4. Christian, Greek and Chinese
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There are several views of mankind, the traditional Christian theological view, the Greek pagan view, and the Chinese Taoist-Confucianist view. (I do not include the Buddhist view because it is too sad.) Deeper down in their allegorical sense, these views after all do not differ so much from one another, especially when the modern man with better biological and anthropological knowledge gives them a broader interpretation. But these differences in their original forms exist.
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The traditional, orthodox Christian view was that man was created perfect, innocent, foolish and happy, living naked in the Garden of Eden. Then came knowledge and wisdom and the Fall of Man, to which the sufferings of man are due, notably (1) work by the sweat of one’s brow for man, and (2) the pangs of labor for women. In contrast with man’s original innocence and perfection, a new element was introduced to explain his present imperfection, and that is of course the Devil, working chiefly through the body, while his higher nature work through the soul. When the “soul” was invented in the history of Christian theology I am not aware, but this soul became a something rather than a function, an entity rather than a condition, and it sharply separated man from the animals, which have no souls worth saving. Here the logic halts, for the origin of the Devil had to be explained, and when the medieval theologians proceeded with their scholastic logic to deal with the problem, they got into a quandary. They could not have very well admitted that the Devil, who was Not-God, came from God himself, nor could they quite agree that in the original universe, the Devil, a Not-God, was co-eternal with God. So in desperation they agreed that the Devil must have been a fallen angel which rather begs the question of the origin of devil (for there still must have been another Devil to tempt this fallen angel), and which is therefore unsatisfactory, but they had to leave it at that. Nevertheless from all this followed the curious dichotomy of the spirit and the flesh, a mythical conception which is still quite prevalent and powerful today in affecting our philosophy of life and happiness.
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Then came the Redemption, still borrowing from the current conception of the sacrificial lamb, which went still farther back to the idea of a God Who desired the smell of roast meat and could not forgive for nothing. From the Redemption, at one stroke a means was found by which all sins could be forgiven, and a way was found for perfection again. The most curious aspect of Christian thought is the idea of perfection. As this happened during the decay of the ancient worlds, a tendency grew up to emphasize the afterlife, and the question of salvation supplanted the question of happiness or simple living itself. The notion was how to get away from this world alive, a world which was apparently sinking into corruption and chaos and doomed. Hence the overwhelming importance attached to immortality. This represents a contradiction of the original Genesis story that God did not want man to live forever. The Genesis story of the reason why that Adam and Eve were driven out of the Garden of Eden was not that they had tasted of the Tree of Knowledge, as is popularly conceived, but the fear lest they should disobey a second time and eat the Tree of Life and live forever:
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And the Lord God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever:
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Therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken.
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So he drove out the man; and he placed the east of the garden of Eden cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.
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The Tree of Knowledge seemed to be somewhere in the center of the garden, but the Tree of Life was near the eastern entrance, where for all we know, cherubims are still stationed to guard the approach by men.
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All in all, there is still a belief in total depravity, that enjoyment of this life is sin and wickedness, to be uncomfortable is to be virtuous, and that on the whole man cannot save himself except by a greater power outside. The doctrine of sin is still the basic assumption of Christianity as generally practiced today, and Christian missionaries trying to make converts generally start out by impressing upon the party to be converted a consciousness of sin and of the wickedness of human nature (which is, of course, the sine qua non for the need of the ready-made remedy which the missionary has up his sleeve). All in all, you can’t make a man a Christian unless you first make him believe he is a sinner. Some one has said rather cruelly, “Religion in country has so narrowed down to the contemplation of sin that a respectable man does not any longer dare to show his face in the church.”
