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ORIENTAL RELIGIONS.

By the Same Author.

ORIENTAL RELIGIONS, and their Relation to Universal Religion. — INDIA. 8vo. 802 pages.

$5.00.

" Samuel Johnson's remarkable work is devoted wholly to the religions and civilization of India ; is the result of twenty years' study and reflection by one of the soundest scholars and most acute thinkers of New England ; and must be treated with all respect, whether we consider its thoroughness, its logical reasoning, or the conclusion — unacceptable to the majority, no doubt — at which it arrives." — Springfield Republican.

" The reader who is curious in the history of opinions will hardly find a more instructive guide in the obscure labyrinth into which he is tempted by the study of Oriental reasonings and fancies. Mr. Johnson has thoroughly mastered the subject of which he treats, by the thoughtful researches of many years.'' — New-York Tribune.

" The comprehensiveness of its scope, its careful summaries and analyses, make it an addition to the literature of theology that can- not fail of attracting the attention, and provoking the criticism, of scholars ; while it will not be found either too recondite or too ob- scure for the thoughtful general reader." — Boston Transcript.

" A book of which every American scholar has reason to be proud." — T. W. Higginson.

HOUGHTON, OSGOOD & CO,

Publishers.

ORIENTAL RELIGIONS

AND THEIR

RELATION TO UNIVERSAL RELIGION

BY

SAMUEL JOHNSON

CHINA

BOSTON

HOUGHTON, OSGOOD AND COMPANY C.imbnttft: Cbz fiturrotte 1878

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1877, by

SAMUEL JOHNSON,

In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.

Cam bridge : Press of John Wilson dr* Son.

CONTENTS.

CHINA. I.

ELEMENTS.

Page

I. THE CHINESE MIND .' 5

II. LABOR 65

III. SCIENCE 93

IV. EXTERNAL RELATIONS 119

V. ETHNIC TYPE 169

VI. RESOURCES , 181

II.

STRUCTURES.

I. EDUCATION 191

II. GOVERNMENT 267

III. LANGUAGE 397

IV. LITERATURE 437

V. HISTORY 471

VI. POETRY 511

III.

SAGES.

I. RATIONALISM .1 553

II. CONFUCIUS 571

III. DOCTRINE OF CONFUCIUS 599

IV. INFLUENCE OF CONFUCIUS 625

V. MENCIUS 637

VI CONTENTS.

IV.

BELIEFS.

I. FOUNDATIONS. page

Introductory 667

Patriarchalism 670

The Ancestral Shrine 695

The Future Life 708

Fung-Shui 715

Divination 718

Theism 723

II. BUDDHISM.

The Coming of Buddhism . 737

Development of Buddhism 757

Chinese Buddhism 800

III. MISSIONARY FAILURES AND FRUITS 837

IV. TAO-ISM.

Lao-tse 859

The Tao-sse 881

V. PHILOSOPHY.

The Y-king 907

Metaphysics 922

Anthropology 950

TOPICAL ANALYSIS.

CHINA.

I. ELEMENTS.

I. THE CHINESE MIND 5-61

A Study in Universal Religion. General Distinction from the Hindus. Relation of Abstract to Concrete in Chinese Mind. As shown by the Written Language. The Key to well-known Defects. Dead Levels and Comminuted Ideals. Pathos of Arrested Growth. Hu- mor. Unprogressive Habits. — " The Middle Way." Its Lack of Inspiration. Its Universal Elements. Its Application to Logical Processes. To Language. To Jurisprudence. To Morality and Religion. — Scope of Chinese Character shown by the Diversity of Testimony concerning it. The Interpretation. — Ethical Qualities. Personal Morals. Effects of Over-population. Infanticide. — So- cial Order. Peaceableness. Courage. Endurance. Self-abandon- ment. Suicidal Propensity. Defective Sensibility. — Humanities. Domestic Affections a Religion. — Defect of Motive Power. Bal- anced by Social Sympathies. The Festivals. Reactions on Re- straint. — Passion for Traffic. Organizing Power. Taste for Competition. Respect for Limits and Conditions. Conservatism. Nothing Lost. Cheerfulness. Causes of Shy and Sharp Practice. Nature of Chinese Love of Gain. Simple and Thrifty Habits. Summary of Traits. Relation to Occidental Needs.

II. LABOR 65-90

The Religion of the Chinese to be studied in their Visible Work. Traits of the Muscular Type of Mind. Chinese Work-Faculty. Variation from the Mongolic Type. Agriculture. Honored from Early Times. Love of Systematic Processes. Nature's Journey- men. Vast Productive Capacity. Labor exclusively Human. Economies. Distribution of Products. Horticulture. ^Esthetic Gifts. Touch. Mechanical Dexterity. Painting and Sculpture.

Vlll TOPICAL ANALYSIS.

Comparison with Japanese Art. Pettiness in Details. Porcelain. Music. — Inventive Ingenuity. Original Inventions. Imperfect Development of Materials.

III. SCIENCE 93-H5

Diversity of Testimony. Disadvantages for Science. Ideal Precon- ceptions. Clear Sense of Natural Law. — Botany. Medicine. Chemistry. Astronomy. Mathematics. History. Criticism. Chronology. Geography. Politics. Comparative Results of Chi- nese Industry. Philosophy of its Want of Progress. Prospects.

IV. EXTERNAL RELATIONS 119-165

Ancient Intercourse with China. Her Interest in Foreign Countries. The Arab Traders. The Catholic Missionaries ; Marco Polo ; Na- vare'te. Reception of Dutch and Russians. Of Portuguese. Proofs that the Chinese were not Exclusive. Causes for excluding For- eigners. Character of European Visitors. Political Interference. Selfishness of Traders. Chinese Self-adequacy. Mutual Ignorance of Chinese and Europeans. — Grounds of Hostility to the Occident. I. The Opium Trade. Data. Smugglers' Indemnity exacted by England. The Chinese Argument. The British Defence. The East India Company's Argument for Gain. Treaty of 1842. Treaty of Tien-tsin. Christianity and Opium. Protests in England. Later Facts. — II. The Cooly Trade. Protests against it. — III. Treat- ment of Immigrants in California. Industry a Stumbling-block in America. Barbarities in a Republic. The Testimony. The Work- man proves his Right to Work. Fear of Cheap Labor. Openness of Chinese to Foreign Teaching. In Commerce, Art, and War. In Medicine. In Culture. Wisdom of their Resistance to Sudden Changes. Japanese Reform.

V. ETHNIC TYPE 169-177

Fusion of Races in Chinese Type. Its Quality. Its Mongolian Traits. Relations with the Manchus. With the Thibetans. With the Aboriginal Tribes. Hypotheses of Origin.

VI. RESOURCES 181-188

The Land. Its Variety. Climate. The Cities. The Ports. The Islands. — Population. Its Pressure on the Land. Causes of its Growth. Resources of China.

TOPICAL ANALYSIS. IX

II. STRUCTURES.

I. EDUCATION 191-264

Worship of Written Words. Honors to Culture. "The Sacred Edict." — Schools. Educational Type. Memorizing. Mechanical Imitation. Analogies in American System. Dangers of Mechan- ism in Teaching. The Chinese aware of these Dangers. Respect for the Moral Nature. —The Text-books. Christian and Tai-ping Versions of the " Trimetrical Classic." Confucian Ethics of Study. Rites and Ceremonies. Ethics of the "Sacred Edict." Their Basis in Moral Order. — THE LI-KI. Its Philosophy of Rites. Mu- tual respect in Teacher and Pupil. Distinction between Music and Rites. Chinese Theory of Music. — Pedagogic Formalism. Re- sults of Patriarchalism. Recognition of Laws beyond Private Will. Dangers of Over-teaching. Analogous Mechanism in Western Cult- ure. Scientific Pedagogy. Opportunity of Mutual Help by Inter- course of East and West. — The Competitive Examinations. The Three Degrees. The Han-lin Laureates. Material of Study. Faculties brought into Exercise. European Analogies. Abuses of the Competitive System. Moral' Results. Political Advantages. Higher Uses. Education of Females. — History of the Chinese Politico-educational System. A Question for Republics. The Idea of Governmental Duty towards Schools. Antiquity of the School System. Its Struggles and Triumphs. Significance of its History. The Glory of China. Estimate of the Facts. Contrast with American Political Methods. Our Instant Duty. The Com- petitive Method discussed. "The Civil-service Act." Wherein Competitive Systems are inadequate. The Deeper Needs. Con- ditions of a good Civil Service. Evils of Competition in America. In Manners. In Schools. How far it is Useful. Reserved Rights of a People, as to Political Choice, beyond all Systems. Function of the Free Personal Ideal.

II. GOVERNMENT 267-393

The Chinese Political Ideal defined and contrasted. Intimate Relation to Nature. Based on the Family. The Imperial Symbol. The Idea of the State the Real Sovereign. Its Symbolism. Adulation in the West. The Duty of being Led. Political Optimism. The- oretic Omnipotence of the Ruler's Example. Its Resemblance to Hebrew Faith in Earthly Retribution. Spontaneous Force of Right in Human Nature. Chinese Traditions on this Subject. Its Rela- tion to the Absence of very Ancient Laws. The People as.a Child.

TOPICAL ANALYSIS.

Universal Good the Basis of Government. — Patriarchalism and Universal Religion. The Oldest Positivists. Government of China not a Despotism. Restrictions on Imperial Power. Responsibility to "Heaven." To the Correlation of Rights and Duties. To Offi- cial Censorship. To the Classical Ideal. To the People. How the Popular Will is expressed. Right of Rebellion. Oriental " Autonomy." Mutuality between Rulers and People. Contrasted with Representative Government. The People as a Body Politic in China. Equality. Absence of Caste. Of Hereditary Right. Slavery. Not of the Western Type. Chinese Liberty not the Right to do as One Wills. Local Liberties. Village System. The Clans. — Supposed " Immobility " of China an Error. Traditions of Progress. Past Political Ideals. Yao and Shun. Secular Stages of Growth. Slow Evolution of the Patriarchal System. Territorial Advance. Real Value of the Shu-king Traditions. The Earliest Books. The Ideal Monarchy. Concreteness of the Picture. How far Unhistorical. The Hia and Shang Dynasties. The First Deliverer. Fall of the Shang. The Second Deliverer. The Law- giver. The Tcheou Regime. Its Fall. — THE TCHEOU-LI. Its Date and Origin. Its Mechanical Division of Land and People. Village Arrangements. Ideal Constructions. The Administration. Board of Ministers. Board of Works. "The Artisans." Art Regulations. Significance of the Tcheou-li. — RELATION OF THE STATES TO THE EMPIRE. Early Union imperfect. Development of Unity. Fall of Feudalism. The Feudal Chiefs.. Their Cove- nants. End of the Strife.— THE TCHUN-TSIEU. Chi-hwang-ti. Later Changes of Organization. — LAND LAWS. Their Early History. Demands of Mencius for Equality. Effect of the T'sin Laws. Present Land Tenures. — OLD PENAL LAWS. Their Ethical Tone. Idea of Punishment. Contradictions in Practice. — THE PENAL CODE. Its Benignities to the Family. To the Old. Its General Humanity. Discrimination of Guilt. The Courts. Protective Supervision. Good Laws. Official Re- sponsibility. Startling Anomalies, arising from Honor to the Old. From the Family Bond. From Marital Authority. From Slavery. From Official Relations. From Religion. Punishment of Mon- strous Crimes. Explanation of Anomalies in Oriental Codes. Comparative Mildness of Chinese Laws. The Rod. The Death Penalty. Dark Side of Chinese Character. Penal Mitigations. — Reverence of Chinese for Government. The Rule of Right Func- tions. Causes of Over-officialism. Ultimate Reference to the Public Good. By the Man-chu Rulers. — THE IMPERIAL ADMIN- ISTRATION. Correspondence with Ancient Regime. The Bureaux. The Provinces. Mandarin Courts. Practical Working of the

TOPICAL ANALYSIS. XI

System. Comparative View of Chinese Political History. Pre- cautions against Injustice. Fulfilment of Imperial Duties. Grana- ries. Charge of the Poor. Defects in the " Providential " Form of Government. Vicarious Atonement in Politics. Analogies in the West. Origin and Meaning of Vicarious Atonement. The Spy System. Mixed Functions. Other Defects. — Causes of the Permanence of Chinese Institutions. Their Motive Forces. I. Moral Supremacy. II. Industry. III. Education. IV. Re- spect for the Family. V. Policies. VI. Religious Liberalism. Conclusions.

III. LANGUAGE 397-433

Language not Revelation nor Invention, but a Natural Growth. Its Psychological Basis. Gesture and Feature Language. Mystery of ;i Beginning. Continuity of its Evolution. Theories of its Organic Relations. Primitive Language not Monosyllabic, but a Complex of Sounds. Comprehensiveness of its Germs. "Roots" not the Beginnings of Language, but a Product. Their Formation by Sepa- ration and Fusion. Doubts as to the Usual Division of Languages. Evolution of Speech a Matter of Race. Onomatopoeia not the Prime Source of Words. — Supposed Inorganic Nature of Chinese Language. The Roots show it is not Primitive. The Grammar an Organic System. Grammatical Expedients. How Ambiguities are Checked. Uses of the Tones. Divination of Meaning. Inorganic Elements. Lack of Interest in Sound. Causes of the Absence of an Alphabet. Multiplication of Written Signs compared with Fewness of Words. — THE WRITTEN SIGNS. Origin of the Art of Writing. Early Stages of Imitation. Picture Signs. Tran- sition to Phonetic Signs. A Result of Individualism. Combination of Phonetic with Picture Signs. Transition to Alphabet. Sanscrit and Shemitic Alphabets. Continuous Development of Writing. Ideographic Changes. To be studied in Chinese Forms of Writing. Effect of Discovery of these Signs on Europeans. Theories of their Connections. Imaginary Biblical Types. — ^Esthetic Elements. Mechanical Aids. Native Analysis. Calligraphic Art. Poetic Symbolism. Its Legendary Origin. Its Closeness to Nature. Attempts to reconstruct Primitive China from the Signs. Con- straints on Grammatical Structure. — Effects of the Signs on Lit- erature. Their Bearing on Chinese Civilization. Use as Medium of Intercourse compared with Spoken Languages. Originality. European Translations. Deficiencies.

