of moderation and compromise—as well as with the old gentry—men who had seen better times and would preserve the "national essence"; why he directed his scorn and irony against the art-for-art's-sakers as much as he did against the old "moonlight and breezes" school, though the former wrote in the new pai hua medium; why he made impartial fun of new slogans and ancient shibboleths; and why, finally, he joined the ranks of the Leftist writers himself when the only hope of progress and national salvation seemed to lie in that direction.
The most consistent object of Lusin's well-directed blows was naturally the national essence or heritage of the old gentry. In volume after volume of his notes and comments he exposed one by one what the reactionaries really mean by their precious national heritage. He was better qualified to expose the so-called "national medicine," the "national art of self-defense" (the hocus-pocus of the Boxers that precipitated the allied expedition of 1900), and "national learning"(which found sanction and inspiration in European "Sinology")—he was better qualified for this task than anyone else not only because of the "sharpness" of his pen, but also because he was himself a Chinese scholar without a peer and knew what he was talking about better than most of the reactionaries who made so much of their Chinese learning.
What is this national essence? [Lusin asks.] On the face of it it must mean something that one nation alone possesses, something which no other country can boast of, something, in other words, peculiar to the nation in question. But something that is peculiar may not necessarily be good. The question is, why should it be preserved.
For instance, a man who has a wart on his face or a boil on his forehead is different from one not so afflicted, and his wart or boil