“I am the universe, life is death and death is life, the present is the past and the future, the past and the future are the present, small is big, the yang is the yin, up is down, dirty is clean, male is female, and thick is thin” |
Note made by young Mao in the margins of a copy of Fredrich Paulsen’s System of Ethics.
Patrick French writes in his book Tibet, Tibet: A Personal History of a Lost Land
Patrick French gives the source as:
Stuart r. Schram (ed.) Mao’s Road to Power, Revolutionary Writings 1912 – 1949:
Volume 1 — The Pre-Marxist Period, 1912 – 1920, New York 1992
What is the source of Mao's marginal note to Friedrich Paulsen, A System of Ethics ?
Looking for the actual source of the note attributed to Mao when he was a 24-year-old young student, here is what I found:
Yang Changji, Mao’s high school teacher and future father-in-law, was versed in Kant, Rousseau, and Spencer. Professor Yang held a faculty position at Peking University. Yang Changji is credited with having introduced Mao to Fredrich Paulsen’s A System of Ethics. Mao’s words are to be found on the copy of Ts’ai Yuan-p’ei’s translation of Fredrich Paulsen’s System of Ethics. It still exists( where? ) with 12, 000 words of marginal notes in Mao’s handwriting, which reveal Mao’s admiration of Paulsen’s emphasis on discipline, self- control, and will power. ( Ch’en, ibid, p.44) |
~Red Star Over China by Edgar Snow, page 422
Ts'ai Yüan-p'ei was an educator and a revolutionary, who served as head of Peking University from 1916 to 1926.
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