may be regarded as his "essence." But to my mind it is better for him to do away with this kind of peculiarity and be like others.
If you say that our national essence is both peculiar and good, then why is it that conditions are as terrible as they are, causing the new school to shake their heads and the old school to heave long sighs?
If you say that conditions are what they are because we have not been able to preserve our national essence, because we have been contaminated by the West, then things ought to have been different before the foreigners came, when the entire country was permeated with this national essence. Why is it, then, that we have had such periods of chaos and disaster as the Spring and Autumn period, the age of the Warring States, and of the Sixteen Kingdoms, that caused the ancients also to heave long sighs?
A friend of mine has once said: "Before we can be expected to preserve our national essence, our national essence must have qualities that will preserve us."
One of the trump cards that advocators of the national heritage have often played (and still play) is that China's national heritage must be good since even foreigners are interested in it. They point to the European Sinologists, for instance, in support of the revival of textual criticism and archaeological research. Lusin's retort was that it was one thing to study antiquities but another thing to "preserve" them.
