Yusheng’s
“Learning Lamp” Issue 11

Abstract: Confucius and Plato both revered morality and ideals, yet they displayed drastically different attitudes towards poetry: the former enthusiastically affirmed it, while the latter completely rejected it. This reflects the different social environments of the East and West: Confucius lived before the emergence of a typical two-tiered society, while Plato’s ancient Greece had already entered this stage. In primitive societies, poetry was a holistic reflection of the deep-seated consciousness of society, a form of emotional exchange, and contained elements of self-restraint, contributing to social stability; hence, Confucius strongly advocated for poetry. In two-tiered societies, poetry bore the imprint of different classes, expressing independent individual emotions and demands, including obscene elements, which contradicted the overall demands of society. Therefore, Plato resolutely abolished poetry when planning his ideal state. China entered a two-tiered society during the Warring States period, hence the different attitudes of Mencius and Xunzi towards poetry compared to Confucius. Mencius spoke of “reciting the poems” and “understanding the person,” while Xunzi used poetry as a propaganda tool and believed it should be abolished. By the time of Xunzi’s students Han Fei and Li Si, they, like Plato, attacked poetry. For the next two thousand years, Chinese poetry inherited the tradition of the *Classic of Poetry*, expressing the natural flow of the heart like lamps of the soul, each reflecting the other’s light. Western traditional poetry, however, is like a series of mirrors, reflecting the arduous journey and inner feelings of humanity in a two-tiered society, with the heart being the object of the mirror’s reflection. The metaphor of lamps and mirrors is also suitable for comparing other art forms of the East and West.

Keywords: Poetic art, primordial society, secondary society, natural expression

In the Western cultural tradition, two figures are comparable to Confucius: Socrates and Plato. Neither Confucius nor Socrates left behind written records. We understand Confucius through the *Analects*, compiled by his disciples, and we understand Socrates through the works of Plato, Socrates’ first generation of disciples. Plato is comparable to the compilers of the *Analects*. Many of Plato’s works are written in the form of dialogues between Socrates and others, making it difficult to distinguish between Socrates’ and Plato’s thoughts. Mencius and Confucius lived at least three generations apart, respectively in the Warring States period and the Spring and Autumn period, while Socrates and Plato were contemporaries. In short, the different attitudes of Confucius and Plato towards poetry and other arts are comparable. These different attitudes represent a substantial difference between Eastern and Western cultures, directly reflecting their different social environments and showing that art had different statuses and functions in primitive and secondary societies.

I. The different attitudes of Confucius and Plato towards poetry

First, it must be pointed out that, limited by their era, Confucius and Plato primarily discussed poetry and music, but their ideas also apply to other arts. In ancient times, poetry and music were not distinguished; poetry was always meant to be sung, and singing is a form of stage performance art, which naturally includes visual arts. Ancient Greece had highly developed painting and sculpture, while China lagged behind, but their influence on human thought and behavior was far weaker than that of poetry. Therefore, Confucius and Plato mainly discussed poetry. In expressing one’s thoughts, written art is far more powerful than other art forms.

Confucius paid great attention to the educational role of poetry and music, but unlike modern politicians, he did not regard poetry and music as a vehicle for promoting his political views. Confucius regarded poetry and music as an indispensable organic component of life and society. As Yuan Xingpei, the chief editor of the History of Chinese Literature, Volume 1, said, “Pre-Qin poetry was inseparable from primitive witchcraft and song and dance.” [1] We can imagine that the ruling class of the Xia, Shang and Zhou dynasties also inherited this idea that poetry and art were inseparable from social life. Confucius repeatedly asked his son Boyu to study poetry. Once he said, “If you do not study poetry, you will have nothing to say.” (The Analects: Ji Shi) If a person does not study poetry, he will have nothing to say. He also said to his students, “Why don’t you young men study the Book of Poetry? Poetry can inspire, can help us observe, can foster unity, and can express our grievances. It can be used to serve our fathers in the near term and our rulers in the long term, and to broaden our knowledge of the names of birds, beasts, plants, and trees.” (The Analects, Yang Huo) Here, Confucius emphasizes that studying poetry can inspire ambition, improve observation skills, strengthen unity and friendship, allow for the expression of resentment, and be used to serve parents and rulers. These words illustrate the important place poetry and music held in people’s lives at that time, and how much Confucius valued them. If we find Confucius’s words difficult to understand, it is because we live in a typical secondary society, fundamentally different from the society in which Confucius lived.

The *Analects*, in the chapter “Taibo,” records Confucius saying, “One is inspired by poetry, established by rites, and perfected by music.” The *Book of Rites*, in the chapter “Confucius at Leisure,” also mentions a similar statement: “Where the will leads, poetry follows; where poetry leads, rites follow; where rites lead, music follows.” Here, Confucius views poetry, rites, and music as an interconnected whole. Poetry inspires and expresses one’s aspirations, which are then established by rites and fulfilled by music. Confucius clearly states that the expression, establishment, and fulfillment of human aspirations are entirely devoid of material interests or utilitarian components; it is a harmonious beauty of society. This is similar to Lao Tzu’s saying, “Let them enjoy their food, appreciate their clothing, be content with their dwellings, and delight in their customs.” Human aspirations refer to beautifying the existing life, not demanding more, much less plundering others.

