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its content, such as that reversal is the movement of the Tao, but, what is more important, it also conditioned its methodology. Professor Northrop has said that there are two major types of concepts, that achieved by intuition and that by postulation. "A concept by intuition," he says, "is one which denotes, and the complete meaning of which is given by, something which is immediately apprehended. 'Blue' in the sense of the sensed color is a concept by intuition....A concept by postulation is one the complete meaning of which is designated by the postulates of the deductive theory in which it occurs.... 'Blue' in ihe sense of the number of a wave-length in electromagnetic theory is a concept by postulation.' **
    Northrop also says lhat there are three possible types of concepts by intuition: "The concept of the differentiated aesthetic continuum. The concept of the indefinite or undifferentiated aesthetic continuum.
    The concept of the differentiation." (Ibid., p. 187.) According lo him,
     
    * Translated by Arthur Waley.
     
    **Filmer S. C. Northrop, "The Complemeiiliiry Emphases of Eastern Intuition Philosophy and Western Scientific Philosophy," in Philosophy, East and West, C. A. Moore, ed., p. 187, Princeton University Press, 1946.
     
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    THE BACKGROUND OF H1NESE PHILOSOPHY
     
    "Confucianism may be defined as the state of mind in which the concept of the indeterminate intuited manifold moves into the background of thought and the concrete differentiations in their relativistic, humanistic, transitory comings and goings form the content of philosophy. (Ibid., p. 2.05.) But in Taoism, it is the concept of the indefinite or undifferenliated aesthetic continuum that forms the content of philosophy. (Ibid.)
    I do not quite agree with all Northrop has said in this essay, but I think he has here grasped the fundamental difference betwecen Chinese and Western philosophy. When a student of Chinese philosophy begins to study Western philosophy, he is glad to see that the Greek philosophers also made the distinction between Being and Non—being, the limited and the unlimited. But he feels rather surprised to find that the Greek philosophers held that Non -being and the unlimited are inferior to Being and the limited. In Chinese philosophy the case is just the reverse. The reason for this difference is that Being and the limited are the distinct, while Non-being and the unlimited are the indistinct. Those philosophers who start with concepts by postulation have a liking for the distinct, while those who start with intuition value the indistinct.
    If we link what Northrop has pointed out here with what I mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, we see that the concept of the differentiated aesthetic continuum, from which come both the concept of the undifferentiated aesthetic continuum and that of differentiation (Ibid., p. 187), is basically the concept of the farmers. What the farmers have to deal with, such as the farm and crops, are all things which they immediately apprehend. And in their primitivity and innocence, they value what they thus immediately appre -hend. It is no wonder then, that their philosophers likewise take the immediate apprehension of things as the starting point of their philosophy.
    This also explains why epistemology has never developed in Chinese philosophy. Whether the table that I see before me is real or illusory, and whether it is only an idea in my mind or is occupying objective space, was never seriously considered by Chinese philosophers. No such epistemological problems are to be found in Chinese philosophy (save in Buddhism, which came from India), since epistemological problems arise only when u demarcation between the subject and the object is emphasized. And in the aesthetic continuum, there is no such demarcation. In it the knower and the known is one whole.
    This also explains why the language used by Chinese philosophy is suggestive but not articulate.
    It is not articulate, because