Work · East Asian Philosophy
On Strength
Written in Tianjin after the defeat by Japan: the strength of the West lies not in its guns but in the physical, intellectual and moral energies of its people, which China has to cultivate.
Introduction
“On Strength” is one of four essays that Yan Fu published in the Tianjin newspaper Zhibao in 1895, in the months after China’s defeat by Japan. It opens with Darwin and with Spencer’s science of society and asks why Western nations had become so powerful. Yan Fu’s answer is that power rests on three qualities of a people – physical strength, knowledge and moral virtue – and that Western institutions, including liberty, serve to develop them. China’s weakness, he argued, lay not in a lack of weapons but in a political and educational order that kept these qualities undeveloped. The essay, revised in later years, set out the programme that guided his translations.
Connections
Builds on
- On the Origin of Species1859 · Charles Darwin
- The Principles of Sociology1876 · Herbert Spencer
More works by Yan Fu
As of November 2026 · Improve this page · How Agora is made