The *Book of Rites*, in its chapter “Explanation of the Classics,” records Confucius saying, “When you enter a country, you can know its teachings. The people there are gentle and kind; this is the teaching of poetry.” Here, Confucius uses the teaching of poetry to summarize the culture and customs of a people: finding joy in their own lives, and living in harmony and order. The *Confucius’s Commentary on Poetry*, a collection of Chu bamboo slips discovered in recent years, comments on almost every poem in the *Classic of Poetry*, further confirming Confucius’s view that poetry and music were an integral part of social life. The preface to the Book of Songs, written in the Western Han Dynasty, summarizes this idea as follows: “Poetry is the expression of one’s will. What is in the heart is the will; what is spoken is poetry. When emotions stir within, they take shape in words; when words are insufficient, one sighs; when sighs are insufficient, one sings; when singing is insufficient, one dances with hands and feet.” This clearly indicates that poetry and music are natural expressions of human emotions, and these naturally expressed poems and music play an important social function: “Therefore, nothing is closer to correcting gains and losses, moving heaven and earth, and touching spirits than poetry.” Emotions are difficult to measure and even more impossible to quantify, so a society built and maintained by emotions can only be a primitive society. Secondary societies are built upon reason, and emotions are under the control of reason.

Ancient Greece was in the early stages of a civilization of warfare. If they had pursued harmony and beauty merely like Confucius, they would have become victims of others’ violence. Therefore, ancient Greece had to pursue utilitarianism and simultaneously needed iron discipline. In Plato’s *Republic*, through dialogues between Socrates and others, he extensively discusses the influence of art on people and the appropriate strategies for a state. Plato first points out that artistic creation stems from humanity’s innate tendency to imitate. For example, there are three types of beds: one is the concept of a bed in Plato’s world of Forms, created by God; another is made by a carpenter; and the third is an imitation by an artist, such as a bed painted by a painter. Artists imitate the surface of things, not their essence. Similarly, poets, in pursuit of fame, strive to stir people’s fluctuating emotions, showing no interest in the rational depths of the human heart. If humanity wants to pursue happiness and morality, it must first control its emotions and avoid acting on impulse. If poets are allowed to do as they please, what will govern a nation will no longer be reason, but the burning desires within the human heart. Therefore, there is no place for artists in Plato’s ideal state; they are among those exiled.

Plato said, “Poetry stimulates and nurtures the passions of lust, anger and all other emotions, as well as desires, pains and pleasures that are inseparable from human action, rather than extinguishing them; poetry allows these passions to dominate human behavior, while they should be controlled if human beings are to increase happiness and sentiments.” Plato specifically suggested that hymns praising gods and famous people could be allowed to exist. [2]

Aristotle pointed out the emotional catharsis of watching tragic performances, but overall, Aristotle’s view of poetry was consistent with Plato’s, placing poetry within a political framework and viewing art as an imitation of the real world.

II. The distinct social environments of China and Greece fostered vastly different poetry.

The starkly different attitudes of the aforementioned Eastern and Western philosophers toward the art of poetry reflect the different social environments of China and ancient Greece: the former remained in the primitive stage of society for a long time, and only emerged as a typical secondary society during the Warring States period, while the latter had already entered a typical secondary society for hundreds of years by the time of Plato.

In her book *The History of God*, the famous British nun Karen Armstrong wrote: “When people created their myths and worshipped their gods, they were not seeking a written explanation of natural phenomena. These symbolic stories and prehistoric rock paintings were attempts by ancient people to express their inner wonder and to connect the mystery of the world around them with their own lives; today’s poets, artists, and musicians are often driven by the same desire.”[3]

Amsterram attributed ancient religions and prehistoric rock paintings to a form of self-expression within the human mind. We use two metaphors to represent Amsterram’s and Plato’s understanding of art: the lamp and the mirror. The lamp reflects its surroundings with its own light, without taking anything back from them; this is the self-expression of art. In primitive societies, this expression was directed towards face-to-face companions—a process of emotional exchange. The mirror, on the other hand, only reflects its surroundings, receiving images of things from them, without giving anything back; this is Plato’s theory of artistic imitation. We believe the images reflected in a mirror are detailed and realistic, but Plato saw them as superficial perceptions, like a painter’s depiction of a bed. Plato argued that the citizens of ancient Greek cities were like people sitting in a cave, facing the inner walls, their feet locked, unable to turn around, only seeing the light shining through the opening onto the cave walls and the projections of puppets or animals at the entrance. In other words, the world as perceived by humans is far from the true nature of the world; only philosophers tirelessly pursue truth. Plato’s philosophers are also like mirrors, reflecting the world, only more accurately and closer to reality.

