[In the following review, Joad finds Lin to be a spokesman of a dying culture inThe Importance of Living.]

Lin Yutang's previous book, My Country and My People, was a study of the Chinese character and of the attitude to life in which it finds expression. The Importance of Living is a study of Western civilisation judged by the standards and in relation to the values established by the East. The judgement is not favourable. Broadly, it is to the effect that Western civilisation entails a continuous and gigantic sacrifice of ends to means. Having unprecedented command of the means to enjoyment, the Westerner does not know how to enjoy himself, and gives the impression of an athlete whose whole life is a training for a race which is never run.

In a series of rapid vignettes Lin Yutang exhibits the salient features of our civilisation for his amusement and our admonishment. The trouble about dictatorship is that dictators always look so cross. Obviously, they do not enjoy themselves or give enjoyment to others; if they did, they would not be so concerned for their own safety. “Show me a man of violence that came to a good end, and I will take him for my teacher,” says Lao Tse, which Lin Yutang adapts to “Show me a dictator that can dispense with the services of a secret police, and I will be his follower.” The characteristic defects of Western civilisation may be deduced from what it most characteristically values, namely, “efficiency, punctuality and desire for achievement and success.” The pseudo-science of psycho-analysis is neither theoretically true nor pragmatically useful. That it is not theoretically true is unimportant; life is to be enjoyed and not understood, and to contrive a right way of living is more important than to discover truth, even were truth discoverable. As to the utility of psycho-analysis, an ounce of pleasure is worth a ton of Freud. Learn to enjoy your life, and the enjoyment of living will keep the psycho-analyst from the door. Now the question, how should a man order his life “so that he can find the greatest happiness in it is more a practical question, similar to that of how a man should spend his week-end, than a metaphysical proposition as to what is the mystic purpose of his life in the scheme of the universe.”

Women should return to the home for “in the office, women talk with civility; outside the office, they talk with authority.” In essence and purpose an apparatus for the production of babies, a woman can only be happy if she is fulfilling her biological function. Sterility is, therefore, the greatest of the vices. Granted right performance of function in the married woman, granted such steps to make herself attractive as are ancillary thereto in the unmarried, there is no reason why women should not cultivate their minds. But the mind, Lin Yutang insists, can never be woman's main concern.

In the West the old try to remain young. This is a mistake for, rightly regarded, old age is the crown and consummation of life. Old age should be the subject of felicitation, not of condolence.

In China, the first question a person asks the other on an official call, after asking about his name and surname, is “What is your glorious age?” If the person replies apologetically that he is twenty-three or twenty-eight, the other party generally comforts him by saying that he has still a glorious future, and that one day he may become old. But if the person replies that he is thirty-five or thirty-eight, the other party immediately exclaims with deep respect, “Good luck!”; enthusiasm grows in proportion as the gentleman is able to report a higher and higher age, and if the person is anywhere over fifty, the inquirer immediately drops his voice in humility and respect.

In China the care of the old is regarded as no less important than the care of the young. In fact, it is more important; for the young parents have a natural affection, but respect for the old must be cultivated: “A natural man loves his children, but a cultured man loves his parents.”

The enjoyment of living depends upon the right training and exercise of one's inborn faculties. It depends, that is to say, upon realising all that one has it in one to be. Hence “the fulfilment of man's natural instincts is the ultimate goal of morals and politics.” This sounds like individualism run riot; in fact it is nothing of the kind, for the individual, Lin Yutang insists, can only develop himself in contact with his fellows, and the biologically-minded Chinese think of the family rather than of the State as the source of such contacts. Indeed, Lin Yutang insists, the State is the falsest of all the false idols upon whose altars the modern Westerner makes sacrifice of his happiness. While the family is a natural growth, the State is a monster “swallowing up the individual's liberty of speech, his freedom of religious conscience and belief, his personal honour, and even the last and final goal of individual happiness.”

Stated thus as a series of bald assertions, Lin Yutang's comments upon Western civilisation may not appear impressive and, it must be admitted, they are not particularly novel. Nevertheless, his book is, I think, of great value, and this for two reasons. First, it is exceedingly amusing. The foregoing summary has conveyed little or nothing of the charm of the writing or of the dry, impish humour which animates the writer. In My Country and My People Lin Yutang specified “old roguery” as the most distinctive character of the Chinese. I cannot better convey the content of “old roguery” than by hailing Lin Yutang himself as an old rogue, and by giving a quotation in illustration of his quality. Here, then, is Lin Yutang depicting the Western attitude to the aged:

On the whole, I find grand old men with white beards missing in the American picture. … Perhaps it is the safety razor that has done it, a process as deplorable and ignorant and stupid as the deafforestation of the Chinese hills by ignorant farmers, who have deprived North China of its beautiful forests and left the hills as bald and ugly as the American old men's chins. … Gone are the grand old men of America! Gone is Uncle Sam with his goatee, for he has taken a safety razor and shaved it off, to make himself look like a frivolous young fool with his chin sticking out instead of being drawn in gracefully, and a hard glint shining behind horn-rimmed spectacles. What a poor substitute that is for the grand old figure!

The second reason lies in the reflection that the attitude to life which Lin Yutang unfolds is disappearing from the world; he is the spokesman of a dying culture. Characteristic of Western civilisation is an admiration of action, irrespective of its results. So taken up are we with acting that, as Lin Yutang points out, we have forgotten how to loaf. Thus we will move heaven and earth to save five minutes and not have the faintest idea what to do with them when we have saved them. Now there is reason to believe that the values of the West are becoming the values of the East. The author of Red Star Over China tells us that the cult of the family, praised by Lin Yutang, is now dismissed as feudal, while young Chinese Communists proclaim the rights of youth and the need for action. Action for what? Ostensibly, to get rid of the Japanese. Now Japan has adopted the civilisation of the West, and the evil of Western civilisation is its infectiousness. Whatever it touches must become like it, since, to become like it, is a condition of survival. Western civilisation through the agency of Japan has now touched China, and it may well be that the cultivated man as Lin Yutang portrays him, “a curious combination of devotion to the flesh and arrogance of the spirit, of spirituality without asceticism and materialism without sensuality, in whom the senses and the spirit have come to live together in harmony,” will presently vanish altogether from the world.