The Development of the Logical Method in Ancient China Ie (Classic Reprint)

The object and scope of the present study I have indicated in the introductory chapter. I wish only to state here the methods of treatment employed in this essay and its main points of departure from traditional scholarship inC hina. Since the present essay is intended to be an historical study, the first problem it has had to face is the choice of source-material. It is impossible for an occidental reader to imagine the tremendous burden of tradition which I have found necessary to overthrow in writing this work. Throughout I have made it a principle not to accept a book, nor to quote a passage from an accepted work, without sufficient ground. Of the so-called Five Classics of Confucianism, I have accepted only theB ook of Poetry in its entirety, and have deliberately refrained from quoting anything from theB ook of History and from theL i Ki excepting its second book which I regard as genuine. I have rejected the Kwan Tze (g -?), the An Tze Chun Chiu (% J- ffc), and many other works of similar doubtful authenticity. In the case of works which contain later interpolations, I have been especially cautious in selecting quotations. I have, for example, made use of only a few chapters each in the Chuang Tze and the Hsun Tze. A nother problem of great importance is that of textual criticism and interpretation. In this regard, I have freely availed myself of the fruits of textual criticism and philological research which our scholars have accumulated during the last two hundred years. To those scholars I acknowledge my profound indebtedness. For it is through philological studies that we can free ourselves from the subjective biases of traditional commentators and arrive at a real understanding: of what the ancients actually meant. In determining the authenticity of our source-material, we have already had to resort to what has been called Higher Criticism. A not
(Typographical errors above are due to OCR software and don't occur in the book.)