In 1953, MH Abrams (1912-) published the book “Mirrors and Lamps: Romantic Theory and the Literary Criticism Tradition,” in which he proposed the concept of mirrors and lamps. The mirror represents the writer’s objective and rational reflection on the real world, just as scientists use experimental observation to reveal the objective world; the writers of the Romantic era are like a lamp, illuminating the external and inner world of mankind. Abrams believes that Western literature in the 18th century was a mirror, while literature in the 19th century was a lamp. This fundamental change was due to the Romantic movement that began in the early 19th century, which turned poets into lamps, and they began to use the light emanating from their hearts to illuminate a new world. [4]

It must be pointed out here that mirrors and lamps are only relative concepts, in comparison. This article borrows Abrahams’s concept to summarize two different ways of thinking: one emphasizes the understanding of the external world, and the other emphasizes the expression of the inner self. I use it here to illustrate the differences between the artistic ideas of the original secondary society and the original society, and further represent the differences between Western and Eastern traditional cultures.

In primitive societies, leisure time was used for self-relaxation and enjoyment, just like other animals. Young mammals all exhibit playful behavior, and humans retain this playful nature throughout their lives, including what Plato called the human instinct to imitate. In short, human self-enjoyment contains an element of self-transcendence, referred to here as a broad aesthetic pursuit, encompassing Amsterdam’s religion, rock paintings, and the activities of amateur poets, artists, and musicians that existed in primitive societies.

This kind of artistic self-expression in primitive societies was primarily collective, directed towards other members of that society. Ancient China was home to a large number of gibbons, who lived in groups, their calls carrying for miles. The calls echoed from one place to another, rising and falling like a grand chorus, often depicted by poets. Human art in primitive societies was similar, directed towards society and companions to evoke resonance. Therefore, it used socially acceptable forms and contained elements of self-restraint. However, this was a natural expression of human nature, not a design by sages.

Secondary society is built upon the leisure time of primordial society. Everything aligns with the established direction of society and is coordinated with the established value system, resulting in an unmistakable class imprint. While leisure time in primordial society was a manifestation of human nature, leisure time in secondary society is reserved for the creation of human culture, the pursuit of utilitarianism and self-actualization, and so on. Under the overarching premise of wealth accumulation and a civilization of war, emphasizing science and rationality, art, originally for leisure, also takes on a cognitive dimension, functioning as a mirror. Ancient Greek artists began practicing their fundamental skills through sketching, which is why we are still amazed today by the lifelike depictions of ancient Western figures. This lifelike artistic depiction reflects the mirror function, absent in primordial society.

It must be emphasized that the self-expression of primitive society and secondary society is different. This is similar to classical poetry such as the Book of Songs in China, which can be understood even by the average Westerner because it is the way humans in primitive society express themselves. Many modern poems are difficult for the average person to understand because they express the feelings of an independent individual in secondary society who has a strange feeling about the world around him and feels his own loneliness.

The above is a brief overview. For a detailed discussion of the definitions and distinctions between primary society and secondary society, as well as the different ways in which primary society and secondary society use leisure time, please refer to the previous text. [5, 6] The following describes the differences between ancient Chinese and Western poetry.

Confucius’s evaluation of the *Classic of Poetry* is: “The three hundred poems can be summed up in one phrase: ‘Thoughts without evil.'” (*Analects*, Book 2, Chapter 10) There are two interpretations of Confucius’s phrase “thoughts without evil”: one is the purity of the expressed emotions, and the other is the authenticity of the emotions. Combined, these interpretations mean that only pure emotions are authentic; impure or unauthentic emotions are considered evil and licentious. Once, Zixia asked Confucius, “How beautiful is her smile, how bright her eyes, how radiant her simplicity! What is the purpose of this?” Confucius replied, “Painting comes after the plain background,” meaning that authenticity comes first, and art expresses reality. This reality is the radiance of a beautiful smile, not the ugliness of life. The result is gentleness and integrity, with emotions of uprightness. Confucius believed that the *Guanju* poem in the *Classic of Poetry* embodies this ideal, saying, “The *Guanju* is joyful without being licentious, and sorrowful without being morbid.” (*Analects*, Book 8, Chapter 10)

Such art is an integral part of life itself. Confucius repeatedly urged his son Boyu to study poetry, once saying, “Without studying poetry, one cannot speak properly.” He also said, “Have you studied the *Zhou Nan* and *Shao Nan*? A person who does not study the *Zhou Nan* and *Shao Nan* is like someone standing facing a wall!” (*Analects*, Ji Shi; *Analects*, Yang Huo). Some scholars argue that Confucius’s discussions with his students were accompanied by music. In the *Analects*, Advanced Chapter, when Confucius discussed personal aspirations with his disciples, he asked Zeng Dian to share his thoughts. Zeng Dian “played the zither quietly, then with a clang, put down the zither and stood up,” meaning he stopped playing the zither, made a final gesture, and then stopped with a clang, putting down the zither and sitting up. Such an environment of poetry, literature, rites, and music undoubtedly fostered and cultivated noble moral sentiments, that is, genuine and pure emotions.