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The Greek pagan world was a different world by itself and therefore their conception of man was also quite different. What strikes me most is that the Greeks made their Gods like men, while the Christians desired to make men like gods. That Olympian company is certainly a jovial, amorous, loving, lying, quarreling and vow-breaking, petulant lot; hunt-loving, chariot-riding and javelin-throwing like the Greeks themselves—a marrying lot, too, and having unbelievably many illegitimate children. So far as the difference between gods and men is concerned, the gods merely had divine powers of hurling thunderbolts in heaven and raising vegetation on earth, were immortal, and drank nectar instead of wine—the fruits were pretty much the same. One feels one can be intimate with this crowd, can go hunting with a knapsack on one’s back with Apollo or Athene, or stop Mercury on the way and chat with him as with a Western Union messenger boy, and if the conversation gets to interesting, we can imagine Mercury saying, “Yeah. Okay. Sorry, but I’ll have to run along and deliver this message at 72nd street.” The Greek men were not divine, but the Greek Gods were human. How different from the Christian God! And so the gods were merely another race of men, a race of giants, gifted with immortality, while men on earth were not. Out of this background came some of the most inexpressibly beautiful stories of Demeter and Proserpina and Orpheus. The belief in the gods was taken for granted, for even Socrates, when he was about to drink hemlock, proposed a libation to the gods to speed him on his journey from this world to the next. This was very much like the attitude of Confucius. It was necessarily so in that period; in that attitude toward man and God the Greek spirit would take in the modern world there is unfortunately no chance of knowing. The Greek pagan world was not modern, and the modern Christian world is not Greek. That’s the pity of it.
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On the whole it was accepted by the Greeks that man’s was a mortal lot, subject sometimes to a cruel fate. That once accepted, man was quite happy as he was, for the Greeks loved this life and this universe, and were interested in understanding the good, the true, and the beautiful in life, besides being fully occupied in scientifically understanding the physical world. There was no mythical “Golden Period” in the sense of Garden of Eden, and no allegory of the Fall of Man; the Hellenes themselves were but human creatures transformed from pebbles picked up and thrown over their shoulders by Deucalion and his wife Pyrrha, as they were coming down to the plain after the Great Flood. Disease and cares were explained comically; they came through the uncontrollable desire of a young woman to open and see a box of jewels—Pandora’s Box. The Greek fancy was beautiful. They took human nature largely as it was; the Christians might say they were “resigned” to the motal lot. But it was so beautiful to be mortal: there was free room for the exercise of understanding and the free, speculative spirit. Some of the Sophists thought man’s nature good, and some thought man’s nature bad, but there wasn’t the sharp contradiction of Hobbes and Rousseau. Finally, in Plato, man was seen to be a compound of desires, emotions, and thought, and ideal human life was the living together in harmony of these three parts of his being under the guidance of wisdom or true understanding. Plato thought “ideas” were immortal, but individual souls were either base or noble, according as they loved justice, learning, temperance and beauty or not. The soul also acquired an independent and immortal existence in Socrates; as we are told in “Phaedo,” “When the soul exists in herself, and is released from the body, and the body is released from the soul, what is this but death?” Evidently the belief in immortality of the human soul is something which the Christian, Greek, Taoist, and Confucianist views have in common. Of course this is nothing to be jumped at by modern believers in the immortality of the soul. Socrates’ belief in immortality would probably mean nothing to a modern man, because many of his premises in support of it, like re-incarnation, cannot be accepted by the modern man.
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The Chinese view of man also arrived at the idea that man is the Lord of the Creation (“Spirit of the Ten Thousand Things”), and in the Confucianist view, man ranks as the equal of heaven and earth in the “Trio of Geniuses.” The background was animistic: everything was alive or inhabited by a spirit—mountains, rivers, and everything that reached a grand old age. The winds and thunders were spirits themselves; each of the great mountains and each river was ruled by a spirit who practically owned it; each kind of flower had a fairy in heaven attending to its seasons and its welfare, and there was a Queen of All Flowers whose birthday came on the twelfth day of the second moon; every willow tree, pine tree, cypress, fox or turtle that reached a grand old age, say over a few hundred years, acquired by that very fact immortality and became a “genius.”
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With this animistic background, it is natural that man is also considered a manifestation of spirit. This spirit, like all life in the entire universe, is produced by the union of the male, active, positive or yang principle, and the female, passive, negative, or yin principle—which is really no more than a lucky, shrewd guess at positive and negative electricity. When this spirit becomes incarnated in a human body, it is called p’o; when unattached to a body and floating about as spirit it is called hwen. (A man of forceful personality or “spirits” is spoken of as having a lot of p’oli, or p’o-energy.) After death, this hwen continues to wander about. Normally it does not bother people, but if no one buries and offers sacrifices to the deceased, the spirit becomes a “wandering ghost,” for which reason an All Soul’s Day is set apart on the fifteenth day of the seventh moon for a general sacrifice to those drowned in water or dead and unburied in a strange land. Also, if the deceased was murdered or died suffering a wrong, the sense of injustice in the ghost compels it to hang about and cause trouble until the wrong is avenged and the spirit is satisfied. Then all trouble is stopped.
