4. Man is neither Good-natured nor Bad-natured according to Su Shih (So-shoku).¹

The difficulty may be avoided by a theory given by Su Shih and other scholars influenced by Buddhism, which maintains that man is neither good-natured nor bad-natured. According to this opinion man is not moral nor immoral by nature, but unmoral. He is morally a blank. He is at a crossroad, so to speak, of morality when he is first born. As he if; blank, he can be dyed black or red. As he is at the cross-road, he can turn to the right or to the left. He is like fresh water, which has no flavour, and can be made sweet or bitter by circumstances. If we are not mistaken, this theory, too, has to encounter insurmountable difficulties. How could it be possible to make the unmoral being moral or immoral? We might as well try to get honey out of sand as to get good or evil out of the blank nature. There can be no fruit of good or evil where there is no seed of good or bad nature. Thus we find no satisfactory solution of the problem at issue in these four theories proposed by the Chinese scholars -- the first theory being incompetent to explain the problem of human depravity; the second breaking down at the origin of morality; the third failing to explain the possibility of moral culture; the fourth being logically self-contradictory.