It should be emphasized that this kind of upright and beautiful truth is the connotation of human nature, not hypocrisy, let alone political hype. In ancient primitive society, there were also occasional ugly events, and the reason why these things were ugly was that humans were born with the nature to hate them. This nature of hatred is enough to make people forget these events, and even less likely to let them appear in the creation of poetry and art. The author once divided human psychological experience into six levels: biological, social, cultural, wisdom, spiritual and cosmic. The author classified art as the spiritual level, which only has good and bad and no right or wrong. This is an elevation, a sublimation of material life, not a mirror image of the real world. Since the expression of the spiritual level is honest and upright in line with human nature, and ancient China lacked the establishment of a secondary society, Confucius’s artistic thought has a long history and comes from the primitive society of ancient times. [6]

The earliest recorded art theory in China is found in the *Shangshu Yaodian* (Book of Documents), where Emperor Shun tells his music official, “I appoint you to preside over music and teach the young. Make them upright yet gentle, lenient yet cautious, strong yet not cruel, simple yet not arrogant. Poetry expresses feelings, song prolongs speech, music harmonizes with the rhythm of the song, and the tones of the five notes should be harmonious. When the eight instruments are in perfect harmony, without losing their order, then gods and men will be in harmony.” Ancient language was simple and slow, possessing a greater poetic and musical quality compared to modern language.

Yu Shun’s artistic thought is completely consistent with Confucius’s. He mentioned that language lengthening is related to the unity of gods and men. Modern science has confirmed that language lengthening helps to slow down thinking, and slowing down thinking helps to stimulate emotions. This is why poetry is more concise and repetitive than prose. For example, movies that change scenes every one or two seconds can make people completely forget themselves and unable to feel emotions. When people enter a harmonious and balanced state of mind, they are close to Zhuangzi’s sitting in oblivion and Nietzsche’s unity of man and the One. This is the wholeness of the deep consciousness level of the original society mentioned by the author. Due to the influence of animism, this wholeness at the deep consciousness level can cover the surrounding things, that is, the wholeness of people and the surrounding things in the mind. For example, two- or three-year-old children will imagine that the surrounding things are the same as themselves, with the same thoughts and needs, and think that their small pillow also needs to find its mother and needs to be put together with the big pillow. This is just the expression of this wholeness at the deep consciousness level of the original society in human language. [7]

The art of primitive societies and secondary societies is fundamentally different, yet they also share many connections and similarities. To illustrate, a child playing with building blocks will construct models of different things. For the child, these models are purely artistic works of art with only entertainment value. The child doesn’t necessarily want to create a particular model, but rather finds joy in it. If adults try to control a child’s block play, they initially introduce a reward and punishment system, giving different rewards based on the complexity of the block models. When they find this system ineffective, they begin to directly link the complexity of the block models to the child’s material life—that is, to whether the child can continue to live and the quality of their material life. Under this brutal selection process, building blocks cease to be purely recreational for the child. While the block models retain their original artistic form, they rapidly evolve towards infinite complexity under the judges’ standards. Only with this perspective can we understand the fundamental difference in ancient Greek art, because ancient Greek civilization began with a typical secondary society.

The authors of the *Classic of Poetry* were all amateurs, while Homer, the earliest poet of ancient Greece, was a professional poet. These poets first had to compete with other professional poets before they could earn a living through their poetry. If these professional poets, like Yu Shun and Confucius, advocated that poetry should be honest and upright, they would lack competitiveness with employers; they had to abandon the constraints of artistic truthfulness. A famous example is Aristophanes’ comedy *The Clouds*. Because ancient Greek drama used poetic language, the playwrights were also poets. *The Clouds* includes the real-life Socrates, but Aristophanes clearly deviated from reality, giving Socrates a comedic caricature to enhance the stage effect. Socrates is portrayed as a litigator who profits from lawsuits, deceiving young people with sophistry and lies. The real Socrates emphasizes that he is different from the so-called wise men of his time; he is merely pursuing truth, therefore, Socrates teaches young people free of charge. Aristophanes may have been completely unaware of Socrates’ noble aspirations, only knowing how to cater to worldly tastes. When Socrates addressed this matter in his defense before the court that sentenced him to death, he argued that the prosecutors were influenced by Aristophanes. Although the reasons for Socrates’ execution were complex, the fact that a jury of 501 members freely voted on his sentence undoubtedly played a role in the long-standing influence of the comedy “The Clouds” among the residents of Athens.

There are many types of secondary societies, with different classes pursuing different political goals. While the *Classic of Poetry* contains poems of complaint and grievance, these are not angry but rather a chorus of self-expression within the primordial society, lacking explicit political meaning. Ancient Greek poetry often points in different political directions. In the sixth and fifth centuries BC, Greek society underwent rapid change, transitioning from aristocratic to popular politics. Alcaeus, Sappho, and Theognis, three exiled poets living during this era, wrote poems filled with nostalgia for past aristocratic life and condemnation of popular politics. They knew that aristocratic politics was more democratic because the aristocracy possessed political literacy; early popular politics could only be despotic because the common people lacked sufficient understanding of political management. These three ancient Greek poets vehemently denigrated despotic regimes. In contrast, Qu Yuan, an exiled poet during the Warring States period, did not complain about differences in material life but rather about the newly emerging secondary society. Qu Yuan’s political ideals were neither concrete nor realistic, yet full of artistic fantasy, because his thinking remained rooted in the primordial society.