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While living, man, who is spirit taking shape in a body, necessarily has certain passions, desires, and a flow of “vital energy,” or in more easily understood English, just “nervous energy.” In and for themselves, these are neither good nor bad, but just something given and inseparable from the characteristically human life. All men and women have passion, natural desires and noble ambitions, and also a conscience; they have sex, hunger, fear, anger, and are subject to sickness, pain, suffering and death. Culture consists in bringing about the expression of these passions and desires in harmony. That is the Confucianist view, which believes that by living in harmony with this human nature given us, we can become the equals of heaven and earth, as quoted at the end of chapter VI. The Buddhists, however, regard the mortal desires of the flesh essentially as the medieval Christians did—they are a nuisance to be done away with. Men and women who are too intelligent, or inclined to think too much, sometimes accept this view and become monks and nuns; but on the whole, Confucian good sense forbids it. Then also, with a Taoistic touch, beautiful and talented girls suffering a harsh fate are regarded as “fallen fairies,” punished for having mortal thoughts or some neglect of duty in heaven and sent down to this earth to live through a predestined fate of mortal sufferings.
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Man’s intellect is considered as a flow of energy. Literally this intellect is “spirit of a genius” (chingshen), the word “genius” being essentially taken in the sense in which we speak of fox genii, rock genii and pine genii. The nearest English equivalent is, as I have suggested, “vitality” or “nervous energy,” which ebbs and flows at different times of the day and of the person’s life. Every man born into this world starts out with certain passions and desires and this vital energy, which run their course in different cycles through childhood, youth, maturity, old age and death. Confucius said, “When young, beware of fighting; when strong, beware of sex; and when old, beware of possession,” which simply means that a boy loves fighting, a young man loves women, and an old man loves money.
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Faced with this compound of physical, mental and moral assets, the Chinese takes an attitude toward man himself, as toward all other problems, which may be summed up in the phrase: “Let us be reasonable.” This is an attitude of expecting neither too much nor too little. Man is, as it were, sandwiched between heaven and earth, between idealism and realism, between lofty thoughts and the baser passions. Being so sandwiched is the very essence of humanity; it is human to have thirst of knowledge and thirst for water, to love a good idea and a good dish of pork with bamboo shoots, and to admire a beautiful saying and a beautiful woman. This being the case, out world is necessarily an imperfect world. Of course there is a chance of taking human society in hand and making it better, but the Chinese do expect either perfect peace or perfect happiness. There is a story illustrating this point of view. There was a man who was in Hell and about to be re-incarnated, and he said to the King of Re-incarnation, “If you want me to return to the earth as a human being, I will go only on my own conditions.” “And what are they?” asked the King. The man replied, “I must be born the son of a cabinet minister and father of a future ‘Literally Wrangler’ (the scholar who comes out first at the national examinations). I must have ten thousand acres of land surrounding my home and fish ponds and fruits of every kind and a beautiful wife and pretty concubines, all good and loving to me, and rooms stocked to the ceiling with gold and pearls and cellars stocked full of grain and trunks chockful of money, and I myself must be a Grand Councilor or a Duke of the First Rank and enjoy honor and prosperity and live until I am a hundred years old.” And the King of the Re-incarnation replied, “If there was such a lot on earth, I would go and be re-incarnated myself, and not give it to you!”
