Our most honored heroes are said to have made their virtue "brilliant"
and one of them engraved on his bath-tub the axiom --
"If you can renovate yourself one day, do so from day to day.
Let there be daily renovation." Our ideal for the ruler is that
the regulation of the state must commence with his regulation of himself.
It is too often forgotten that civilization, like religion,
originally came from the East. Long before Europe and America
were civilized, yea while they were still in a state of barbarism,
there were nations in the East, including China, superior to them
in manners, in education, and in government; possessed of a literature
equal to any, and of arts and sciences totally unknown in the West.
Self-preservation and self-interest make all men restless,
and so Eastern peoples gradually moved to the West taking their knowledge
with them; Western people who came into close contact with them
learned their civilization. This fusion of East and West
was the beginning of Western civilization.
A Chinese proverb compares a pupil who excels his teacher to the color green,
which originates with blue but is superior to it. This may aptly be applied
to Westerners, for they originally learned literature, science, and other arts
from the East; but they have proven apt pupils and have excelled
their old masters. I wish I could find an apothegm concerning
a former master who went back to school and surpassed his clever pupil.
The non-existence of such a maxim probably indicates that no such case
has as yet occurred, but that by no means proves that it never will.
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