Contents | Book Of The Humanist | Next
The Tao Teh
The idea that there is a wisdom that is higher than scientific knowledge but not a replacement for it is really rather foreign to Western civilization, but not to the great ages of China. Tao Teh, pronounced dow duh, refers to just such a wisdom with the added meaning that it is well for a superior man to follow it and act on it. It also includes the idea that there should be a center, a balance, a synthesis, a harmony, a golden mean (there is no one word in English to convey this idea) in life and in civilization which should prevent excesses in everything else, towards which everything and everyone must relate. This too is a strange and well nigh unintelligible idea in Western civilization today. We make a cult of specialization; higher cultural life is in the hands of arrogant Faustian men who make virtue of fragmentation and unintelligibility. It was a very powerful idea in the great ages of China. Ching (pronounced jing) means classic book, and the Tao Teh Ching is an ancient Chinese classic book which states about 90% of what I consider wisdom. Tao Teh is the path of humanist wisdom.
India's chief contribution to the developing world synthesis of civilization is Yoga. China's chief contribution is the wisdom expressed in the Tao Teh Ching and put into practice for 14 centuries by Mandarin government. Tao Teh is the wise man's way of harmony, humanist synthesis, integration, coherence, balance and perspective (fig. 1). The Tao is a way of acting which takes precedence over all the more specific or specialized codes of behavior. It is also a way of looking at man, his place in society and his place in the universe, which takes precedence over all the more specialized ways of looking at things. The Tao Teh is the wisdom which transcends specialized knowledge.
What do these words mean: balance, synthesis, integration? It has always been difficult to flesh out in concrete ways notions of balance and perspective. "The Tao described in words is not the real Tao. Words cannot describe it." These ideas are so far removed from the fragmented, specialized, debased and barbaric form of current Western civilization as to be unintelligible without examples.
Example 1. In the great Tribal civilizations a Sophocles or a Machaut or a Michelangelo or a Bach could flourish on quite an advanced level of sophistication and yet be completely understood and appreciated by the ordinary citizens. Ordinary citizens listened to Machaut's mass and Bach's cantatas. Ordinary citizens made a triumphant procession of the unveiling of Michelangelo's David which lasted for days. The entire citizen body turned out for the yearly festival of Dionysius, where Sophocles was performed. The music of our Faustian contemporary Subotnick is simpler than Bach, but few like it. GILES GOAT BOY is no more symbolic than Oedipus, yet Goat Boy is not intelligible to most people today, and all the Greeks understood Oedipus. The great Tribal civilizations pursued the Tao of cultural coherence.
Cultural coherence: that's part of the Tao. The citizens of Tribal civilizations respected and appreciated their artists; the artists respected and appreciated the citizens. And there is also respect for the continuity of the cultural tradition. There was much originality, but few abrupt breaks in the cultural pattern. Modern Fausts have no respect for themselves, for their predecessors or fellow artists, and have contempt for the citizens (who respond not in kind but with bewilderment). Respect: that's part of the Tao. Respect for the continuity of cultural tradition, and respect for the superior man. "Hold close to the ancient Tao and be master of your present existence. Knowing the present you mirror the past."
Example 2. The I CHING is even older than the Tao Teh Ching and expresses the same basic philosophy. Its advice is always for the superior man. It is assumed that the superior man will be recognized, respected, and followed by lesser men! This ideal becomes reality in every vital institution from Gothic Christianity in modern science. But the Chinese were the first to formalize this and build their government around this idea. However, my example comes from Gothic architecture, which was virtually invented by Abbot Suger of St. Denis. In Gothic times men like Abbot Suger and St. Bernard could rise from obscure origins to become the chief architects of Gothic civilization. The church was international, both powerful and culturally influential, and men of ability could rise in it. In decadent institutions the reverse is true. Mediocrity is given power and the brilliant are forced out. But the idea of a cultural center occupied by superior people is part of the Tao.
In our civilization there is no center, and we are unaware of how irrelevant and futile this makes all of our activities. The artists and intellectuals go their own way, occupying their own little cultural worlds, oblivious to one another and to the masses, and without real influence. For the masses, there is a kind of center, but not one which draws them upward. Instead, it is a kind of mirror image of themselves. Public opinion is unconsciously forced into line with what politicians find to be salable by means of public opinion polls. Thus, all of mass man's worst impulses, most degraded tastes, most ignorant and bigoted impulses are instantly pandered to and thus reinforced. Thus, our civilization sinks to a technologically advanced barbarism, lacking all respect for the great cultural achievements of the past, pointing in no consistent direction for the future, creating a succession of mindless fads, which contribute nothing to the sum total of civilization.
Example 3. "There is danger in extremes: pull a bowstring too far and you will wish you had let it go before." But what is an extreme? This was always the problem with Aristotle's golden mean, giving it specific content. But the answer is, extreme with respect to one's sense of the whole. A sense of the whole is part of the Tao, a sense of the relative importance of things, compared to their dangers. An example of an imbalance is the American (and Japanese) pursuit of growth and expansion as an end in itself. The citizens of Tucson were amazed when its most noted citizen, Joseph Wood Krutch, denounced the Chamber of Commerce drive for expansion of population and industry. This was years ago before such things were popular. But he knew that the result of this growth might be more dollars, but at the expense of the destruction of all the things that attracted people to Tucson: clean air, wide open spaces, a desert environment, natural beauty. The chamber of commerce attitude is a perfect example of imbalance, of myopia, of tunnel vision. The wise man seeks a sense of the whole. Growth is only good if it is growth of the whole: whole spiritual man, Whole Earth civilization. The short path of evolution risks everything.