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The reasonable attitude is, since we’ve got this human nature, let’s start with it. Besides, there is no escaping from it anyway. Passions and instincts are originally good or originally bad, but there is not much use taking about them, is there? On the other hand, there is the danger of our being enslaved by them. Just stay in the middle of the road. This reasonable attitude creates such a forgiving kind of philosophy that, at least to a cultured, broad-minded scholar who lives according the spirit of reasonableness, any human error or misbehavior whatsoever, legal or moral or political, which can be labeled as “common human nature” (more literally, “man’s normal passions”), is excusable. The Chinese go so far as to assume that Heaven or God Himself is quite a reasonable being, that if you live reasonably, according to your best lights, you have nothing to fear, that peace of conscience is the greatest of all gifts, and that a man with a clear conscience need not be afraid even of ghosts. With a reasonable God supervising the affairs of reasonable and some unreasonable beings, everything is quite all right in this world. Tyrants die; traitors commit suicide; the grasping fellow is seen selling his property; the sons of a powerful and rich collector of curios (about whom tales are told of grasping greed or extortion by power) are seen selling out the collection on which their father spent so much thought and trouble, and these same curios are now being dispersed among other families; murderers are found out and dead and wronged women are avenged. Sometimes, but quite seldom, an oppressed person cries out, “Heaven has no eyes!” (Justice is blind.) Eventually, both in Taoism and Confucianism, the conclusion and highest goal of this philosophy is complete understanding of and harmony with nature, resulting in what I may call “reasonable naturalism,” if we must have a term for classification. A reasonable naturalist then settles down to this life with a sort of animal satisfaction. As Chinese illiterate women put it, “Others gave birth to us and we give birth to others. What else are we to do?”
