th centuries. We know that this period witnessed great progress in science, philosophy and education. We also know that al-Farabi Ibn Sina (Avicenna), al-Khwarizmi, al-Biruni and other great men of the time were shaping the new trends in science and philosophy, having assimilated the legacy of the ancient world. They drew from alf the sources of the great ancient civilisations with which their peoples came into contact in their historical destinies. The major source was European antiquity, particularly the Hellenistic period; they also drew from the ancient Indian sources. Future studies will probably reveal that they are indebted for some things to ancient China too—if not directly, then through the heritage of the older peoples in Western Turkistan that have maintained close relations with ancient China. Even in hoary antiquity, Western Turkistan was a crossroad to major seats of civilisation and itself one of the centres of this civilisation. That is why advanced scientists and philosophers of the Western Asian world—genuine humanists in their outlook—in creating a new enlightenment and education in the 9th-llth centuries, just like their colleagues in China before them and their colleagues in Europe after them, bypassed some historical period which lay between their time and the ancient world, in other words, their “Middle Ages”.

This brief excursion into the past enables us to say that the Eastern historians have a right to use the term “Middle Ages” on the same grounds on which it was introduced by the European humanists in the 15th-17th centuries. At the same time these facts, it seems to us, allow us to raise the question of whether we should not regard the stage in the history of the European peoples known as the Renaissance, as a manifestation of a general law of the historical process, which necessarily arrives at a definite moment in the development of great civilisations. This idea is also suggested by the fact that the movement for turning to “ancient education”, as it was manifested both in the history of the Chinese people and in Europe, arose in an atmosphere of a rapidly developing urban culture, with the existence of a numerous stratum of writers, publicists, histori-

ans, philosophers and public leaders, intimately connected with this urban culture and the life of the influential urban sections; an important factor was the development of book printing.

Naturally, all these phenomena must under no circumstances be completely identified. If we agree to name them “Renaissance”, then the “T’ang Renaissance” and “Western Asian Renaissance” have their profoundly specific features, setting them apart from each other, and each of them from the “European Renaissance”. Rut are we justified in seeing only these differences without paying attention to similarities, the more so since these similarities are rooted in the historical essence of these phenomena?

Let us now compare the chronology of the Middle Ages in these centres of world civilisation.

For the Chinese humanists in the T’ang Empire the Middle Ages began after the disintegration of the ancient Han Empire, that is in the 3rd century; for the great thinkers and scientists of Western Turkistan and Iran, after the fall of ancient Parthia, also in the 3rd century; for the European peoples, after the fall of the Western Roman Empire, in the 5th century. For the T’ang humanists the Middle Ages ended in the “return to antiquity”—the epoch of T’ang Renaissance. It clearly emerged, as stated earlier, in the 8th century, but was prepared in the preceding century. For the humanists of Western Asia the end of the Middle Ages was marked by the epoch of the Ghaznevid Renaissance, which began in the 9th century and reached it apex in the 10th and 11th centuries. For the European world, the Middle Ages ended in the “epoch of European Renaissance”, which started in Italy in the 14th century and subsequently brought about the great progress of civilisation throughout Europe.

As soon as we define the beginning of the Middle Ages in these three centres of world history, we can clearly perceive, from the present level of historical knowledge, the true historical content of these Middle Ages. The Middle Ages is the period when feudalism originated, struck root and developed.

Opinions differ as to the end of antiquity in China. Present-day Chinese historians regard antiquity as the epoch of slave-owning society and are inclined to date its fall and, consequently, the beginning of the feudal period to distant times, in any case not before the 4th or 3rd century B. C. True enough, elements of feudalism began to develop in China earlier than among other peoples. Though this is indisputable, we should bear in mind that the disintegration of the slavery system and crystallisation of the feudal order usually took a long time and that elements of the disintegrating slavery system and the gradually emerging feudal system could exist side by side for centuries. That is why, from the viewpoint of the history of slave-owning society, these centuries could be regarded as the last, waning phase of the slavery period in the history of the given people, and, if approached differently, from the standpoint of the history of feudal society, could be considered the initial phase of

the feudal period. The last centuries of the Roman Empire could likewise be differently assessed. The same applies to the times of the Han Empire, that is, the last two centuries B.C. and the first two centuries A.D. The attitude of the T’ang humanists, who saw the divide between antiquity and Middle Ages at the end of the Han period, gives us grounds for considering this epoch as the waning phase of the slavery period in the history of China, notwithstanding the existence of rather developed elements of feudalism in the Han Empire. If that is the case, then both for China and for Rome—somewhat earlier for the former and somewhat later for the latter — the Middle Ages in the indicated chronological bounds were equally the time of the final rooting and development of feudalism.

In the history of Iran the period of the Parthian kingdom, a state with a slave-owning system, was the epoch of antiquity. After the fall of Arsacid Parthia and the formation in its place of the Sas-sanid Empire, feudal relations gradually began to strike root in this state. The Kushana kingdom in Western Turkistan and NorthWest India was a slave-owning state. That was antiquity for the peoples in this part of the Old World. After the fall of the Kushana kingdom in the 5th century, feudal relations gradually began to take shape in this area, too.

Both in the East and the West the Middle Ages thus have one and the same historical content: it is the time of the rooting and development of feudalism.

Marxist historical science demonstrates that the transition from the slavery formation to feudalism at that time was of profoundly progressive significance. This leads us to regard the Middle Ages differently than the humanists. Their attitude, as we know, was negative. The humanists saw the Middle Ages as a period of darkness and ignorance, from which, it seemed to them, mankind could escape only by turning to radiant antiquity. We, however, cannot but see in the advent of the Middle Ages a step forward, and not back. The Parthenon, the Ellora and Ajanta temples are great creations of the human genius, but the Milan Cathedral, Alhambra and the Horyuji Temple in Japan are no less great.

What reasons, then, do we have for building the history of the Middle Ages on the scale discussed earlier, i. e., on a scale which would include not only the history of the European peoples, but also the history of the Asian and North African peoples, of the entire civilised world known at that time? In other words, what reasons do we have for building the history of the Middle Ages on a world historical scale?

We have the most important thing: a single common background. This background is the history of the establishment of feudalism as

a formation dominating on the scale of world history. Chronologically, the 3rd century is the point of departure.

At that time the ancient world was represented on a world historical plane by five states if we count only the “great powers” of those days. These were: the Han Empire in Eastern Asia, the Gupta Empire in India, the Kushana kingdom in Western Turkistan, the Parthian kingdom in Mesopotamia and Iran, and the Roman Empire in Western Asia, North Africa and Western Europe. The disintegration of the Han Empire began at the end of the 2nd century; Parthia fell at the beginning of the 3rd century. Two of the biggest powers of the ancient world in the East thus collapsed at about the some period. The other powers survived longer: they disintegrated only in the 5th century.

It is well known, however, that when historians speak of the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century, they refer to a fact which did not have any epochal significance: the dethroning of Romulus Augustul, the last Roman emperor, by Odoacer. Actually, the empire ceased to exist earlier. In the 4th century it disintegrated into two parts, the eastern and the western, and already then the “barbarian” conquerors began to dominate the western part. Definite signs of disintegration of the Roman Empire appeared even before, in the 3rd century; its weakening was also manifested in that it survived the onslaught of the “barbarian” peoples at that time only with great difficulty.

Thus, it should be recognised that in the 3rd century the collapse of the ancient slave-owning world was evident not in two but in three of its centres: China, Iran and the Roman Empire. Of course, the degree and scale of this disintegration and, consequently, the degree and scale of the establishment of feudal relations in each of these three countries differed greatly. This process was strongest in China and weakest in Iran. Therefore, in the history of individual peoples and countries and even in regional history, the chronology of the transition to feudalism will be different in each case. But xf we take this process as a whole, on the scale of world history, these local distinctions in the degree of the rooting of feudalism cannot alter considerably the general chronology.

The transition to feudalism in the other two centres of world civilisation began much later. The Kushana kingdom fell at the end of the 5th century; the Gupta Empire was also defeated at the end ol the 5th century and completely vanished early in the 6th century.

It would be wrong, however, to expect the historical process of feudalism s establishment to take place throughout the Old World in the same chronological bounds. We should sooner be surprised at the proximity, in point of time, of the development of this process in three major states of the ancient world: in Eastern Asia, the Middle East and Western Europe. The epochal significance of the developments in these countries can be judged by the fact that signs of collapse were already in evidence in the 4th century both in

the Kushana kingdom, i.e., the country which on one side bordered on Parthia, already defeated, and, on the other, on the disintegrated Han Empire; almost simultaneously with the fall of the Kushana kingdom in the 5th century came the fall ot the neighbouring Gupta Empire. Therefore, if we take the world historical scale, it is the 3rd century that should be regarded as the beginning of the process which led to the establishment of feudalism as the prevailing socioeconomic system.

Many historical facts, which accompanied the establishment of feudalism and were common both to the East and the West, can serve as the foundation for tracing a history of the Middle Ages on a truly world-wide scale. One of these facts is the emergence of a number of new, “young” peoples on the world historical scene during this period, between the 3rd and 5th centuries. The population of the two powerful empires of the ancient world, the Han and the Roman, with their ancient civilisation, which for a long time suffered from the raids of these peoples, designated them with words of an absolutely identical meaning: the Chinese called them hu or hu-jen, and the Romans, barbari. Roth these names mean “alien” and at the same time “uncivilised”. For the Chinese in the 3rd to the 5th centuries these were the Huns, Tibetans, Hsien-pi, Jujan; somewhat later also the Turkic people. For the Romans of these centuries these were the Goths, Vandals, Alans, Langobards, Franks, Huns and, somewhat later, the Slavs.

Some of the peoples that surrounded ancient China brought about in the 4th century her cleavage into two parts, the southern and the northern, when they set up their “barbarian kingdoms” in the northern part (the Huns, Tibetans and Hsien-pi); other peoples—the Vandals, Ostrogoths, Visigoths and Franks, who surrounded ancient Rome—contributed, also in the 4th century, to the break-up of the Roman Empire into two halves, eastern and western, and then settled in the territory of the western half. The situation was similar in other areas of the ancient world. As early as the 3rd century Parthia fell into the hands of a group of Iranian tribes which founded a new state ruled by the Sassanids. The Kushana kingdom and the Gupta Empire fell in the 5th century under the blows of Ephtha-lites (White Huns), who also had their state on the conquered territory for a certain time.

Common features, however, should not overshadow the essential differences in the clashes of the “old” and “young” peoples. It will be recalled that as a result of “barbarian” invasions of the Western Roman Empire the latter ceased to exist and the “barbarian kingdoms” which arose in its stead initiated a complete change of the picture in Europe. The subsequent history in this area is the history of these “young” peoples.

The process was different in China: the barbarian conquests, far from destroying the Chinese state, did not even interrupt its existence. The southern part of the country remained outside the

invasions. Moreover, it did not in any way subsequently turn into a kind of Byzantium, but remained the selfsame China. And even in the northern part, where “barbarian kingdoms” were formed, they soon ceased to be “barbarian”, turning into Chinese. The native Chinese population in this part of the country assimilated the newcomers and passed on its civilisations to them. This was the basis for the subsequent restoration of the country’s political unity.

In view of this, the “barbarian conquests” affected the process of feudalism’s development in different ways. “Young” peoples stood at that time at a lower stage of social development than the peoples of ancient civilisations: some of them were in a late stage of the primitive-communal system, others already had elements of feudalism. That is why these peoples, coming in close contact with the peoples of ancient civilisations, in which the crystallisation of feudalism was under way, were drawn into this process. But in some cases they played a bigger part in this process and in other cases, a lesser part.

Many of these tribes, both in the East and the West, developed beyond the bounds of the ancient civilisations. In Asia these were the Manchu-Tungus tribes (as we call this ethnic group now) who long ago settled on the territory subsequently named Manchuria; close to them were the forebears of the present-day Koreans, who in the 1st century B.G. set up their own states on the Korean Peninsula; north-west of China lived the Jujan, who in the 5th century reached the apex of their might; in the 6th century the Turkic people formed a powerful state on vast expanses north-west of China, subordinating the Jujan. In Europe such tribes were represented by the Sueves in the northern part and the Slavs in the eastern and southeastern parts.

This process was subsequently continued, drawing ever new peoples into the general historical stream. In Eastern Asia these were the Japanese, Tanguts, K’itan, Churchen and Mongols; in Western Asia, various Turkic tribes; in the Middle East, the Arabs. Some of these peoples settled on the territory of old civilised countries, creating their own states there and either merging with the local population or annihilating it; others created states of their own on new territories, thereby bringing new vast areas of the Old World into the common stream of history.

A common feature in the history of the peoples in the Middle Ages, both in the East and the West, was that they were building their civilisations having as a legacy the civilisation of the ancient world. Some of them were direct heirs to this legacy because they were living on the territory of the great states of antiquity. For others this civilisation, as it were, was external. But the power of the ancient civilisations was such that all peoples fell under their spell and were drawn into their orbit. That is why ancient civilisations played a special part in the history of the Middle Ages.

At the beginning of the Middle Ages the world had five old centres of civilisation: China, India, the Kushana kingdom, Parthia and the Graeco-Roman world. All the peoples of East and SouthEast Asia were under the influence of the ancient Chinese civilisation; various nationalities in India and in Western Turkistan were influenced by India’s civilisation; in its turn, the civilisation of Western Turkistan extended its influence to North-West India, to the peoples of Central Asia and even to China; Graeco-Roman civilisation prevailed in Europe, Asia Minor and North Africa, and in the Hellenistic period it even reached Western Turkistan.

This situation determined the very intricate development of the economic, social and political institutions of the peoples in the Middle Ages. Many of these institutions either grew out directly from the corresponding institutions of the ancient world or were shaped under their influence. That is why “purity” of social forms, which may occur under an independent historical development of a people free of any outside influence (by the way, a case which has hardly even existed in history), could not be observed in this historical setting. The Middle Ages, an epoch radically differing from antiquity, was nevertheless a successor to this antiquity. This duality—succession of civilisation, on the one hand, and renunciation of the old civilisation for the sake of the new, on the other—were an essential feature of cultural development in the Middle Ages, the feature which made for the complexity and, frequently, the contradictory nature of individual phenomena of this process.

The role of antiquity in the development of the Middle Ages stands out very clearly in two historical stages: when medieval feudal society crystallised and when it passed into a new, relatively later phase. The crystallisation of the feudal system proceeded amidst a sharp clash of the new and the old along all lines, a clash which brought about the collapse of the slave-owning world represented by ancient states;at thesame time the new feudal system was shaped,incorporating many elements of the culture of the slave-owning states.

The role of the ancient civilisation was strikingly revealed during the transition of medieval feudal society to a new phase of its development, when elements of relations new for that time—early capitalist relations—began to appear. That was the epoch called “Renaissance” in Europe. The same name, it seems to us, with the necessary account of the specific conditions, could be applied to some Asian countries too. Transition to the new form was accompanied by a certain departure from the “medieval” and recourse to the “ancient”. Antiquity was called upon to facilitate the development of the new order, the one of which the humanists of Europe, China and Western Asia dreamed. As we know, that naturally was not a complete negation of the Middle Ages. They could not be fully discarded: feudalism, i. e., the system which we call medieval, continued to exist. Nor was this a revival of antiquity. Antiquity could not be restored either: that would imply a return to the slavery system.

Everything of medievalism that could still be developed was preserved and things that could facilitate the necessary forward movement were borrowed from antiquity. On the other hand, we also know full well how great was this new manifestation of the influence of antiquity on the medieval world, how long it persisted and to what diverse consequences in the sphere of culture it led.

Thus, the special role played by the heritage of the ancient world in the history of the Middle Ages was manifested both in the East and the West. This can serve as another reason for constructing the history of the Middle Ages on a world scale.

We can point to many common developments. Let us dwell on one of the most essential, the special role played by religion and the church in the history of medieval society.

The appearance of world religions in the Middle Ages is a development unknown in antiquity. These were Buddhism in Eastern and Central Asia, and partly in Western Turkistan, Islam in Western Asia and North Africa and Christianity in Europe and partly in Western Asia. It goes without saying that Buddhism and Christianity originated and developed in antiquity, but it was only in the medieval period that they turned into world religions. Islam arose in the Middle Ages but it also swiftly gained world-wide importance. It was feudalism, medieval society, that gave the very possibility of religions acquiring such an exceptional position. The new basis at first needed a superstructure which could help it strike solid root: Buddhism, Christianity and Islam provided such a superstructure and, moreover, of an all-embracive character.

A superstructure which strengthens its basis consists of a legal system, political theory, ethical system, aesthetic views, philosophy and religion. In the Middle Ages religion was a system of law, political doctrine, moral teaching and philosophy combined. It was a synthesis of all the superstructures over the feudal basis, at least until this basis began to be undermined by factors leading to capitalism. This all-embracive nature of religion in the Middle Ages was displayed everywhere.

Buddhism is not only a religious creed; it is a philosophy with its own theory of knowledge and doctrine of being; it is a moral teaching; it is a doctrine of society and the state; lastly, it is a system of aesthetic views which stimulated the flowering of remarkable Buddhist art—architecture, sculpture and painting; poetry, narrative prose and drama arose.

Islam is not only a sum total of religious beliefs; it is a political doctrine, a system of legal and ethical prinoiples.

The same can be said about medieval Christianity; suffice it to read the Summa theologiae to see that it contains elements of the superstructures of all kinds, up to economic theory.

Therefore, the disintegration of this synthesis, the release of individual independent spheres from this integral whole was a symptom of emancipation from the power of religion and of a

decline of its importance. We know that the first to be thus released was natural science, astronomy and mathematics. It is for this reason that their origin and development was of truly revolutionary significance for those days, heralding the dawn of a new social system.

But the matter was not limited to the purely ideological side of religion. Superstructures bring into being corresponding institutions and act through them. The church was an institution of religion as a superstructure, and to the same extent as the superstructure itself its institution was of an all-embracive character. The development of the church as a huge, ramified, powerful public organisation was a new, highly characteristic feature of the medieva

' Here again we can note in each case a similarity of phenomena in the East and the West, for all their specific features. Christianity was not the only religion to create a church: both Islam and Buddhism did the same. Moreover, the organisational forms ol these three churches were close in their essence.The church brought togeth er the clergy and the laity; the clergy was organised on a hierarchic scale. The principle on which this hierarchy rested was also the same: it was the principle of authority.

One more feature was fully displayed in the religions ol the Middle Ages. All the three churches were above all major political organisations The history of the Christian, Islamic and Buddhist churches is primarily the history of their political activity. It is hardly necessary to recall that these organisations were instruments of the ruling class, the feudal lords, in most fully subordinating the people they exploited.

This specific nature of religion in the Middle Ages and its particular role both as an ideology and a church organisation (a role equally played in the history of Christianity, Islam and Buddhism) can be added among the common factors in medieval life which form the ground work for constructing a history of the Middle Ages as a general history of the countries and peoples of the Old World m that period.

But for all the common features, we must not lose sight ol the considerable differences in the sphere and degree of influence exerted by religions on the ideology and social life in different countries during the medieval period. An example of these differences is afforded by the role of Catholicism in the life of the West European peoples and of Buddhism in China. In China, Buddhism has never even during its heyday, played a role in the life of society and the state equal to that of Catholicism in the West European countries. For example, in China one of the most important spheres — education and enlightenment — was always in the hands of the so-called Confucianists, proponents of secular education. School education and the academy of learning were also in the hands of the Confucianists. Buddhist treatises never served as textbooks in these schools. And if Confucianists did read

these treatises, it was only to criticise them and reject them on the basis of this criticism. In this respect the situation in medieval China redically differed from the one in Christian Europe and Islamic Asia and Africa.

We could enumerate other phenomena which serve as a reliable mainstay for constructing a general, world-wide and not regional— Western of Eastern—medieval history. Let us examine only one of the most important phenomena: the peasant movement.

It was during the Middle Ages that peasant movements gained a scale observed neither earlier not later. This is natural because under feudalism the peasants made up the bulk of the toiling population and were the main antagonistic class facing the dominating class, the feudal lords. The other oppressed sections of society—artisans, hired labourers and the urban plebs—began to act independently only in tbe period of late feudalism, and even then but relatively. Throughout the Middle Ages these oppressed sections rose up to fight only when joining the peasants. That is why the class struggle in the Middle Ages assumed the form of clashes between the main antagonistic classes of feudal society—the peasants and the feudal lords.

The peasant movements in Europe have been thoroughly studied. They have been less studied in the East, and yet it is in the East that the peasant struggle in the Middle Ages assumed the largest scale and the keenest forms. This is particularly true of China.

From the viewpoint of the historical process, the most important thing is to consider not the uprisings themselves but the role they played in history.

Peasant uprisings in the Middle Ages, as a rule, ended in failure: the feudal elements usually brutally crushed them. But it would be altogether wrong to see only this aspect. Despite all the repressions brought down upon the peasants, it were these uprisings that moved history forward at decisive moments. In the history of China, this point can be illustrated by three striking examples.

A sweeping uprising, known as the Yellow Turban rebellion, broke out in the Han Empire in the 180’s. All oppressed sections of the population, chiefly the feudally-bound peasants and the slaves, took part in it. The rebellion was crushed, but it undermined the very foundations of the Han Empire and compelled the ruling class completely to abandon the survivals of slave exploitation and go over to feudal exploitation. For that period this change-over was a step forward in social development.

A second example. In the 70’s of the 11th century a peasant war flared up in the T’ang Empire, known as the Wang Hsien-chi and Hwang Ch’ao rebellion. As always, the peasants made up the mass of the rebels and they were joined by other oppressed sections of the population. The uprising was crushed, but the form of exploitation which had prevailed until then, the form based on state bondage, was abolished and replaced by the dependence of

the peasants directly on the feudal lords. That was definitely in the interest of the exploiter class, but it ushered in the era of so-called fragmented feudalism, marked by considerable economic independence of the separate feudal domains, which facilitated the country s general economic development. Consequently, that was a step forward for those days. The ruling class, which used to cling to the old form of feudal exploitation, went over to another form under the pressure of this peasant uprising.

Here is a third example. In the first half of the 17th century^a peasant war flared up in the Ming Empire, known as the Li Tzn-ch’eng rebellion. It, too, was crushed—with the help of Manchus summoned by the Chinese feudal lords. But this rebellion, apart from bringing about the overthrow of the ruling dynasty, had a more important result: it brought Chinese feudalism to its last phase, the phase of absolutism, that is, it pushed history forward.

These three examples, it seems'to us, corroborate the thesis of the Marxist theory of the historical process: it is the people, the working classes, that are the real makers of history. Naturally, this is illustrated just as strikingly by the struggle of the peasants m the West too. This can serve as a reliable compass in revealing the common course of the historical process in the West and in the East.

Is all this, however, sufficient? Is it enough for constructing the history of the Middle Ages, enough for proving that during this period feudalism prevailed throughout the Old World; that feudalism had grown up on the ruins of the ancient slave-owning world; that during this period, both in Asia and Europe, new peoples appeared on the historical arena; that many of them initiated the subsequent crystallisation of modern nations; that the entire historical process was marked by the intertwining of elements of the new civilisation with elements of the old civilisation; that religion and the church played a tremendous role in this process and that the masses, their struggle, gave an impetus to history? For a common history some kind of a community of life itself is necessary. Was there such a community in the historical life of the peoples ot Asia, Europe and North Africa in the Middle Ages?

No one will challenge the statement that the peoples ol Europe in the course of their history came in close contact with one another. This is attested to by the long existence of the “history of the Middle

Ages”, in the European sense of this term, as a special branch ol historical science. No one will deny that the historical destinies o the peoples in Western Asia and also in India were closely intertwined; this gave rise, long ago, to the “history of the East in general and even"the history of medieval East” in particular. Die peoples of the Far East and of South-East Asia were likewise closely intercon-

nected. But what about a common historical life of the East and the West as a whole? Did it exist?

Let us turn to things we know well; let us turn to the ancient world. Ancient Greece was not only a European country: its colonies in Asia Minor made it an Asian country as well. The GraecoPersian wars eloquently attest to the closest proximity of the history of Greece to the history of the Middle Eastern peoples. The history of the West in the age of Alexander the Great ceased to be the history of the West alone; it also turned into the history of the East. Moreover, in the Hellenistic world, which took shape after the campaigns of Alexander, there was no division into the East and the West in general. European Greece, African Egypt, West-Asian Syria and Bactria in Western Turkistan were all in equal measure parts of this world.

It is also difficult to make a division into the East and the West in the Roman epoch. The Roman Empire was in no way solely a European state either geographically, politically or culturally. Even in the domain of religion, Mithraism and Christianity, which prevailed in the Roman Empire in the last centuries of its existence, were phenomena equally Eastern and Western. It is also well known how closely the history of Rome was related to the history of the Asian and North African peoples around it.

What was the Kushana kingdom like? Ittwas located in Asia so that geographically it belonged to the East. But it included the territory of former Bactria, a country of Hellenistic culture; it ruled the territory of present-day Afghanistan and part of NorthWest India, and from there Buddhism penetrated; it was in constant contact with the Han Empire and this signified penetration of Chinese civilisation and at the same time the spread of Buddhism from Kushana to China. During its heyday the Kushana kingdom was truly the crossroad and junction of Iranian, Indian, Hellenistic and Chinese civilisations, which enriched the local culture. Sufficient proof of this is furnished by the art of Gandhara, the surviving memorials of pictorial art: in the images of Buddha and Bodhisattva of those days we can discern features of Indian art, elements of Hellenistic art and echoes of the pictorial art of ancient China. This blending of different cultures was peculiarly symbolised in that Kanishka, the ruler of the Kushana kingdom at its apex, bore four titles: Son of Heaven (Dewaputra), King of Kings (Shaonan shao), Caesar, and Maharaja. These were the titles of the rulers of China, Iran, Rome and India.

Let us turn to the Han Empire. It will be recalled that its history was closely intertwined with the history of the peoples on the Korean Peninsula, of South-East Asia and of the “Western area” (Hsi yii), as the Chinese called Eastern Turkistan and Western Asia in those days. Needless to speak of the history of the numerous “barbarian” tribes which dwelt north and north-west of the Chinese borders: the history of these tribes is directly included in the so-called dy

nastic chronicles of China. For example, Ho Han-shu (History of the Later Han Dynasty) has sections outlining the history of the peoples of the Korean Peninsula and the “Western area”. Through Western Turkistan the Chinese people also came in contact with the peoples of India and Western Asia.

The Chinese even knew about the “great land of Ch’in” (Ta Ch'in) in the distant West: this is how they called the Roman Empire. The ancient Romans likewise knew about the “Chinese land” somewhere in the Far East; they knew that the silk fabrics brought to Rome by Eastern merchants came from that country. Roth countries at times even tried to establish direct contacts. A Han mission was sent to Rome in the 1st century A.D.;it did not get to Rome but visited Roman Syria. When Marcus Aurelius Antoninus defeated the Parthians in the 2nd century and reached the shores of the Persian Gulf, he sent a mission to China. It went there by sea—over the Indian Ocean to the shores of Cochin-China and from there by land to Loyang, the Han capital. Trade ties thus existed between the two great empires of the East and the West. It was maintained both along the continental “northern route”, across countries of Western Asia, and the marine “southern route”, from the Persian Gulf to Indochina.

All these well-known facts are cited merely to recall that even in the ancient world a certain community of the historical life of the Eastern and Western peoples existed. In^the Middle Ages this community, far from disappearing, increased in scale and its content became more diversified. This can be easily demonstrated even by a cursory review of the major events of the Middle Ages.

At the very beginning of the Middle Ages we find a manifestation of community in the history of the Eastern and Western peoples; it is the history of the Huns. Let us recall it.

The Huns, that part of the tribe which remained in its homeland in Eastern Asia, at the beginning of the 4th century bore down upon the Chin Empire of Chine, which for a short time restored the old empire under the power of another dynasty, and captured the northern part of that empire. The Huns from the part of the tribe which at the end of the 2nd century left their ancient homeland and moved westward, stopped for a time in Central Asia and then moved on. One of these groups, named Ephthalites by European historians, attacked and overran the Kushana kingdom in the 5th century and shortly afterwards also subjugated the Indian Gupta Empire. Another group moved to the Caspian Sea, occupied its northern coast up to the southern foothills of the Urals and then, carrying along the subjugated tribes and mixing with them to a certain extent, moved farther west, establishing in the second half of the 4th century its state in the steppes of the lower Volga, the Don and the North Caucasus; in the last quarter of the 4th century these Huns, crossing the Don —the frontier of the Goth power—defeated the Ostrogoths and, moving farther to the Dniester, routed the Visigoths

and reached the borders of the Roman Empire. The onslaught of the Huns on Rome began in the 5th century and led to shifting the centre of the Hun state to the very heart of Europe, to Pannonia.

Where was the history of the Huns enacted? In the East? In the West? In Eastern Asia? In Western Turkistan and Western Asia? In India? In Eastern Europe? In Central Europe?... There can only be one answer: everywhere throughout the Old World, from the northern provinces of China to the western provinces of Rome. Is it possible to outline the history of the Huns otherwise than within the bounds of a general history of the peoples of the Old World in the Middle Ages?

The case of the Huns clearly demonstrates the impossibility of constructing this history within the hounds of the East or West alone. The history of some other peoples that appeared on the historical scene in the Middle Ages—Turks, Arabs and Mongols—also oversteps these bounds.

The history of the Turkic tribes begins in Asia, in the Altai area. In the 6th century these tribes formed a strong tribal alliance, named the Turkic Khaganate by Western historians. In those days the possessions of the Turks represented a vast country extending from the Khingan Mountains in the East to Sogdiana in Western Turkistan, which was wrested by the Turks from the Ephtlialite Huns. The centre of this country was on the bank of the Orhon River (present-day Northern Mongolia). Rut even at that time this state, which was an unstable union of many nomad tribes, was actually divided into two poorly connected parts, the eastern and the western, each having its own Khagan. That is why the further development of the history of the Turks followed along two lines. The history of the Eastern Turks proceeded in close neighbourhood of China and was intimately linked with Chinese history. A strong onslaught of Turks on Northern China was in evidence as early as the 6th century. The Chinese were compelled either to beat them back by force of arms or buy them off with gifts and tribute. The clashes continued throughout the 6th and 7th centuries and were so intense that during that period the “Turkic danger” was the principal

As early as the 6th century, i. e., during the existence of a single Turkic state, the WesternTurks subjugated Western Turkistan and even Persia, and established relations with Byzantium. Through these old civilised countries they engaged in the lively trade that connected the East and the West. .

There is no need to outline the history of the Western Turkic tribes; it is well known. In subsequent centuries we find Turkic states in Western Asia, India and Europe. To what part of the Old World does the history of the Turks belong? Was Tamerlane s empire only Asian? Was the Ottoman Empire only Asian? Is it possible in general to present the history of the Turkic peoples outside the framework of the history of the East and the West?

The history of the Arabs is similarly a common development both for the East and the West. In the Middle Ages, Arab states lay in a chain from Arabia and Western Turkistan along the entire coast of North Africa to the Atlantic, and from there extended to the Iberian Peninsula. The history of these states in the East was the history not only of the Arabs themselves, but also of the peoples of Western Turkistan and even North-West India; the history of the Arabs of Arabia is linked also with the history of Ethiopia. The history of the Arabs in Western Asia is most intimately connected with the history of Byzantium and even countries of Western Europe. The history of Europe deals with the Arabs in the Iberian Peninsula. In equal measure it is impossible to outline the history of the Cordovan Caliphate separately from the history of Spain and the history of Spain in the Middle Ages, separately from the history of the Moors.

Similarly, the history of the Mongols cannot be presented within the bounds of the history of the East alone. The Mongol Empire of the 13th and 14th centuries, extending from the Pacific to the western frontiers of Eastern Europe, is a development belonging both to the East and the West. It is difficult to imagine that the Mongols in the days of Genghiz Khan or Kublai Khan could even have an idea of a frontier dividing their possessions into “the East” and “the West”. It should be noted that the concept of “the East” was formed in Europe, but the Asian peoples had no concept of “the West” in the Middle Ages. “The West”, as a concept opposed to “the East”, appeared, for example, among the Chinese and the Japanese only in the recent period and it owes its origin to their familiarity with the European word “East” in its specifically European sense.

Such is the case with the history of some peoples in the Middle Ages: it can be outlined only within the framework of world history. This applies not only to peoples that emerged from Asia; it is also true of some European peoples. Let us recall the history of Byzantium or the history of Kiev Bus and Muscovy. Is it possible to expound the history of Byzantium without the history of Persia, the Arab Caliphate or Turkey? Can we consider the history of Kiev Rus and Muscovy without touching upon the Mongol Empire or Tamerlane’s state?

That the historical life of the peoples in the East and the West was intertwined in the Middle Ages, is beyond doubt. This intertwining differed at different times and among different peoples both in degree and in content. At times it could be entirely absent. But if we take the history of the Eastern and Western peoples in the Middle Ages as a whole, this intertwining is present everywhere.

The history of separate peoples, both big and small, can and should be outlined; every people is a maker of history and has its own destiny. The historical activity of each people has a significance of its own. It is possible and necessary to present the history of groups

of peoples closely interconnected by their historical destinies It w fully possible, for example, to write histories . of the peoples ■ of Eastern Asia (the Chinese, Koreans and the Japanese), the peoples of India and Western Asia, the history of the Slav peoples, the peoples of Western Europe, and so on. But a general history of the Middle Ages is no less important and necessary. It is possib because the life of individual peoples in the Old World was closely connected with general history; it is necessary because only m such a general framework will many processes m the history of individual peoples and groups of peoples appear in their true light and true

How is this general history of the Middle Ages to be constructed How can we prevent it from turning into a collection of histories oi individual countries or peoples or at best into some kind of general compendium of these histories: in other words, into a new variant of the so-called “universal histories” which have existed for a long time and have their own traditions? How are we to construct this history so as to obtain a truly general history of countries and

A truly universal history of the Middle Ages can be elaborated only if we constantly bear in mind its specific features, which set it apart from the histories of individual peoples and countries or the histories of groups of peoples. Some of the tasks of such a world history, it seems to us, can be easily formulated. . .

One task is to reveal the content and importance of each historical event affecting simultaneously several countries and peoples, several groups of countries and peoples, or even the East and the West as a whole, not from the angle of the history of one participant m this event but in the aspect of world history.

We know the Crusades and their history. But the very tact that we know this under the name of “Crusades” shows that they are presented “from this side”—from the side of Europe. Replacing the name “Crusades” by some other would change nothing in our “European” approach to these events.

Yet the Crusades are events which in equal measure are the history of Eastern peoples; they can be presented “from that side” too. There are no less grounds for it than for outlining them m the aspect of European history. Let us imagine that these events are described by a Muslim historian. He will speak about them differently than European historians. He will perhaps present them as ‘ defence against the invasion of infidels”, perhaps as “the history of Islam s advance to the West”, etc. To approach these events from the angle of European history is fully warranted, but only for the history of Europe. It is similarly justified to outline them from the aspect

of the history of the Arabs and later of the Turks, but only in writing the history of the Arabs or Turks. A world history of the Middle Ages must approach these events differently: it must view them not from “this” or “that” side, but from above, i. e., independent of the concepts of both sides. Only in that case will these events appear before the historian in their general-historical, i. e., most proper light.

Let us take another example. We know of the Mongol conquests in Eastern Europe; we know of the struggle waged by the Russian people against the invaders and the fall of the latter’s state. This collapse can be presented as deliverance from the Mongol yoke; this is how it should be done in writing the history of the Russian people. We can speak about this collapse as the saving of the West European peoples from the Mongol danger; this is how it should be presented in the histories of these peoples. But the historian of the Middle Ages as a whole will see here simultaneously the persistent struggle of the Chinese people against the Mongol conquerors, a struggle which led to their liberation from the Mongol yoke; the struggle of the peoples of Western Asia against the Mongol conquerors and the fall of Mongol rule in this area of the Old World; the heroic resistance of the Russian people who won their freedom in protracted struggle. World history will see these three facts simultaneously; they will be linked with one another and together reveal the true meaning of the events. This will be the collapse of the world Mongol Empire and the beginning of new development for the peoples that for a time had been fettered by the conquerors’ rule.

Such is one task of the history of the Middle Ages: to reveal the content and significance of all events in a truly world-historical aspect.

Another possible task is to bring out the role of each people in the general historical process in the Middle Ages. This can be achieved in two ways: first, by tracing the history of each people as an independent phenomenon, and not as an appendage to the history of some other people; second, by revealing the intertwining of the history of each people with the history of other peoples. These two aspects must necessarily accompany each other, reciprocally supplement and correct each other. We must not, for example, present the history of the Arabs only from the moment when the European peoples actually faced them; it is necessary to ouline the entire history of the Arab tribes in the Middle Ages. But to prevent this from turning into a history of the Arabs only, it should be expounded in the context of the Arabs’ role in the general historical life of the Middle Ages. Then the history of the Arabs will appear as the process of emergence of various Arab tribes onto the world historical scene, as a process of their spread over a huge part of the Old World—from the Arabian Peninsula to the Atlantic coast and to Indonesia; as a process of the formation of several Arab nationalities that created their oAvn states; as a process of their pene-

trating the history of other peoples both in Europe and Asia, which exerted a serious influence on the latter’s history and even on the destinies of some of them.

The Middle Ages in the history of the Russian people, too, will appear in a special light before the historian. He will see in it the drawing together and unification of a number of East Slavonic tribes, their conversion into a powerful factor of world history, the formation of an East-Slavonic state as a crossroads of the history of the East and the West, and the resultant consequences: the need to wage a struggle for existence and development in two directions— Western and Eastern; the historian will see the subsequent formation of a state which in the 16th century became a mighty power that crossed the Urals and thereby laid the beginning of a multinational state that connot be divided between the East and the West, with all the attendant consequences for the further course of world history.

Another task of the general history of the Middle Ages can thus be defined as the presentation of the history of each people in the light of their place and role in the general historical process.

But this task in itself raises another problem—tracing and revealing the process of historical life in the Middle Ages as a whole. This is the most difficult and most urgent problem of all. It may be sa’d that no genuine history of the Middle Ages is possible unless it is solved.

It would be premature now to outline ways for accomplishing this task and predicting its results. We shall limit ourselves to the most general considerations.

We look upon the Middle Ages as a period of the emergence and development of the feudal socio-economic system, which replaced the old slave-owning system. But a careful study of the history of the peoples in the Middle Ages clearly brings out several indisputable facts: the establishment of feudalism in various countries of the medieval world differed in point of time; the conditions for the emergence of feudalism and its development in various countries differed; the degrees of its development differed and, lastly, its forms were diverse, whereas its socio-economic essence in general was the same.

Only a general history of the Middle Ages can disclose and explain all these phenomena—through a study of the history of individual peoples and countries and simultaneously the history of all of them taken together. Without this it is impossible to ascertain why in one country feudalism struck root earlier than in. another; why in some countries it was established in one way and in other countries, in a different way; why in one place it was more stable and better developed than in others; why in one place it was manifested in some forms and elsewhere in other forms. Without a general study it is impossible to establish the most important thing: how all this

historical multiformity fitted into a single process of historical development; how, in what concrete forms, in what sequence and interconnection it proceeded and to what ultimately it led medieval society. In other words, what was it that brought to life the feudal system of medieval society, what comprised the driving force of its tremendous development and what led to its decline and, ultimately, to its fall.

This common process has one concrete side which comprises its historical specific feature. This is the common trend, common direction of the historical process of the birth, development and decline of feudalism. Disclosure of this direction explains the historical destinies of the peoples in the Middle Ages and also in the new times.

Let us review the general course of the world historical process during the Middle Ages. We at once will see that in the common history of the East and the West the East played a progressive part for a long time. The processes which subsequently became common for the West and the East started earlier in the East. The onslaught of the “barbarians” on ancient civilised states, for example, began in the East: as far back as the 3rd century B.C. the Chinese had to build various fortifications to protect themselves from invasions from the north. That was the beginning of what subsequently became the Chinese Wall. Its counterpart on the north-eastern borderlands of the Roman Empire, the Trajan Wall, was needed only at the beginning of the 2nd century A.D.

The movement of tribes which encompassed Asia and Europe and ultimately led to the rise of new nationalities and new states, in other words, the greatest historical development which marked the initial period of the Middle Ages, originated in the East and, moreover, long before it spread to Europe. The Huns were pressed back from the northern borders of the Han Empire at the end of the 1st century A.D.; this movement of the Huns reached Europe and pushed the Black Sea Goths westward, towards the Roman Empire, only in the 4th century.

New “barbarian kingdoms” began to arise in the East earlier than in the West: they appeared on the territory of Northern China at the beginning of the 4th century, whereas in Europe they arose only in the 5th century on the territory of the Western Roman Empire. Feudalism as the basis of the economic, social and state system began to take shape in the East earlier than in Europe. Similarly, rudimentary elements of capitalism appeared in the feudal society in the East before they appeared in the West. Another indication of the leading role of the East is the fact that the biggest and most powerful states in that epoch arose in the East in view of the early and extensive development of feudalism there.

Lastly, one more indication of the leading role of the East in the Middle Ages can be mentioned: the cultural superiority of the East over the West in that period. It is beyond dispute that theChinese,

Indian, Arabic, Iranian and Western Turkistan peoples in that epoch in many spheres of technology and material culture, andparticu-larly in the arts, in the sphere of law, political doctrines, philosophy, historiography, science and literature, were ahead of the West; for a long time these cultures were much richer in content than the analogous spheres of culture in the West.

Alongside all this, conditions also developed in the East which gradually began to retard the historical process and to impede the development of capitalist elements. Since such conditions did not arise in the West, the development of feudalism and, subsequently, the growth of capitalism, proceeded there at a faster pace. The result was that at a definite moment in the Middle Ages the centre of mankind’s forward movement in the Old World began to shift from the East to the West. Thus started what came to be called the lag of the East, at first in the economic and then also in the political and the cultural spheres. In the new times this lag brought about a situation directly opposite to that in the Middle Ages: whereas in medieval times the East kept up its onslaught on the West, in the new period the West began its onslaught on the East, which ultimately turned most of the Eastern countries into colonies, semicolonies and dependencies of the West. Thus, a truly scientific study of the history of peoples in the Middle Ages on a world-historical scale, i. e., embracing both the Eastern and the Western peoples, makes it possible to explain the course of the historical process in the new times as well.

In the Sung shih—The History of the Sung Dynasty—there is a special section, Tao-hsueh-chuan (“Description of the Teaching of the Way”), which deals with the most important philosophical trend of the Sung Empire (960-1279). ¹ It is carefully pointed out that this school restored the true spirit of ancient Confucianism. The latter was regarded as the teaching of “the Perfect and the Wise” (.sheng-hsien). After Confucius died, the Sung History assures us, his doctrine was preserved and continued only by one of his pupils, Tseng-tzu, who, in his turn, transmitted it to his pupil Tzu Ssu, and the latter—to Men-tzu (Mencius). The death of Mencius meant the end of the doctrine: the tradition of the “true teaching” was broken. This interruption lasted for a long time. It was not until the Sung epoch, centuries later, that the doctrine was taken up anew by Chou Tun-i and Chang Tsai. Their work was continued by theCh’eng brothers (Ch’eng Hao and Ch’eng 1); it was finally completed by Chu Hsi, who had inherited it, so to speak, from Ch’eng I.

Consequently, the teaching of the Sung philosophers may be “traced back, over the heads of all intermediate thinkers, directly to Mencius.” At all events, thus wrote the compilers of the Sung History, who lived in the first half of the 14th century ² and left us a picture of an epoch not so very far removed from them and also an appraisal of the cultural heritage of that epoch.

Analysing dates, we find that Confucius lived from about 552 to 479 B.C., Mencius from 372 to 289 B.C., Chou Tun-i from 1017 to 1073 A.D. and Chang Tsai from 1019 to 1077 A.D. It appears, then, that the true tradition of the teaching began in the 6th and 5th centuries before our era and was inaugurated by the “Perfect One” (Sheng-jen) —Confucius himself. After Mencius’ death in the first half of the 3rd century B.C., there ensued an interval of thirteen centuries. The re-emergence of the doctrine dates from the 11th century of our era, coinciding with the appearance of Chou Tun-i. Throughout the 1300 years that elapsed between antiquity and the Sung

epoch—the “Middle Ages”, as they were considered by the Sung historians—the “true teaching” had undergone distortion or at times had been consigned to total oblivion.

Let us regard these chronological dates in the context of the historical process. The age of Confucius and Mencius (the 6th to the 3rd centuries B. C.) belongs to the ku, the antiquity of China’s history, and was regarded as such by the compilers of the Sung History.

The above-mentioned passage in the Tao-hsueh-chuan begins with the statement that there"was no such title as tao-hsiieh (the teaching of the Way) in antiquity, i. e., in the times of Confucius and Mencius, although the concept of “the Way” did exist.

In the history of Europe, “antiquity” usually means ancient Greece and Rome. From the social-economic viewpoint, it is the epoch of the slave-owning system. This was marked by several stages: the early period of Greece’s history which lasted until the 6th century B.C.—the period of the “Homeric” kingdoms; the middle period, from the 6th century B.C. to the 3rd century B.C.—the time of the city-states; the late period, from the 3rd century B.C. to the rise of the Hellenistic states, which were to merge subsequently with the history of the Roman Empire. In China’s history, antiquity was also a slave-owning epoch and was divided likewise into three stages: the early period, up to the 8th century B.C.—the time of the Chou kingdom; the middle period, beginning with the 8th century B.C.— the time of the separate kingdoms (the lieh-kuo); the late period, beginning with the 3rd century B.C.—the age of empire. Thus the time of Confucius and Mencius falls on the middle stage of the history of the slave-owning society in China.

What precisely did this middle stage signify in the history of an ancient society? In Greek antiquity it was the “classical period”, classical in its social, economic and cultural aspects. It was the reign of a “pure” (from the standpoint of historical typology) slaveowning system, no longer associated with the relics of communal-tribal relationships and not as yet complicated by the new shoots of future feudal relationships. It was the age of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, Herodotus,Thucydides, Democritus, Herac-lites, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Isocrates and Demosthenes. In China’s history this age was likewise marked by a clearly defined slave-owning system, and renowned for names such as Confucius, Mencius, Lao-tzu, Lieh-tzu, Chuang-tzu, Hsun-Tzu, Mo Ti, Sun-tzu, Wu-tzu, Kuan-tzu, Han Fei-tzu, Ch’ii Yuan and Sung Yii. These names alone show that, from the cultural-historical standpoint, it was the truly “classical” age of Chinese antiquity.

Naturally, when the Sung scholars spoke of antiquity, they were referring to its classical period. They accepted the “learning”, that is, the Confucianism, of this period alone. All the permutations that took place in Confucianism in the “Middle Ages”, between antiquity and their own day, were rejected by them.

The Sung philosophers’ reasons for this may be gathered from their works. The fact that everything in this teaching depended solely upon the “teachers” displeased them; that the ancient writings, the chins, which they regarded as the vital sources, the fountain-heads of learning, were not treated as such but rather as objects for exegesis, and that even in this expositional work the less important details, not the essentials, were stressed-these things were not to their liking. To grasp the full force of these objections, it is necessary to consider the situation that had arisen in Confucianism during the epoch immediately preceding that of the Sung. This is known in the traditional dynastic divisions of Chinese history as the 1 ang epoch, after the reigning dynasty which lasted from 618 to yij.

As far back as the reign of T’ai-tsung (627-650), noted as the nrincipal organiser of the regime in the new empire it was decided to found a doctrine which would serve—no matter what turns social thought might take—as a support for the rulers. Basic material tor this doctrine was found in Confucianism, a teaching that treated largely of problems concerning the life of society and the state. It should be remembered that Confucianism was renowned as a genuine state doctrine. This reputation dated from the time of the Han dynasty the first kingdom that united all parts of the country and formed a state that was to be regarded as the ideal, the prototype of every future empire arising in China. Confucianism, in the shape it had then assumed, was accepted as the official doctrine of the Han regime. Consequently, no matter what their personal leanings were—now Taoist, now Buddhist—the first rulers of the r ang Empire chose Confucianism as the state doctrine.

This decision was only the initial step. In the course of the 800 years that had elapsed since the death of Mencius, Confucianism had undergone a series of metamorphoses. The outcome of these was a voluminous literature, extremely diverse in content and trend ot ideas. It was necessary, therefore, to make selections from t ese writings. Primarily, a canon had to be established, a list o wri -ings chosen to serve as the basis of the teaching. These were the I-ching, Shu-ching, Shih-ching, Ch'un-ch'iu and Li-chi. .

It would be erroneous to suppose that these works became canonical only in the 7th century. The Confucian “Five Books became canonical as early as the second half of the 2nd century B-C -the first phase of Confucianism’s formation as a philosophical system. At this time, during the reign of Wu-ti (140-86 B.C.), a ruler of the Han dynasty, Confucianism was called upon to represent the official ideology of the state. Naturally, when the T ang ruler T ai-tsung was looking for a similar ideological system, his choice fell upon

The solution of the problem, however, did not lie m the mere selection of the constituents of the canon. The texts of these canonical books had suffered considerable change m the course of the eight centuries that had elapsed since the time of the Han philosopher lung

Chung-shu, who had confirmed the “Five Books” in their then existent composition in the year 136 B.C.

This meant that after the confirmation of the constituents of the canon, the establishment of their texts was called for. It was accomplished during the reign of the selfsame T’ai-tsung. The canonical editing of the “Five Books” was carried out by Yang Shih-ku, and the result was the Wu-ching ting-pen (The Five Books in the Official Version).

And still, this was not all. The previous history of the classics had given ample proof of the variety of interpretations to which they were liable. Consequently, work on the establishment of the canonical texts entailed the fixation of their canonical interpretation. This was undertaken by the second pillar of T’ang Confucianism, K’ung Ying-ta, who selected from the extensive storehouse of available versions those he regarded as corresponding as closely as possible to the general conception. In 641, a new edition appeared, known as Wu-ching cheng-i (The Five Books in the True Interpretation). ³

The doctrine was not created to the end that it might exist, but that it might gain control over people’s minds. The best means of achieving this was by teaching it in the schools. The study of the canon was the basis of the education given in the higher school of the empire—the university ⁴ of Ch’an-an, the capital. Thus, Confucianism became scholastics; it was taught in the educational institutions.

This clarifies for us the reason for the invective of the Sung scholars directed at the Confucianism of an epoch prior to their own: it was a protest against authoritarianism as a method of substantiating truth; against dogmatism as a principle of the perpetuity of the one and only verity; against exegesis as a method of studying the sources of truth; against scholasticism, with its abstractions and formalism, as a means of attaining to the truth. Considering the social position of the Sung philosophers, who were not state university professors but taught in their own private schools (shu-yuan), ⁵ it is only natural that they adopted a negative attitude to the officialising of philosophy and to its transformation into an instrument for governing, into an attribute of power.

^ How did the Sung philosophers accomplish the revival of “the heritage left by Confucius and Mencius”, as it is expressed in the Sung History? The answer to this question entails at least a brief account of the main principles of their philosophy. This has been done in a very concise but, as it seems to me, exhaustive form in the section indicated of the Sung History. It has proved of the greatest value to us, for we have learned from it the appraisal of the generation closest in time to the Sung thinkers.

Take_the first of the thinkers enumerated in it: Chou Tun-i (1017-1073), who “took up the forgotten teaching of the Perfect and

the Wise”, that is to say, began its revival. It was he who “discovered the Law (li) of Light and Shade (yin-yang) and of the Five Elements (wu-hsing); who showed that Heaven has its destiny (;tning), man—his nature (Using).”*

The second to initiate the renascence of philosophy was Chang Tsai (1019-1077), a contemporary of Chou Tun-i. He established that “there is one law, but its parts are diverse”.

Then came the brothers Ch’eng Hao (1032-1085) and Ch’eng I (1032-1107) who “carried on the work of Chou Tun-i”. What did they achieve? They “developed further the learning they had acquired from him”; they edited two books, the Ta-hsiieh and Chung-yiing, and placed them beside the Lun-yii and Meng-tzu. They were succeeded by Chu Hsi (1130-1200); “he acquired the true learning from the Ch’eng brothers and elaborated it in detail.” He placed “cognition of things—the creation of knowledge,” foremost and established the “revelation of Good—the unity of self with Truth”, as the most important of all.

In justice to the compilers of the Suug History, we must admit that hardly could so much have been expressed in so few words— in fact, the most essential of all that the Sung philosophers had accomplished.