Xll TOPICAL ANALYSIS.

IV. LITERATURE 437~46;

Scope. Quality. Significance. Resources. Cyclopaedias. Antholo- gies. Extent of the Han Revival of Letters. Pan-kou's Report. LITERARY HISTORY OF CHINA. Its Ethical Epoch. Lyrical Epoch. Philosophical Epoch. Dramatic Epoch. The Youen Dynasty. Cyclopedic Epoch. The Ming. Epoch of Diffusion. Stages of Progress. — THE DRAMA. Its Productivity. Structure of Dramas. Rythmic Effusions. Ethical Purpose. The Drama a Form of Popular Self-criticism. Naive Combinations. " The Sorrows of Han." " The Heir in Old Age." Popular Supersti- . tions Satirized. "The Circle of Chalk." — ROMANCES. Their Special Art and Ethics. Geniality. "The Three Warring King- doms." " The Fortunate Union." Honor to Woman. Love and Friendship. Short Stories. Special Providence. Types of Ideal Virtue. Extreme Optimism. Grounds of Appeal to Hopes and Fears. — PROVERBS. Their Significance. Aphorisms. Of Practical Thrift. Of Prudential Ethics. Of Personal Character. Of Reli- ance on Natural Laws. Of Trust. Of the Spirit. Of Humanity. Miscellaneous Proverbs. Man-chu Sentences.

V. HISTORY 471-507

Ancient and Modern Records compared. History transmits Qualities rather than Facts. Its Psychological Value is most Important. Imagination as Constructive of Prehistoric Times. The Chinese Rationalistic even here. Soberness of the Great Chinese His- torians. Of the Shu-king. Of Later Writings. The Historiogra- phers, Sse-ma-thsian, Sse-ma-kouang, Ma-touan-lin. Their Critical Capacity. — Peculiar Form of idealizing Early Times. Age of Fo-hi and the First Rulers. Close Relations with Nature and Use in these Myths. Contrasted with Attempts to harmonize the Bible and Chinese Tradition. An Older Darwinism. Contrasts of Chinese, Hebrew, and Greek Legends. Opening of Genuine Chinese History in Eighth Century B.C. Earlier Foundations not want- ing. Historical Conscience of Chinese. — THE SHU-KING. Criti- cal Data. Basis in Ancient Records. The First Chapter. Chief Value of the Shu is Psychological. An Ethico-political Ideal. Its Religion. Its Universal Morality. — The next Epoch in National

. Story. The Civil Wars. Origin and Character of THE TCHUN- TSIEU. Charges against Confucius. Was he its Author ? — How the Chinese "Make History." T'sin Chi-hwang-ti as an Outgrowth of the Demands of his Age. His Personal History. His Con- flict with the Confucians Natural. His Function Transitional. Overthrow of the T'si.n. Slow Movement to Unity. The

TOPICAL ANALYSIS. Xlll

Han. The Mongols make China a Nation. The Ming. Administra- tion by Women in China. The Earlier Man-chu Emperors. Old Internal Antagonisms continue. Disastrous Reigns of Tao-kwang and Hien-fung. Recovery under Prince Kung. Chinese Rebellions do not aim at dissolving the Empire. The Balance of Opposites is the Safety of the State. Force of Race Qualities and its Practical Lesson. Elements of the Problem to be solved. Internal Forces that must be relied on.

VI. POETRY 5H-550

Passion for Rhythmic Expression, a Conservative Element. Music and Rhythm in China. Rhythmic Legislation. Parallelism. Wide Scope of Poetic Treatment. Facilities in the Language. Ex- tent of Symbolism. — Qualities of Chinese Poetic Sensibility. Good Counsels to Poets. Veneration for Poets. "Toper Bards." Association of Poetry with Woman. " Flowery Scrolls." A Prize Poem. Sympathies with Nature. Illustrations. A Friend revisited. Longings of the Separated. Humanities of Li-thai-pe and Thou-fou. The Conscripts. Praise of Solitude. Transient- ness of Life. " Carpe Diem." The Li-sao. Songs of War and Love. A Woman's Devotion ; and a Man's. The Religious Ele- ment.— THE SHI-KING. Probable Antiquity of the Odes. The Dates not settled. Associated with Music. The Lost Rhymes. Only Natural Effects expected from the Odes. Contrasted with other Ancient Hymns. Affinities with Egyptian Records. With the Hebrew Books. Intellectual Functions of the Shi. Expansion of its Meaning by Later Sages. Absence of Ecclesiastical or Pre- scriptive Character. Free Criticism. Its Realistic Record of the Old Chinese. — Arrangement of the Odes. Book I. LESSONS FROM THE STATES. Spurious Titles. Domestic Odes. The People's Voice. Peasant Song of T'sin. Labor Songs. Inmost Meaning of the Symbolism. Ethical and Religious Earnestness. Freedom of Speech. —Book II. MINOR ODES OF THE KINGDOM. Festal Odes for Family Reunions. Country Life Celebrated. The Dark Shadow. War Burdens. Prophetic Warnings. Earnest- ness and Courage of the Poets. Jeremiads. Feminine Element. — Book III. GREATER ODES OF THE KINGDOM. Divine Honors to Virtuous Leaders. Their Civilizing Work. The Fortunes of Tcheou. Agricultural Myth. Providential View of History. Dark Omens. The Good King Seuen. Evil Reign of Yew. Royal Self-admonition. The Criticism of Rulers. A Gospel of Civiliza- tion.— Book IV. THE SACRIFICIAL ODES OF TCHEOU. Re- ligious Crown of the Shi-king. Ancestral Odes and Honors to the Best. Peasant Thanksgivings. Prayer of a Child Emperor. Final Ode.

XIV TOPICAL ANALYSIS.

III. SAGES.

I. RATIONALISM 553~568

Chinese "Atheism." What the Charge signifies. Meeting of the Positivist and the Supernaturalist. Rationalism of the Thinking Class. No External God. The Human Faculties made the 'Ulti- mate Ground of Knowledge, a Necessary Result of Culture. Religion of Humanity. Honors to Benefactors. The Popular Superstitions of China Contrary to the National Culture. Their Relation to Natural Law. Rationalistic Proverbs. Results of Chinese Anti- supernaturalism. In Literature. Free Criticism and Discussion. The Text-books of Naturalism. The Defect of Over-concreteness. Relation to the Needs of the Occidental World. Influence on Japan.

II. CONFUCIUS 571-596

Data for his Biography. His Times Unsuited for Historical Records. Analogy with the First Christian Ages. Similar Obscurity in Lives of all Founders of Religions. Inferences. Real Value of the Con- fucian Records. Ideas, not Individuals, are the World's Saviors. Value of Personal Influence. That of Confucius purely Human and Natural. — His Life. His Sense of the Conditions of Wisdom. His Early Political Relations. Official Life. Exile and Wanderings. His Use of Ill-fortune. His Withdrawal to Literary Tasks. Old Age. Pathos of his Sickness and Death. Compared with other Teachers. Dignity of his latest years. Their Task. Tributes of his Followers. The Lun-yu Picture of his Personal Habits. His Traits. Sympathy. Humor. Critical Sense. Charity. Fear- less Use of Opportunity. Hate of Aimlessness and Insincerity. Good-sense. Catholicity. Modesty. Originality. Self-respect. Spirituality. Faith in Intellectual Limitations. Reverence for Prin- ciples. Tragedy of his Life. Its Triumph. The Religion of Self-respect. Affinity with Stoic and Socratic Ideas. Legacy of ,' his Latest Toils.

III. DOCTRINE OF CONFUCIUS 599-622

I. Man's Relation to Himself. Just Self-estimates and Inward In- tegrity. Ethical Definitions. The Price of Virtue. Spontaneity. II. Relation to Others. The "Golden Rule" in Positive and Negative Forms. Its Defect as Motive and Criterion. Cautionary Maxims of Confucius. Return Injustice with Justice. Aim at

TOPICAL ANALYSIS. XV

Balance of Character. The True Conditions of Labor. Modifica- tion of Patriarchal Ethics. The Confucian State based on private Virtue. The Family Idea a Complex of Personal Rights and Duties. Duties > as the Condition of Rights. The TA-HIO, or GREAT DOCTRINE. Unlimited Powers of the Virtuous Ruler. Imperialism. Precepts for Rulers. Rights of the People. Ideal of Statesmanship. III. Relation to the Whole. Confucian " Unity " of Person, State, and World. Trustworthiness of Nat- ure. The Cosmico-Ethical Laws. Greek Analogies. THE TAO. Meaning of the Term Ching, translated " Sincerity." — Con- trast of Chinese with Hindu Tendencies. Confucius absorbed in Patriarchalism. His Sense of Continuity in Growth. His Doctrine opposed to Inertia. Contrasted with the Idea of Catastrophe. Scientific Elements in Chinese Thought. Effect of Prescription on Art, Science, and Religion. Transcendental Element in Positivism. Mind all-controlling in the Confucian System. Religious Con- ceptions.

IV. INFLUENCE OF CONFUCIUS 625-633

Special Prophecy and Plan of Reformation always a Failure. Con- fucius successful in his Unorganized Work only. His Function. He forms the Literary Element into a Power. The Balance to Imperialism. Conflict of the Two Forces. Triumph of Confucius. Services of the Literary Class. In Ethics and Politics. Doctrine of National Continuity. Form of Confucian Teaching. No Ground for Exclusive Centralism. " The Master " is simply the Teacher. Evolution in Institutions.

V. MENCIUS 637-664

Character of the Mencian Books. The Times and the Man. Child- hood and Maternal Teaching. Unsatisfactory Relations with Princes. Strength of his Protest against Wrongs. Sensitive Self-respect a Part of his Respect for his Function. Devotion to the People. To Humanity. Affirmative Spirit. A Genius for Prin- ciples. Against Extremists. — Excellence of Human Nature. This Idea not Utopian, but based on the Laws of Culture. Human Freedom. The Child-Heart. " Human Nature " not Defined by Crude Instincts, but by Essential Relations. Laws of Penalty. — Cheerfulness and Courage of Mencius. Sources of his Personal Force. Appeal to Antiquity. A Consistent Record. — Theory of the Absoluteness of Moral Power. Its Grounds. Ideal of Personal Character. Social Ideal. Political Ideal. Land and School Sys-

XVI TOPICAL ANALYSIS.

terns. Military Affairs. Labor. Social Order. Right of Revolu- tion. Government for the People. Against Doctrinaires. Selfish System of Yang. Communism of Mih. Universal Love. Two Leading Aims of the Chinese Sages. Recognition of Continuity in Growth. Reform through Constructive Moral Forces.

IV. BELIEFS. I. FOUNDATIONS 667-733

INTRODUCTORY 667-670

Various Estimates of Chinese Religious Capacity. Conditions of Ap- preciation. Patriarchal Evolution.

PATRIARCHALISM 670-695

Definition of Universal Ideas. Their Phases Guarantee Progress. Antiquity and Force of the Family Bond. Marriage not the Primi- tive Tie. Ante-patriarchal Sexual Relations. Primitive Systems of Consanguinity. Germs of a Higher Order in these Systems. The Mother as Centre of the Group. Moral Origin of the Family. Low Beginnings of Social Life no Argument for Materialism. Sig- nificance of Marriage therein. Exogamy. As Instituted by Fo-hi. Transition from Communism to Marriage connected with the Birth of Industry in China. Patriarchal Institutions the Result of Ages of Upward Struggle. Their Influence on Woman. Their Justification in Social Needs. Origin of Male Supremacy. The First Effort at organizing Government could only be the " Patria Potestas." Benignity of Patriarchalism towards Motherhood. Its " Patria Potestas " long-lived, because expressing Duties and Needs. The Patriarchal Family did not rest on Mere Power. Duties of the Chinese House-father. Of the Emperor. Of the Elder Brother. Effect of the " Lex Naturae." The Family was the Personal Unit. Patriarchalism not the Cause, of the Subjection of Woman. All Positive Religions contain this Injustice. Com- pensation to Woman in Chinese Manners. Crippling the Feet. Nature of Chinese Polygamy. Woman in Japan. Root of Patri- archalism in the Natural Sentiments. Their Great Development in the East. Respect for the Old. Errors concerning Chinese Patriarchalism. It is not a Theory, but a Civilization. Not a "Worship of Human Personages." Not a "Deadening of the Conscience." Theological Patriarchalism of the West. Japanese Shinto-ism and Early Chinese Religion.

TOPICAL ANALYSIS. XV11

THE ANCESTRAL SHRINE 695-708

Power of Filial Piety over the Idea of Death. P'etichism as a Wor- ship of Life. Relation of Ancestral Fetichism to the Sense of Immortality. The Invisible Homestead. Its Religious Meaning. Turanian Tomb-builders. Domestic Rites at the Grave. Family Reunions at the Shrine. Its Importance. In the Shi-king. Functions of the Ancestral Hall. Christian Charges of Idolatry. Nature of Chinese " Spirit-Intercourse." Contrasted with that of Christendom. Its Moral Realism. Chinese Ideas of Spirit-pres- ence. Relations to Form. THE KWEI-SHIN. Ancestral Rites not mere Fetichism. They, divinize the Home. Their Uses. They suggest a Lack in Western Civilization.

THE FUTURE LIFE 708-715

Spirits associated with the Cosmical Order. Interest in the Present Life helps to Faith in Another. Indefinite Notions of Immortality. Why Art does not seek Permanence in China. Content' in the Order of Nature and its Laws. Chinese Animism. Its Practical and Moral Interest. Its unifying Effect on Social Life. On the Conception of Nature. Theories about " Shin-worship." Panthe- istic Elements.

FUNG-SHUI 7l$-7l7

Nature and Origin. Based on Natural Laws. Relation to Positive Science.

DIVINATION 718-722

A Constant Element of Knowledge. Interest of the Chinese in the Art. Contrast with its Use for Intolerance and Barbarity in the West. Magic as the Reverse Side of every Philosophy and Faith. The Fung-shui of Higher Civilizations. Chinese Shin and Chris- tian Satan. Magic as a Passion and Pastime. Transition to Theism.

