that is invariably the earmark of Ah Q-ism and a sense of inferiority. Lusin was not constrained to be polite because he wrote primarily for a Chinese audience; he was not constrained to gloss over or to explain away China's sore spots or disguise her weaknesses because he had faith in China and was conscious of her strength.
The reader will find here not only the plainest speaking yet to come out of China, but some of the very plainest speaking anywhere since Swift hurled upon us the epithet of Yahoo and pronounced us the most despicable and unteachable of all God's creatures. Above all, he will find in Lusin, for the first time in all Chinese history, a full embodiment and expression of that quality of indignation and that spirit of revolt which we usually associate with the European temperament and without which it is impossible to achieve freedom and progress. At first glance it may seem far-fetched to link Lusin's indignation with the magnificent struggle for freedom that China has been carrying on against Japan. Nevertheless, just as the spirit of acceptance and resignation which until recently dominated China was responsible for her submission to the rule of alien dynasties in the past, so is the new spirit of indignation and revolt which found its fullest expression in Lusin responsible for her determination to carry on her battle for freedom.
Lusin was, indeed, the spiritual offspring of the West, though he had no first-hand contact with Western civilization. It was the spirit of revolt in Western literature that encouraged his rebel heart to speak out. It was the realistic and psychological fiction of the West that brought home to him that fiction could be made an instrument of social criticism and reform. It was, finally, by contrast with the Western temperament that he was able to see the weakness in
