Practically all the prominent leaders of thought in China today are openly agnostics and even atheists. Hu Shih More Quotes by Hu Shih More Quotes From Hu Shih India Conquered and dominated China culturally for 20 centuries without ever having to send a single soldier across her border. Hu Shih independence india soldier What is sacred among one people may be ridiculous in another; and what is despised or rejected by one cultural group, may in a different environment become the cornerstone for a great edifice of strange grandeur and beauty. Hu Shih groups beauty people Only when we realize that there is no eternal, unchanging truth or absolute truth can we arouse in ourselves a sense of intellectual responsibility. Hu Shih realizing intellectual responsibility The most outstanding characteristic of Eastern civilization is to know contentment, whereas that of Western civilization is not to know contentment. Contented Easterners are satisfied with their simple life and therefore do not seek to increase their material enjoyment... They are satisfied with their present lot and environment and therefore do not want to conquer nature but merely be at home with nature and at peace with their lot. Hu Shih simple home civilization Even the absolute universality of the law of causality does not necessarily limit a person's freedom, because the law of causality not only enables him to explain the past and predict the future, but also encourages him to use his intelligence to create new causes and attain new results. Hu Shih law doe past The underlying sickness of human life is an unwillingness to look with open eyes at the condition of the world. Hu Shih diversity eye justice It is only through contact and comparison that the relative value or worthlessness of the various cultural elements can be clearly and critically seen and understood. Hu Shih relative-value contact elements The sun exactly at noon is exactly [beginning to] go down. And a creature when he is born is exactly [beginning to] die. Hu Shih noon down-and sun Confucius was a humanist and an agnostic. Hu Shih agnostic humanist Within my own life, I read all the beloved novels by lamps of vegetable oil; I saw the Standard Oil invading my own village, I saw gas lamps in the Chinese shops in Shanghai; and I saw their elimination by electric lights. Hu Shih oil light vegetables The knowledge that mankind needs is not the way or principle which has an absolute existence, but the particular truths for here and now and for particular individuals. Absolute truth is imaginary, abstract, vague, without evidence, and cannot be demonstrated. Hu Shih principles truth needs Life and human society are the chief concern of Confucianism and, through it, the chief concern of the Chinese people. Hu Shih confucianism chinese people In such diffused changes of culture two factors are necessary: contact and understanding. Hu Shih understanding two culture But I wish to point out that it is entirely wrong to say that the Chinese are not religious. Hu Shih chinese religious wish On the basis of biological, sociological, and historical knowledge, we should recognize that the individual self is subject to death or decay, but the sum total of individual achievement, for better or worse, lives on in the immortality of The Larger. Hu Shih historical-knowledge achievement self The Chinese people, too, went through all kinds of vicissitudes in their religious development. Hu Shih chinese religious people The rise of the dramas in the thirteenth century, and the rise of the great novels in a later period, together with their frank glorification of love and the joys of life, may be called the Third Renaissance. Hu Shih together joy drama Whenever you do something without asking yourself, "Why am I doing this?"-that is meaningless life... . The "why" of life makes it meaningful... . Only when an answer is given is one living life as a man. Hu Shih live-life meaningful men Another important historical factor is the fact that this already very simple religion was further simplified and purified by the early philosophers of ancient China. Our first great philosopher was a founder of naturalism; and our second great philosopher was an agnostic. Hu Shih historical simple religion For all the social changes in China can be traced to their early beginnings in the days when the new tools or vehicles of commerce and locomotion first brought the Chinese people into unavoidable contact with the strange ways and novel goods of the Western peoples. Hu Shih chinese tools people