Individuals in secondary societies can no longer communicate psychologically and emotionally with society as they did in primordial societies. The integrity of secondary societies depends on the shared goals and directions among their members. Individuals in secondary societies become infinitely lonely, and they seek to recapture the sense of unity at the deep-seated level of consciousness found in primordial societies. Religion is one avenue, and art is another—the aforementioned psychological experiences of oneness with the divine and convergence with the One. Secondary societies achieve psychological and emotional communication without physical contact through art. Therefore, one of the key differences between art in primordial and secondary societies lies in the presence and extent of detailed descriptions. Only detailed descriptions can vividly portray people from afar. For example, the detail of how a woman opens a letter from her lover can be described in hundreds of words, and films can use dozens of close-up shots to depict the protagonist’s complex emotions. Early Chinese literary works such as the *Classic of Poetry* and the *Classic of Mountains and Seas* lack such detailed descriptions, while early ancient Greek literature is full of them. Due to space constraints, this article cannot cite the content of the works to prove this point. Instead, it uses the length of the *Classic of Poetry* and Homer’s epics as an example. The *Classic of Poetry* contains over three hundred poems, totaling just over thirty thousand characters, while Homer’s epics consist of only two poems, one telling the story of a war and the other the story of a hero returning home after battle. These two poems, translated into Chinese, would amount to hundreds of thousands of characters. Clearly, there is a vast difference in the level of detail between the *Classic of Poetry*, the *Classic of Mountains and Seas*, and Homer’s epics.

Due to human nature, certain realities of life are not elevated to a spiritual level and expressed in language. Secondary societies break down this filtering function of the human brain. One example is the description of obscene details. While the *Classic of Poetry* adheres to the principles of honesty and moderation and contains no obscene content, obscenity seems to have been a part of ancient Greek life, and poetry was not immune. Ancient Greek paintings and sculptures contain obscene content, such as scenes of a group of men engaging in sexual intercourse, or a bronze statue from the 2nd century BC depicting a hunchback masturbating in public. Ancient Greek poetry also directly describes scenes of men gathering for sexual intercourse, which are not suitable for direct quotation. Nietzsche used the sun god to represent finding oneself in dreams and Dionysus to represent drunken revelry and debauchery. Nietzsche cited two poets to represent the sun god and Dionysus: Homer and Archilochus, who lived slightly later than Homer. Archilochus was a famous rogue poet. Because his fiancée’s father disapproved of the marriage, the engagement was annulled. In revenge, Archilochus used the most obscene language to describe his fiancée and her sister in his poems. The circulation of these poems made it impossible for the girlfriend’s family to survive, and all three members of the family hanged themselves. This also illustrates that the taboo against obscene content is the same throughout history and across cultures, and helps us understand why Plato advocated banning poetry.

III. Social Changes and the Transformation of Poetic Art and Thought during the Spring and Autumn and Warring States Periods

During the Warring States period, China gradually entered a secondary society, which differed significantly from ancient Greek society. China lacked a developed commercial civilization and a strong middle class, which somewhat limited the development of independent individuals in this secondary society. However, China had indeed entered a secondary society, and its attitude towards poetry had changed accordingly. Let’s examine the different attitudes of the renowned Confucian masters Mencius and Xunzi towards poetry. Mencius and Xunzi had clearly lost the attitude of Confucius in wholeheartedly promoting poetry and no longer advocated so-called “poetic education.” In their eyes, poetry was merely a form of written art, a vehicle for expressing personal thoughts. Although Mencius advocated the inherent goodness of human nature, he also believed that people in a secondary society were fundamentally different and could not be generalized.

In *Mencius, Wan Zhang II*, it says, “It is not enough to befriend the virtuous men of the world; one must also discuss the ancients. To recite their poems and read their books, is it acceptable to not know the people themselves? Therefore, one must discuss their times; this is true friendship.” Mencius clearly believes that understanding the outstanding figures of the present world is insufficient; one must also understand the outstanding figures of ancient times. To understand the outstanding figures of ancient times, one must recite their poems, know the people themselves, and also understand the era in which they lived. In *Jin Xin I*, Mencius says, “A gentleman has three joys, and ruling the world is not among them. The first joy is that both parents are alive and brothers are without misfortune. The second joy is that one can look up to Heaven without shame and down to men without blushing. The third joy is that one can educate the talented people of the world. A gentleman has three joys, and ruling the world is not among them.” Mencius adopted a negative attitude towards the politics of the Warring States period, so ruling the world was irrelevant to him. Mencius’s words above depict a self-sufficient individual in a secondary society, enjoying his own pleasures. In Mencius’s view, people have become independent individuals with different thoughts, and poetry can only represent the author. Therefore, to read poetry, one must also understand the poet and the era in which he lived.

