文档介绍：Chapter One
The Historical Beginnings
he foundations of a civilization are of several kinds: material,
spiritual, social, and institutional. The material ones include
Tman himself and the setting in which he lives; the others
represent man's cumulative achievement in that setting, his response
to its demands and to his own. Important as environmental factors
have been, the unique patterns of Chinese life cannot adequately be
explained by the struggle to maintain order while wresting a liveli.
hood from the soil, for that was mon problem of early man
everywhere. The geographer e B. Cressey has observed some
ways in which the Chinese patterns have been distinctive.
More people have lived in China than anywhere else. Upwards of 10 \ *
billion human beings have moved across her good earth; nowhere else
have so many people lived so intimately with nature. A thousand
generations have left their indelible impress on soil and ropograph
so that scarcely a square foot of earth remains unmodified by man.
With so many people to be fed, only the most painstaking care
provide an adequate harvest. Few landscapes arc more human. It is
also obvious that climate and topography have influenced the
pattern of life. . . . Other lands are older, bur none have
INTFLLECTUAL FOUNDATIONS OF CHINA
developed a more mature adjustment between man and the also the spiritual foundations, that is, the ponents of
environment.* Chinese life to consider. These took form, on the one hand, as th
concepts, the attitudes, the values, and the cumulative knowledg
Writers have applied all kinds of environmental determinism to which the Chinese people, having generated some and borrowed 0th
Chinese history. One historian of Chinese thought, Fung Yu-Ian, has ers, put to use in char setting. On the other hand, the nonmaterial
said that the landlocked character of China's agrarian life determined foundations of the civilization also include the