love and sympathy make a good man
If someone says that The Spirit of the Chinese People is absolutely a book of great intelligence, I will disagree. Owing to the chain of period Gu lived in, he is a stubborn scholar who was blind to see the weakness in his civilization at that time. The opinion upon woman and the racial superiority he has expressed are against our value today. However, I don’t consider him as a fool as he laughed at himself. Indeed, he was a warrior fighting for his culture for the whole life who earned his respect from the super powers for his purity as a real Chinaman. Undeniable, the book has something that we can acquire from it.
I am also desirous to such a fool wearing pride of my culture talking about how to be a good man, a true Chinaman.
How to be a good Chinaman? What distinguishes Chinaman from citizens in France, England and Germany? It is the religion of good citizenship. I quote a passage from the to answer what is religion of good citizenship: The first principle of this Religion of good citizenship is to believe that the Nature of Man is good. The nature of man is something taking roots at the time we are given birth to. Recalling our childhood, and seeking what we had, we will find that we are born with love and sympathy.
The law of love means love your father and mother. The performance of feeding them and amusing them is not enough. As is said in the book: Confucius attached importance to manners rather than the things themselves. It’s not what you do but how you do it that shows your love to your parents. And love also means to be true to your beloved and your friends. We can take the first step to believe that people around you wear their hearts on the sleeve and show our kindness along with gentleness, which comes from nature, like perfume that attracts others. Only in this way will love show itself.
Sympathy is a life of feeling-not feeling in the sense of sensation which comes from the bodily organs, nor feeling in the sense of passions which flow from the nervous system, but felling in the sense of emotion or human affection which comes from the deepest part of nature-the heart or soul. Sympathy is not only when someone gets hurts, we reach out for help, but also a kind of overall view on the entire mankind. For instance, the ancient literati would pour their anger in their articles provided that people suffer due to the war; they would also lighten the poets for the good government and harvest. The power of secret is so profound that it connects our Chinese people as a whole. And only by connecting as whole can we live a life of heart and brace ourselves for the hope of the better life.
It depresses me that nowadays the nature of man seems to be hidden. I am not denying that there is still trueness, love, faith and sympathy in us Chinese. But these qualities are fading in the crowd. I once encountered a question: if two crowd of people each with a time bomb among them, has a controller to control the bomb in the other crowd and only when one bomb explode will the other one be dismissed or when both of the bombs’ time is up will they be saved , what would they do? I believe that a man of love and sympathy will choose to lay their trust on the other crowd of people. Amazingly and surprisingly, most of the interviewees would rather ignite the other bomb than save both group of people. Thus I say that the nature of man is fading away in the crowd.
Nevertheless, like I said in the beginning, I would like to be a fool to take my first step to follow the nature of a good man. And I believe this is what The Spirit of the Chinese People is trying to do-to transmute Chinese people into a real, true Chinaman.
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