Mao Zedong Read Online Free PDF Page B

which had just been translated into Chinese. Yang explored the moral problems inherent in hedonism and utilitarianism, and in the evolutionary theories then becoming popular. At the same time he queried such deeply held Chinese beliefs as “Family priorities should come before national ones,” and argued that intense family protection of the individual could in fact harm that individual’s development of independence. Yang also encouraged Mao and other students to meet with such radical figures as the Japanese socialist Miyazaki Toten, who came to lecture at the Changsha normal school in March 1917.
    Yang could not make Mao into a philosopher any more than Yuan could make him into a classical exegete, but Yang could and did introduce Mao to a global array of philosophical concepts, and gave him some of the analytical keys to continue his own investigations. By a lucky chance, Mao’s original copy of Paulsen has been preserved, along with the marginal notes that Mao made during his senior year. The notations show him reading with close attention and occasionally expressing his own excitement in writing. Mao was especially intrigued to learn that moral philosophy always sprang from experience and that accordingly morality was different in different societies. From such a perspective, wrote Mao, “all our nation’s two thousand years of scholarship may be said to be unthinking learning.” Sometimes Mao’s comments reflect his awareness of a different road opening up before him. Opposite Paulsen’s comment that “all human beings without exception tend to stress self-interest over the interests of others,” Mao wrote, “I really feel that this explanation is incomplete.” And where Paulsen suggested that certain people were “devoid of feelings for the interests of others ... [and] even take pleasure in the suffering of others,” Mao exclaimed, “Except for those who are sick and crazy, there definitely are no such persons.”
    Many passages of Paulsen reminded Mao of Chinese philosophers or the early historical tales he had loved to read, just as others reminded Mao of something as local as the behavior of the lawless troops in Changsha, or as portentous as the fate of Republican China. Most moving, perhaps, are the moments when Mao read into Paulsen’s words the deepest feelings of his own psyche. “This section is very well done,” he noted next to Paulsen’s powerful passage on the human wish to live “an historical life,” one in which each person could “form and create, love and admire, obey and rule, fight and win, make poetry and dream, think and investigate.” Sometimes Mao sighed over his new knowledge, as is seen in his handwritten comment on the pervasiveness of evil: “I once dreamed of everyone being equal in wisdom, and of the whole human race being made up of sages, so that all laws and rules could be discarded, but now I realize that such a realm cannot exist.”
    Yang not only wrote on ethics, he also wrote on physical culture and personal strength, and here his words touched another chord in Mao. Yang wrote that scholars in China were so physically frail that they were incapable of serving in the army, and hence military service was left to “scoundrels with little education.” On the other hand, in Japan, as in the West, all kinds of sports from baseball and soccer to fencing and rowing were used to strengthen the citizenry, and in those countries outings to scenic spots were a basic part of life. Mao absorbed many of these ideas. He came to believe that exercise should be both violent and systematic, conducted in the nude if possible or in the lightest of clothes, and directed at strengthening the spirit as well as the body. By 1915 at the latest, Mao had begun to go on long tramps through the countryside with small groups of friends, staying with peasant families or in out-of-the-way mountain temples. He even posted notices around in Changsha, calling for “worthy men” to join