reflection after reading
There is seldom a person, who is so proud of the spirit of the civilization in his country so deeply in his heart and soul,who admired the civilization of his country with the most gorgeous rhetoric, even sometimes it seems exaggerate and ridiculous, who spent his whole life protecting and trying to spread the Chinese civilization to the whole world, even there is never a supporters. He is Gu Hongming, who is such a person holding the spirit of Chinese he mentioned in his book. He is gentle to the ironic, sympathy for the victims. Even the theory he hold maybe defective, but the spirit he shows is so valuable.
In his book, Gu shows the different between the religion of European and the Confucianism, in order to make the European better understanding the spirit of chineseman.
In the opinion of Gu, the spirit of Confucianism is most suitable for describing the real spirit of Chinaman. While the religion in Europe suppose that civil is the nature of human , the Confucius believe that the nature of human should be kind. Therefore, fight and protest are not considered to be ordinary and reasonable in Chinese mind. And they will not consider violence to be the first choice while solving the problem. On the other hands, they will solve in peace. This altitude today is tought as a good manner ,and can better explain the impression made from European to Chinese. This impression Gu mentioned in his book are gentleness, sympathy and the want of exactness.
The gentleness, sympathy in Chinese people make European confused but moved ,because it is so different from the spirit of the European. Nowadays, more and more European are attracted to learn Chinese civilization and religion because of this beautiful impression.But there is one thing they find hard to understand,that is the tight relationship between Chinese family social and nation,which in Gu’s words is ‘ming gen ming yi ‘.This four simple Chinese words mean the Great Principle of Honour and Duty or Code of Honour.
Let us first talk about the great principle and the sense of honour. The people live in the morden generation can not understand and accept the absolutely, blind loyal in the ancient time. At that time, the wife is bound to be absolutely loyal to her husband and the people of china are bound to be absolutely loyal to the emperor. And such relationship became an acceptable religion existed in the history of China for hundreds of thousands of years.The Europeans can not understand it too,but the characters, the gentleness, sympathy and the want of exactness in Chinese give us the best explanation. We must admit that it is the family religion as well as the state religion, that made our ancestors kind and gentle ,it is the religion that gave birth to the closest relationship in the world.That is family. And it is the religion that made us so different from the European.
So in the opinion of Gu,he wants to show the European the spirit og chineseman,so that they will not trying to destroy them,show Chinese the tight relationship so that they can hold each other tightly.
Even we are not agree with some of the words in Gu Hongming’s book, we want to thank him for letting us remember the power of the spirit of chineseman.
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