Another example of imbalance has been the Western world's pursuit of technology and natural science as ends in themselves. This is based on a naive faith that all knowledge and all technology is good. High energy physics has soaked up billions of dollars. Billions more has been spent on one facet of this research, nuclear fission. What is the result? Nothing useful and much that is dangerous. The same continues to be true of high energy physics. Will their research add anything to our understanding of the physical world not already contained in our knowledge of the electron, proton and neutron? At that level of reality, we reached simplicity and sufficiency, achieved with little cost. Beyond that we go through the looking glass, like Alice in Wonderland. "When you have reached your goal, be satisfied to go no further. This is the way of the Tao." Go further and we face increasing complexity, and strange properties which have nothing to do with the world on this side of the glass. "Let me walk along the main path of Tao and avoid by-paths of worthless knowledge."
Another idea which is central to the Tao is the equal importance and equal necessity and equal wisdom of Yin and Yang (fig. 21). Yang: heaven, active, positive, male, firm, strong, light. Yin: earth, passive negative, female, yielding, soft, dark. Kenneth Clark points out that all the truly great civilizations have given equal weight to the masculine and the feminine principles, and the three examples he gives are the Gothic, the Italian Baroque and the 18th Century French civilizations. Our present, Puritan and Practical civilization utterly denies the importance and equal value of Yin. This is also true of other 'communities of will.' Notice that the point here is different from that made by women's lib, who want women to be Yang and accepted as such. But if we pursue the Tao women will usually be Yin and men will usually be Yang but the wise person will know that it is wise sometimes to be one and sometimes the other. The Yin of graceful yielding can be as creative and intelligent and necessary as the Yang of inventing and initiating something. Diplomacy and courtesy require equal parts of Yin and Yang. "The softest will penetrate the hardest; the non-existent will penetrate the existent. By this I know the value of being passive. This is teaching without words; achievement without direct action. In all the world few know this." Intelligent passivity can shape events quite as much as activity. Intelligent yielding is the key to guerrilla warfare (it is not surprising that Chinese are good at it). "Thus, a headstrong legion will lose in war just as an unyielding tree will snap under the ax. The place of the strong is below; the place of the gentle is above."
If we agree that Lord Clark that the Yin/Yang societies of chivalrous Gothic/Renaissance aristocracies and 18the Century salons are greater than the Yang societies of the Reformation or of today, then we must ask why? It is partly because sensitivity and artistic nuance flourish anywhere there is gentleness. It is partly because the dark earth of Yin is the unconscious, and to accept it is to become whole, intuitive, spontaneous; to deny it totally is to become dry and cold. It is partly because the forgiveness, maternal constancy, and love of the Great mother gives one an emotional security and freedom from fear in which great things blossom. It is partly because the hardness and activity of Yang unleavened with the flexibility and tolerance of Yin becomes brittle and totally destructive to all. Yang destruction is never ended by surrender or forgiveness (Yin) and thus continues until nothing is left. We find fanaticism and unyielding destructiveness in the total wars of the 20th Century and in the religious wars of the 16th and 17th Centuries.
The world always has need of creative Yin. One very specific example: why was there so much intelligent conversation in those 18th Century Salons of the hostesses? They were intelligent listeners (a yin virtue) and graceful ladies who yielded sexually to genius and intelligence in preference to physically handsome men and empty-headed flatterers. David Hume and Benjamin Franklin were both quite well entertained by the intelligent ladies of the French Salons. Hume was ugly and never married; Franklin was old, fat and bald. But they were truly loved. It is not surprising that the brilliant men of the day all flocked to the Salons.
The equal importance of Yin and Yang virtues is thus part of the Tao.
Wisdom is not the same as knowledge. Wisdom is a matter of perspective. It is the total man reacting. Thus it is very difficult to formulate wisdom in specific terms the way we can scientific theories or theorems. But the concept of Tao, fully understood and assimilated and fleshed out with countless examples of the best formulation of Teh (wisdom, the virtue that rules all others).
The idea of the humanist is being resurrected in the 20th Century in a new form, with the systems analysis of the ecologists and the Club of Rome. But we should not forget the older forms, such as the humanist amateur which was such a part of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. The humanist is in some ways the opposite of the specialist, who tries to learn everything about some restricted realm (and with the accumulation of information, his realm steadily shrinks, and he knows more and more about less and less). But the humanist tries to learn what is important (if anything) about every realm of knowledge. This does not imply the kind of intellectual athlete the specialist would suppose. "The scholar needs to know more and more each day. The follower of the Tao needs to know less and less each day. By lessening information one reaches inaction. By inaction everything can be done. The world is won by those who leave it alone. When one feels compelled to dominate, the world is already beyond reach." It is not by trying to be a specialist master of every field that one becomes a humanist, but by allowing an insight to grow. It is frequently true that an entire subject is useless, something the specialist in the field is unaware of. It is also true that a subject may be drastically simplified in a way that improves it, which the specialist would never see. Such insights can be had only by inaction, i.e., by contemplation of what one knows of a subject.
The humanist needs to know less and less partly because the growth of knowledge (as opposed to information) results in greater and greater synthesis, which he can also help to provide. As we replace numerous fragmented ideas with a few very general theories, the task of the humanist becomes easier. By lessening the intake of information one reaches the inaction of contemplation and assimilation. By assimilating and relating things not visible to the specialist, everything can be done, one meaning being that the humanist can solve problems the specialist cannot. This book illustrates the point.
A specialist in astrology could never have found the explanation of astrology. A specialist in psychical research could never have found the explanation of psychical research. A specialist in religion could neither see what religion is all about nor construct a superior religion. A specialist in philosophy could never have understood the achievements of philosophy (and thus its function) nor could he have advanced philosophy one iota. The specialist in art, in music, or literature could never understand the consciousness which created that art, music or literature, nor could he see the direction the arts must now take.