The significant thing is what precisely they regarded as the most important. Chou Tun-i “discovered the Law of Light and Shade and of the Five Elements”. In our own words this means that he discovered the law of opposites and the primary elements of material nature. Let us look into this.

The existence of opposites, the visual expression of which are Light (yang) and Shade (yin), was observed in very ancient times and given its philosophical purport: the movement of opposites gave rise to “changes”, that is, all the various phenomena of existence. This was referred to in the I-ching (Book of Changes), one of the oldest examples of Chinese writing, in all probability compiled no later than the 7th century B.C. In antiquity it was understood, too, that only a few elements—the primary elements, so to speak, of material existence—lay beneath the immense variety of material nature. They were accounted to be five, and the nature of each was determined by means of things familiar to man: water, fire, wood, metal and earth, which were thus transformed into symbols of primary elements of material nature. They are also mentioned in another ancient Chinese book, the Shu-ching (Book'of History). Hence, the discovery of the opposites themselves, and of the five elements, does not belong to Chou Tun-i: he discovered their “law”.

The compilers of the Sung History seem to have taken pains that readers should learn at once where an explanation of this “law” might be found, and why it was the same for the “opposites” and tor the “five primary elements”. They mentioned two works by Chou Tun-i: T'ai-chi t'u sho (The Exposition of the Principle of the Great

Limit) and T'ung-shu (The Book of Penetration). It is sufficient to open the first-named for the author’s conception to be plainly seen. Light, one of the two opposites, is defined as “movement”: Shade, its opposite, as “rest”. ⁷ This is something new: no one before Chou Tun-i had as yet understood the opposites in this sense. The book continues to unfold the idea: “movement attains its limit and rest ensues”, “rest reaches its limit and movement begins anew”. This is new, too. The connection between the two opposites was known earlier, but the idea of the transition of one into another, a transition in the process of quantitative development of each, had not* been known before Chou Tun-i; at least, not in the form of a conception of the unity of these opposites, here formulated as: “Movement and rest constitute the roots of one another.”

As we have said, a conception of the primary elements of material nature was worked out in early antiquity. Later, it was concluded that these primary elements passed one into another. It was mentioned as far back as the 3rd century B.C. by Tsou Yan. But before Chou Tun-i no one had directly associated the conception of rotation of the primary elements with the conception of the. movement of opposites.

This was done by Chou Tun-i, moreover, in the most explicit form: “The Five Elements are in themselves Light and Shade”, he declared! tersely, adding, for the sake of clarity, that from light and shade emerged water, fire, wood, metal and earth. These things were born of the reciprocal action of light and shade. The action of light, that is, movement, found expression in “changing”,' the action of shade, that is, rest, in “uniting”. So opposites were characterised in an entirely new aspect.

From this it becomes obvious why the compilers of the Sung History considered Chou Tun-i’s greatest contribution to learning to he his “discovery of the Law of Light and Shade and of the Five Elements”. Observe, not “Light and Shade” as disparate from the “Five Elements”, but jointly as one. Besides, Chou Tun-i said, “these five categories of material nature are distributed everywhere and in this the four seasons are realised,” which means that the conception of process had now been introduced into the general scheme—moreover, in its spatial and temporal expression. It is typical that the four seasons of the year are taken to denote time. Evidently, this particular image lent itself most clearly not to the suggestion of the passing of time, but also—and this is more important—to the idea of transition. Employing the language of Chou Tun-i, one might say, “spring reaches its limit and summer begins; summer reaches its limit and passes into autumn”, and so on.

Thus, the movement of opposites taking place in material nature is a process in time and space, a dialectical process. Dialectics constitute the “law” formulated by the first philosopher of the Sung school, the first theoretical thesis that marked the beginning of the renascence of philosophy.

Hereupon the compilers of the Sung History make an additional observation: “Thus was it discovered that Heaven had its own destiny” (ming). What is the meaning of this?

Our translation is literal, but the use of the same words as in the original does not always convey the idea. Particularly in the given case, where words are used that have various meanings in Chinese. Space does not permit here of analysing the meaning of the words t'ien “heaven” and ming “destiny”. In the present instance the word t'ien, I should say, is used in the sense reflected in a word derived from it, t'ien-jan “by nature” or “naturally”. It would seem, then, that “sky” or “heaven” stands in this case for the image of what we would call “Nature” with a capital letter, as a category of being. The word ming may have the sense both of “command” and “destiny”. Destiny, which is natural to all being, is a kind of command inherent in it, an inner imperative of its process. Understood in this way, the words mean that Nature— that is, all that lives—has its own destiny. Does this not imply that the word ming signified what we express by the words “law” or “regularity”? Then the idea of the compilers of the Sung History becomes clear: the law of the dialectics of being reveals to us that it is not accidents hut laws that work in nature. It should be pointed out that the word li itself, translated as “law”, does not mean state law hut “law of nature”, “natural law”. The idea of imperativeness, of natural law, lies in this conception.

The compilers of the Sung History added that, following the discovery of “the Law of Light and Shade and of the Five Elements”, it became clear that not only did Heaven possess its own destiny, but that man also possessed his own nature. What did these words mean?

In his treatise T’ai-chi t'u sho, Chou Tun-i remarked that in the process of “reciprocal action of Light and Shade”, which entails the rotation of five primary elements, “all things”—objects in the material world —“are born and transformed”, and he adds that among them man is the “most spiritual” {ling). Let us consider this formula.

Undoubtedly, the word ling refers to something concerned with the category of spirit. Man, however, is spoken of only as the “most spiritual”, which implies that all other things are also spiritual to some degree. In other words, man as a spiritual creature is not detached from the whole material world, is not contrasted with “all things”, but only selected as outstanding among them. The idea of the unity of everything existing is found in another of Chou Tun-i’s formulae, where he speaks of “all affairs’. In juxtaposition with the term “all things”—all objects of being—this term means all that “happens”, that is, phenomena of being. Now, Chou Tun-i points out, in the first place, that “phenomena” arise in the process of interaction of the “five natures”, namely, the nature of each of the five primary elements, and, in the second place, that “Good

These are very remarkable words. It appears that the conceptions expressed in the words shan and o are applicable to every phenomenon of life: in their content they extend further than “good” and “evil”, as categories of man’s moral nature. If man, by his own nature, enters the orbit of “all things” (objects of being), then, through his own life, he belongs within the orbit of “all affairs”, or phenomena of being. At this point his “human limit”—the ideal of man, is established. This ideal, as is invariably the case in Confucianism, is embodied in the image of a perfect man (sheng-jen). “The five natures are interactive and, by dividing Good from Evil, all affairs appear. The Perfect Man affirms in them the mean, the right, the human, the proper; rest is made the master, and the human limit is established.”

The word jen, here translated as “human”, is the traditional term for the human principle in Chinese philosophy, the specific characteristic of the nature of man. The word i, translated as “the proper” and descended from ancient times, also denotes the sense of duty organically inherent in man. Hence the derivatives of this concept, such as “duty” and “justice”. Chou Tun-i, however, presents these concepts in another aspect: in T’ung-shu, another of his treatises, jen is referred to as “the force giving birth to things”, and i as “the action forming things”. These categories, which are present in the nature of man, extend to “all things”, in other words, they prove to be universal. Thus, the “human principle” in man, and his inherent sense of duty, are common to him and the whole of being. This conception seemed perfectly natural to Chou Tun-i, who built his teaching on the unity of all being, both “things” and “affairs”, and traced the entire content of these back to their source in being.

The passage from T'ai-chi t'u sho says that the perfect, or ideal, man affirms in himself not merely what is “human” and what is “proper”, but also the “mean” and the “right”. T'ung-shu elucidates this: what is called the “mean” is the “harmonious”; the “right” concerns the character, the quality of the manifestation in being of the “human” and of the “proper”.

Such, then, is the dialectical concept of Chou Tun-i. From this, the Sung History passes to Chang Tsai. The only work by this author mentioned in the History is the Hsi-ming (The Western Inscription). It appears that on the walls of Chang Tsai’s study hung two “inscriptions”—short philosophic poems. They were always before his eyes, one on the western wall, the other on the eastern. The Western Inscription earned more fame than the other. The Sung History considers that in this inscription Chang Tsai expressed most forcibly the principle “there is one law, but its parts are diverse.” Taking into account the general character of the exposition of the Sung doctrines in the History, it should be understood that its com-

pilers considered this principle as the second important stage—after Chou Tun-i—in the development of the Sung school.

At this point the unexpected happens: no such formula is to be found in Chang Tsai: it is neither in The Western Inscription nor in any other work from his hand. It actually belongs to Ch’eng I, the younger of the Ch’eng brothers. Something of this kind is found earlier, in the exposition of Chou Tun-i’s teaching: it is stated there that he “discovered the Law of Light and Shade and of the Five Elements”. As a matter of fact, though his exposition included everything concerning the two opposites and the five elements, he made no reference to the word “law”. This was introduced by the compilers of the Sung History.

It should be borne in mind that its compilers lived in an age when the history of the Sung school of philosophy had become a thing of the past and had taken the shape of a system. Therefore, these historians used in their judgements terms common to the entire system, thus emphasising its unity and the consecutiveness of the main principles of various representatives of their school. To denote the essence of the principle advanced by Chou Tun-i about the movement of opposites and primary elements, they employed the term “law” (li), which had been introduced into philosophical usage by Ch’eng Hao, the elder Ch’eng brother. ^

On similar grounds the authors of the Sung History affixed Ch’eng I’s formula to Chang Tsai’s principle. The last-named philosopher understood the course of being as “the transformation of primary matter” (ch'i-hua); these transformations, namely, different forms of material being, assumed their shape, he considered, during the process of “condensing” and “rarefying” that took place in primary matter. Such was Chang Tsai’s formula of opposites, which he substituted for his contemporary Chou Tun-i’s formula concerning “movement” and “rest”. If the general process, during which all forms of material being are born, consists of the condensing and rarefying of matter, these two must in their concrete realisation create various forms. Therefore, each “thing” possesses a dual nature—the general and the unique. Chang Tsai called the general nature “universal” (t’ienti-chih hsing), and the unique nature, the “material nature” (ch'ichih-chih hsing). In the context of their universal nature, all things are one; in the context of their unique nature, diverse.

The compilers of the Sung History observe: “After this it became perfectly clear and certain that the Great Source of the Way came from Heaven.” Let us examine this in the light of Sung philosophy and, in particular, that of Chang Tsai’s ideas. He applied the word “Way” (Tao) to the “transformation of primary matter”, that is, to the process of material being. The significance of the word “heaven for him, as for Sung philosophers in general, closely approaches that of our “nature”. From the standpoint of these categories, the words of the Sung History acquire a profound meaning: Chou Tun-i advanced the principle of being as a dialectical process and postulated the

unity of everything existing. But he did not clarify the point that, “all things” do not bear a resemblance to each other, that the concrete manifestations of being are diverse. This was clarified, the compilers of the Sung History considered, by Chang Tsai in his principle of the “dual nature’ of each thing. He spoke of diversity in unity and of unity in diversity, connecting all these in the general process (tao) of life. Consequently, the quotation from the Sung History simply means that after Chang Tsai it became perfectly clear and certain that the “Great Source of the Way”, namely, the priory impetus given to the process of being—in both its unity and its diversity—“came from Heaven”, namely, from Nature itself: this is a regularity inherent in it.

The Sung H istory tells-us further that the Ch’eng brothers, Ch’eng Hao and Ch’eng I, took over the work of Chou Tung-i.

ihe fact that the names of the Ch’eng brothers are coupled with that of Chou Tun-i, while Chang Tsai is omitted, attracts attention at once. It ought not to be understood as underestimation of Chang Tsai’s importance, but as an indication that the Ch’eng brothers were directly linked with Chou Tun-i too.

There is reason to believe that the authors of the Sung History saw the greatest contribution of Ch’eng Hao, the elder of the Ch’eng brothers, in applying the term “law” (li) to the principle of the transition of opposites. Therefore, let us look intot his part of his teaching.

Following in Chou Tun-i’s footsteps, Ch’eng Hao held to a concept of being as a “Way”, that is, a process consisting of the transition of opposites into each other. The core of this process, to his mind, lay in the “birth and formation” of forms of being— “all things” (objects) and “all affairs” (phenomena). His concept of the dialectics of this process was the rise of one and the disappearance of the other, and in this he discerned the “natural law”, the regularity inherent in the actual process.

Since every single “thing” differs from another, this general law is manifested in man in a special way. At this juncture, Ch’eng Hao stressed a thesis which stands out as one of the most essential features of the whole Sung philosophy. It was that of the specificity of human nature, namely, the manifestation in man of a form of being called jen—the humanistic principle; and since “man” and “all things” in their “universal nature”, in the plane of being, are one, then it follows that the humanistic principle is inherent in things, too.

In one of his philosophic epistles ⁸ Ch’eng Hao expressed himself even more explicitly: “Students (those who were studying philosophy, philosophers.—N. K.) should first of all be cognizant of jen; generally speaking, jen is identical with the ‘thing’.” When we recall Chou Tun-i’s words, quoted above, to the effect that jen is the force giving birth to things, it becomes evident that Ch’eng Hao did indeed carry on the work of his teacher. But the quotation should not

be concluded without the last words. Having written, “the humanistic principle is identical with the ‘thing’”, the author added: “The sense of duty, the sense of lawfulness, knowledge and truthfulness are also /era”, that is, the same humanistic principle. This sentence warrants closer examination.

The teaching of the five qualities or virtues of human nature is typical of the whole Sung philosophy. Inherent in this nature are essentially human characteristics: the quality of humaneness (/era) — the attitude to one’s self and to others as to a human being; the quality of dutifulness (i)— the endeavour to think, feel and behave as one should, as would be natural in each case; the quality of lawfulness (li)—the conception that life as a whole takes its course, of necessity, within a definite framework, regulated by norms inherent in it; the quality of knowledge (chih)—that is, the capacity for cognition and for bearing knowledge; the quality of inner truthfulness (hsin).

Now Ch’eng Hao, without hesitation, singles out from this chain, consisting, apparently, of equivalent values, the first link— the humanistic principle—and makes it cover all the rest. If we are to see in these five qualities the moral side of human nature, it appears that one of them—the humanistic principle, in the first place, sums up the remaining virtues; in the second place, it is common to man and all being. The humanistic principle, as Ch’eng Hao declares, is identical with every “thing”, that is, constitutes the essence of each object in existence.

What is essentially characteristic of Ch’eng Hao in this field, is his attitude to his teacher’s above-mentioned thesis—that “man is the most spiritual among all things”. In this connection, Ch’eng Hao observes in another epistle: Not only man has the utmost spirituality in the world. My soul is as the soul of grasses, trees, birds and beasts. Man is distinguished from all these solely in that he is born accepting the mean of Heaven-Earth.”⁹ The conception of this “mean”, as pointed out above, comes from Chou Tun-i, who advanced it in the form of a particular property in human nature, and placed it beside “rightness”. Ch’eng Hao also employs the conception of “rightness”, opposing it to something he names p'ien, a conception equally opposed to the “right” and the “mean”.

It is in the light of these two conceptions that Ch’eng Hao views the difference between the nature of “things” and of man: “man and things are only the right and the wrong in the primary matter (ch'i)”.¹⁰Thus his conception is clear: man and all that is living in nature are equally endowed with a “soul”, that is, with living properties, which belong to the matter itself (ch'i); they form one of the functions of matter. The whole difference between man and an object of nature amounts to the different degrees of the life principle in each.

Therefore, if we are to seek in Ch’eng Hao’s teaching the direction in which he “extended” the teaching of Chou Tun-i, we must, first of all, accept the following.

Ch’eng Hao has termed the dialectic character of the process of being described by Chou Tun-i “the natural law”, explaining that this “law” does not consist of some special essence from which all life is derived, but is something existing in the very phenomena of life—some property that makes each phenomenon precisely what it is, in other words, creates its “nature”. By this, he asserted that the “natural law” (li) and the “nature of things” (hsing) were one. The extent to which these conceptions became representative of the Sung philosophers’ line of thought is evidenced by the more widely known name of their teaching: hsing-li-hsueh¹¹—“the teaching of the natural law and the nature of things”.

The second element in which the extension of Chou Tun-i’s doctrine may be seen, was the assertion that hsin (the heart, or soul)—the psychic principle—is not peculiar to man alone: it is present in all objects of nature. Consequently, this “psychic principle” is xro other than “the life principle”, except that in man it is expressed comprehensively, not in a one-sided way, as in the case of “all things”.

The third direction taken by Ch’eng Hao’s extension of the teaching of Chou Tun-i was to assert that the life principle is the property of matter itself (ch’i). This is disclosed in the dialectic rotation of primary elements. Finally, the fourth direction: Ch’eng Hao resolutely raised the humanistic principle—the specific quality primarily of human nature—to the rank of a universal category, that is to say, spread it over every thing existing. The idea is expressed with vivid imagery and brilliance by Chang Tsai in the remarkable beginning of his Western Inscription: “Heaven is my father,

Whatever reigns in Heaven and Earth, is my nature. People are my brothers, things—my associates.”

It seems to me that the world outlook shared by Chang Tsai and Ch’eng Hao might be defined as pan-humanism.

In what way did Ch’eng I, the younger Ch’eng brother, “extend” the doctrine of their common teacher? The answer should be sought primarily in his formula “there is one law, but its parts are diverse”. It will be remembered that the authors of the Sung History regarded this principle as the major contribution of Chang Tsai.

The compilers of the History employed Ch’eng I’s formula “there is one law, but its parts are diverse” to define what they regarded as the most essential in Chang Tsai’s work. True, the latter did not express himself in exactly this way, but said, “matter (ch’i) is one, but its parts are diverse”. Both formulae were probably equivalent for the compilers of the Sung History, save that the second conveyed the essence of the first in a better way—better, that is, from the

standpoint of the system of Sung philosophy in general. The whole point, apparently, lies in the meaning given to the concept of “law”.

It is known that Ch’eng I devoted a considerable part of his life to the study of the I-ching (Book of Changes). His I-chuan, summing up his researches in that ancient book, became one of the most important works on the subject. That is why, in his philosophical language, he uses terms borrowed from the I-ching, among them hsiang.

We are in the habit of translating this word as “image” and taking it to mean the image of reality. But Ch’eng I joined this word to another, which we have already encountered—shih, meaning “affair’; this the Sung thinkers usually employed in the plural: chu-shih— “all affairs”. As explained above, this expression was customarily juxtaposed with “all things”. Therefore, since all things were objects of nature, “all affairs” must signify all that happens—phenomena of being. And since Ch’eng I uses the word hsiang (image), which in the Book of Changes means precisely all that exists in nature, and places it beside shih (affair), does this not mean that in his language shih-hsiang means precisely what other Sung philosophers term shih-wu, that is, the objects and phenomena of reality?

And thus we approach the central idea of the entire teaching of Ch’eng I: he regarded the hsiang or image, that is, “things”, forms of being, as the “most manifest” of all that exists; the law (li), as the “most secret”. So the most secret is law, the most obvious is the image. He says, “the law is substance, while affairs and images are accidence. They cannot be separated from each other. Affairs and law are a unity; substance and accidence have a single source.

There can be no doubt that the idea of opposing “law” and “reality” to each other in some way did not occur to Ch’eng I. This is clear because he saw the difference between them solely in that the first was the substance of the being, the second—accidence, that is to say, the form of manifestation of this substance. As to their unity, he said plainly: “Substance and accidence have a single source; between the manifest [reality] and the hidden [law] there is no

Yet it seems to me that this formula of Ch eng I s marks a turning-point in the philosophical thought of the Sung school. Haying advanced the concept of substance and accidence, he introduced into the Sung system of reasoning ontological categories, expressed, moreover, in the plane of logic. In this way, the rationalistic principle was introduced into Sung philosophical thought.

The very same “law” which the elder Gh’eng brother had conceived as a “natural law” became a rationalist category. If the younger Ch’eng brother is to be understood in this way, it must be admitted that he had indeed taken a step of immense importance along the path of affirming the rationalistic character of the Sung philosophers speculations.

The compilers of the Sung History note still another thing accom-6 3aKa3 .Ns 1380

plished by the Ch’eng brothers: they “edited” two ancient works, the Ta-hsiieh and the Chung-yiing, and placed them beside the Lun-yii and the Meng-tzu. Indeed, if we are to name the most important of all that the Ch’eng brothers had done, this editing must be put on a par with the transference of philosophical speculation onto rationalistic lines.

It is well known that two treatises, the Ta-hsiieh (The Great Learning) and the Chung-yung (The Doctrine of the Mean), were part of the Li-chi, one of the ancient “Five Books”. The Ch’eng brothers separated these two parts from the “Five Books”, revised them and published them as independent works. As we know, these treatises are in fact complete in content and general trend. The brothers not only separated them, but gave them a particular significance. The Aung History describes it eloquently in these words: they placed these two treatises “beside the Lun-yii and the Meng-tzu”. In this way, the “Four Books” (Ssii-shu) came into existence. New classics— the “Four Books”—had now appeared beside the old classics, the “Five Books”.

So accustomed have we grown to these classics that we forget that it is only since the Sung school that the “Four Books” have become as inseparable from Confucian philosophy as the “ Five Books”; we forget that the inclusion of Mencius in the classics was a truly revolutionary act. Throughout the period of later antiquityand earlier Middle Ages, until the 8th century, Mencius remained in the background. It was Han Yii who remembered him. Not only did he rescue Mencius from oblivion, he praised him as one of the great teachers of antiquity, who continued the work of Confucius himself. No special attention had been paid to the two short treatises included in the Li-chi; again, it was Han Yii who remembered the Ta-hsiieh in his most important work, a treatise entitled On the Way. Neither was the Lun-yii the centre of attention at any time; notwithstanding the reverence in which the compilers of the “ Five Books” (the first compilation of the classics) held Confucius, the Lun-yii was not included in it, while the Ch’un-ch'iu, another work connected with his name, found a place in this collection. Consequently, when the new classics were brought to the fore, this marked a turning-point in Confucian thought. Philosophers began to seek the key to wisdom, for the most part, in the “Four Books”, and _ not in the “Five Books”. As Chu Hsi wrote, '“If you desire to assimilate with ease, in all their simplicity, the writings of the Perfect and the Wise, to retain easily what they write in all their conciseness, you cannot do better than to read Ta-hsiieh, Lun-yii, Chung-yiing and Meng-tzu.” ¹⁴ He defined with great exactitude the mutual relations of these four works. “If you do not begin with the Ta-hsiieh, you cannot attain, grasping the most fundamental, the refinement and depth of the Lun-yii, and the Meng-tzu; if you have not read the Lun-yii and the Meng-tzu, you cannot reach, by passing them over, the Chung-yiing; if you have not reached the Chung-yiing, how are you to com-

prehend the Great Foundation, to read the book of the Celestial Empire and form judgements on the affairs of the Celestial Empire? Therefore, those who strive to acquire learning should study just these four treatises,” he writes in another place. ¹⁵

From this alone, it is clear that, in the opinion of Sung philosophers, the “Four Books” were more than a collection of remarkable philosophical thoughts of antiquity; they formed the key to all ancient wisdom. Hence, could any doubt remain that this was not only a turning-point, but a radical turning-point, in philosophical thought? There can be no doubt that the renascence of antiquity at this stage signified a complete revolution in ideas. Previous to the Sung philosophers, Confucianism was built upon the “Five Books”, but beginning from this period, it was built upon the “Four Books”. The compilers of the Sung History knew well what they were doing when, in their extremely concise survey of the Sung philosophy, they mentioned the creation of the “Four Books” among the most important achievements of that school. ¹⁶

From the Ch’eng brothers, the Sung History passes to Chu Hsi, beginning with the information that the latter “accepted the true tradition of learning from theCh’eng brothers and supplemented it with the utmost care”. What was the sum and substance of this supplementary work?

From the point of view of the compilers of the History, the answer is as follows: Chu Hsi gave an elucidation of the “foremost” (hsien) in learning and the “most important” (yao) in it. The foremost was “cognition of things—the mastering of knowledge”; the most important was “the revelation of good and the bringing of one’s self to the truth.”

The formula “cognition of things—the mastering of knowledge” (ke-wu chih-chih) is drawn from the Ta-hsiieh. Chu Hsi tells us in his commentary to this treatise: “The wise Ch’eng in his day explained what was meant by the ‘cognition of things—the mastering of knowledge’, but at the present time this explanation is lost. Basing my knowledge on what I once heard from the wise Ch’eng, I replace that which was lost.” He did this as follows.

“What does ‘the mastering of knowledge through cognition of things’ mean? It means that to master ’ knowledge, one must so concentrate on a thing as to ascertain its law. For man possesses the spiritual knowledge of his own heart, and the things of the Universe possess their law. If this law is not grasped, knowledge is insufficient. Therefore, the Ta-hsiieh teaches us to urge the student towards the concentration on some one thing of the Universe, so that, on the basis of his cognition of its law, he may advance further and further along this path until he reaches its end. When these efforts have been applied for a long time, some day all that belongs to things—their obverse and reverse sides, the line and the coarse in them—all will become illumined and clear to our heart, both in

their essence (substance) and in their manifestation (accidence). This, then, is cognition of things, this is the mastering of knowledge.” ¹⁷

How are we to assess this explanation? “Thing” is the term habitually used by Sung philosophers to denote objects of nature. It is quite possible they might mean what in other cases they call “affairs”, that is, the phenomena of reality, in which case the question would be one of cognition of all reality. It need not surprise us that the purpose of cognition of each “thing” is its law: this category was advanced by the Ch’eng brothers, who gave an elucidation of it that was subsequently accepted by all the Sung philosophers, in the first place by Chu Hsi. The most striking point here is that in order to attain cognition of the law of a thing one must first concentrate on it, and proceed in this state of concentration from one thing to another. Ought we not to discern in this the idea that knowledge is acquired through experience, rationalistic perhaps, but still experience? That it is precisely the accumulation of experience that leads to knowledge? Once such a conception is accepted, it must be acknowledged that in Chu Hsi’s theoretical-cognitive conception rationalism is not contradictory to empiricism, but united with it.

Chu Hsi is not content with just this empiricism, however. Pure empiricism in the theory of knowledge, taking knowledge to mean solely what has been learnt from experience, must needs admit the attainment of complete knowledge as impossible. Complete knowledge would require the cognition of all that exists, and this is impracticable. But it was precisely empirical knowledge that the Sung philosophers had in mind, and that was why they were obliged to say that it was attainable and to explain how it could be attained even with limited experience. Chu Hsi explained it in these words: “Man possesses the spiritual knowledge of his own heart, and the things of the Universe possess their law.” His idea is not difficult to grasp if one remembers the famous formula of his teacher, Ch’eng I: “There is one law, but its parts are diverse.” In this formula, as we have already pointed out, Ch’eng I wanted to stress, on the one hand, the unity of all that exists and, consequently, of man and natural objects, and, on the other hand, the concrete, physical diversity of all that exists. Evidently, the Sung philosophers could not have admitted it as possible for man to attain cognition of objects external to him, unless they had postulated the basic unity of the individual who perceives with the object perceived. This offered an explanation only of the possiblity of cognition. A further thesis was required of the possibility of acquiring full knowledge — “reaching the end”, as Chu Hsi expressed it. According to his teaching, this end is attained automatically, as it were. Accumulation of experience—necessarily a large accumulation, as he stated emphatically—must inevitably lead some day to the clarifying of all things, both from “their obverse and reverse sides” and “in their substance and accidence”. Apparently, this should be understood to

mean that experience would be followed by intuition, which, coming into action at this juncture, would fill the gaps in experience. The intuitive path to cognition is rendered possible by the fact that “man possesses the spiritual knowledge of his own heart”, that is to say, all-embracing knowledge is intrinsic in man’s nature.

The theoretical-cognitive conception stated by Chu Hsi is thus made clear. The world can be known by man in the categories of reason; the way of knowing objectively existing reality is experience. This means that every single thing may be known by concentrating on it as such. Knowledge is made up of experience, but this experience should be as wide as possible; at a certain level of experience, intuition comes into action and fills in the gaps in experience. But without the background of experience, which, as Chu Hsi emphasises, must be wide, intuition is unable to do its work. It is experience that lies at the basis of the whole process of knowledge. Such, as far as I can see it, is the gnosiological conception of Chu Hsi.

But how is one to understand him when he declares that he reestablishes what Ch’eng I once said and what was afterwards lost? In one of Ch’eng I’s philosophic epistles we find a statement of this process that bears a resemblance to Chu Hsi’s, but still is not the same: “A man asked me, what is the first thing in the practice of self-improvement? I answered: ‘The first thing is to make your heart right, to bring your thoughts to the truth. The way to bring your thoughts to the truth lies through cognition of things. Within each lies its own law. To this law you must penetrate.’ Then the man asked me, what does that mean—cognition of things? Must one know all things? Or does the knowledge of one thing give us knowledge of all laws? To this I replied: ‘How can one know all things? Today you will know one; tomorrow, another, and when the accumulation of knowledge is large enough, then you will penetrate at once into all things.’”¹⁸

As will be easily seen, Chu Hsi’s words contain a good deal of what reproduces Ch’eng I, but Chu Hsi adds something of his own to his teacher’s words, and makes essential alterations in others.

His additions consist in explaining how it is possible, by passing from the cognition of one thing to the cognition of another, to attain to complete knowledge without studying all things. Ch’eng I merely declared it possible in general, but did not explain why this should be so. Chu Hsi did this by introducing intuition into the process of knowledge. Here, indeed, he added something to Ch’eng I’s teaching. But in another instance he says the exact opposite to Ch’eng I’s words in the epistle quoted above. Ch’eng I was asked a direct question: wherein lay the first step on the path of learning? He gave a direct answer: first of all, in making the heart right, and bringing one’s thoughts to the truth. But it can be clearly seen from Chu Hsi’s words that he accorded the foremost place to cognitive work. The only conclusion, then, that we can draw—if we are to

believe him when he claims to be re-stating the ideas of Ch’eng I — is that some time after Ch’eng I wrote this epistle, he altered his own conception. The change is a significant one: it appears as though Ch’eng I, after stating in the beginning that the first step on the path of learning was to attain a definite moral and intellectual height, later admitted that this first step should be the acquirement of knowledge.

This is not the place to go into the question of whether Ch’eng I really changed his views or not; Chu Hsi’s thesis fits well into Ch’eng I’s general conception. After all, the latter said himself that the cognition of things should proceed in the order of one thing today, another tomorrow. That is why it seems to me that the compilers of the Sung History explained it all in the best way: the acquirement of knowledge is the first, but not the most important step. The attainment of the moral and intellectual height is the most important. Consequently, knowledge is not an end in itself, but only a means; the end is perfection in man.

Another thing that strikes us is that the writers of the History define this perfection in man in a different way to that of Ch’eng I: according to Ch’eng I’s formula, the heart must be right, the thoughts true, if one is to attain to such a quality. The historians’ formula is “to reveal the good and bring one’s self to the truth”. A difference exists, an important difference.

In his formulae, Ch’eng I closely followed the Ta-hsiieh, where a whole series of links, consecutively connected with each other, is given: “...When cognition of things is reached, knowledge is created; when knowledge is created, thoughts are brought to the truth; when thoughts are brought to the truth, the heart becomes right; when the heart has become right, the personality of man becomes valid; when the personality is valid, the welfare of the family is assured; when the welfare of the family is assured, the state is fittingly administered; when the state is fittingly administered, peace reigns in the world.” When Ch’eng I said that it was of the greatest importance to have the heart right and the thoughts in accord with the truth, he was expressing himself in the exact words of the Ta-hsiieh. Chu Hsi, the Sung History pointed out, defined the “most important” in other words: the revelation of good and the bringing of man towards the truth.

Different though the words are, I think that the idea Ch’eng I expressed in the words of the Ta-hsiieh, and the idea of Chu Hsi conveyed in the Sung History, are synonymous: “to make the heart right” is the same as “to reveal goodness in one’s self”. Mencius insisted that good is the inherent attribute of human nature itself, and man should reveal this attribute.

In no way does this contradict the ideas of the Ta-hsiieh. At the very beginning of this treatise, it is said that the content of the Great Teaching (Ta-hsiieh) lies in the revelation of the bright qualities of human nature, in leading people ever towards the new and the

abiding in a state of “the Highest Good”. The “heart” can be regarded as another name for “human nature”; therefore, “to make the heart right” can really mean the same thing as to reveal in one’s self bright qualities, those that lead to good. Chu Hsi’s formula, as given in the Sung History, defines the most important in learning by means of the category of Good; the most important proves to be the attainment of a high moral level.

But this is only one part of the “most important”, the second is “to bring one’s self to the truth”, and here Chu Hsi expresses himself in a way that differs from the Ta-hsiieh; the latter speaks of bringing one’s thoughts, and not one’s self, to the truth. In this instance, I think, Chu Hsi has drawn a natural conclusion from the premise: bringing thought to such a state that it will be adequate to the truth transforms the whole personality of a man. In the ultimate analysis, “the most important” is not only a high moral level, but also a high intellectual level; in other words, the aim of learning lies in the attainment of a comprehensive development of the human personality, assessed in the light of the categories of Goodness and Truth, that is to say, the categories of ethics and reason.

This was the path followed ' y the new philosophical school; these were the principles it declared and upheld in the exposition of the Sung History, that is to say, in the appraisal of succeeding generations. The concluding words of this work provide a definite statement of all that this meant from the standpoint of history. Finishing the description of Chu Hsi’s contribution, the historians write: “It was then that the learning of Shih and Shu, the Six Arts, the counsels of Confucius and Mencius—all that had been cast into the Ch’in flames, torn to shreds by the Han scholars, plunged into oblivion in the Wei and Liu-ch’ao times — was revealed in all its clarity and brilliance, and all was accorded its proper place.” Thus have the Sung scholars reached out over the heads of thinkers of preceding epochs, to direct contact with Mencius.

Brief though the definition is, it gives all the essentials. Mencius died in 289 B.C. A comparatively short time after his death— in 221, to be exact—the first all-embracing Chinese state was formed, the Ch’in Empire. Its first ruler, the Emperor Ch’in Shih Huang-ti, began his reign with harsh measures against scholars, in particular those of the Confucian school, at the instigation of his Prime Minister, Li Ssu (as the tradition goes). The learned men were buried alive, their works burned. Hence the term “the Ch’in flames”. In a comparatively short time, in the year 206, the Ch’in dynasty fell and the House of Han began to rule.

These rulers adopted a different attitude to Confucianism: not only did they cease persecution of the doctrine, but raised it to the level of a state ideology. It was then that the plan involving immense labour was launched for the search and restoration of manuscripts of the previous epoch, particularly those known in the Confucian

tradition as ching, or foundations of the whole doctrine. Upon this basis the famous Han philology arose; a parallel instance of this kind may be found, in the history of Western learning, in the Alexandrian school of philology, which made a study of the texts of ancient manuscripts. This philological work, which necessitated concentration on the textological side, overshadowed the subject-matter. Consequently, the latter hardly came in for study; the same applies to the study of the system of ideas contained in the manuscripts a sa whole.

Moreover, the difficulty of the work itself required narrow specialisation on the part of those engaged in research. Philologists often confined their labours to the study of some particular manuscript and this became a characteristic feature of Han philology. It must have been this that the authors of the Sung History had in mind when they spoke of learning “torn to shreds” by the Han scholars. In succeeding ages, which the historians call the Wei and Liu-ch’ao times (the dynasties of the 3rd to 6th centuries A.D.), worse was to befall the “true learning”: it was consigned to oblivion. Not until the day of Chou Tun-i and Chang Tsai in the 11th century, and later the Ch’eng brothers and Chu Hsi, was this learning presented once more in all its brilliance. Could there be more convincing proof of the conception formed by people of the 14th century that a new epoch had begun in the 11th century, a truly Renaissance epoch?

This appraisal reflected the long-standing opinion of the historical importance of the Sung school. In 1175 the first collection of_the most significant works by Chou Tun-i, Chang Tsai, and the Ch’eng brothers appeared. This collection was compiled by Chu Hsi and Lii Po-kung (Tung-lai) for the use of “those beginning the study”, as the first-named says in his preface. This collection, known as the Tsin ssu-lu, treated of That Which Should Be Meditated upon Directly, and soon became widespread among the numerous philosophical circles of the Sung epoch. The high respect in which it was held is evident from the fact that during the administration of Tsing-ti (1125-1265), Yeh Ts’ai, a scholar of that time, presented it with his own commentaries to the emperor himself. In the accompanying address (piao), he wrote:

“Mencius died, and the teaching of the Law was consigned to oblivion. In the time of Li Ssu fire flamed and almost all the books vanished. In Han times work was conducted solely upon texts and their interpretation. In T’ang times high-flown words and intricate artistic imagery were what made scholars, and learning became quite fragmentary.

“Then Heaven opened for us the age of Sung power. The five luminaries (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn—heavenly bodies allegedly influencing the course of history.—N. K.) gathered in the constellation of K’uei (Andromeda; an augury of the great flowering of learning.—N. K.). Enlightened rulers have followed

successively and administration has taken the course of the ancient kings. A multitude of scholars have appeared and learning in all its grandeur has shone out in its true tradition.”

From the Sung History it appears that the epoch of the ^Reijais-^ance—at all events in philosophical thought—begins with the 11th century. Other dates, however, may be found in the works ol the Sung school. For example, in the above-mentioned Tsin ssu tu, in the 14th section, which is on “the Perfect and the Wise” of bygone days Han Yu (765-824) is mentioned as the first of eminent scholars of the “new times”, the first after the long interruption that took place in what was known as the “Middle Ages”. What are we to make

To obtain a clear understanding of all the information in the Sung History, it should be borne in mind that it was conceived throughout as a chronicle of purely Sung times, in other words, it kept within the bounds of the chronology of the Sung Empire and could not extend further, therefore, than the period from JoO to 147ft. This was not so in regard to other sources.

It is of particular interest to us to find in the 12th century, that is during the Sung Empire, the names of eminent philosophers and writers of both T’ang and Sung times, mentioned side by side, this coupling of names occurs, for instance, in the Ku-wen kuan-chien (The Key to the Portal of Ancient Literature), by the above-mentioned Lii Po-kung (1137-1181), Chu Hsi’s contemporary and friend. In this collection, he included the works regarded as most important in his day, by eight authors: two of T’ang times and six ot Sung times. The T ’ang authors were Han Yii (765-824) and Liu Tsung-yuan (773-819) The Wenchang kueifan (Examples of Fine Literature), a somewhat later work, but still dating from the Sung period and compiled by Hsieh Fang-te (1226-1289), includes works by both T ang and Sung writers; foremost among them are Han and Liu lsung-yuan. So well established was this habit of coupling of names that it gave rise to the conception “The Eight Great Writers of 1 ang and Sung” (T'ang Sung pa ta-chia). The Sung philosophers obviously saw the outset of what was to develop into the renascence of the true learning as early as the T’ang epoch and traced its source to Han Yu.

Here it should be pointed out that this scholar is considered the forerunner of the Sung philosophers in almost all the scientific histories of Chinese philosophy written by scholars of China and Japan in modern times, that is, the second half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century. This appears to me indisputable.

First of all, we find that, previous to the Sung thinkers, Han Yii declared that the tradition of true learning was interrupted far back in antiquity, on the death of Mencius. Han Tu, who gives an exposition in his treatise, Yuan tao, of the path pursued by learning

in antiquity and follows it up to Confucius, concludes with the words: “Confucius transmitted it (the “Way”.— N. K.) to Mencius Mencius died, and after him none took up this teaching.”¹⁹

.Han Yu’s position is highly significant. A professor of Ch’ang-an University, where he taught Confucianism, he makes no mention of the material on which his instruction was based—the Wu-ching chmg-i (Th_e Five Books in the True Interpretation), that is to say, the collection of classics compiled by K’ung Ying-ta. Consequently, it appears that Han Yu rejected wholly the Confucianism of the Han dynasty, that of “Wei and Liu-ch’ao times” and also that of his own day. It appears, then, that in his evaluation of Confucianism both of later antiquity and of the Middle Ages, Han Yu was undoubtedly the predecessor of the Sung philosophers.

He was their predecessor, too, in regarding as the main source ot “true learning” not only the teaching that arose in distant antiquity and was reflected in the “Five Books”, but also the teaching that stemmed directly from Confucius and was continued faithfully by Mencius. If we add to this his special attention to the Ta-hsueh ^an<1 \\?img-yung, so clearly demonstrated in his treatise On the Wau it will be evident that he had already marked out the path for the creation of the future “Four Books”. ²⁰

The character of Han Yii’s work shows him to be the predecessor ol the hung philosophers. The task he set himself was not that of writing commentaries on the classics, but of elaborating the ideas underlying their works. In other words, he considered that the revival oi the true Confucian tradition might take place not by way of exegesis and hermeneutic exposition, but by way of philosophy, as free creative thought. The work of all the] Sung philosophers followed the same principle. Hence, Han Yu’s work took the same forms as we find in the Sung school—treatises, articles and epistles

Like the philosophers of this school, Han Yii advanced and elaborated problems of great importance. His three principal works— the treatise On Man (Yuan fen), On the Way (Yuan tao), On the Jxature of Man (Yuan hsing)—indicate, even by their titles, which philosophical problems be considered to be the most essential. In this he proved again to be a predecessor of the Sung school.

He was the first to advance the idea that man is the highest of all that exists. He says plainly in his treatise On Man, “Man is the highest of all that lies between Heaven and Earth.” Man is contrasted with “all the rest”: birds and beasts, and also “savages”. Evidently, Han Yu s idea of man is not merely physical but also qualitative, since the philosopher contrasts him not only with birds and beasts but also with the “savage”. As the highest of all that exists, man is the “master” (chu) of the existing things, and is so because he possesses “man’s way”. A definition of what this way consists in is found in another treatise, On the Way: man’s way is realisa-tion-ol the fundamentallfquality of man’s nature—the “human principle”, or humanism.

An explanation has already been given here of how, precisely, the Chinese word jen should be understood. It was likewise pointed out that various meanings might be attached to the conception of the “human principle”. Therefore, it is significant that Han Tii elucidated the meaning of the word at the very beginning of his treatise: the human principle in man is “love for all” (po ai). _

This conception of the human principle undoubtedly contains an element of “the return to antiquity” (fu-ku)—the idea that Han Tii, and also Liu Tsung-yuan, who shared his views in this sphere, regarded as the most important of all for their time. Confucius, when asked what jen was, replied simply: “love for man”. Yet Han Yu’s words cannot be taken as a simple repetition of Confucius. Han Yu knew the Lun-yiz, where Confucius’ answer is recorded, and could have repeated it literally. The “return to Confucius” is reflected, in this instance, in only one part of the answer, the word “love”. Confucius applied it to man, Han Yu applies it to all. The words “love for all” mean primarily “love for people”.

This is clear from the entire content of the treatise On the Way. The whole spirit of Han Yii’s teaching lies in the idea that people should care for each other, pay attention to each other. Special emphasis is laid upon the necessity for taking care of those who particularly require help: widows, orphans, sick people, and so on. But in the treatise On Man, Han Yii advances the proposition that man is the master of all living creatures. If so, then the basic quality of his nature, the human principle, extends its activity to these, since a man must be humane not only to people hut also to “beasts and birds”. Does it not follow from this that the expression po ai should be interpreted not as “love for all men”, but “love for all things ? Provided that this is the case, Han Yii may be considered the predecessor of the Sung philosophers in their conviction that the “human principle” is the highest category of all manner of being—consequently,

Han Yu’s third basic theme, as we have already mentioned, was “the nature of man”, the title of his treatise. He defines the presence of three categories in human nature. One, he calls “good”; another, “good and evil intermingled”; the third, “evil”. Can we not connect him with the Sung philosophers in this sphere, too? After all, they postulated the conception of two natures in man: one, the primary, fundamental, common to all being, conditioned by the “law” of being; the other, material, conditioned by the material nature of being. Like Han Tii, the Sung school, by postulating the “dual nature”, aimed at solving the problem of good and evil in man-— of understanding the nature of man in the ethical aspect.

Li Ao, who studied under Han Yii, should also be regarded as a predecessor of the Sung philosophers. His chief work, The Return to One's Nature (Fu-hsing-shu), is a philosophical treatise, in form like those of Han Yii. It deals with the same subject, human nature, in the same plane: the manifestation in it of two piinci-

pies, good and evil. Li Ao finds his own solution of the problem. He thinks that, as Mencius said in his time, human nature is fundamentally good, but that emotions are inherent in this nature and they may be both good and evil. According to traditional Chinese psychology there are seven emotions: joy, wrath, grief, gaiety, love, hatred and desire. Li Ao considers that the appearance of evil in man depends upon the influence of emotion. He offers a whole conception m order to explain how it is possible for the emotions of a man with primordial good in his nature to be evil Human nature is good basically-“in the state of repose”, to use Li Ao’s expression. When it is aroused or, as Li Ao puts it, “in movement” that is, when disturbed by emotion, then both good and evil are possible, ror this reason, man should endeavour to repress the lalse movements ’ of his emotions and strive in general to maintain a state of “repose”, that is to say, impassivity.

When we remember how much space the Sung philosophers devoted to the problem of emotions in their judgements, and when we remember Chou fun-i, who spoke of the superiority of repose in the dyad “repose-movement”, then it becomes evident that Li Ao was also among the predecessors of the Sung school. It is of interest too that he devoted a great deal of attention to the Chung-yiing; p’artly for the elucidation of his premises, partly to reaffirm them, he refers frequently to this ancient work. For instance, he considers that the well-known formula contained in this work, “the law of Heaven is indeed human nature”, refers to the same thing as his own theory of good being a primordial quality of man’s nature^ Li Ao discerns in the words of the Chung-yiing “the directing of one s own nature-this is the Way”, the same principle of repressing “false movements” of emotion that he himself advanced.

As noted above, Han Yii paid a great deal of attention to the Ta hsuehm his treatise On the Way. And from the treatise written by his disciple we see how much attention he paid to the Chung-yiing- This is further proof of the fact that at the time when Han Yii and Li Ao lived, the ancient works from which the “Four Books” were to be compiled in future occupied the foremost place in philosophical thought.

A more detailed exposition of the teaching of Han Yii and Li Ao cannot be given here, but enough has been said, I think, to render it clear why, in his work Tsin-ssu-lu, Chu Hsi named Han Yii as the first among the philosophers of the epoch closest to himself, to be associated with the revival of the true learning. It follows that the initial stage of the Renaissance, at any rate in the field of philosophical thought, should date from the time of Han Yii—the second half of the 8th century and the first quarter of the 9th century.

But what about the end of the epoch? After describing the Sung times, the Sung History was brought to a close. This is natural enough; it is clear, however, that the new philosophical thought awakened in the 8th century and flourishing from the 11th

to the 12th, did not decline automatically with the fall of the Sung Empire at the end of the 13th century. Even after the country’s subjugation by the Mongols, Chinese society could not be torn away brusquely and totally from all that had constituted its life until then. The advance in Sung times of philosophical thought, a movement which had created an epoch, continued to develop in lively discussions, which is the clearest proof that it continued to exist and, moreover, to show no signs of stagnation.

These controversies on questions of basic principle began, by the way, in Chu Hsi’s lifetime, at the close of the Sung epoch. Moreover, the active intellectual life of this man, who may be said to have brought the system of thought to culmination, was marked by frequent clashes with opponents of his ideas. The foremost of these was Lu Hsiang-shan, a younger contemporary (1139-1191).

(li). But Chu Hsi took this no further; he directed all his attention to the actual process unfolding in being, and in this he included “matter” (ch'i), in which the “law” was manifested. It will be seen from this that Chu Hsi displayed an inclination, from his rationalist position, to adopt a materialistic interpretation of the external world as objectively existing. As regards the gnosiological aspect, he tended to admit the possibility of the full cognition of this world through human consciousness.

Lu Hsiang-shan opposed this theory, advancing a totally different conception: “The human soul is the law itself.” This was his basic premise. But if “the soul is the law”, and “all that the world contains is only the law”, as he held, then “the world is my soul; my soul is the world”. “All that takes place in the world is that which takes place in me; whatever takes place in me is that which takes place in the world”—such were the formulae stemming from the basic premise. ²¹ Lu Hsiang-shan did not stop there. It was now necessary to determine of what that same world consisted. The word yii-chou—“world” or “universe” in Chinese, is made up of two components. In his explanation of the concept of the world, Lu Hsiang-shan said: “The four sides, above and below, are yii; the past and the future are chou.” This means that he conceived the world in its spatial and temporal aspects, and it is in this plane that he asserted: “The world is my soul; my soul is the world. And those Perfect Ones who appeared in all preceding ages are identical with this soul, and identical with this law. And those Perfect Ones who will appear in succeeding ages are identical with this soul and identical with this law.” ²² Sufficient has been quoted to show that Lu Hsiang-shan’s rationalism was built upon an idealistic basis. He refused to acknowledge the objective (in the ontological sense) existence of the world, and fully identified this world with his own consciousness.

This radical divergence, in the ontological aspect, in his views and those of Chu Hsi,led to divergence in gnosiology. Chu Hsi thought

the path¹ to knowledge lay through cognition; the object of cognition was the external world, cognition in itself meant “concentrating on the thing and grasping its law”. Lu Hsiang-shan, who thought that the whole world was contained in the human soul and this soul was the world, affirmed, naturally enough, that knowledge was contained in one’s self; therefore, cognition of the world meant cognition of one’s self.

These standpoints, differing so widely from each other, determined the difference in philosophical methods characteristic of the two thinkers. Chu Hsi, who thought he should attain cognition of things “through their law”—that is, in a purely rationalistic way— sought this cognition in ideas; the material of these ideas he found in the classics, both the ancient “Five Books” and the new “Four Books”. He never ceased to study them and the results of his studies took the form of treatises on themes from these classics or commentaries to them. Lu Hsiang-shan, in whose opinion all that had been said by the Perfect Ones was in the soul of man, had the right to declare: “...Learning ... since I know the fundamentals, then all six classics are commentaries on me.” ²³ Indeed, Lu Hsiang-shan left no writings of his own; all we know of his teaching is recorded by his disciples. When one of them asked his teacher why he did not write his commentaries on the classics, the answer was, “The six classics are commentaries on me, why should I write commentaries on the six classics?” ²⁴

Yet, though the two contemporary philosophers held divergent views in the fields of ontology and gnosiology, their conceptions coincide in one respect: the treatment of the meaning of /ere—the human principle. It has already been pointed out that Chu Hsi discerned “two natures” in man, the basic and the material. The presence of these stems from the general theory that all being is the action of “law” and “matter”. The fundamental nature reflects “law”; the material, “matter”. Chu Hsi defines the first as “truth”, and that which is called “truth” on the gnosiological plane is called “good” on the ethical plane. But in human nature this “good” is realised in “four qualities”: humanity, sense of duty, sense of lawfulness, knowledge. The first of these is the most important. “Humanity” in his interpretation is the “law of love”.

According to Chu Hsi, the category of the “human principle”, humanism as the essence of human nature, through the ethical category of “good” stems from the gnosiological category of “truth”, and through that from the ontological category of “law”. Lu Hsiang-shan states plainly: “The human principle—this is the soul, this is the law.”

In short, despite all possible divergences in other things, the Sung thinkers agree in raising man, as the embodiment of high moral principle, to the centre of all being. Strictly speaking, it is in this, precisely, and not in all manner of cogitating upon “law”, “matter”, etc., that the socially significant essence of this trend of

philosophical thought lies. In this respect, the Sung school follows the tradition of Han Yu, who put the whole idea in a perfectly concrete form: “The human principle is love for all.”

From the foregoing it will be clear that the Sung History's exposition of the lines along which the philosophy of the Sung school developed, does not cover all the philosophers who belonged to it. At all events, we must add the name of Lu Hsiang-shan to those mentioned in the History (Chou Tun-i, Chang Tsai, Ch’eng Hao, Ch’eng I, Chu Hsi). There is not the slightest doubt that Lu Hsiang-shan belonged to this school.

It should be pointed out that his ideological opponent, Chu Hsi, was also of this opinion. In one of his works he mentions Lu Hsiang-shan’s teacher, goes on to speak of the person from whom the latter learned the teaching, and traces Lu Hsiang-shan to Ch’eng Hao. This is true: Lu Hsiang-shan’s starting point was taken from the last-named philosopher, who said: “All phenomena in the world are the law.” This formula was repeated almost word for word by Lu Hsiang-shan: “All that the world contains is only one law.” Since Chu Hsi regarded himself as a disciple of Ch’eng I, it is clear that already in his time the presence of two distinct lines was recognised in philosophical thought, one stemming from Ch’eng Hao, the other, from Ch’eng I. Why, then, was no mention made of Lu Hsiang-shan, a philosopher living in Sung times, in the Sung History?