THEISM . 723-733

Shang-te an Intelligent Providence in the Shi and Shu. Tien inter- changeable with Shang-te in all Periods. Proofs of Theism. But no Chinese Word for "the Bible God." Origin of the Identity of Shang-te and Tien, not in Materialism; but in Concrete Habits of Thought. Supernaturalism gradually dropped. Contrast with

b

XV111 TOPICAL ANALYSIS.

Shemitic and Christian Ideals. Affinities with Natural Science. Cosmical Theism. Emotional Tendencies of Anthropomorphism. Capabilities of Cosmical Theism. Chinese Sentiment as modified by the Perception of Law. Its Ethical Power and Guarantees.

II. BUDDHISM 737-833

COMING OF BUDDHISM 737~757

Apparent Unfitness of Buddhism for the Chinese. Its Growth not clue to the " Negativity of Rationalism." Nor to Religious Indiffer- ence. National Opposition to it. Its Expansion not so explicable as that of Christianity. Fergusson's Theory of the Origin of Buddhism in Serpent Worship. Wonders effected by Buddhism in China. Its Prolific Literature. — Explanation by Laws of Uni- versal Religion. I. A Slow-sure Movement, with Secular Aid. II. Its Ethical Side preached first. Points of Contact with Chinese Culture. The Sutra of Forty-two Sections. The Cate- chism of the Shamans. The Dhammapadam. " The Four Veri- ties." Its Sympathetic Use of Chinese Beliefs and Terms. Its Speculative Doctrine came later. Chinese Affinities of the " Great Vehicle." III. Industry of Buddhist Preachers and Scholars. Monastic Institutions favorable to the Faith. IV. Sympathies of Buddhism. Its Supply of Imaginative Elements. Reconcilement of Opposites. Transmigration and Spirit Tablets. Attractive Doctrines and Adaptations. V. Force of Organization. Non-dis- turbance of Associations. The Convent and the Family. VI. A Force of Reaction against Confucian Contempt. Against Material Interests and Toilsome Routines. Against Ethical Sanctions from the Present Life alone. Secular Aid from Political Reactions. Restrictions by the State. VII. Intrinsic Virtues. A Recent Estimate.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF BUDDHISM 757-800

The Problem of Buddhist Expansion. " Worship of Non-entity.1' China tests the Virtues of Buddhism. Bearings of Science on the Question of "Real" and ''Unreal." Application. I. PRIMITIVE BUD- DHISM. Relation of Religion to the Mystery of Impermanence. In Christianity. In Buddhism. " The Four Verities." Their Positive Elements. Moral Emphasis. Early Sutras of Similar Character. Good Sense and Breadth. Humanities. Circulation of Apologues and Tales. Practical Services. Germs of Intellectual Culture. Nirvana not yet developed. Instinct to escape Individual Conscious-

TOPICAL ANALYSIS. XIX

ness. Nirvana as positive Existence and Bliss. In what Buddhist Reform consisted. Nirvana explained from Pantheism. A " Modern Buddhist" on Immortality. Other Elements of Early Buddhism wrongly thought Negations. The Moral Law as Karma. Ex- tracts from Sutras. The Blessing. The Departed. The Treas- ure. The Holy Life. II. THE HINAYANA, or Second Stage of Buddhism. The Twelve Nidanas ; a Logical Chain. Metaphysical Causes and Positive Realities. Grounds of Transmigration. " The Five Skandhas" Similar Transition from Morals to Metaphysics in Early Christianity. Philosophical Energy of Early Buddhism. The Hinayana Schools. Their Materials of Discussion. Results Affirmative and Negative. Formation of Personal Mythology. Realists and Idealists. Earnestness of Dialectic and Monastic Labors. Missionary Ardor. Unity of the Schools through Hu- manity. III. THE MAHAY ANA, Doctrine of '-the Void." Its Logi- cal Development. Its Affirmative Side. Relation to the Infinite and Eternal. The Surangnma Sutra. Its Spirituality. The Secret of Wisdom. Reality of Nirvana. The Paramita School. The Prajna Paramita. Meaning of Absorption. Later Mahayana Schools. The Madhyamika. The Yogatcharya. The Nepalese Schools. IV. MYSTICISM. Fourth Stage of Buddhism. Recurrence to Reli- gious Sentiment. Personal Worship of the Buddha. Association with Miracle. Logical Reaction from Extreme Abstraction to Thaumaturgy. Supernaturalism of the Satnadhi. Mystic Powers of the Dkarani. The Runes of Asia. The Logical Circle of Reli- gions. The Tantras. Miracle and Personal Worship combined. Buddhist Messiahs. Worship of Motherhood. Adiprajna. Vir- gin and Child. Buddhist Mythology as Product of the Worship of the Human. Historical Interest. Universal Affinities. The Sol- vent of Asiatic Civilizations. A Religion of Brotherhood. The Tsing-tu-wen. In Mongolia.

CHINESE BUDDHISM 800-833

Completest Literary Expression of the Faith. Difficulties of trans- lating from Sanscrit into Chinese. Extent of the Buddhist Collec- tions in Chinese. Signs of Earnest Appreciation. Even in Metaphysics. School of Chi-kai. Attractions for Chinese in Buddhist Metaphysics. Relations to Poetry. Philosophical Affinities. The Ideal as Concrete. Practical Affinities. — Ethical Method of the Buddhist Scriptures. Their Precautions against Monastic Selfishness. The Chinese second their Practical Ten- dencies. Priests and Services. Versions of Buddhist Apologues. Their Humanity and Common Sense. Their Spiritual Perception.

XX TOPICAL ANALYSIS.

Their Faith in the Law of Love. — Popular Chinese Buddhism belongs to the Fourth Stage. Religious Dependence on Persons not centralized but diffused. Contrast with the Shemito-Christian Form of the Same. Subdivision of Deity in Later Buddhism. Popular Forms of Buddhahood. Maitreya. Mandshusri. Ava- lokiteswara. Kwan-yin, the Female Saviour. Her Relations with Avalokiteswara. Amitabha. His Paradise. Transformation of Nirvana. Conditions of Entrance. Immortality with Amitabha. Sensuous Symbolism. Descent into Hells. The Divine as Human. Disproof of Exclusive Religious claims. — Conclusions concerning Buddhism. Unselfishness. Affirmation of Law and Love. Ideality and Common Sense. Conciliation of Freedom and Fate. Demo- cratic Views of Human Nature. Fitness for the Common Mind. Poetic Capabilities ; shown in the "Jatakas" and the Propagation of the Faith.— Actual Condition of the Buddhist Church. The Best has become secularized. Law of Transformation in Reli- gions. Defects of Buddhism. Its Priesthood. The Superstitions similar to those of other Faiths. Magnetism of Sympathy trans- forms them. — The Buddhist Inferno. Analogy of Rites with those of Christianity due to General Causes. — Function of Science in reconciling Man to the Conditions of Life. Prophetic Germs in Buddhism. In its Mythology. Inscrutable Substance. The " Modern Buddhist's" Summary. Assuring Lessons from the His- tory of Buddhism.

III. MISSIONARY FAILURES AND FRUITS . . 837-855

Freedom of Proselyting in China. Failure of all Religions save Budd- hism. Jews. Mahommedans. Christians. I. Nestorians. The Sin-gan-fu Tablet. II. Roman Catholics. Jesuits and Dominicans. Practical and Literary Zeal of the Jesuits. Educational Labors. Martyr Spirit. Their " Me'moires." "All Unsuccessful. III. Pro- testant Missions a still greater Failure. Hopes of Miraculous Conversion of the Chinese. Effect of Christian Assumptions. " Argumenta ad Hominem.1' Real Services of the Protestant Mis- sionaries. The Hospitals. Scientific Success and Theological Failure. Literary Labors. Sum of the Testimony and its Lessons.

IV. TAO-ISM 859-904

LAO-TSE 859-881

Recapitulation of Buddhist Relations to China. Difference of Lao-tse from Buddha. Not Destructive, but Idealist. An Outgrowth of Chinese Mind as well as a Protestant against Chinese Methods.

TOPICAL ANALYSIS. XXI

His Isolation and Impersonality. THE TAO-TE-KING. Unique in Chinese Literature. Doctrines falsely ascribed to Lao-tse, and not in this Classic. Its Characteristics. Its, supposed "Obscurant- ism." Its Practical Purpose. Meaning of its " Non-action." Of its " Non-existence." Its Originality. Meaning of Tao as Law and Intelligence. As Right Way. The "Unspeakable." Its Im- manence, yet Reserve, of Force. "Hiding its Claim." The Inward Witness. Summons to the State to recognize Spiritual Liberties and Laws. The Signs of Public Demoralization. "The State cannot be Manufactured." Lao-tse's Political Gospel. Extracts from the Tao-te-king. I. The Eternal Way. Laws of Growth and Good. Life in Tao. Sovereignty of Spiritual Forces. II. Per- sonal Character. The Law of Contraries. Least is Greatest. Substance and Show. Strength in not Striving. Self-restraint. Self-reliance. Respect for One's Work and for One's Self. In- ward Harmony and Rest. Union with Tao. The Three Treasures. The Immortal Armor. Sincerity and Love. III. True Govern- ment. Ruling through Humility and Service. Through Repression of Desires. Trust in Instincts of the People. Effects of Suppress- ing Spontaneity. Against Conceit of Wisdom and Virtue. Sim- plicity against Smartness. The State ruined by Over-regulation. By Luxury. By War. Saved by Humanity. A Model State.

THE TAO-SSE 881-904

Rise of the Tao-sse. Use of the Tao-te-king as Basis for Mythology and Occult Studies. Similar Perversions in Other Religions. Universal Magnetism of Spiritual Genius. Merits of the Tao-sse as Reformers. Their Physical Studies. Their Large Claims in Religion and Letters. Moral and Spiritual Elements in the Search

' for Occult Powers. Its Relations to Progress. Wide Sympathies of the Tao-sse. Grounds of the Great Influence of the Tao-te-king. Sayings of its Disciples. — The "Book of Eternal Spirit and of Eternal Matter." — The Tao Saints and Public Affairs. Ch'ang Ch'un and Tchinggis Khan. Popular Imaginative Elements ab- sorbed by the Tao- Idea. Points of Attachment to the Tao-te-king. Significant Titles of Tao-sse Works. — The " Book of Rewards for Good Acts done in Secret." — •' THE KAN-ING-PIEN," or Book of Rewards and Punishments. How Bibles mingle the Wisdom and Foolishness of Man. Police Management of the Universe in Mod- ern Religions. The Kan-ing-pien on Moral Freedom and Immor- tality. Sources of the Illusion that Virtue ensures a Long Life. Persistence of Fixed Beliefs against Experience, through Moral Associations. Kan-ing-pien Theory of Ideal Retribution on Earth.

XX11 TOPICAL ANALYSIS.

Plato's Form of the Same. Its Merciful Side. Extracts from the Kan-ing-pie n. Virtue in the Heart. In Outward Relations. In Private Life. Humane Sentiments. Against Bad Habits. Against Irreligion. Blessingsof the Good. — THE COMMENTARIES. Ethical Relations with the Future Life. With Cosmical Phenomena. Their Democratic Tone. Official Position as an Ethical Sanction. Spir- itual Principles and Humane Precepts. Present Tao-sse Theology, the Fusion of Chinese Elements. Its Superstitious Types common to all Religions. How treated by the Educated in China. Related to Mongolian Traits.

V. PHILOSOPHY 907-975

THE Y-KING 907-922

Causes of its Preat Repute. The Koua of Fo-hi. Elements of the Work. I. The Trigrammes. II. The Sentences of Wan-wang. III. The Maxims of Tcheou-kung. VIV. The Commentaries. Original Meaning of the Trigrammes Obscure. Sentences have no Apparent Connection with them. A Divining Book turned into a Political Manual. Relation to I^o-hi. Scientific and Philosophical Germs in A^z/tf-Divination. Their Naturalism. Based on Rela- tions of Unity and Diversity. The Principle of Polarity. Antithesis of Sex. — Historical Significance of the Y-king. Compared with other Bibles of Divination as to sense of Universal Law. Practical Maxims. Rise from Augury to Ethics. To Politics. To Cosmical Philosophy. This Evolution contrasted with the Chaldeo-Babylonian. Testimony of the Hi-tse. The Virtue of Balance. Man the Middle Point between Heaven and Earth. Ideal Exposition of the Y-king. The Instinct of Rhythm. Sketch of the Philosophical Literature of China. Chu-hi's Life and Function.

METAPHYSICS 922-949

Is there a Chinese Philosophy? Did Philosophy begin with the Greeks ? Function of the Thought of Social Childhood. Maturer Elements of Chinese Experience. I. No Antagonism of Philoso- phy and Religion. Pure Validity of Reason. No Strife between Reason and Faith. Object of Faith is the Rational Nature Itself. This Instinctive Unity of the Two Spheres foreshadows their Synthetic Union in Modern Free Thought. Good and Evil of their Long Separation. Morality not dependent on this Separation. II. No Absolute Distinction of Matter from Mind. They are related as Manifestation and Essence. Contrast with Hebrew and Greek Ideas. No Chinese Term for " Creation out of

TOPICAL ANALYSIS. XX111

Nothing." Philosophical Difficulties of that Idea. Scientific Con- ception of Substance. Use of Terms " Before and After." Unity of Essence and Manifestation in Shang-te. In the Tai-ki. In the Tao. In Le, as the Principle of Organization. Different Terms Expressive of this Unity. It admits Distinction of Person and Thing. — TCHEOU-TSE'S PHILOSOPHY OF EVOLUTION. Its Conception of Highest Intelligence as not analogous to Self-con- sciousness. Principles are Ultimate. In the Absolute is the Sub- stance of Intelligence. This Philosophy wrongly supposed to be Materialism. Rationality of the Ultimate Force. Human Mind the Product not of the Lowest Forms, but of the Whole. — Ethical Significance of Chinese Philosophy. The World Interpreted by the Moral Nature of Man. Spontaneity of Principles. Goodness of Human Nature. Foundations of Spiritual Freedom. Chinese Philosophy Intuitional. Transcendental Elements in Evolution- ism. Meadows on the Idealism of the Chinese. They slip Specu- lative Discussion. Apparent Explanation by mere Phrases common to Evolutionists in the East and the West. Deficiency of both Classes in Contemplation. Chinese Deficient in Individual Self- consciousness Their Respect for the Balance and Level. Yang and Yin. Scientific Value of this Conception. Causes of De- fective Individuality. Sustaining Elements of their Thought.