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There is a terrible philosophy in this saying, “Others gave birth to us and we give birth to others.” Life becomes a biological procession and the question of immortality is sidetracked. For that is the exact feeling of a Chinese grandfather holding his grandchild by the hand and going to the shops to buy some candy, with the thought that in five or ten years he will be returning to his grave or to his ancestors. The best that we can hope for in life is that we shall not have sons and grandsons of whom we need be ashamed. The whole patter of Chinese life is organized according to this one idea.
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4. 基督徒、希臘人、中國人
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人類的觀點有很多，包括傳統的基督神學觀點、希臘異教觀點，以及中國的道、儒觀點。（佛教的觀點太悲哀了，所以我沒列出來。）這些觀點在深遠的寓意上並無多大差異，尤其生物學和人類學較佳的現代人已經能夠給這些觀點更廣泛的解讀。不過，就原始意義而言，這些觀點是存在差異的。
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傳統、正統的基督教觀點認為，上帝創造的人類原本無瑕、純潔、愚昧、快樂，赤裸地生活在伊甸園裡。之後，人類擁有了知識、智慧，並出現了「人類的墮落」，人類因此遭受應有的苦難，像是（１）男人必須靠自己的血汗工作，以及（２）女人分娩的痛苦。相對於人類最初的純潔與無瑕，基督教用新的元素來解釋人類現在的瑕疵，那就是惡魔。惡魔對人的影響主要表現在人的身體，然而惡魔更高的本質是對靈魂的影響。我不清楚基督教神學何時開始出現「靈魂」的概念，不過「靈魂」後來變成一件重要的東西，而不只是一種功能；它是一個實體，而不是一個狀態；而且靈魂是人類和動物最明顯的區別，動物並沒有值得救贖的靈魂。邏輯到此打住，因為得先解釋「惡魔」的起源，而且中世紀神學家繼續用他們慣有的學術邏輯探究惡魔起源的問題時，陷入了困境。他們無法完全承認惡魔就是上帝的化身，他們也不能完全同意在元初宇宙中，惡魔和上帝同為不朽。在走投無路之下，他們只能同意惡魔一定是墮落的天使，雖然這樣的說法仍未回答何為惡魔的起源（因為必須有另一個惡魔來引誘墮落的天使），而不盡人意，但他們也只能這樣了。儘管如此，這些討論引發了人類對精神和肉體二元論的探索，直到今天，這個虛構的二元論仍舊無所不在，且強烈影響著我們的生命和幸福哲學。
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接著出現了「救贖」的概念。目前，用作獻祭的羔羊仍舊比喻救贖，而獻祭羔羊的概念可進一步追溯到上帝對烤肉香味的渴望，以及上帝原諒眾生的代價。藉由救贖，可以一次洗清所有罪惡，並且再次回到無瑕。「無瑕」是基督教思想中最有趣的概念。由於無瑕的概念出現於古世界的衰落時期，因此基督教開始傾向強調來世，救世的問題也取代了關於幸福或生命本身的問題。這個想法的重點在於，如何活著離開明顯沉淪於腐敗與混亂、注定要滅亡的世界。「永生」因此被賦予了絕對的重要性。這和原始創世紀的故事是相抵觸的，故事中上帝並不希望人類長生不死。根據創世紀的故事，亞當和夏娃之所以被逐出伊甸園，並不是因為他們嚐了智慧之樹的果實（這也是一般所認為的原因），而是因為上帝害怕他們會再次偷嘗禁果，吃了生命之樹的果實後長生不死：
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接著耶和華上帝說，看哪，那男人現在就像我們一樣，能夠分辨善惡：現在，為了避免他 也伸手摘了生命之樹的果實來吃，並且長生不死：
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因此，上帝將他打發出了伊甸園，使他耕種他所自出之土。
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驅逐了男人以後，上帝在伊甸園的東方安置了基路伯（cherubims）和一把向各方旋轉的火焰之劍，以看守生命之樹。
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智慧之樹似乎是在園中的中央某處，生命之樹則靠近東邊的入口處，我們都知道基路伯仍在那守衛著不讓人類靠近。
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總體來看，一般仍相信有完全的墮落，也就是享受生活是有罪和邪惡的，對生活感到不安才是美德，而且基本上人類只有倚靠外來的強大力量才能拯救自己。「罪」的信條仍是今日基督教廣為奉行的基本假設。基督教傳教士吸引皈依者的方法，一般都是從強調罪感意識和人類本質的邪惡開始（這麼做當然是必要的，因為傳教士早就已經有了現成的補救方法）。總而言之，要讓一個人成為基督徒，就必須讓他相信他是罪人。有人說得更殘酷：「我們國家的宗教太侷限於罪的思考，以至於可敬的人再也不敢在教堂露面。」
