Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1930-04-20
D. c. MAN RECEIVES
GRANT BY SOCIETY
A. w. Hummel Will Work on
Most Revolutionary Chinese
Book of Age.

East is East and West is West, and
never the twain shall meet"
But they have got TO meet, says
Arthur w. Hummel, chief of the divi-
sion of Chinese literature of the Library
of Congress- who has just been given
a grant by the American Council OF
Learned Societies to translate what he
describes as the most revolutionary Chi
nese book of the age.
Mr. Hummel is custodian of the most
extensive collection of Chinese literature
outside of China, much of which never
has been translated and remains sealed
to the Western World because of the
difficulties of language. 1t contains
some of the finest poetry and philoSo-
ply ever written and some of the Sc
crets of happy living for which the Oc-
cident now seems cropping in vain.
The Orient and Occident. Mr.. Hum
mel says, have seemed far apart largely
because of their philosophical interests.
The first has been concerned with
adapting man to nature, the second
with adapting nature to man. One has
trained the human mind to control
ITSELF while the other has controlled
human beings with laws and machines.
Each has seemed inexplicable and silly
to the other.
Chinese Mentally Happy.
The result. Hummel points out, is
that the Western man is becoming the
creature of the machine, physically
comfortable and mentally unhappy,
while the Chinese is mentally happy
and physically uncomfortable. The
Oriental, he says, has seemed back
ward because he failed to accept
the blessings of stable government in
dustry and science, but this was because
he was not willing to pay the price In
social unhappiness the American and
European were paying.
Now, he believes, the two divergent
PHILOSOPHERS are coming together. Po-
litical organization. law and machinery
are reducing the American to slavery
from which he is revolving. without
knowing the way to escape. This may
be shown him by an understanding OF
the Chinese philosophy Of life.
China, on the other hand, welcomes
Western comforts and is willing to &C
cept science and law, but only In so lar
as they do not interfere seriously with
the values he considers of paramount
Importance in life. So the Chinese are
taking the initiative in the eventual
meeting of the Eastern and Western
mind
This has resulted in the last few
years, Hummel says, in a great Chinese
renaissance. Chinese culture and his
tory in the past has been accepted
without questioning. Now the scholars
are subjecting it to critical examination,
discarding the spurious and preserving
slider essential. This has resulted in
some startling revelations. Authentic
Chinese history has been shortened by
about 1900 years. The golden age"
has been revealed as an unfounded ira
dition. 1t has knocked the breath out
Of the classical Chinese scholars, re-
sponsible for much Of the country's
come from the Ku Shih Pien, or SYM
postum of ancient Chinese history. pub
tshed in 1925 by Ku Chieh-kang.
Governed without Laws.
The golden age" says Hummel, was
a lengendary time when all China was
supposed to have been ruled by benevo-
lent monarchs who governed without
law, but purely by the. example of their
greatness and virtue It has been con-
sidered a matter of history, but the
documents upon which 1t is based have
beel found to have originated much
later The Chinese mind, he points out,
evidently went through exactly the re-
verse process from the Western mind.
Thus the Jewish prophets, dissatisfied
with the social conditions which sur
rounded them, predicted the coming OF
q Messiah and the establishment of
Kingdom of Heaven free from all the
conditions which they disliked. The
Chinese philosophers, confronted with
the same situation, placed their ideal
society in the distant past rather than
the future. So the intellectual side of
Chinese culture, Hummel points out,
always has been turned backward.
Hummel's grant from the American
Council of Learned Societies is for the
translation Of the Ku Shin Pien, con-
sidered q meeting place of the Eastern
and Western minds. 1t is part of the
councils program for making Oriental
culture available to the West in antici-
patton of the time when it will be
turned to in the pursuit of happiness
by race revolving from the machine
Americans, Hummel says get a con-
sistently distorted idea of China from
newspaper reports. He points out that
American journalists, with bare smat-
tering Of Chinese at the best and get
ting most of their information from po-
litical leaders, always portray Chinese
events from the political point of view.
So the people seem grotesquely back
ward, inefficient and weak. From the
Chinese point of view they have lacked
an efficient political organization. be-
cause they considered it step back
ward and not worth the price the West
not been militaristic, because they knew
there were more effective ways of resist
ance. The significant events in Chi
nese history from the Western viewpoint
have been the failures TO achieve things
which the people did not want to
achieve, whereas to themselves the i'm
portant facts concern the achievements
of what they do desire.
Announce Awards to Scholars.
Awards aggregating 100000 to As
scholars were announced yesterday by
the American Council of Learned So
cities.
Prof Roy Joseph Deferrari, head of
the department of Greek and Latin at
Catholic University, was given an award
for his work on concordance of the
works Of the Latin poet, Ovid, and
George Larcombe, research professor Of
medieval history at the same institu-
ton, for work on manuscripts dealing
with the history of the church and of
education during the Middle Ages.
Other nearby awards were:
william F. Albright. professor Of
semetics at Johns Hopkins University,
for an archaeological survey of PaleS-
tine; Edith Marion Smith, professor of
Greek and Latin at Hollins College
Hollins, Va, for study of the relations
of the Phonicean colony at Marseilles
with the f1p0OleS of CSaul