ANTHROPOLOGY 95°~975

The Three Roots of Chinese Philosophy. Their Logical Bond. A •• Fall of Man" inadmissible therein. Human Nature represents the Order of the World. It is within the Primal Force. It guarantees the Balance of Natural Forces. — Moral Evil recognized by Chinese Thinkers. Their Plaint of Degeneracy. Sketch of their Controversy on Human Nature. Substantial Agreement as to the Excellence of its Constitution. Illustrations. Chu-hi on Good and Evil. Evil a Part of Diversity and a Condition of Prog- ress. Also a Lack of Limit and Proportion. '"Satan" unthink- able by the Chinese. No System has explained Evil. The Chinese Ethical Balance as earnest and as effective as any other Solution. — Optimism and Universality. Meaning of "The Mean" as the Method of Virtue. — Truth and Law their own Sanction. The Moral Nemesis. Penalty is Natural Consequence. The Life of Principles is in Humanity. An Ideal Humanity the Arbiter of History. Virtue One with the Life of the World. Power to Transcend Individual Being. Origin of Mind. — Ideal Embodied in Rulers. Contrast of this Ideal with Actual Men. Belief in Immortality not affected Thereby. Materialism Inconsistent with

XXIV

TOPICAL ANALYSIS.

Chinese Conceptions. Immortality their Natural Result. Terms for Spiritual Existence. Veneration for Shin. — Origin of Man. How he is affected by Death. Conclusions as to Chinese Ideas of Immortality. — SUMMARY OF CHU-HI'S SYSTEM. His Cosmogony is Evolution without Beginning or End, or Loss of Force. The Inscrutable. Production by Polarity and Permutation. From Nebula to Heaven and Earth. Scientific Suggestions. Yin and Yang combined in All Things in Definite Proportions. Man the Bloom of the Elements and Heart of Nature. Correlations of Force. Philosophical Basis of Fung-shui. Rationalistic Criticism of Superstitions. Foreshadowings of Modern Science. Causes of Non-development of these Germs. A too-concrete Idealism and Absence of Scientific Apparatus. Promise of the Chinese Mind.

CHINESE DYNASTIC CHRONOLOGY.

Mythical.

i. The Three Hwang-ke. 2. The Five. — Fo-hi. Shin-nung. Hwang-te. Yaou. Shun.

Historical.

3. The Hia. . . .

4. Shang. . .

5. Tcheou. . T'sin . . . How-T'sin HAN . . . How Han Tsin . . . Tung Tsin Sung . . . Tse. . . . Leang . . Chin .

A.C

2205-1766.

I766-II22.

1122-249.

249-246.

246-202.

2O2-22I. A.C. , 221-265.

265-317.

317-420.

420-479.

479-502.

502-557.

557-589.

16. The Sui

TANG . . . How Leang , How Tang . How Tsin . How Han . How Tcheou Sung .... Nan-Sung . YOUEN . . MING . . . Ta-Tsing. .

A.C. 589-620. 620-907. 907-923. 923-936.

936-947.

947-951.

951-960.

960-1127. 1127-1280. 1280-1368. 1368-1644. 1644-

CHINA.

ELEMENTS.

I.

THE CHINESE MIND.

li Y

THE CHINESE MIND,

civilized nations of the West, subject for ages to mutual friction and physical intermixture, afford very inadequate data for studying the distinctive capacities of races. They do not help us to determine how far t

J • A study in

a separate ethnic growth can unfold the germs of universal universal principles in philosophy and faith. But * in the Oriental world this opportunity is presented on a magnificent scale. The vast population of China, so uni- form in physical type that they seem free from foreign admixture, isolated by the ocean and by the loftiest moun- tain barriers in the world, have shaped for themselves a peculiar civilization, whose inveteracy proves it a genuine outgrowth of the race and soil ; while its startling contrasts with other Asiatic forms render such common aspirations as shall be found to underlie this difference all the more impressive signs of Universal Religion.1

In that -division of the present work which treats of the Hindus, I have indicated their main difference General from the Chinese, by calling the mental quality distinctions of the one family cerebral, and that of the other, Lm"" muscular. There, we have an imaginative, meta- Hindus> physical race, who think away matter, and hate the physi-

1 For a better understanding of this term as used in the present volume, as well as of the scope and purpose of the whole work, of which the following pages form a second part, the reader is referred to the Introductory chapter of the preceding volume, on India.

ELEMENTS.

•

cal toil which develops its uses : here, apparently, a swarm of plodding utilitarians, sternly adherent to things actual and positive ; who insist that the world is the plainest of facts, and needs no explanation ; that it is purely a work- ing world, wherein a seventh-day rest would be an imperti- nence,— a world where every atom is intensely real and valuable ; where domestic and social uses stand for poetry, metaphysics, and religion. As w*e pass from Indian to Chinese architecture, we find the Bubble — symbol of the unreality of things — giving way to a pile of dwelling- houses, perhaps tents, each provided with roof, piazza, fini- cal pictures and bells. These pagodas tell the whole story of Chinese religion. It is domestic, tangible, practical. What a chasm we have crossed from Hindu Brahmanism and Buddhism ! There was the Brain, pure Thought : here is the Muscle, pure Labor.

To do, not to think about doing ; to fashion the stuff of life, not to contemplate it ; and to do and fashion after the most obvious, commonplace, realistic, and persistent way, — this is what seems legibly stamped on those square heavy features, so slightly modifiable by time or space : the downward-drawn eyelid, the flattened profile, the unin- spired air, the somewhat plump, muscular, enduring phy- sique. Contrast this Chinese mould with the clear bright eye and rapid graceful motion of the Arab ; with the dreamy languor, yet exquisite nervous 'susceptibility of the Aryan Hindu ; with the prominent features, the col- lected, self-conscious, and expectant bearing of the Teuton or the Greek. It is the unchangeable image of the per- sistent mental type which corresponds to it, — so lym- phatic, so incurious, so fast-bound in things as they are and have been. The Chinese creative faculty remains within the plane of certain organic habits, failing to rise from the formalism of rules to the freedom of the idea. Its function is to maintain and multiply ; to reproduce, not

THE CHINESE MIND. /

to reconstruct. It buries itself in its materials, instead of going behind them. Hindu cosmogony makes the world issue from mystic thought ; Manu forms the creatures by devotion. But the Chinese skips the question of origin, and says that the world has a self-shaping force ; or that the first man must have fashioned the world- stuff with hammer and chisel, himself and his tools being already a part of it. Speculation here holds fast by the actual and concrete ; takes the human for the divine, and positive visible work for the best part of the human.

China does not grow metaphysicians in tropical luxuri- ance, as the plains of the Ganges do. It has been hospita- ble to Buddhist literature, but the higher speculative forms of Buddhism were not of native origin, and have not main- tained themselves among the people. The sublime ideal- ism of Lao-tse, instead of flowering out, as it would have done in any Indo-European race, into a rich cycle of mys- tical philosophy, — like the Ved£nta in India, or Sufism in Persia, — rapidly faded into low forms of conjuring with spirits, elements, and spells. The rationalism of Confucius and Mencius holds fast to the solid ground of practical ethics and social organization ; while its philosophical in- terpreters, like Chuhi, guard carefully against separating essence, even in the idea, from material form. And the bewildering jargon of the " Two Principles," which circu- lates among the people in a great variety of shapes as a substitute for philosophy, usually winds itself up with the saying, that all this has inexpressible meanings which no one since Confucius has been able to conceive. The na- tional religion of China is essentially a political institu- tion ; and we shall realize the distance between the popular Buddhism and that absolute mental abstraction from things visible and conceivable, which distinguishes the original faith, when we consider how intensely and exclu- sively the Chinese mind holds to the reality of the phe-

o ELEMENTS.

nomenal world, and the validity of its familiar interests, sentiments, and pursuits.

It would be quite wrong to infer from facts like these Relation of that we are dealing with pure materialists. Their abstract to significance may be better stated by saying that

concrete in •"/•«•

the Chinese the Chinese do not hold ideas apart from con- crete embodiment, so as to study them in their own right y and in their capacity for growth. As the Hindu could not easily get away from the abstract Idea, so the Chinese cannot get away from the embodied Form. This is perfectly illustrated in the written characters of their language. There is an immediateness of relation between idea and embodiment, abstract and concrete, in their mental constitution, which has not only forced each primary complex of experience directly into the mould of a single syllabic sound, and thence into the still more con- crete shape of a visible written image, but has held it fast bound on this material plane. So that not only has sound failed to be analyzed into alphabetic elements, but the inner development of the idea itself, arrested at the outset, has remained unaccomplished, — the mind being busied, not in pursuing its lead, but in constant effort to modify and per- fect its visible sign. The paucity of ideas in Chinese civili- zation, the intellectual rigidity, the comparative absence of historical development, have long been suspected to be somehow owing to the too rapid crystallization of thought into written and even printed forms. Spoken language, as an intermediate stage in this process, has, in fact, re- ceived much less attention than written. Little effort has been made to bring the dialects of the Middle Kingdom into a common speech, compared with that expended on the grand achievement of a common script conveying the same meaning to the hundreds of millions of its population. Less than five-hundred sounds have been invented ; and these have been made by very primitive artifices of tone,

THE CHINESE MIND. 9

position, and combination to do service for the forty or fifty thousand characters, which the love of working at this concrete end of the mental process has wrought out. The language itself is still a monosyllabic heap of atoms l after twenty centuries of existence. As in the lowest forms of animal life, so* here, there is no separation of functions ; each word may serve for all parts of speech in turn, all specialization being effected by external devices only. The verb and the noun are not formally distin- guished. How could they be held apart, so long as the ideal and the actual were not mentally separated ? The fact standing there is the only reality ; and. human action can only come to that, producing no essential change in things. Similar phenomena, however, may be found in the languages of realistic races of the highest culture.

Ampere, many years ago, ascribed the inflexibility of Chinese words to the "curious accident of an ideo- illustrated graphic writing, invented at a primitive epoch and J^teen always preserved." It was not, as we have just language, seen, a " curious accident," but a natural result of pre- dominant mental qualities. These oldest forms were the bare picturing of ideas by the concrete objects which really meant or symbolically suggested them. When a child learned an idea by the written language, it was only as an embodied fact. Thus, obedience was represented, not by a series of letters conveying no visible image and leaving the mind free to hold fast the abstraction, but by two charac- ters which painted the very act of obeying, — a child at the feet of an old man ; comfort, by a woman under a roof ; compassion, by a heart and blood ; fear, by two eyes placed obliquely and drawn together at the corners ; death, by a sepulchral urn ; succession, by one man behind another. Simpler forms are a sun and a moon, for brightness ; for

1 This statement must not be applied to its grammatical structure, as will hereafter appear.

1O ELEMENTS.

darkness, a falling moon ; for old age, a man leaning on a staff ; for growth, a plant rising from the ground ; for culti- vated land, a crossed square. These ideographs were sim- plified, modified, and combined as writing became a fine art, until the original forms are for the most part lost ; but the intricate labyrinths of pencil-strokes which have supplanted them show that the process has still continued to be essentially picture-making. And although by far the largest portion of the actual signs are phonetic, their forms are none the less distinctly associated with the ideographic processes from which they came, and with artistic con- structions of which they form a part. However arbitrary their use in composition, they indicate, almost as strongly as the earliest and rudest figures, the absorption of Chinese mind in concrete things. These remarks on the written language may serve to illustrate that central quality of the national type to which our attention must first be directed. This incapacity, if not for grasping ideas as such, yet The key to for holding them in solution for the tests of reason nwbi?6 an<^ aspiration, — this necessity of letting them slip ity." down, at once and in their very rudiments, into work- ing moulds that forbid their further growth, — is the key to " Chinese immobility." Progress depends on comparing the idea of a thing as it is with the idea of what it ought to be, or of somewhat better than it can ever be. For the Chinese positivist, what ought to be has already got perfect expres- sion : the idea had its perfect work long ago ; and he has nothing more to do with it but to show how obviously it is all contained in some crude diagram traced with Nature's simplest straight and broken lines. Therefore this im- mense civilization appears to be in many respects an ar- rested development, — an old man still in the cradle ; and the unconscious symbolism of its highest philosophy cele- brates a founder who has grown hoary with years in his mother's womb.

THE CHINESE MIND. II

It is the arrest of ideas by their own earliest concrete expressions, destined thenceforward to absorb the and child- whole working power of the mind, that explains ishness- this childish side of an aged civilization, — the side familiar hitherto to Western races, who have made the utmost of its odd contrasts and infantile illusions ; apt indeed to overdraw the picture, as well as to misinterpret it.

