A
Westerner cannot be expected to accept this view, because it is based on
traditions utterly different from his own. But gradually one comes to
feel that it is, at any rate, not an absurd view; that it is, in fact,
the logical outcome of a self-consistent standard of values. The typical
Westerner wishes to be the cause of as many changes as possible in his
environment; the typical Chinaman wishes to enjoy as much and as
delicately as possible. This difference is at the bottom of most of the
contrast between China and the English-speaking world.
We in the West make a fetish of "progress," which is the ethical
camouflage of the desire to be the cause of changes. If we are asked,
for instance, whether machinery has really improved the world, the
question strikes us as foolish: it has brought great changes and
therefore great "progress." What we believe to be a love of progress is
really, in nine cases out of ten, a love of power, an enjoyment of the
feeling that by our fiat we can make things different. For the sake of
this pleasure, a young American will work so hard that, by the time he
has acquired his millions, he has become a victim of dyspepsia,
compelled to live on toast and water, and to be a mere spectator of the
feasts that he offers to his guests. But he consoles himself with the
thought that he can control politics, and provoke or prevent wars as may
suit his investments.
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