As social practice continues, things that give rise to man's sense perceptions and impressions in the course of his practice are repeated many times; then a sudden change (leap) takes place in the brain in the process of cognition, and concepts are formed. Concepts are no longer the phenomena, the separate aspects and the external relations of things; they grasp the essence, the totality and the internal relations of things. Between concepts and sense perceptions there is not only a quantitative but also a qualitative difference. Proceeding further, by means of judgment and inference one is able to draw logical conclusions. The expression in San Kuo Yen Yi,(3) "knit the brows and a stratagem comes to mind", or in everyday language, "let me think it over", refers to man's use of concepts in the brain to form judgments and inferences. This is the second stage of cognition. When the members of the observation group have collected various data and, what is more, have "thought them over", they are able to arrive at the judgment that "the Communist Party's policy of the National United Front Against Japan is thorough, sincere and genuine". Having made this judgment, they can, if they too are genuine about uniting to save the nation, go a step further and draw the following conclusion, "The National United Front Against Japan can succeed."
The question raised by Life of Wu Hsun is fundamental in nature. A fellow like Wu Hsun,living as he did towards the end of the Ching Dynasty in an era of great struggle by the Chinese people against foreign aggressors and domestic reactionary feudal rulers, did not lift a finger against the feudal economic base or its superstructure; on the contrary, he strove fanatically to spread feudal culture and, in order to gain a position for this purpose previously beyond his reach, he fawned in every way on the reactionary feudal rulers -- ought we to praise such disgusting behaviour? How can we tolerate praising it to the masses, especially when such praise flaunts the revolutionary banner of "serving the people" and when the failure of revolutionary peasant struggles is used as a foil to accentuate the praise? To approve or tolerate such praise is to approve or tolerate abuse of the revolutionary struggles of the peasants, abuse of Chinese history, abuse of the Chinese nation, and to regard such reactionary propaganda as justified. The appearance of the film The Life of Wu Hsun, and particularly the spate of praise lavished on Wu Hsun and the film, show how ideologically confused our country's cultural circles have become!