The Chinese boy " never becomes a man." He is under nursery disciplines from beardless youth to beardless old age. The State is but a larger nursery. Everywhere maturity is foreclosed, and the passion for toys and trifles is supreme at every period of life. Gentlemen in China fly kites, pitch coppers, cut pretty lanterns in paper, and pay for their mis- demeanors on their naked backs. When Lord Amherst's embassy were at Peking, a crowd of yellow-girdled manda- rins kept close about them, feeling of their dresses, taking liberties with their persons, making holes in the paper win- dows of their private apartment ; and were driven off at last, at the whip's end, like scared children.1

During the war with England, great images with goggle eyes were mounted on the walls to frighten the barbarians. On approaching a regiment drawn up in tiger-colored gowns, the English were surprised at seeing them fall on their knees with a dismal howl : this was a salutation of respect. The travelling players make a stage of bamboo poles, and go through a drama without change of scene. If a general receives orders to visit a distant province, he mounts a stick, snaps a whip, and capers round the stage with a bridle in his hand, to the sound of instruments of heartrending qual- ity : then he stops suddenly, and tells you he has arrived. Ghosts call out from under the stage that they are ready ; and men walk over it with a rolling motion to show that they are crossing a river. Yet this primitive acting is clone in silk dresses of great splendor and very ancient patterns.2

1 Davis, Sketchts of China (Lond. i84s\ IV. p. 90. » Williams's Middle Kingdom, II. 86.

12 ELEMENTS.

It is far from true that the intelligence and culture of Dead China is cast in such childish moulds. Yet the Levels. repressed ideal element has been crystallized for ages in rigid working forms, whose gravitation has drawn to dead levels of uniformity and routine. Every thing runs into ruts of habit, unchangeable simply because the ideal was at the outset buried in the actual, and cannot stand outside and judge it. A population of three hun- dred million souls firmly believe that the world has always gone on by virtue of the same maxims and methods. In all their history, full as it is of civil strifes and local rebellions, there has been but one real political revolution ; and that lasted scarcely a century. Never were annals so monotonous, crowded as they are with a whirling chaos of names and doings : and they reach through thousands of years. A roar of multitudes, toiling, struggling, working up rude material into innumerable forms of use, — yet to the ear of thought subdued to an endless ticking of the clock or dropping of sands in the glass. Not to the Hebrew preacher, but to the Chinese worker, belongs the experience that" there is nothing new under the sun." In this plane of suppression there is no irregularity of surface, because there is no free ideal. Things are unmodified, laid by the plumb and square. You may draw a line horizontally over a Chinese city, at the height of a single story, with scarce an interference save from a flagstaff or a Buddhist pagoda. The Emperor Kienlung, seeing a perspective of London, wondered if the English territory was so small that people had to pile the houses up to the clouds. In the language, every word stands stiff and stark in monosyllabic uniform, like a drilled private in his trainband : no' initials to serve as corporals, nor punctuation for platoon divisions. Pict- ures are without perspective ; and, if you ask why the human face is drawn without shadows, you are answered that there is no reason why one side should be of different

THE CHINESE MIND. % 13

color from the other. History has the same construction : the effects of distance are wanting, its contrast of changing atmosphere, its differences of quality and relief ; the earliest fact is outlined as distinctly as the latest ; and both are of one value, because presenting the same motives, traits, and aims in the same way. The perception of emphasis seems wanting. This people lay up the old boots of a retired officer in their archives as carefully as they would build him a memorial gateway.

A plodding, matter-of-fact temperament, without salient choice or special enthusiasm, makes the Chinese Comminu. push all work into infinitesimal details; just as the ted ideals, opposite spirit impelled the Hindus towards abstract unity in all the products of their dreaming brain. In this amaz- ing minuteness of elaboration we see that the ideal element in their nature is not absent, but absorbed in positive and physical work-impulses. This Pegasus loves his harness, and grinds away at his mill with all the perfection possible without freedom. Out of this labor come exquisitely deli- cate manipulations ; civil and political structures of be- wildering complexity ; a system of written signs, in number and intricacy almost beyond conception ; a network of etiquette and secular ceremony surpassing in fineness any ritual elsewhere devised for the purposes of religion. The Chinese ideal is in a state of comminution. We cannot wonder at the pulverization to which the art of compliment has been reduced by this mincing process at work through so many ages. Its ingenuity is exercised in avoiding the use of plain personal pronouns, and substituting polite or self-depreciatory adjectives. As a branch of the ceremonial- ism which makes so important a part of Chinese life, these fine-spun courtesies serve to mark what grotesque transfor- mations may befall the higher elements of character, when absorbed by an intense interest in concrete details. We cannot help discerning the traces of benevolence and even

14 ELEMENTS.

humor limping about with clipped wings, where people say "little dog" for one's own son, and "contemptible village" for one's native place ; while they have invented " your illus- trious house" as an euphuism for another's wife, and even " your respectable disease " for his ill health, — phrases doubt- less much transformed in spirit by an English garb. What ages of mutual deference are condensed into the flattering address on a visiting card, " Your stupid younger brother salutes you with bowed head ;" or into the host's obeisance to his caller, " How shall I presume to receive the trouble you give your honorable feet " ! From the oldest recorded times the duties of children to parents have been mechanized with a minuteness of prescription that would turn a less prosaic race into sheer hypocrites in the closest relations of life.1 In the Chinese, it seems but a sincere expression of the patriarchalism that sways every fibre of their being, and works with a kind of spontaneity at the production of these swarming human bodies, not more real and solid than they are loyal, age after age, to their unvarying type. And no mechanism can hide its genuine filial piety ; its full flow of reverence and tender devotion neutralizing the rigidity of these infinitesimal rules, though it does not quite melt them in fervent heat. " They say but little," observes an old traveller of the Chinese : " their compliments are in form ; one knows what he must say, and the other how he must answer : they never beat their brains like us, to find out new compliments and fine phrases. They never overheat themselves : they are like statues in a theatre, they have so little of discourse and so much of gravity." 2 Is this as likely to make hypocrites as the other style with which they are compared? Baron Hubner admired the "chin-chin" when he saw it performed by the natives, and recommended its use

1 Yet it is not two hundred years since profound obeisances between persons of the same social rank were a part of civility in Europe, and children were taught all the outward forms of homage to their parents.

s Pe"re Lecomte (lyth century).

THE CHINESE MIND. I 5

in the West as an antidote to the excessive familiarity of manners, borrowed from American life.

The utter sincerity of this worship of petty ceremonial by a people who have so faithfully used their work- ^J^dof ing power to build up a vast industrial civilization, ideals, nowise wanting in the amenities of life, has certainly its pathetic side. How completely it absorbs the religious sentiment is shown by the simple amazement into which they are thrown by European irreverence towards their imperial fetich. Lord Amherst's embassy refused to "kotow" before the sacred curtain, but consented as a com- promise to bow thrice. Soon afterwards, to read the Celestials a lesson, they unveiled portraits of the British sovereigns, and made similar obeisance to them. " Where- at," we are told, " the imperial deputy was thunderstruck, and could scarcely recover himself." No wonder, since every loyalty of his nature was outraged ! The indignation of the English embassy of 1793, at rinding themselves es- corted to Peking under banners announcing them to all China as bearers of tribute to the Emperor, hardly allowed them to perceive that what seemed intended as humiliation was, in fact, the naive symbol of a profound national convic- tion;— inability to conceive of any other relations between the " Son of 'Heaven " and foreign States being as positive a limit for Chinese vision as the institutions and traditions of Christianity are for that of the majority of Englishmen. It is as possible for the religious ideal to become arrested in some concrete finality at the later stage of its growth as at an earlier one.

The pathos of this drudgery of the higher faculties in organizing the ideas of their own infancy is ex-

i . . . . Humor.

pressed in a timeworn, serious, impassive air, as if making solemn earnest of minute and trivial things. Hence, probably, the prevailing impression of a defective sense of humor, and even of the ridiculous ; so that most

1 6 ELEMENTS.

translators have thought themselves justified in making an intelligent people write and speak in a persiflage, wholly opposed to the compact and forcible genius of their language. A closer study has laid most of this absurd inflation at the door of the ingenious translator. The Chinese have really a very quick sense of the ridiculous, though its associations belong to the experience of an antiquated childhood, as strange to us as the language of tones entirely separated from feeling, which they have invented to aid the poverty of their vocabulary. They are singularly light-hearted, passionately fond of comedy, travesty, and banter ; and they have brought political lampooning to a fine art. Their aged and serious ex- pression does not prove absence of the play-impulse, but shows the repressive forces that have, as it were, crystal- lized it.

The facts now indicated are very far from inclining me False and to believe with Burnouf, that " the organ of abstract true grounds notions is wanting to the Chinese brain ;" or with gressive Bunsen, that " they wholly lack the idea of con- habits, scious mentality," if I understand his expression. Abstract and concrete tendencies coexist in their mental habit, but in too close combination for freedom of play. Meadows — one of the best observers of their Character — even insists with much force, in opposition to the general belief, that it is not utilitarianism, but intense ideality, that most distinguishes this people. Certainly, their theory that government belongs to the fittest and best, their doc- trine of the excellence of human nature, and the fulness of faith with which they point to their whole history for four thousand years as justification for these beliefs, — indi- cate the possession of this quality in a remarkable degree. And we have only to remember the unchangeable moulds to which its manifestation has been bound, to recognize that the true statement of the relation of the abstract to the

THE CHINESE MIND. \J

concrete in Chinese mind is not that the former is absent, but that it is inseparable from some fixed actual embodi- ment ; that this conjunction, being organic, took place at an early stage in the growth of the ideal, or rather was one of its first conditions, and from thenceforth deter- mined its objects and methods ; and that the result of this chronic inaptness at lifting thought out of phenomena into free speculation is to deprive even the highest in- stincts of their proper power to criticise their own prod- ucts, so as to reconstruct them from new standpoints of progress.

Mr. Fortune tells us that in many districts of China the art of ploughing consists in turning over a layer of wet mud only six or eight inches deep, which rests on a solid floor of hard, stiff clay. The share never goes deeper than this mud, so that the ploughman and his bullock find their solid footing just below the surface. The ideal element in Chinese mind so loves a solid footing close at hand, that it plods away age after age at a thin surface deposit, and leaves the hard pan undisturbed.

What can come of such constant experience of limita- tion both in ideal and actual relations, but failure "The to recognize the infinite and absolute, — a perpetual ^MiddhT schooling in moderation and repression, and com- Path." promise between extremes ? This is that password to Chinese wisdom, which meets us everywhere in philosophy, politics, manners, literature, faith, — "the Middle Path; the Mean." In all things, the ideal has one meaning : it is balance and harmony of differing elements, the not-too- much of either. Hence, the " horde of petty maxims," of minutely measured virtues, antithetically set and squared in pedagogic formulas, that make up the educational pro- gramme ; never to be seized with freedom or enthusiasm, but followed as perfect prescription for securing the bliss of equilibration and level in the elements of life. The polit-

1 8 ELEMENTS.

ical recipe is " tranquillization," — a term for governmental duty to the people. All functions, from the courier who runs with despatches to the emperor who sits in the repose of divine authority, are beset with regulation and restraint at every step. Sovereignty resides not in the free concep- tion of justice, not in any personal will or public purpose, but in the prescribed repression of every special tendency in deference to its counterbalancing one ; and to this bal- ance of forces, believed to be actually organized in institu- tions, emperor and subject are alike responsible. The aim and end of society are, therefore, not progress, but "pro- priety; " and this term, descriptive of the mutual obeisance to which the life of all human aspirations is reduced, corresponds in Chinese usage to that of the word " in- spiration " in races whose ideal is free motive-power and enthusiastic choice.

Hence the lack of grandeur and even of elevation in most products of the spiritual soil. Even Buddhism Absence gradually loses its ardor, and fritters away its ofinspira- self-abandonment in petty forms and superstitions. And the mystical philosophy of the Tao, so far from reaching enthusiasm, deals to a large extent in para- doxes of contrast and negations of extremes, which end in a quietistic self-repression, depreciative of special aims. It hangs between the contradictory theses, that, on the one hand, only renunciation of the world can accomplish its ideal of seeing the invisible and doing the impossible ; and, on the other, that these very powers depend on arts of manipulating the visible phenomena of Nature, and sub- jecting them to human control.

It has been suggested that the intermediate position of China between Europe and Asia explains this tempera- ment of compromise, this cool, uninspired movement of mind in middle paths. The physical type of the race how- ever, as well as its history from very early times, shows

THE CHINESE MIND. IQ

that the peculiarity is no mere result of geographical relation to other races. We shall see, too, that it has its analogues in certain tendencies and special stages of other civilizations, which cannot be so explained ; and that these are proofs of its origin in universal laws of human nature. But, however explained, it stands before us as the first impressive feature of Chinese character, and as not without its attractive aspects.

There is a fine instinct of justice in its broad recognition of differing sides and tendencies, as elements to _

Its Uni-

be harmonized in due proportion and balanced versaiEie- activity. Even on the concrete plane to which it n is so closely confined, we note with astonishment the extent to which the individual represents the complex of public interests, the organization of the State. This mar- vellous social builder can hardly be said to have any life apart from the carefully balanced and regulated whole. 'Tis a polypidom of toiling atoms, yet a structure of intel- ligent adjustments and adaptations for all organic pro- clivities. Here every thing has its ideal, though not as looked at in itself or its own right. Individual, Family, Property, Commonweal, Authority in Letters or in Re- ligion, are a series of middle terms, deduced from a variety of optimist extremes, brought into mutual defer- itsappiu ence and restraint. The logical process of the ^^ Chinese is not induction nor deduction, but the processes, movement of this love of the Middle Term, systematically brought to its simplest form as the mutual interaction of two contrary principles. This is the normal track of Chinese reason. Its physical, mental, social, political sci- ence,— its ethics, literature, religion, — turn upon the con- stant formulas of the Yin and Yang, as all-pervading oppo- sites, by whose interfusion and mutual compromise all things have harmony and health. Every thing illustrates this necessity of the national mind to move in the balance,

20 ELEMENTS.

or centre of indifference, of contrary forces. The combina- Toiau- tion °f opposites is a common device of the lan- guage, guage for expressing genus, quantity, and quality. Thus, far-near-ness is distance ; light-heavy-ness, weight ; great-small-ness, size; and long-short-ness, length. For designating succession, it has before-after-ness ; for rate of movement, it says leisure-haste ; for number, many- few ; for brother, the older-younger ; for animal genus the united names of the male and female ; and for existence it makes the really philosophical combination of "being and nought." Meadows, from whom some of these instances are taken,1 calls attention to their conscientious accuracy as compared with our corresponding terms, which recog- nize only one side of the relation. The anomalies of the TO juris- Penal Code are explicable only as the wavering, prudence. now to one gj^ an(j now ^Q ^Q other, of a line

drawn half-way between opposite tendencies ; and the con- stant coupling of commutation with penalty betrays one pervading spirit of compromise " between severity in sen- tence and mildness in execution." The peculiar conjunc- Tochar- tion of qualities observable in Chinese character, acter. — of cruejty with gentleness, of peacefulness with irritability, of profound loyalty with incessant discontent and revolt, of extreme dislike to bloodshed with utter unconcern at the torture or decapitation of hundr£ds of persons at once, of strong love of life with equally strong propensity to suicide under circumstances of discourage- ment,— all point to the same constitutional proneness to hover between two attractions, instead of yielding to either alone. As the Hindu dissolved contraries in unity, so the Chinese asserts them in his Middle Path, which never escapes dualism.2

What then do we naturally find to be his religion ? Not

1 The Chinese and their Rebellions, p. 380; Schott, Chin. Sprachl., p. 14. 1 Philosophy, however, it will be seen, knows how to go behind it.

