China Learn

On Having Strong Muscles

Another important consequence of our being animals and of our having mortal bodies is that we are susceptible to murder, and the average man doesn’t like murder. True, we have a divine desire for knowledge and wisdom, but with knowledge come also differences of point of view and therefore arguments. Now in a world of immortals, arguments would last forever; for I can conceive of no way of settling a dispute, if neither of the disputing immortals is willing to admit that he is wrong. In a world of mortals, the situation is different. The disputing party generally gets so obnoxious in the eyes of his opponent-and the more obnoxious he will appear, the more embarrassingly right his arguments are-so that the latter just kills him, and that settles the argument. If “A” kills “B,” “A” is right; and if “B” kills “A,” “B” is right. This, we hardly need remind ourselves, is the old, old method of settling arguments among brutes. In the animal kingdom, the lion is always right.

This is basically so true of human society that it offers a good interpretation of human history, even down to the present time. After all, Galileo retracted as well as discovered certain ideas about the roundness of the earth and the solar system. He retracted because he had a mortal body, susceptible to murder or torture. It would have taken infinite trouble to have argued with Galileo, and if Galileo had had no mortal body, you could never have convinced him that he was wrong, and that would have been an eternal nuisance. As it was, however, a torture chamber or a prison cell, not to speak of the gallows or the stake, sufficed to show how wrong he was. The clergy and the gentlemen of the period were determined to have a showdown with Galileo. The fact that Galileo was convinced that he was wrong strengthened the belief of the clergy of that period that they were right. That settled the matter very neatly.

There is something convenient and handy and efficient about this method of settling quarrels. Wars of depredation, religious wars, the conflict of Saladin and the Christians, the Inquisition, the burning of witches, the more modern preaching of the Christian gospel and proselytizing of heathens by gun-boats, the bearing of the White Man’s Burden by the same means, the spread of civilization to Ethiopia by Mussolini’s tanks and airplanes-all these proceed upon this animal logic to which all mankind is heir. If the Italians have better guns and shoot straighter and kill more people, Mussolini carries civilization to Ethiopia, and if, on the other hand, the Ethiopians have better guns and shoot straighter and kill more people, and then Haile Selassie carries civilization to Italy.

There is something of the noble lion in us that disdains arguments. Hence our glorification of the soldier because he makes short shrift with dissenters. The quickest way to shut up a man who believes he is right, and who shows the propensity to argue, is to hang him. Men resort to talking only when they haven’t the power to enforce their convictions upon others. On the other hand, men who act and have the power to act seldom talk. They despise arguments. After all, we talk in order to influence people, and if we know we can influence people, or control them, where is the need for talking at all? In this connection, is it not somewhat disheartening that the League of Nations talked so much during the last Manchurian and Ethiopian wars? It was altogether pathetic. There is something ominous about this quality of the League of Nations. On the other hand, this method of settling arguments by force can sometimes be carried to absurdity, if there is no sense of humor, as when the Japanese actually believe they can stamp out anti-Japanese feeling among the Chinese by bombing and machine-gunning them. That is why I am always slow to admit that we are rational animals.

I have always thought that the League of Nations was an excellent School for Modern Languages, specializing in translation of the modern tongues, giving the hearers excellent practice by first making an accomplished orator deliver a perfect address in English, and after the audience is thus made acquainted with the gist and content of the speech, having it rendered into fluent, flawless, classical French by a professional translator, with intonation, accent and all. In fact, it is better than the Berlitz School; it is a school of modern languages and public speaking to boot. One of my friends, in fact, reported that, after a six months’ stay at Geneva, his lisping habit which had bothered him for years was cured. But the amazing fact is that even in this League of Nations, consecrated to the exchange of opinions, in an institution that conceivably has no other purpose than talking, there should be a distinction between Big Talkers and Small Talkers, the Big Talkers being those having Big Fists, and the Small Talkers being those having Small Fists, which shows the whole thing is quite silly, if not a fake. As if the nations with Small Fists couldn’t talk as fluently as the others! That is to say, if we mean just talking… I cannot but think that this inherent belief in the eloquence of the Big Fist belongs to that animal heritage we have spoken of. (I shouldn’t like to use the word “brute” here, and yet it would seem most appropriate in this connection.)

