Chapter I · The Ideological, Social, and Political Background. The Rationale of the Readjustment.

The San Min Chu I and related works of Sun Yat-sen represent in their entirety one of the most ambitious bodies of doctrine ever set forth by a political leader. They differ from such a document as the Communist Manifesto in that they comprehend a much greater range of subject matter and deal with it in much greater detail. They pertain not merely to the reconstitution of an economic or political system; they propose a plan for the reconstruction of a whole civilization, the reformation of a way of thought customary among a great part of the human race, and a consequent transformation of men's behavior. Conceived in the bold flights of a penetrating, pioneering mind, avowedly experimental at the time of their first utterance, these works of Sun have already played a most significant rôle in the Far East and may continue to affect history for a long time to come. They may quite legitimately be called the bible of new China.

Social change is a consequence of maladjustment. The thought of Sun Yat-sen is a program of change—change which, if it is to be understood, must be seen at its beginning and its end. The background from which Sun emerged and which was an implicit condition of all his utterances must be mentioned, so that the problems he faced may be understood. Only then will it be possible to turn to the plans he devised for the rethinking of Chinese tradition and the reorganization of Chinese polity. A vast maladjustment between the Chinese and the world outside led to the downfall of the Manchu Empire in China and has threatened the stability of every government [pg 023] erected since that time; Chinese society is in a state of profound unrest and recurrent turmoil. Sun Yat-sen contributed to the change, and sought a new order, to be developed from the disorder which, voluntarily or not, he helped in part to bring about.

The old order that failed, the interregnum (in the etymological sense of the word), and the new order proposed by Sun must be taken all together in order to obtain a just understanding of Sun's thought. No vast history need be written, no Decline and Fall of the Chinese Empire is necessary, but some indication of the age-old foundations and proximate conditions of Sun's thought must be obtained.

These may, perhaps, be found in a sampling of certain data from the thought and behavior of the Chinese as a group under the old system, and the selection of a few important facts from the history of China since the first stages of the maladjustment. An exposition of Sun's thought must not slur the great importance of the past, yet it dare not linger too long on this theme lest the present—in which, after all, uncounted millions of Chinese are desperately struggling for life—come to seem insignificant.

Confucianism is a philosophy so broad and so highly developed that any selection does violence to its balance and proportion, which are among its chief merits.24 Yet [pg 024] only those few facts can be taken from the history and thought of the Chinese which may assist the Westerner in becoming familiar with a few terms which recur again and again in the works of Sun Yat-sen. If the present work purported to be a study of Chinese history, or a complete analysis of the Chinese social system, such an extreme selectivity could not be condoned; since it, however, tries only to outline Sun's thought, the selection of a few Confucian doctrines and the complete ignoring of others, may be forgiven. All the schools of the past, and the literary traditions which developed from them, and social tendencies that were bound up with these have to be omitted, and those few ideas and customs described which bear directly on one single point—the most significant ideological differences between the Chinese and the West with respect to the political order, i. e. the control of men in society in the name of all society.25

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