Chapter 28 ◇New Knowledge Narratives──【Near People's Shuhua】

◇New Knowledge Narratives──【Near People's Shuhua】 The Content and Comments of "Sun Wen Shuo" The main purpose of the whole book is to break the superstition that "knowing is not difficult but doing is difficult" for thousands of years, and is to let people know the new belief that "doing is not difficult but knowing is difficult".The author puts forward ten evidences to prove the truth of "easy to do but difficult to do".The ten types of evidence are: (1) diet; (2) money; (3) composition; (4) house building; (5) shipbuilding; (6) city building; (7) river opening; (8) electricity; (9) chemistry (10) Evolution.From the first chapter to the fourth chapter, ten things are discussed, which proves that human beings have done many things for a whole life without knowing the reason behind them.It can be seen that doing is easy, but knowing is not easy.The fifth chapter is about knowing and doing.The main idea is that there are three kinds of people in human beings: one is the inventor who knows foresight;The original text said: "With these three lines of people needing each other for use, the Nine Rivers of the Dayu can be dredged, and the Great Wall of the Qin Emperor can be built. This is the saying that people of later generations have misunderstood the saying that knowing is easy and doing is difficult. Although there are foresight The invention of the invention, and those who are late to realize it often think that it is easy to know and ignore it, not only do not follow it and implement it, but also regard it as an ideal and it is difficult to implement. Therefore, the unknowing masses have no reason to do their best to succeed.” (p. 50) This is the gist of the whole book.The following chapter six discusses "If you know what you can do, you must be able to do it".

The seventh chapter discusses "you can do what you don't know".The eighth chapter discusses "Thirty Years as One Day" of the author's self-seeking revolution as a concrete precedent. The book "Sun Wenxue" has a legitimate role, and it is impossible to regard it as a book that only has a political party role.Mr. Zhongshan is a man of action.All true adepts have a visionary plan, separate procedures, and then do it step by step.Politicians who have no plan, just mess around for a day.People who say "specialize in practice, not empty talk" are not actually practitioners, they can only be called fools.The biggest injustice Mr. Zhongshan suffered in his life is that people say he is an "idealist", not a man of action.In fact, a person without an ideal plan can never be a real practitioner.I call Mr. Sun Yat-sen a man of action precisely because he has the courage to formulate an ideal "strategy for nation-building".However, most politicians are fools, and when they hear the ten-year or twenty-year plan, they run away with their ears covered, saying: "We are not just talking about it." The loss of his ideal; it is the loss of everyone who regards his ideal as empty talk.

Most of his "revolutionary strategies" have never been implemented, all for this reason.The sixth chapter of this book records the fact that the Democratic Party did not trust his plan in the early years of the Republic of China, which is of great research value.The long letter sent by Chen Yingshi to Huang Keqiang is attached at the back, which can also be used as a reference for historians.The fundamental concept of this book can be summed up in one sentence: "If you know it, you will be able to do it; if you know it, it will be easier to do it." (Page 50) Mr. Sun Yat-sen made another "State-Building Strategy", which is a very far-reaching plan. (Part of it can be found in the appendix of Chapter Seven of the original book, pages 84-86) He was also afraid that people across the country would still regard this kind of plan as empty talk that could not be implemented, so he first made this "theory" and asked people to abandon the ancient " The superstition of "Easier to Know but Difficult to Do" means that although it is not easy to plan such a plan, it is not difficult to implement it.

This is the original intention of his book. "It is the proper procedure for practitioners to break through resistance".So I say this book has a legitimate role. Some of the many evidences cited in his book that "doing is easy but knowing is difficult" are "doing without knowing", such as food and money.There are several kinds that are "knowledge after doing it". For example, there was no chemistry in ancient times, but there were porcelain, tofu and other chemicals.There are several kinds of "knowledge is easier to do", such as modern chemistry, engineering, electricity and the like.The most important thing in the book is the sentence "knowing it is easier to do".What the author means is that now is the age of scientific prosperity, reference materials that were not available before can now be obtained; various aspects that could not be calculated before can now be comprehensively calculated; .At this time, if we can use scientific knowledge to formulate a practical and ambitious plan, there is absolutely no reason why it cannot be implemented.Before, it was possible to do something without knowing it, but now that you have the correct knowledge, it is easier to do it.

This kind of theory is not limited to one party. No matter what kind of legitimate organization, it should have a long-term plan based on correct knowledge. It should hope that everyone will recognize that plan as "workable" and should use legal procedures to dispel doubts about that plan. ——In other words, no matter what kind of reasoned and well-founded plan it is, everyone must have the belief that "if you know it, you will be able to do it;The great danger now is that there are too few practitioners with ideals.The greater danger now is to regard nonsense as practice and plan as useless.Lu Fangweng said it well: "Year after year, day after day, like the death of the Eastern Zhou Dynasty, there will be no serious illness." Without a plan, the result will be like this. ——That's why I said that Mr. Zhongshan's book is not only useful for political parties. This is my agreement with the general purpose of this book.

There are many things in the book that I do not agree with: For example, in the third chapter on China, "Writing has evolved while language has changed." See Regression"; the fifth chapter discusses Wang Yangming's section. The comparisons are all subsections, so I don't need to criticize them in detail. July 1919 Preface to Selected Works of Hu Shi