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希臘異教世界本身即是一個截然不同的世界，因此他們對於人類的看法也相異其趣。最讓我訝異的是，基督教渴望人類可以像神一樣，希臘人卻將他們的神塑造地像人類一樣。奧林匹亞眾神無疑是愉快、多情、博愛、欺騙、吵鬧、不遵守誓言，又任性莽撞的一群；祂們喜好打獵、駕馭戰車和投擲標槍，就像希臘人自己一樣（希臘人也是男女關係混雜，私生子的數目多得不可思議）。到目前為止，就神與人之間的差異而言，神只是有在天堂發射雷電和在凡間養育植物的神聖能力，祂們長生不死，喝花蜜而不喝酒（用來釀造兩者的果實幾乎一樣）。每個人都會覺得和這群神很親近，可以背著背包和阿波羅（Apollo）或雅典娜（Athene）去打獵，或半路攔下墨丘利（Mercury）與之閒聊，就跟和西聯匯款（Western Union）的信差閒聊一樣，如果聊得太起勁了，我們可以想像墨丘利說：「是阿，好吧，不好意思，但我得繼續送消息到第七十二街去了。」希臘人並不神聖，但希臘的神卻帶有人性。這和完美的基督教上帝是多麼不同啊！所以神只是另一個人種，祂們屬於巨人的種族、生來即長生不死，凡間的人類則不是如此。在這樣的背景下，也就出現了關於德墨忒耳（Demeter）、普洛塞賓娜（Proserpina）和奧菲斯（Orpheus）等最動人的美麗故事。對神的信仰常被視為理所當然，就連蘇格拉底在喝下毒芹汁之前，也曾向神獻酒祈求盡快脫離人世。這和儒教的態度非常相像，而這樣的態度在當時是理所當然的。不幸的是，現代希臘思維對於人和神會採取何種態度已無從得知，因為希臘異教世界並不是現代的，現代基督教世界也不是希臘的。這是可惜的地方。
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總體來看，希臘人接受人類終究難逃一死，有時還受制於殘酷的命運。接受了這樣的價值觀以後，人類便滿足於作自己（希臘人因此熱愛生命和宇宙），除了全心投入物質世界的科學探索之外，也有興趣了解生命的美好、真實與美麗。希臘人並沒有如伊甸園神話般的「黃金時期」，也沒有關於「人類的墮落」的寓言；大洪水之後，丟喀里翁（deucalion）和其妻琵臘（Pyrrha）來到一處平原，希臘人就只是當時他們從地上撿起往身後丟的小石頭變成的罷了。希臘人用幽默看待疾病和憂慮：由於一個年輕女孩無法控制窺探珠寶盒的慾望，疾病和憂慮因而傾巢而出，這個珠寶盒便是潘朵拉的盒子（Pandora’s Box）。希臘人的想像力無比迷人。他們幾乎原封不動地接受人類的本質：基督教可能會說他們是對難逃一死的命運「投降」。但生命有終點是多麼美麗的事：各種探索活動，以及自由、求知若渴的精神都將擁有自由揮灑的空間。有些哲學家認為人性本善，有些則認為人性本惡，但霍布斯（Hobbes）和羅素（Rousseau）之間並不是尖銳的對立。最後，柏拉圖（Plato）認為人類是慾望、情緒和思想的綜合體，理想的人生就是在智慧或真理的引導下，生活達到這三個部分和諧的狀態。柏拉圖認為「思想」是永垂不朽的，但個人的靈魂既不卑劣也不高尚，而是取決於他們是否傾向正義、學習、節制或美的事物。蘇格拉底也認為靈魂是獨立且不朽的存在；如同《費多篇》（Phaedo）所述，「當靈魂獨立存在，並且脫離肉體，肉體也脫離靈魂，這不是死亡那是什麼？」基督教、希臘人、道教和儒教對於人類靈魂不朽的看法顯然是一致的。當然，現代的信徒不見得就此接受靈魂不朽的看法。蘇格拉底對於不朽的信念對現代人而言可能毫無意義，因為許多他用來支持不朽的假設（像是輪迴轉世）並不為現代人所接受。
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中國人的人類觀同樣也認為人類是造物之主（「萬物之靈」），根據儒教的觀點，人和天、地同等並列為「三才」。這個觀點的背景是性靈論：萬物皆有生命或者靈魂，包括山、川等任何古老的事物。風和雷電本身即是靈魂；每一座高山和每一條河川都由一個靈魂主宰；每一種花卉都有一個天庭的花神四季照料，另有一名百花仙子，她的生辰在農曆二月十二日；每一株上百歲的柳樹、松樹、柏樹，或者每一隻上百歲的狐狸和烏龜，都已經達到了不朽的狀態，而成為「精」。
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在這個性靈學的背景之下，人類自然也被認為是靈魂的表現。如同整個宇宙中的所有生命，靈魂是雄性、積極、正面或「陽性」的原則與雌性、被動、負面或「陰性」的原則結合的結果──這只不過是一種對正負電極既僥倖又精明的猜測罷了。靈魂一旦依附在肉體上就稱為「魄」，靈魂若脫離肉體四處飄盪則稱為「魂」。（人格或精神剛烈的人就稱為很有「魄力」的人。）「魂」在生命死後將繼續遊蕩，在正常的情況下，它不會干擾人類，但如果死者沒有下葬或得到祭祀，靈魂就會變成「孤魂野鬼」。基於這個緣故，中元節特別設在農曆七月十五日，以普渡溺斃或客死異鄉而無法安葬的死者。同樣地，如果往生者是死於謀殺或不法之事，則受冤的鬼魂將會繼續遊蕩並製造麻煩，直到冤屈平反、靈魂滿意為止，此時所有的麻煩才會停止。
