Salutary interpreter of Reason alone,rnilluminating minds without dazzling the world,rnhe spoke only as Sage and never as Prophet:rnand yet he was believed, even in his own land!rnIf anything, it is clear that Voltaire wished to use the East asrna club with which to beat the West! It is unmistakaljle in thisrnpoem that Confucius has been transformed into the livingrnembodiment of pure reason, who never attempted prophecy.rnThe real attack here, of course, is on the Church, with itsrnprophetic and supernatural foundations, and thus by projectingrnhis conception of the ideal polity upon China, Voltaire wasrnmerely repeating an age-old pattern. As Bunburv noted inrn1883, Megasthenes and the other “Greeks were led to form toornfavorable an estimate of the state of society among the Indians,rnas well as of their moral character Thus Megasthenes representedrnthe warrior caste as leading a life of perfect ease andrnenjoyment, when not called upon to go out to war, while thernagricultural peasantry pursued their occupations in undisturbedrntranquillitv. . . . But this tendency to find a kind ofrnUtopian perfection in any form of society widely different fromrnthat with which the observer is familiar, is an error of frequentrnoccurrence in all ages. The flattering picture of China byrnVoltaire is an instance that will readily present itself to the mindrnof the modern reader.”rnTrying to Play It Cool at thernIce Cream Parlorrnby Harold McCurdyrnAfter the Bobbitt fun, a shocked shopkeeperrnFumbled the phone requesting “body parts”rnMolded in ice cream for a bridal shower,rnA pretty dish to set before pretty tarts.rnThe stunned shopkeeper stammered to his callerrnHe had no ice cream molds so up-to-date.rnAnd earned, of course, her scorn. Bankruptcy followed.rnHe closed his doors, and joined the Welfare State.rnHere Bunburv has demonstrated his superior wisdom to thatrnof Said, his realization that far from wishing to dominate Asia,rnWestern admirers of Asia from ancient times to the presentrn(and we might include the “multiculturalists” of today) havernwished to make Asia the standard against which the West is tornbe measured, usually to its detriment, whether that standard bernso defined as to uphold the secularized politv dreamed of byrnthe philosophes, to provide an alternative religious vision—as inrnthe Thcosophy of Madame Blavatsky, Annie Besant, and HenryrnSteele Olcott (or our own “New Age” aficionados)—or torninspire and sanction the aesthetic, even decadent luxuriesrndreamed of by Gautier, Baudelaire, or Rimbaud. We havernindeed been in danger not of cruell}’ suppressing the Other, butrnon the contrary of becoming seduced by the Other, in anrnintoxicating narrative parallel on a more refined level to thatrnof Heart of Darkness.rnIn a faculty meeting some years ago at my institution. ThernGeorge Washington University, there was a lengthy discussionrnon revising the General Requirements for our undergraduaternstudents. Debate occurred on whether the university should orrnshould not have a “non-Western” requirement. Rising to speakrnagainst such a requirement—to the immense surprise of manyrnof my colleagues, as I am a professor of Chinese language andrnliterature—I lamented the fact that when my students read ThernPeach Blossom Fan, an important Chinese historical drama ofrnthe I7th century that dranratizes a range of responses to therntraumatic fall of the Ming dynasty to Manchu invaders in 1644,rnI cannot draw effective comparisons with the historical plays ofrnShakespeare, because the students have not read them. Norrncan I draw comparisons between China’s great historical novelrnof the 14th century, ihe Romance of the ihree Kingdoms,rnand the Iliad for the same reason. My plea was this: let us requirernthe students to receive a solid grounding in the great classicsrnof the West and in the entire Western heritage. Our ownrnuniversity and the whole system of higher education of which itrnforms a part is a product of the West. The academic freedomrnwhich allows us to explore tlie complete range of knowledge isrna product of the West. The very enterprise of systematiealKrnand dispassionately studying another civilization, while empatheticallyrnentering into its aesthetic sensibility, historically hasrnemerged only in the West. If we repudiate a grounding in thernWest under the influence of a radical egalitarian ideologyrnwhich holds all cultures to be of equal value and importance,rnand of equal interest to us, we will undermine the very groundrnwe stand on.rnOf course, once that foundation is again solidly established,rnthose who are interested will be encouraged to undertake thernchallenging, serious study of Asian languages and civilizations.rnThey will then do so, because such study is and has been forrncenturies part of the noble endeavor of seeking knowledge as anrnend in itself, always a characteristic of the West, but alsornbecause in the course of encountering other religious andrnphilosophical traditions, they will come to realize again, as didrnMegasthenes in antiquity. Couplet and Intoreetta in the 17thrncentury, Whittier in the I9th, and C.S. Lewis in this century,rnthat there are ultimately “Natural Laws” shared in common,rnconstituting what Lewis calls, in I’he Abolition of Man, andrnusing a Chinese term, the “Tao,” a universal, normative moralrncode. Let the problematic of “difference” vs. “sameness” bernresolved in favor of “sameness” on this level, and let thern”multiculturalists” take note: the sins we commit against ourrnancestors will be atoned bv our children. crn16/CHRONICLESrnrnrn