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｢緒言｣，宋緒康先生撰

｢展覽推介｣，何廣棪教授撰

Foreword by Professor John Minford

The brave continuation in the midst of destruction and the potential rebirth, of a great and ancient culture, are indeed weighty themes for an exhibition. It was nearly a hundred years ago, in the autumn of 1920, that the great British philosopher, libertarian and pacifist Bertrand Russell visited China, giving numerous lectures on philosophy, which were interpreted for him into Chinese with great skill by the young polyglot linguist Yuen Ren Chao. Upon his return to England, Russell wrote his book The Problem of China, which was eventually published in 1922. He had visited the Soviet Union briefly in 1920, and was already greatly disillusioned with the Bolshevik brand of totalitarianism. He met with Lenin for an hour and saw through to what he called his”impish cruelty”. His subsequent perceptions of China, and his meditations on its modern fate, today seem deeply prophetic. Here are a few of his words:

”A spirit of patriotism is absolutely necessary to the regeneration of China. Independence is to be sought, not as an end in itself, but as a means towards a new blend of Western skill with the traditional Chinese virtues. If this end is not achieved, political independence will have little value… Out of the renaissance spirit now existing in China, it is possible, if foreign nations can be prevented from working havoc, to develop a new civilization better than any that the world has yet known. This is the aim which Young China should set before itself: the preservation of the urbanity and courtesy, the candor and the pacific temper, which are characteristic of the Chinese nation, together with a knowledge of Western science and an application of it to the practical problems of China… Those who value wisdom or beauty, or even the simple enjoyment of life, will find more of these things in China than in the distracted and turbulent West, and will be happy to live where such things are valued. I wish I could hope that China, in return for our scientific knowledge, may give us something of her large tolerance and contemplative peace of mind. ”

These quotations from one of the twentieth century world’s greatest thinkers are a fitting echo of my friend Shu-kong Soong’s idealism, of his deep commitment to the preservation of a vision of a China that is both free and wise.

This vision of his is evident in this remarkable exhibition of documents, gathered together from a brave array of free spirits, all of whom have this in common: that they believe in the enduring values of perennial China, values which go back to the earliest period of this great civilization, and are embodied in such immortal texts as the Tao Te Ching 道德經, whose tranquil wisdom, to quote the great scholar Anthony C. Yu 余國藩,’seems ever more compelling and urgent today in a world where officials of various nations are vying to vaunt their incomparable power’. The continuation and rebirth of this great and splendid civilization , for which this exhibition pleads so eloquently, is a matter of the utmost importance. It is needed not only for China, but for the whole of humanity, indeed for the very survival of our entire planet.  

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