It seems to me that the reason for the omission is this: the compilers of the History mentioned only the Ch’eng I—Chu Hsi line because it was along this line that the completion of the whole system was attained consecutively, without exceeding the limits of its fundamental premises. It was Chu Hsi who elaborated various aspects of philosophical thought manifested by his predecessors, in an attempt to bring them into agreement and association with one another. In Chu Hsi’s teaching the philosophical thought stemming from Chou Tun-i reached its culmination. At that time the theories of Lu Hsiang-shan had not been further developed. This took place much later, and his line of thought attained its culmination in the teaching of Wang Yang-ming (1472-1526) at the end of the 15th and the beginning of the 16th century.

The historians were justified, therefore, in not mentioning Lu Hsiang-shan. They omitted to mention many other thinkers of the Sung epoch; some, though undoubtedly deserving of attention, had not marked any definite stage in the development of the leading school of the time. But philosophical thought went further, particularly along the line represented in the views of Lu Hsiang-shan. As we have said, it reached its maximum development at the end of the 15th century. The fact that both thinkers were of the same trend Was so obvious to later generations that the whole line was named the “Lu—Wang school”. The opposite trend is often known as the

Cli’eng_Chu school. In the course of time these two schools developed, "and at a later period rivalled each other. .

Wang Yang-ming pursued Lu Hsiang-shan s principles to their logical end. Like Lu Hsiang-shan, he upheld the premise that the “soul is the law”. Like him, Wang Yang-ming considered that the soul already possessed all knowledge and, for that reason, the process of cognition consisted in self-cognition. With still stronger conviction he declared that it was not man who explained the classics, but the classics that explained man. But he continued his teaching of inner knowledgeto its logical end, asserting that inherent knowledge was good, not in the sense of being the opposite of evil, but m the sense of loftiness or perfection. His term Hang chih may also be translated as “beautiful knowledge”. Like Lu Hsiang-shan, he spoke of “knowledge” and “action”, but unlike his predecessor, who asseverated “cognition first, then action , Wang Yang-ming advanced the principle “knowledge and action are one . 1 his principle acquired so great a significance that his followers considered it as in some way embracing the whole of his philosophy, which as a consequence acquired a shade of what we call voluntarism. It is necessary to refer here to certain movements among the people, including uprisings, headed by the followers of Wang Yang-ming. They argued: since we know that something is wrong it is our duty

History has plainly shown the social destiny of these two schools, the Ch’eng—Chu and the Lu—Wang. The Chu Hsi school took priority until the 17th century, when it was attacked by what was known as the critical school (K'ao cheng hsiieh). But Lu Hsiang shan’s school always remained somewhat in the background; m the subsequent struggle between different social trends it played a more prominent part, but only as one of the weapons employed by the opponents of the Chu Hsi doctrine. A new stage m the history of philosophical thought in China is associated with the above-mentioned “critical school”, which became the ideological basis of the Chinese Enlightenment. The role played by the Lu—Wang school in Japan in the 17th and 18th centuries, as a weapon m the struggle against the Chu Hsi school, was the same as in China. In this case, however, Japanese Enlightenment philosophy was not built up on the basis of the “critical school”, as in China, where schools were basically philological, but on experience of natural science borrowed from Europe.

Earlier in this article the question was posed: wherein could the end be discerned of the philosophical thought which arose m China in the 8th century, the time of Han Yu? The question has already been answered, in essence: the end came at the juncture where a the lines of this thought ended in their organic development and not in their formal existence, that is, before they had been transformed into inviolable dogma. One of these lines, represented by the

Chu Hsi school became a dogma soon after Chu Hsi s death, so great was the authority of this remarkable thinker. The other line, which led from Lu Hsiang-shan, attained its peak in Wang Yang-ming s philosophy, with which its history ended. If the first philosopher of the Chinese Renaissance was Han Tu, the last was Wang Yang-ming. Thus, the Renaissance epoch in the plane of philosophy begins in the 8th century and ends on the threshold of the 16th century.

¹ It is deserving of special attention that information on Confucian philosophy during the Sung epoch is included in two sections of the Sung History: “Ju-lin-chuan” and “Tao-hsiieh-chuan”. This distribution of material shows that the compilers, historians of the generation still of the same frame of mind as prevailed during the Sung dynasty, considered that the philosophical school represented by Chou Tun-i, Chang Tsai, the Ch’eng brothers and Chu Hsi, was not incorporated in the trend signified by the word ju-lin. This word is usually translated as “the Confucianists”. Generally speaking, this is correct, but on y with the proviso that it is understood as referring to Confucianists officially representing this doctrine. Therefore, when the historians devoted a special section to “the Tao science”, they contrasted the official philosophy with the true philosophy, as they considered it, the philosophy of officialdom with the philosophy of the thinkers. It seems to me that the presence of these two sections in the Sung History may be understood as further evidence of the struggle between ideologies: the clash of Renaissance humanists with scholastic dogma-

^tlStS’² The compilation of the Sung shih was completed in 1345. We find in reference works that the order for the compilation of a history of the fallen dynasty was issued by the new Mongol rulers m 1343, half a century after the Mongols had crushed the last centre of resistance in 1279. Simultaneously, the order was given to write the Liao shih and the Tsin shih; these were histories ot two other vanished states, the K’itan (907-1115) and the Churchen (1115-1234 , which had arisen on northern Chinese territory, a region invaded by the Mongols at an earlier date. The fact that so complex a task was completed in so short a time—-three years—suggests that the materials for it had been prepared hefoie-hand. It is thought that the author of the first version of the Sung shih was Tung Wen-ping,who was wholly the product of Sung times and who painstakingly gathered all that concerned them. His motto was: “A state may vanish, but history, never.” I give this detail as an indication that the Sung shih must have reflected not only the facts and events of the epoch, but also its moods, which remained alive even in new political conditions. Foreign invasions — the K’itan, Churchen and Mongol—during which first the northern halt and later (under Mongol rule) the whole of the country fell under their power, and the innumerable calamities they brought upon the Chinese people, could not hinder the advance of the Renaissance. A parallel instance is seen m Italy, where the Renaissance could not be delayed by foreign invasions—French and Spanish which ended in the middle of the 16th century with the inclusion of the greater part of the country in the Spanish Habsburgs empire. The establishment ol Mongol rule in China did not mean the end of the Renaissance, but a new phase

² The history of the “Five Books” in the indicated composition is briefly as follows. During the first stage of the classical period of Chinese antiquity (traditionally termed Ch’un-ch’iu, 770-403 B. C.) the foundation of learning consisted of four ancient texts— Shih, Shu, Li and Yueh. These are mentioned in the Lun-yii (Confucius’ words concerning the I-ching are held to have been a later interpolation).During the second stage of the classical period (tradition

ally termed Ch’an-kuo, 403-221 B.C.) Hsiin-tzu (315-236) added a fifth book, the Ch’un-Ch’iu, and later the I-ching was included in the list. In this way “Six Books” (liu-ching) or “Six Arts” (liu-i) were compiled. When the era of the empire opened, and a chair of Confucian learning was founded in 136 B C. at the T’ai-hsiieh (Higher School), the basis of education was formed of only five of the above-named books: the Shih-ching, Shu-ching, I-ching, Li-chi and Ch’un-ctiiu, because the sixth, Yiiek-ching (Book of Music), proved to have been lost. It is surmised by Pan Ku (in his Po-hu-tung) to have been destroyed by the “Ch’in flames”, that is, during the burning of Confucian manuscripts in the reign of Ch’in Shih Huang-ti. It should he borne in mind that the text of the Li at that time was the one subsequently regarded as a special manuscript, I li. The text of the Ch'un-ch’ iu was that which was afterwards called Ch'un-ch'iu Kung-yang chuang, that is, the Kung-yang version of Confucius’ Annals of the Lu kingdom. In view of all this, the “Five Books” as we know them came into being as such only in the year 642 of our era, as a result of the work carried out by Yang Shih-ku and K’ung Ying-ta.

⁴ The Chinese word t'ai-hsueh, the term for the country’s Higher School, is translated here as“ university”, since this is the name usually given to higher schools in Western countries in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Certain differences existed between “universities” in medieval China and medieval France or Italy. The I’ai-hsiieh were first founded in China in 136 B.C., when emperor Wu-ti, at the suggestion of Tung Chung-shu, opened a higher school for the elaboration of “the learning”, which was understood then as the branches of knowledge that Confucianism comprised, and for the spread of this learning. In other words, the first “university” in China’s history combined research and teaching. It retained this form until 278 A.D., when a “lyceum” was founded. This school (kuo-tzu-hsiieh) was intended for the education of young men belonging to the families of the high officials (none below the fifth rank of the existing list of ranks). The university preserved its purpose as a school, but received a far wider range of students and did not specialise in educating young men for official posts. 1’his state of things continued until the 11th century, when Wang An-shih (1021-1086), who was then in charge of the whole administration, directed the purpose of the university to purely practical lines: the training of young men io become officials. On this ground friction arose between the university and the lyceum, at times developing into serious conflicts, which reflected the contradictions between different social groups.

⁶ The rise of private schools is typical of the Sung epoch and shows the democtatic spirit that made itself felt in education, literature and culture in general. Shu-yuan had been instituted as early as the 8th and 9th centuries, but at that time they were either book-and-document repositories connected with government offices, or the study-libraries of certain scholars. In Sung times these tended to become private schools—“academies”.They were the principal centres of enlightenment, education and, at the same time, of science, since, for the most part, eminent scholars of the day taught in them. For example, the Pai-lu-tung, or “Cave of the White Deer”, was a well-known institution of learning and a schooHraining young men. It was founded in the-lOth century,and became especially famous at the time when Chu Hsi taught there. Since the official schools for young men who were trained for posts as government officials, were government institutions (see Note 4), the antagonistic, anti-government trends of every persuasion found refuge in the private academies, which, in consequence, acquired widespread social importance. For instance, it was in these academies that, during the Sung period, a new philosophical school of thought, opposed to official Confucianism, took shape and flourished. In Ming times these academies took the lead in propagating the teaching of Wang Yang-ming, who was also opposed at that time to official philosophy. At the end of the Ming epoch, the opposition Tung-lin school of thought used these academies. They maintained their importance until the establishment of the Manchu regime, during the Ch’in Empire.

⁶ All quotations, with the exception of those specially stipulated, are taken from the section indicated of the Sung History.

⁷ Excerpts from works of Sung philosophers mentioned here are in my own translation from the usual editions of these works. For the most part l have used the texts in the Tsin-ssu-lu, the edition prepared by Chu Hsi and Lii Po-kung in 1175.

¹¹ This designation became widespread after the appearance in 1415 of the Hsing-li ta-ch’iuan, a huge collection comprising 95 volumes of the works of 120 representatives of the Sung school of philosophy. This collection was compiled by Hu Kuang at the command of Ch’eng-tzu (1403-1425), the third emperor of the Ming dynasty. It is significant in the extreme: the fact that it appeared under this title shows that the teaching of the “nature of things” (hsing) and the “natural law” (li) was regarded as the most important in Sung philosophy, and not the teaching of the “great limit” (t'ai-chi), as might have been supposed when the school first arose. The fact that this work was undertaken by imperial command is evidence that it was becoming necessary as an instrument of power. It thus determines the time when Sung philosophy was being transformed from a teaching inimical to official ideology into a bulwark of that ideology. The final transformation of a once progressive philosophy into a reactionary one occurred during the Manchu regime. In the reign of Sheng-tzu (Kang-hsi), the second emperor of the new Ch’ing dynasty and the principal organiser of the feudal-absolutist regime in China, a specially doctored collection of works by Sung philosophers, Hsing-li tsing-i (The True Meaning of the Teaching of Nature and Law), was published. Even a superficial acquaintance with this reveals the careful omission of all elements of dialectics from the Sung philosophers, especially from the works of Chu Hsi. That this should be the fate of Chinese Renaissance philosophy need not surprise anyone. We know only too well that the teaching of the humanists of the European Renaissance became, in the end, the support of stagnation. The next progressive stage in the ideological sphere of social life was the philosophy of the Enlightenment. As it was in the West, so it was in China.

¹² The quotations here are from ClTeng I’s preface to I-cliuan, his_ treatise on the I-ching. These formulae are repeated in almost the same words in one of his philosophical epistles (cf. I-shu, 25). Generally speaking, the reason why the treatise on the I-ching acquired its importance in the history of Sung philosophical thought was precisely Ch’eng I’s divergence from all preceding traditions of exposition; he interpreted the I-ching from the standpoint of the doctrine of “natural law”. It was to this that the I-ching owed the prominent place it assumed in the philosophical speculations of the Sung philosophers.

¹⁴ See Chu-tzu wen-chi (The Collected Works of Chu-tzu), 59, “Ta Ts ao Yuan-k’o” (“Answer to Ts’ao Yuan-k’o”).

¹⁶ See Ta-hsiieh ho-wen (“Ta-hsiieh” in Questions and Answers), foreword. Attention should be paid to the order in which Chu Hsi enumerates these four works: this order reflects the Sung philosophers’ endeavours to discern in the “Four Books” something more than a set of treatises—a whole system of ideas and at the same time a course of education in philosophy. Chu Hsi thought it best to begin with the Ta-hsiieh, since this work embraced a wide, indeed a universal, range of problems—from those of knowledge to the problems of peace for the world. Following this, the Lun-yii should be studied to gain an understanding of the basis, the principle known as fen (humanism); then the Meng-tzii, which further developed this doctrine, should be studied, as Mencius spoke not only of fen but also of i (sense of duty). The culminating study should be that of the Chung-yiing, since through this, as Chu Hsi said, the student would be brought into touch with the “most precious that the ancients possessed”. Upon these reflections Chu Hsi founded his order in his edition of the “Four Books”. Subsequently, this was altered: the Ta-hsiieh and the Chung-yiing headed the list, and this was the order that all future editions observed.

¹⁶ The idea of a separate collection of the “Four Books” was suggested by the

Ch’eng brothers, since it was they who had extracted the Ta-hsiieh and Chung-yiing treatises from the Li-chi and placed them beside iheLun-yii and the Meng-tzu. But the collection was called Ssu-shu because of Chu Hsi, who wrote the Ssu-shu chi-chu (The Concise Commentary to the “Four Books”) in the 70’s and 80’s of the 12th century. It is clear, then, that at the time when the Sung History was being compiled, the “Four Books” were already widely known, both as a concept and as a term.

¹⁹ Yuan tao, section 15.—For the translation of this treatise see Kumau.-cKan Aumepamypa. XpecmoMamua. (An Anthology of Chinese Literature), Mockbs, 1959, CTp. 305-311.

²⁰ This place in the treatise reveals a very characteristic feature of Chinese Renaissance philosophy, namely, the importance that the tao-t'ung possessed for it; this term denoted consecutiveness in the Tao learning, that is, the “true learning”.Han Yii,who traced this line to the“true learning”of distant antiquity, followed it up to Confucius, after which it led straight to Mencius. But the Sung philosophers extended the conception of this link by including two more names in it, those of Tseng-tzu and Tzu Ssu. This was done because the Sung philosophers, and in the first place, the Ch’eng brothers, had accorded particularly high praise to two other ancient treatises, the Ta-hsiieh and Chung-yiing. In order to give these historical authority, they discovered their authors who, as far as their philosophical genealogy was concerned, were irreproachable: Tseng-tzu had studied under Confucius, and Tsu Ssu was a pupil of Tseng-tzu.By this the “Four Books” were satisfactorily sanctioned.

²¹ These quotations are drawn from various passages in Chuan-chi (Collected Works) of Lu Hsiang-shan: from the biography, from the Yii-lu section, from the letters to Tseng Chai-chih and Li Ning.

²² This is a place of great significance in the section Tsa sho (Various Opinions), in the 22nd book of the above-mentioned Collected Works.

²³ Yu lu (Collected Works, Book 34). — The six classics are Shih-ching, Shu-ching, I-ching, Ch'un-ch'iu, Li-chi and Yiieh-ching (cf. note 3)-

THE RENAISSANCE EPOCH

Varied though the interpretations of the intrinsic nature, content and boundaries of the epoch commonly known in European history as the Renaissance, its existence has never been disputed. Historians of all persuasions and trends have written about it, but, while all are interested in its cultural content, they differ in this: some visualise it simply as an epoch in the history of culture and others associate its cultural-historical content with its social-economic background, that is,regard the Renaissance as one particular link in the general historical process. Then again, among historians of the first-named group, differences of opinion exist: these depend, in the first place, upon whether they consider the entire cultural complex characteristic of the Renaissance,or solely one particular sphere of culture, such as art or literature. These differences are determined largely by the authors’ special field of research. Differences existing among historians of the second group depend upon their interpretation of the general historical content of the Renaissance epoch; these differences arise out of the authors’ general historical standpoints, and the schools of historical studies which they represent. ¹

It is clear, then, that the situation has its complexity, even though we may confine ourselves to ground that has been thoroughly investigated. As is well known, exhaustive studies have been conducted only in the Renaissance phenomena in Italy and other West European countries—Germany, the Netherlands, France, England and Spain; less is known of the Renaissance in Central European states, and far less in the Eastern half of Europe. ² A further complication arises out of the fact that, due to an insufficiently clear understanding of the historical essence of the Renaissance in Italy, whence came the conception of the epoch that was accepted in historical science, the name “Renaissance” is not infrequently used to describe any period of intensive cultural activity (most often in art and literature), especially when this activity is associated, to some degree, with a heightened interest in antiquity.

In recent years, the question has become still more involved because Orientalists have become concerned with it. Writing in 1947 on the subject of Rustaveli and the Eastern Renaissance, S. P. Nutsubidze referred to the lifetime of this great Georgian poet—the period from the 12th to the 13th centuries—as the Georgian Renaissance. In the History of Georgia published in 1948, I. Dzhavakhish-vili described the period extending from the 11th to the 12th centuries as similar in its historical content to the epoch known in the history of the West European countries as the Renaissance. In his work on The Pedagogics of Georgian Humanism in the 11th and 12th Centuries, which appeared in 1961, V. D. Chanturiya asserted that the pedagogical ideas of that time were clear evidence of this. In his book The Armenian Renaissance (1963) V.K. Chaloyan tried to prove on the basis of a fundamental analytical study of social-economic and cultural evidence that an epoch of the same nature existed in Armenian history.

Chaloyan’s work is, so far, the widest in scope and the most thorough in argumentation among the studies devoted to the subject of the Renaissance in the East.

These studies did not end with Georgia and Armenia. In an article on “‘The Middle Ages’ in Historical Science”, published in 1955, I dealt with the question of a Renaissance epoch in China, occurring between the 8th and 12th centuries, and expressed the view that a parallel epoch, similar in historical and cultural content, could be discovered in the history of Western Turkistan, Iran and North-West India, extending from the 9th to the 12th centuries. The question of a Renaissance epoch in China in the context of the history of social thought was examined in greater detail in my article on “The Rise of Chinese Humanism” (1957). The same question, this time in the field of the history of literature, was analysed in my article “Three T’ang Poets” in 1960.In my article written in 1965, “The Philosophy of the Chinese Renaissance” (on the Sung philosophy), this question was considered in the context of the history of philosophical thought in China. Abundant data on the problem of Renaissance in China is given in an article by V. I. Semanov, “Various Conceptions of the Chinese Renaissance”, written in 1962. “Alisher Navoi and the Problem of the Renaissance in Eastern Literatures”, an article by V. M. Zhirmunsky (1961), also upheld the idea of the Eastern Renaissance. In his book Arabic Literature, published in 1965, I. M. Filshtinsky approached the concept of the Renaissance in discussing Arabic literature of the 8th to the 12th centuries. In the same year, a vivid Renaissance interpretation of the poetry, philosophy and science of Iran and Western Turkistan from the 9th to the 13th centuries was presented in Iranian Miniatures, by I. S. Braginsky. 1965 also saw the publication of Some General Problems of the History of Eastern Literatures, in which the authors, I. V. Boroli-na, V. B. Nikitina, Y. V. Payevskaya and L. D. Pozdneyeva, gave a detailed analysis of the question of the Renaissance epoch in

Eastern countries against the background of the general history of the literature of those countries.

It is understood, of course, that the quantity of data presented by the authors of the above-mentioned works differs greatly:there is also a considerable difference in the depth of analysis, but one thing the authors have in common is their attitude to what they suggest should be termed the Renaissance—at least conventionally—and which they do not regard simply as a period when literature and art were particularly flourishing, but as a definite historical epoch.

This close attention to the problem of the Renaissance in the countries of the East is perfectly comprehensible. Actually, the question may be said to have been posed not so much by certain scholars as by historical science itself. It is well known that the boundaries of historical knowledge have been greatly extended in this country. The whole of the East, with all its long history, has been included in this knowledge. It has not been merely included, it has assumed its rightful place.

To be convinced of this, one has only to open the ten-volume Soviet World History. Numerous works have appeared creating both a general picture of the historical process in the Eastern countries and various aspects of this process. Among the nationalities whose history has now been presented with a completeness hitherto unknown are some with a very ancient historical life and culture, developing in unbroken continuity to this day. These are the peoples of China, India, Iran, Western Turkistan and the Caucasus. The periods of increased social-historical activity among these peoples, the epoch when culture particularly flourished, have now become more distinctly marked and comprehensible. It is perfectly natural that some of these epochs should be compared with similar epochs in the history of European peoples, and that therefore the terms used to denote historical phenomena elaborated from data in the history of Europe were transferred to analogous or similar phenomena in the history of the Orient.

This is understandable, too. As a branch of learning, history took shape in the East earlier than in the West, but as a pragmatic subject it developed more fully and at an earlier time in the West than in the East. For this reason, the use of general designations, such as feudalism, capitalism, class, estate, and so on, when dealing with the history of the East, is fully justified, particularly since Marxist historical science has given these expressions an exact meaning, that is, has made them part of the terminology of historical science. Similarly, the use of expressions that have arisen in studying the history of European peoples—terms like “antiquity”, the “Middle Ages”, “modern times”, ³ is also justified. In the same way, certain expressions, applied to cultural-historical epochs in the West, among them the “Renaissance epoch”, came to be used by historians of the East.

It cannot be regarded as fortuitous or arbitrary that the expression “Renaissance epoch” came into use in discussing the history

of the above-mentioned countries of the East. The existence of such an epoch in their history was postulated because it has been observed to arise in the first place among peoples with a long, unintermittently developing historical life and culture. The idea stemmed from the fact that the country where the “Renaissance” was first observed was Italy, whose people’s historical life dated from the 8th century before our era. Italy’s Renaissance epoch had been preceded by many centuries of “antiquity” and of the “Middle Ages”. Antiquity, for Italy, had meant both Latin and Hellenic culture.

The term “Renaissance” in the sense of “return to antiquity” (fu-ku) is encountered also in China’s history as characterising one of the features of an epoch reminiscent of the Italian Renaissance. The history of the Chinese people, too, reaches far into the distant past, the 12th and the 11th centuries B. C. This history had its “antiquity”, which, at the time of the “Renaissance”, was regarded as the period when all the foundations of culture qnd education were laid.

Among the peoples of Western Turkistan and Iran the term “Renaissance” is not encountered, but an epoch characterised by Renaissance features is observed between the 9th and the 13th centuries. The history of the Iranian peoples began, like that of the Chinese, at the end of the 2nd millennium B. C., when Iranianspeaking tribes appeared in North Iran. The historical life and culture of Iranian peoples were interwoven in their course of development with those of the Turkistan and North-West Indian peoples, who also had a rich culture. The first states of Western Turkistan— Khwarizm and Bactria—arose between the 7th and the 6th centuries B. C.Thus, the peoples of that part of the world had their own antiquity, which was, to a considerable degree, common to them all, just as the Italians and the Greeks had a common antiquity.

The group of ancient peoples with a long and unbroken history, a rich and ancient culture, includes the Georgians, who had state life already in the 3rd century B. C. The group also includes the Armenians, whose history, reckoned from the appearance of the ancestors of the latter-day Armenians on their present territory, began in the 7th century B. C. These Transcaucasian peoples possessed their antiquity, which in its cultural-historical aspect had many things in common with Iranian and Near Eastern antiquity, but to a still greater degree with the Graeco-Roman. These peoples also had their “Middle Ages” with a well-developed culture.

Hence, the question posed by historical science is evoked in its essentials by history itself. The essence of it is so important that discussion became imperative. We are dealing here not only with the discovery of “Renaissance epochs” in the history of different peoples (that is to say, with a new interpretation of the historical process), but with far more. It is a question involving the historical meaning of such an epoch, the historical conditions leading up to it and determining it, its historical significance and, lastly, its

inevitable appearance in the history of certain peoples, and, in the final analysis, in the history of all mankind.

Excellent data for the discussion of the whole set of questions could be extracted, I believe, from a comparison of those historical instances of this epoch which are disassociated, which emerged, took shape and developed independent of each other. The first instance, the Renaissance in Italy,is familiar to us.The second is the Renaissance in China; the existence of such an epoch in China has not as yet been investigated to its full extent, but enough has been written about it, I consider, to warrant our acceptance of the idea as a sufficiently grounded historical postulate.

In both cases attention is arrested, first of all, by the existence of an identical expression used to denote the epoch, identical not only in its general meaning but also in its lexical form, and applied to the epoch by its contemporaries. Vasari called it Rinascita, Han \ii called it fu-ku.The Italian word meant renascence,but was understood as the revival of antiquity. In the case of China, the conception “antiquity” is included in the very term. Fu-ku has two component parts: fu— “return” and ku—“antiquity”. The combination of the two may be understood both as “return to antiquity” and as “return of antiquity”, that is, its revival. _

It is interesting to note the time when these expressions came into use. Vasari lived in the 16th century, from 1511 to 1574, when in his native country the Renaissance was already at an end. Han Yu lived in the second half of the 8th and the first quarter of the 9th century (768-824), when the Renaissance epoch had only just begun in his country. This difference indicates that the name of an epoch may denote a summing-up of its past characteristics, or may be in the nature of a slogan heralding its advent in history.

Rut how exactly did this same antiquity look from the standpoints of Vasari and Han Yii?

It must have appeared to them as a shining light. Since every endeavour was directed towards its revival, it must have been held in the highest esteem. Antiquity, in that case, was regarded as a qualitative conception, but, of course it is also a historical conception. What,then, was the concretely historical view of antiquity, as understood by these thinkers? _

Renaissance Italians regarded antiquity as the past of their own country—the time of ancient Rome. Not the whole of that time, but for the most part the period marked by extraordinary activity in social ideas and literature: the closing period of the republic and the initial period of the empire. In other words, neither the early nor the late stages in the history of the Romans, but the middle stage which became known as the “classical phase”. During the Renaissance the Italians added to their own Latin antiquity the Hellenic

antiquity, which the Romans had inherited, especially at the time of the principate. But here again, it was not the earlier, the “Homeric period, nor the late Hellenistic, but the middle, the classical period, that they sought to revive. True, they venerated antiquity as a whole, but it was undoubtedly the classical period that was accorded the foremost place.

What was Han Yu’s conception of antiquity? He presented it with the utmost clarity in his treatise On the Way; ⁴ he understood “the Way” to mean enlightenment, which was so dear to him. It consisted in the entire antiquity of Chinese history up to the beginning of the 1st century of our era. The last of the great figures that he names in the culture of the distant past are: Ssu-ma Hsiang-ju (died in 117 B.C.), Ssu-ma Ch’ien (145-86 B.C.) and Yang Hsiing (53 B.C.-18 A.D). From this we may conclude that Han Yii did not accept the later antiquity—the second period of the empire—just as the Renaissance Italians did not acknowledge the Hellenistic epoch or the later empire period. When we recall that Han Yii regarded Confucius as the founder of “the Way”, that is to say, of learning and enlightenment, and that the ancient manuscripts which he mentioned (I-ching, Shi-ching and Shu-ching) appeared even before Confucius’ time and are surrounded by a halo of the loftiest wisdom due to the name of Confucious, then it seems that in Han Yu’s opinion “antiquity” denoted principally the lieh-kuo epoch of the city-states, and that this was the genuinely classical period in the history of ancient culture.

_ We can, then, say that during the Renaissance which took place in Italy and China—two of the major countries surviving from antiquity in Western Europe and Eastern Asia—it was primarily the antiquity of the middle period that the leaders of this Renaissance visualised as reborn; this period was the most integral,in its typological image, in the history of slave-owning society in these two regions of the world.

This preference for the middle period of antiquity could scarcely be fortuitous; it seems to me that it is accounted for by one particular feature in the historical outlook of the Renaissance thinkers.

One of the most typical features of the epoch is that the leaders of the Italian Renaissance in glorifying the classical period showed by this that they held in far less esteem the period dividing them from antiquity. They regarded the intervening centuries as the “Middle Ages”, and, since antiquity was glorious, and their own epoch strove for the revival of this glory, then the Middle Ages stood for darkness and ignorance.

The Chinese leaders of the Renaissance did not create the expression the “Middle Ages” as a specific term, but there is no doubt that they had the same conception of this intermediate stage in their

history. This is plainly evident from the Sung History, a work that appeared in the 14th century, when several centuries of the Renaissance had passed and a definite view of it as a whole had been formed. In this History, which covers the Sung Empire (960-1279), there is a section dealing with what is known as the Sung school of philosophy, a school, which, to my mind, forms an inseparable part of the Chinese Renaissance. ⁸ The section in question enumerates the principal philosophers of that school, outlines the contribution each made to its development, and gives a general evaluation of this trend as a whole.

This reads as follows: “It was then that the learning of Shih and Shu, the Six Arts, the counsels of Confucius and Mencius—all that had been cast into the Ch’in flames,torn to shreds by the Han scholars, plunged into oblivion in the Wei and Liu-ch’ao times—was revealed in all its clarity and brilliance, and all was accorded its proper place. By this means the Sung scholars reached over the heads of the thinkers of previous epochs until they came into direct touch with Mencius.” The Shih-ching (Book of Songs) and the Shu-ching (Book of History) were ancient manuscripts included in the Confu-cian “Five Rooks”; the “Six Arts” means learning represented in six treatises: the above-mentioned Shih-ching and Shu-ching, to which the I-ching (Book of Changes) had been added, and also the Ch'un-ch'iu (The Annals), regarded as the work of Confucius himself, and the Yueh-ching (Book of Music). The counsels of Confucius and Mencius— the Lun-yu. and the Meng-tzu — were statements of the doctrine propounded by these two founders of Confucianism, that is, the whole of philosophy as then understood. With Mencius, all this came to an end, in the 3rd century R. C. The interruption lasted for a long time, until the 11th century of our era.

Hence, this had been the classical period of antiquity, both for the compilers of the Sung History and for Han Yu.The sole difference was that Han Yu mentioned three other prominent scholars of the initial period of the empire; but the first of them, Ssu-ma Hsiang-ju, was a poet, not a philosopher. The second, Ssu-ma Ch’ien, was a historian. The third, Yang Hsiing, wrote chiefly poetry and was of no particular significance as a philosopher. In this respect, Han Yu referred to him with disapproval. For the compilers of the Sung History, therefore, the end of antiquity came with Mencius, as far as philosophy was concerned; he was the last prominent thinker of the classical period during the history of slave-owning society in China.

Following this, while the transition to the later stage of antiquity—the epoch of the empire—was taking place, learning and enlightenment were “cast into the Ch’in flames”, as the Sung History designates the burning of Confucian manuscripts fin the first years of the empire, and then “torn to shreds” by scholiasts during the Han dynasty. The authors of the Sung History are referring here to Han philologists, who conducted laborious researches on the

surviving manuscripts, restoring those that had been lost, elaborating the ancient texts and writing commentaries on them, that is, doing work similar to that undertaken by the Alexandrian scholars on the heritage of their own classical period. From the standpoint of Renaissance thinkers who valued most of all ideas, this textological work, undertaken on various documents isolated from each other, led to the “tearing to shreds”—that is, the reduction of the “true learning” to a mass of unimportant detail. Then came “the Wei and Liu-ch’ao times”—the 3rd to the 7th centuries—when learning and enlightenment were “plunged into oblivion”, and the light of learning was not rekindled until the opening of the Sung epoch. Could there be a clearer expression of the conception of the intermediate “Middle Ages” between “antiquity” and “modern times”—the Middle Ages that were regarded as “dark”?

Taking this attitude into consideration, it seems to me fully comprehensible why the Renaissance thinkers rejected not only the times that are often termed “medieval” — the early period of feudal society—but also late antiquity. This transitional period, which in Italy was the Hellenistic epoch and the later period of the Roman Empire, and in China, the Han Empire, especially its latter half, was as much a part of the Middle Ages, which it foreshadowed, as of antiquity, from which it stemmed.Since the Middle Ages were despised by Renaissance thinkers in Europe and the “Wei and Liu-ch’ao times”, by their colleagues in China, this attitude in both countries extended to the epoch that foreshadowed the Middle Ages.

What was it that Renaissance adherents found so alien to their ideas in this medieval period, in the ‘Wei and Liu-ch’ao times”, the “Dark Ages”, as they considered them? Let us attempt to answer this question, at first on the plane of a general ideology.

Analysing the standpoint of Han Yu, with whom, I think, we should begin the history of the Renaissance movement in China, we find that he was definitely opposed to Buddhism and Taoism. But ■ it was in the “Wei and Liu-ch’ao times” (from the 3rd to the 7th centuries), the “Dark Ages”, that these systems of thinking had acquired extraordinary power. During that time Buddhism, with its well-organised and ramified system, its innumerable priests and monastic sects, had become well-nigh the most widespread religion in China. The beliefs usually known by the name “Taoism” were transformed into a real religious teaching, complete with its own dogmas, cult and temple organisation. In both cases, these were religions possessing a many-faceted and highly-developed philosophy.

Han Yu opposed their philosophical principles. He objected to what he considered the most unacceptable: the conception of nirvana in Buddhism, and the conception of quiescence in Taoism.

Both of these, he held, distracted people’s attention from the main things: from life, activity, from service to society. In contrast to Buddhism and Taoism, he set up “the true learning”, Confucianism. His ideal was Mencius, the most active zealot in antiquity of “the true learning”, carrying on an unwearying struggle with all that represented the social evil of his day, and unafraid to expose even the rulers of the country. Han Yu regarded himself as the Mencius of his own time. But if one praised Mencius it was equivalent to praising antiquity, and if one rejected the things of the “Wei and Liu-ch’ao times”, it was equivalent to disparaging the “Middle Ages”.

As we know, in those ages Mencius’ work had been far from popular. Even the Lun-yix, the book in which Confucius’ own words were recorded, had not been in the foreground then. Sources given prominence in those days were mainly the I-ching, Shih-ching, Shu-ching, Ch'un-ch'iu and Li-chi—all of which (with the exception of the Ch'un-ch’iu, the annals of the Lu state) dating from pre-Con-fucian times. In Han Yu’s day attention was not directed towards developing the principles contained in these works, but towards the establishment of the “correct” in them, correct both as regards the restoration of the genuine text and also the interpretation of it. As far back as the first half of the 7th century, Yang Shih-ku had published the text of the above-mentioned five ancient treatises he had edited, while K’ung Ying-ta had selected from all the existing commentaries those he considered the best. This had been accompished not only with the approval, but at the order of the rulers, who required ideological support for the established regime. The text of the “Five Books” edited by Yan Shih-ku was proclaimed “official” (ting-pen), and its interpretation in K’ung Ying-ta’s version pronounced “correct” (cheng-i). This same collection of the “Five Books”,both the text and its interpretation,became the summa sum-marum of all the learning of that age.

This evokes a memory of the appearance of the Summa theologiae of Thomas Aquinas in the history of the philosophical-religious thought of medieval Catholicism. And could not the juxtaposition of these two disparate facts contribute towards a clearer understanding of what actually took place at that time in the Confucian philosophy of China and the Catholic philosophy of Italy? Should we not discern in these facts the formation—a process natural and inherent in any doctrine having vital power—into an integral and universal system, that is, the attainment of the height of development? Simultaneously, this system having been enclosed within sharply defined interpretative limits, excluding all digression, did not the inevitable transformation of the system into dogma take place? In this case, was it not this ideological dogmatism, already established by that time and inadmissible to the minds of the Renaissance thinkers, that lay at the basis of their negative attitude—both in China and Italy—to the “Middle Ages”?

With regard to China, it seems to me this is quite clear. Han Yu, a professor of a state university, was under an obligation in his official position to teach the “learning” in its officially accepted text and interpretation. Yet he undertook wholly independent researches. He did not write new versions of the commentaries to the classics, but treatises on those problems that he considered most important. The chief of these are three, entitled On Man, On the Way and On the Nature of Man. These constituted a free, genuinely creative, treatment of themes which, though present in the classics, had either remained undeveloped in general, or had not been presented in the aspect that Han Yii thought most essential.

The Sung philosophers active during the 11th and 12th centuries, that is, at a much later period, when the Renaissance movement had entered upon a new phase, were inspired by the same spirit as Han Yii. Their attitude to Buddhism and Taoism—to the philosophical conceptions in these teachings—was mostly negative. As cults, Buddhism and Taoism had no appeal for philosophers of the Confu-cian persuasion, to whom the phenomena of the religious cult had always been totally alien. —

This was evident from the indignation expressed by Han Yii in his notable pamphlet On the Bone of Buddha, and his invective directed at the court circles for the pomp with which they housed in the palace a bit of bone, this “relic” brought from distant India and alleged to be that of Buddha. “It is merely a fragment of decayed bone!” Han Yii exclaimed. But as a rule, the Chinese Renaissance thinkers conducted their struggle against that which they regarded as of really great importance in these cults—their philosophic conceptions. A glance at the concluding part of the Tsin-ssu-lu, the well-known collection of the most important works of Sung philosophers, compiled in the 12th century by Chu Hsi and Lii Po-kung, is sufficient to show that even three centuries after Han Yii Chinese'¹ Renaissance philosophers still protested against those same conceptions of nirvana and quiescence, regarding them not only as antisocial, but contradictory to the very nature of man.

Nevertheless, the principal object of their protests lay in Confucianism itself, within that same system of philosophical thought of which they were adherents: they were struggling against what is known to history as hsiin-ku. This term denoted the work that had been carried out on the classics throughout the later period of antiquity,the early Middle Ages and even the initial stage of the Renaissance. Actual mention of hsiin-ku is made in one of the treatises by Ch’eng I, a philosopher of the 11th century.

What did this hsiin-ku constitute in itself? Commentaries, and nothing more: hsiin stands for the interpretation of sentences, ku for the interpretation of words. How this was accomplished is evident from the words of Nakamura Tekisai (1629-1702), a Japanese disciple of the Sung school. In the introduction to his edition of the above-mentioned Tsin-ssu-lu, he wrote:

“It is considered that a new era opened in the sphere of Confu-cian ideas with the beginning of the Sung period. It is founded on the fact that Chou Tung-i, the Ch’eng brothers (Ch’eng jHao and Ch’eng I) and Chang Tsai proclaimed the teaching of Nature and the Law, while Chu Hsi, who followed them, collected and brought this to completion. It was done because during the Han and T’ang dynasties scholars considered that the most important thing was to give as many interpretations (hsiin-ku.—N. K.) as possible. So far did they go that in the interpretation of the four hieroglyphics at the beginning of the ‘Yao tien’ in Shang-shu they expended more than 30,000 words and even then did not attain to the sense of those four characters.”⁶ This was the manner in which the hsiin-ku-hsiieh, “the science of interpretation”, was created. To my mind, it was the same that was known as exegesis in Europe during the Middle Ages.

The Sung philosophers objected to the exegetic and hermeneutic methods in the study of the classics, opposing to it the teaching of “Nature and the Law”, i. e., the study of the spirit and not the letter; not the texts as such, but the problems posed in them. The abovenamed Ch’eng I expressed this idea as follows: “In ancient times there was but one teaching; at present there are three.... I ignore alien teachings (Buddhism and Taoism.—A. K.). One teaching concerns the text, another, the interpretation (hsiin-ku-hsueh), the third is that of the scholars. Whosoever desires to attain the Way (true knowledge.—A. K.), cannot do so without this teaching.” ⁷

To what can we compare this in Italy? The attitude of the Italian Renaissance philosophers to religion was different from that of the Chinese Sung thinkers. The most widespread attitude was indifference, which in some cases took the form of disbelief and even ridicule.Few of the Renaissance leaders turned to paganism:let us recall the great attraction that some humanists of the second half of the 15th century found in Plato’s wmrks. Notwithstanding differences, one feature characteristic of many Italians of the time reminds us of the Chinese Renaissance philosophers. It is the feature known to some research scholars of the European Renaissance as the secularisation of theoretical thought, i. e., its detachment from the orbit of religion. ⁸ This secularisation meant, in effect, a complete break with theology, with dogma, and, consequently, was one of the forms t aken by the struggle against dogmatism. With regard to this essential point Renaissance thinkers in China and Italy were in agreement, and this meant that the struggle to release man’s intellect from the fetters of dogmatism—religious in Italy, philosophical m China—constitutes the principal feature of the Renaissance in the realm of ideology. It is necessary to point out not only the resemblance, but also the divergence in these two historical instances. In China, the Renaissance created a philosophy of breadth and originality; in Italy, the Renaissance created no original philosophical system. In the beginning, there was a marked slackening and loss of interest in the metaphysical side of philosophical theorising

on the part of Petrarch and the early humanists in general, and also a tendency to reduce the entire philosophy to ethics. Later in the second half of the 15th century, original thinkers appeared due to the special attention paid to the teachings of Plato and Ar stotie but they did not succeed in founding an integral system, such as had been created during the Chinese Renaissance. ,

Notwithstanding this divergence, a comparison may_ be drawn, and moreover, in the most essential respect—method-between the Renaissance philosophical thought in China and m Italy.

Many scholars conducting researches in the Italian and in the West European Renaissance as a whole have remarked upon the prSence of elements of rationalism • in ^

outlook of the humanists. It is usually considered that the age of reason” was inaugurated by the Renaissance humanists: it was they who directed human thought towards rationalism. It seems to me indisputable that the same process took place m theoretical thought during the Chinese Renaissance. The principal category o the Sung philosophers was the “law” (li), a purely logical conception, cognition amounted to the elucidation of the “law ^ir‘ ^e™m *^a“all things” i. e., in all the objects and phenomena of reality, while the stages and the results of this cognition were perceived on a purely intellectual plane and were expressed in rationahstic terms. To my mind, it is this, and not the question of whether an integral system had been created or not, that is the most essential Mature of the revolution wrought in people’s minds during that remarkable epoch known both in East and West as the Renaissance. I he switching over of thought to rationalistic lines produced the basis upon

which arose all that is usually regarded as pertammg to the Renaissance; the protest against dogmatism as a principle of world outlook against exegesis and hermeneutics as methods of cognition, against

£ piSdlrS «tionaUsm. which —acted the entire system of thought, revealed its full strength m Europe much later during the Age of Enlightenment; m China this took place during the Renaissance, in the Sung school of philosophy, but the rationalism of this school found no further development such as was observed in Europe in the philosophy of Descartes and other Selt European rationalists of the 17th and 18th centuries Socia conditions in China in those ages gave rise to a certam deveiopnient of rationalism on the lines of the “critical school (to₀-cfterag-/isn-

could not ensure so rapid a development of theoretical thought as took place in Europe during the pre-bourgeois centuries.

It is often considered that the advancement of man to the fore ground is practically the most important feature of theltalianRenais fance Man became the centre of everything as a higher category

with the highest rights, as the highest value; all the rest—society, history, the world—were considered valuable and important only in so far as concerns man. This conception, it is thought, was a reaction against the attitude typical of the mood of the Middle Ages which regarded the nature of man and the external world as a source of temptation, the cause of ruin; against the attitude to reason as a dangerous principle which could only lead people to intellectual pride, i.e., to deadly sin. The external world in its association with man was also regarded as a source of temptation. Hence the conclusion that one should retreat from the world and constantly struggle against the needs of human nature.

This widespread interpretation of the Italian Renaissance seems to me in part true, in part false. It is true in the main fact that during the Renaissance the attitude to man differed from that prevailing in the Middle Ages: man came to the forefront. But it is not true that the essence of this advancement of man was visualised as permitting free development of all the inherent traits of his nature, especially the sensual, as though the root of all evil had lain in monastic “mortification of the flesh”. The essence of the Renaissance attitude, I believe, lay in something far more significant.

The fact that man was brought into the foreground during the Renaissance in Italy is beyond doubt. But the essential thing in this was by no means the acknowledgement of his right to satisfy his needs, especially “the needs of the flesh”. If it had amounted to no more than this, then there would have been no reason for the traditional admiration of the Renaissance. The most important in the new attitude was what Michelet and Burckhardt termed “the discovery of man”; the former in his formula “the discovery of the world and man”, the latter in his “discovery of man and nature”.

In what particular way was this “discovery of man” manifested? First of all, in the idea that he was capable of thinking for himself as his reason dictated. In this lay the core of the “secularisation” of theoretical thought that took place during the Renaissance. Western historians understand this as the liberation of human consciousness from the formulae of religious dogma and as the transition from religious to secular thought. “Secularisation” is a term applied to ethics as well, taking this to mean the disassociation of ethics from religious conceptions.

If we are to take the prominence accorded to man as one of the most characteristic features of the Renaissance—and this is actually the case—then the most genuine Renaissance must be that which took place in the social consciousness of Chinese society between the 8th and 15th centuries. We have previously spoken of three treatises by Han Yii: On Man, On the Way and On the Nature of Man. The titles indicate that HanYii’s chief subject of philosophical speculation was man. In the first-named work it is affirmed that man is the master of all that lives on earth. The second explains why he

occupies such a place in the world: it is because he possesses “man’s way” and this way consists in “love for everything”. In the third treatise it is affirmed that human nature is good. ¹⁰ “Han Yii was the first to proclaim Renaissance ideas in the philosophical field, and these principles of his were accepted and comprehensively developed in the future. Chou Tun-i (1017-1073) said that among all that existed, man had the utmost spirituality. Ch’eng Hao (1031-1085) expressed it differently: “Not only man has the utmost spirituality in the world. My soul is as the soul of grasses, trees, birds and beasts. Man ... is born having accepted the mean of Heaven-Earth.” ¹¹

A detailed elucidation of this principle cannot be given here, but it is necessary to point out that in the language of the Sung philosophers, the “mean” is something that does not incline to any side, is not one-sided hut comprehensive, is of full value. This idea of the validity of human nature constitutes the basis for the advancement of man to the foreground of existence. And this is done not by contrasting him to all else, but by uniting him with all else. Chang Tsai (1019-1077) held the view that man was a manifestation of the “universal spirit”, that this spirit was identical in people and in “things”. He expressed his idea in graphic language in the opening sentence of his famous Western Inscription: “Heaven is my father, Earth, my mother. People are my brothers, things—my associates.” Therefore, if we apply to the Chinese Renaissance Burckhardt’s formula “the discovery of man and nature”, it should be understood as “the discovery of man in nature”, and simultaneously as “the discovery of nature in man”.

As is well-known, two followers of Petrarch—Coluccio Salutati (1331-1406) and Leonardo Bruni (1369-1444)—launched the word humanitas, which they had found in antiquity, in Cicero. They considered that it expressed most satisfactorily the distinction between their own time and the Middle Ages. They understood humanitas as that particular characteristic of man which determines his human dignity and urges him to knowledge. This same word, which in Chinese is jen, was selected by Han Yii to distinguish “the Way” of his time from “the Way” known before his time. He, too, had found the word in antiquity, in Confucius. The meaning it held for Confucius is clear. When asked about the meaning of jen, he replied, “love for man”. Han Yu’s reply was different, “love for all”.

According to Han Yii, jen stands as a category of social ethics, and this means that it is the foundation of the whole human society. The later Renaissance philosophers, those of the Sung school, endowed the word with a different sense. Asw^re have mentioned above, the Sung philosophers advanced the conception of the “law” (li) — the “natural law” (t'ien-li) of being that was active in “all things” (wan-wu), i. e., natural objects. Ch’eng Hao, the first to advance this category, thought that the nature of man in its universal aspect permitted him to understand the content of this “natural law”.

Since he considered the principal characteristic of man’s nature to be /'ere—humanitas, then it followed that humanitas was the general law of all that existed, the law active in “all things”. Ch’eng Hao expressed the idea in a simple definition: “/ere embraces all things”.

But what is this “humanity”, in the concrete sense? Ch’eng Hao expressed his conception of it in a series of judgements, as follows: “humanity in man has a place beside his other characteristics”. These are: the inherent sense of “duty”, i. e., the endeavour always to do what ought to be done; the sense of “lawfulness”, the understanding of the necessity for always keeping within the bounds of certain norms, or a kind of inner discipline; the thirst for knowledge and the ability to attain it; finally, rectitude. Jen—humanitas is among these characteristics, but Ch’eng Hao considers that it embraces them all.

This is by no means the same conception of /ere as in antiquity, when /ere was accepted only as a commandment to love one another, i. e., as a purely ethical law. Now it was raised to the degree of the fundamental law of all existence; it had acquired an ontological sense, and in its ethical aspect it had become a demand to love (i. e., to treat humanely) not only people, but also “grasses, trees, birds and beasts”, all living things in nature. Then, should not Han Yu’s formula be translated as “love for everything”, and not as “love for everyone”?

If humanism, even in the interpretation of the Italian Renaissance, was regarded as the most striking feature of this new epoch, should not humanism, as understood by these Chinese thinkers, be taken as evidence that their epoch has every right to be called the Renaissance in the same comprehensive historical sense?

In studies on the Italian Renaissance, the authors invariably mention poetry when enumerating the features of cultural life most characteristic of the spirit of the times. Not infrequently, poetry occupies the foremost place. This view is prompted by the special importance that poetry was accorded in the minds, hearts and activities of the humanists: not only did they set a high value on poetry, they called themselves poets, and many of them were poets. Succeeding generations saw⁷ in Petrarch the first great poet of the Renaissance and also the initiator of the new trend of thought that determined the whole epoch. This trend is seen most vividly in lyrical verse which thus became, as it were, the genre most typical of Renaissance poetry. A similar picture, it seems to me, may be observed in China.

The epoch of the Chinese Renaissance began, I suggest, with the time of Han Yu (768-824), i. e., in the 8th century. Among his contemporaries were Wang Wei (699-759), Li Po (701-762), Tu Fu (712-770); Po Chii-i (772-846), too, partly belongs to this period. An acquaintance with these poets is sufficient to strengthen the impression that a new era opened with their works. Not in poetry

alone, for if the new age had not been manifest in everything, poetry could not have attained the level of those genuinely great poets of old China. They were succeeded by a number of remarkable poets like Ouyang Hsiu, Wang An-shih, Su Shih and Lu Yu, and especially Su Shih (Su Tung-po, 1036-1101) who deserves to be called great. We should add that practically all scholars who were known for their work in other fields—philosophy, science and art—wrote verse, that many were worthy of the title of poet, and some were outstanding poets, as, forj example Han Yu. Such were the famous authors of novellas, Yuan Chen and Po Hsing-chien, among others. In this field the parallel with the Italian Renaissance is obvious.

The period extending from the 8th to the 13th centuries, a time when poetry truly flourished, has been well studied. This needs no further explanation. What is required is to define the new trend that this poetry brought into the general history of Chinese poetry, and the reason why this new trend is linked with the Renaissance.

In the first place let us take the question we referred to in speaking of the philosophical thought of the epoch: was the poetry of that time realised as something new, distinct from its predecessors? An answer to this question might be given by somewhat extending the boundaries of the survey to include not only verse but poetry in general, i. e., poetry expressed in prose, or, in other words, fine literature in the sense that was then widespread among educated circles of Chinese society.

In the year 530, two centuries previous to the time of Li Po and Han Yu, a comprehensive anthology entitled Wen-hsuan (Selected Literature) appeared. It was compiled by “Ten Scholars of the High Cabinet”, a group of literary men who gathered in the Tower of Wen-hsuan and in the Palace of Joy and Wisdom.The patron of this group was Hsiao T’ung, a prince of the royal house of Liang, then reigning in southern China—the last independent part of the country, since the whole of the northern half had been overrun by the hsien-pi (“barbarians”). The anthology included works in verse and prose dating from the 2nd century B. C. to the 6th century A. D., i. e., from late Chinese antiquity to the Middle Ages. Only the verses of Ch’ii Yuan (340-278 B.C.), a poet of the end of antiquity, were selected from the literature of the classical period of antiquity. Consequently, the literature of classical antiquity is not found in the anthology.