THE CHINESE MIND. 21

personal experience of relation to the infinite and absolute, so much as a body of common interests, averaged,

J Io moral-

conciliated, and expressed in domestic and political uy and re- institutions ; in which the antithesis of heaven and llglon' earth reappears as that of the governing and the governed, and the active and passive principles — Yang and Yin — are represented by teacher and taught, by parent and child, by older and younger brother, and, to a certain extent, by man and woman. The adjustment of these relations, the pres- ervation of that harmony of the universe which depends on their mutual fidelity and proportional work, is the pur- pose of religion. It is thus an affair of the State ; not as religious master, but as religious representative, — the de- positary of worship for the people, as its organized Middle Term between heaven -and earth. And as the Emperor officially performs the national homage to Shangte, and to the superior guardian deities as under him, so the great local magistrates throughout the empire pay to the inferior gods their iesser dues. Meanwhile the popular religious sentiment, by no means resting in this final product of vicarious and mediatorial religion, is absorbed in the closer intimacies of the service of ancestors and of the forces of Nature, or Fung-shui. And these again follow the regulative ideal, moral and spiritual, in its inevitable middle ways. The burden of the Classics is the sacred and invariable " Mean." " Be discriminating," says the Shuking, " and hold fast the Mean ; for the mind of man is restless and prone to err." l " In punishment, settle cases with compas- sion and reverence ; hit the proper mean." 2 The text of the Yking opens with announcing four different principles, whose combination constitutes virtue, through mutual lim- itation and mediation, upon the basis that each shall have such culture as the interests of the others allow.3 " Per-

1 Shuking, II. ii. 15 (Legge's Transl.). » Ibid., V. xxvii. 20.

3 Mohl's Yking, I. vi, and Piper's exposition of the meaning of /4 Zeitschr. d. Deutsch. Morg. Gesellsck. III. 290.

ELEMENTS.

feet," says the Chung-Yung, " is the virtue of the Mean ; rare its practice : the knowing go beyond it ; the foolish do not reach it. Equilibrium is the great root of human action ; and harmony the universal path that human feelings should pursue. Then heaven and earth are in happy order, and all things will prosper." l " Shun," says Confucius, " took hold of the two extremes in men ; determined the Mean, and employed it in his government of the people. It was by this that he was Shun." 2 " To go beyond is as wrong as to fall short." 3 " The reason I hate holding to one point alone," says Mencius, "is the harm it does to principle. Taking up one point, it disregards a hundred others." 4 " When the sages had used the vigor of their eyes, they called in to their aid the compass, the square, the level, and the line ; and the use of the instruments is inexhausti- ble. Thus they perfectly exhibited human relations." 5

Evidently, then, the repression to which all natural ten- its affirm- dencies are subjected does not intend their destruc- ative eie- tion. On the contrary, the rights of all are studiously respected, save that they appear in that mechanized form which belongs to the intense concreteness of the na- tional mind. In the instant assumption by each of a fixed type, to be thenceforward sacredly maintained as factor of an ideal system, there is at least a rare universality of plan, as broadly affirmative as it is unprogressive, and as persist- ent as it is uninspired. This hospitality to all passions and desires, as valid within their proper limits and relations, leads the Chinese to their characteristic belief that human nature is essentially good, — a belief as consonant with the best psychological science as it is opposed to certain dog- mas of Shemitic origin, concerning the nature of man and treatment of moral evil, which are current in Christianity.

1 Chung-Yung, I 4, 5. 2 Ibid., VI. s Lunyu, XI. xv. 3.

* Mencius, VII. i. 26. « Ibid., IV. i. i, 2.

THE CHINESE MIND. 23

The offence of the Chinese ideal to the human faculties does not consist in excluding or denying, but in over-reg- ulating and mechanizing them. How erroneous it is to suppose this peculiar people to be entirely wanting in whole classes of capacities, — such as the religious, poetic, or spon- taneous, — may be readily inferred from the extraordinary variety of testimony concerning their habits and Scopeo{ traits. This diversity is so great that it would seem to make a trustworthy analysis of Chinese mind im-

possible, did we not learn, upon closer study, that by the dis-

/ cordanceof

the apparent incongruities are but a natural result testimony of the breadth and variety of its qualities. It is true about it- that most of our data come either from religious functiona- ries who would obviously be inclined to overstate the darker side of a civilization which they wish to supersede, or else from practical tradesmen and political agents whose in- terest it would be to magnify the attractions of their own spheres and the vastness of unexplored resources which have drawn them to this marvellous land. But peculiar circumstances have helped to counteract both these causes of error ; yielding a large infusion of liberality and learning in the contributions of missionaries to our knowledge of the Chinese, and greatly tempering the natural tendency of travellers, traders, and officials from remote nations to idealize their traits. Besides this, our data run back through several centuries in the history of a comparatively unchang- ing national type, and their principal records of its spirit are now rapidly becoming accessible in a trustworthy form. So that fair conclusions from what we know of Chinese tendencies in general may safely be followed in dealing with this mass of apparently conflicting testimony as to special qualities. While we guard against extreme features, as contrary to the national temperament and culture, we may reasonably allow a degree of credence to very dif-Howtodea] ferent and even opposite pictures of a race which withthesc-

24 ELEMENTS.

does not renounce, nor yet fuse, its propensities, but reconciles them by mutual balance ; and not by composition of forces, so much as by their mechanical conjunction. And we must especially bear in mind its characteristic habit of hovering between opposites. The dualism of the Yin and Yang is a constitutional fact, and as likely to appear in moral traits as in philosophical theories and religious beliefs.

Chinese literature everywhere enjoins conscientiousness Ethical in stucly and conduct ; practical application of what side. is believed ; honest payment of the moral price by which wisdom is earned ; compliance with the just conditions of success by self -discipline and by steady routines. Its ethics are an endless variation on the great texts of Confucius and Mencius ; which pronounce that only loyalty to principles is power, and that "he whose good- ness is a part of himself is the real man." 1 This is of the essence of honesty, and the persistence with which this tone has dominated the national thought for thousands of years seems to find explanation in traits that rest on the best of evidence. Thus Williams, in common with all other competent observers, testifies to the general security of life and property in China ; 2 and Meadows, whose opin- ion of Chinese adherence to truth is very low, yet believes that there are " as many individuals of high and firm prin- ciples among them as in many, perhaps in any, of the Christian nations." 3 He considers the system of guar- antee, which pervades all relations, as supplying the place of natural veracity ; and declares that he has " never known an instance of a Chinese openly violating a guarantee known to have been given by him." This sacredness of the bond resides, according to him, in its public necessity, rather than in the authority of truth. Doubtless we have here an

* Mencius, VII. ii. 25. 2 Middle Kingdom, I. 42.

8 Notes on Gov't. and People of China, p. 216.

THE CHINESE MIND. 25

instance of the tendency of all ideals to resolve themselves into parts of a mechanized whole, and so to appear at last, not in their own right, but in their public relations. Pum- pelly's experience " did not corroborate the accepted ideas concerning the dishonesty of the Chinese." 1 Brine, in his careful history of the Taiping rebellion, denies the com- mon charges of rapacity and fraud.2 Father Hue's state- ment, that " European merchants who have had dealings with the great commercial houses of China are unanimous in extolling the irreproachable probity of their conduct," is generally admitted.3 Giles speaks of the trustworthi- ness of servants left in the entire charge of houses, and thinks thieving is not more common than in England.4 Medhurst tells us that "honesty is by no means a rare virtue," and that the Chinese boy, in this quality, "will match, if well treated, with any servant in the world ; " that for thirty years he lost nothing by theft in China but a small revolver ; that the Chinese take no such precautions as we do against fraud in dealing with each other ; that large sums are constantly entrusted to native hands in the transactions of the interior, where the temptation to em- bezzlement is very great.6 It is well known that Chinese merchants do not generally give nor require written agree- ments in their dealings with foreigners. Objects of value are exposed for sale as it would not be possible to do in England ; and lines of coolies carry money freely through the streets without protection from police. Scarth states that not more than one per cent of the tea bought at Can- ton was examined by the buyers. Davis describes the public porters as so trustworthy, that " not a single article was lost by the British embassies in all the distance be- tween the northern and southern extremes of the empire." 6

1 Across America and Asia, p. 321. * Brine, p. 345.

8 Travels in Chin. Empire, II. 146. * Chinese Sketches, p. 122.

6 Medhurst, Foreigner in Far Cathay, pp. 170, 30, 171, 172.

8 Davis's Chinese, Lond, 1845, II. 63.

26 ELEMENTS.

Morache, the author of a very careful description of Peking, says the laborer does not shirk work, and is perhaps more conscientious than the French ; " he does not seek to de- ceive, but gets his pay loyally ; will haggle for an hour for a few centimes, but will be the slave of his engagements." 1 Knox gives similar testimony as to the traders ; who, he says, will circumvent when they can, but when the bargain is made, adhere to it ; their word being as good as their bond.2 Medhurst testifies, from very long acquaintance with the working of Chinese institutions, that although the scanty salaries of officials and the crowd of subordinates made necessary by the concentration of many functions in one mandarin lead to a vast amount of peculation and bribery, much of it through secretaries, yet these officials as a class lead a laborious life, and not unfrequently win the esteem and devotion of the people ; while those on the other hand who arouse popular indignation by their cor- ruption are certain to be reprimanded and punished by their superiors.3 Extreme wholesale denunciations of Chi- nese officials are proved superficial by such well-balanced estimates as this ; to which we may add Williams' s state- ment, that, although the mandarins " spend their lives in ambitious efforts to rise upon the fall of others," they " do not lose all sense of character, or become reckless of the means of advance ; for this would destroy their chance of success." 4 On the general honesty and fidelity of the Chi- nese in California we need only refer to the testimony of competent observers like Speer, Bowles, Brace, Palmer, to the effect that no class of foreign miners sustain so high a character, and that no laborers on public works so satisfac- torily fulfil their engagements.

On the other hand, Eitel asserts that China is the " para- dise of thieves ; " 5 and Montfort, that " their cunning is

1 Peking, p. 80. 2 Overland, &c., p. 312.

3 Foreigner in Far Cathay, pp. 85-89. * Middle Kingdom, I. 356.

8 Notes and Queries, II. No. 2.

THE CHINESE MIND. 2/

such that they succeed in duping themselves, and deceit is everywhere the order of the day." l Fortune had many adventures with robbers in the open country around Can- ton. Martin reports the Chinese police to be of corrupt and abandoned character.2 Williams says of the people generally, that " they feel no shame at being detected in a lie ; " but we must remember his opinion that " it would be a strange wonder in the world to find a heathen people who did speak the truth." 3 Others, however, less orthodox, agree with him.4 The prevalence of freebooting and piracy in all ages of Chinese history is notorious ; but the cause lies ob- viously, not so much in disregard for rights of property, as in the famines, rebellions, and provincial wars of this enor- mous and crowded population. The English have been loud in their charges of political trickery against Chinese officials, during the wars by which the gates of the Middle Kingdom have been forced open ; but the effect of these charges is not a little weakened by the utterly demoralizing purpose which the complainants were pushing on, and by the fact that cunning is the only defence of the feeble against the strong. It is hardly worth while to insist on the adulteration of teas with sulphate of copper, a " medi- cine " provided by the native manufacturers, with smiles of wonder, to satisfy the .special taste of the foreign barba- rian ; 5 nor on the infusion of Prussian blue, manufactured, the Cantonese say, by a process taught them by English- men.6

Upon the whole, this contradictory testimony need not confuse one who reflects on the interaction of opposite qualities already ascribed to the Chinese mind. It points to an average honesty in the masses, certainly not inferior to that which our best types of Western national character would present. But it also shows how utilitarianism offsets

1 Voyage en Chine, p. 89. 2 China, I. 153. 3 Middle Kingdom, II. 96.

4 Giles, pp. 123-126. 6 De Mas, I. 154. 6 Notes and Queries, May, 1840.

28 ELEMENTS.

or balances the love of truth and justice, so manifest in their ethics and their labor, with a politic shrewdness as regards personal interests, which is apt to pass into less creditable traits ; the two tendencies maintaining a kind of mechanical balance, instead of being fused, as they would have been in more ardent temperaments, into a definite type of character. This defect may astonish us when observed on so large a scale ; yet it really illustrates the action of familiar laws to which no people is a stranger. And our data prove that what it expresses is not an or- ganic tendency in the Chinese to practical violation of their own moral ideal, but the coexistence of tendencies which the want of a free contemplative study of the ideal has caused to fail of being solved in a higher unity. The result is neither the extreme virtuousness which their lit- erature would promise, nor the extreme insincerity which has so often been charged upon them, — but a combina- tion of honor and policy, each in a repressed form ; and, upon the whole testimony, strikingly creditable to an un- progressive race.

Williams describes the Chinese as " a vile and polluted personal people, among whom brutality and coarseness are Morals. covered by a mere varnish of manners." 1 Yet he allows that " they have more virtues than most pagan nations ; " that there are no gin-palaces nor indecent the- atrical shows, and even that public opinion favors morality more than among their neighbors.2 The Penal Code has penalties for keeping a gambling house. Classic odes, imperial edicts, and moral precepts denouncing intemper- ance testify in all times to the prevalence of this vice, and to the strenuous effort to repress it.3 Alcohol in Western countries kills ten persons to one victim of opium in China.

1 Middle Kingdom, II. 96-98. * Ibid. II. 14, 88; I. 435-

3 Liki, III. iii. ; Ibid., II. ; Shuking, V. v.

THE CHINESE MIND. 2Q

Delirium tremens is unknown ; nor is opium smoking easily propagated, as it destroys the procreative force, having thus a natural check.1 The use of very small glasses and of weak and watered wine at entertainments is a very old and honored custom.