Xunzi, in his “Exhortation to Learning,” stated that “The Book of Poetry is where the most moderate sounds cease,” referring to the *Classic of Poetry*, not the poetry of the Warring States period. In his “Discourse on Music,” Xunzi said, “Music unites, rites differentiate,” advocating that music can facilitate communication and achieve unity. This is because music is less expressive of individuality than poetry, although Xunzi also emphasized that “a gentleman does not listen to lewd sounds.” Xunzi wrote a popular poem, “Cheng Xiang,” to promote his political views. Cheng Xiang was an ancient form of artistic performance; Xunzi’s use of this form clearly leveraged its popularity to promote his political ideas to the common people. This differs from Confucius. While poetry can be used to promote different political views, it is certainly among those that can be abolished. In his “Effects of Confucianism,” Xunzi said that refined Confucian scholars advocated “following the later kings, unifying the system, emphasizing rites and rituals while eliminating poetry and books.” Xunzi approved of refined Confucian scholars, saying, “Using refined Confucian scholars will ensure the peace of a state with a thousand chariots.” Therefore, Xunzi believed that poetry and books could be abolished under certain circumstances.

Legalist figures Shang Yang and Han Fei, a student of Xunzi, both advocated burning books to suppress artistic freedom, which is somewhat similar to Plato’s ideas. When Li Si, another student of Xunzi, came to power, he actually burned books and buried scholars alive. While Shang Yang and Han Fei advocated for national wealth and military strength, Plato advocated designing an ideal state for humanity. Plato’s ideal state was limited by the political situation of his time, designed within the premise of a war-torn civilization, thus imposing cruel restrictions on human nature, including the pursuit of poetry and art. From a Daoist perspective, Plato’s ideal state is not even an ideal. Like Plato, Shang Yang and Han Fei neglected the reality of the diverse and harmonious nature of a secondary human society, overemphasizing the unity of values.

Mencius said in *Li Lou II*, “When the traces of the kings disappeared, poetry perished; when poetry perished, the *Spring and Autumn Annals* was written.” Mencius was referring to a shift from poetic creation to historical prose during the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods. This is, of course, relative; Mencius may not have known that China’s greatest poet, Qu Yuan, emerged during the Warring States period. Mencius was referring to individual creation; state documents such as books, histories, and the *I Ching* could only be in prose. A key difference between poetry and prose is that the former is rich in emotion, while the latter is rich in reason; the former is like a lamp, the latter like a mirror. This is precisely the difference between the artistic thought of primitive society and secondary society, and this artistic thought also influences the way people think. Therefore, Mencius’s statement, “When the traces of the kings disappeared, poetry perished; when poetry perished, the *Spring and Autumn Annals* was written,” also represents the profound social transformation of China during the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods, from primitive society to a typical secondary society. In primitive society, people faced each other, speaking with emotion, reflecting each other like lamps, similar to poetry; in secondary society, people faced countless strangers, speaking with restraint, objective like a mirror, far removed from poetry. If we see a society where people are gentle and kind today, we would never say, as Confucius did, that this is “poetry education,” because the behavior of people in a secondary society has little to do with poetry.

It should be pointed out here that Lao Tzu and Confucius lived in the late Spring and Autumn Period, a painful period before the birth of a second-level society, before a typical second-level society had emerged. Lao Tzu and Confucius’s way of thinking still had poetic characteristics. The Tao Te Ching was written in rhyme and, like the Analects, was aphoristic and contained emotional elements. Even the Spring and Autumn Annals compiled by Confucius contained profound meanings in concise language and did not speak directly about everything.

IV. Impact on Later Generations

While both Confucius and Plato held different attitudes towards poetry and art, both prioritizing social health and human happiness, today’s society, though unprecedentedly complex and boasting cutting-edge communication technologies, remains a secondary society. Therefore, contemporary art shares many similarities with ancient Greek art, making it difficult to argue that today’s art is inherently more advanced or complex. As art within a secondary society, ancient Greek art had reached its zenith. While works of art from primordial societies like the *Classic of Poetry* and the *Classic of Mountains and Seas* appear significantly different from contemporary art, they also share common ground with modern people.

It is said that wild cattle follow the same path throughout their lives: they rise in the morning, slowly graze on the grassland, drink from the nearby river in the evening, and then spend the night in the woods, repeating this cycle endlessly. Human thought in a two-tiered society works similarly; generation after generation, they repeat the same patterns of thought from the beginning. This is also true of traditional poetic art in the East and West: China inherits the tradition of the *Classic of Poetry*, like a lamp; the West inherits the tradition of Homeric epics, like a mirror.

Professor Stephen Irwin of Harvard University, who specializes in comparative literature, said: The concept of Western literature originated from ancient epics and dramas, telling stories and performing stories; Western poetry is the same, telling stories, creating scenes and perspectives, and telling itself through masks. This kind of poetry is a few professional poets facing the general public. Irwin believes that Chinese poetry is completely different. Chinese poetry is a kind of art of friendship and companionship, facing kindred spirits, that is, people who can understand the same state of mind. Chinese poetry can also be said to be a high-level form of talking about one’s heart. [8] In short, the traditional Western poetry art is more like a mirror, creating scenes and perspectives is only part of the creation of scenes and perspectives in the artificial secondary society; the traditional Chinese poetry inherits the idea of ​​the collective expression of emotions in the original society, only the object of expression in the original society is other members of society, while in front of countless strangers in the secondary society, the object of expression can only be kindred spirits.