As may be supposed, the selection was made from a definite standpoint. This is stated in the introduction to the Wen-hsuan, written by Hsiao T’ung himself. He explains why he included nothing written by the sages of antiquity, such as Chou-kung, so highly praised by Confucius, or by Confucius himself: “I have not included works of Chou-kung or K’ung, our father. For they are with us as the sun and the moon in the heavens, supernally profound, as though they would reason with the divine powers ... nor did I select anything from the annals and chronicles, inasmuch as they do not answer

my purpose by the doctrinaire nature of their judgements upon right and wrong, by their eternal endeavour to praise some and humiliate others. But whatever was compiled exclusively of elegant phrases, and, furthermore, particular narratives written in artistic language,

I included in the Wen-hsiian, as writings profoundly thought out in content and attaining to refinement in language.” ¹²

It is easy to discern, through this explanation of Hsiao T’ung, the serious changes that had taken place by that time; the entire conception of what was termed wen (literature) had undergone reconstruction. A work was regarded as literary only when it proved to he artistic. Artistic merit was manifested in the language in a specifically literary form. It follows, then, that profundity of thought, i. e., the supreme significance of the content of a work, did not constitute in itself a claim to literary merit from the viewpoint of the High Cabinet group.

There is no doubt that such a conception of literature was then widespread, at any rate in circles that were in contact with the feudal nobility, and may be regarded as typical of the courtly lyric of medieval China on the eve of the Renaissance.

Although the eve of the Renaissance, this period had many features clashing with that same Renaissance. As a collection of the best examples of literature, the Wen-hsiian became at a later time, during the T’ang Empire, the principal material of instruction in the training of future government officials. Those taking government examinations had to write a composition on the pattern of those included in the anthology. What had once taken place in philosophy was now taking place in literature: literature of a definite range of constituents, a definite conception of its essentials and its methods, had become canonical.

The phenomena observed in Chinese poetry on the eve of the Renaissance involuntarily remind us of the changes observed in literature on the eve of the Italian Renaissance in the literary centre, Florence. Here, too, an association existed of writers with specific views on poetry: a group of poets of the dolce stile nuovo. This school also considered exquisiteness of ideas, refinement of feelings and emotion, fluency and harmony in verse the chief things in poetry. Officially, the principles of this school were not recognised as canonical in Italy, but the methods of the dolce stile nuovo became the criterion of poetry without any official interference. At the end of the 13th century, the eve of the Renaissance, the novellino appeared in Italy. These were collections of fables, anecdotes of incidents in daily life, short novellas narrating various subjects taken from antiquity, the Middle Ages, the Bible, the Orient. The compilers of these collections claimed, in almost the same words as Hsiao T’ung had used, that they offered here “the flower of elegant speech, excellent courtesies and witty rejoinders”.

Han Yu, who was the first to oppose the canonisation of definite formulae in philosophical thought, carried the war into the literary

sphere, protesting against canonical standards. Naturally, his protest was expressed primarily in proclaiming other principles for literary work. According to the compilers of the Wen-hsiian, the content of a work was important, but its literary value did not stand or fall by this. Han Yu put it otherwise: “What is known as literature is in ourselves. That is why the tsiin-tzu (enlightened man.— N. K.) is so attentive to the content of his work”.

The literati of the High Cabinet group evidently admitted that exquisite artistic form might disguise the insignificance of the content. Han Yu did not agree: “The beauty or the ugliness of a subject, once it is manifest, cannot be disguised in any way.” It may be said, then, that he visualised the promise of truly high literary merit in the significance of the idea it contained. “When the tree trunk is rooted deep in the earth, the branches grow thickly”; “When a musical instrument is large, the sound from it is loud”. One may even go >o far as to say: since the quality of the ideas is determined by the personality of the author, then the pledge of the literary significance of a work will rest, in the ultimate analysis, in the author’s humane qualities: “When a man’s heart is pure, then his spirit is also harmonious”; “When a man’s deeds are worthy, then his words are strong”; “The body ... if some part of it is lacking, cannot be transformed into a man. The word ... if something in it is lacking, cannot become a work of literature.” ¹³ “The spirit is as water, the word is as an object floating upon it. Where there is much water, everything— great or small—that can float, will float. Such is the relation between spirit and word.” ¹⁴

It will be seen from these and many similar sayings of Han Yu’s that, in his opinion, the literary value of a work is determined by the personality of its author. Can we imagine anything more dissimilar to the views of the literati on the eve of the Renaissance?

Yet Han Yu could not have been regarded as a Renaissance thinker had he not exhorted his contemporaries to learn from the ancients. He considered that he himself learned from them: “I plunge into the strong wine (of ancient literature.— N.K.); saturate myself in it. I swallow its ripening buds, taste its opening flowers; and in this manner I create my works”, he wrote in the treatise On the Way. He points to the sources of his learning. “Above”, i. e., in early antiquity, his exemplars were the Shu-ching, I-ching, Shih-ching, Ch'un-ch’iu and Tso-chuan. These formed not only the earlier line of ancient literature, but became classics for the Confucianists. “Below”, i. e., during the later period of antiquity, his teachers were Chuang-tzii (4th century B. C.), Ch’ii Yuan (4th-3rd centuries B. C.), Ssu-ma Hsiang-ju (2nd century B. C.), Ssu-ma Ch’ien (2nd-lst centuries B.C.), Yang Hsiing (1st century B.C.). Not only is this a much later line of ancient literature, it is, in fact, the line that in the future could not be confined within the framework of Confucianism. This viewpoint highly recommends Han Yii, who, notwithstanding his reverence for Confucius, could recognise the merits of Chuang-tzu,

Besides enumerating those from whom contemporary writers should learn, Han Yu also defined what they should learn: “If a thought is followed to its culmination—this is all,” he said, repeating Confucius.

Yet it seems to me that it is not precisely this that constitutes the new element introduced by Han Yii into the literature of his day. The most essential contribution was the principle of the writer’s freedom and independence (tzil-yu tzu-tsai) as a creative personality. In this respect Han Yii was in perfect accord with his epoch.

In Han Yu’s lifetime, the poetry of Li Po had come to be estimated at its true worth. Although this poet belonged to the preceding generation of writers, his work manifested that spirit of freedom and independence of which Han Yii spoke. If Petrarch was hailed as the first poet of the Italian Renaissance, Li Po may be called the first poet of the Chinese Renaissance; and like Petrarch, not only in regard to time but also to spirit.

A great deal has been written about Li Po in our country, and so there is no need to enlarge upon his work here. His verse, familiar to our readers in many translations, speaks for itself. The love of liberty and the sense of independence inherent in the creations of this poet have also been remarked upon by all who have written about him. But I would like to point out that his path was far different to that indicated by Han Yii. The two men possessed in common their awareness of the need for complete liberty and independence—spiritual, creative independence, but the paths by which they sought spiritual freedom were divergent.

I believe that the key to the inner world of Li Po, to the deep roots of his creative work, is to be found in the verse treatise on the nature of poetry, written by Ssii-k’ung T’u (837-908), poet and theoretician of poetry, who lived at a time when Li Po was no longer with the living, though his poetry still reigned over the minds of men.

V. M. Alexeyev, who translated this treatise and wrote a commentary, gave a correct and, I consider, exhaustive elucidation of the author’s conception. In the opinion of V. M. Alexeyev, Ssu-k’ung T’u believed the writing of creative poetry to be the outcome of inspiration, born of association with “Tao”—the “Way”—the innermost, truest being in the Taoist conception of that category. ¹⁸

Here we have a conception which is the direct opposite of the rationalistic, since man is conscious of his innermost experience not in the terms of reason, but in those of supra-sensual cognition, i. e., mystics. It goes without saying that Li Po’s poetry is a subtle and many-faceted phenomenon, ¹⁷ and it is possible to find in it obvious elements of rationalist thought, but still, illumination as the outcome of direct contact with being plays an immense part in his creative work. The chief thing is that along this path Li Po acquired the

freedom of spirit, the sense of independence that Han Yii sought on the paths of rationalist thought.

So it appears that Chinese data confirms the phenomena that the investigators found in the Italian Renaissance—the presence of both rationalism and mysticism. The one and the other are merely different paths leading to the same end: to the liberation of man’s consciousness from the power of dogmas, to an outlet into the sphere of completely spiritual, and therefore creative, freedom. This was essential for the advance of human thought, social life, culture and science.

But mysticism should not be understood solely in the sense of religious awareness. It may have been this in certain trends of the Italian Renaissance, hut not in the Chinese: here a philosophical mysticism that had no immediate bearing on religion existed.

It is necessary to remind the reader once more that the path of rationalism proved to be the most fruitful for the further progress of social thought and social life.

It seems to me that in order to understand the nature of the fundamental changes wrought in social consciousness during the Renaissance epoch, the important thing is to consider the change that took place in philosophy and poetry. ¹⁸ All the rest, no matter how significant, fits within the same framework, including the processes taking place in literature as a whole.

One of the most expressive signs of the Renaissance in Italy and other European countries, pervaded by Renaissance influences, is considered to be the blossoming of literature. It is well known, too, that during the Chinese Renaissance an immense creative force was at work in literature. Here we encounter a phenomenon of a peculiar nature, typical of the Renaissance epoch in Europe, but given particularly vivid expression in China. A mass of literature appeared of a character which we would call publicist, philosophical and scientific, in forms which might be termed essays, sketches, articles, treatises and epistles, of high literary merit. These forms were alluded to by the collective term ku-wen.

Translated literally, ku-wen means ancient literature, fbut since it included particularly the works of Han Yu, Liu Tsung-yuan (and other Renaissance writers of the 8th to the 12th centuries), it was not the literature of antiquity. It was “ancient” only in spirit but not in time. As a matter of fact, it was the literature that arose along with the movement known as fu-ku—“return to antiquity”, which gave to that historical epoch its specific and original colouring. In view of this, the term ku-wen may he understood to mean exactly the literature of the Renaissance.

That it was so may be seen from the following. A collection of literary works entitled by its compilers Ku-wen chen-pao (True Gems

of Ancient Literature) has been preserved to us. The earliest of the editions known to us dates from 1366, but its first appearance research scholars suppose, must have been about the end of the 13th century, when circumstances permitted of a partial summing up of what had been achieved in literature by the “return-to-antiquity movement.

First of all, writers of the period extending from the oth to the 12th century are included. These were the centuries marked by the development of the movement, and the writers are represented by a large number of their works. There are also writers of the past, from the 3rd century B. C. to the 6th century A. D., but these are few, and a very limited number of their works are given. Essentially, this is a collection of Renaissance writers. The writings of the ancient and medieval authors are included, in the first place, to show that ancient masterpieces were highly estimated by the Renaissance intellectuals and, in the second place, that their own works actually revived the brilliance of that past, that the new “ancient literature” was a worthy successor of the old classics.

The collection is in two volumes. The first is devoted entirely to poetry, the second, to prose, of the kind mentioned above. Here are some examples: On History, a philosophical-historical treatise by Su Hsiin; On a Subject's Right to Criticise the Ruler, an article by Han Yii; On Field Work, a didactical treatise by Su Shih; Against Revenge, an article by Liu Tsung-yuan; The Pavilion of an Intoxicated Elder, by Ouyang Hsiu, a poetical description of a pavilion built by the author in a picturesque spot where he could meet his friends. We find here, too, prefaces to anthologies of the works of some other authors, epistles, biographies and epitaphs. This prose was regarded as literature in the exact sense that Han Yii conceived it. During the Renaissance in China, this literature not only knew a prodigious blossoming, but was elevated to the height of true art. It is possible to speak of the remarkable poetic style, genres and forms, the techniques of this literature, which may be considered as belonging to poetry in a prose form.

Another literary-prose trend was that of the narrative, which was of no less importance for this epoch, and of even greater importance for the subsequent history of Chinese literature.

The narrative prose of the Chinese Renaissance was represented by the novella genre. It had been represented by this form during the first stage of its history, from the 8th to the 9th centuries, and during the second, from the 10th to the 13th centuries. In the first stage, it was known as the T ang novella, since it related chiefly to the days of the T’ang dynasty; and in the second stage, as the Sung novella, since it took shape at the time of the Sung dynasty. Taken as a whole, it was a single line of development in belles-lettres, with clearly marked phases. The T’ang novella was aristocratic; the Sung, democratic. The first came into existence in a circle of the enlightened, highly-cultivated literary men and was intended for

the educated stratum of society, the second was of a more popular nature both in its origin and its suitability to a wider circle of readers.

The existence of these two phases in the novella’s history was in itself evidence of characteristic features in the Chinese Renaissance. The movement was initiated by the educated and enlightened social circles, the spiritual aristocracy, but later the general tendencies of the Renaissance penetrated to wider circles, since, during the second phase of the Renaissance (from the 11th century) a rise in democratic culture was manifested. ¹⁹ Consequently, the history and destiny of the Chinese Renaissance novella are vividly illustrative of the epoch as a whole, and also of its inner development. At the same time, this novella-form helps us to discern the lines of the Renaissance in other fields, above all in the drama. The relation between the novella, especially the T ang novella, and what is known as the \ uan drama, the first outstanding form of the Chinese theatre, is incontrovertible. And this is not merely because many of these plays, including some of the most remarkable of the 13th- and 14th-century dramas, were based on the plots of novellas (a tendency also typical of European Renaissance drama), but, in a greater measure, because the creative principles on which the novella was constructed proved applicable to drama.

lhe fact that the T’ang and Sung novellas belong to the Renaissance epoch is obvious. The Sung novella, and partly the T’ang novella (pien-wen) are closer to folklore, to popular tales; but still, it is not folklore, especially the T’ang novella. These novellas are the genuine stuff of fine literature with its specific qualities.

It is evident in their language; they were written in literary language, as this category is understood in present-day linguistics. ²⁰We know from the subsequent history of the Chinese language how long this literary language, i. e., the language elaborated during the Renaissance, remained unchallenged in Chinese society. Actually, it lasted until the 20th century, at the beginning of which another, modern literary language came into use. That it was in use for so long a time is fully accounted for by the fact that it was evolved and developed by Han Yu, Li Po, Liu Tsung-yuan, Tu Fu, Ouyang Hsiu, Su Shili, Wang An-shih and other remarkable writers.

In the second place, and this, of course, is the most essential, the fact that the novellas belonged to the Renaissance is proved by their subject-matter. The personage presented in them is the man who was the centre of all the Sung philosophers’ attention, the man lor whom Han Yu and Liu Tsung-yuan were fighting. Now, for the first time in Chinese narrative literature, man had appeared as an individual, with a psychology, emotions and a destiny of his own. In the novellas one may even find a re flection of something characteristic of the philosophy of that time — the discerning of a dual nature in man: the “universal”, which meant good, and the “material”, which was, potentially, good and evil. The general humanistic

mood of the epoch is represented just as plainly. Novellas of these centuries were created in the same current of humanistic ideas as the whole of progressive social thought.

It appears, then, that there is ample foundation for including the novella and the drama within the sphere of Chinese Renaissance literature: the drama, because it presents in perhaps a more vividly impressive fashion the individual, the personality, the human character, and thus reflects the humanistic mood of the progressive strata of Chinese society. ...

A great deal more may be included in this sphere. Since it is impossible to dwell on this here, I will confine myself to a brief enumeration of the fields wherein the Chinese Renaissance spirit was manifested. First of all, historical science, in which a new, critical trend ²¹ appeared in those times. From this stemmed the new conception of the philosophy of history. ²² It is necessary, too, to mention art. T’ang portraiture and Sung landscape and genre painting occupy the same place in the history of the art of China, and also of Korea and Japan, as Renaissance art occupies in the history of European art. I cannot forbear to mention that the time has come to consider in the light of Renaissance ideas the new tendencies that pervaded the sphere of Ruddhism both as a religion and a philosophy. It should not be forgotten that if Ruddhism is omitted, it is impossible to understand the origin of many principles in the Sung school of philosophy; no matter how negative the attitude of these philosophers to Ruddhism, they could hardly have attained to their basic principles without an acquaintance with Ruddhist philosophy. Apart from this association with Sung philosophy, Buddhism is important because at that time a new spirit was at work in it, reminiscent of the Reformation, which had been one of the most typical manifestations of Renaissance ideas in Europe. Unless we link the teaching known in Chinese as ch'an (in Japanese, Zen) vyith Renaissance ideas, it will be difficult to understand this teaching, which gained such wide influence both in China and Japan and in many respects determined the aesthetics of the Renaissance. ²³

All these phenomena are still awaiting research, and without thorougli investigation of them we cannot hope to advance from the traditional, settled positions we occupy. These researches, I am convinced, would yield data of immense importance for the study of the Chinese Renaissance—its content, its scope, its historical significance, and by this means, for an understanding of many phenomena in the cultural life of the neighbouring countries, Korea and Japan.

A comparison of data on two of the historical instances of the Renaissance we have discussed, instances that have arisen and taken shape entirely independent of each other, makes it possible,

it seems to me, to distinguish certain common features of this epoch in its cultural-historical content.

The most important manifestation in this field was the spirit of^humanism. But to confine ourselves to. this statement is not enough; in the history of mankind the humanistic principle has always dominated, to a greater or lesser degree, people’s minds and activities; otherwise they would not have been the makers of history and culture. The conception of humanitas was actual to Cicero, the conception of jen, to Confucius, long before the Renaissance epoch; it was, moreover, identical at opposite sides of the civilised world. What is important, therefore, is not the conception of humanism as such, but its content. Historically, this content differed: let us recall that man was proudly declared to be created in the image of the deity; that man was the possessor of the fire, wrenched from the hands of the deity. May we take this to signify that man possessed the same powers as were attributed to the deity—unlimited powers, according to the ideas of that time? Such, apparently, was the most ancient conception of humanism, a conception of immense importance, since without this faith in his own powers man would have found it hard to build up life and culture. The significance of this consciousness is indicated by the fact that the conception assumed shape through a medium most forceful to the minds of people of those ages—the creation of myths. Let us recall the commandment “love thy neighbour,” the precept of “charity and compassion”, etc., which were acclaimed also in antiquity, though at a somewhat later stage, when social life and culture were already highly developed. These commandments expressed awareness of the equality and fraternity of all people, their equal value and their ethical community. That this conception was of prime importance is borne out by the fact that it was established through the medium most imperative for people of that time—the medium of religion. This conception reflected an idea of the utmost importance in that epoch, the idea of the untenability of the then prevailing division of people into superior—free, and inferior—slaves. Progress in life and culture, that is, in history itself, was impossible without a struggle against this differentiation.

Even if we bear in mind this alone, it will be clear that the conception of humanism formed during the Renaissance was, [historically, at least the third of its kind. But its content was its own. Renaissance humanism consisted in the individual’s assurance of his own value from every aspect; of the value of his own reason, senses and will power. Furthermore, this value was associated with the autonomy of the human personality, its freedom and independence. This third conception of humanism assumed its form in categories that were philosophical rather than mythical or religious. Humanism in this content, as I see .it, constitutes the salient feature of the Renaissance epoch in the cultural-historical plane indicated.

placed the former; it could not have accomplished this because the former conceptions were too precious to human life and cult ure and to history itself. But it supplemented them by something new and essential—something indispensable to historical progress. '

Not only what it affirmed, but what it rejected, was characteristic of Renaissance humanism. Both historical instances of the Renaissance, the Chinese and the Italian, indicate with the utmost clarity that whatever hampered man’s spiritual freedom, freedom in every manifestation of his nature, was rejected. The mam obstacle in the path of freedom at that time consisted in dogmatism as a principle of the attitude to truth, and scholasticism as a method of the cognition of truth. The negative attitude was directed, concretely, towards that which, in the given society, had proved a refuge for these two phenomena: in China this was Confucianism, i. e., philosophy, in Italy, Catholicism, i. e., religion. In no case was philosophy itself or religion itself the object of opprobrium, but only the claims that each laid to constituting the sole source oi truth—moreover, in its specific formulae, claims supported by the ruling powers: the state in one case, the church in the other.

Nevertheless, there wa snotliing new, as far as history was concerned, either in the emergence of humanism during the Renaissance

or in the ways by which it was established. Dogmatism, and its inevitable associate, scholasticism, had taken shape in the history of human thought in earlier times, and even then the struggle against them had begun. Both the one and the other were historically and logically justified. All doctrine is evolved gradually, and so by degrees formulae are elaborated to set down the essence of the said doctrine; it is perfectly natural, therefore, that at a certain stage these formulae assume a finished, fully defined form, both in idea and language. If the teaching is rooted in social being, i. e., has a historical foundation, this process is inevitable and even serves as a symptom of its vitality. Hence, the appearance of dogmas as strictly defined conceptions is not only a logical development but also evidence that the given doctrine has reached the peak of its development. From this standpoint, the Confucian summa summarum given' in the collection of K’ung Ying-ta, and the Catholic summa summa-rum given in the Summa theologiae of I homas Aquinas, represent the peak of all that had been attained by Confucian and Catholic thought in the preceding ages. But these peaks belonged historically to a definite epoch, the Middle Ages. Consequently, when changes took place in the historical setting, K’ung Ying-ta and Thomas Aquinas could uphold their principles solely by obligatory means: inwardly—by declaring their dogmas to be the only verities, and outwardly—by employing the authority and force of the ruling power. Hence, dogma bred dogmatism. The founding of dogma is a phenomenon historically legitimate and, in a way, progressive; the founding of dogmatism is a phenomenon historically natural but always reactionary.

The struggle against dogmatism was observed in history at earlier dates. Take, for instance, the efforts of Confucian thinkers of the Middle Ages to emerge beyond the bounds of Han Confucianism and to endow it with a new content by introducing elements borrowed from Taoism and Buddhism. Take, again, the heresies in medieval Catholicism, evidencing the effort to escape from canonical bounds. The point is not in the struggle against dogmatism, but in the way it was conducted. It was at this juncture that the Renaissance contributed something new; previous to this, the struggle against dogmatism had been waged with the aid of dogmas, one set against the other. In the Renaissance epoch, at all events during its rise, it was not a question of setting up new, strictly defined dogmas against the existent ones, but of the outburst of protest against the spirit of dogmas, i. e., against dogmatism as the principle of thought. Dogmatism was confronted by free thought, scholasticism by the creative principle. It was this, I consider, that constituted the new idea introduced into the history of thought by the Renaissance epoch.

This epoch, in both its western and eastern versions, showed us the paths by which the creative freedom of thought was attained. There were two ways, directly opposite to each other—the rationalistic and the mystical.

In the given historical circumstances these were two divergent paths to cognition. Rationalism led to cognition of being by the study of it—through experience interpreted in the categories of logical thinking, the categories of reason. The mystics considered that cognition could be attained straightforwardly by direct contact with what is cognised, realised not only through reason but also through intuition. Both paths were observed in the Renaissance in China and Italy. During the Chinese Renaissance the rationalist principle was manifested mainly in the channel of Confucianism and partly Buddhism (in its reformational trends). The mystical principle followed the channel of Taoism and some Buddhist trends. Not infrequently both paths led to one and the same end. Chang Tsai spoke of all mankind as his brothers and sisters, and all other living things—“grasses and trees, birds and beasts”—as his “associates.” Francis of Assisi looked upon fishes and birds as his brothers and sisters. Both men arrived at the same conclusion, the first, by way of rationalism; the second, by way of mysticism. As history was to show, the first way proved the more effective; succeeding progress, both social and cultural, was associated with rationalism (in its new development, of course), rationalism as the principle of cognition, and with experience as its method.

It should not be forgotten that the humanism of the Renaissance had its own destiny. The time came when Renaissance humanism itself became the stronghold of dogmatism. A striking instance of this is afforded in the history of Renaissance philosophy in China. This philosophy which, in its time, had built up one of the most integral, complete and socially necessary, that is to say, progressive,

systems for its time, beginning with the 16th century turned into a system of dogmas, a system upheld by external means-the ruling nower which permitted of no doubts about its truth. On the whole, the same thing occurred in Europe, where, in the 16th century, a crisis in humanistic thought in its Renaissance form became apparent Both in the East and in the West the humanism of the Renaissance gave place to that of the Enlightenment, But this turning-point, like the history of the Renaissance epoch in general, is a subject

What is known as the Renaissance is closely associated with humanism in its concrete historical content. The name Renaissance became the principal title of the whole epoch. Since the terminological name of this epoch is so firmly established, we do not infringe upon it, but we wish to show that whatever is understood by this name is of secondary importance in characterising this epoch and, though inseparable from the main thing-humamsm, is nevertheless no more than an accompaniment to it.

As we have already indicated in this article, the Chinese term ju-ku refers not only in its general meaning, but even in the lexical sense, to the restoration of antiquity. The European terms for the epoch-Rinascita, Renaissance-do not express “antiquity m the lexical sense, but are understood if not as the rebirth oi antiquity itself then at all events as the rebirth of sciences and arts on the basis’of antiquity. Both in the East and in the West Renaissance humanists turned their attention to antiquity. To find what? Inspiration and help. Where? In the “classical” antiquity.

Renaissance humanists desired something new m life and cut ture. They felt and understood what it should consist of, but they needed help in working out their views, and, what was no less important to them, they needed someone’s authority to support their views. This authority they found in the ancients.

It was necessary at the same time to strengthen this authority in the eyes of their contemporaries. This the Renaissance humanists achieved. Strictly speaking, the effulgence that the West Europeans visualise around Graeco-Roman antiquity, and the East Asians visualise around Chinese antiquity, if not wholly created by Renaissance humanists, was at least strengthened by them. It was an effulgence

Antiquity is a very wide field and shows great variety in its different epochs. The period of antiquity, in which the humanists of the epoch sought inspiration and support, characterises their outlook. Both in China and in Italy it was the classical period tha attracted them. The Chinese looked to the lieh-kuo, 1. e., the midd e period of their antiquity; the Italians, to the last period of the republic and the beginning of the empire in Latin antiquity, and the period of the city-states in Hellenic antiquity, which were likewise middle

periods. Earlier antiquity was recognised and revered, but late antiquity was rejected, or at any rate played a far less important part. The explanation of this'is to be found, I believe, in what has already been mentioned: in the dependence of the attitude to antiquity upon the attitude to the Middle Ages. These two attitudes are two sides of the same historical outlook. The conception of the Renaissance emerged in the process of struggle for free thought, for free and all-round development of human nature. But these were hampered by dogmas in philosophical guise, secular in China, religious in Italy. It was necessary to escape from their power. Since these dogmas had been created in a previous epoch, that epoch was to blame for everything. When had it begun, though, this epoch? The beginning had to be traced, and it was found: the epoch had begun at the moment when the luminous period of antiquity was dimmed.

It must be admitted that a certain historical reality lay behind this historical conception. Late antiquity, the last phase of the history of slave-owning society both in East and West, merged with the early Middle Ages, the first phase of the history of feudal society. Many phenomena in medieval culture, particularly in religion and philosophy, were developed in late antiquity. As one instance of this, we may point to the history of laoism in the East and Christianity in the West. _ .

The universal religious-philosophical system of 1 aoism took shape in the “Wei and Liu-ch’ao times”, in the Chinese Middle Ages, but its initial period of development dates from the time of the Han Empire. Christianity was transformed into a religious-philosophical system in the early Middle Ages, but its sources, both Hebrew and Hellenic, are to be found in antiquity. And indeed there is a great deal in Christian dogma that assumed its form in the late period of this antiquity. It was because late antiquity proved to be in some way intermingled with the phenomena brought by the Middle Ages that the Renaissance humanists were attracted by the classical phase of antiquity.

We are well aware that the search for aid and inspiration in antiquity was by no means confined to the Renaissance epoch. Both before and after this epoch, people in the Orient and the Occident had looked to antiquity. The essential point is, to whom or to what they looked. The humanists of the Italian Renaissance sought Plato, not Plotinus; the Chinese humanists sought Mencius, not Wang Pi. Theologians of the Middle Ages and humanists of the Renaissance turned to Aristotle—the former, to build up the edifice of scholasticism with his aid; the latter, to pull down and destroy this ediiice with his aid. In China, in the Middle Ages as in the Renaissance, thinkers looked to the conception of the five primary elements of material nature, but in the first instance it was done for the purpose of building up a mystical-magical doctrine on this basis; in the second instance, to attain with its aid to a materialist interpretation of the

process of being. Mankind, which had become detached in some way from the earlier ages of its history by late antiquity and the early Middle Ages, was brought once more into contact with those ages by the Renaissance. In other words, the conception of continuity in mankind’s historical existence was resuscitated; perhaps, this conception of continuity was even created anew, and it was founded upon a humanistic basis, a basis that treated man as the free agent in history.

In conclusion, it should be borne in mind that no actual rebirth of antiquity took place, nor could take place. After all that mankind had suffered in the struggle against the division into freemen and slaves, it was unthinkable that people would willingly return to the slave-owning past,. This was on the social-economic plane. It was likewise unthinkable to return to the ideological systems of antiquity. The paganism of the fanatical disciples of Plato in Italy at the end of the 15th century was only an episode in the history of Renaissance religious-philosophical thought; actually, its most characteristic feature was the endeavour to build a new system of world outlook. The close attention that Sung philosophers devoted to the ancient I-ching by no means signified a return to the naturalistic conception of being, but was merely a sign of their increasing awareness of “being” as a dialectic process.

The same thing is to be observed in literature. Although the Italian humanists admired the writings of the ancients, Petrarch’s sonnets do not resemble the Amores of Ovid either in form or content. Han Yii, who advocated the “return to antiquity” and visualised antiquity through the prism of its manuscripts, termed all that he considered genuine in contemporary literature “ancient”. Yet even those genres which were elaborated by him and his associates—genres that included articles, treatises, studies, etc. — bore little resemblance to parallel elements in the literature of antiquity, not to mention verse and narrative prose. A particularly striking indication of the fact that no restoration of antiquity had taken place is observed in China, where the ancient classics were actually replaced by new classics.

Humanism and renascence: these were the most general and, at the same time, the fundamental moving forces of the Renaissance epoch in the history of mankind, where it appears in two versions—the Italian and the Chinese. All cultural phenomena of this epoch either owed their origin directly to these forces, or were wholly determined by them. Philosophy and poetry were created by them; literature as a whole, historical science and art were determined by them; and under their influence natural sciences developed. They determined the very mode of living. Characteristic of the humanists in both Italy and China was the new interest in practical activity, in the spread of their ideas. The media for their pro-

The whole of this many-sided a Y _{lg wh0) in soc}ial status, of a separate social stratum ¹ differed greatly from the

°^f t tL°tLg:fn7wfotlined^Pt^Phe common feature; typical of the cultural-historical side of the Renaissance epoc ^ ¹ largely

Their reproduction in each country and their appea^ ^ ^ independent of reciprocal m ue features

n?ioVrea\Xm“rtt key Jan undemanding oi the role played Z the epoch in the general hisin Chin, extend-

feudal system had lasted far beyond the early stage of its ^hlstory. changes that took place in the

Renaissance epoch. It is a generally-known fact that this development of the towns with all its consequent economic, social and cultural effects was one of the most characteristic aspects of the Renais-_m Ttalv A no less important fact in the economic, social and cultural Ufe 5 Renaissance China was the development of the towns not onlv as political-administrative and military centres, but a so lent res for^?trade crafts and cultural activities. It is often pointed nit that certain forms of capitalist production began to make their appearance during this epoch in Italy. Rut here we must bear in

the feudal era of her history. This may be ^a.^s®®^rt^,the'lSt^cen-fmmdation about the Renaissance period—the 8th to the °e

turies-in China. But it is, nevertheless, a special stage m the history of feudal society. I would suggest naming it transitional. ^y _{Tn its ma}i_n lines the historical process is uninterrupted. In the case of a phenomenon such as the substitution of a social-economic svstem the decline of one of its forms and the emergence of another aref actually a prolonged process. Therefore, the frontier zones m the history slave-owning society and of feudal society merge into one , i. observe this in the so-called Hellenistic epoch, merging

“to the Sory of fhe early period of the Roman Empire Tins was the last stage in the history of slave-owning society m that zone ot the Old World, and the first in the history of feudal society. ^eS¹¹¹

was transferred from Rome to Byzantium, and with the elevation of Constantinople and the fall of Rome, antiquity came to an end as Eneels pointed out. For this reason the history of feudal socie „ il Ralv cannot be detached from that preparatory stage, that tran-uS pSod. The same may be raid in regard to the history of feudal society in China. The system was consolidated in the dra century but took shape earlier, during the latter part of the Ha Errmirp This constituted the transitional stage.

^EX'dS“e,Situation arose dnring the ‘rancori from : feudd.sm to capitalism: here, too, a long transitional P”¹⁰J _t“

Asia, not China alone, then the transitional period closes m 19th century with the consolidation of capitalism in Jap • P of particular interest is that the countri« of the

“proved Kmere backward than younger montn^ talt. J the capitalist system was consolidated only in the 19th century,

China, only at the end of 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, and, moreover, it iiad not time to reach full development.

The Renaissance epoch enters this transitional period of history as its first phase; the second is that known in the West as the Enlightenment epoch. An epoch closely resembling this in its character took shape in China’s history. It follows that the Renaissance epoch remained still feudal, but was passing already to the new, urban stage of its history. It was not yet capitalism, but without it, capitalism -could not have emerged.

What, then, had it accomplished—this Renaissance epoch? It had brought about a revolution in people’s minds. Without this there could have been no ideology that impelled the builders of the future social system, capitalism. Capitalism in the circumstances of the time was a natural development, a further advance on mankind’s long, arduous road. That this revolution in thought was confined mainly to intellectuals goes without saying. Rut, as Lenin remarked, the intellectuals are called intellectuals because they reflect and express with the greatest awareness and acuity the development of class interests and the political groupings in all societies.

We know from history that what the Renaissance humanists were aiming at was, historically speaking, progressive. They might not have been in direct, immediate contact with the masses, but all the same, inasmuch as they were in accord with the demands of the epoch, they expressed the objective interests of society as a whole. It is understood, of course, that this revolution in minds was determined to a certain extent by the rudiments of the new that appeared in the social and economic spheres of the life of peoples, but it took place before these rudiments had time to develop. That the intellectual revolution is one of the most essential conditions for the transition to a new social system is proved by the fact that the preparatory change in ideas necessary for the transition from capitalism to socialism was accomplished long before the initial establishment of the socialist system. It seems to me that if we have grasped the historical content of the Renaissance epoch in precisely this way, it will be easy for us to determine its place in history and its historical meaning. Since the same epoch proved to be as clearly marked in China as in Italy, the question arises of what this epoch was from a general-historical standpoint: was it peculiar to the history of one country or two countries? Was it a historical fortuity? Or was it inherent in the history of other countries, where historical life evinced characteristics identical with those of China and Italy—countries that had passed through a prolonged stage of the slave-owning system with a many-sided, well-developed culture, and had experienced as long (and as many-sided in its development) a stage of feudalism? Was it a historical regularity in these instances? If this could be convincingly shown on the basis of various data, it would play a very important part in our general understanding of the historical process.

We know, however, that the Renaissance epoch—in Europe, at any rate—embraced other countries, not only Italy. At the same time, we are well aware that the first country where the epoch made itself felt was Italy. We know, too, that the Renaissance in other countries was determined to a great extent by the changes that took place in Italy. There can be no doubt that the Renaissance in these countries was historically independent of that in Italy. As soon as this has been decided, the question arises of autochthonic and reflected Renaissance epochs. Whereas the former arose, evidently, in the history of ancient peoples, the latter arose in the history of younger peoples, who entered the arena of history when the slaveowning world was in its decline. For this reason, they had no antiquity such as belonged to the older peoples. Rut, as they advanced rapidly along the path of feudal development, they reached the same realisation as the older peoples, namely, that an intellectual revolution—in the sense indicated—was necessary. They had their Renaissance epoch in their own shapes and on their own levels, and the absence of a “classical” antiquity was compensated by assimilating the antiquity of the older peoples. Hellenic and Roman antiquity became the antiquity of all other European peoples; Chinese antiquity assumed the same place in the history of the culture of other East Asian peoples.

Thus, the question of the Renaissance epoch ceases to be that of the history of any particular country and becomes a problem of world history. At the same time, it gives rise to another problem— that of the concrete shape and level of this epoch in various countries. We know, for example, that the Renaissance spirit in Germany found its most vivid expression in the Reformation—the reshaping of religious views. Possibly, the same process took place in Rud-dhism in Japan. In short, it is far from being a rule that the Renaissance elements in other countries should develop within the same spheres as in the first Renaissance country. Neither is it the rule that the highest attained in any field by this movement should be, of necessity, in the first country to know a Renaissance epoch. We know that Renaissance drama reached its peak not in Italy but in England, where the movement was only a reflection. The same may be said, evidently, of Renaissance drama in Eastern Asia: it first took shape in China, where it reached a very high level of development, but attained its peak, apparently, in the Japanese drama of the 17th and 18th centuries.

The historical content of the Renaissance, therefore, can only be understood on the basis of a general survey of its manifestations in every country where the movement was known. These should be grouped, according to their historical connections, into definite cultural-historical zones, for example, the European, East Asian and Middle Eastern. As a phenomenon of world history, the Renaissance is only revealed in its full historical significance when the phenomena of this movement are compared in different countries

and also in each of the possible zones. Seen in this light, the Renaissance phenomena in each country, their quality, significance and historical role will become far more distinct.

I cannot but add that in this comparative method of study the movement of world history might become perfectly concrete; we observe the geographical trend and the consecutiveness of the movement, as well as its sporadic, even fitful nature. This, perhaps, will put an end to attempts to obliterate the Renaissance by proving that it stems from the Middle Ages and, thus, depriving it of any title to originality; it may also foil attempts to prove that it had no connection at all with the Middle Ages. Without the Middle Ages there could have been no Renaissance; but it undermined the Middle Ages not by obliterating everything, including the great things that had been created during the Middle Ages, but by making a bold advance.

¹ The most interesting of the modern writers on problems of the West European Renaissance as a particular historical epoch is, in my opinion, Huizinga, the Dutch historian (1872-1945). Readers who admire and value his works have called him “the Burckhardt of the 20th century”. For fuller information about this author see K. Roster’s introductory article in Johan Huizinga, Geschichte und Kultur, Gesammelte Aufsatze, Stuttgart, 1954.

² The interesting work on the Italian Renaissance and Slavonic literatures of the I5th-16th centuries by I. I. Golenishchev-Kutuzov marks a decided advance in this field (H. H. EoneHnmeB-KyTyaoB, dlmajibnHCKoe eo3poMdeuue u cjiaenncKue Jiumepamypu XV— XVI ee., MocKBa, 1963).

⁹ See V. I. Semanov’s article on the historical basis of literary periodisa-tion (B. Id. CeMaHOB, 06 ucmopunecKOu ocnoee jiumepamypnou nepuoduaariuu,— «Hapoflii A3hh h A$phkii», 1963, N» 5, dp. 118-134).

⁴ See the anthology of Chinese literature: «KiiTaficKan jmiepaTypa. Xpe-CTOMaTHH», t. I. «/lpoBiiocTi,. Cpe^HHe BeKa. HoBOe BpeMH», MocKBa, 1959, CTp. 305-311.

⁶ See the article on “The Philosophy of the Chinese Renaissance” in this volume (pp. 69-100).

⁶ Tsin-ssu-lu, with a commentary by Nakamura Tekisai, was reproduced in 1912 (the 45th year of Meiji), in vol. 8 of Kanseki kokuzikai zensho, a collection of the Chinese classics with commentaries by Japanese Confucianists of the 17th and 18th centuries, published by the Waseda University, Tokyo.

⁹ Huizinga, in his work Le Declin du moyen age (Paris, 1948, pd278 ff.), advances an original conception of “formalism”.

¹⁰ See the article on “The Philosophy of the Chinese Renaissance” in this volume.

¹¹ This assertion is to be found in one of HanYii’s philosophical epistles, included in I Shu, I, the collection made by Ch’eng Hao.

ckou jiumepamypu u 06 onepeduux sadanax ee ucmopuna,—«'<Rypnan MHHncTep-cTBa napo/uioro npocuememiH)), 1916, 6).

¹³ Quoted from the epistle Ta Wei Chih-sheng shu (“Answer to Wei Chih-sheng”).

¹⁷ For this aspect of Li Po’s verse see 0. JI. (DmnMaH, JIu Eo. Mwmb u meopnecmeo, MocKBa, 1958.

¹⁸ With reference to this, see N. I. Konrad’s article on three T’ang poets (H. H. Konpa.a, Tpu mancnux nosma, in the book «Tpit TancKiix noa-ra. JIu Bo, Bsh Ban, fly ®y», MocKBa, 1960).

¹⁹ See N. I. Konrad’s survey of the history of Chinese literature in: «Kn-TaiicKaH nmepaTypa. XpecroMaTHH», t. I, cip. 35-37.

(LI. II. KoHpafl, O jiumeparnypi-tOM asune e Kumae u Hnanuu,—«LioiinoCbi H3HK0-3HaHiia», 1954, 3).

²¹ Since this question cannot be dealt with here in the necessary detail, I shall confine myself to pointing out that I regard the “critical school” in Chinese historical science of that time as the trend initiated by Ouyang Hsiu’s works on the authenticity and authorship of certain ancient writings. The development of this trend is seen in the historical works of Su Shih and Su Cbeh.

²² Evidence of the formation of such a conception is found in the philosophical-historical treatises, for example, Ch’ un-ch' iu lun by Ouyang Hsiu, Cheng-tung lun by Su Shih, Shih lun by Su Cheh and Cheng-tung lun by Chu Hsi. Naturally, the historiographic corpus Tzu-chuh tung-Chian by Ssu-ma Kuang, and its abbreviation, Tzu-chih tung-chian kang-mu, compiled by Chu Hsi, are of great importance. In this connection I wish to call attention to what is, from my standpoint, a notable circumstance: the new school of history, characteristic of the Renaissance epoch, arose in China during the second stage of this epoch.

²³From this standpoint, the teaching of Tsung Mi (780-861), in particular his treatise On Man (Yuan jen lun), seems to me typical. The study of this treatise and of the entire system of ideas to which it belongs should be one of the most urgent tasks in studies on various aspects of the Chinese Renaissance.

²⁴ See K. MapKC, ®opMM, npediuecmeyioufue nanumajiucmwiecnoMy npoua-eodcmey,— '.'BeCTHHK apeBHefi HCTopnH>>, 1940, N° 1, exp. 15.

In the study of literature, as in other fields of learning, there exists something that may be termed “the inertia of science”. Its essence lies in the employment of premises and formulae considered indisputable by those engaged in research. This, of course, is natural: the purpose of the history of science is to establish a certain number of general principles accepted thereafter as universal. Circumstances arise, however, which call for a revision of some of these generally accepted principles.

These circumstances may arise as a result of something taking place within this branch of learning, or in connection with a change in a wider sphere to which the given science belongs. It appears to uS that in view of such a change certain premises customarily regarded as indisputable by historians ©f literature require to be, if not completely revised, at any rate extended, and that this applies to some aspects of the study of Shakespeare.

For example, now that the immense sources of material on the history of the Eastern peoples have been used in the study of the general historical process, we can view differently and more comprehensively the trend of world history in general, and such aspects of it as, let us say, the Renaissance. Another important circumstance is that this particular epoch, with which Shakespeare’s name is inseparably associated, is now being given a new interpretation by historians, especially that aspect of it which identifies the Renaissance with humanism. This necessitates a revision of the current conceptions of the Middle Ages. These, then, are a few of the trends that should be followed, in my opinion, in striving to “overcome inertia” in the study of Shakespeare.

The book on Shakespeare, by M. and D. Urnovs * {Shakespeare. His Hero and His Time), was prepared with a view to publishing it in 1964, the quater-centenary of his birth.

“ f„^y-X,tT,r JfurSn”_g to Shakespeare in 1964. Not so much, perhaps, for Shakespeare’s sake, as for our own.

item from a historical quest.onna.re WhatiJfXn fhe English epoch? The Urnovs oharac ®^ris® _{b peare} then, was the last and most’emUient^epresentaUve^of^FTenaissance culture in England.

^a™’n°^{f C}°^UrSe’ ^{Eagland herself}- ^{Its ri}se in these countries was not simultaneous, as the authors are well aware: in some it came earlier m others later It emerged first of all in Italy in the 14th century!

i g and was the last country in which it appeared. Therefore the fourth stage of the answer is: English literature, or, to be exact the English drama of the late 16th and early 17th centuries marks the culminating point in the development of European Renaissance literature. Since the peak of English drama is Shakespeare’s work his name concludes the literary history of the European, or more precisely, the West European, Renaissance.

This must be dealt with at more length. That a West European literature, a regional literature, existed during the European Re-naissimce, is beyond doubt. Regional literature is a tangible historical S: ,^{0n varyin}g geographical scales, with changing frontiers,

^{E rmg de}g^re^es °f inner unity, different proportions of component parts, regional literatures are a feature of many epochs in the history ol world literature. In some cases the character of this literature is

n!I¹S₁^eX?^^ed’. ^aa’ rl°J ^mstance’ the Alexandrian literature of the Hellenistic period. The important thing is to discern the historic

, / ^^poa ^^{ch a} regional literature came into existence and persisted. At different historical periods this soil varied. For example during the period before the formation of nations, a regional litera ture emerged upon one particular basis; when nations had formed it arose on another basis. If we study from this standpoint the regional literature that emerged in the West European countries during the Renaissance, it should be noted that this literature arose during the slow, uneven but persistent transformation of the various peoples of Western Europe into nations. The Renaissance is an intermediate period between the Middle Ages as the last stage in the history of peoples, and modern times as the first stage in the history of nations.

It is ol importance to take this circumstance into consideration 1 we want to understand by what social stratum the unity of Renaissance culture in West European countries was upheld, the founda-

T °™^ch11 rested was the intellectual stratum, and this was indisputably international within, of course, the scope of its time t he point has long since been stressed by all historians of the Re, ^dlfet^ance- ^rhe fact that the active element in the Renaissance was the intellectual does not mean that the culture of that lime wus solely confined to a narrow milieu. The Urnovs do not use the word intellectuals in their book, they speak of the humanists, but to historians writing of the Renaissance these are synonymou^ As the authors point out, “humanism as an integral system of concepts was accessible to a narrow circle. The humanists were few, but the humanistic philosophy, freed from medieval dogma, became the heritage of an entire epoch.”

At the same time, it must be taken into account that the Renaissance epoch was not stationary, it was a process. In the course of time its characteristic phenomena altered, lost some features and acquired others. The exponents of the Renaissance were themselves affected by this process: as the concept of nations developed, the foundation weakened upon which the “internationality” of the humanists rested. Shakespeare stood not upon the threshold, but within the gates, so to speak, of the nations’ epoch in Western Europe; at that time “internationality” was built on a foundation differing from that of Petrarch’s day. This, too, is an indication that during the second half of the 16th and the beginning of the 17th centuries, English literature, particularly English drama and, consequently, Shakespeare, were not only a late, but the last stage in the great regional literature of the Renaissance in Western Europe.

It is not a question of Western Europe alone. The idea expressed by the Renaissance, as is well known, was humanism. In their book on Shakespeare, the Urnovs speak of humanism as a new trend in the spiritual life of not only Western but also Central Europe. And this is perfectly justified. Renaissance phenomena in art, literature and science were to be observed in those centuries among the peoples of Central Europe. It should he added, among those of Eastern Europe as well. In our day, this is an indisputable fact for scholars engaged in Renaissance research, as may be seen in that admirable book, The Italian Renaissance and Slavonic Literatures of the 15th-16th Centuries, by I. N. Golenishchev-Kutuzov. Shakespeare marks the culminating point in Renaissance literature in Europe as a whole.

Another point one would like to make here is that there is a tendency—a result of inertia—to refer to the Renaissance exclusively on the loftiest of levels. It would be hard to find any published work on the subject in which bombastic remarks upon the prodigious upheaval experienced by mankind are not included.

This, however, always applies to the West European Renaissance. We know, of course, that upheavals which prove of revolutionary significance for all mankind, may take place in a group of countries, or even in one alone. Such, for example, was the English industrial revolution. Can the West European, or even the European Renaissance in general, be placed under the heading ol such upheavals—localised in their emergence, but universal in their

It would be more correct to say that the Renaissance m itseli constituted a momentous progressive turning-point in the historic path of mankind; not because, having received its impetus m one country, it then affected every other, but because it occurred at a definite phase of their history among other civilised nations. In each case it was observed to appear independently. What has been called the Renaissance in the history of European peoples was a universal, and not a local, phenomenon.

Renaissance took place in Italy. What was the position of Italy at that time in relation to other peoples of Western Europe? It was an ancient land, an active agent of history, the land that could boast, in that part of Europe, the longest and most uninterrupted history, that possessed her antiquity, and her Middle Ages of many centuries. In the 14th century it was the country that possessed the richest cultural heritage in Western and Central Europe.

This heritage embraced all that antiquity had given to Europeans, that is to say, the culture of ancient Greece and ancient Rome; all that had belonged to the Middle Ages, within the boundaries of the Roman Empire of the Christian era. Moreover, as the result of the movement of her own history Italy was then the one European country ahead of all the rest in the general European historical process.

Rut was she the only country to possess a history and a culture such as these? After all, Ryzantium could also look back upon a history of parallel length and unbroken continuity, which included a highly developed antiquity, and its own widely developed Middle Ages. Byzantium was for the peoples of Eastern Europe what Italy was for the Western and Central European peoples.

And what of the countries beyond Europe? The peoples of Iran, India and China could boast an equally long history. Their civilisation was on just as high a level, and in some fields far richer. Now, at a certain crucial moment in the history of these ancient civilised peoples, phenomena appeared which closely resembled those known in Europe by the term “Renaissance”. They found particularly vivid expression in the luxuriant and original flowering of literature, art, social thought and science. In Italy this began in the 14th century; in Iran and contiguous regions of North-West India and Central Asia, in the 11th century; in China, at a still earlier date, in the 8th century. The Renaissance may be sensed as a parallel process, in its essentials, in many countries, if we read with close attention the verses of poets such as Petrarch, Ronsard, Ruda-ki, Saadi, Hafiz, Li Po, Tu Fu, and Po Chii-i. We know these poets well, but individually; had we become acquainted with them side by side in a single series of volumes entitled A Treasury of Poetry of the World Renaissance, their creations would have shone out with a new and dazzling brilliance. This would have proved a far more convincing argument than many historical works in favour of considering the Renaissance as a universal phenomenon.

However, this is not the place for detailed research on the Renaissance as a world-wide phenomenon. We shall only stress the point that it was a movement. History presents it as a tidal wave surging over the vast continent of Eurasia, or, more correctly, of Afro-Eura-sia, since North Africa had from ancient times constituted one historical whole with the Mediterranean countries of Europe and ¹ Asia. Beginning in the 8th century on the eastern frontiers of the Eurasian continent—the shores of the Pacific, the movement ended

It is understood, of course, that throughout those nine centuries of the world Renaissance, history could not remain stationary. The actual disparity of time in the appearance of the Renaissance in different countries is evidence of the movement of history. In the case of some Eastern countries, their historical development brought about their Renaissance earlier than in Italy. And there is nothing surprising in this: in those remote days, the great and ancient peoples of the Orient were more advanced than those of the West. From the 16th century onward, Europe began to overtake Asia, and the further, the more decisive became the advance. _

Another circumstance which should not be forgotten is that since the Renaissance was a movement, and that movement, a historical one, its destiny was subject to the general course of history. That is why the phenomena of the Renaissance did not have a permanent form. Even in the same country they gradually underwent alteration in both content and appearance. They were all the more varied m the changing history of different countries; in each country, at every historic juncture, they remained fundamentally individual. The development of the Renaissance as a whole presented, then, a picture of an especial character: its phenomena in one country might gradually weaken and eventually disappear, while simultaneously, in another country they might be flourishing. Rut still, if we take the Renaissance movement as a whole, from its historical emergence to its historical end, it is permissible to speak of the actual world-wide Renaissance epoch as lasting from the 8th to the Kith centuries.