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人類是靈魂以肉體的形式存在，只要活著，必然會有特定的熱情、慾望，以及流動的「生命能量」（vital energy），或者口語英文說的「神經能量」（nervous energy）。這些元素就其本身而言並無好壞之別，只是典型人類生活不可或缺的一部份。所有的男男女女都有熱情、自然的慾望、崇高的抱負，以及良知；他們有性慾，會感到飢餓、害怕、生氣，也會遭受疾病、痛苦、折磨與死亡。文化即是這些熱情和慾望調和的結果。這就是儒教的觀點，如同第六章末所述，儒教認為人只要活在這些人類本性和諧的狀態之下，就能和天地並列。然而，佛教認為凡人肉身的慾望是應該被消除的有害物，這個看法基本上和中世紀的基督徒一樣。有時候，才智過人或性格多慮的男女會接受這樣的觀點，而成為比丘與比丘尼；但一般來說，健全的儒家意識是反對這種行為的。此外，道教的觀點認為，美貌多才但命運多舛的女子是「墮入凡間的仙女」，她們由於動了凡心或未盡到天庭的責任而受到處罰，被降謫至凡間遭受凡人注定要經歷的歷練。
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人的才智被視為是能量的流動。簡單來說，這個才智就是「精神」，「精」基本上和狐狸精、石頭精與松樹精的精同義。英文最相近的同義字就是我所使用的「vitality energy」（生命能量）或「nervous energy」（神經能量），這些能量在人的一天和一生中會有不同的高低起伏。每個人來到世上一開始都有特定的熱情和慾望，在經歷幼年、少年、成年、老年到死亡的過程中，這些熱情和慾望也自然有不同的發展。孔子曾說，「少之時，戒之在色；及其壯也，戒之在鬥；及其老也，戒之在得。」簡單來說就是少年喜好女色，成年男子喜好打鬥，老人則喜好錢財。（譯註：林語堂原文「When young, beware of fighting；when strong, beware of sex」與孔子所言不符，應為錯誤，故在此作修改。）
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面對肉體、心靈和道德條件的混合，中國人看待人類本身的態度，也和看待所有其他的問題一樣，簡單來說就是「我們都理智點」。這是一種中庸的態度。從古至今，人類都是夾在天地之間、理想主義和現實主義之間，以及崇高的思想和基本的渴望之間。處於兩者之間就是人類最基本的本質；人性就是會同時渴望知識和飲水、同時愛上一個好點子和一盤竹筍炒肉絲，以及同時欣賞一句佳言或一名美人。在這樣的情況下，我們的世界基本上是不完美的世界。人類社會當然有可能在控制之下變得更美好，但中國人並不期望完美的和平或完美的幸福。有一個故事闡明了這個觀點。曾經有一個即將脫離地獄要轉世的人，他跟閻羅王說：「如果您要讓我重返人間作人，就必須滿足我開出的條件。」閻羅王問：「什麼條件？」那人回答：「我要作內閣大臣的兒子，未來狀元（國家考試的榜首）的父親。我家坐擁有一萬畝田，還有魚池和各種果樹。我要娶美麗的妻妾，她們都愛我且善待我。房間裡金銀珠寶堆到天花板去，地窖則儲藏了成堆的穀物和一箱箱滿溢的銀兩。我自己則一定要作宰相或公卿，享受榮華富貴直到一百歲。」閻羅王回答：「凡間要真有那麼多好事，我自己早就投胎去了，哪還輪得到你！」
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理智的態度意指，既然我們已經擁有了這樣的人類本性，那就與之和平共處吧！反正也沒有辦法擺脫本性。雖然熱情和直覺的本質可能有好有壞，但多說也無益，不是嗎？另一方面，人類也可能被其本性所奴役。那就維持中庸吧！在這樣理智的態度之下，產生了一種寬恕的哲學，至少對一個有教養、心胸開放、奉行理智精神生活的學者而言，任何人類所犯的錯誤或偏差行為（不管是法律、道德或政治的），只要能被標上「一般人類天性」（簡言之就是「人之常情」）的標籤，都是可以原諒的。中國人甚至假設神界或神本身也是理智的，如果你一生清白、根據良知行事，那麼你就沒什麼好怕的，心安理得便是最棒的禮物，問心無愧的人甚至連鬼都不用怕。有理智的神監督理智或不理智的萬物之事，那世間的所有事大概都不會出什麼差錯。暴君滅亡；叛徒自殺；貪婪的人變賣財產；權貴和富有的珍品收藏家之子（聽說他們常貪得無厭或者藉權勢進行勒索）變賣他們父親花盡心思、費盡辛苦所得來的寶物，使這些財寶得以分配到其他的家庭；兇手被發現死亡，不道德的婦女則遭到報應。有時候（但很少見）可以見到受壓迫的人大喊，「老天無眼！」（正義是不長眼睛的）。最後，不管是道教或儒教，這個哲學的結論和最終目標都是要了解天性，並與天性和諧共存，如果一定要找個詞將之歸類的話，我可能會稱此為「理性的自然主義」（reasonable naturalism）。理性的自然主義者有點像安分守己的動物一樣，接納自己的生命。如同未受教育的中國婦女所言，「他人賦予我們生命，我們則賦予他人生命。不然我們還要做什麼？」
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「他人賦予我們生命，我們則賦予他人生命。」這句話背後的哲理很糟糕。因為人生變成生物學的程序，永生的問題也就被擱置了。這正是中國祖父牽著孫子的手到商店去買些糖果的心情，因為再過五到十年，他就會踏入棺材或回到祖先的身邊。我們此生最好的期待就是，我們的兒孫不會使我們蒙羞。中國人的整個人生模式都是根據這一個概念所安排的。
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