The earnest efforts of the government to suppress traffic in opium gives evidence of the fearful demoralization this drug has produced since its introduction in large quantities by European traders-. Yet in earlier times there appears no evidence of its use. It is otherwise with the social vice ; and recent statistics point to syphilis and an allied form of leprosy as prevalent in many parts of China. 2 The experiment of legalizing vices so deeply rooted in all large communities, under all forms of civilization, has been tried in China, as elsewhere, as a method of restraint. Doubt- less, Medhurst indicates a more effectual influence when he says of prostitution in the large cities that law and public opinion combine to keep it under a certain check, and that the practice of early marriage must also have a salutary effect in counteracting it.3 The Chinese have carefully kept all immoral suggestions out of their literature and art ; and the classical Books of Instruction enforce the law of purity as springing directly out of the profoundest principle of the national belief. " As our bodies are in- herited from our parents, let us not dare to be negligent or base in our treatment of them."4 No nation in the world, of whatever religion, possesses a literature so pure. It has been said that there is not a single sentence in the whole of the classical books, nor in their annotations, that ' may not, when translated word for word, be read aloud with propriety in any family circle in England. Not a sign of human sacrifice, of the deification of vice, of licen- tious rites and orgies, exists in China ; and not an indecent

1 Gileses Sketches, pp. 104, 113. s Morache, Peking, p. 130-132.

* Foreigner in Far Cathay, p. 117. * Siaohiao, ch. ii.

30 ELEMENTS.

idol is exposed in any temple.1 Are we to infer that the great number of immoral pictures on walls and teacups, observed by Erman at Maimachin, the great trading post on the Siberian border,2 were intended to meet a special demand of Northern and Western peoples ? The conclusion to which we should be led by these differing data on the morality of the Chinese, as well as by what has been said of their psychological qualities in general, is fully con- firmed by the testimony of Nevius : "The difference in the standard and practice of virtue between China and Chris- tian lands is certainly not so striking as to form the basis of a very marked contrast, or to render it modest or prudent for us to designate any particular vice or class of vices as especially characteristic of the Chinese." 3 This piece of justice loses none of its force from the fact that the writer hastens to inform us that, nevertheless, he believes " a high degree of moral culture to be consistent with the greatest spiritual ignorance and destitution " (i. e., as to the knowl- edge of Christ), and that " Satan has used this instru- mentality of a (good) moral system in China to keep the soul away from God " ! 4

Nevius further testifies, from ten years intercourse as a missionary with the Chinese, to the extremely low opinion which they have formed of the morality of Christian races ; founded partly on experience of their political and mercan- tile operations, and partly on the brutal and sensual habits Effects of °^ Western sailors in the Chinese ports. His evi- over-popu- dence shows that the native population are becom- ing demoralized by this contact.5 It is no less certain that most of the charges brought against their moral charact^ as a people are drawn from observations made in the great trading ports, and especially Hongkong, which are of course subject to the worst influences, foreign

1 Meadows, The Chinese and their Rebellions^ p. 396.

2 Erman's Siberia^ II. 188. 8 Nevius's China and the Chinese, p. 290. 4 Ibid , p 291. B Ibid., p. 283, 284.

THE CHINESE MIND. 31

and native. As to the interior, the testimony of travellers is almost universally favorable. The cities of China are probably the most densely peopled in the world : the poor in this oldest of empires have come to pack themselves more closely than any similar class in other countries. Such circumstances, aggravated by misgovernment and the lack of energy and progress, have produced effects which it would be exaggeration to describe as national habits and traits. One of these is uncleanliness, of which the large cities of the coast are doubtless dire examples. Yet these bad conditions do not greatly affect the lon- gevity of the people, who live mostly in the open air, dress comfortably, and are cheerful and social.1 While the city of New York counts one pauper for every fifty persons, and the proportion in the whole State is nearly half as large, we can hardly condemn Chinese civilization for fail- ing to diffuse the blessings of self-support.

Excessive population has caused singular effects in some of the cities ; where beggars have become a recognized caste, with rights, it is said, of roving and pillage on certain days, and of organizing to levy funds for their support.2 The sale of children by their parents in stress of poverty involves less mischief than we should expect ; as the buyer is forbidden to sell the child again, or to use it for vicious purposes. This slavery is not perpetual ; nor are girls, bought for domestic service, excluded from ordinary femi- nine culture, nor from the best marriages.3 Mendoza (i6th century) says that in his time there was no beggary in China, all the poor being supported. But the most startling sign of poverty is the readiness with which a condemned criminal can obtain a substitute, who will give his life for the sum needed to support his family. Whether

1 Lay's Chinese as they Are, p. 260; Morache, p. 88. The Jesuit Fathers (in Alvarez, 1565) noted the neatness of their apparel. 1 Fleming, p. 70. Morache, 108, 113. 8 De Mas, I. 132-135. Medhurst, Foreigner in Far Cathay, pp. 91, 101.

32 ELEMENTS.

poverty alone explains this kind of martyrdom is doubtful ; yet suicides arising from poverty have recently amounted in France to three thousand a year.1 Of the dreadful excesses attendant on famines, — a common calamity in China, owing to imperfect internal transfer of produce, and the enormous population to be fed, — it is needless to speak in detail.

Infanticide, another clear result of poverty, is due in infanticide. some degree to the inability of parents to pay the expenses requisite on the marriage of daughters,2 But its extent has been greatly exaggerated. " The whole nation," says Williams, " has been branded as systematic murderers of their children from the practice of the inhab- itants of a portion of two provinces, who are regarded as among the most violent and the poorest in the whole eighteen." 3 There is eminent medical and other authority for saying that the proportion of infanticides is not greater in China than in England, or America.4 Chinese are quite as fond of their children as other people ; and though boys are more desired than girls, yet both are equally cherished.6 It is a popular proverb, " Even the tiger does not devour his own young." Bodies of children are frequently found floating in rivers or lying on roads ; but the fact is explained by the popular belief that formal burial is not necessary for the very young.6 Public opinion is rapidly putting an end to it, even in Amoy, where remonstrances against it from the literary class have been posted in public places for a long period.7 Government edicts and exhortations have not been wanting, however incompetent, to abolish a practice more dependent on social conditions than on laws or desires.

De Mas, I. 13^-139' 2 Chinese Repository, Oct. 1843 ; De Mas, I. 37.

Williams, II. 260.

Pumpelly, p. 261. Morache, p. 116; Irisson, La. Chine Cotemp,, p. 63.

Medhurst, Foreigner in Far Cathay, pp. 98, 99 ; Davis, Sketches, p. 99 ; Morache,

p. i

5 ; Giles, Sketches, p. 157. Medhurst, p. 97. Davis's Chinese, II. 119, 120. 7 Chinese Repository, Oct. 1843.

THE CHINESE MIND. 33

The order and quiet that prevail, especially by night, in Chinese cities have been noticed by all travellers, social The greatest harmony and tranquillity reign among f the boat-population of Canton.1 The gates of cities are closed at nightfall., shops are shut, and the people resort to their homes, with little need of local police.2 The good temper and even courtesy of crowds are said to be equally striking ; long lines wait quietly, and there is no pushing.3

Hiibner describes the Cantonese as seeming to be made of cotton wool. When the British legation passed through Tien-tsin, " the streets were crowded for a mile's distance, yet the silence and respect of the populace suggested a sea of heads in a perfect calm." 4 The childish curiosity and familiarity shown in other instances give weight to this evidence of their power of self-control. The same orderly habits were recognized by the oldest writers on the Chinese. Pliny describes them as mild and reserved. Ammianus speaks of their quiet behavior, and unwarlike spirit ; " a still and gentle people, frugal and shy, and wonderfully self- restrained." 5 This peaceable civilization, a great still world of industry and resource, far off in the horizon of imagination, seems to have strongly impressed the Greek mind. The Arab travellers in the ninth century are not complimentary, and make severe charges against the relig- ion and life of the Chinese ; yet they too praise their admin- istration of justice and their social order.6 Marco Polo says that contentious broils are never heard among the people of Kin-sai ; and that those who inhabit the same street, from the mere circumstance of neighborhood, appear like one family.7 In fact, " moderation, self-control, self-restraint, absence of excess, is the essence of Chinese virtue." 8

1 Davis, II. p. 119. J Brooks, Run, &*c.t p, 274.

8 Williams, II. 68; Brooks, p. 266. 4 Davis, Sketches, p. 42.

* Pliny, Natural History) vi. 20. Ammianus, xxiii. 6, 64.

8 Renaudot's Version (1733) p. 73- 7 Marco Polo, B. n. ch. 68.

• Wuttke, Gesch. d. Heidetitb., II. 128.

3

34 ELEMENTS.

Assassinations are rare. The duel is unknown. The fear of public opinion and the ceremonial of manners enforce mutual respect. By nothing are they more shocked than by European customs that ignore or outrage the expecta- tions of others. De Mas having told his attendants to inform a visitor that he was out, they answered, " He will be shocked if you treat him so." " So much the better," said the Frenchman : " he won't come again." Whereat they whispered to each other, " This person has no education." The porters, waiting for him in the courtyard, would not ask for their dinners, because they were not invited.1 Per- haps the higher mark of real civilization is the disposition to resort to moral, rather than physical, modes of settling disputes, and to recognize the force of reason ; and for this the Chinese are conspicuous. Meadows says that a posted placard, exposing the unreasonableness of one's conduct, is as effective as such an exposure in an English newspaper, if not more so.2 They regard passion as indecent and vulgar, and "bear injuries with an equanimity that would make a European ungovernable." 3 They despise rudeness, instead of being enraged at it. A shopkeeper's patience and polite- ness are inexhaustible ; and stories are told of the endurance of discomfort and injury out of pure good manners, that prove this capacity to be of a heroic type. Lord Macart- ney's embassy was impressed by the dignity, politeness, and good humor of all the officials with whom they had to deal.4

For aggressive warfare they seem to have little taste, Peaceable- P^Y^S at soldiers with lanterns tied to matchlocks, ness. and painted towers constructed of mats ; labelling their troops on the back with boastful words, and arming them with rusty ineffective weapons, made more awkward by unsuitable dress.5 Their armies are ill-disciplined, and

1 De Mas, pp. 140, 141. 2 Notes on Government, &c.t of China, p. 204.

8 Ibid., pp. 202, 203. * Barrow, p. 186.

6 Davis, Sketches, pp. 140, 156; Williams, II. 160.

THE CHINESE MIND. 35

little better than " an unwilling mob of forced men." " The Chinese, of all men, " says Lecomte, " love best to sleep in a whole skin." Mr. Lay asserts that they do not know how to double up the fist, nor to parry blows. It is an old saying that, where the ground is wet with blood of battle, there springs up the will-o'-the-wisp.1 The old classic odes abound in lamentations over the evil fate of serving on distant expeditions, and the sorrows of families at these long separations. This tone of complaint seems to have been consecrated, as of peculiar moral and poetic value. Peace is indeed essential to the nation's faith in its insti- tutions as the established harmony of heaven and earth. Tranquillity is written on its edicts, and Heavenly Rest on its palace gates. Its very principle is Repose. As being already complete, holding all nations as its children and parts of its divine order, an aggressive policy on its part would seem impossible. The Imperial sceptre of jade is called, "Just as you will," and the nymphaea is carved on its upper end as a floral emblem of brotherhood.2 It is a curious fact that in the oldest governmental arrangements — those of Yu — as given in the Shuking, a department of war is lacking. Shun, the ancient ideal ruler, says to his followers : " Do well yourselves ; the barbarian then will submit to you." 3 " In no Chinese city," says Plath, " have I seen soldiers : mandarins walk in the streets escorted by axes and lances, but these are of wood, and a gong pre- cedes them. The word for war (wu) means simply ' to control anarchy,' and conquest (tching) is merely 'to bring order.' " The emphasis laid by almost every Chi- nese moralist on the iniquity of war, and the subordination of the military to political and civil institutions, are familiar to all readers.

And yet there is manifestly a reverse side to this pict-

1 Plath on Chinete Military Affairs, Bay. Ak. 1873.

* Davis, Chinese, II. 45. 3 Shuking, II. 2.

36 ELEMENTS.

ure. Self-defence was of course indispensable, and the There- oldest written signs are evidence of the use of ;' warlike weapons in primitive times. The first wars, according to the Shu, were not aggressive, yet they were undertaken at " the command of Heaven." The Liki says that in those times, on the birth of a male child a bow with arrows was hung beside the door. Every one was subject to military duty. All this is probably legend, but we know that China had standing armies in the seventh century. Foreign wars built the Great Wall, and domestic ones covered the land with fortified towns. The royal hunts were organized for military education, not from mere love of destroying game.

The people are divided into clans, whose quarrels are constant, and frequently produce civil war on an extensive scale. The study of Chinese history has revealed the startling fact of an almost unbroken series of internal wars from the earliest to the latest times. Of the twenty-six dy- nasties that have covered a space of four thousand • years, every one, except the T'ang, rose and set in revolution. The numbers recorded as slain in the perpetual strifes of petty princes and semi-independent States would be incredible, but for the well ascertained series of fluctuations in the population of the empire, which they only can explain.1 The transition from feudalism to imperialism, in the third century B. c., is reported to have cost the lives of a third of the people. The triumph of the Han dynasty, three hun- dred years afterwards, was won by the slaughter of a mil- lion. Periods of many hundred years have been spent in uninterrupted civil wars. The Han perished after a strife of thirty-five years ; the Tsin in an insurrection of twenty. Seventy years' struggle destroyed the Sung ; and the Yuen, or Mongol, its conquerors, after barbarous conflicts which

1 Plath on Chinese Military Affairs, Bay. Ak. 1873; Sacharoff, Arbeiten d. Rnss. GesancUch. zu Peking; also Biot, Journal A siafiyue, 1836.