It should be pointed out that the movement we know by this name arose, as a rule, in the more ancient countries, rich in history, and subsequently spread to other, historically younger, countries. This was the case in the Far East, where the Chinese Renaissance called into existence similar phenomena in Korea and Japan; it was also the case in the Middle East, where the Indo-Iranian-West-ern Asian Renaissance evoked similar phenomena among the Transcaucasian peoples; and so it was in Europe, where the Italian Renaissance overspread the countries of Western, Central and Eastern Europe, even penetrating to the Transcaucasian countries—for example, Armenia. In Armenia, the national culture revealed an unusual intermingling of the elements of the Oriental Renaissance with those of the Occidental Renaissance. This necessitates drawing a distinction between the autochthonic, or indigenous, Renaissance, and that introduced or reflected from some other source. The Renaissance in China, in the Indo-Iranian-Western Asian group of countries and in Italy, where it arose out of the development of their own histories, was purely and completely autochthonic. In other countries it was reflected. .

sance phenomena does not render them any the less expressive of the epoch, Ihe history of Renaissance drama may be taken as evidence of this. In Europe, the highest level attained in Renaissance drama was not that of the Italian drama produced in the home of the European Renaissance, but the drama appearing in England, one of the countries to which the movement born in Italy had spread.

Similar instances may be observed in the general history of this world-wide movement. Renaissance drama emerged in China in the 13th and 14th centuries, the period of what was known as the Yuan drama. Rut the finest achievement in this field, and in this part of the world, was the Japanese drama of the 17th and 18th centuries, which appeared in a country where Renaissance phenomena were not autochthonic.

Two names stand out in the history of Renaissance drama on two opposite sides of the world, the names of William Shakespeare and Chikamatsu Monzaemon. Two great names: but as regards the breadth and nature of the problems treated, the power of artistic expressiveness and depth in subject-matter of universal human interest, William Shakespeare undoubtedly takes precedence.

Are we not, then, justified in saying that Shakespeare was the genius not only of English, of West European, of European drama in general, but of the world’s Renaissance drama? And is not this addition only a fraction of those new things about Shakespeare that can be contributed by us, by our research scholars, in the year 1964?

It is of the utmost importance for the Urnovs that the work of the great dramatist dates from the close of the Renaissance epoch. For this reason, it is essential to understand the nature of Renaissance drama in general and all that happened to it during the final stage of its historical existence.

Historians of the theatre often say that Renaissance drama lies midway between the open-air mystery or miracle play form of dramatic art and the literary-theatre production. One may agree with the general idea of this. Theatricals in the Middle Ages were performances for the masses, and therefore required no special settings; the town square, the grounds of an abbey, an open space in front of a castle, or the large porch of a church or cathedral, could serve as a stage. The piece enacted was either a mystery or miracle play, or some simple farcical sketch. Theatre art of this type is found in various forms everywhere: in the East and in the West, in Asia and in Europe. They might be wordless: such were the pantomimes, dance or circus scenes, and processions. Wherever speech was used, it svas generally accorded an auxiliary role, as a medium in the enacting of a tale, already familiar to most of the audience.

But with the opening of the Renaissance epoch this situation underwent a gradual change. If drama is to be understood as a theatrical production in which the elementary plot has become a fully worked-out subject, calculated to suit specifically theatrical methods of treatment, and if the spoken parts are accorded their full significance, then it must be admitted that drama—in the form existing during the feudal stage of man’s development-appeared precisely at the time of the Renaissance. The whole history of the theatre convinces us of this. Such, for example, was the Yuan drama of the 13th and 14th centuries in China, the first Renaissance drama to emerge. Such, too, was the No drama of the 14th and 15th centuries in Japan. _TT , . ,

But this was not yet a literary theatre. Ihe Urnovs book contains a very interesting chapter entitled “A Partiality lor Music , in which the authors point to the importance that music was accorded in Shakespeare’s plays. This does not refer to stage directions such as “flourish”, “trumpets sound”, “hautboys play”, etc. “Music, the authors say, “is included in Shakespeare’s dramatic conception and in the subject of his plays; it introduces nuances into their noetic atmosphere, and is employed by him in the solution ol his ideological and aesthetic problems.” These words go to the heart ol

music in the plays does not enter into rivalry with the speech ol the characters, but supplements it and at times expresses something words leave unsaid, either because the poet hesitates to go so tar, or because he senses that words lack the necessary power and therefore relies on the spontaneity of musical expression.” It seems to me that if it were necessary to point to something m dramaturgy that would proclaim it at once as belonging to the Renaissance, no better indication could be found than music. The authors’ remarks regarding the place of music in Shakespeare’s drama might be applied without modification to the music in the Yuan and No dramas.

This is easily understood. Renaissance drama was still theatre, and music enters into the element of theatre. Not in an illustrative capacity, as an accompaniment to the text, but as an element of dramaturgy itself. The authors of the book on Shakespeare expressed this idea as follows: “In the Renaissance theatre music was the organising groundwork of the entire course of the show; it governed not only the actors’ speech, but also their movements and their

This, however, refers to Renaissance dramaturgy when the epoch was at its height. Towards its close things were changing. Many instances are given by the Urnovs of the mention and discussion o music in Shakespeare’s plays, and this is no longer Renaissance. When music is discussed in a play, it means that music has become something external, A necessary element of life is not talked of: it is lived. Neither in the Yuan nor the No drama do the characters

philosophise about music: they simply live in it. The talk of music in Shakespeare’s plays is clear evidence that the end of the purely Renaissance dramaturgy had arrived.

This was precisely what had happened. Drama had grown more and more into a production encroaching on the literary field, “dramatic literature”, as it was later called. Increasing importance was given to the text of the play. True, the era of the literary theatre had not yet begun in the Renaissance; it was to be launched in modern times—with the theatre of the Baroque and the Enlightenment periods. But the approach to the drama as a literary work—“dramatic” though it might be in its nature, made itself felt everywhere as the Renaissance progressed: in Chinese drama of the 15th and 16th centuries, in 16th-century Spanish plays, in 17th-century Japanese plays. Striking examples of this trend towards a literary theatre are afforded by English drama in the second half of the 16th and the opening of the 17th centuries, and they include the plays of Shakespeare. They do indeed belong to the close of the Renaissance and mark the beginning of a new stage in dramaturgy.

This should not be regarded as a mere historical detail. The years when Shakespeare was alive, writing his plays—that is, the end of the Renaissance and the beginning of modern times—determined not only the general character and form but also the historical place of his plays. It also determined their content, and it is this content that leads us to discuss Shakespeare anew in our own day.

At the end of their book, the Urnovs mention past Shakespearean anniversaries, two of which—those of 1939 and of 1964—“were separated by events of truly Shakespearean tragical quality”.

A profound thought, and one which, it seems, will be understood by everyone. And, in analysing Shakespeare’s plays, the authors suggest a great deal. It is with more than a purely theatrical interest that we now see a play such as Richard III or Macbeth, in which the characters shed human blood and defy all law.

Shakespeare’s time was a tragic time, and it is this tragic quality that was expressed in his plays with such superb mastery. It is this that evokes a response in us in our day. It seems to me that the book by the Urnovs is, in itself, a response of this kind. The voice of the research scholar, specialising in English literature, in Shakespeare, is heard in it, and at the same time one senses the emotions oi the man of our day who lives by all that belongs to our epoch.

m 1964 about Shakespeare and his contemporaries is the idea of crisis, crisis inherent in the time itself in which these people lived.

This is understandable. Shakespeare’s lifetime fell between the end of one epoch and the beginning of another. On the socio-economic plane, this covered the concluding phase of the feudal era and the

initial stage of the capitalist era. The Netherlands Revolution, the first bourgeois revolution in history, was a thing of the past, but was still not so very distant from Shakespeare. Ahead lay the English Revolution, in which many historians discern the outset of the capitalist era. On the cultural-historical plane, it covered the decline of the Renaissance and the dawn of the Enlightenment period.

Yet Shakespeare’s time possessed its own particular content in England. It was not only the decline of the Renaissance, is was the Renaissance itself; at all events, as the authors maintain, it was the most decisive stage of the Renaissance for England: “Whereas the Renaissance in Europe had extended over centuries and had taken the form of a many-stage process—as, for example, in Italy, here in England it had hastened its advance in everything—state, society and intellects and in its decisiveness, intensity and brevity showed a close resemblance to a revolutionary upheaval.” One might add that brevity, even haste, and at the same time decisiveness and intensity, are features inherent in revolutionary upheavals when they take place in countries that find themselves left behind by others, and make a sudden impetuous leap forward. Consequently, as the authors point out, the most decisive stage in the great progressive upheaval in English history took place within one man’s life time, and a short one at that; hardly had England recovered from the period of feudal anarchy than “the time was out of joint”. To recover from anarchy evidently entailed a transition to the Renaissance; “the time was out of joint” means that the crisis of the Renaissance had already arrived.

But what was this Renaissance itself? A period when art, literature and science flourished as never before? This is an obvious understatement. The opening of the capitalist era? This is simply inaccurate, especially in the light of world history.

The Renaissance did not mark the opening of the bourgeois-capitalist era; yet this new and, in comparison with the preceding, far higher stage of the historical process could not have begun without the preparations carried out during the Renaissance. Avery definite change on the plane of ideas and culture was necessary before the Middle Ages could be done away with and the modern age inaugurated. We are in the habit of calling this the turn towards humanism. The terms “Renaissance” and “humanism” have become almost synonymous in this respect.

But in this identification of the Renaissance with humanism there lies, it seems to me, a grave error. Although this epoch, undoubtedly, is associated with the movement that may be called humanistic, it does not mean that humanism was unknown until the Renaissance. It is important, I consider, that the authors of this hook on Shakespeare overcame the inertia of their branch of study. Humanism existed in the ancient world, and in the Middle Ages; moreover, it was widespread in all European and Asian countries whose

history had known its own antiquity and its own Middle Ages. Humanism was the manifestation of humanitas—humaneness, a principle underlying all human conduct; but it was subject to alteration in scale and specific features. For this reason, the humanism of the Renaissance may be referred to solely as a certain historically defined aspect of this eternal principle.

By what traits is this historical aspect distinguished? The authors offer the customary answer to this question. They discern the essence of Renaissance humanism in “the emergence of the personality, freed from the thousand-year shackles of medieval dogmas”, in “the appearance of a man possessing a consciousness and a pattern of behaviour of an entirely new type”. What were those “religious dogmas”? “... The dogma of the duality and wickedness of human nature, the helplessness of man confronted by higher powers, the frailty of earthly existence,” the writers reply. In what, then, did this new type of consciousness” consist? In daring creativeness, in free, real, active thought on a broad theoretical and practical scale, intended to supplant the old constraint, rigorism and sterile scholasticism. What was “the new pattern of behaviour”? “The daily practice of self-affirmation, spiritual staunchness, and an inexhaustible affirmation of life, as a basic means of overcoming every form of tragic wretchedness.”

This is all true—precisely this, and not the invectives commonly used by Renaissance historians in speaking of the “infamous” Middle Ages. As a rule, this period is designated only as “gloomy”; though it lasted for centuries, it was allegedly filled with nothing more than the morti fication of the flesh. The extreme accusation levelled at the Middle Ages was the reiteration of the “sinister” formula: “Philosophy is the servant of theology.” That is why I find it important that the Urnovs overcame in their book the “inertia of science”, which owed its origin to prejudice or simply to inadequate knowledge of facts.

We need not go deeply here into the question of whether medieval times were indeed an unrelieved inferno which mankind endured for a thousand years until rescued by the Renaissance. This view would mean, first and foremost, an underestimation of man, his powers and his labours. Let us confine ourselves to recalling that those same “gloomy Middle Ages” witnessed the formation of allembracing systems such as Christianity, Buddhism and Islam, which, though philosophical in essence, were presented — as was natural at the time—under the heading of religions.

Other things that should be recalled are Gothic architecture, the architecture and sculpture of Buddhist temples, Moorish palaces and gardens. One should ponder on the brilliant poetry of the troubadours and minnesingers, the epic and romance of chivalry, the merry popular farces with their sparkling humour, the stirring public shows, such as mystery and miracle plays, and many other things present in various forms and on various levels in the culture

of West and East. The Middle Ages remain as one of the great est. epochs in the history of mankind. Does the fact that it was, in many respects, also a grim and difficult time for people, necessarily mean that the Renaissance led them into paradise? “This inspired age was not cloudless,” the Urnovs write in their book, “it was a time of unremitting strife. Its keynote was austerity rather than smiling happiness. All that had been disturbed in the revolutionary process and found no place for itself, rose to block the path of new thought and activity. It was marked by religious clashes, wars, enmity between social strata, castes, groups and persons, and by political con

During the Renaissance epoch the things to be fought against became clear to people; they realised whose power they had to rid themselves of, what form of enslavement they had to^ cast off: it was “the thousand-year shackles of medieval dogmas”. Let us reject the word “thousand-year”. Is it conceivable that the transition from the slave-owning society to the feudal system could be unrelieved misery from the very outset, and that it was not a necessary and, for that time, a progressive move in history? It seems, then, that the fault lies not with the medieval period, but with the fact that at a definite moment in its history dogmas appeared in its philosophy.

Religious and philosophic teachings of any kind, unless they move with the times, unless they continue to develop and are supplemented by new elements, are threatened by two dangers: first, dogmatism, that is, the transformation of free creative thought into dogma, and secondly, scepsis, that is, doubts of the value of a given doctrine in general. Scepsis may lead to something bad, to nihilism both intellectual and moral, or to something good—the fruitful reassessment of values. Dogmatism puts an end to all movement, and consequently, to the possibility of progress. By the end of the Middle Ages the prevailing religious-philosophical systems had indeed become the unyielding ramparts of dogma. Thus, the further development of these systems, and not only of these, but of society, culture and the individual, was blocked.

This is what occurred at least in the case of three systems: Confucianism, Christianity and Islam. In China, this found expression in Confucian “orthodoxy”, its dogmas were laid down in the famous code drawn up by K’ung Ying-ta in the 7th century and known as Wu-ching cheng-i (“The Five Books in their Correct Interpretation”). “Orthodoxy” made its appearance in Islam, too. Christian religious-philosophical thought was also transformed into a system of dogmas, a particularly striking expression of which is found in the doctrinal work of Thomas Aquinas.

Free-thinking people rebelled against this dogmatism, and the revolt followed two paths: scepsis and free thought. The struggle, if it was to succeed, required a reliable new basis. This was created by the Renaissance. The finest minds of this period were in opposi

lion to dogma both in religion and in philosophy, but their struggle was not conducted against religion as such, or against any special philosophy. The means resorted to in the struggle differed. In some cases they took the form of conversion to other trends of thought, other teachings, in particular, the mystical. In China, they took the form of Taoism, in opposition to Confucian dogma; in Buddhism, they expressed themselves in sects; in Islamic countries, in Sufism; in Christian countries, in what were known as heresies. Another form was to turn to reason, free creative thought. This stirring of the minds of men engendered what was known in the Renaissance times as humanism.

1 he Urnovs, in my opinion, offer a correct answer to the question, in what did the true essence of this Renaissance humanism consist? Everyone who had the boldness to consider himself “his own ma-kei shared in the spirit of the new time: “Man recognised his own worth, trusted to his own powers, put himself in the place of god.”

This last sentence does not necessarily mean that men of the Renaissance age had reached the stage where they fiercely denied god, became militant atheists or indulged in anti-religious excesses. Some of them were, no doubt, sceptics and free-thinkers, who believed in nothing. They might even have been princes of the church. All these things are well known. But they gave their formal support to religion, and the majority of humanists were sincerely religious. This was the case in Islamic and Christian countries. In China, the Renaissance was divorced from religion; as far as its theory was concerned, the change took place in the sphere of philosophical thought, but at the same time, the phrase “the individual has elevated him-seli to the level of god is equally applicable to Chinese humanism: it is sufficient to recall the idea expressed by Lu Hsien-shan (11391191) that it is not man who makes commentaries on the canonical books, but the books that make commentaries on him. It is as if someone in a Western country had said in the Middle Ages: I do not comment upon the Scriptures, they comment upon me.

The Middle Ages created their own humanism, with a definite principle of thought and conduct. Following the decline and fall of the slave-owning world that had seemed so great, society, its life and outlook had all to be built up anew. This called for inexhaustible strength and energy, and also the belief that this reconstruction was not only necessary but feasible.

Where were these powers and this faith to be sought? Only within one’s self, no other source being available. The rebuilding of the world, it seemed, would require powers that could make a man virtually omnipotent. This secret consciousness of the latent omnipotence of man found expression in conceptions which, for the thinkers of that historical phase, were the clearest and most comprehensible: in religion, in the conception of the deity as the embodiment of omnipotence. Interpreting his own powers in this way, a man acquired the intellectual and moral force needed for creative historic

ical work. It was this interpretation that constituted the essence of medieval humanism. It is also applicable to the Arab Middle Ages with their Islam, and the medieval China of Taoism and Buddhism.

While the reconstruction of society was being accomplished in the main, and the feudal world was following its course, this humanism which, at the outset, as the Urnovs observe, was characterised “by enthusiasm and passion rather than by a system of thinking”, gradually developed and assumed another shape. Formulae of strict exactitude made their appearance. At first, this was highly necessary and useful. It rendered the efforts 'or the further development of society more purposeful and assured. But the formulae could not keep pace with swiftly moving life; new ones were required, yet people still clung to the old, striving to follow these under changed conditions. Since the force of the old formulae—once actual — had now waned, the zealots of the old aimed at giving them an absolute and abstract shape, and thus the formerly living formulae became dogmas. Hence, the emergence of dogmatism, the chief stumbling block to man as he strove to advance along his historical path.

As a rule, when one source of strength fails, another appears-Once more, man found the source of strength within himself, but only by “elevating himself to god’s place”, and recognising that forces he had considered as inherent in the godhead, were perfectly human. Thus, a new foundation was created for humanistic, or human, activity, and upon this basis arose that splendid resurgence of culture which justifies in a certain measure the name of Renaissance.

Then, the unexpected happened: “...No matter what personal problems might be confronting Hamlet, no matter what his torments—his own character, his peculiar turn of mind are discernible everywhere, and through these the spiritual state of Shakespeare and many of his contemporaries, representatives of the young generation: it was a state of deep-seated perturbation,” we read in this book on Shakespeare. This perturbation was the outcome of the crisis in humanism, or to be exact, in the ideal of humanism: “Hamlet, his character, his emotional experiences and fate, give us an idea of how grave, and, for many adherents of humanism, how fatal, was the crisis of the humanistic ideal.”

Is it possible that the change once observed in medieval humanism was now taking place in Renaissance humanism? Could this, too, have become mere dogma? To a certain extent, it was so. The authors remind us that the humanists had been termed proud since they looked down upon others; they did so because they believed themselves to be the exponents of irrefutable truths. But, by Shakespeare ’s time.theseprinciplescould no longer be regarded as irrefutable truths. What the Urnovs said of Othello applies to these humanists: “He continued to think dogmatically, and went to the limit of unreasoning

pedantry in circumstances that called for broad views, sober flexibility, manly tact and restraint, and far-sighted trust.” Fine, apt words. But all the same, the most significant point in the crisis of Renaissance humanism, as the Urnovs correctly observed, was the collapse of the humanistic ideal. In the writers’ words, we may explain it as follows: the free and harmoniously developed individual, as a norm of life, proved to be a beautiful but Utopian idea of the humanists and sustained a collapse; “the cruel age of self-affirmation of absolutistbourgeois society emerged”.

In terms of time it was so. The outlines of the collapse of Renaissance humanism had been discernible while the outlines of the bourgeois-capitalist system took shape. It is clear that this collapse must have been deeply felt in Shakespeare’s England; at that time— and at no considerable historical distance—the outlines became visible of the bourgeois revolution that was to be of greater signi fi-cance for the European nations than the bourgeois revolution in the Netherlands. Hamlet’s frame of mind—the mind of a young man of that generation—“conveys the shattered spirit of the time”.

In what, then, was this perturbation of the time expressed? It would be reasonable enough to accept, as the underlying cause of the collapse of the humanistic ideal, the transition that had begun from one social system to another. “The Middle Ages (that is to say, feudalism.—N. K.) came into conflict in the people’s minds with the modern age (that is, the beginning of capitalism.—iV. K.) and it was plainly seen how complex, motley and contradictory this process proved to be,” the authors say in their book. Yet it would be more correct to say, I think that the transition constituted no more than the basis upon which the crisis of humanism arose.

The Urnovs quote in one place a profound observation made by N. I. Storozhenko, in his time one of our finest specialists in English literature: “...It is not the bloody events, nor the horrors, but the spirit shattered by passion, that becomes the main subject of tragedy.” Exactly—the shattered spirit.

What produced this state of the spirit, the “disillusionment” in Renaissance values, the sceptical reaction to Renaissance transports of enthusiasm? The answer lay in the very nature of Renaissance humanism.

This has been aptly noted by the Urnovs. In connection with their characterisation of John Lyly, one of Shakespeare’s forerunners, they pointed out: “... The Renaissance emancipation of man was fraught with crisis.” Why? Because the humanistic principle— “man is the measure of all things”—had come into use as a personal, practical motto: “All is permissible.” For, though the remnants

of Renaissance humanistic conceptions apparently still held their ground, “the norms of the inner self, the discipline of mind and feelings, no longer meant breadth and freedom, but licentiousness”.

Macbeth, as the authors point out, is “in the thrall of his own passion for vainglory; he hastens to rid his mind of moral princi-

pies and rules of conduct, dismissing them as trivial prejudices. His own turbulent energy, unbridled initiative, leads him to spur on his will-power. He strains towards his purpose, stifling the insistent doubts that trouble him, disregarding risk, overcoming obstacles, stopping at nothing.” This, then, is the heart of the matter. The path followed by Renaissance humanism led to crisis, both intellectual and moral.

The fact that the authors have led their reader to this conclusion is of great importance. At each stage in its historical path, humanism required a definite discipline of mind and feeling, a discipline both intellectual and moral. Medieval humanism had created this discipline: it was based upon religious conceptions of the world and man’s duty in it. Renaissance humanism set to work to create its own discipline, building it upon anthropological views; the intellectual side of this discipline was sought along the lines of rationalism. (It should be pointed out here that the traits of rationalism are inherent in the Renaissance, no matter where it appeared. For example, these features were clearly marked in what was known as neo-Confucianism, the philosophy of the Chinese Renaissance.) Although during the Renaissance epoch in Europe these features had not yet assumed the form of a definite system, their presence was felt everywhere—in natural science, history, and even in literature. But moral discipline was still drawn from religion, and this, by the way, reveals the transitional nature of that particular phase of history. Not until the opening of the Enlightenment era, the true age of rationalism, was a new intellectual discipline, merging with moral discipline, founded upon a strictly anthropological basis.

It was precisely because rationalism, the corner-stone of the new philosophy, was insufficiently developed in Renaissance conditions that the collapse of the moral discipline of humanism was inevitable. The Renaissance emancipation of man was indeed in itself fraught with crisis. The principle “man is the measure of all things”, that is, anthropological humanism, was indeed reduced to the motto, “all is permissible”. How strikingly this was demonstrated in the history of the Renaissance! How sharply defined it was in Shakespeare’s chronicle plays and tragedies! The balance between intellectual and moral discipline was struck—in reciprocal interdependence—only during the age of Enlightenment, which established rationalist philosophy. This, too, was only for a limited time: the firm foundations of rationalist intellectual and moral discipline were laid by Descartes, but when they were developed by Kant they led to the blind alley of antinomies, that is, to another collapse of the humanistic ideal. The search for a new humanistic ideal followed other paths.

The crisis of Renaissance humanism as an ethical category conditioned the state of profound shock or disturbance which the Ur-novs observe in Hamlet’s mind, and through him, in Shakespeare’s; through these instances they envisage the state of mind prevailing

among the young generation of the period that extended from the end of the 16th century to the beginning of the 17th century—the last phase of Renaissance history in general.

The intellectual crisis in which Renaissance humanism ended was reflected with amazing power in Shakespeare’s plays. This was the crisis that created the “unsettled fancy”, the “boiling brains”. But the dramatist himself pointed the way out of the crisis; it was the re-establishment in man of the lost harmony.

The most satisfying expression of harmony, its symbol as used by Shakespeare, was music, the Urnovs consider. The harmony represented by music resolves all difficulties:

The quotation is taken from The Tempest, the most wonderful of Shakespeare’s plays. I will permit myself to quote a passage from the Urnovs’ book which seems to me extremely important for their whole conception:

“The magician Prospero, the central character, in calling for ‘some heavenly music’, conveys the poet’s attitude. The desire for a musical resonance in life might appear celestial, while the monologue about the ‘so potent art’ relieved by music, might seem to mean the wizardry of the alchemist. But, actually, clothed in these metaphorical words are enlightenment and poetic insight. It is possible that the awareness of life, the rhythmic pulsation felt continually, are at the source of Prospero’s extraordinary power. Experience, understanding of human character and a thorough knowledge of the people’s life, sustain this power. Harkening to the rhythm, drawing inspiration from reason and will, Shakespeare’s last hero, Prospero, responds to his daughter’s joyous exclamation: ‘How beauteous mankind is!’ Prospero, and with him Shakespeare, taking leave of the theatre, once again look for a new hope in man.”

In what man? In the man of the past—that is to say, of the Middle Ages? But the authors of the book have clearly shown that Shakespeare could find nothing there. They make apt mention of Malory who, writing a hundred years before Shakespeare and full of the highest admiration for the Knights of the Round Table, yet indicated the collapse of those knightly adventurers. Was this hope, then, centred in the man of the future, of the approaching bourgeois age? No. The authors clear up that point by reminding us of Lang-land. Did the vision of that still far-distant age move Piers the Plowman, the simple peasant, to such enthusiasm? Quite the contrary.

It would be not only trivial but simply depressing to refer in this connection to the man of another, a post-bourgeois epoch. The Urnovs have refrained from this, of course, and very justly pointed out that no “theoretical programme or orderly system of practical instruc-

tion” should be sought in the dramatist’s dream of an ideal society and a new man. It is not a question of a type of man belonging to anv definite historical epoch, but of man in general or to be exact, of humanistic faith in man. And it should be made clear that this faith “ man is not characteristic of Renaissance humanism alone, bu, of th”h"m».u_Sm of an, epoch. Otherwise, .t would not be lmman-

had a sense of distant prospects, or that he was, to a greater ^deS^r® > f tii« time'¹” the authors ask. Their answer is that while

Shakespeare “suffered tragically from the shock of disorder and chaos, it was only his brilliant prospectiveness of thinking that kep

^PeCWhSrgofng^efo°ver¹t'heir manuscripts the Urnovs substituted the word “redeemed” for the word “justified”, which was formerly used in this sentence. Horror and bloodshed can nover be ]ustified by My mi. hp pither forgiven or redeemed, forgiveness may

JonT, by ot lo hi°_t^She right to forgive, redemption meet come from mankind. The horror and bloodshed that abounded 1 English history, in Shakespeare’s view, could be redeemed by the nrosuect he envisaged — still far distant, perhaps—of the untiring a-bour, of mankind directed towards eradicating horror and bloodshed from the life of the English and of all the nations on earth, eradicat g them omthe basis of a new, more profound and comprehensive huma-

^niSWhat was the basis underlying Shakespeare’s optimistic belief in man? The authors reply: “A single word ... stands out and immed ately claims attention, inasmuch as it draws after it the associations with Hamlet. The word is .‘conscience .

even at the worst of times. I cannot but recall that at the end ot the Chinese Renaissance epoch a word was

force, a word possessing a meaning identical with conscience uang hsin The last representative of Renaissance philosophical thoug in China, Wang Yang-ming (1472-1526), spoke of conscience as a great source in human nature, directing all man s conduct.

It seems to me that in Shakespeare there is something that can be understood as the highest manifestation of the humanistic conscience. But, before coming to this, we should recall the words of John Donne, a contemporary of Shakespeare’s, about those tragic twenty years. The quotation from his An Anatomie of the World is given by the Urnovs in their book:

When in the Planets, and the Firmament They seeke so many new; then see that this Is crumbled out againe to his Atomies.

Let us turn back to Shakespeare. Who is the leading character in The Tempest? Prospero, the man who had evoked that same tempest. But it was also he who opened the path to peace and happiness. Wherein lies his power? He is a magician who discovered the great and truly awful mystery of nature, and mastered it. But, having used this almost supernatural power and realising what it really is, he rejects it. Was it not conscience, as the amazing source of the human principle in man, as the highest of all ethical categories, that made him act in this way?

The Urnovs have written a book on Shakespeare, the concrete, historical Shakespeare. But, we read, the “artistic thought pregnant with life and finding its own image, acquires something in the nature of an independent life”. The posthumous life of Shakespeare of which they spoke at the beginning of their book is the life, now become self-dependent, of his tragedies.

One aspect of this life was experienced by us with particular keenness during a quarter-century of our history, which, fortunately, belongs to the past. It was filled with truly Shakespearean tragedy, as the Urnovs have pointed out. Hence, it is not necessary to explain why the book by M. and D. Urnovs should be regarded not merely as a jubilee book to mark a famous poet’s quater-centenary, but as a warm response to Shakespeare’s works from onr contemporaries in this country—-a country with a great prospectiveness of thinking, a firm humanistic faith in man, a country where life should be directed not only by reason and will, but conscience as the image and expression of the highest ethical principle in man.

It has long been an acknowledged principle in our country that a history of literature should embrace all the known literary material, not only of the West but also of the East, The Universal History of Literature, which appeared here at the end of the last century and was participated in by many scholars and edited by A Korsli and A. Kirpichnikov, included articles on the history ol literature of European peoples, and of many peoples of the East.

It is a great pity that this experiment was not repeated and carried further; even at the present day when life itself has imperatively broadened our outlook, we still have no up-to-date history of world literature conforming to odr far wider knowledge of available material and to our greatly altered conception of the development

The theory of literature, too, calls for revision. Both Western writings, studied in many respects from new standpoints, and Eastern, which are becoming better known to us, may bring much that is new into the understanding of the essence of literature as a social phenomenon possessing its own specific nature; also into the appraisal of the means of literary expression and the understanding of the progressive development of literature—both in connection with the inner laws of this development and in connection with the history

This article comprises some observations on the literary history of certain Oriental peoples. It seems to us that these might have a certain importance for literary studies in general.

During the last two decades of the 19th century and the first two decades of the 20th century an extraordinarily intensive development of realistic literature was to be observed in Japan. It is understood, of course, that other trends existed simultaneously, but the predominant trend was undoubtedly realism. It was launched m the

1880 s by Hasegawa Futabatei, and its last important exponent, who continued its creative development, was Natsume Soseki. This writer’s principal works appeared at the close of the first decade and the first part of the second decade of the 20th century.

When we use the term “realistic” in regard to Japanese literature of the period mentioned, our conception of realism is that which was bestowed upon it by the history of 19th-century European literature — the history of French, English, Russian and other European literatures. Japanese literature of that trend adjoins, in its fundamental traits, the parallel trend in European literature, thus forming a part of the world’s classic realistic literature. The literatures of some other Eastern countries, Turkey for instance, also come within the scope of this trend.

The close and vital contacts existing between the literatures of different countries will be obvious from even a superficial acquaintance with the world literature of that period. The close mutual contacts between the literatures of European countries at that time are common knowledge. Students of Eastern literature are aware that, beginning from the second half of the 19th century, a great deal of European literature became widely read in Eastern countries, at least in certain social circles. For example, European literature, especially English, became familiar to a large stratum of Western-educated Indian society. The same may be said of the Western-educated stratum in Turkey, where French literature was well known at the end of the 19th century. ¹ Beginning from the 1880’s an ever increasing tide of Russian, French, English, German and Scandinavian literature flowed into Japan.²

The same tendency, in varying degrees of intensity and on a varying scale, was to be observed among other Eastern peoples. That ties between the literatures of the world existed during the period of classic realism is an incontrovertible fact.

Involuntarily, this gives rise to conjecture on the particular role played by these contacts, and leads to the conclusion that the appearance of the same type of literature in different Western and Eastern countries was conditioned to some extent by these literary ties.

Other instances may be found in history, where the literatures of different nations proved to be of the same type, with close contact existing between them. No one would dispute the mutual interconnection and interdependence of the literatures of Western Asia, North-West India and the Caucasus from the 10th to the 13th centuries; despite local differences, these literatures were of one type. The Shah Namah and The Knight in the Panther's Skin undoubtedly belong to the same type; they were produced in a definite cultural region, which was characterised by close interrelations. It was in the same region that poets such as Rudaki, Nizami, Saadi and Omar Khayyam ³ emerged, who wrote lyrics similar in theme and stylistic colouring.

The connections between Japanese and Chinese literatures from the 17th century to the beginning of the 19lh century are obvious.⁴In both countries literary genres such as the fantastic novella, the heroic adventure novel, the story of real life, which were widespread at the time, closely resembled each other. This is particularly the case with the Japanese fantastic novellas in the well-known collection Otogi-boko (1666), and the Chinese tales from a popular collection Chien-teng hsin-hua, which dates from the late 14th century. Both the Japanese and the Chinese collections are in themselves merely examples of a great mass of literary works of the same type in both countries. The stories of everyday life in the collection known as Kokin kidan hanabusa zoshi, dating from about 1749 and regarded as the starting-point of a certain line in Japanese 18th-century literature; the Chinese fantastic stories in the ch'uan-ch'i genre; the hun-ts'u, or “funny stories”—all these represent in themselves an entire branch of literature and belong to the same type. The adventure novels of Bakin (1767-1848) merely reproduce the adventure stories of Chinese narratives, typical examples of which are the Yu-hsien wai-shih and Shui-hu-chuan. Many similar examples might be given here from the history of world literature in the Middle Ages and modern times.

On the other hand, instances that seem to contradict the foregoing may also be found: identical types of literature sometimes arose among different peoples, who were not in contact with each other.

For example, the Japanese knightly epics of the 13th to the 15th centuries were far removed from the heroic epics of the peoples of Western Turkistan, Iran and the Caucasus, but bore a resemblance to the West European medieval romances of chivalry though it is practically impossible to establish any connections between Japan and Western Europe in those centuries. Yuan Chi, a Chinese poet of the 3rd century, one of the “Seven Sages of the Bamboo Forest”, wrote a verse cycle on wine, an original expression of a mood of bitter grief, in its trend and general idea closely akin to the 12th-century wine-songs of Omar Khayyam—at any rate, to those widely-known verses attributed to the famous Iranian poet. No data exists in support of the conjecture that the Chinese poet’s verses, written almost a thousand years before Omar Khayyam, could have influenced the Iranian. Sometimes, in Japanese poetry of early medieval times, we find verses containing lovers’ reproaches addressed to the dawn that heralds the inexorable hour of parting, and we are involuntarily reminded of the same reproaches voiced in medieval Provencal albas; it would be futile to suppose that any contact existed at that time between two countries so distant from each other. Many examples might be quoted of identical or very similar literary phenomena occurring among diverse peoples, where contact between their literatures has been totally absent.

The conclusion to be drawn amounts to this: although literary contacts between different peoples might play a definite part in the

rise and development of identical or similar literary phenomena, these may also arise in the absence of such contacts. The necessary and decisive condition for their appearance is the attaining of one and the same stage of social-historical and culturaPdevelopment by different] peoples, and the similarity of forms in which this development takes place. The conditions prevailing in the social life and culture of diverse peoples at an early stage of feudalism often resemble each other in essentials and even in form, so that it is not surprising if striking resemblances occur frequently in their literatures. What was known in German medieval poetry as the “hofische Lyrik”, can be found in the poetry of other West European peoples of that time. The court lyric is typical of early medieval poetry in Iran and Western Turkistan. The same type of lyric constitutes the main trend of poetry in the early phases of the Japanese Middle Ages. While the rise and development of the court lyric in Western Europe was accompanied by contacts between the various peoples of the region, there could be very little contact at that time between Western Europe and Iran, and still less between Western Europe and Japan at the other side of the world.

The resemblance existing between Arabic verse in Spain, in the period extending from the 10th to the 12th centuries, and the poetry of the troubadours in France is well known; but, though the Arabs of Spain and the French were fairly near neighbours in those days, literary and cultural contacts were extremely slight. It appears, then, that geographical proximity by no means determined or ensured the existence of literary contacts between different peoples at certain periods of their history. The epics of chivalry in diverse forms—the epopee, poem and romance—are to be found in the literature of West European peoples, of the Arabs, Iranians, Georgians and Japanese. Although in some instances connecting links existed between the national literatures enumerated, in other instances there were none, and nevertheless, similar literary phenomena arose. From this it follows that the fundamental condition for the rise of such a resemblance was the existence of chivalry among these nations, the appearance of a certain type of knight, leading a characteristic way of life, having a specific psychology and outlook. This particular type existed neither in feudal China nor in feudal Russia, consequently, these countries had no knightly epic of this kind. The reason for its absence is to be sought in the peculiar nature of the historical forms in which feudalism developed in China and Russia.

Literary contacts, then, do not determine the rise of homogeneous literatures, but accompany them; the latter is not necessarily the rule, for contacts will appear only when certain general-historical conditions obtain. And it is by no means necessary that these contacts should be established and developed solely where a homogeneous literature has emerged in two nations; there may be contacts where literatures are dissimilar. The fact that widely differing lit-

erary works from West European countries have penetrated to our country, and vice versa, does not mean that trends of a similar nature to those represented by Proust or J oyce exist here; or that in England, for example, where Soviet literature is well known, a literature approaching socialist realism has come into existence.

Literary contacts are a historical category. While the peoples of the world were, to a considerable extent, isolated from each other, literary contacts were formed—under the above-mentioned historical conditions—between countries that were geographically and culturally near neighbours and had reached the same stage in their historical development; their connections were then on a regional scale. When international relations developed on a wide scale to include all the civilised nations, literary contacts also acquired a world-wide character and became a form of international communication. This was the form they assumed in the second half of the 19th century. But this does not exclude, of course, a narrower circle of regional links. For example, in the second half of the 19th century and in the 20th century, European literature became well known to the peoples of the Arab countries, while at the same time the literary contacts between those Arab countries, that is, contacts on a regional scale, retained their importance. At the present time, the links between the literatures of diverse peoples of India still retain their significance, while simultaneously India has entered the orbit of world literary contacts.

Literary contacts are a concrete historical category: they vary in their scale, their part in the literary process as a whole, and their importance in the history of the literature of certain peoples at different periods of history, under differing historical conditions. Consequently, the study of these contacts forms one of the tasks of research in literature.

In the general sense of the term, literary contacts mean the penetration of one literature into the world of another. This may assume diverse forms.

Since the second half of the 19th century literary contacts have acquired a world-wide scale and have become an established fact in the literature of each people, and at the same time an established fact in world literature. During this period the East has been brought within the sphere of these contacts. The process by which European literatures penetrated into the literary world of the Eastern peoples reveals also the forms taken by this penetration.

European literature often penetrated the Eastern in the original—that is to say, in the language in which it was written. It was this form that exercised the greatest influence during the initial period when the Orient entered the general orbit of literary contacts— when Eastern countries began to produce their own realistic lit era-

ture. It is characteristic that in this case penetration was accomplished through the works of some particular writer or writers.

Typical of many Oriental literatures of the time was the author familiar with European writing, usually with one of the Western literatures. For example, Hasegawa Futabatei (1864-1909), mentioned above as the founder of the realistic school in Japan, was la-miliar with Russian literature of the classic realistic school. At the outset of his work as a creative writer, he knew Turgenev and Goncharov, passing later to Gogol, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov and many other Russian authors. It is safe to assert that he owed his formation as a writer to his knowledge of Russian realistic literature, which he studied in Russian, not in translation. He mastered the tongue and even lectured on the Russian language and literature.

Tsubouchi Slioyo (1859-1929) was a prominent writer and critic, an expert on English literature. As the author of the treatise On the Essence of Literature (published in 1885), his position, like Futabatei’s, was at the fountain-head of the realistic school of literature in Japan. Mori Ogai (1862-1922),who knew German literature well, was the third important writer of the initial period of realistic literature in Japan.

Halid Ziya (1866-1945), one of the most outstanding realistic writers of Turkey, was educated at a college where all instruction was given in French, and he knew modern French literature. ⁵ The new literary trend was introduced into Persia by the dramatist Mirza Malkom (Malkom-khan; 1833-1909) and the novelist and satirist Zain al-Abidin (1837-1900). The first-named knew French literature well in the original, and the second knew Russian.⁶

It is typical of most eminent authors in Eastern countries (not only at the beginning of the new realistic literature, but also later on) that they were acquainted with European literature in the original and often knew several languages. Since it was these writers who created their own literature and directed its course of development, their knowledge of foreign literatures in the original was of the utmost importance: European literature had become accessible to them in its own linguistic idiom and, hence, fullness of expression, capable of maximally influencing the reader. But this meant, at the same time, that the books the writer had read impressed themselves upon his consciousness in a wholly original way, and, moreover, selectively, according to his individuality. Transmitted thus into his own creative work, they passed through the prism of his creative individuality and the various stratifications formed by the traditions of his country’s literature. ...

A direct acquaintance with an alien literature in the original is one of the forms by which one literature may penetrate to the world of another. Another form, which was also fully represented during the period of world realistic literature, was translation.

The penetration of one people’s literature into the literary world of another in the form of translation is a phenomenon of a totally

different order from the penetration of works in the original. Of necessity, translation gives a very definite, new linguistic guise to the translated work, and under this guise it begins its existence for foreign readers. When a literary work reaches the foreign reader in the original it has no new, strictly drawn linguistic shape; this has to be created by each reader according to his own taste and, therefore, exists for him alone. Naturally, the extent of influence of this second form of literary penetration is entirely different. At the time when realistic literature became world-wide, this sphere of influence assumed vast proportions. Every book that possessed any significance or was simply found attractive by mass readers spread all over the world, only altering its language guise to suit each country. This means that a literary work begins to have a life independent of its primary language form. It becomes many-faceted in linguistic expression. In the process of translation it loses something, and gains somet hing. For one thing, it loses its unique quality the inimitable individuality ensured by its native language, on the other hand, its multilingual existence brings out the common features that give it a meaning for everyone. In French, Madame Bovary is a part of French literature; in Russian it has become a part of the Russian literary world; in Japanese it belongs to the Japanese literary world; and in its multilingual form it is a part ot the world’s literature.

A definite conception now exists of what a translation should be. It would not be correct to think that our present understanding ot translation existed in all preceding centuries and that the translations were always distinguished only as bad or good, or that some were “closer to the original” and others less so. Instances may be quoted when translators were guided by special considerations, wine 1 were not the result of their own opinions, but oi the requirements

found their way to the Oriental literary world m the original, the people who introduced realistic literature into all the Eastern countries employed this method to bring the literature ot one or another European country into their own. The principal means ot introducing realism were their own writings. But, as a rule, these writ

The above-mentioned Futabatei not only studied lurgenev s works in Russian, but translated them at the same time. Ihe first attempts in this field were the translations ol The Rendezvous, a story from A Sportsman's Sketches, and a story Three Encounters. This happened in 1888, the early dawn of realistic literature in Ja pan, the years when progressive writers were still on y groping their way towards the creation of a literature of this kind. Futabatei was a pioneer in this field. In 1887 he published the first part of h.s l1 Sanaa Ns 133)

novel The Passing Cloud ( Ukigumo); in 1888, the second part. It is clear from this novel how much the author owed to his study of the works of Turgenev and Goncharov.

“One evening, as I unfolded my newspaper, I saw that on the way from Colombo to Singapore, Hasegawa Futabatei had died of consumption, on the steamer by which he was returning home from Russia. It had happened ten days ago.

“In my time, I, who had been fond on reading Bakin and literary rubbish such as Setchubai’s Plum Blossom in Snow, had been genuinely moved by Futabatei’s Passing Cloud. It seemed as though for the first time in my life I had been taken into an anatomical theatre where a man’s body was being dissected. Fearfully, I watched the movement of the pen, keen as a scalpel. Later, when I read in the Kokumin-no tomo magazine his translation of The Rendezvous, and in the Miyano-no hana magazine, Three Encounters, I was full of admiration: was it possible that there could be such a beautiful world? I read these tales over and over again and still it was not enough for me. I copied them out for myself....”⁷

This was written in 1909 by Tokutomi Roka, a younger contemporary of Futabatei’s. He had already made a name for himself as a writer, and his talent developed along the lines of critical realism. As a matter of fact, the quotation given shows that he regarded Futabatei’s novel as possessing features of critical realism.

The strong impression produced by Futabatei’s translations was shared throughout Japan by the young reading public of that time, a period when it would have been hard to find a Japanese writer who had not expressed similar views.

The reader probably remembers that The Rendezvous is in two parts: the first, the description of the birch grove, the second, the conversation carried on by the gentleman’s valet with a peasant girl, and overheard by the author. Looked at closely, the first part of Futabatei’s translation evidences particular care. It is really a fine and penetrating translation, showing that the author expended great pains upon it.

Subsequently, excerpts from this particular part came to be included in the Japanese anthologies as models of the finest language. Fragments from the description of the grove, in Futabatei’s translation, were inserted in the Diary of the Musashi Plain ⁸ by Kunikida Doppo (1871-1908), who was one of the prominent writers of Japan’s realistic school at its peak period; the Musashi Plain he describes is a picturesque plain in the vicinity of Tokyo. Thus the Russian birch grove was transplanted to Japanese soil.

But in reality it was not the birch grove that was transplanted. Now, years later, we can understand the things taking place in the Japanese literature of that time: it was not the Russian birch grove that was transplanted, but the mode of its description. Japanese writers of that time could not draw the birch grove as Turgenev had drawn the picture through the medium of his native tongue.

This does not mean that the Japanese writers’ art was primitive; they had more than a thousand years of many-sided literary experience to look back upon, a literature of great variety and richness. Then, wherein lay the crux of the matter?

Let us picture to ourselves a grove drawn by a Japanese artist in ink or colour. It would be a landscape in the linear perspective typical of Oriental art. This is one way of seeing the external world. Now let us visualise a similar grove painted by a European artist. Here the landscape would be presented in aerial perspective and chiaroscuro—a totally different way of seeing the external world. Then, it follows that Japanese writers describing a landscape in their native tongue were accustomed to visualising it as two-dimensional, in linear perspective, and selected for this purpose their own familiar approach in language. But in Turgenev’s landscape they became aware of the depth of space, of vistas, of chiaroscuro; this explains why Futabatei had to work so painstakingly to find the correct language media capable of transmitting a perception as yet unfamiliar to readers of his generation. This he achieved, and that is why his translation “opened the eyes” of his contemporaries. As Tokutomi Roka expressed it, a new and beautiful world was opened to them.

Now that Japanese literature was launched upon the path of realism, aerial perspective and light-and-shade had become necessary. It entailed a deeper penetration into reality than had been required by linear perspective, and, above all, a different viewpoint: it was this that constituted the elements of realism for the Japanese writers of the time.

In that case, what was the principal thing in Futabatei’s translation of The Rendezvous? Not the scene enacted between the valet and the peasant girl. When all was said and done, the presentation of such emotional stories was not beyond the powers of the Japanese writers, even if it had been done with less insight. That is why the second part of the translation is more ordinary. The first part held a new significance for the realistic trend, for the writers of that time and for that generation in general. And that was why it had been translated with so much care. ⁹

This example has been given in some detail as an illustration of an important principle that the translator should keep in view when attempting a task of a special kind: the task of assimilating, with the aid of translation, a new creative method, the task of working out language treatments characteristic of this method. Therefore, in the execution of a translation something else emerges: no special care is taken of things that do not help to solve the problem, while those that do serve to solve the problem are treated with the utmost care. In this case, translation becomes one of the ways by which an author obtains creative re-equipment; for the reader, it becomes a means of transforming his perception of actuality. It is understandable, therefore, that during the early stages, when literature of a

new trend or method is establishing itself, a translator’s work assumes a place of considerable importance, and writers devote a great deal of attention to translation. The history of the establishment of realistic literature in Eastern countries affords ample evidence of this. Translations of this particular period cannot be viewed from the same standpoint as translations of a period when the homogeneity of two literatures, the one that exerts the influence and the one that feels it, had already been established. It seems to me that the study of translations from this viewpoint could aid considerably in assessing the character and the essence of the contacts between one literature and another.

It need not be supposed that only two forms exist by which one people’s literature can penetrate into the literary world of another— penetration by the original and by translation. The history of the world’s literary contacts can show us other forms.

One of these is the reproduction in creative work by a writer of one nationality, of the content and motives of a work by a writer of a different nationality. This form will be found to be particularly widespread in the literature of the peoples of Western Turkistan, Iran and the Near East.

Nameless story-tellers have created the tale of Leila and Majnun in its original form. An Azerbaijanian, Nizami (1141-1203), transformed this romance of the Romeo and Juliet of the East into a poem that is one of the world’s literary gems. The Uzbek Navoi (14411505) retold the story in his own tongue. The poem had a double existence in two languages—Persian and Uzbek. It was no mere translation that emerged; a comparison of the texts by Nizami and Navoi reveals that the latter poet introduced much of his own into the poem.¹⁰ At the same time, according to our ideas today, this is not an original work: too much in Navoi’s poem comes direct from Nizami.

Can this be called plagiarism? Nothing could be further from the truth: in plagiarism mention of the original is carefully avoided. But Navoi refers openly to Nizami’s Leila and Majnun, expresses his veneration for the Azerbaijanian poet and makes no secret of the fact that he is reproducing Nizami’s poem. Could this be regarded as a new treatment of the same theme? Hardly, because new treatments are usually accomplished independently of the earlier ones, and frequently as a result of dissatisfaction with them. But in this case Navoi makes no adverse criticisms on Nizami’s treatment of the theme; on the contrary, he expresses his unbounded admiration for the poem. Consequently, we must reject the customary evaluation in considering these reconstructions. It seems to me that the main point lies in the following: the reproducing of another writer’s work written in a foreign language was, in those times, creative

work and, furthermore, a free creative act. In the eyes of the people of the day, the new language form in which the old work was presented endowed it with something different, and so it entered upon a new and different life. The creator of this new life was a poet whose genius, in its power and character, was often equal to that of the man who had created the poem in its primary language form.

According to the concepts of that day, if the new language shape given to a literary work endowed it with new life and was regarded as a creative piece of work, then it was only natural that the Introduction of changes into the original was the new author’s right. For this reason, Navoi’s poems were neither translations nor imitations of Nizami’s work. At the same time, Navoi’s poem showed that the works of the Azerbaijanian Nizami had penetrated to the literature of another people, a plain proof of literary contacts.

Examples of a similar nature may be found in plenty in the history of the medieval literature of Western Asia, the Arab world and even the Caucasus. One may go so far as to say that this form of penetration was widespread. Certain gradations existed, of course, from genuinely creative reconstruction down to flagrant imitation.

And so, another form of the penetration of one people s literature to the world of another is discovered in the study of the history of literary contacts. This form is national adaptation.

The Otogi-boko, mentioned earlier, was a Japanese collection of “extraordinary adventures”, which first saw the light in 1666. Its close kinship with the stories in the Chien-teng hsin-hua, the Chinese collection, has already been commented upon. This connection is evidenced in the fact that the great majority of the Japanese tales reproduce the Chinese, but in a form adapted to the Japanese reader.

What does adaptation mean in this case? First of all, Chinese material became Japanese, the scene of action was transferred to Japan, the characters were now Japanese. Furthermore, features of Chinese life that would be alien or unfamiliar to the Japanese are rejected, and instead of these, elements acceptable to the concepts and tastes of the Japanese readers of the time are introduced. These alterations come under the heading, we consider, of national adaptation.

This is far from being a unique instance. It recurs in several branches of Japanese literature of the period extending from the 17tli century to the early 19th century. Practically the whole genre of adventure stories (kaidanmono) is founded upon this adaptation of Chinese literary material. Then again, a great deal in the extensive field of novellas of everyday life is bound up with the corresponding field in Chinese literature. For instance, many of the novellas in the Kokin kidan hanabusa zoshi collection (1744-1747) are adaptations of corresponding stories in the famous Chinese collection Chin-ku ch'i-kuan (dating from the first half of the 17th century) and from other Chinese collections.

Here again, it should be taken into consideration that the borrowing of material was in no way disguised; on the contrary, the

fact that the source was indicated ensured greater popularity. Even the title of the source book was often repeated for this purpose. Take, for example, the historical adventure novel Shui-hu-chuan, extremely popular in China; the most widely-known version of this novel dates from the first half of the 17th century. In 1773, a novel called Honcho Suikoden, or The Japanese Shui-hu-chuan, appeared in Japan. The plot of the story had been transferred to that country and the Chinese personages replaced by Japanese. The plot was drawn from Japanese history.

This is still another kind of borrowing. There is no question here of the simple adaptation of a foreign literary work. The Japanese Shui-hu-chuan suggests a desire to introduce on Japanese soil a literary genre new at that time, the romantic adventure narrative, ox-in other words, the Japanese version of the world-wide genre of the “robber romance”. The initial step was the building-up of this romance on the model of an existing one, which had become a classic in that part of the world. The Shui-hu-chuan was the Chinese version of the “robber romance” type of a novel; this, then, was not a case of reproduction of a foreign book, but of a genre, following a definite model.