Even Qu Yuan’s long poems can hardly be said to have any mirror-like effect. “Li Sao” cannot reflect the obscure details of our society, nor does it depict a unique world that can be imitated. In short, reading “Li Sao” is about emotional resonance, offering no practical guidance for real life. For the next two thousand years, Chinese poetry primarily expressed personal feelings, leaving the exposure of secondary social realities to political essays. This was partly due to Confucianism’s political approach of using the primordial society as a model for governing secondary societies, and partly because the unified autocratic dynasties after the Qin and Han dynasties left little room for free thought for intellectuals. Instead, their monotonous lives and perilous political environment forced them to seek solace in traditional Daoist thought. This is somewhat similar to Western Christians’ collective prayer to God every Sunday, allowing isolated individuals in secondary societies to rediscover the social wholeness at a deeper level of consciousness in their primordial society. In that moment of prayer, they truly feel as if they are all connected to a higher, greater entity, God. Ancient Chinese poetry also has a similar function, allowing authors and readers to feel those individual lamps of the soul, shining brightly together, forming a unified whole, where they themselves remain part of this spiritual whole. This is certainly different from the poetry of primitive societies. For example, Tao Yuanming’s poems are typical pastoral poems. Besides self-expression, his poems often reveal criticism of secondary societies, flaunting their lofty ideals, which in fact constitute a value system of secondary societies. Nevertheless, Chinese traditional poetry, in both style and content, is still similar to the poetry of primitive societies, and different from Western traditional poetry. The mainstream of Chinese traditional poetry expresses a tranquil and lofty state of mind, a deep feeling of humanity’s eternal consciousness.

The Roman Empire, following ancient Greece, fully inherited its cultural traditions. However, giants rarely emerge after giants, and Roman art consequently paled in comparison. Medieval European art became subservient to Christianity; only the Renaissance, rediscovering the art of ancient Greece and Rome, initiated the world’s modernization process. The evolution of modern Western intellectual history began with the Enlightenment movement’s opposition to Christian theocracy, followed by the Romantic movement. It was Abrahams, an American literary critic specializing in Western Romanticism, who proposed the concept of the mirror and the lamp to encapsulate this process of humanity’s return to nature and human nature. The Romantic movement, beginning in the early 19th century, transformed Western poets into a lamp once again, but these were individuals within modern secondary society, artificial beings, unlike the emphasis on the natural self in traditional Chinese poetry. This is why modern Western poetry has a reputation for being bizarre and difficult to understand.

Traditional Chinese poets inherited the dignified and upright tradition of the *Classic of Poetry*, with Qu Yuan’s stammering lament becoming an unparalleled masterpiece. Secondary society is ever-changing and complex, making it essential to use poetry as a mirror to reflect possible future paths. Poets like Shakespeare, who vividly portrayed the myriad aspects of society, are arguably absent from Chinese poetry to this day. The Western poetic awareness of the tragic nature of life and the horrors of society is entirely absent from traditional Chinese poetry; those negative elements may have been mistakenly considered taboo and filtered out.

V. Other Arts

Art has more room for free development than society, making it easier to continue along the path that began more than two thousand years ago. As a result, the differences between other traditional arts in the East and West can mostly be explained by the differences between primitive society and secondary society.

Louis XIV told his court painter, “I trust you so much that I entrust you with the most sacred thing in the world, my reputation.” Only in a secondary society does art possess such political and economic value. Similarly, only different reflections in a mirror can bring about such vastly different social effects. Court painters in Chinese history also painted portraits of emperors, clearly idealized images, the emperor as the painter envisioned him. Furthermore, because portraits of emperors throughout Chinese history seem to resemble each other, it’s a traditional image, not unique to any one painter. That is to say, even the portraits of emperors are similar, determined by the collective mentality of the group of painters. Our traditional Chinese painting principles include concepts like “contemplating the Dao with a clear mind,” “vibrant spirit,” and “the realm beyond the image,” emphasizing spirit and avoiding superficial resemblance in Western traditional art. The result is that the expression can only convey the painter’s own spirit and essence. They use landscapes, fish, insects, flowers, and birds as symbolic language to express their emotions, conveying not just the painter’s individual feelings, but a deep sense of humanity’s eternal consciousness, a traditional, tranquil, and lofty realm of thought.