Of course, the gist of the matter lies in the fact that mankind is endowed with a chattering instinct as well as the fighting instinct. The tongue is, historically speaking, as old as the fist or the strong arm. The ability to talk distinguishes man from animals, and the mixture of verbiage and barrage seems to be a peculiarly human trait. This would seem to point to the permanency of institutions like the League of Nations, or the American Senate, or a tradesmen’s convention-anything that affords men an opportunity to talk. It seems we humans are destined to chatter in order to find out who is right. That is all right; chattering is a characteristic of the angels. The peculiarly human trait lies in the fact that we chatter to a certain point until one of the parties of the dispute who has a stronger arm feels so embarrassed or angered-”Embarrassment leads naturally to anger,” the Chinese say-until that embarrassed and therefore angered party thinks that this chattering has gone far enough, bangs the table, takes his opponent by the neck, gives him a wallop, and then looks about and asks the audience, which is the jury, “Am I right or am I wrong?” And as we learn at every tea house, the audience invariably replies, “You are right!” Only humans ever settle a thing like that. Angels settle arguments all by chatter; brutes settle arguments all by muscle and claws; human beings alone settle them by a strange confusion of muscle and chatter. Angels believe solely in right; brutes believe solely in might; and human beings alone believe that might is right. Of the two, the chattering instinct, or the effort to find out who is right, is of course the nobler instinct. Someday we must all just chatter. That will be the salvation of mankind. At present, we must be content with the tea house method and tea house psychology. It doesn’t matter whether we settle an argument in a tea house or at the League of Nations; at both places, we are consistently and characteristically human.

I have witnessed two such tea house scenes, one in 1931-32 and one in 1936. And the most amusing thing is, there was an admixture of a third instinct, modesty, in these two squabbles. In the 1931 affair, we were at the tea house and there was one party in dispute with another and we were supposed to be the jury in the matter. The charge was some sort of a theft or stealing of property. The fellow with the strong arm at first joined in the argument, made an address to justify himself, spoke of his infinite patience with his neighbor-what restraint, what magnanimity, what unselfishness of motive in his desire to cultivate his neighbor’s garden! The funny thing was, he encouraged us to go on with our chatter while he stole outside the room and completed the stealing by staking up a fence around the stolen property, and then came in to ask us to go and see for ourselves if he wasn’t right. We all went, saw the new fence being steadily pushed farther and farther to the West, for even then the fence was being constantly shifted. “Now, then, am I right or wrong?” We returned the verdict of “You are wrong!”-a little impudent of us to have said that. Thereupon the fellow with the strong arm protested that he was publicly insulted, that his sense of modesty was injured and his honor besmirched. Angrily and proudly he walked out of the room, wiping the dust off his shoes with sneering contempt, thinking us not good company for him. Imagine a man like that feeling insulted! That is why I say the third instinct of modesty complicates the matter. Thereupon the tea house lost a good bit of its reputation as a place for scientific settling of private quarrels.

Then in 1936 we were called upon to judge another dispute.

Another fellow with a strong arm said he would lay the facts of the dispute before the table and ask for justice. I heard the word “justice” with a shudder. And we believed him-not without a premonition as to the awkwardness of the situation or our questionable capacity as a jury. Determined to justify our reputation as fair-minded and competent judges, we, almost to a man, told him to his face that he was wrong, that he was nothing but a bully. He, too, felt insulted; again his sense of modesty was injured and his honor was besmirched. Well, then, he took the opponent by the neck and went outside and killed him, and then he came back and asked us, “Now am I right or wrong?” And we echoed, “You are right!” with a profound bow. Still not satisfied, he asked us, “Am I good enough company for you now?” and we shouted like a regular tea house crowd, “Of course you are!” But what modesty on the part of the killer!

That is human civilization in the year of Our Lord 1936. I think the evolution of law and justice must have passed through scenes like the above in its earliest dawn, when we were little better than savages. From that tea house scene to the Supreme Court of Justice, where the convicted does not protest that he is insulted by the conviction, seems a long, long way of development. For some ten years, while we started the tea house, we thought we were on the road to civilization, but a wiser God, knowing human beings and our essential human traits, might have predicted the setback. He might have known how we must fail and falter at the beginning, being only half civilized as we are at present. For the present, the reputation of the tea house is gone, and we are back to falling upon each other and tearing each other’s hair out and digging our teeth into each other’s flesh, in the true grand style of the jungle. Still I am not in total despair. That thing called modesty or shame is after all a good thing and the chattering instinct also. The way I look at it is we are quite devoid of real shame at present. But let us continue to pretend that we have a sense of shame, and continue to chatter. By chattering we shall one day attain the blessed state of the angels.