It may be asked: if the Japanese writers of the time knew this Chinese novel so well, if they admired it so much, why did they not make a straight translation of it? We are unable to give a sufficiently convincing answer to this question. We can only say that the Chinese novel is available in translation in Japan, but the translation was made in our time. The whole point is that translation as a form of transmitting a literary work from one language milieu to another is a historical phenomenon; it is characteristic of certain historical epochs, but not necessarily of others; and in some epochs it is nonexistent. If we consider the immensity of the historical epoch during which one people’s literature penetrated to another’s by means other than translation, it will seem that the epoch of translations is not so long.

In conclusion, let us examine one more form of literary penetration. In ancient India, the home of Buddhism, legends existed about the life of its founder, Buddha. On the basis of these a peculiar species of narrative arose—the hagiography. This became known in a great variety of languages: Indian, Persian-Pahlavi, Arabic, Hebrew, Ethiopian, Armenian, Latin, Greek, almost all the West European and Slavonic languages, as well as in Tibetan, Chinese and Mongolian.

It would not be correct to call these versions translations: they vary too distinctly from each other. Neither would reproduction, in the sense that we encountered it in Navoi’s poems, be a suitable term. The most correct conclusion is that here we have a unique literary work in diverse forms and variations, existing in many countries of the world. The same, on a grander scale, may be said of another ancient Indian work, the Panchatantra.

These are the different forms which literary contacts assume at different historical epochs and which are characteristic of these epochs. Possibly, some of the forms discussed ought to have been differentiated, and in these, narrower forms examined separately; possibly still more forms could be discovered. But the conclusion seems clear enough: the problem of literary contacts is one of importance in the history of world literature, and should be considered from a strictly historical standpoint, in all its concretely historical significance.

¹ See. JI. O. AjitKaeBa, Teopnecmeo Xajiuda 3uu 1956, bungahu (.Nippon bungaku-o chusin-to shite), Tokyo, 1953,

^19-87 See’ Indoyt°'in: Tokutomi Rona-shu (the series “Gendai Nippon bungaku zenshu”, 2nd year of Showa Kaijosha publ., vol. 12, p. 552). ,

10 on the poems of Navoi and Nizami see E. 9. BepienbC Haeou u Hum _MU — c.6. «Annmep HaBon», MocKBa-JIeHimrpafl, 1946, CTp. 68-91.

“Realism” is a term widely used in the history and theory of literature. It is alluded to,at times in the somewhat toned-down form— “elements of realism”, in connection with many works, almost throughout the whole of the literature of the past. We might go further and say that if we take historical surveys of literature (particularly the degree theses written within the past ten or fifteen years) it would he practically impossible to find one that does not speak of realism, whether the given thesis treats of the literature of a European or an Asian people, whether it is on 19th-century literature, or that of medieval Europe and Asia, or even the literature of antiquity. The general impression left upon the reader is that realism is a kind of absolute category — it may be supra-historical, it may he omni-historical, but at all events existing in history “in general” (independent of concrete history) and developing by definite stages, each of which possesses its own socio-economic and cultural content. Since it is hardly possible to accept such a category outside an idealistic interpretation, it appears highly necessary to investigate the reason for this extensive use of the term “realism” and, remaining on concrete historical grounds, clarify the meaning or meanings attributed to this term.

A glance aj; history suffices to determine when the term “realism” was first used in respect to that literature in the sphere of which the name in general made its appearance and which people desired to characterise by that name. This was French literature in the second and third, quarters of the 19th century. The representatives of its most forceful trend were Balzac and Flaubert. In this instance there can be no doubt that the use of the term is fully justified. Here we have a concrete historical fact that must be accepted,

and it is the starting-point in any study of the meaning of the realism concept in literature.

The question of its meaning, and its acceptance as a term, arises only in cases where we discover that it has been applied to other literatures. This was the case with 19th-century English literature with Russian of the same time, and also with the literatures oi other European peoples.

In all these instances, too, the question is easily decided. Ine use of the term was justified: it was motivated by the feasilnlitj oi considering all of these literatures as realistic, in the same meaning

Realistic literature in 19th-century France arose and developed in the conditions created by the prevailing capitalist system, this means that it was characteristic of precisely these social relations, both from the viewpoint of their general social content and from that of the specific circumstances which distinguished the epoch of capitalism from the preceding epoch of feudalism. The social situation typical of society in the capitalist epoch was determined by the struggle of two main classes of this society-the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. Therefore, all phenomena appearing in the culture ot capitalist society emerge and develop in the circumstances and under the influence of the dialectics of that struggle. Such, then is the literature of the capitalist epoch. But the level, the content, the theoretical principles are determined by concrete historical circumstances These circumstances are known: they occurred in the mid-19th century in France. It was the time of the impetuous development and prosperity of the capitalist system, and simultaneously the time which witnessed the steady strengthening and increasing activity of the proletariat, the inevitable concomitant of the bourgeoisie and, in the ultimate result, its grave-digger. This meant that at the very moment of capitalism’s establishment, the social contradictions inherent in the system were laid bare. It was precisely this that acted as the impetus towards the extremely high development of realistic literature. In its turn, this development owed much to criticism, which acquired significance in the creative method ot

It would be a mistake to oversimplify this criticism as exposure , “the laying bare of sores”, etc.; this element was present, and considerably strong at times. But the opposite also was present—the affirmation of all that was progressive in the system, which constituted a higher level of social development than feudalism, there fore criticism in French realism of the 19th century should be viewed as a method of revealing reality in all the complexity and contradictoriness of the forces at work in it. If we do not depart from the vantage-point of concrete history and always consider French realism in the ambience of its time, it is quite possible to transfer the characteristics of “realism” to the literature of other peoples, provided the socio-economic and general-cultural conditions under which

these literatures developed at a given historical moment correspond to the conditions then obtaining in France. It is justifiable to apply the term to the trend in 19th-century English literature which is represented, for example, by the works of Dickens and Thackeray. It is justifiable to apply the term “realistic”—in the same strictly historical sense—to 19th-century Russian literature, to the trend represented by the works of Goncharov and Turgenev.

The tangible features of the epoch in each country—France, England and Russia—differed in many respects: the level of bourgeois-capitalist development was not the same in each country, but on the whole, viewed along the broad lines of the historical process and the general tendencies of socio-economic development, it was one and the same important epoch in the history of Europe. Unequal though the development of capitalism undoubtedly was, all the European countries at that time were drawn into the common course of this development, forming a general capitalist system in Europe. In the 19th century, therefore, particularly about the middle of it, the literatures of all Western peoples could be called realistic, in the exact “French” meaning of the word, with, of course, the necessary national corrections. The use of the term in the given instance is fully justified historically.

But if we are to adhere to the historical meaning of the term “realism”, its application to the literatures of Eastern peoples is possible only when we find in their history socio-economic conditions parallel in their principal traits and tendencies to those of the West, that is, the establishment and development of capitalism as the prevailing system.

As is well known, corresponding conditions existed in Japan alone. It was the sole Oriental country to emerge from the fateful clash with the expanding West without becoming a colony of some European power, without losing sovereignty, as India and Indonesia had lost it. Japan had not been reduced to the state of a semi-colony of some Western country, as, for a considerable time, the states of Indo-China had been, where only the semblance of independence had been maintained. Neither had Japan become a dependency, as Turkey and Persia and, to a certain extent, China, had become temporarily; politically and formally independent, they -were caught in the web of financial and diplomatic control. Japan was the sole country in the Orient which, after the revolution of 1868, launched out upon independent capitalist development and attained so high a level in this that she was enabled, at the beginning of the 19th century, to join the far from friendly “family” of imperialist powers; politically, after the First World War, she acquired the footing of an almost equal partner. It follows that in Japan alone that stage of contemporary history had been developed which, in its social and economic content (as regards the main features and tendencies), corresponded to the parallel stage of bourgeois-capitalist development in England, France and Russia. In the Japan of the

second half of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century then we find a literature that corresponds in its general traits to the realistic literature of Western countries. It shows, of course, national characteristics, and is represented by the work of Tokuto-mi Roka, Shimazaki Toson and Natsume Sosela, to take leading ex-

^Intfie case of other Eastern countries the question is more complex. Their position as colonies, semi-colonies or dependencies retarded the disintegration of feudalism and affected the development of capitalist relations in them insofar as to make it a slower, more limited and deformed process. The development of the bourgeoisie in these countries showed features corresponding to the above. It was not fortuitous that a peculiar phenomenon known as the “comprador bourgeoisie” should arise in the Orient; here two bourgeois groups, the “comprador” and the “national”, proved to he m opposition to each other. The opposition arose out of a certain diversity of interests. This diversity concerned the attitude to the economic political and cultural development of the given country; the respective roles of these bourgeois groups in this development were also diverse. Nevertheless, retarded, limited and deformed as it might be in those countries, the development of capitalist relationships and the formation of a bourgeois-capitalist system took its course. The 19th century saw the establishment of capitalism as a worldwide and, moreover, ruling social and economic system. Different countries occupied different places in the system, the level of capitalist development and the paths this development pursued also differed widely, hut still, in one capacity or another, all these countries ultimately entered into the world capitalist system.

Consequently, it was natural that realistic literature, typical ot the epoch, should appear, in one form or another, both m Japan and in other old and civilised Eastern countries, notwithstanding their colonial, semi-colonial or dependent status. It is sufficient to reca 1 the writers of the Servetifiiniin group in Turkey, the works of A.al-kom-khan and Zain al-Abidin in Persia. . . , . .

The special features of their internal historical development, in conjunction with their position in the world capitalist system left their individual imprint upon the realistic literatures of each of these Eastern countries and determined their trend General economic and political backwardness and the immaturity of the bourgeoisie tended to slow down momentum in the development ot ideas to lower the artistic level in the realistic literature of colonial semi-colonial and dependent Eastern countries, and also to detract from its social role. Since the more highly-educated strata oi the national bourgeoisie had a predilection for some foreign bourgeois country, more progressive at the time than the rest (often the coun ry where they had received their education), this resulted man interruption in the consecutiveness of development in national literature.

stage in the general process of development of French literature from the decay of feudalism to the establishment of capitalism as the prevailing system. A romantic literature which had preceded and, for a fairly long time, run parallel to realistic literature was necessary for the existence of the last-named, since, on the one hand, realistic literature had taken shape in the struggle with romantic literature and, on the other hand, was destined to continue, and creatively develop, some of the achievements of this school. Realistic literature could never have become what it was without the preceding stage of a fully-developed romantic literature.

In the countries of the East, literature at this stage of their history showed signs of hastening its progress. No sooner was it well launched—in the natural sequence—upon the path of romanticism than, before it had thoroughly assimilated this trend, it hurried on towards realism. The outcome of this was a peculiar feature, recurring, to a lesser or greater degree, in almost all Eastern literatures: many works which undoubtedly aimed at realism contained elements o r omanticism (usually in an extremely sentimental and often very ofbvious form). It seemed as though this realistic literature sought to supplement within itself the insufficient development of the preliminary and necessary stage. For some time realistic literature seemed to continue romanticism, but in doing so, strove to overcome it.

Another peculiarity of realistic literatures of the East arose from the impact of general circumstances in the world around them. As a rule, these countries’ approach to realistic literature occurred somewhat later than in progressive Western countries. Even in Japan, where independent capitalist development begun in the 1870’s had progressed at a tremendous rate, realistic literature of a type familiar in Europe during the second and third quarters of the 19th century began to take shape only towards the close of that century, a period when naturalism was widespread in the major Western countries. A certain flavour of naturalism, as a consequence, was sensed in Japanese realistic literature from the outset. It could not be otherwise, considering that Japanese realistic writers read not only the works of Goncharov and Turgenev, but also those of Zola and Maupassant. By the second decade of the 20th century, realistic literature in Japan had attained the peak of its development. It existed in a most complex ambience, wherein the elements stemming from naturalism were subtly intertwined with those inspired by the ideas and moods of the European fin de si'ecle. Now, these had already given rise in the West to a literature of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a literature extremely varied and contradictory in form, treatment and creative principles. Consequently, echoes of Dostoyevsky and Rolland, or again of Chekhov and Ibsen, and of Anatole France and Oscar Wilde, were heard in Japanese realistic literature of the peak period. It meant that this literature had scarcely attained maturity when it diverged from the classic path and culminated in a

hotchpotch of elements of later analytical naturalism, garnished with touches of aestheticised modernism.

Another feature characteristic of Eastern literatures should be pointed out. Hitherto we have been speaking of the stream of literature as a whole. In each of the literatures mentioned, however, certain writers stand out who were not in the current of the stream of realistic literature in the advanced European countries, but kept pace with it and thus approached, to a certain extent, the general level. One of these was Futabatei, the author of Ukigumo (The Passing Cloud), which appeared in the middle of the 1880’s. In its theme, concept and creative treatment this novel possessed affinities with Goncharov’s A Common Story and The Precipice, and with Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons. As regards the theoretical position, Futabatei owed something to the influence of Belinsky. At a later period, it is also possible to find Japanese writers on the level of the world literature of their OAvn time.

The reason for this was that since Eastern countries had been in contact with the more advanced European countries, a stratum of Westernised intellectuals had formed. The intellectuals, who knew European languages well, were familiar with the science, literature and social life of these countries. They were not very numerous, their development was far ahead of the general cultural development of the bourgeoisie to which they belonged. Consequently, these intellectuals played the role of forerunners or founders of some literary trend, while the trend itself only assumed its finished shape and acquired a corresponding social significance later. Futabatei’s personality and the part he played were, in this respect, very revealing. He had made a special study of the Russian language and literature; he was the first Japanese translator of Turgenev and Gogol, and he had an excellent knowledge of the works of Belinsky, Dobrolyubov and Chernyshevsky. This, we must bear in mind, took place in the 188.0’s, at a time when there were, perhaps, only a very few Japanese who had even heard of Turgenev and Gogol, and, it is safe to say, none who knew anything of Belinsky. The result was that Futabatei’s novel was not accepted by the public: it did not fit into the general current of Japanese literature of the time. Nevertheless, his novel was a landmark on the way to realistic literature. Later, when this literature had acquired a definite form and growm stronger, Futabatei’s novel was remembered. Today, he is the acknowdedged forerunner of classical Japanese realistic literature of those times.

In spite of these special features of their development, all the realistic literatures of the Eastern countries may he and should be considered in the context of the world’s realistic literature, in the strictly historical sense specified above.

The evolution of the term “realism” is in itself characteristic. French in origin, based upon a Latin root, it has come into common use not only among European peoples, but among all the civilised nations of the world. In some languages it retains its original form, in others it exists in translation.

True, it has acquired the status of a term only since the second half ot the 19th century. At the outset those literary phenomena which were known in France as realism were known to other nations hy different names: for example, the term “naturalism” was employed by the Scandinavians and “naturalist school”, by the Russians of the mid-19th century. In the course of time, local terms were rejected in favour of “realism”, which was first in European use, and later came into world-wide use.

It appears, then, that the employment of the word “realism” to denote a definite historical epoch in the development of world literature is historically justifiable. This epoch covers the second and third quarters of the 19th century, if we agree on some central chronological framework, always bearing in mind that, on the world scale, certain national literatures extend beyond the range of these boundaries. In some instances, for example, in France, realistic literature covered the period from the end of the first quarter of the 19th century to the very end of the century; in other instances, such as Japan, realistic literature, of which the beginnings as a whole can be traced to the last quarter of the 19th century, extended naturally over two decades of the 20th century. It should also be borne in mind that in the history of realistic literature, as well as in that of any other trend in literature, the central stage is always the most sharply defined, while the beginning and the closing stages are diffuse. This is due to the fact that in its initial stage this literature not only stemmed from that which history destined it to replace, but in addition retained many of the traits of this still-existent literature. At the end of its course it often proves hard to trace a sharp demarcation line between the literature of realism and that of naturalism.

Another thing that should be taken into account is that during its historical existence realistic literature passed through several phases of its inner development, The realism of Flaubert is not the realism of Balzac. The difference does not rest only on the diversity of their creative individualities, no matter how immeasurably great the significance of the writer’s individuality might be; much depends upon the changes in the social atmosphere and also upon the internal laws of development in literature of a certain type. Consequently, we meet many very different approaches in the world’s realistic literature. It is the sum total of the works of Stendhal, Balzac, Flaubert, Dickens, Thackeray, George Eliot, George Meredith, Gogol, Goncharov, Turgenev, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Ber-thold Auerbach, Spielhagen, Eliza Orzeszkowa, Boleslaw Prus, Perez Galdos, Tokutomi, Tayama, Shimazaki, Natsume, Halid Ziya,

Malkom-khan, Zain al-Abidin, and many other writers. But despite all differences, the historical, social and artistic essence of this literature remains well defined in the more important works and the principal tendencies of its development.

In a concrete-historical approach to the phenomena of the literary process, have we the right to move heyond the boundaries indicated, and apply the term “realism” elsewhere? Have we the right to transfer the term that defined the main stream of a literature which arose and developed in conditions when capitalism became the prevailing, world-wide social and economic system, to a literature belonging to other epochs and arising in other historical conditions?

The answer to this question must be in the negative, nor can it be otherwise if we observe the concrete-historical approach. Still, a fact is a fact, and neither more nor less. The term “realism” is applied to 18th-century literature in France, Germany, England, and also to that of the West European Renaissance. It is met with in discussions of The Knight in the Panther's Skin, The Tale of Genji (Gen-ji-monogatari) and even Homer. It would be easier to say where it is not applied than to enumerate all the works that appeared among different nationalities at different periods and were designated by this term.

Nevertheless, since the standards applied to literatures of the time when capitalism flourished may not be used in assessing literatures of the feudal and slave-owning societies, it must be admitted that if the term “realism” is used to characterise these last-named literatures, something must have happened to the term itself. This is not difficult to determine: it lost its concrete historical content.

What were the constituent elements of the “realism” concept when it began to be applied to literature? The most convenient method of discovering this is to proceed from the juxtaposition of French mid-19th century realism with French romanticism that preceded it and for a while existed parallel to it. The formation of realism as a creative method stemmed in many ways from the negation of the creative method of romanticism. Realism rejected, in its creative reflection of reality, the approach based on ideas, on abstractions— the approach characteristic of romanticism; instead of this, realism required that the writer should turn to reality itself. In the depiction of nature, realism rejected the principle of fusion with nature, absorption in its mystery and beauty. The realist writer desired to be an attentive observer of nature and to disclose its mystery and its beauty. The romantic writer aimed at expressing himself in his work; the realist writer wanted to be objective. At a later stage of realism Flaubert expressed this idea in a yery extreme form: he declared that the artist should be so unobtrusive as to convince readers of later generations that he never existed at all in this world. When the romantic author attempted a contemporary theme, he sought for the hidden and unusual in life and, with the aid of these, expressed his

ideas and liis inner world. The realist author did the exact opposite: he selected the most typical from life around him and on this basis strove to create generalised types. For example, Madame Bovary was conceived as the type of woman from a bourgeois family in provincial France of the mid-19th century.

The above is meant to show the principal traits of realism as a definite historical category in literature. Could all these traits be applicable to the literature of any other epoch? We are familiar with the general state of culture in Europe of that time, we know how closely lealism in literature was connected with science, and above all with the state and trend of natural science. In short, the historical features of realism w^rere clearly marked, inimitable in their combination. What rendered it permissible, then, to apply the designation “realism” to literary works written in other historical epochs, when the combination of such traits did not, nor could, exist?

The first thought that occurs to us in this instance is that we must presuppose the existence of realism as a concept in some field other than literature, and, moreover, in a connotation that would permit of its being widely employed.

The word “realism” actually existed in a different field at that time. Schelling used it in philosophy to define reality cognoscible through the media of art. But Schelling’s realism was contained within the framew'ork of his teaching of identity: he considered that the reality of being could be known to its fullest extent through art precisely because knowledge and being were identical from the aspect of their oneness in some absolute principle of the highest order. If such a concept of realism could become the basis for the extension of the term “realism” to any corresponding phenomenon in art, at any period in history, then it could oidv be on the metaphysical plane. But the plain and simple fact that the term was employed in the assessment of literary works of past epochs shows that in these cases the understanding of “realism” is very far from metaphysics.

The term “realism” existed also, as is well known, in medieval philosophy, wdiere it w^Tas used to distinguish the trend of philosophical thought directly opposite to the doctrine of “nominalism”. It is clear that this “realism” could have nothing in common with the concept of realism as understood in mid-19tli-century French literature. Therefore, it could only have been some alteration in the content of “realism” that led to its application to literary phenomena of all preceding epochs.

Actually, the application of the term discloses the nature ol the change that has taken place. Since the concept of realism began to be applied to the literature of all historical epochs, this means that the concept ceased to be historically conditioned and became a general term for all time.

It is not difficult to see what determined this change: in the complex of characteristic features of wdiich the concrete historical concept of realism consists, there is one that has the right to genera

significance. This is “reality”. It was this trait that was singled out from the general complex and acquired independent being. Since this reality accompanies man at every stage of his historical existence, and human life is part of reality, then the trait “reality”, as one of general significance, became a criterion for the assessment of a literary work of any epoch.

The transformation of the concept “realism” in its complex historical content into a synonym of the concept “principle of reality” had a dual consequence: on the one hand, it made it possible to trace in the literary process, in the isolated phenomena of which this process consisted, the general; but, on the other hand, it led to ignoring the fact that the general is always manifested in the particular, and the particular is always concrete. “Reality” is something general, but it is manifested in the particular, and the particular in social life, in social phenomena, is invariably not only concrete but also historical. To people of one level of cognition, with one set of problems in this cognition, one specific attitude to the world, “reality” means one thing; to people of another level, with other problems of cognition and another attitude to the world, “reality” means something different. At the present time the phenomenon of the magnetic field is part of reality to us, but it did not constitute a part of reality for people of the not very distant past.

In the Genji-monogatari, a Japanese novel of the end of the 10th century, historically truthful pictures are given of the people of the time, their life and customs. The story tells us of a woman who was attacked by the spirit of her rival during her slumber. For the people of those days this experience appeared perfectly consistent with reality: a “spirit” that was able to cast off its mortal shell and undertake certain actions was for 10th-century Japanese a part of reality. The author himself bears witness to this, for he declares in one place that “the tales (monogatari) describe all that has happened in the world”. Therefore, if such “spirit” happenings had not been described by the author, he would not have been true to reality as it existed for him and the people of his day. Moreover, it should be remembered that phenomena such as these w^rere not regarded then as belonging to the mystical plane; on the contrary, a “spirit” of this type was considered as much a creature of matter as a man of flesh and blood. At a certain period in the European Middle Ages, the creatures participating in the orgies at Brocken were held to be matter or substance. The love potion in the romance of Tristan and Iseult had nothing of the mystical about it, but was simply a product of the pharmacology of the period, not only for the heroes of this romance but also for Gottfried von Strassburg, not to mention authors who wrote on the same subject before his time.

Is it possible, therefore, to apply the term “realism” to a literary work on the grounds that it “reflects reality”, without considering precisely what form of reality is meant and to what end this reality is reflected? If this is not to be considered, then, in place of

concrete historical reality we will deal with some abstract reality, or the particular reality that exists only for the scholar investigating it. Herein lies the danger of applying the term “realism” in a sense completely detached from historical concreteness*

Even if historical concreteness is taken into account in employing the term “realism” when speaking of a literary work or trend of past epochs, this can only be done in a limited sense. We can speak of “realism”, even with the above reservations, only when we come upon a work which stems from reality (as it appeared at a given time).

The history of 19th-century French realism affords us one of the more reliable criteria for the definition of conditions permitting us to speak of “realism”, meaning works that take their bearings from reality. French ’’realism” is not solely a sum of literary works; it is a method acknowledged by the writer, his reader and his epoch. The term realism rose in association with the French literature of the mid-19th century. Without this literature it would not have appeared; but its rise attests the fact that writers, critics and thinkers of that epoch understood that they were concerned with something original, and having decided the question of wherein this originality lay, named it “realism”.

That is why every literature that takes its bearings from reality, if it is something big, something of serious social significance, is accompanied by the understanding of this approach on the part of the writers and the reading public of its time. This understanding may be manifested in a variety of ways: in the writer’s opinions, the reader’s judgement, the literary critic’s views, the formulae of the corresponding poetics of that period. The history of literature in Japan affords excellent material for this study.

One of the peculiar traits of the history of Japanese literature is the consistent use of a term applied to characterise some new trend that arose at a certain period. For example, in the 17th and 18th centuries, when a multitude of diverse trends existed, a work that belonged to a particular trend was given a definite name: a comical novel (kokkeibon), a sentimental novel (ninjobon), a historical play (jidaimono), a play of everyday life (sewamono), and so on. Publishers were very particular about printing these terms on the book cover, so that the customer would know beforehand the nature of the book he was buying. Then, suddenly, among all these familiar and correctly labelled books, new ones appeared on the bookstalls of the time, and these were labelled ukiyo-zoshi; zoshi in this compound word denoted a book in a narrative genre of any type (a novel, a play, a cycle of short stories), something integral in concept, but carried out in various scenes. The word ukiyo in this title meant “world”, “life”. Therefore, the term in its entirety meant “a novel (story) from life”.

The concept of “world” and “life” possessed a content of a definite kind: “world” signified the reality of the surroundings in which people lived; “life” meant human existence, the life of society. Consequently, these books might be written to present a picture of reality.

Does this, then, mean “realism”? The term is usually applied to this genre. But it suffices to compare this Japanese realism of the last quarter of the 17th and first half of the 18th century—the period when its development was at its height—with mid-19th-century French realism, to see how strikingly different these “realisms” were, how unjustifiable it would be to apply a term defining the works of Balzac to the works of Saikaku, the principal representative of this Japanese trend.

In 19th-century France the concept of “realism” assumed its shape as the antithesis of the former principles upon which romantic literature rested. The concept of Japanese 17th-century literature of ukiyo (“world”, “life”) owed its origin to the antithesis of one world outlook to another. The word ukiyo arose in Buddhism and was used by Buddhists to define reality, but solely as the “world of futility”, “earthly vanities”, a concept founded on the negation of the genuineness of the reality surrounding people, the ordinary life of man. The higher verity lay in absolute reality, wherein the ordinary reality, being, was dialectically merged with “oblivion”—nirvana. .

The trend represented by Saikaku used this same term to specify the life of “this world” and not of the “other world”. Earthly life for this author was the real life; his was not a world of earthly vanities but of human activity. This literature did not exhort people to reject the world, hut to live an intensive life in it; and this attitude to life determined the creative method of Saikaku and other writers of his school.

How different this method is from that of French realists of the 19th century! The French writers’ aim was to be objective, but the Japanese evidently thought neither of being objective nor subjective. The French sought to probe reality, the Japanese simply presented it without having any special purpose in this. The French endeavoured to reveal reality in the typical, but the Japanese showed no inclination for the typical. The French writer above all desired things to be true to objective reality, but the Japanese writer could create images he had never observed in life.

For example, Saikaku recurred in a series of works to the sensualist, a character with an unbridled desire for sensual pleasures. Numbers of people of this type passed before Saikaku’s eyes, so that its familiarity (the society he wrote about was noted for people of this type) must have impelled him to picture it with the aid of hyperbole. But it would be erroneous to imagine that exaggeration was the specific creative method on which Saikaku’s work was built up. True, he resorted to this treatment when he considered it suit-

able, but in other cases he was extremely “objective”, and drew bis characters as he saw them in life. A good example of this “objective” approach is found in the characters of the women of a merchant ’s family in a cycle of stories Five Women (Gonin onna). But here again, though he is objective, it is by no means a treatment specially employed. The same may be said of the author’s role in the hook: he may disappear or reappear again in a maxim or a lyrical digression. In short, the specific quality of Saikaku’s “realism", if we are to apply the term to his work, will not be revealed by comparing certain treatments of his to'certain treatments of the 19th-century French realists. They are not comparable; they lie on different planes in these two kinds of “realism”.

Japanese realism (ukiyo-zoshi) of the second half of the 17th and the first half of the 18th century is connected, like the whole of Japanese fiction of the time, with the establishment of the bourgeoisie. For Japan it was the epoch of absolutism, when the feudal class was beginning to lose ground, but was not yet so enfeebled as to release the reins of pow⁷er; on the other hand, the bourgeois class was not yet strong enough to force the feudal class to yield power. And the merchant, though he still had to bow to the feudal lord, knew perfectly well that the aristocrat would come to ask him for a loan. The feudal aristocrat still possessed the right to behead the merchant if he considered that the bourgeois had in some way shown disrespect, but the merchant did not fear for his head as he knew that the baron’s estate, and consequently his welfare, was in his hands.

Conscious as they were of their strength, the bourgeoisie were eager for life. At the outset, the cultural narrowmess of this class, limited as it had been for centuries by the monopoly of culture held by the feudal class, permitted it very little scope. Rich merchants, factory owners and guild masters aimed first of all at things within their reach; these were confined to what could be purchased. Money they certainly possessed. So they were eager to enjoy life, above all sensual life. The ukiyo-zoshi school of literature reflected this desire for enjoyment; consequently, those sides of life that constituted reality for the bourgeoisie of the day were presented in literature. It unfolded the life stories of merchants and entrepreneurs, it gave examples of enterprise, enrichment, prosperity and ruin. Saikaku wrote a series of novellas on this side of life, under the general title The Treasury (Eitaigura). It was an account of the life and morals of merchant families, domestic dramas, many of which dealt with a wife’s liaison with her husband’s shop-assistants. The Five Women cycle is all about family life. Finally, there are the pleasures of life: drinking in the gay quarters that sprang up at that time in the towns, a life of unbridled sensuality. The Sensualist of Our Time (Koshoku ichidai otoko) pictures this kind of life.

Thus, the literature of that period might be called “the literature of life” or, more correctly, “the literature of the affirmation of life”, within those bounds and from those aspects that were accessible to

the bourgeoisie during the period of primary accumulation of capital. Life could be affirmed by true and “objective” depiction, and also by the exaggeration of some phenomenon, with a view to throwing it into high relief and stressing its significance. The author’s attitude to life may be manifested both by his total absence from the pages of his work, and also in his loudly-voiced assertiveness. In the works of Saikaku and other representatives of the ukiyo-zoshi school, such features did not determine the essentials of their creative method. _t

The literature of the absolutist epoch in Japan, which extends from the 17tli century to the end of the first half of the 19th century, is by no means confined to the trend represented by Saikaku. The “literature of reality” includes the sentimental novel (ninjobon), the comical novel (kokkeibon), the stories of actual occurrences (jitsurokumono) and many other kinds of literary work. It is not limited to narrative prose, but includes a great quantity of dramatic works, foremost among them the plays of everyday life by Saikaku’s famous contemporary Chikamatsu Monzaemon—the most outstanding dramatist in feudal Japan. Books like The Sensualist of Our Time are reminiscent of a notable Chinese novel of the 16th century (the epoch of the beginning of Chinese absolutism), entitled The Branch of Plum Blossom in the Golden Pitcher. This contains a description of the life led by a rich merchant, his sensual pleasures; it manifests a tendency to show up the false morals of a feudal aristocratic family by contrasting it with the merchant’s frankly sensual life. Such books are also reminiscent of Les amours du chevalier de Faublas or Casanova’s Memoirs. Saikaku’s other writings and certain trends in the “literature of real life” recall impressions of Le Sage, Fielding, Smollett, Defoe (Moll Flanders), even Richardson—a great number of prose writers during the epoch of absolutism in Europe. When one reads the “everyday-life plays” (sewa-mono) and the historical plays (fidaimono) of Chikamatsu Monzaemon, one involuntarily recalls not only the remarkable Chinese drama of the 16th to the 18th centuries, but also the “petty-bourgeois” drama of Lessing and his followers in Europe, and the historical tragedies of Schiller and Goethe. Is it not possible that these mark yet another general line in world literature? It is undoubtedly the literature of reality; if we take it as a whole on a world scale, does it not show clearly expressed features that prevent us from placing it under the heading of realism beside 19th-century literature (notwithstanding all the reservations surrounding this term)?

Another section in the history of Japanese literature was the drama during the epoch of its formation—the 14th to the 15th centuries—when this, too, was developing along the lines of “reality”. But here the term “reality” did not strike the eye in the book titles, as in the case of narrative literature of the late 17th and early 18th centuries: it was evident in the theory.

plays, acted in them, produced them, was the manager and leader of the troupe and trained the actors. Since the drama, that is to say, the textual libretto of the performance, constituted only one of the elements in the theatrical production, and this production was built up on music, the dramatist had to compose the music as well. The rendering of the libretto consisted of arias that were sung, melodic recitative and stage declamation. The acting consisted of stylised movements, pantomime and dances. The player had to sing and dance. Consequently, we visualise Seami as a personality as many-faceted and synthesised as the art itself of the No theatre, as these performances were called. He was the author of the text, the music, the pantomimic and choreographic parts; he was the dramatic actor, singer and dancer, the teacher of actors and the organiser of the theatre. It should be added that this was a theatre of masks, since the leading characters wore masks; apart from the actors, there was a chorus. Music was not only vocal, but also instrumental, performed by an orchestra, accompanying now the singer and dancer, now the chorus, and also playing as an independent element of the show. Only men could he actors.

Seami set out clearly the principles of his art. The two most important were termed monomane and yugen.

The word monomane may be translated as “imitation of things”. The word mono (“things”) may include any object existing or regarded as existing in the world. For Seami it was the No theatre world, and the concept of an “object” was confined to the world of living beings.

Who were these beings? Men, spirits, gods. Seami was even more explicit: under the heading of men came the nobility, the knightly warriors, squires, servants, Buddhist monks, Shinto priests, novices, peasants, traders, fishermen, wood-cutters, salters, charcoal burners; women included noblewomen, wives and mistresses of the knights, women of the people, dancers and singers; spirits were the souls of the dead, the spirits of plants and mountains; gods included the deities of the Shintoist pantheon, Buddhist deities and saints. It should be added that in Seami’splays all characters were on an equal footing, no special “transcendental” plane was set apart for spirits and gods. To Seami these things represented “reality”. Moreover, it should not be forgotten that this was a time when Japanese feudalism was at its height—between the 14th and 15th centuries.

What exactly was the “imitation of things”, that is, the reproduction of reality in the No theatre both through the play as such, and through its performance? Seami explained this as follows:

“It is difficult to describe what the imitation of each object means. The main point is to concentrate on each object in every way. Above all, to be able to imitate each object fully, in every way. It must be borne in mind, however, that in some cases deep colours are required; in others, light and delicate colours.”

“The imitation of things does not consist in achieving a simple resemblance. He who acquires a genuine facility for imitation, penetrates to the very essence of the thing, and therefore he is not aware of imitating anything.”

What, then, is the “essence” of a thing, to which the artist should penetrate while he is reproducing it in his art? Seami’s definition of this is the word yugen, the closest translation of which would be secret . This point he clarifies as follows: “the secret exists in everything: it is the beautiful. Imitation of things alters in accordance with the nature of things, but in each there is beauty.”

. ^{What does} Seami mean by beauty, and what is the true meaning of the word yugen? He illustrates it by an example—the personification of an aristocrat on the stage. The actor must be able to reproduce the exquisite manners, gentle and delicate speech, the elegant simplicity of the clothes worn by this character; in music, beauty of melody should convey all that the image stands for; grace and fluency in movement should convey it in the dance.

Here, then, is a fresh instance where the principle of looking to reality as a source is proclaimed in art; this, to use a customary term, is realism. But does this realism of the 14th and 15th centuries, when it was called the “reproduction of reality”, possess anything in common with the realism of the “literature of life” of the latter part of the 17tli and the first half of the 18th century? Do both of these possess anything in common with the realism of Japanese literature during the late 19th and early 20th centuries? All these “realisms” aimed at reproduction of reality, only in each case it was a different reality, and so the attitude to it and the purpose of its reproduction varied. In Saikaku s reality no spirits or deities exist, nor are they present as elements of reality, in the realistic literature on the threshold of the 20th century. Saikaku sought no “inner beauty” in presenting the people of his day; he certainly did not set himself the task of reproducing the “inner beauty” of his “sensualist”. Neither did Shimazaki meditate on this secret “inner beauty” when, at the opening of the 20th century, he drew the character of a pariah concealing his origin, in his novel The Broken Vow.

Here the picture is more subtle. Outwardly, the content of all the plays is integrated in the Buddhist tenet regarding the frailty of all that is earthly. But when it is considered that the theatricals were later transferred to the palaces of the feudal nobility and became a customary feature of holiday celebrations, and not a source of mournful resignation, it is easy to understand that the Buddhist motive was inserted to “ennoble” a performance which, since the No theatre stemmed from plays for the populace, had been hitherto

regarded as definitely “low.” Tlie aristocracy resigned itself to listening to these discourses on the transitoriness of earthly things, but least of all were they interested in them. They were attracted hy the characters and plots* which were perfectly mundane and familiar. Inasmuch as these characters of the feudal world and the events typical of that world were shown in all their beauty, the art of the No theatre appeared to sing the praises of the feudal world. This approach to reality determined Seami’s creative method.

Parallels to the No theatre and its plays may be found in the history of the world’s theatrical art and dramatic literature. The closest resemblance to the Japanese theatre and its plays both from the standpoint of art and the level of artistic development— is seen in the Chinese theatre during the Yuan dynasty (the second half of the 13th and the first half of the 14th centuries), in what are known as the Yuan plays (Yuan ch'ii). Historically, the No theatre might be placed beside the mystery plays of medieval Europe, except for the circumstance that the latter fell far below' the Chinese and Japanese productions in scope and artistic standards.

Another instance from the history of literature may be given, when the essence of the literary wmrk and its public appraisal also show that its purpose was to reflect reality. This is the Chinese literature of the 8th to the 12th centuries. This was a time, a particular phase in the history of literature, art and philosophy in China, associated wdth a movement knowm as “the return to antiquity . Ihe moving force of this phase was revealed by Han ^u (768-824), a poet and thinker, who was also a publicist.

The antiquity to which return was advocated, Han Yii defined with great exactitude as the period from the 12th century B. C. to the 3rd century A. D. From the standpoint of China s general historical development this covered the entire period preceding the establishment of feudalism as the prevailing social-economic system, that is, the period of the slave-owning system. “Antiquity" for the 8th-century Chinese, when feudalism had reached its peak in China. w⁷as identical with the “antiquity” known to medieval Europe.

For the thinkers, publicist writers and poets of the 8th century the main thing in this antiquity was literature. It attracted them because they visualised in it the embodiment of an idea they considered of the highest importance. This idea was humanism.

There are ample grounds for applying this European term, in its exact historical sense, to Han Yu’s outlook, and also to that of his followers, his outstanding contemporaries and his disciples in succeeding centuries. In both medieval Europe and China, humanism signifiied that man was brought into the foreground.

The long history of his country, w'hicli for him signi lied the history of mankind, is reviewed by Han Yu in one of his treatises -On the Way (Yuan Tao). Man, he considers, has built up civilisation and culture and has been its creator from the moment w'hen he emerged from his cave dwelling and started to build himself a house,

prepare food to appease his hunger, and clothing to protect him from the cold- from the moment when he founded a family, a society, a state ’regulated by definite civilised standards. According to Han Yii all these things had been created by man for himself, no deitv had created them'for man. Han Yii considered that men of the greatest intellect were the best representatives of mankind, and he called these “perfect”. The “Perfect Ones” led others, and thus, under their guidance, civilisation had been created.

This concept of the historical process, free as it was of any trace of religious awareness, constituted a challenge not only to religion, represented in the China of that day by Buddhism and Taoism, but also to Buddhist and Taoist philosophy. The Taoist philosophy propagated by Lao-tzu was rejected by Han Yii because it negated culture and advocated the return to the “natural state , to passmtji. Buddhist philosophy was rejected by Han Yii because it regarded being as merely a lower stage in human evolution; because Buddhist philosophy claimed that the ultimate purpose of this evolution was “oblivion”, nirvana.

In the above-mentioned treatise, Han Tu quotes from a book dating from antiquity and almost forgotten by his time. It was called The Great Learning and was to be found in the Li-chi, an ancient code of standards for social life and ritual instructions, lhe central portion in this work reads as follows:

“In ancient times he who desired to render bright for the entire Universe the bright attributes of his nature had first of all to learn how to rule the state. He who desired to rule the state had first to learn to rule his household. He who desired to rule his household had first to learn to perfect himself. He who desired to perfect himself had first to learn to make his own heart right. He who desired to make his own heart right had first to bring his thoughts into accordance with truth. He who desired to bring his thoughts into accordance with truth had first to learn how to acquire knowledge, the acquirement of knowledge consists in the study of things.

Here, then, is the beginning of all human activity— the study of things”. We have just encountered the concept of “things^ m the work of the 15th-century Japanese dramatist Seami; to him things were people, spirits and gods. For the Chinese of the 8th to the 12 th centuries they were things of a material nature, man himself, society and the state*. These constituted reality for Han Yii and other ideologists of Chinese humanism, and for them man’s activity began with the knowledge of these. Then, is this “realism” again? All its standard features seem to be present. We may add for the sake ot analogy: when humanism flourished in Europe the literature ot that

A closer scrutiny of the literature of Chinese humanism is necessary in order to discern what it consists of. In the first place, it_consists of poetry. The names of its foremost representatives are Li Bo, Tu Fu, Wang Wei, Po Chu-i, SuTung-po. The names alone ot these

T^{C SU}?^{cient t0 indic}^e the level of poetry. Prose .mould he placed alongside poetry, but prose of a special kind- treati

epistles^S0Cetc ^"S®^{1 and} J^Jnsopbical subjects, descriptive prose, epistles etc Nowadays, we would call these publicist articles and rhetorical prose in various genres. Very few of these writings wouid come under the heading of fine literature; but the Chinese considered all the above-mentioned kinds of prose as fine literature and, moreover, accorded them the highest place. Han Yu Liu Tsunoyuan, Ouyang Hsiu, Su Tung-po, the most eminent writers of such proseq were.included m the list of “Eight Great Writers of the Vans ¹¹ N^vt^g’^Dynn^StleS ’ ^{3S they W6re} named by a later tradition. ^&Yuan Chen °^^erH^comes, narrative prose-the novella, created by luan Chen, Po Hsmg-chien and many other writers

,, .^Wlthf*^h constituents, Chinese humanist literature requires that in the assessment of its art method we should consider all of th,s literature. From tlrie whole we should then seleot Crst of all

inapplicable here True, it was a literature that turned consciously and with conviction to reality, to the most human reality but free of any intention to merely show or reflect it. In everything he wrote the writer strove to speak of man and society. But' how? By any means: through the medium of an inspired love poem for a beloved ^W7^ho 7^as, ^dead- ^ Po Chu-i did in his Song of Unending Com plaint- through expressing thoughts on his country’s destiny and her grievous trials, as Tu Fu did in his poignant lyrics; by means of discussions about “love for all”, regulated by a sense of duty

g someone s fate, or some unusual experience that befell someone such as the writers of novellas did; or by means of a farewell address to a friend departing to take up an office, a reminder fW _i^governme?^{t offlCiaI was no more than} the people’s servant

vant TheT⁶ °f ^{y t}j^ie+.^wages P^aid by the people to their hired servant. I he true foundation of these writers’ creative method was humanism. This allowed them a free hand: they could use any method o. treatment including the fantastic. This last, by the way was very evident in the novellas, but it was employed to presentTn

Hfe n^lkl7n^mai^nner r ^aecessary ^asP^ect the theme of man of social that L ^{f h}i 7' LV^S P^e™^{issible to s}Peak of Chinese literature of 1” I m ^{6 8 h} i° ?^e centuries—as the “literature of reality , but to apply the term “realism” to it, wmuld lead it seems

hv ^^e’t? ^{theaubstltutl}<?^{n of the true} concept of its creative method ^{by anot}her that mistakenly regarded certain particular and derivative features of the method as basic principles.

^?1Untari1^ °^{ne iS reminded} that the literature of European humanism was also very complex in its composition. It included the works of Boccaccio Petrarch, Pico della Mirandola, Erasmus and Ulrich von Hutten. Moreover, it is impossible to draw a sharp demar-

cation line between fine literature and all other varieties of literature. The closest links between literature and philosophy, history, and science, are characteristic of the humanistic period in both China and Europe. History and philosophy flourished in China from the 8th to the 12th centuries; it is sufficient to name the historians Ou-yang Hsiu and Ssu-ma Kuang, the philosophers Han Yu, Chou Tun-i, Ch’eng Hao, Ch’eng I and Chu Hsi. As in Europe, most of these were writers on social subjects, poets, and also representatives of the above-mentioned genre of prose without a special plot.

This recalls another remarkable historical epoch: the history of Western Asia and North-West India from the 9th to the 15th centuries. It was a brilliant epoch that glittered with the names of scholars, historians and philosophers: al-Farabi, al-Khwarizmi, Ibn Sina, al-Biruni, the poets Rudaki, Firdausi, Omar Khayyam, Nasir Khusrau, Saadi, Hafiz and Jami.

If we consider that in this region of the world, the same humanism flourished at that period, do we not distinguish still another universal epoch in literature—the world literature of humanism? An epoch beginning from the 8th to the 12th centuries in China, continuing through the 9th to the 13th centuries in Western Asia and the adjoining part of India, and culminating in the period covering the 14th to the 16th centuries in Europe.

The foregoing is intended to show the necessity for the utmost caution in applying the term “realism” to literature previous to the 19tli century, even with modifications and reservations such as “primitive”, “elemental”, and so forth. Literature that consciously takes its bearings from reality has emerged at many stages in man’s historical development, and therefore the term “literature of reality” may be used, to some measure, as a general term for these cases. The term “realism” should be kept for only one of these cases—the 19th-century trend in world literature which has been described in this article. But in employing a general term, great care should be exercised to avoid narrowing down the conception of literature to poetry, narrative prose and drama. In some epochs, literature moreover, what may be called fine literature—was made up of very different elements. _

Another danger to be avoided is this: it should be borne in mind that literature wdiich consciously takes its bearings from reality is only a single line in the history of world literature. Many other lines existed; there have been epochs when it was on these lines that the highest achievements of genius were manifested, when it was these lines that guided mankind on the path forward. If we were to ascribe this role in the past to “realistic literature” alone, it would mean that we had diverged as far from concrete history as in the indiscriminate application of the term “realism”.

certain questions concerning the history

OF WORLD LITERATURE

• if,^tlie.^Iast twenty or thirty years there have appeared works in different countries which, under various titles, set forth the history of world literature. These works differ greatly in the volume of matenal used, in the way it is arranged and the form in which it is offered, to say nothing of the interpretation given to the process

wi t ?^s.^hls^^0ncal development in general and in particular. Work of this kind is conducted in this country as well.

^{he v}®^ry steadiness of the desire to generalise and elucidate the piocess of the development of world literature proves, in m_V opinion, that it is prompted by the course of the development of literary studies. Our knowledge of the literatures of different nations peopling the world has increased considerably in the past fifty years The well-known literatures of European nations apart, we now have a sufficiently good knowledge of the literatures of Asia and Africa

of different European countries. It may even be said that we have as good a knowledge of the history of literature of many Oriental peoples as we have of Occidental literatures. The desire to somehow generalise this enormous material was therefore perfectly natural the traditions of the old and merited cultural-historical school provided a convenient soil for such generalising. The result was the publication of compendiums which gave the history of different literatures within the framework of the general history of mankind’s culture these compendiums or reviews, if they are sufficiently comprehensive are extremely valuable, if only for the wealth of material thev contain. ^J

But matters did not stop there. The summing up of the material clearly indicated the existence of many-sided and different links between many individual literatures. The existence of such links was put down to the influence one literature had exercised upon another, and on this basis, as everyone knows, numerous works were written disclosing cases of such influence. A whole school of comparative literature was born, a leading place in which was assumed from the start by the French litterature comparee.² Influence as such— that is, the active role which some element in the literature of one country plays in another country’s literature—is an indisputable fact, observable in the histories of many literatures. Therefore, works disclosing instances of such influence are not simply well justified but are really essential.

The existence of links, however, was also interpreted as a factor indicative of a certain community in the history of two or more literatures belonging, as a rule, to neighbouring nations. The idea of zonal literatures was conceived: for example, the literatures of West European peoples, of Slav peoples, and so on.

It is an indisputable fact, frequently known in history, that close links do exist between the literatures of some nations. The discovery of zonal literatures, in a correct, concretely historical understanding of such a phenomenon, is a great achievement of literary scholars. The French comparative school showed the community of literatures within one zone—the zone into which come the literatures of West European nations and America—and also*within a definite historical period, from the 17th to the 19th century in the main, and going back no further than the Renaissance.³ It is not sufficient, of course, but even so literary science is greatly indebted to the French comparativists. In any case, the idea of zonal literatures undoubtedly affected, and very fruitfully so, some of tbe histories of world literatures that have appeared in print.

And still matters did not stop there. The idea of zonal literatures naturally gave birth to the idea of the community of literatures on a world scale. In the light of this idea the term “world literature” acquired a special meaning—an integral phenomenon, rather than an aggregate of separate phenomena closely linked together though they may be. On this basis, a special branch of the comparativist school came into being, developed mainly in the United States.

This is a new and unquestionably important aspect, of course, and it is essential for a better comprehension of the historico-lite-rary process. But only if interpreted correctly. The concept “world literature” in American litterature comparee was actually formed by spreading the concept “zonal literature” to embrace all literatures as such; in other words, the principle of links, which makes the corner-stone of the conception of zonal literatures, remains.

There is a certain historical justice in this, of course: the American comparativists speak of 19th-century literature, and mainly of contemporary literature; actually the community of all literatures has been established since at least the middle of the 19th century. But if we are to work only on the presence of links and the community created by them, we shall of necessity have to restrict ourselves to the study of the history of world literature belonging to modern

times in other words, to particularise the concept “world literature” as applicable to only a single, definite historical period.

res l7u^e ?^1Iedu^tl!f P^r°j^ect dealing with the history of literatu-makes ft If .^laun<*^ed. ^here- ^aN^tory of World Literature, which different ^bn^10Ut ? Tv ^{understand the} term “world literature”

.• T° ^d° ^thl®* T must first outline some particular questions, par-^tl.^c“^^ar ,^ia relation to the general: questions concerning the essence

Every time we begin a review of the history of world literature we first of all come up against an old and elementary question-the composition of literature. ¹

The fact that the composition of literature differed at different historical periods is perfectly obvious. For instance, we find Pla-

SW y TT / * ^{anCi6nt Greek} literature, but Nietzsche’s Thus T f Zarathustrh is not included in new German literature. Livy’s J^StAZ^y- ^{and S}su-ma Ch’ien’s History are included in the literature of ancient Rome and ancient China respectively, while Ferrero’s

WorSiTT^eSS Tv ^L!^ef^ine °J ^J!^orne and Carlyle’s Heroes and Hero-rship are not listed in the Italian and English literatures of the

time although they are undeniably brilliant from the point of view of literary merits especially. Aurelius Augustinus’ Confessions is course, a literary monument of later antiquity in the Graeco-Roman world (it is even called the first autobiographical novel) hut len Jean Jacques Rousseau’s Confessions is sometimes mentioned

SainT Tf ^n0t,^jn ]^{he llist0I}-y of French literature of his time; a^ain, Leo Tolstoy s My Confession is never examined in the usual histories of Russian literature but is merely mentioned as one of his works when a general study of Tolstoy’s writings is made. From this we see that works, very similar in theme and character, of un-demab¹⁶ literary merit, were included in the composition of earlier liteiature and left out in later times.

The reverse happens sometimes too. Books of the novel type such as Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Water Margin, which ,^PT^{ared m} China in the Middle Ages, were for a long time regarded by Chinese literary scholars as something that was “not quite literature m the accepted sense, while a publicist article or a^hi-losophica] treatise was, on the contrary, considered to be literature of the highest order. And only later, around the 17th century these novels^ began to be recognised as literary works. Consequently, the recognised composition of literature is also dependent on the notions of what a literary work should be, and these notions are always istorical, l. e., they are shaped by the position of literature in a giV-

en historical epoch: its place in the country’s cultural life and the part it plays in that life. These notions are also shaped by the given society’s attitude to the themes raised in a literary work, its material, form, genre and mission.