The author once pointed out that due to the wars between ancient Greek city-states and the social circumstances of secondary societies and interactions with strangers, Western painting and modeling focused primarily on figures, with little knowledge of painting other subjects. Landscape painting did not appear until the seventeenth century in the Netherlands. [5, pp. 305-317] Ancient Greek figure modeling was initially influenced by Egypt, but quickly moved towards greater realism, shedding traces of idealization. Today, when we see ancient Greek figure sculptures, we are moved by the delicacy of the stripes on their clothing and the lifelikeness of their faces. This tradition reached its zenith with Leonardo da Vinci’s portrait “Mona Lisa” and Michelangelo’s sculpture “David.” It is said that the invention of photography brought confusion to this mirror art idea: would painters be out of a job? In the latter half of the nineteenth century, when Romanticism prevailed, the so-called Impressionist painters emerged. They used rough brushstrokes to create what they called impressions, which were initially ridiculed as unfinished sketches. To be precise, Impressionism still falls under the category of mirror images, only with the addition of the painter’s subjective color. Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) is considered the founder of Expressionism, the first Western painter to express his emotions through color and form. In my view, the emotions conveyed in Van Gogh’s paintings are merely a kind of existential bewilderment, not particularly fantastical. Most Expressionist painters after Van Gogh are known for their eccentricities; they sought to express the absurdity and fear inherent in human existence. More than two thousand years after ancient Greek visual art, it was with Van Gogh that we returned to the original social art expression, but the expression of the superficial feelings of individual consciousness within a secondary society differed from the expression of the deeper consciousness of humanity in the original social art.

According to research by Paul S. Ropp, a Chinese social history expert at the University of Clarco, the development of Chinese and Western novels share striking similarities in terms of time and chronology. For example, both saw rapid development of the novel alongside commercialization and urbanization from the 14th to the 18th centuries; both exhibited autobiographical tendencies in novels from the 16th to the 19th centuries; and both ultimately developed a tendency to criticize mainstream society. Ropp’s observations on the differences between Eastern and Western novels can largely be explained by the distinction between primary and secondary societies. This analysis will not be comprehensive but will only offer examples. For instance, Chinese novels possess a long-term vision and a broad social perspective. This is entirely because primary society is singular, uniform in time and space, and based on human nature, while secondary society is man-made and constantly changing in time and space. The Chinese people still harbor ideals of a primary society, hence their long-term and broad perspective. Compared to Western novels, Chinese novels have a looser structure, lack linear story development, and the climax often occurs not at the end but at one-third or one-quarter of the way through the story. Linear development is a matter for secondary societies. Primitive societies themselves have no direction, and the stories they produce are structurally loose and focus on the afterglow after the climax.

Compared with Western novels, Chinese novels lack tragic heroes with extreme personalities and circumstances. Human civilized life is tragic, that is, the tragedy of life caused by the contradiction between secondary society and human nature. The complex and dangerous secondary social environment requires extreme heroes to solve various insurmountable difficulties. Primitive social life is stable and simple, and people need love and justice. Therefore, the heroes in Chinese novels have the virtue of moderation. [9]

Finally, I’d like to conclude this article by saying a few words about *Dream of the Red Chamber*. The core idea of ​​*Dream of the Red Chamber* is to uphold the values ​​of equality and kinship found in the original society, while relentlessly criticizing the values ​​of the secondary society. Kinship and equality are the main values ​​of the original society, and in the secondary society, women are less influenced by its ideologies than men, young people are less influenced by them than adults, and those who appreciate art are less influenced by those who prioritize practicality. The idealized characters in *Dream of the Red Chamber* are precisely women, young people, and artistic poets and actors. The tragedy depicted in *Dream of the Red Chamber* is the tragedy of the original society gradually disappearing under the oppressive influence of the secondary society. While Lin Daiyu and Jia Baoyu may have real-life prototypes, their artistic images can only be fictional; such characters are no longer permitted in the reality of the secondary society. Lin Daiyu is an ideal figure from the original society, while Xue Baochai is an ideal figure from the secondary society. Xue Baochai’s tragedy is a tragedy of the secondary society itself—a Western-style tragedy. Lin Daiyu’s tragedy is the tragedy of primal social ideals, a tragedy of humanity, a tragedy of the light of the soul being extinguished under the pressure of countless mirrors, and a tragedy brought to humanity by civilized society. From the perspective of Western cultural tradition, Lin Daiyu’s tragedy is more akin to the tragedy caused by Adam and Eve’s insistence on returning to the pure Garden of Eden, rather than the tragedy caused by their descendants killing each other in a secondary society.

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literature

[1] Yuan Xingpei (2005): History of Chinese Literature, Volume 1, Beijing: Higher Education Press, 2005, p. 6.

[2] Stanley Rosen (2003): The Philosopher’s Handbook: From Republic by Plato, p201-215.

All of Plato’s works cited in this article are translated by the author himself from English.

[3]. Karen Armstrong (1994): A History of God. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994, p5.

[4] MH Abrams (1953): The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition.. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1953.

[5] Yu Sheng: A New Perspective on the Differences Between Eastern and Western Cultures, see the 7th issue of “Xue Deng” on this website (http://www.confucius2000.com)

[6] Li Yousheng (2006): A New Interpretation of Chinese Taoism. London, Canada: Taoist Rehabilitation Centre, 2006.

[7] You Sheng (2008): The Five Degrees of Mourning and Early Literary Thought in the East and West. *Xuedeng*, Issue 8, (http://www.confucius2000.com)

[8] Stephen Owen (1990): Poetry in the Chinese Tradition. In PS Ropp ed, Heritage of China, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990.

[9] Paul S. Ropp (1990): The Distinctive Art of Chinese Fiction. In PS Ropp ed, Heritage of China, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990.

author By Dr. You-Sheng Li

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