Work · East Asian Philosophy
On Evolution (Tianyanlun)
A free rendering of Huxley’s “Evolution and Ethics” with Yan Fu’s commentaries, which side with Spencer against Huxley: nations, too, are subject to natural selection, and only a people that develops its energies survives.
Introduction
The Tianyanlun is Yan Fu’s rendering of Thomas Huxley’s lecture “Evolution and Ethics” (1893) and its prolegomena, circulated in manuscript from 1896 and printed in 1898. It is less a translation than a dialogue: Yan Fu condensed and adapted Huxley’s text and added commentaries in which he sided with Spencer against Huxley, treating evolution as a process of progress that applies to societies and nations. He wrote in an elevated classical prose and set out his principles of translation – faithfulness, comprehensibility and elegance – in the preface. The book was read by a whole generation of reformers and students, among them Liang Qichao, Lu Xun and Hu Shih, and made evolutionary vocabulary part of Chinese political language.
Connections
Builds on
- On the Origin of Species1859 · Charles Darwin
- The Principles of Sociology1876 · Herbert Spencer
More works by Yan Fu
- 1895On Strength
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