All this is well known, but today with our greater knowledge of the material and our better understanding of it we can clearly see that the historical composition of literature is one of the most important considerations. And what we have to fear more than anything else are hackneyed notions of the course of literature’s development: of its original non-differentiated composition and the subsequent process of differentiation; of the gradual formation of a specific phenomenon, known as belles-lettres, and so on. The danger of operating with these notions only is that the integrity and completeness of the literary systems of each large historical epoch in their inimitable originality, their qualitative value for their times and their society, might disappear if such an approach is taken. And this is precisely why we should go back to the question of the historical composition of literature once more.

The question of notions about literature as an element of its history has a direct bearing on this. We simply cannot ignore this element: our very material insistently reminds us that the history of literature is at the same time the history of notions about literature. Various theories of poetry, for instance, are well known—treatises on the art of writing poetry, its forms and styles, its essence and tasks. The whole history of Indian, Japanese, Chinese and Arab poetry is littered with these treatises. The most outstanding among these are theories which were conceived at some especially important moments, such as we find in Wagner’s Die Meistersinger, for example. The poetry of the meistersinger was coming to an end. And the famous master Hans Sachs himself grew old. In his place came Walther von Stolzing who sang an entirely different song. Beckmesser was highly displeased because Walther sang not as “he was supposed to”, that is, not according to the Tabulatur, and the Tabulatur was law. But Sachs understood that the time had come for precisely this kind of song. And as it turned out, at the Nuremberg guild masters’ and apprentices’ song competition, this song proved victorious, whereas the Tabulatur, like any other Tabulatur that begins to imagine itself the only truth in the world, was doomed to retirement and, even worse, to becoming a caricature of itself, as was the case with Beckmesser—its high priest.

Du Bellay’s poetry resounded like Walther’s song in one of those critical moments in the history of Western poetry, and together with his poetry came his famous manifesto Defense et illustration de la langue franqaise. It offered French poetry, which was already emerging from the Middle Ages, new notions of poetic art. In a very

similar moment in the history of Japanese poetry, Basho gave voice to another “Walther’s song” at the turn of the 17th century, and also expressed his thoughts on the meaning and tasks of the new poetry which was coming to replace the poetry of haikai—the creation of guild masters and merchants. A similar fusion of the new in literature with new notions about literature can be discovered in almost every field of literary endeavour both in the \\ est and in the East.

Thus, the history of literature is made up of two intertwining factors: literature itself, i. e., the aggregate of literary works, and thoughts on literature, i. e., notions about its meaning, its tasks and its types. This gives rise to the following questions: how do these two factors interact, how important is this interaction and how is it influenced by the life of society itself? The interaction as such, however, is an indisputable and universal fact.

If we take the historical character of the composition of literature into account and admit that every large epoch has its own literature as a thing of integrity that is socially and aesthetically important for its time, then the question of historical systems .of literature will naturally arise. We see clearly enough how amazingly stable are the uniformities or the similarities in the literatures of different peoples at one and the same historical time. It should hardly he dismissed as a mere coincidence that a literary-historical genre such as a “pragmatic history” existed in ancient Greek and ancient Chinese literatures at the same time, as well as the genre of “historical biography”. In Greece and in China these were Polybius s History and Plutarch’s Parallel Lives, and Ssu-ma Ch’ien’s History and Biographies. The latter, even though not entitled “comparative , are anyway, just as they are in Plutarch, based on comparison of persons and destinies that would seem to be different and are yet somehow alike. In medieval Europe we find mysteries and miracle plays, on the one hand, and farces and Fastnachtspielen, on the other.’ Medieval Japan also had its mysteries, yokyoku, and its farces, kyogen. Considering that compositions of this type, clothed in their own genre and form, are encountered elsewhere in the East, also in the Middle Ages, one cannot help thinking that there must be some logic to the simultaneous emergence and development of two opposed types of dramaturgy, and that they must belong to the same system. The same can be said of court lyrics and court epics: whatever their form, they belong to the system of literature of their historical time. It can hardly be accidental that in medieval literature the exquisitely gallant poem of the Aucassin and Nicolette type existed side by side°with the most devil-may-care schwank. Is it so very accidental that the appearance of the “accusatory” novel and the lachrymose melodrama coincided, which is characteristic of literature in the last stages of feudal society both in France and China? It is

hardly probable that the literary forms of romanticism and realism— the way they are presented in fiction and connected manifestos, pamphlets and polemic articles—are not interdependent, and that this interdependence is not a very important feature of the system of literature existing in capitalist society at its time of flower. It is precisely these forms that we inevitably find both in the 19th-century literatures of France, England and Russia, and in the literatures of Japan and Turkey in the 20tli century—a historically similar time. These coincidences cannot be explained away by literary influences alone. An influence can speed up or slow down a process and guide it in one or another direction, but it cannot engender a process, especially one that is of cardinal importance to the entire literature of a given people. The question of historical systems of literature is there without waiting to be raised, and it is imperative to answer it one way or another.

Apparently, the basic types of literary systems will correspond to such large epochs in history as antiquity, the Middle Ages and modern times. These epochs, needless to say, are attended by definite social-economic systems—the slave system, the feudal and the capitalist—but only at the very basis. All systems are always in movement: the end of one long stage blends with the beginning of the next, and the beginning of the next stems from the final stage of the last. Therefore the “pure” form of a social-historical system is evidently created by the middle period of its history when the development of all the elements of this system is as harmonious as

The fact that it is so, is very clearly seen in the history of the slave-owning society. In what period of its existence did Hellenic civilisation create the greatest that it gave the world, that which came to be a classical heritage for all the peoples of Europe? In the middle period of its history: in the epoch of poleis, or city-states. That was the time of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Phidias and others. In what period of its history did ancient China create the culture that became a classical heritage for all the peoples of Eastern Asia? In its middle period, in the epoch of lieh-kuo, or kingdoms. That was the time of Confucius, Lao-tzu, Chuan-tzu, Lieh-tzu, Hsiun-tzu, Ivuan-tzu and others.

The heyday of medieval civilisation also occurred in its middle period, taking the form typical for that civilisation; only, to my mind, the most characteristic form should be sought not in the history of the old, but of the younger nations, which came striding into feudalism, bypassing the slave system stage and unburdened by the enormous weight of an antique heritage, which they simply did not possess. In Italy, for instance, the transition to feudalism was a complicated process, overburdened with all kinds of elements

stemming from the past, and a great past at that. The same can be said of other nations which went through the slavery system stage with its many-sided developments.

We know no more than five such nations in history: the Greeks, the Romans, the Iranians, the Indians and the Chinese. Together with the Hebrews they created that which comprises the world’s “classical” heritage. Therefore, in outlining the system of medieval literature we should base ourselves on the literature of the Franks, the Anglo-Saxons, the Japanese and the Arabs, rather than on the literature of medieval Italians or Chinese. “Classical” medieval poetry began with the Provencal troubadours, the German minnesingers and the Arab and Japanese bards. The same applies to the knightly epics: it was the historically younger nations w^rho created them. Suffice it to recall the Chanson de Roland and The Lay of Igor's Host, the Song of the Cid and Heike Monogatari.

The question of what literary systems were typical of the large historical epochs is of paramount importance for the elucidation of the general course of mankind’s literary development. But to understand the transition of literature from one large epoch to the next, we must examine the literatures of the transitional periods, the literatures at either extreme, so to say, which concluded one social-historical formation and led to the next one.

In the history of the Western world these transitional periods stand out with singular clarity. The first is the transition from ancient society to the medieval, the Hellenistic period as it is usually called; the second is the transition from the Middle Ages to modern times, called the Renaissance; and the third is the transition from modern times to the contemporary period. It has no generally accepted name as yet, but it began with the Paris Commune and the Internationale. .

The tremendous significance of these transitional epochs in the history of literature is obvious if only from the fact that each one of them was heralded and launched with a literary work of genius. The first was ushered in by De Civitate Dei; the second, by I he Divine Comedy, and the third, by The Communist Manifesto.

The existence of these extremely important transitional epochs in the history of Western literature immediately poses another question: was it a purely European phenomenon? A local phenomenon, historically speaking?

The history of Western peoples is one of the most imporant chapters in world history. In order to appreciate the great help it rendered science to gain a better understanding of the historical process as a whole, it is sufficient to recall that such categories as slaveowning system, feudalism, capitalism, discovered in the history of European nations, came to be universal categories. It is a perfectly

logical inference that there had to be transitional epochs of equai importance in the history of those peoples who, like the Greeks and the Italians, had their antiquity with as great and many-sided a culture. These nations were the Iranians, the Indians and the Chinese. Like the Greeks and the Italians they, too, made the transition to feudalism. And they naturally had their transitional epoch.

The epoch of transition from antiquity to medieval times was no longer the slave-owning system in its classical form, nor was it yet the feudal system in its classical form. The change was indicated, however, and it influenced the minds of men. The Hellenistic period started and developed in the history of the old civilised peoples in the East-Mediterranean countries on all three sides: Europe, Africa and Asia. The revolution of minds which took place here led to the collapse of the old pagan world outook and the adoption of the new Christian ideology. The words “pagan” and “Christian are, of course, no more than very general designations; the phenomena themselves,' covered by these designations, were extremely complicated, varied,,and at times contradictory — all of them, however, joining in the struggle against the old world with equal determination. The new came into the world of the Roman Empire from outside, as it were, from the East: from Judea, Syria and Egypt- the Roman East, as historians call it. As a matter of fact, it was there, in this Roman East, that the revolution of minds began and developed, but it also spread to the Graeco-Latin part of the “Roman world” where the old established world outlook was undergoing a crisis of

With the Chinese and the Iranians the transition from antiquity to medieval times was also accompanied by a revolution of minds. This revolution was fed primarily by inner sources, by trends that were alien to ideological orthodoxy and were called Taoism in China and Manichaeism in Iran. There was also an extraneous factor: a system of ideology coming from outside. In China it was Buddhism, and in Iran, Islam. And it was under the influence of these two forces that minds were reorientated in that first great transitional epoch in these parts of the world.

In Europe, the second transitional epoch—from medieval to modern times—first unfolded in Italy. This, too, was a revolution of minds, and again it drew its inspiration from two sources. The first was that which in the circles of orthodox ideology was called heresies; the second was that which stemmed from Graeco-Roman antiquity, the Italians’own antiquity. Naturally, something came from outside as well: partly from the newly emergent Arab world nearby, and partly from the world of medieval Jewry, but the chief factors of the revolution of minds were certainly the two sources—one from the present and the other from the past.

As events developed, however, the second factor gained priority over the first, at least in the eyes of those active in this second transitional epoch. They attributed such an enormous importance to

antiquity in the remodelling of their own times that they even called their movement the “Renaissance”. Needless to say, there was no restoration of antiquity and there could not have been. Actually, a new philosophy was created, a new sociology and jurisprudence, a new literature and a new natural science; but antiquity was naturally called upon to assist in its own way.

We see exactly the same thing happening in the 9th-12th centuries in the vast Indo-Iranian and Western Turkistan world. There, too, a revolution of minds was going on, which brought about the florescence of philosophical thought, literature, the humanities and the natural sciences. And, again, as in Italy, this movement was fed by two sources: its own times—various anti-orthodox trends in Islam, and its antiquity. The participants in this movement called it the “modernisation”, which shows how great a significance they ascribed to it.

In the 8th-13th centuries a similar movement became clearly outlined in China. It led to the creation of a new philosophy, a new historical school, a new literature. It also drew nourishment from two sources: from its present—various intellectual trends that challenged the official ideology, and from its past, i. e., antiquity. The fact that the movement was called a “return to antiquity” (fu-ku) shows how significant its representatives thought the second source.

Thus, students of the history of world literature are confronted by the question: how to evaluate these facts historically? Attribute them to the accidental or to some law of development? A law of the general course of historical development, which had manifested itself, in features peculiar to itself, in the history of at least three great and leading (in the cultural sense) peoples? This question cannot be avoided. Without solving it, there can simply be no understanding of that golden age of poetry which we link with such names as Li Po, Tu Fu, Po Chii-i, Rudaki, Saadi, Hafiz, Petrarch, Ron-sard and du Bellay.

I do not mention the third transitional epoch here, our epoch, but I think that a careful study of the first two in a world-historical aspect will help us the better to understand the contemporary epoch as well, and, consequently, the processes which have been going on in world literature since the end of the last century.

All these facts, once we succeed in probing them to the full, will enable us to see clearly the movement in the literatures of single nations. At the same time these very facts will let us see the movement in literature on a world scale. And for the history of world literature—that is, of course, if a mere summary of the histories of separate literatures is not substituted for it—the question of this general movement is, perhaps, the cardinal one.

To clarify, here are two examples. Accepting the thesis that “Renaissance” literature, let us call it that, originated with the old peoples—China, Iran and Italy—we shall see that corresponding Renaissance ideas were subsequently conceived by the young peoples as well: in the zone of China, it was the Koreans; in the zone of Iran, the peoples of North-West India and the Turkic peoples of Western Turkistan; in the zone of Italy, the peoples of Western, Central and even Eastern Europe. Thus, it has to be admitted that Renaissance features were already becoming facts of world culture. But at the same time it transpired that their centre of gravity had shifted in a number of cases: the most brilliant attainments of the Renaissance in some spheres of culture were found not in the birthplace of the Renaissance in the given cultural zone but elsewhere. For example, Renaissance dramaturgy in the West attained its peak not in Italy hut in England, with Shakespeare’s art; and in the East it was not in China but in Japan, with the work of Chikamatsu Monzaemon.

It follows, therefore, that in every case Renaissance began, developed and ended in its birthplace before anywhere else. Taking Europe as an example, this is demonstrated by Italy, which fell behind the younger countries—the Netherlands, England, France— in both its social-economic and cultural development. The history of world literature has to examine this process.

But apart from the movement in each separate zone there is also the general world movement. If we analyse the Renaissance chronology for each zone, we shall discover that this proces : first appeared in China in the 8tli century, then in Central Asia, Iran and NorthWest India in the 9th century, and, finally, in Italy in the 13tli century. It was ended in the 17th century on the fringe lands of the Old World: in England, of the Western countries, and in Japan, of the Eastern.

Let us take another example. The literature of modern times— the literature of capitalist society—was most vividly developed not in the old countries but in the young: not in Italy, but in England and France; not in China, but in Japan. Later, this process spread to the other countries as well. This establishes the chronological order in which the world system of literature of modern times was formed from the 17th to the late 19th centuries. This world process moved reversely to the first, Renaissance process: from the West to the East this time.The crest of this wave rose highest not in the country where the process began, but elsewhere. In the West it was attained in Russia with the works of Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy and Chekhov, and in the East it was in Japan with the writings of Shimazaki Toson and Natsume Soseki; the levels, both artistic and social, were entirely different, of course.

A third example can be added to these two. The beginning of the latest, in other words present-day, epoch in literature appeared most clearly in the works of Gorky and Mayakovsky in the W est, and in

the works of the Japanese writers Kobayasi Takizi and Ishikawa Takuboku in the East. The artistic levels were very different, but they were alike in the social message they brought the respective countries.

The essence of what is perhaps the most important question in the history of world literature now takes shape: the question of movement. What is it essentially? What are those impulses that start the movement, guide and stimulate it—where do they come from and when, where and how do they start?

Is there such a thing as “world literature” not in the limited sense in which the term is applied to the literature of the modern world, but as a specific phenomenon that existed in all times?To my mind, this question can be answered in the following manner.

As said above, the composition of literature changed historically: it was determined by the actual state of literature at a given time and the current notion of what a literary work should be. This fact was observed in the history of all separate literatures, and in its main features it is common to all of them.

We further observe how gradually, in the process of historical changes, that which people have called “literature” took more and more definite shape and received the right to independent existence. By “literature” we mean that special category of society’s creative activity which differs from philosophy, science and the fine arts and is yet linked to them since it uses all their means: concepts, symbols, images, metre, rhythm and euphony. This process is invariably observed in the history of all separate literatures and is, therefore, general in character.

In every large historical epoch literary manifestations, in whatever stage of formation literature itself may have been, always crystallised into a whole which acquired the importance of a system whose , separate parts were linked together by various relationships. The existence of such systems is observed in the history of all literatures; what is particularly important, the characteristic features of these systems, and even their composition, are roughly similar in the history of all separate literatures—in epochs that have a social-historical similarity, of course.

The history of literature is made by the movement of these systems—the forming, developing, and eventual dying of one system and the appearance in its place of another system with the same cycle. This process with all its peculiarities is also repeated in the history of all separate literatures.

The succession of literary systems, however, does not mean that whatever has been replaced is lost forever. It is rather a process of replenishing the existing aesthetic values with new ones. The con-

cept “heritage” is perfectly real, it means that many works of past epochs live on in later epochs, enriching, what is more, the minds of subsequent generations with the aesthetic values embodied in them. This connecting line, drawn through the ages, and the unbroken succession form a solid substratum for the whole literary-historical process. It is this aesthetic accumulation that makes the substance of the progress created by means of literature.

The succeeding literary systems are linked together in another respect as well: in the origin of literary types and genres. Each type and genre of literature in a given historical system is somehow connected with its predecessor in the previous system. Even though the types and genres originating in a new system may be entirely new, a study of them will reveal their dependence on the old. Naturally, dependence does not necessarily mean that the old types and genres are continued or developed; in can mean a complete renunciation of them. This, too, is observable always and everywhere.

Relations between literatures may vary, as borne out by the history of all literatures. Therefore the communities of literatures we have mentioned before by no means have to last forever. Let us recall, for instance, the history of literatures of the peoples of Western Turkistani in the Middle Ages these literatures belonged to the community of literature which embraced Western Turkistan, Iran and North-West India; in our time they belong to the literary community of Soviet peoples. The existence of zonal literatures for each historical time is a fact recorded in history. Historical changes in number, composition and zonal boundaries, however, are one of the elements of the world historical process.

The character of literature, wherever it may appear, reflects the social nature of its makers. This nature changes; tribes come into being, then they unite, and finally nations are formed. And so there is literature typical of the epoch of tribes, the period between tribes and nations, and the age of nations. National literature in the exact social-historical sense of the term is a special category that originated only in modern times and is the unquestionably predominant one at present. The historical changes of literature’s social substratum, which determines its character, forms, boundaries and lifespan, are common to the histories of all large, long-existing literatures.

And so, in the history of separate literatures known to us there are features peculiar to all of them; in its development we identify the same processes which acquire the significance of definite laws. The fact that a number of these developing phenomena have common laws proves that by nature they are one. This is why the history of separate literatures itself confirms that for all their individual distinctions they are one and the same phenomenon: literature.

Separate literatures, however, join together to form a whole not only on the basis of their, so to speak, substantial unity. They are also linked by the general movement of history. History, as everyone

knows, unfolds unevenly: in the common stream of social-economic development some nations take the lead and others fall behind. This unevenness is one of the motive forces of the historical process. In every large epoch, the stride forward is made in some one part of the world and under its influence a corresponding movement begins in some other parts. This was observed in social-economic history, and this was observed in literary history as well. In this manner a general history of the world’s literature is created.

The existence of histories of separate nations does not preclude the existence of a history of mankind as a phenomenon sui generis.

In the same way the existence of separate literatures does not preclude the existence of a world literature. Each separate literature is a fully independent phenomenon, but so is world literature, except that it is of a higher order.

I have only one question left which I should like to touch upon. It is a question which confronted Soviet literary science when we undertook the compilation of a History of World Literature. Was it worth while doing all this work? If so, why? What for? To find out how the process of inception and development of literature went with different peoples? For that too, certainly. Or in order to see this process on a world scale? Yes, that too. These are the scientific aims of our work.

But we have other, social aims as well. The history of world literature may help to bring into the sphere of the people’s awareness much that deserves to be appreciated. Translators and literary scholars in the Soviet Union have already done a tremendous deal in this respect. The widest circles of readers are now familiar with Medea, Romeo and Juliet, Farkhad andShirin, Petrarch, LiPo,Basho, Omar Khayyam and very much else. But let a young man of our day know not just Beatrice or Laura, but also Yang Kui-fei and Salome. Lethimheartheheroicin//eiA*eMonogataris.n&not just in the Chanson de Roland. It is all necessary, it will all come in useful; we want not Montaigne alone but the Ecclesiastes too. However, one of the vital tasks of the History of World Literature is not so much the introduction of our society to new literary facts as the dissemination of a proper understanding of their aesthetic value.

Another social aim of our work is to show that the history of world literature is a product of mankind’s joint endeavour. We are well familiar with large cultural zones. The peoples of Eastern Asia and India have long been interrelated. Buddhism—and it is far from being simply a religion or simply a philosophy, hut is both literature and art in all its spheres—this Buddhism united the countries of Central, Eastern and South-Eastern Asia into one cultural group. In another direction, Indian civilisation came into con-

tact with the world of Western Turkistan, Middle East and even Greece, both in the times of the Hellenes and Byzantium Byzantine civilisation spread to South-Eastern and Eastern Europe and itself belonged to the sphere of all-European civilisation. Boman culture, another component of this all-European civilisation, embraced Central and Western Europe. The East-Mediterranean world with its multitribal and multilingual population—European, Asian and African—made one huge cultural zone already in the Hellenistic period. Arabic culture with Islam in a variety of interpretations spread over the vast territory from Spain to Indonesia.

One of the aims of the History of World Literature is to disclose these numerous links through literature and, more important still, to help people to understand these links correctly: to understand that different peoples, for all their, feuds, always associated with one another in the field of culture and could not have managed without this association.

To my mind, our History of World Literature must also help to strengthen the notion of the true criterion of historical social progress.

There have been and still are different notions of what should be regarded as progress in the cultural life of mankind. There is quite a widespread opinion that progress should be gauged only by the level of material and technical progress attained in a given country. But even that one span of history Avhich was witnessed by the presently living generation demonstrated with striking vividness how a very high level of material and technical progress, perhaps the highest at that time, in one European country proved to be compatible with perhaps the lowest level of moral depravity civilised mankind of that time could sink to. It is understandable enough that this fact, taken in all its depth and seriousness, led many to historical scepticism and some to an even more bitter state—to historical pessimism. But even this is not the worst: after all, both scepticism and pessimism are anyw^Tay responses of the human intellect which could not ignore and remain indifferent to what had happened. What is much more frightening is the spread of cynicism, insensibility and indifference to everything except material benefits, and a refusal to give any thought to the future roads along which mankind should go.

It is imperative at the present time especially to argue with scepticism and pessimism, on the one hand, and fight cynicism and spiritual inertia, on the other. And in the first place, the truth of a simple principle must be reinstated: only that which is compatible with humaneness and is justified by it, is historically progressive. —

I think that literature is one of the most powerful means with which to convince people of the imperative validity of this principle.

There are different forms of thinking. One form is valid for the field which we call science; another, for thatwhich we call philosophy; the third, for what we entitle art. The material on which our mind is wmrking calls into existence many specific branches of sci-

ence, philosophy and art, but in man’s social consciousness they appear as an integral whole. This whole, moulded in concepts, images and symbols, is embodied in language—that “direct reality of thought”, and through language, elevated to the plane of art, in literature. This makes literature a synthesis of the elements of philosophy, science and the arts. And it is precisely this synthesis that social consciousness is presented with.

If this is so, is not then literature the most direct and powerful means of restoring in social consciousness the notion of humanism as the highest criterion of social and cultural progress?

In socialist society, which is called upon to raise the ethical level of social consciousness in the first place,' we naturally do not have to worry about restoring the meaning of the humanist concept of social and cultural progress: this concept lies in the very basis of our system. Still, a reminder is necessary just the same since the enormous material and technical progress made today, accompanied as it is by a magnificent flight of theoretical thought in this field and an insufficiently developed theoretical thought in the sphere of spiritual values, misleads many into an overestimation of the significance of the former and an underestimation of the importance of the latter. That is why the task of literature which we are discussing concerns in some measure our society as well.

If literature as such can most effectively implant in social consciousness the humanist concept of social and cultural progress, then what other branch of knowledge if not the history of literature can best show that the criterion of humaneness has faithfully served civilised mankind in all the periods of its history? And this is precisely why our work takes on a special meaning: it is not simply a routine undertaking, extremely important though it may be, but a great social cause.

And now for the last point, which concerns our own needs. What can we derive from the history of world literature, Ave people of the third great transitional epoch, to whom the transitional epochs of the past seem especially close? What can we derive from them?

I have named three great works which called for the creation of a new and different future—neAV for each historical period, that is, De Civitate Dei, The Divine Comedy and The Communist Manifesto. Oh, how hard Aurelius Augustinus Avas on his age! How mercilessly he castigated its vices! And what did Dante do? He subjected the past and his own times to the most ruthless judgement: some he sent down to hell with a specialised punishment for each, others he put in purgatory, and some he thought deserving of paradise. Does it need reminding how the authors of The Communist Manifesto came down on the evils of their times and their society?

But then how fervently Aurelius Augustinus believed in his ideal, which he called ^uCity of God”, thinking of it in categories

of the social consciousness of liis time! How passionately Dante believed that it was possible to build up a society that would answer his ideal! And how great was the conviction of the authors of The Communist Manifesto that a new social system was both necessary and attainable! All three works are not only books of great wrath but of great faith too, of great belief in the highest ethical nature of that to which they called men.

And, finally, these three works are also books of great love. Love of man, of mankind. For it was man the authors vere thinking of, worrying about, fighting for; it was for man they wanted to create the new and the best they could imagine. Without this great love their wrath and their faith would have been barren. This too, I think, the history of world literature could show. And it is hardly the smallest of our needs.

1 [ shall only mention the major works: E. Laaths, Geschichte der IV eltlitera-lur. Eine Gesamtdarstellung, Miinchen, 1953; G. True, Histoire illustree des litteratures, Paris, 1952; E. Tunk, Illustrierle Weltliteraturgeschichte. In drei Banden, Zurich, 1954-1955; G. Prampolini, Storia universale della lette-ratura Torino, 1959; H. W. Eppelsheimer, Handbuch der Weltliteratur, Bd. 1-2, Frankf./M., 1950; R. Lavalette, Literaturgeschichte der Welt, Zurich, 1948.

³ See P. Tiegbem, Histoire litteraire de VEurope et de l Amerique de la Renaissance a nos jours, Paris, 1946. -

⁴ See W. P. Friedrich, Outline of Comparative Literature from Dante Alighieri to Eugene O'Neill, Chapel Hill, 1954.

THE SUBSTANCE OF HISTORY

These are extraordinary times. They are unquestionably one of the crucial turning-points in world history. The future will probably show that they are even the most important of all that mankind has lived through so far.

It is only natural that, at times like these, as at all other major turns in history, thinkers ponder on the substance of history.

Let us recall antiquity, the time of Polybius and Ssu-ma Ch’ien. They belonged to different worlds—one to the Western, and the other to the Eastern. Generally speaking, the situation in these two parts of the inhabited world was historically similar. Polybius (203-120 B. C.) lived in the Hellenistic epoch, that period of it when the Roman Empire was emerging in the Mediterranean basin as the unifier and hegemon of a spacious world reaching from the British Isles to Bactria in Central Asia. Ssu-ma Ch’ien (14585 B. C.) lived in the Han Empire, which incorporated the kingdoms of what is now China and ruled supreme over a vast area stretching from the Japanese islands to present-day Hsin-chiang and Central Asia, known in China at that time as the “Western end”.

Socio-economically, the time of Polybius and Ssn-ma Ch’ien had been the final stage of the long and changeful history of the slave-owning society that existed in those two regions of the ancient civilised world.

It was a time of turbulent events, a crucible for many peoples, but it produced great treasures of culture and roused man’s craving to cognise and understand the developments about him. It was this craving which brought forth the works of Polybius and Ssu-ma Ch’ien.

The two historians appraised the emergence of their respective empires as a fact of world-wide historic —and, moreover, beneficial — purport. For them, it was an ascent to the summit.

Another striking attempt to comprehend the course of history was made on the threshold of the Middle Ages, a time of transition

from slave society to feudalism. In the East, the attempt was made by Nagarjuna (2nd-3rd centuries), and in the West, by Aurelius Augustinus (354-430).

Nagarjuna based his views, which he set out in a number of treatises and notably in his Mahaprajnaparamita-sutra, on the principles defined in Saddharmapundarica-sutra (1st century A. D.), the Lotus Sutra. The principles of the Lotus Sutra were built upon the conceptions of Mahayana, the “Great Vehicle”, imbued with a distinctly universalist idea, the idea that enabled Buddhism to overcome local Indian exclusiveness and reach out to the ends of the Eastern world—first to those lands of the Middle East that adjoin India and then also to the boundless expanses of Central and Eastern Asia. This transformed Buddhism, a faith conceived in the womb of slave-owning society, into a religious system destined to serve the then new and burgeoning feudal society.

The teaching of Aurelius Augustinus, set out in his De Civitate Dei (413-426), belongs to Christianity, another religion conceived in slave-owning society; it was moulded in the late Hellenistic period and reflected the universalism that constituted one of the principal features of the Hellenistic mentality.

Nagarjuna and Aurelius Augustinus felt that a new time had arrived in man’s history which each described in his own way as man’s ascent to the summit. They conceived this summit as man’s ultimate salvation by a divine power—Buddha in the former’s case, and Christ in the latter’s. Both dealt in religious categories, for to men conscious of progress these represented the most universal and all-embracing ideas of the time. The conception of ascent was based on the audaciously proclaimed idea of the unity of samsara and nirvana, the earthly and the divine, the empirical and the absolute, propounded by both Buddhism and Christianity. It enabled both faiths to invade the real world and take a hand in mundane affairs.

We also find a remarkably lucid appreciation of the current historical time—and again in the context of man’s general history—■ during the transition from feudalism to capitalism. Not at all surprisingly, it was more distinct and lucid in Europe, the Western world, where this transition was at its most tangible. In the East, the emergence of elements of capitalism—though they appeared earlier there (in, say, China), proceeded far more slowly and less acutely for definite historical reasons. This is why the conception of history set out in his Scienza nuova by Giovanni Battista Vico (16681744) is so important to us in relation to that specific period of world history.

Vico’s conception of history is usually described as the theory of recurring cycles. He held that history was cyclical and every cycle consisted of three stages—the epoch of barbarity, the age of heroes and the age of humanity. The age of humanity, Vico maintained, was the peak of every cycle, followed by descent to a new epoch of

barbarity. According to Vico, each recurring cycle saw man descend to a lower degree of barbarity than in the one before it and, accordingly, each recurring ascent saw him rise to a higher, as yet unsealed, summit. The march of history, Vico believed, was not circular, but spiral-like, meaning that history did not just repeat itself, albeit in different forms, but essentially constituted a process of advance.

However, it is not this aspect of Vico’s doctrine, but bis attitude toAvards his epoch that interests us most. He considered the “age of humanity” an age of the city, of law and reason. That Avas how he visualised his OAvn epoch. The epoch he lived in was to him the beginning of the age of humanity and, hence, an era of ascent.

The fact that Vico used the expression “age of humanity” indicates that he thought in terms of humanistic philosophy, as mundane a system as was possible at the time.

The craving to comprehend current history was bound to appear also during the next sharp turn—the time of the transition from capitalism to socialism. Indeed, it did appear. It appeared Avhere the transition occurred most tangibly, at a time when it Avas most distinct—in the West, in Europe, in the 20th century. OsAAald Spen-gler’s The Decline of the West (1918-1922) and Arnold Toynbee’s A Study of History (1934-1954) Avere evidence of this effort to comprehend history. Spengler Avrote his book soon after the First World War and the Socialist Revolution in Russia, and Toynbee tackled his voluminous work before the Second World War and completed it after the People’s Revolution in China.

Both these studies are widely-known and there is scarcely any need here to set out the conceptions of their authors. We only Avisii to draw attention to Avhat is in a way the keynote of the tAvo investigations: their tenor is entirely different to those of all the aforementioned forerunners of the two contemporary thinkers.

Polybius and Ssu-ma Ch’ien extolled their time. Whatever their view of the general process of man’s history, they considered their own time an era of ascent. The concepts of Nagarjuna and Aurelius Augustinus were imbued with deep faith in the “ultimate salvation” of long-suffering humanity, that is, with deep-seated optimism. Vico believed that the “age of humanity” Avould be followed by an “epoch of barbarity”, but that was his general, that is to say, theoretical, outlook. In the practical sense, he thought his OAvn time a time of ascent. In other Avords, he cogitated optimistically in the context of his contemporary history. The tAvo latest exponents of the philosophy of history had an entirely different attitude toAvards their times. It Avas a pessimistic attitude, wholly so in Spengler’s case and Avith some reservations in Toynbee’s.

There is little need to delve at any length into the differences that mark the historical mood of Polybius, Ssu-ma Ch’ien, Nagarjuna, Aurelius Augustinus and Vico, on the one hand, and Spengler and Toynbee, on the other. The former speculated in terms of

ascent, while the latter thought in terms of the receding element. The conceptions of Spengler and Toynbee should probably be viewed in the context of their eschatological state of mind, a state that gripped so many people at times of acute historical collisions and was strikingly reflected in a number of remarkable works, most notably in St. John’s Apocalypse. In our time, too, we know, the acuteness of the historic moment is liable to create such eschatological sentiment. That is easy enough to understand, but not to share. What is needed is a closer look at history, at the path travelled by mankind up to the present hour.

Need we say that our appreciation of the past depends on the amount and level of our knowledge? Yet this knowledge is always relative, always historical. All we can say in this, the second, decade of the latter half of the 20th century is that our knowledge of past history ranges far afield and is much greater than the knowledge that existed in the latter half of the 19th century. To think it will not be still greater in future is to assume the retrogression of the human race. We see clearly how our knowledge of the past gradually expanded, how new elements were injected into it by new discoveries, and how often these made us modify what were seemingly deep-rooted conceptions. Many fresh discoveries still lie ahead.

Assuming, however, that we know enough in basic outline about the past of mankind and that the new element likely to he injected into our knowledge of history will affect no more than particular aspects of man’s past, our knowledge of the process of history will still necessarily be hemmed in by the limitations of time. All interpretation of human history necessarily stems from what we are able to deduce from man’s previous experience, what we are able to foresee of the future on the basis of this experience.

To be sure, our experience is fairly prodigious. Even if we begin our review of history from the time of the emergence of the earliest tokens of statehood—which will take us back to the 4th millennium B. C.—we shall be dealing with man’s life over as many as 60 centuries. These six millenniums are bound to reveal the general outline of the path travelled by mankind. They are bound to reveal the purport of this path, and its general direction.

To top it, there is yet another factor which makes our appreciation of material limited in time fuller and more distinct, and, moreover, applicable to the future or, at the very least, the near future. This factor may be described as our own historical experience, the experience of the contemporary times.

There are times in the history of man that connote the end of something significant and, what is more, the beginning of something new. There are times that, as it were, lift the veil on the future. These times are best described as revolutionary turns.

The first such turn was the collapse of the world we style as ancient society. In socio-economic terms it was, generally speaking, a slave-owning society. There came a day when it collapsed as the dominant world system. The last of its major exponents was the

Han Empire in Eastern Asia and the Roman Empire in Southern Europe, North Africa and Western Asia. The Han Empire fell in the 2nd and 3rd centuries A. D., and the Roman, in the 4th and 5th centuries. These developments shed light on the past and lifted the veil on the future. The collapse of the two empires indicated clearly that the socio-economic relations that burgeoned when these empires still existed, were emerging onto the arena of history. It revealed that the future would be keynoted by these socio-economic relations. We term these relations, new at that time, feudal relations.

The second of the major revolutionary turns of history was the collapse of the world we call medieval society. From the socio-economic standpoint it was generally a feudal world. There came a day when it collapsed as the dominant world system. Of the big countries, this happened first in Britain and France. It involved Britain in the 17th century, and France in the 18th. Developments showed that the socio-economic relations that had been taking shape little by little were next in the line of succession. We call these relations capitalist. The third revolutionary turn of world-wide impact occurred in the 20th century. It was heralded by the revolutions in Russia and China. These indicated the beginning of the fall of capitalism as the dominant world system. They indicated, too, that the future belonged to the new socio-economic relations that had begun to take shape in the environment of capitalist society. We call these relations socialist and, in so doing, consider socialism to be the first phase of communism.

If we turn to the history of social thought, we shall find there were people on the eve of each of these major turns who in some way foresaw the future, and even some of its specific features. In the epoch of feudalism, but on the threshold of the capitalist era, such men of philosophical-historical eminence as Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) and Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) reflected on the future, that is, on the capitalist social order. Karl Marx identifed Hobbes with the thinkers who “began looking at the state with human eyes and inferred its laws from reason and experience, rather than theology.”¹ Of Rousseau’s theory Marx said that it was an anticipation of bourgeois society, ² which, at the time, was still of the future.

The works of Marx and Engels are one of the best examples of how the foremost thinkers of their time foresee the future on the threshold of revolutionary upheavals. Living in a capitalist environment on the eve of its collapse as a world system, they visualised clearly the features of the future socialist order.

However, the third of the big revolutionary turns had a different historical impact than the previous two. They occurred within the same general socio-historical framework, the framework of a class system in which class relations were marked by antagonism. One social system of antagonistic classes was replaced by another such system, in which the class antagonists were different. As for the so-

It leads not to the replacement of some classes by other classes, but to the elimination of classes and of the attendant social antagonisms. This is why socialist revolution is not just one more turn in the succession of previous ones; it is counterposed to them all. The collapse of slave-owning society and the transition to feudalism, and similarly the collapse of feudalism and the transition to capitalism, were transitions from one stage of man’s history to the next within one and the same social framework—the class system; whereas the collapse of capitalism and the transition to socialism is a transition to a new era, a fundamentally novel social system—to a classless society. This turn in history is comparable only to the transition of mankind from pre-class to class society.

This is why the present epoch offers greater opportunities than were available before, to comprehend the past and also the future—the latter, of course, within the limits of our visual range. Essentially, it has been under the impact of the latest revolutionary turn that we perceived the existence of classes as socio-economic entities, comprehended the substance of their interrelations and collisions, glimpsed the existence of a classless society in the remote past and its succession by a class society, and appreciated the fundamental difference between the ancient pre-class society and the classless society of the not-so-distant future.

Our knowledge of the past, coupled with what our own epoch reveals in relation to the past and future, enables us to comprehend the course of man’s history and, therefore, mould a philosophical conception of history. In doing so, we consider the history of all mankind, and not of any single group of nations or countries, buch concepts as “Europe”, “Asia” or “Africa” are geographic concepts rather than historical ones. At best, they belong under the head of historical geography. Such concepts as “East” and “West are also unreliable. At best, they stand for certain groups of peoples and even then connote different concepts to different nations at different times. The Chinese of antiquity and the Middle Ages, for example had their own idea of the “West”, implying those regions of the’ Asiatic continent later designated as Eastern Turkistan and Western Asia; to the modern Chinese the “West” stands for Europe and America. The ancient Romans, on the other hand, considered the “East” to be Syria, Palestine, Persia, Armenia and Mesopotamia; their descendants, the Italians of the Middle Ages, thought the “East” began at Byzantium, while today the Italians, and the

people of Western Europe generally, regard the “East” to be Czechoslovakia, Poland, Rumania, and, of course, the U.b.b.R. it is therefore impossible to base any concept of history on material limited to Europe or Asia, the West or the East. All mankind, precisely all of it, is the only valid material and constitutes the true subject of history.

This is borne out by the historical process we have described. Suffice it to say that two of the three afore-mentioned revolutionary turns of world-wide impact—from slavery to feudalism and from capitalism to socialism—occurred within a short space of time at different ends of the world: the first in the Han Empire, in the east of the Eurasian continent, and in the Roman Empire in the west; and the second in Russia, i. e., Europe, and in China, i. e., Asia. Even the emergence of the world capitalist system began in the 16th century at one end of the world, the Netherlands, and ended at the other, Japan, in the 19th century. It will also be recalled that the biggest peasant risings against feudal oppression, ushered in by the Peasant War in Germany in the 1620’s, swept across the whole world from France to Japan in the early half of the 17th century: 1620-1640, in France (culminating in the rising of the Va-nu-pieds in 1639); the first decade of the 17th century, in Russia (culminating in the rising of Bolotnikov in 1606-1607); the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries, in Ottoman Turkey (the rising in 1600); the 1620’s, in Persia (the rising in 1629); 1620’s-1640’s, in China (culminating in Li Tzu-ch’eng’suprisingin 1639-1645); and 1620’s-1630’s, in Japan (the uprising in Shimahara in 1637-1638).

In may be added that the great peasant war in China was as big in scale and importance as the Peasant War in Germany, and only naturally so, for in the 16th and 17th centuries China was on a par with 16th-century Germany in historical development.

The common historical purport of these risings is revealed in an exhaustive investigation of the whole process. It bares the historic image of the risings as a kind of peasant “prologue” to the bourgeois revolution and shows conclusively why a generally identical political order, known as feudal absolutism, emerged, for all its local peculiarities, in the countries where these popular movements occurred. Could this have been grasped by studying the history of just one country?

We may refer to countless facts from various fields of human endeavour to substantiate the contention that a world-wide approach to history is necessary to comprehend the nature of historical development to the full degree. Take the movement that sprang up in Italy in the 14th century, subsequently known as the Renaissance. It was so named, because the new trends that appeared then in philosophy, literature and art were considered by contemporaries as a revival of the philosophy, literature and art that had existed in classical antiquity—in ancient Greece and Rome. We know all about this movement, but our appreciation of it will never be complete unless we consider the identical Renaissance that took place in China in the 8th century, the new features of which in philosophy and literature moulded the entire epoch. The Chinese, it is true, spoke not of a “revival of antiquity”, but of a “return to antiquity”; however, that is one and the same thing. The movement, its very content, essentially coincided with what we observe in 14th-

and 15th-century Italy, leading us to consider the Renaissance as a development which occurs necessarily at a certain stage in the history of medieval society among peoples with a long history, peoples

The history of the various fields of human knowledge, too, goes far beyond the limits of any one people. The very designation of such branches of mathematics as “arithmetic” and “algebra indicates the extensive participation of the Arabs in shaping these disciplines Yet we know how much the Arabs themselves owe in this particular field to the ancient Hellenes and Indians.

The history of logic reveals three lines of development the Chinese, Indian and European. The first (Hetu-vidya) goes back to Akshapada (2nd century A. D.), the second to Mo Ti (5th century B. C.) and the third to Aristotle (4fh century B. C.). The habitual, and seemingly European, concept of “vowels” and “consonants , and of •labial”, “lingual” and “dental” consonants, etc. was known to the Chinese back in the 8th century; yet they had learned

As we see, the facts showing that the history of mankind is the history of the whole of mankind and not of separate peoples and countries, and that the only way to comprehend the process of history is to study the history of all mankind, are numerous in all spheres. History is full of them. ,

However, this does not obviate the existence of particular histories, the histories of individual peoples. Every people big or small in number, has an individual history with its attendant original, unrepeatable features. We may go so far as to say that the history of mankind is manifested in the histories of individual peo-

¹ The history of mankind is not an anonymous process. It is highly specific and aggregates from the activities of individual peoples, each with their own distinctive face. Yet almost invariably the purport of historical events, rooted, it would seem, in the history of but one people, reveals itself in full only m the context of man s general history. The 16th-century revolution in the Netherlands, for example, is elucidated by the facts of Netherlands history. If we confine ourselves to just these facts, it will appear to us as a mere episode in the history of a fairly small country. Yet it shoulc be borne in mind that the Netherlands were then part of the Spanish Empire and acted as its financial, commercial even industrial, centre. It should be borne in mind, too, that revolution was followed by the Netherlands’ colonial expansion in the southern part ot Africa, some points of India and in Indonesia, and reached as tar as Japan. Besides, it should be borne in mind that the Dutch East India Company was the first instrument of the new capitalist colonialism, as distinct from the preceding feudalists Spanish and Portuguese colonialism. . ,

lands assumes the proportions of an event of world-wide historic impact. Perhaps it will even prompt historians to date the beginning of the capitalist stage in the history of mankind more properly to the Netherlands revolution.

Take this other example. The Russian Revolution of 1905 was above all an event in the history of the Russian people. Its origin, content, form and, lastly, its outcome were motivated by the course of Russian history. But once we recall that it was followed by the vast and important movement which Lenin described as the “awakening of Asia , it appears in an entirely different light as an event that transcends the framework of Russian history, giving us much more conclusive insight into its historical substance.

Every attempt to comprehend the process of history inevitably prompts the following question:

Does the process of history have any substance? Does it follow any purposeful direction?

One says there is no purport in history and that it is an endless repetition of one and the same thing. The other says there is purport in history and that history constitutes an unintermittent ascent. The theory of recurring cycles is the most striking exposition of the former view, and the theory of progress, of the latter.

Both these theories have been opposed. It is easy enough to criticise the theory of recurring cycles. There is any amount of facts to show that no epoch has ever repeated any of the previous ones, even though some of their features may have been similar. Nobody will ever insist that 19th-century European democracy was the same as the democracy of ancient Athens, or that the totalitarian 20th-century Fiihrerprinzip is the same as the Roman principate; that Racine’s Phedre is no more than an amended and revised version of Euripides s Hippolytus or that Michelangelo’s Moses is, generally speaking, the same thing as Phidias’s Zeus. It is true that Henri Matisse’s drawing resembles the still-life drawing of oranges, chrysanthemums and a jug by Shen Chou; yet the two are entirely different. The 15th-century Chinese artist strove to convey the essence of his objects in the aesthetic spirit of Ch an (Zan) Buddhism by reducing them to flat decorative forms with a few strokes of the brush, whereas the 19th-century French painter used the same technique to try and balance form and colour, an abstract problem that belonged entirely to the post-impressionist period of West European art.

The theory of progress, too, has had its critics at all times. The main argument against it was that the very concept of progress was dogmatic and unclear, or at least controversial. Its critics pointed out that the conception of progress depended on the point of view and demonstrated that facts considered progressive often proved

in the crucible of history to be anything but progressive. This criticism is, indeed, very weighty, because the question of what is progressive and what is not is often based on some abstract or dogmatic premise.

It seems to us that the most dependable way to settle this question, the basic in the comprehension of history, is to refer to history itself, to make an impartial analysis of the 6,000-year-old history of man.

We refer to the 6,000-year-old history of man, because the historic life of mankind within the scope of our vision, as recorded in writing, began some 4 millenniums B. C., when the first states appeared in two regions of the Old World—the Nile Valley and the basin of the Tigris and Euphrates. This does not mean that man’s previous life is set apart from history. However, our knowledge of it is based solely on historical anthropology and archeology, which makes it improper to speak of history in the precise sense in reference to that period. It does not follow, however, that this very long period of human existence has no historic sense. Its historic sense is tremendous.

Indeed, the appearance of states is inconceivable without a long preceding period of social progress and struggle. This progress was marked by the crucial fact that people began to create social forms. Engels pointed out most relevantly that the prehistoric times witnessed the most essential thing that conditioned the entire further course of human development: man became man. This epoch, Engels said, “has for its starting-point the moulding of man from the animal kingdom, and for its content the overcoming of obstacles such as w^Till never again confront associated mankind of the future.” ³

As we see, even this prehistoric epoch shows that from the very beginning human development was ascendant in complexion.

The era of history in the aforesaid sense began in the 4th millennium B. C., when Egypt emerged as a state in the valley of the Nile, and Sumer between the Euphrates and the Tigris. The distinctive feature of that era was that, unlike the phehistoric times when nearly the whole globe was the arena, historic life Avas associated with definite geographic regions. The Nile Valley and the basin of the Euphrates and Tigris were the first of these.

The further course of history ushered in a process of the steady expansion of the geographic and ethnic arenas of history; it embraced more and more peoples and countries. Even a cursory survey of man’s distant past reveals this distinctly.

The historic life of the first two centres—the Egyptian and Sumerian—was joined gradually by neighbouring regions.

The course of history spread southward from Egypt, one of the existing centres, towards the Ethiopian plateau, eastward towards the Arabian Peninsula, principally the contiguous part of it later

known as Palestine, and onward to the Mediterranean seaboard of Western Asia, the territory of what is now Syria and the Lebanon, towards Mesopotamia.

From the other centre, the Sumerian land in Mesopotamia, history spread out in two directions—towards Asia Minor, Syria, the Lebanon and Palestine, and towards the Transcaucasus and Iran.

By the middle of the 3rd millennium B. C., history involved a large territory embracing Egypt, part of Ethiopia, Palestine, Syria, the eastern part of Asia Minor, the south-western section of the Transcaucasus, some regions of Western Iran and Mesopotamia. From then on the process unfolded dually, with the above area expanding in the same directions as before, and a new big region—the seat of the Aegean civilisation along the Mediterranean coast of Asia Minor and including the islands of the Aegean Sea, Crete and the southern part of the Balkan Peninsula—being drawn into the vortex of history.

This is how a vast area of historic life, stretching across the contiguous parts of three continents and their adjacent territories, took shape by the middle of the 2nd millennium B. C.

Two more regions, interconnected by their histories, appeared in the 2nd millennium B. C.—one in India, the basin of the Indus and Ganges, and the other in the territory of what is now China, the basin of the Hwang Ho River.

The first Indian states appeared in the Indus and Ganges valleys in the 3rd millennium B. C., and the valley of the Hwang Ho became the seat of the Yin kingdom, the first Chinese state known to the historian, at about the same time.

Those were the first three geographic centres of man’s historic life, the first three foci of culture.

Subsequently, history maintained the same dual course, with each of the three existing historic entities expanding continuously, while new regions also became involved. The Euro-Afro-Asian world expanded towards Iran, the Transcaucasus and Asia Minor, and from the end of the 2nd millennium B. C. became the seat of the ' history of Assyria, the Neo-Babylonian kingdom with its centre in Mesopotamia; Media and Persia with the centre in Iran;' the kingdom of Urartu in the Armenian highland; the kingdom of the Hittites, Phrygia and Lydia in Asia Minor; Tyre, Sidon and other Phoenician city-states along the Mediterranean shore of Syria, Israel and Judea in Palestine; the Minean and Sabean kingdoms in South Arabia; Egypt and Ethiopia in the Nile Valley.

A new region, that of Western Turkistan, appeared some distance away in the 7th and 6th centuries B. C.’, represented by Khwa-rizm and Bactria. It was destined later to link the Euro-Afro-Asian, Indian and Chinese centres of historic life.

The Euro-Afro-Asian region expanded also towards the western Mediterranean. This occurred through Phoenician and, later, Greek

colonisation. Phoenician colonisation first involved the North African seaboard, chiefly the territory of what is now Tunisia, where the city of Carthage was founded in 814 B. C. to mark the inception of a new Phoenician centre, the state of Carthage, which grew into the then biggest colonial power with colonies in Sicily, Sardinia, the Balearic Islands and Spain. This materialised in a new historic region connecting the lands of the eastern with those of the western Mediterranean. Merchant shipping, which the Phoenicians developed to a high degree, served as the vehicle of such a junction.

The Phoenicians navigated not only the eastern and western Mediterranean, but pressed on audaciously into then unknown regions of the globe. In the 7th century B. C. they circumnavigated Africa for the first time in man’s history, setting out from the Red Sea and returning through the Strait of Gibraltar, which they gave its first name, the Pillars of Melkart. Phoenician seafarers were also the first to reach the British Isles.

Greek colonisation proceeded in several directions. One was the western, with Greek colonies springing up in the south of Italy and in Sicily; the other was the north-eastern, with Greek colonies appearing along the northern seaboard of the Black Sea. The old territories of the Hellenic world developed as well. The earlier half of the 1st millennium B. C. witnessed the rise of Greek cities in Ionia, that is, the seaboard of Asia Minor. In the Balkan Peninsula civilisation expanded towards the centre, and other parts of the Peninsula were also drawninto historic life, the Thracian kingdom springing up in its north-eastern part in the 5th century B. C. and the Illyrian kingdom on the Adriatic shore in the 4th century B. C. The Kingdom of Macedonia appeared, too, somewhat north of Hellas proper.

In the meantime, a new centre of historic activity materialised gradually in the Apennine Peninsula. Etruscans were dominant in it at first, creating a union of cities in the 8th-6th centuries B. C. Later, precedence was seized by the Latins, who founded the city of Rome in Latium in 753 B. C. and formed a powerful state, known in history as the Roman Republic, in the 5th-4th centuries B. G.

The second old centre of historic life, that of India, expanded steadily as well. At first it involved new areas in the basin of the Ganges and Jumna. According to legend, there were 16 states in that part of the subcontinent by the beginning of the 4th century B. C. Subsequently, the central part of India south of the Ganges, was involved in the process of history. An old Indian kingdom, Ma-gadha, gained power in the north-eastern and central part of India in the 4th century B. C. The expansion continued. The Mau-rya Empire, which replaced Magadha in the 3rd century B. C., controlled almost the entire subscontinent, excepting its southern tip. As for South India, it made its entry into historical life in the 3rd century B. C.

contacted each other. From then, history witnessed their mutual relationship. This applies particularly to North-West India, which developed into the north-western outpost of the Indian world and at once the south-eastern outpost of Western Asia. Fora time, it was even part of Achaemenid Persia, later a part of Alexander’s Macedonian Empire. The history of North-West India was also associated with the Central Asian civilisation. At the time of the Kushana kingdom the two regions even joined within the framework of one state.

The third old centre of world history, the Chinese, expanded as well. During the 1st millennium B, C. general historic life in this part of the world spread from the Hwang Ho basin to the basin of the Yangtze, the other big river in China. Historic J territory also expanded north-eastward towards what later became Manchuria, north-westward towards future Mongolia, westward towards the present-day province of Szeclrwan, and south-eastward towards the future Viet-Nam. In the 3rd century B. C. all this vast territory became the Ch’in Empire, the first state to embrace all China.

A new seat of historic activity sprang up in Central Asia to the west of this third, continuously expanding, old centre. The principal makers of history there were the Huns. In the 3rd century B. C. they | formed an extensive tribal alliance, often described by historians as the Hunnish Power. It sprawled across vast territory from the * 1 Transbaikal in the north to Tibet in the south, and from Eastern Turkistan in the west to the middle reaches of the Hwang Ho in the east. This new centre was destined to act as the link between the East Asian centre of world history and the Central Asian.

By the end of the 1st millennium B. C. there thus took shape an immense region of the historic activity of peoples that were connected in one way or another. No longer were there just three centres, as in the earlier period of world history, but as many as seven. The three old centres—the Euro-Afro-Asian, Indian and Chinese—were augmented by the Carthaginian in North Africa, the Latin in southern Europe, the Central Asian and the Turkistan centre. History involved the bulk of Eastern Asia, a considerable portion of Turkistan, many regions of Central Asia, Iran, India, a large section of the Transcaucasus, Western Asia, the Nile Valley, some parts of the African Mediterranean coast, the Aegean island world, the Balkan Peninsula, the northern seaboard of the Black Sea, the Apennine Peninsula, Sicily, Spain and some parts of Southern France. 1

Development continued unabated, both through the expansion of the existing historic regions and the emergence of new ones. In the 2nd century B. C. the rise of the Roman state saw involved in historic life Numidia, a new section of the North African shore,

Spain in the 1st century B. C. and, somewhat later, Gaul and even Britain. This constituted the western periphery of the old Euro-Afro-Asian civilisation. The northern margin of the central part of

this civilisation, the northern seaboard of the Black Sea, developed historically as well. A Scythian kingdom sprang up there in the 4th-2nd centuries B. C. with its centre in the Crimea. The Kingdom of Bosporus arose on both sides of the Cimmerian Bosporus, now known as the Kerch Strait. Also, Colchis, Iberia and Albania—lands in the Caucasus and Transcaucasus—became lastingly involved in world history.

There was no such expansion on the eastern margin of the old Euro-Afro-Asian world, because it had long since reached its historic boundary, the limits of the Indian world. But the links and relations between the two neighbouring regions grew stronger and bigger. How great these contacts were is illustrated by the fact that from the 4th century B. C. the whole of this vast world developed into a single cultural and historic entity named the Hellenistic world, consisting of North-West India, Iran, Western Asia (comprising Bactria and Sogdiana), Asia Minor, Syria, Egypt, the islands of the Aegean Sea and the Balkan Peninsula (comprising Greece and Macedonia). The influence of this world spread also to the countries of the western Mediterranean, notably Italy. It also exercised a tangible, though insufficiently established, influence on the Eastern Asian countries—China, Korea and even Japan.

The Indian lands expanded as well. Their expansion was oriented south and east. In the south, Ceylon, settled by emigrants from the Indian subcontinent, became involved in history from the 5th century B. C. The first Ceylonese states sprang up in the 3rd century B. C. Indian migrants also poured continuously into the islands of Indonesia, establishing relations between the Indonesian and Indian worlds. The heart of the Indonesian world was then in the territory consisting of the adjoining parts of the Malay Peninsula, eastern Sumatra and western Java. In the early centuries of the new era the first Indonesian states, which were largely India-nised, took shape there.

The Indonesian lands, too, expanded and, moreover, not only by involving the eastern regions of Indonesia in the operation of history, but also through the colonisation of distant Madagascar. The settlement there of migrants from Indonesia, who mixed with the local population, eventually formed the Malagasy people, ethnically close to the Indonesians.

The contacts between the Indian and the Indonesian worlds had far-reaching consequences. By way of India’s long-time relations with Iran and Asia Minor, which were seats of Hellenised culture, the Indonesian civilisation came into contact with the Euro-Afro-Asian world. The sea route from India to the harbours of Ja-vaka, a state founded in the 2nd and 1st centuries B. C. in the aforesaid territory, was also known to the Greeks.

The third old centre of history, the Chinese, kept growing too. By the end of the 2nd millennium B. C. it involved South Manchu-

na and the adjoining regions of North Korea. Three major tribal federations emerged in the Korean Peninsula in the 1st century f • ^G'T;^{the K}°guryo in the north, the Pakche in the south-west and the bilia in the south-east. For all the autonomy they had in their historic development, all these lands were part of the Chinese world. And from the 1st century B. C. onward, Japan, too, began to have close contacts with it.

The Chinese world also expanded in the south-eastern direction In the 3rd century B. C. the state of Nam-Viet took shape in the south of present-day China, which included the north-eastern part ot Indochina. In the 2nd century B. C. this kingdom fell under the sway of the Han Empire, and the connection between that part of Indochina and China has endured ever since. But in the meantime the historic life of the rest of the Indochinese Peninsula, inhabited by various tribes chiefly of the Tibeto-Burman group and by the Mon-Khmers, developed as well. In the 4th-lst centuries B. C they created their own states.

The Indochinese Peninsula was also a place of Indian immigration, which had the same consequences as in Indonesia: the India-nisation of many parts of the peninsula. Chinese influence came from the north-east, leading to the Sinification of some areas. Indochina, the name given to the peninsula, is thus justified not only geographically, but historically.

In the 1st century A.D. large lands stretching from the shores of the North and Baltic seas in the extreme west to the Sea of Okhotsk and the Sea of Japan in the extreme east (with the entire European and Asian shore of the Arctic Ocean forming the northern margin and the territories adjoining the Bhine, the Danube, the northern Black Sea coast, the Caucasus in Europe, Western and Eastern Turkistan, the Gobi Desert and the Sayan Mountains in Asia forming the southern margiii), were still left out of the orbit of the “historic” world, populated by peoples interconnected in one way or another in their life. Continental Africa, reaching from Egypt and Ethiopia in the east and regions adjoining the Mediterranean up to the Atlantic Ocean in the west, lived a life of its own. There were also “blanks” within the liistorified lands, the biggest of these being the area of present-day Tibet, the Himalaya states and South-West China. The eastern section of the island world of Indonesia, too, was not yet drawn into common historic life. Farther on was Australia, New Zealand and Oceania, none of which had yet come into contact with the historified life of the rest of the world. The life of the Western Hemisphere, that of the Americas, proceeded in total isolation from the countries of the Old World. Its known, and evidently authentic, history came into being in relatively later times.

The further course of history’s spatial development is well known. The most prominent feature was the involvement in common historic life of new regions of Europe—the northern parts of

Western Europe and all of Eastern Europe. The western part of the northern half of Europe entered history after the establishment of the Frankish kingdom in the 5th century A.D; the central part in the 9th century, with the establishment of Germany; the Scandinavian part in the 8th century, with the rise of the Danish kingdom; the big territory embracing the basin of the Labe (Elbe), Odra (Oder) and Vistula rivers, with the establishment there of tribal alliances of Labe Slavs in the 6th-8th centuries; the lands of Bohemia. Moravia and Slovenia in the 6th-7th centuries, with the appearance of statehood there; Poland in the 7th-9th centuries, and the remoter section of Eastern Europe, with the emergence of the ancient Rus state.

Historified territory expanded also towards the Asian part of the Eurasian continent. This occurred from two directions—the aforementioned lands of the East Asian world and, much later, Eastern Europe. A tribal alliance of the Jujan emerged in the immense territory reaching from the Khingan Range to the Tien Shan in the late 4th and early 5th centuries. An alliance of Turkic tnbes, usually known as the Turkic Ivhaganate, took shape in the 6th century in the region of the Altai Mountains and Semirechye bordering on the old lands of Western Turkistan. This union embraced the lands of the Jujan, part of Central Asia and even some regions of North-East Asia to the shore of the Yellow Sea. In the other direction, the Turki spread towards Western Turkistan, invading the land between the Syr Darya and Amu Darya. Their raids reached as far as south-east of the Caspian Sea. The new historified territory came into contact with the Western Turkistan and East Asian lands, and with the zone which connected these two areas, stretching from Iran and Western Turkistan through Eastern Turkistan and further to the western frontiers of China.

The region of Manchuria and the basin of the Amur River became involved in the vortex of history somewhat later. The Pohai kingdom appeared there in the 8th century, consisting of various Manchu-Tungus tribes. This kingdom played a big part in extend-ting contacts between China, on the one hand, and Korea and Japan, on the other.

The emergence of the Mongolian Power in the early 13th century involved the vast territory reaching from the shores of the Sea of Japan, the Yellow, East China and South China seas to Western Turkistan and Iran, inclusive, and on through Eastern Europe to the Carpathians.

Later, historic connections began expanding in Asia from Eastern Europe. By the end of the 14tli century the Nogai Horde, moulded in the Volga country, laid claim to possessions on the Irtysh, and in the 15th century in the territory between the Tobol, Tura, Irtysh and Ob there rose the Khanate of Siberia, which involved Western Siberia in common historic life.

ed. In the 7th century a Tibetan state came into being, which expanded both towards West China and towards Western Turkis-tan. Nepal got involved in historic life too. A third route via Tibet and Nepal was thus added to the two old roads from the East Asian world—the one through Eastern and Western Turkistan, and the other through Burma and Assam. In the 8th century a state known in Chinese historiography as Nan-chao arose in the south-west of present-day China, adjoining Tibet on one side and Viet-Nam on the other. When the Arabs entered the stage of history and Arab expansion began in the 8th and 9th centuries, the historic curtain began to rise on Continental Africa. Arab traders penetrated far into the continent and Arab geographers produced their first accounts of the African countries and peoples. In Eastern Sudan, situated in the middle reaches of the Nile, historic life had begun in antiquity, at the time of Egypt’s bloom, but was isolated from the life of other countries. It was through the Arabs, who reached not only Eastern but also Western Sudan, where the states of Ghana, Songhai and Mali already existed, that the Sudan made contact with the outside world.

The eastern seaboard of Africa from the Somali Peninsula to Mozambique came into contact with the Arab countries as well. Arab cities, such as Malindi, were founded along the shore, with sea routes running to Aden and other points in South Arabia and from there to the Red Sea, to Ormuz and other harbours of the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea, and even to Calicut and other ports on the western shore of the Indian subcontinent. How well the Arabs had learned to navigate these routes is illustrated by Vasco da Gama’s famous voyage. Having skirted the then still unexplored parts of the south-eastern shore of Africa, Vasco da Gama reached Malindi and found himself in a civilised world. Malindi seafarers, he found, did not consider voyages to Calicut as anything out of the common. Strictly speaking, Vasco da Gama did not make the voyage to India himself; he was taken there by his Arab pilot, Ahmad ibn-Madjid.

In later days, the historic contacts of the peoples of Continental Africa with the rest of the world proceeded under the shadow of colonial conquests by the West European states. This was a form of contact which retarded the historic development of the African peoples. It was not until the middle of the 20th century, when the colonial system began to crumble, that the situation changed.

The history of the American peoples, too, was isolated from that of the Old World until the beginning of the Spanish colonial conquests. Historic life in America was centred chiefly in the territories of Mexico and Peru. As far as we know, the first people to form a state in Mexican territory were the Mayas. Their recorded history goes back to the 4th century. The history of Peru was associated with the Incas, whose tribal alliance dates to the 13th century.

The above survey shows graphically that the historical process has a geographic trend. From the earliest times, historic life expanded continuously until all parts of the globe suitable for human habitation finally entered general history.

The expansion was also unquestionably ethnical, for new sections of mankind kept emerging on the arena of history. It is easy to trace the manner in which this occurred. In some cases, new regions inhabited by peoples not yet drawn into the vortex of general history were added to the old regions. In other cases, new peoples came from places of their original habitation to invade old historic reo-ions. The history of the peoples of Japan, Korea, the Latins of Italy, the Celts of Gaul, etc., is an example of lnw nations were drawn into the historic life of their neighbours. Migrations may be illustrated by the settlement of Greek tribes in the Mycenean region, a part of one of the old historic regions at the end of the 3rd millennium B.C.; the settlement of the Arameans in Syria, Phoenicia, Babylon and northern Mesopotamia early in the 2nd millennium B.G.; the settlement of the Cimmerians in the Transcaucasus and Asia Minor in the 8th century B.C.; the settlement of the Hsien-pi, Hun, K’itan and Churchen tribes-in the north-east, north and north-west of present-day China, which began in the 4th century A.D.; the migration to the Balkans and farther to the southern half of Central and Western Europe of the Goths, Sarmatians and Slavs in the 4th century; the migration of Turkic tribes from the Altai to Turkistan, the steppes between the Aral and Caspian seas and the steppes of Eastern Europe, which began in the 6th century, their resettlement from Western Turkistan to Iran, Iraq and Asia Minor, involving the conquest of Azerbaijan and Armenia, which began in the 11th century; their advance to the Balkan Peninsula in the 14th century; the migration of Arabs to Palestine, Syria, Iran and Western Turkistan, on the one hand, and to Egypt and onwards along the Mediterranean coast of Africa, from where they came to Spain, on the other, which began in the 7tli century; the Arab penetration of East Africa; the settlement of the West Indies by the Spanish at the end of the 15th century, and then of Central and South America; and, lastly, the colonisation of North America by the Anglo-Saxons, Dutch and French in the 17th

These were all different migrations, occurring at different times, prompted by different motives, each of a different historic purport, and each bringing about different results. Often, the settlement of new lands w-as accompanied by the subjugation, sometimes even complete or near complete extermination, of the local populations. Let us take a few examples from modern history to illustrate this point: the Spanish completely exterminated the original population of the Caribbean islands; the Dutch exterminated the bulk of the Bushmen and Hottentots in South Africa; the population of Tasmania has almost completely disappeared, and a con-

siderable part of the Australian aborigines, and of the Indians of North America, have been wiped out.

Many of the migrations were like a chain reaction, the movement of one people causing the movement of another. The migration of the Cimmerians into Asia Minor, for example, was caused by the coming of the Scythians, who compelled the Cimmerians to abandon the places of their original habitation. The Scythians, for their part, had moved into Cimmerian territory due to the coming of the Massagetae. The march of the Huns, which began in the 1st century B.C. at the Wall of China and ended in the 5th century in the heart of Europe, displaced a large number of Central and Western Asian tribes, and then also the tribes of south-east Europe. In their movement from Central Asia eastward and westward, the Mongols swept along a prodigious number of tribes and peoples.

In these great migrations some tribes and peoples disappeared, while others grew strong. There were fusions of tribes, which modified the ethnic image of the more stable components or brought about the appearance of a new ethnic type. Hun, Hsien-pi, K’itan and Churchen invaders, for example, dissolved in the Chinese population. Yet they, too, influenced the anthropological type of the modern Chinese. The migration of Germanic tribes from Eastern to Central and Western Europe brought about a mixing of the newcomers and the previous inhabitants, which formed the nucleus of such modern West European nations as the English, French, Spanish, Italian and German.

This is how our planet was gradually populated and developed in the process of history, until the whole earth was at last populated and developed, save those parts of it which are unsuitable for human life. Ethnically stable tribal groups emerged in the complicated process of contact between the various parts of mankind. Peoples, which subsequently developed into nations, grew up. Language groups emerged, and individual languages were moulded within their framework. The social importance of languages changed: tribal languages developed into the languages of peoples, and the latter into the languages of nations. In this respect, as we see, the historic process was by no means chaotic; by and large, it followed a definite trend.

The historic process follows a distinctly definable trend also from the point of view of man’s activity, above all his economic activity.

Man has always confronted the problem of securing for himself the material conditions of existence. In remote antiquity man defined these conditions as “food-clothing-shelter”. The history of man’s economic activity, and with it the history of technology and material production, boils down to the provision of food, clothing and shelter in conformity with the geographic and social environment, the needs created by this environment and the tasks of further

development. To procure what he needed, man had to use the resources granted him by nature. Their use called for labour, which had to he progressively effective.The efficiency of labour, for its part, depended on two factors—the technical and the social.

The technical aspect of efficiency depended on the existence of instruments of labour, on their quality and on the degree to which man harnessed the forces of nature.This is graphically demonstrated by the process of history. We have the Stone Age, followed by the Metal Age, which broke into the Copper Age, the Bronze Age and the iron Age, which is the age mankind is living in to this day. Yet we already see the outlines of the Polymer Age. Some day, archeologists will probably refer to two great eras—the era of natural materials, those created by nature, and the era of artificial materials, those created by man. At the same time, we also witness man’s increasing mastery over the forces -of nature—the energies of fire, water, steam, electricity, electromagnetism and radioactivity. Man has made his first step towards mastering the energy of the atom, that is, the prime matter of nature, and even thermonuclear reactions, the energy of the cosmos.

However, the effectiveness of labour depends not only on the technical level. It also depends on the forms of organisation of labour, and the latter, in turn, are dependent on the prevailing social relations.

Real human existence originates when man begins to act in concert with his fellows. Such existence produces different forms of social relations— forms based on equal cooperation and forms based on the exploitation of man by man. The community is the oldest social form of the first type. By and large, the community has accompanied man in one form or another throughout his known history from primitive communism to the socialist epoch, with one set of functions or another, with different types of relations with other coexisting social forms, and with a different status in the general structure of society. The exploitation of man by man produced various forms of social relations, of which two are the most general: the one in which exploitation is effected by direct coercion and the other in which exploitation is effected by economic compulsion. A ithin each of these forms there are many varieties conditioned by the different relationships between the exploited and the means and instruments of production and, hence, their varying status in relation to the exploiters. The varieties recorded in man’s history are very numerous; some of them are distinct types, while others are transitional. There was slavery, dependence and freedom in many forms and of many degrees.

Slavery, dependence and freedom have also accompanied man throughout his history, often existing side by side not only among different groups of mankind at different social levels, but within one and the same group. Take Britain and France of the 17th and 18th centuries. They were the most advanced countries of their

time, but had feudal lords of nearly the medieval type, bourgeois who were much like the present-day capitalists, and slaveowners in their North American colonial possessions.

Social relations depend on the state of material production and the forms of economic activity, but they also affect both the forms of economic activity and the state of production. This dual process may be harmonious if the state of the productive forces and the social form are compatible, and disharmonious if they are not. As we know, when the incompatibility becomes acute, the existing social form is replaced by another, whereby the compatibility is restored for some time or, at least, the incompatibility becomes less acute. If we follow the process of history from this point of view, we shall see that forms involving non-economic compulsion were gradually eliminated, and forms based on economic compulsion took theif place. In the 20th century we are witness to the emergence of a form that is entirely free of every type of compulsion, being based on the equal cooperation of all members of society.

This trend reveals the ascendant course of the historic process. All social forms based on the exploitation of man by man involve the suffering of a vast majority of mankind. Yet they were not the making of an evil genius. They were moulded by history, by * the conditions in which man mastered the resources and forces of nature. At first, having only just learned to deal with nature, man had to substitute manpower for tools, or to depend chiefly on manpower as an appendage to available but inefficient tools. It was this that turned a large section of mankind into living tools, or slaves. After man’s labour was equipped with modern tools and man gained a high degree of mastery over the powerful forces of nature, the situation changed, paving the way for an entirely different kind of labour, one in which the antithesis between manual and mental labour is gradually eliminated and conditions are created in which man is able to shake off his abject dependence on the forces of nature in securing his material existence. But there was yet another meaning to this process: by means of the above social forms, coupled with an ever mounting degree of mastery over the forces of nature, man has continuously extended the scale of production; it transcended the needs of individuals or small groups of individuals and rose to a level that met the general social needs on an evergrowing scale, bursting state and national boundaries, in oui time there is the prospect of its becoming world-wide. At present material prerequisites have been attained to provide for the existence on earth of any number of people. What is necessary is to establish the due balance between the level of the productive forces and the social forms, that is, to establish a social order that would enable man to turn the existing premises into reality. We see that slavery in its historic form, and then serfdom too, disappeared in the process of history; we also see capitalist exploitation being replaced in the socialist environment by the free labour of harmoniously associated peo-

pie. This makes the above-mentioned outlook quite realistic. It is plain, therefore, that the historic process in this field pursues a definite trend and is, moreover, ascendant in character.

Most intensive cognitive activity develops along man’s historic' path. It accompanies man because his physical and social life demand it.

Cognitive activity is directed equally upon nature and society. Springing from man’s experience and continuously verified by experience, it tends to expand man’s knowledge of nature and society. Alongside this activity, man strives also to comprehend the outside world and himsef within this world.

Man’s efforts in this direction have assumed a variety of forms. In the remote past the Chinese interpreted the being of material nature and man as the operation of three forces: Heaven, Earth and Man. By “Heaven” they meant such phenomena as the succession of day and night, the four seasons, the climate and weather, and the atmospheric phenomena; by “Earth” they meant the soil, the plants and animals, the minerals, metals, etc. Man and bis abilities were placed on an equal footing with all this. That was the ancient Chinese conception of nature and man. The ancient Hebrews conceived man as the ultimate of all creation, as the ruler, the lord over all things placed at his disposal by the natural world. Many of the antique peoples had a third conception, that of man oppressed by the forces of nature, and capable of coping with them, let alone governing them, only with the help of an extraneous force.

Man’s apprehension of nature, of his place in it, of his relation to it, is a complex picture of development, modification and struggle between these three conceptions, in the course of which new arguments were found to substantiate them, new appreciations were moulded, and different combinations were evolved. But the sense of it all was one: there was the craving to find ways and means of gaining a greater degree of mastery over the resources and forces of nature in order to satisfy the continuously mounting needs. This purposive trend and the ascendant course of the historic process implicit in it are beyond question.

Man’s cognitive activity has also been focused on his social life. In the early half of the 1st millennium B. C. the ancient Chinese interpreted social life as the action of “five relations”—those of rulers and ruled, parents and children, husband and wife, elder and younger brothers and sisters, and friends and friends, that is, people who are not kin. The concept of what we call the family, society and the state is easily discerned in this formula. All other conceptions of social life have built on it, such as public and private, rights and obligations, compulsion and freedom, domination and submission, legality and lawlessness, justice and injustice, social good and evil, valour and crime, and the like. All this was differently understood, particularly as regards the degree of importance, even the need of

these principles to exist. The principle of archos, that is, law, as the symbol of the necessity of an organised order regulated by universally obligatory standards, was opposed by the principle of anarchos, or lawlessness, as a symbol of a social pattern free from all compulsion. Early in the new era the Roman poet Ovid conceived a society, which he called the “millennium”, in which men would without any judge, of their own free will, observe honesty and justice.

However differently these conceptions may have been understood and however bitterly they may have battled each other, their very appearance and the unceasing and persevering efforts of human thought to elucidate and substantiate them, to assert some and repudiate others, prove the ascendant course of man’s cognitive activity in the field under review.

Man’s cognitive activity directed at himself is just as distinctly revealed in history. “Know yourself” was said to have been inscribed over the entrance to the Delphic temple, articulating the need that confronted man in one form or another at a very early stage of his historic life. Strictly speaking, in its original form it was not a question that sought an answer; it was much more a kind of intrinsic conviction or, perhaps, a sense of self-perception. Consciously or not, man has always looked upon himself as, first, an intelligent being and, second, a social being. This self-perception stemmed from immediate experience and direct observation of himself and his fellows, and grew stronger as man’s experience and observations expanded. In short, man perceived himself as what biologists later defined as homo sapiens and, at once, as what Aristotle defined as zoon politicon.

Man’s notion of himself as an intelligent being came into evidence in his cognitive activity and creative endeavours. It combined in its development with efforts to explain the origin of reason, man’s distinctive attribute. The explanation boiled down to two conceptions, that of receiving and that of acquiring. In the first case, it was contended that man received his reason from a superior being, itself the personification and embodiment of reason, conceived usually as a deity. Christianity, for example, which maintains, after Judaism, that man is created by God after his own image and likeness, nevertheless described Christ’s birth as the inception of the “light of reason”. In the second case, it was believed that man acquired his reason through the very fact of his formation as a particular species among all other species.This notion was set out at its most distinct in the Buddhist teaching that all existence, man included, constitutes bunches of ■equivalent and inseparably connected threads that assume different individual shapes from which the threads stretch into the stream of being which has no beginning and no end. The ability to reason, it says, is but the feature which distinguishes the bunch of threads named man.Either notion is represented in history by a countless number of different variants expressed in myths, chronicles, legends, folk songs and in religious, philosophical and scientific concepts. The notion that man received his reason from a superior being was 226

interpreted in the story of Prometheus stealing fire from Zeus as an act of taking reason from a reluctant deity. Receiving reason from a superior being may also be interpreted as a natural act based on closeness to that being or, even, identity with it. This interpretation is given, among others, in the Judaist teaching about the creation of man in the image and likeness of God, and in the Indian Upani-shads, which argue the identity of God and man.It is also set out in a somewhat different form in the ancient Greek notion of gods being anthropomorphic creatures.

The conception that man acquired his reason independently may combine with the notion that reason is innate. The charvaka philosophy of the ancient Hindus, for example, considers reason to be a property of man’s physical being. A similar notion is set out in the Chung-yung, an ancient Chinese treatise, which attributes to man three qualities implicit in his very nature—reason, humanity and courage. These concepts are close to those that we designate as reason, emotion and will. The conception of the independent acquisition of reason may also combine with the notion of the development of reason by man in the process of practical experience, labour and struggle. If we look at this side of the history of man’s cognitive activity, we shall see the untiring work of human thought, employing the means of conceptual cognition, figurative apprehension and symbolical expression to produce what has eventually become an immense intellectual treasure.

Man’s cognitive activity w⁷as centred also on the most basic of all problems—the essence of the very process of life. This was by no means an abstract issue and stemmed from man’s activities. In its most general form, it boiled down to the following: does everything in a man’s life occur irrespective of his will and wishes, or does he himself chart his life’s road and his fate?

This question w^ras applied first to the fate of individuals, then to the life and fate of society, and then to the whole existing world. The answers furnished to this question w⁷ere different, but tw⁷o are the most typical and the oldest. The life and fate of the individual, society and the world as a w⁷hole proceeds irrespective of man’s will and wishes, says one; the life and faith of the individual and society is shaped by the people themselves, says the other. In the first case, the entity w'hich determined the path of the individual, the society and the world could be a being conceived either as a deity or as fate, or a powur conceived as a law operating independently of man’s will. In the second case, man was considered the maker of life and of the fate of man in society, the maker of the social law's.

There also exists a third answer, which, one may say, is the most widespread: the life and fate of the individual, of society and nature are governed by a certain force, hut man is able to influence this force by pleas, gifts, threats or the invocation of special powers able to subject even gods to man’s control. Or, to put it differently, the life of all existence obeys certain laws, but these laws are created by life

itself and man is able to comprehend them and control their operation within certain limits.

The history of religion and philosophy reveals a complex and motley agglomeration of these and other similar variants. However, the most common idea pervading all these views is the notion of two principles governing being. One of the most simple expressions of this notion are the images of Jehovah and Satan, or of Ormazd and Ahriman. This conception rests upon man’s observation in life of the useful and harmful, of the good and evil.The other expression of this notion, which is just as simple and similarly based on observation, is the image of the opposites—light and dark, hot and cold, hard and soft, old and young, male and female, etc. Take the ancient Chinese conception of duality, yang and yin, and the conception of opposites conceived by Greek thinkers and reflected in the teaching of Pythagoras. Among the ancient Greeks this conception was articulated in the symbolism of numbers, and among the ancient Chinese in the symbolism of lines, one principle being symbolised by an unbroken line and the other by a line divided in two.

This gave birth to the idea that forces of conjunction and division, integration and differentiation were operative in the world. A scheme of the motion of these two forces was drawn up in graphic symbols, showing the successively developing process of all possible combinations, transitions and changes. The Buddhists set out the regularities of the process of living in their karma, the principle of cause and effect, whereby every cause gave rise to an effect and the effect became a cause itself.

To sum up, whatever sphere of man’s cognitive activity we look into, history reveals the vast and persevering effort made by mankind to comprehend everything related to the individual, to society, to nature. New questions arose, the content of the old questions changed, the interpretations changed as well; different approaches were worked out to solve the question, but all in all a slow, contradictory but consistent process took place of expanding knowledge, finalising some of its aspects. We see knowledge serving the task that a people, or mankind as a whole, were confronted with. These tasks kept arising continuously, they became more complex, and cognitive activity absorbed all available experience and always, to one extent or another, was able to point out ways and means fulfilling them.

If we say that man is the maker of history, we must also say that history, in turn, is the maker of man. A social system established by man has the effect of forming man. Knowledge is worked out by man, but knowledge, in turn, forms man’s intellect. This is why man improves in the process of his historic life through his economic and social activities, which are alwrnys connected with his cognitive activity. His improvement occurs in two planes—as a creature of reason and as a social creature. There are many ways of defining "improvement” of man. One of the most ancient, produced by Chi-

nese thinkers, says that man cognises “things”, that is, the whole outside world, that he creates knowledge on the basis of his cognition, that knowledge makes his thought equal to truth and that the truth of thought conditions the “rightness of the heart”, that is, emotion. All this improves man’s personality, and when man’s personality, that is, he himself, is perfect, then the family is in good condition, and once the family is in good condition, the state is properly governed; once the state is properly governed, there is peace in the world. This conception is set out in an ancient treatise known as

The idea that it is possible and necessary for man to improve and that the state of society depends on the extent to which he has improved has accompanied man throughout his history. The ancient Chinese conception mentioned above maintains that the improvement of the personality begins through cognitive activity directed at "things”, that is, the objectively existing world. In other words, improvement begins through the action of reason based on experience.

The conviction that all man’s activities in improving his personality, and the social and political pattern, are aimed at one goal — the attainment of peace on earth, or among people, is just as important an element in this conception. The old adage of “peace on earth and good will among men” appeared at another time, among another people, within another system of conceptions, but it speaks of the same thing and is expressed precisely in relation to the “light of reason”. These and similar expressions, of which there is a prodigious number, reflect man’s age-old dream of truly human existence.

Man’s language is a strikingly bright and, moreover, a most immediate indication on mankind’s intellectual development. Cognition is effected through thinking, yet thinking assumes a definite, as it were “material”, form only when clothed in language. Language, Marx said, “is just as old as consciousness; language is the practical and actual consciousness, existing for other people and thereby also existing for me.”⁴ This is why thinking, its processes and its level of development, may be measured by the language.

We find certain wholes and parts of one form or another m any language. The linguistic act as the expression of the act of cognition consists in establishing connections between individual phenomena apprehended in a linguistic shell, or in determining the whole as a compound of individual parts.This act of integration and differentiation reveals the content of the objective world in which all phenomena are certain wholes, on the one hand, and compounds of indi\idu-al units, on the other. This shows that thinking as a function of reason is determined by being, which creates the opportunity for cognising reality. •

This function of language reveals the forms of such cognition. Reality may be apprehended in conceptual language or in a language

of images or symbols.Conceptual language is a tool of science; the language of images is that of imaginative literature; the language of symbols, that of myths. But this is so only when men imply so-called pure forms of thought in terms of concepts, images and symbols—forms that do not really exist. Imaginative literature cannot do without the language of concepts and symbols; a myth is inconceivable without images; as for symbols, they exist not only in imaginative literature, particularly poetry, but also in science, in which they assume their special form specific for the given branch of learning—a mathematical symbol, a chemical formula, and the like. All this speaks of the great variety of forms of thought, of the all-embracing character of man’s apprehension of reality, of the possibility to embrace it in all its fullness, that is, to penetrate into the essence of the cognised phenomena.

Language is also a means of communication. “Like consciousness,” Marx said, “language stems from the need, from the insistent necessity, of communicating with other people.”⁰ This function of language reveals the social nature of man. However, we should not take communication to mean the outer process alone; first and foremost, communication implies understanding. We are able to communicate by means of language for the sole reason that it contains categories and forms of thinking common to a given group of people and because the concepts, images and symbols concerned are clothed in expressions that have a common meaning for that given group of people.

Language is not only a means of communication and joint activity, but also a material expression of the intellectual communion of a given group of people. Small wonder that we considei language one of the key attributes of a nation—the highest form of all the integral social organisms yet shaped by mankind.

The history and reality of our time are marked by the existence of a great number of languages and, moreover, very different ones. This speaks of the fact that there are very many different ways in which man apprehends reality and very many different forms in which this apprehension can be linguistically clothed. At the same time, however, the historic process shows that these very different languages are steadily drawing closer to each other.

It is wrong to think that one language will ultimately come to replace the different languages. The obstacle to men s linguistic communication is not so much the difference of languages as such, but much more the difference in their semantic structure, that is, in the composition and number of concepts, images and symbols, the difference in their content and in the conditions and possibilities

It is essential in men’s communication with each other and. in their joint activity to understand what the other is saying, no matter what language this other may use. Yet such understanding depends on the identity or, at the very least, on the closeness of their intellect)

ctual levels. In the final analysis, it depends on their standard of culture and education. In the Hellenistic period the Romans and Greeks understood each other not only because very many of them knew both languages. It was easy for them to learn the other’s language, because both peoples had attained the same level of intellectual development and had one and the same culture. The Koreans and the Japanese of the Middle Ages understood the Chinese not only because they knew the Chinese language, but also because their mentality was largely shaped by the same factors as those which shaped the mentality'of the Chinese. Identity of the semantic system of the European languages during the Renaissance served as the foundation for the multilateral and effective development of international con-tftcts

The historic process shows that the languages of individual parts of mankind are steadily drawing closer to each other in this particular sense, while retaining and even developing their own distinctive features. This drawing together is the linguistic reflection of the expansion and strengthening of ties between peoples, of the exchange of knowledge, education and culture, which, in turn, is prompted by the continuously increasing necessity of international cooperation. .

One might say that in our time an immense section of mankind, at least its leading section, possesses a common language. By a common language we mean identity of semantic systems; the different forms of expressing it survive. This identity is maintained and developed through joint life and activity, a process which has at present involved the whole of mankind and all fields of science and culture.

The scale of this identity has brought about new phenomena, highly indicative as regards the trend of this process; we call them mass communication, that is, an almost limitless extension of linguistic communication within the framework of one languageIt stands to reason that this expansion was brought about by the insistent needs of social life with all its developments and all its contradictions. This need has given rise to such new means of linguistic communication, means adapted precisely for mass communication, as the radio, television, cinema and all other forms of audio-visual communication, a massive press and other forms of publication.

An entirely new^ form of communication has arisen as regards, different languages. It may be described as simultaneous multilingual communication effected through synchronised interpreting. Yet the very possibility of such communication appeared because people speak in different languages about one and the same thing. They may have different attitudes to what is being said, but the subjects involved are the same and the connections between them are comprehended identically. Mankind’s common language is based on mutual understanding in the direct linguistic sense, and development as well as struggle are impossible without such mutual understanding if the struggle is waged in the interest of development and pursues

Language is an instrument of development and struggle. This function of language is connected with the first, that is, cognitive, and also the second, communicative, element; they are associated with it because cognition and communication are effected through development and struggle. This function of language reveals man’s nature, that is, his emotions. Linguistics has long since determined that language has an expressive side; it expresses the speaker’s relation or attitude to what he is saying or his emotional reaction to what he hears. He does so by means of speech, intonation, tempo, modulation of the voice, etc. Alan uses these rich, complex and diverse means to express his emotions and attitudes towards the subject; emotions, that is, partiality, appraisal (statement of attitude) are just as essential for development and struggle in the defined sense as they are for cognition.

The state of human language and the practice of linguistic activity demonstrates beyond doubt in our time that the human personality generally, and the human intellect in particular, have scaled great heights. The history of languages examined in conjunction with the history of knowledge, of human relations and of society with all its institutions, indicates that the trend of the historic process, like all other aspects of man’s history, has been an ascendant one. .

In the time of his historic existence man has untiringly developed the land and resources at his disposal; he learned to control the forces of nature and to press them into his service. Thereby, he has been able to satisfy his needs, which kept growing continuously in quality, as well as quantity; he showed that it is possible for any number of people to live on earth. He discovered laws of nature and devised methods of turning them to his benefit; he created tools and methods of labour. All this demonstrated the possibility for a continuous extension of our knowledge of nature and for continuous technical

Just as untiringly, man laboured on the development of social forms consistent with the current big stage in his historic life, with each of the stages he achieved in technology and material production repealing forms suited to the receding stage and replacing them with new forms suited for the burgeoning period. He found the most desirable forms of organising social life, established norms to regulate relations between members of society, and apprehended the social requirements of individuals and society as a whole implicit in man’s social nature and growing more complex as mankind moves forward. He devised the necessary social institutions, demonstrating the possibility of a continuous growth of knowledge about society and man, and of developing on its basis such social forms and institutions as provide the right conditions for the unhampered existence of peo-

The ascendent course of mankind is no less distinct m the contiguous sphere of cognitive activity. The scope of empirically acquired knowledge expanded continuously, embracing not only what man found on the earth, but also what he saw in the cosmos. The development of empirical knowledge was accompanied by generalisat on, that is, by theoretical knowledge applying to the ever expand mg cognitive sphere. The development of the human intellect, wh occurred in this process, saw man create all sorts of aids ^{t0 fac}tate cognitive activity, such as instruments and ^aPPlia^nces an a variety of sciences, that is, systems of knowledge referring to the various fields of life. History has revealed immense possibilities tor

The various forms of cognition, coupled with the ways and means devised by man to satisfy the multifarious needs of individuals with their complex nature and of society as a whole, bear evidence of man’s continuous ascendant growth in historic life. These forms, such as science, religion, philosophy and the arts, which deal with words, musical sounds, colours and shapes, are all just as old as mankind itself. They were created by man, but they influence man himself. They owe their appearance in society to man; it is through man that they come into being, hut they acquire tlieir own being, turning into factors that act upon man’s way of life, on the lite of society and on every individual singly.

History demonstrates the continuous development and growing complexity of these creations of the human genius; it shows that their forms keep changing and that they have continuously greater importance in social affairs. Every newly invented tool is created by man on the strength of his experience and knowledge. However, once it is created it begins to influence its creator, moulding his labour and thought. It is human socie tliatty creates social forms, but once the latter are created they exercise an influence on the society that created them, shaping man’s consciousness in many ways and'impelling the further course of history. The same is true of science religion, philosophy, literature and the arts.

To be sure man’s ascendant advance has not been at all regular and unintermittent. There were epochs of stagnation, even of retrogression. Yet there were also epochs of particularly intensive pro gross. We know, too, that the general advance within a specific epoch has never been smooth: development marks some spheres ol social and intellectual life, while other spheres stagnate. However to appreciate the advance of history correctly from this point of view, we should bear in mind that the appraisals of their own epoch and past epochs by contemporaries may be coloured by their narrow conception of the historic process as a whole. Take the appraisals by the Italian Renaissance humanists of the Middle Ages, on the one hand, and of antiquity, on the other. Indeed, from the standpoint

of the tasks facing the Italian society, then the most advanced in Europe, society could not live by the old ideals, those of the times which the humanists called medieval, because that would mean stagnation.To break away from the existing state of affairs, it was necessary to substantiate such a move. Appraising the Middle Ages as a time of darkness and recession was just such substantiation.This appraisal, therefore, hinged on what was wanted for the present and future, and ignored what the Middle Ages had departed from at one time. Yet in defining the character of an epoch in history we ought to appraise every period from the standpoint of what it had yielded, what new element it had produced in relation to the preceding times, and to probe the nature of this new element—whether or not it has facilitated further progress.

The same caution should be exercised in dealing with appraisals which extol past eras as extraordinary times with which no other later times can compare. That is how the humanists treated Europe s antiquity: the history of ancient Greece and ancient Rome. To define our own attitude to them correctly, we should bear in mind that the authors of such paeans did not treat the epoch they thought ideal as one whole, but picked out the features in it that they thought most worthy of praise. We should also bear in mind that such appraisals of the past are, in effect, notions of the desired present and future, a retrospective projection of ideals focused essentially on the present. Such projections made it easier to visualise the desired in specific images. Antiquity was also worshipped in the bourgeois age, when the bourgeoisie still played a progressive role. In its efforts to create a democratic regime within the bourgeois framework, the bourgeoisie extolled Athenian democracy and the democracy of republican Rome. Need we say, however, that antique democracy was in its historic and social substance something entirely different from bourgeois democracy?

To sum up, we should certainly take note of existing appraisals, but chiefly in order to visualise more concretely what the society of the epoch wished and did not wish for itself, and what it considered progressive. The historic purport of every epoch is apprehended by comparison with what had gone before.and, at the same time, in the light of what had followed. Each epoch hinged on what its contemporaries wished for themselves, what they expected of the future, and what they saw in it. Taking all these reservations into consideration, we should—as we deal with the general course of history and not merely with separate periods of historic life—recognise that the course of history is ascendant, that mankind has continuously and steadily developed in all respects. All we need to settle now is whether this has been progress.

The answer depends entirely on what we consider to be progress. The substitution of firearms for bows and arrows, and of the automatic weapon for the flint gun speaks of technological development, and

moreover, of the development of all pertinent knowledge and science. Is that progress? The advance from face-to-face combat with equal risks for every man involved, to killing from afar, with one side in relative safety, is unquestionably associated with the development of science and technology. Is that progress too? The ability to massacre people wholesale is also unquestionably tied up with scientific and technical development, and of an immensely high order at that. Is that progress? We owe the substitution of electric charges for red-hot irons in the torture chambers to the discovery of electricity, an immense development made by science and technology. Does that, too, come under the head of progress? What about the suffering, the grief, the crimes and the man-hating that fill the chapters of human history from its very beginning to the present day, in various forms and on different scales? Are those evidence of progress? _ _

It is impossible to deny the existence of much of this not only in the past, but also in the present. Nearly all the things in history that may be described as positive, have something negative to counterweigh them. Many elements that are described as positive from one viewpoint, may be termed negative from another.

This is why we must determine what we mean by progress before we decide whether the course of history evidences progress.

To avoid falling into the error of dogmatism in attempting to answer this question, we should proceed from some point of departure — from the maker of history himself, from man and his nature, and, moreover, not nature as an abstraction, but concrete nature as it manifests itself in man’s historic activity. History attests that man is a sensible being, and a social one.This is why we may consider as progressive all elements in man’s historic activity which correspond to these principles in his nature and promote their increasingly fuller

All we should bear in mind is that these two principles are part of man’s nature not in isolation from each other, but in close association, and that the realisation of one is linked with the realisation of the other. We cannot consider as progressive the elements in which human reason alone manifests itself and which liberate man from all trammels, those that are conditioned by his own development as well as those which man and society create themselves. The activity of reason is truly progressive, provided it is coordinated with the social principle. .... ,

All elements which manifest the social principle in man s nature and facilitate the increasing development of the activity of man as the bearer of this principle may appear progressive. But such activity is progressive provided it is coordinated with the operation of

To be sure, this, too, is insufficient to define progress. Reason and sociability are no more than properties of one whole, of man; this means that they are governed by some general principle which characterises man precisely as a whole.

Man apprehended this principle a very long time ago. It was designated by different words and was differently understood at different times in history, but the substance of it was perceived equally at all times.

The Romans designated it in their language as humanitas. This was a derivative from the word homo, meaning “man” and connoting “humanity”, the “human principle”.

The ancient Chinese had the word jen, meaning “humanity”, “the human principle” and derived from another jen, which meant “man”.

This is how one and the same notion, “the human principle”, apprehended through one and the same concept of “man”, appeared quite independently, at two ends of the world, among two masses of mankind. The system of views and rules of behaviour based on this conception was named “humanism” by ourselves and jen-tao by the Chinese. These words are identical etymologically and in their real meaning. What did humanitas and jen mean in concrete terms? History furnishes the answer to this question.

In the middle of the 1st millennium B.C. Confucius, or those who spoke their ideas through the Chinese sage, described jen as “love for man”. At about the same time a conception expressed by the word naitryakaruna appeared in the Indian centre of man’s historic life, implying “compassion”. In substance, this is also “love for people” viewed from a different angle. Buddhism spread the principle of compassion among all the peoples of Eastern Turkistan and Eastern Asia. At the dawn of modern times, the commandment “love thy neighbour” was proclaimed by Jesus of Nazareth in Judea—in the third, West Asian, centre of history. Christianity spread it among the peoples of Europe.

Such was the conception of humanism in ancient times. Essentially, it has survived to our day.

But this conception did not ossify. Though its general purport has not changed, its volume expanded. What is still more important, the dominant trend did change. The contribution to the idea of humanity made by the Renaissance is particularly substantial.

The Renaissance, it appears, is not a possession solely of the history of the Italian people. It is not a “particular case” in man’s history. It is a stage in the history of ancient peoples who had had their period of antiquity and their Middle Ages. The Renaissance is a specific historic period between the early and the late Middle Ages, that is, one of the stages of feudalism. In the history of the Chinese people it seems to date to the 8th-15th centuries and to the 9th-13th centuries in the associated histories of the peoples of Iran, Central Asia and North-West India. In Italy’s history it dates to the 14th-16th centuries.

The historic facts on the eve of the Renaissance showed that social life and cultural progress could no longer advance along the principles created and worked out in the preceding epoch. These princi-

pies, as such, were not necessarily bad, but they had ossified and became a dogma, they fettered human thought. In China it was the Confucian dogma, in Western Asia it was the Muslim dogma, and in Italy it was Christianity. To advance, the fetters had to be cast off and the road had to be paved for free and creative thought. It is only natural that this urge was inspired by the notion of man’s selfsustained value. It was this notion that presented fertile soil for the development of the Renaissance brand of humanism.

Humanists in the different countries attached value to the human personality on different grounds. Quite naturally, their views depended on. their historic environment. The men of the Chinese Renaissance identified the value of the personality chiefly with man’s ability to improve himself. The humanists of Western Asia laid stress principally on the fact that man had lofty moral qualities, such as decency, generosity and the capacity for friendship. The men of the Italian Renaissance considered man chiefly as the bearer of reason, which they regarded as the supreme feature of humanitas.

We therefore have a criterion worked out by history itself to define the truly progressive. It is humanism in a two-fold context— as a designation of the specific properties of the human nature and as an appraisal of these properties in the sense of the supremely reasonable, and at the same time ethical, principle of human behaviour and social life as a whole.

In the light of this proposition one may look differently upon the gloomy side of history, the ocean of grief and suffering in which mankind has been immersed to this day. It is a truly great accomplishment, and probably the highest sign of progress, that people were able to see this fact, that they named evil evil, violence violence, and crime crime. After all, these words are not simply descriptions of acts or phenomena. They are an appraisal, a severe condemnation. Suffering has given them birth; they were born in the process of development and struggle.

It stands to reason that different meanings were attached to them. They have never been abstract.They were always specific, and their concreteness has always been historical. In class society, they were filled, like the concept of humanism, with a meaning designed to serve the interests of a certain class. They could have, and usually had, different meanings at one and the same time, for class society consists of antagonistic classes that have their own notion of what is socially evil and criminal. To be sure, at times the main evil coincided with what the class considered evil.This was so when the class was the most advanced social force of its time. But in class society, too, the finest sons of mankind, the bearers of its conscience, never deviated from their concept of good and evil as something applying equally to all. They applied the notion of good and evil to the sphere of the common interests of all men. Though it could not be realised in their epoch, this notion played a big part all the same, being the beacon along man ’s historic path.

The attitudinal nature of the concepts of evil, violence and crime prompted a sense of duty to combat them, the duty to remove evil from the life of man. Such a struggle has prevailed at all times and itself served as a tangible sign of progress.

Only naturally, the struggle was chiefly aimed against that which was considered the main evil at the time. This is why the immediate object of the struggle kept changing throughout history. In this sphere, progress came into evidence chiefly through the fact that the struggle was directed not only against the evil itself, but also against its causes.Progress came into evidence through the increasing ability to define the main source of evil in each specific case and to choose the most effective means of combating it.

What do we consider the main source of social evil in our historic time, when the development of the productive forces, of our knowledge, of our skill to harness the forces of nature, has led us up to a point v, here we can realistically consider the task of providing a material basis for a worthy life on the scale of all mankind?

What do we consider to be the chief source of evil in our time, when social progress has opened for us vistas of a classless society capable of providing a cultural and spiritual basis for a life worthy of man on the scale of all mankind in a community of harmoniously associated people?

To reply to the first question, we must take note of one specific feature of Our time—our relation to nature.

There were times—and they are not yet over—when man and nature were regarded as two forces opposed to each other. Their relationship was defined as struggle, as man’s eternal struggle against the forces of nature. Two opposite conceptions arose on this ground— the conception of man’s complete dependence on nature, and the conception of man the lord over nature.

However, there were also thinkers with a different turn of mind. They did not make man subject to nature. Neither did they oppose nature to man. They considered them as two forces coexisting in one and the same sphere, the sphere of life. What is more, they regarded them as forces that not only coexisted, but also interacted.

At present, man is about to master the most deeply hidden and greatest forces of nature. This has made him face up to a very pertinent question, the question of man himself. Who is he, the man who masters the forces of nature? What are his rights and what are his duties in relation to nature and to himself? Is there any limit to these rights? If so, what limit is it?

If we take humanism to be the great principle of human activity that has so far led man along the path of progress, it only remains to be said that our task today is to draw nature not simply into the sphere of human life, but into the sphere of humanism. In other words, we must humanise all the natural sciences. If we do not do so, our power over the forces of nature will become a curse, for it will emasculate man of his human principle.

The answer to the second question—what do we consider to be the main source of evil in social life —is clearly evident: exploitation of man hy man and the employment of w^Tar as a means of settling conflicts. The struggle to destroy such exploitation, to remove wars from history, is the main content of contemporary humanism.

Exploitation of man by man is no novelty in history. We are aware that it was inevitable at certain points of history, at a certain level of the productive forces. Resort to war was just as understandable. But we also understand that at the present level of the productive forces exploitation of man by man can he removed, and that at the present level of man’s intellectual and moral development exploitation, like war, is a crime. We owe this conviction to our humanism.

It is a credit to mankind that the conscience of its finest sons has never at any time accepted either the one or the other. Appeals for fraternity and peace resounded over and over again at all points of the earth. At first, these appeals came from the prophets, the sages, the teachers of mankind. Later, they came from the poets, the thinkers, the scientists. These men spoke on behalf of all, or, more precisely, it was through them that mankind, the ordinary people of the earth, spoke their mind.

Today, these ordinary people articulate their ideas themselves. Therein lies the great force of their appeals. This is why we, who carry on the struggle against the sources of social evil, a struggle waged for centuries by our predecessors, are likely to bring it to the cherished conclusion. Our social system, known as socialism, is incompatible in principle with either exploitation of man by man, or with war. That is the source of its great social force, a force that is quite special in substance.This is why it is within the socialist framework that we can realistically expect success in our struggle.

If so, have we not reason enough to look with hope upon our future? Admittedly, our future is not a direct and smooth ascent to a society that will provide mankind with a life worthy of man. No such thing has ever occurred in history. But the main path is clear. It is shown us by our realities. That makes us optimistic. However, to be certain in our optimism we need one more condition.

Humanism is, in social content, probably the most important of all the great ideas advanced by man in the many millenniums of his history. The idea of humanism springs from immense, profoundly perceived historic experience. It is the result of man’s having apprehended himself and his social tasks in the process of this exprience. The humanist idea is, socially speaking, also the highest ethical category. It has always been the supreme criterion of true human progress.

In a letter to Mehring, Engels described as absurd the charge that he and Marx refused to acknowledge that various ideological spheres, to which they allegedly denied an independent historical development, played a part in history. The basis of this notion, Engels wrote, is “the common undialectical conception of cause and effect as rigidly opposite poles, the total disregarding of interaction”.⁸

which caused, and ^stlll ^'^is^ _soci_ety may be able to combine tbe natural sciences are humanised, society n y _egories _born

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