THE CHINESE MIND. 37

depopulated whole regions and drove great numbers into brigandage, succumbed to a native revolt that had lasted twenty years.1 It has even been sought to prove, from the incessant warfare that makes Chinese history monotonous, that universal and permanent peace is impossible.2 The desolation produced by the Taiping rebellion, and the pro- digious destruction of life that has attended it, are but a repetition of what we may read in the old annals of the wars of Tcheou, and the fall of Tsin.3 It would almost seem as if this swarming population illustrated Malthus, and that depletion by continual blood-letting was the na- tional necessity. We cannot overlook, moreover, a pro- pensity to expansion that seems at variance with the peaceful traits and tendencies already described. They have been frequently at war with Corea, Japan, Thibet, Bucharia : and the Han were masters of a zone through Asia, from near the Caspian to Siam. Four times this per- sistent people have subdued Tartary, and their wars with the hordes of Central Asia have been incessant. We must note also the democratic excitability and disposition to re- bellion which are constants in their history. It is sufficient at present to observe of this tendency that it is strong enough to hold the imperial government in check, and to keep the national tone constantly up to a conception of public responsibility which excludes the very idea of arbi- trary personal power.

Whether all this should lead us to pronounce the Chinese a quarrelsome people, is at least questionable. The General vast scale on which human nature appears in this result- great empire would lead us to expect proportionate demon- strations of every element of character. Its history in fact passes through most of the phases, and exhibits most of

1 Letter of Medhurst to Hon. Caleb Gushing, April 17, 1856. 1 Chinese Repository, March, 1835.

8 Pfizmaier, Sitzber. d. Wie-n. Akad. July and Oct. 1869 ; also, Plath, Sitzber. d- Bayer- isch. Akad., Feb. 1870; Legge's TchuntsUu, of Confucius; Sacharoff.

38 ELEMENTS.

the phenomena, of the life of Western nations, — gradual growth from small beginnings ; leagues and strifes of petty States ; feudal subordinations and chieftaincies ; consolidations and dissolutions ; plots and conspiracies, domestic intrigues and disputed successions, making and unmaking dynasties ; rivalries of religions ; outbreaks of local discontent under ambitious leaders ; invasions and border warfare without intermission. Such variety of ex- perience gives ground for expecting just that diversity of traits which at first seems so self-contradictory; and we are warned against formulizing the capacities of such a people within narrow limits or one-sided negations.

Such facts as these should forbid us to suppose them Courage, wanting in courage. Their military annals abound in brave leaders, bold censors, and heroic martyrs to public duty.1 Persistent defences of besieged towns, ending in the self-destruction of the defenders by thousands, illustrate the history of wars with Tartars and European invaders. The desperate courage of Manchu garrisons like those of Chin- kiang and Chapu, and the defence of the Peiho against the French and English fleets in the opium war, enforce our strongest sympathy.2 The northern provinces fell into the hands of the Mongols in the eleventh century, not from lack of native valor, but as a consequence of internal dis- sensions. After three centuries of rule, the intruders were expelled by the uprising of patriot forces under a leader who had been a servant in a Buddhist monastery. Two centuries of Manchu dominion have not quelled the national spirit, and the vast extent and prodigious energy of the Taiping rebellion would have perhaps resulted in the over- throw of the Tsing dynasty but for the interference of European arms. Fleming describes the soldierly qualities of the northern Chinese as fitted to make them a match

1 Pfitzmaier, Platli, Fleming, et al.

2 Williams, I. 79, 86 ; II. 552 ; St. Denys, La Chine devant L? Europe-

THE CHINESE MIND. 39

for any other Eastern people in war ; and Medhurst, de- scribing disregard of peril in the pursuit of an object as a national characteristic, instances the coolness of the native corps of the British forces in their Peking campaign in face of heavy fires, and the steady courage of Chinese troops under foreign officers in the Taiping war.1 A people who have erected nearly twenty-five hundred for- tresses, and surrounded seventeen hundred cities with walls, cannot be lacking in the faculty of self-defence.

It is unquestionable that their courage is of a passive quality, and has its root in a wonderful power of . endurance, rather than in that love of military qualities, achievement which would have led to discipline Endurance- and culture in the art of war. It is in suffering that the force of Chinese character becomes most impressive. In those terrible massacres of hundreds at a time, which they call executions, the most cruel pains and the ghastliest antic- ipations seldom extort a murmur or a groan. The readi- ness with which whole multitudes resort to suicide, rather than fall into the hands of the enemy or survive defeat and disgrace, shows what insensibility to fears or suf- suicidal ferings this force of endurance can attain. It Pr°PeQsity- becomes a species of fatalism. In timestof great public misery, instead of rising to the active energy demanded by the situation, they kill themselves and their families, with a self-abandonment in singular contrast with their patience in enduring physical sufferings. Suicide is common from the most trivial causes. It is probable that this despair is the natural consequence of the psychological quality to which we have already referred the main points in their character. They are so incapable of separating their ideal faith from the concrete facts of their social and political order, that they cannot exist when these are broken down. Their propensity to suicide is a species of insanity like that

1 Foreigner in Far Cathay, p. 177.

4O ELEMENTS.

of animals removed from temperate to arctic zones, and deprived of the alternation of day and night on which their instincts depend. " Man," says the poet Litaipe, " when things are not in harmony with his desires, can but throw himself into a bark, with his hair on the wind, and drift on the waves."

But the impulse to self-abandonment is a characteristic of the yellow races, strongly indicated in their religious tendencies. Their fatalism, associated with fortitude in suf- fering and a patient stoicism, — alike in the Mongol and American tribes, — is not without its noble elements of self- command, and even heroic ardor. The Chinese generals who slay themselves after defeat, the scholars whose fre- quent self-destruction makes a tragedy of every great com- petitive examination, the officials who choose the harikiri of the Japanese, and so escape the religiously dreaded calamity of decapitation, — not only obey a keen sense of personal honor, but advance halfway to meet the destiny which they so thoroughly accept. The Japanese call the summons to harikiri the " Happy Despatch ; " they invest it with ceremonious politeness and respect, and refer it to a generous impulse on the part of one who has incurred disgrace, to savefhis property to his family and expiate his fault in the eyes of his sovereign.1

The approbation of suicide under depressing circum- stances in China may be said to amount to enthusiasm. Pagodas are erected to the "beautiful suicide of love."2 Honorary tablets are frequent to widows who have betaken themselves to their lost husbands. So fashionable became such suicides, that in the early part of the last century an imperial edict forbade this public reward. The reader of the " Peking Journal " will still find petitions for these tab- lets, especially in behalf of daughters who are described as models of filial piety, for putting an end to their lives in

1 Osborne's Japanese Fragments (Lond. 1861), p. 24. 2 Bowring's Flowery Scroll.

THE CHINESE MIND. 41

imitation of their mothers. Even the self-immolation of widows amidst crowds of spectators still occurs.1 The ex- planation of such a passion must lie in the peculiar traits of Chinese character already noticed, brought into emergen- cies by a social order so rigidly mechanized as to afford no other relief.

It is mainly, we suspect, in this form that the disease of insanity manifests itself in China, since it is not only exhibited in such maniacal habits as putting oneself to death to bring disgrace upon others, but is to be associated with the singular fact that actual insanity is hardly recog- nized in that country except as an explanation of the most hideous crimes. Thus, by a well-known fiction, those who are guilty of parricide are usually designated in the " Peking Gazette " as lunatics.

The Chinese are said to suffer little from nervous irrita- tion after injuries or surgical operations, and to Apparent exhibit much less sensitiveness than Europeans ^d^LuTe to affections of the spine.2 It is but just to re- sensibility. fer to this constitutional defect of sensibility many traits which appear to imply extreme cruelty. It may help to explain the custom of treating rebels and banditti with- out mercy, and totally exterminating the families of those guilty of treason.3 The coast pirates showed no quarter to the imperial forces, and received none.4 The Taiping war was a series of massacres and executions on a pro- digious scale. The " Five Punishments," as laid down in the oldest times, were modes of beheading, branding, and mutilating. A peculiar form of shoe is said to have been invented for the use of persons whose feet had been cut off by the law ; and a proverb hints the frequency of the punishment by saying that these shoes for cripples were dear in the market, when ordinary ones were cheap.5 The

1 Hongkong Daily Press for Jan. 20, 1861. J Lay, p. 225.

8 Martin, I. 142. Meadows, Chinese and their Rebellions, p. 454.

* Ckine Ouverte, p. 104. 6 Plath, Gesetz u. Recht in AH. China (Bay. Ak., X).

42 ELEMENTS.

whole family of the parricide was put to de'ath. Cruelties were invented by tyrants 1 that would seem incredible, were we not familiar with similar ones in the records of sla- very and intolerance in the West. Instances are recorded of burying servants alive with their dead masters in large numbers ; and this appears to have been not infrequent at some very ancient periods.2 But the Liki says it was against Chinese custom ; and it will probably be traced to relations with the Tartar tribes, who have retained the slaughter of men and women as a burial ceremony in honor of their Khans, down to recent times.3 There are legends of its abolition in China through the shrewd proposal to substitute the wife and children of the prince for his ser- vants, as still more necessary to his happiness in a future state; as also, of the further substitution of figures in straw and wood, and finally of paper ones, as now burned at funerals.4 Dark pictures have been drawn of cruel- ties practised in Chinese prisons and by arbitrary man- darins ; but these do not appear to be approved by the government' nor to be true of penal administration in gen- eral, though punishments like the " cangue " and squeezing the fingers are still in vogue.5 Navarete found the prisons cleaner and more orderly than those of Europe. There is a custom of administering drugged wine to criminals before execution, to diminish the pains of death.6 It is said that the criminal has the benefit of a moment's relaxation of the cord about his neck, — a well-meant interruption, to enable the soul to escape the body ! It should seem on the whole that as the older barbarities do not materially differ from those which appear in the history of European States, so the later severities are neither better nor

Plath, Gesetz u- Recht in Alt. China (Bay. Ak., X.). Shiking, I. xi. 6. Plath, Ztsch. d. D. M. G., xx. 480. Instances in Wuttke, I. 232. * Plath, pp. 480, 481.

Williams, I. 409, 411. Lockhart's Medical Missionary, ch. II. China Review, II. No. 3.

THE CHINESE MIND. 43

worse than such as have prevailed in the most civilized countries down to the present century. The harshness of the Penal Code will hereafter be seen, to be much mod- ified by humane provisions, — such as the commutability of penalties, — and the more brutal features are practically abolished.1 The present period of civil wars and other complications is exceptional, and affords no proper test of the spirit of Chinese jurisprudence.

But the vast and permanent civilization of China is itself ample evidence of socially constructive and Human- humane tendencies, infinitely more powerful than ities- the barbarism interwoven in the structure. I shall not here enumerate the benignant precepts that crowd her ancient classics and modern literature alike, and constitute the invariable norm of all political and social duty. The practical results are as impressive as the persistent theory, — such as orphan asylums in almost every city, and fre- quently in villages ; societies for aid to widows ; free day- schools everywhere, supported by the rich ; public asylums for the sick, old, and poor, sustained by the government, ^- and, as these are apt to be ill-provided, support by the clans, of their own poor ; a general belief in the meritorious- ness of almsgiving, and in the inauspiciousness of sending beggars away empty ; gratuitous distribution of medicines, and of books of moral edification.2 Not less numerous are societies for aiding indigent persons in paying marriage and burial expenses ; for distributing second-hand cloth- ing ; for establishing granaries ; for building roads and bridges to facilitate industry ; for saving drowning persons, and furnishing biers for the drowned ; for taking care of foundlings and lepers.3 There are no hospitals for the in- sane, for deaf mutes, cripples, or the blind ; yet not so many

1 Williams, I. 415; Giles's Sketches, p. 136. 8 Nevius, pp. 214-225. Morache, p. 118.

8 Doolittle, II. 193-196. De Mas, I. 273, 274. Chinese Repository, Aug. 1846. Speer, p. 636, 637. Williams, II. 282.

44 ELEMENTS.

of these unfortunates are seen in Chinese cities as in European. It is generally admitted that lunacy is ex- tremely rare. Mutual-aid Associations have their bureaus and halls in the cities ; and in California they not only pro- vide for the poor, but send back the sick and dead to China. It is common for wealthy people to furnish great jars of tea under canopies, for travellers and wearied laborers ; and especially on the mountain roads.1 There is a college at Ningpo to aid the poor in getting educated, deriving its income from lands and products, and founded two hundred years ago.2 Many reports from sanitary institutions in Chinese cities indicate great defects in their management during the present century: they have suffered severely from the agitated and depressed condition of the country ; and the extreme pecuniary distress of the government has, of course, caused its benevolent activities to fall into decay.3 Yet in all prosperous times the imperial bounty has flowed out in fixed channels, to relieve the miseries arising from local floods or famines, and to secure the comfort and happiness of the people. The patriarchal theory makes it a prime duty of the ruler to provide for their physical needs, and especially in the matter of food. Hence granaries have been maintained from earliest times on the frontiers, at the capital, and in all the departments, in which the abundance of favorable years has been stored up for years of famine ; and edicts exhorting to private benevolence abound at all periods. Every device for re- lieving the burden of taxation and public service is ex- hausted in the older legislation, which is extremely minute and explicit on the duties of government in times of popular distress.4 The family relation is theoretically expanded

1 De Mas, I. 273, 274. 2 Milne in Chinese Repository, Jan. 1844.

8 Girard, La. France en Chine-, pp. 170-180 (Paris, 1869). Williams, II. 283. Chinese Recorder, Feb. 1870. Chinese Repository, Jan. 1844. Lockhart's Medical Missionary gives a very favorable account of the native institutions in Shanghai.

4 Biot's Tcheouli, IX. 31-33. Mencius, I. ii. 5.

THE CHINESE MIND. 45

even to remotest nations subject to the emperor as their common father. And serious effort has always been made to carry out this Chinese analogue to the Western idea of brotherhood, into every branch of public and private con- duct. The universal good is distinctly proclaimed as the one principle on which lands have been apportioned, occu- pations regulated, crimes punished, office bestowed, educa- tion diffused, rites instituted, manners prescribed. In old feudal China, the care of the poor, of widows and orphans, was specially commended by the king to his chiefs, who were expected to provide for these classes by local institu- tions.1 " Remember," says the Shuking, " the proper end of punishment is to make an end of punishing." 2 " Only the good should determine criminal cases." 3 " Deal with evil as if it were a disease in your own person, and with the people as if you were guarding your own child." 4 " Bet- ter run the risk of error than put to death an innocent person." 6 " Rewards, not punishments, should descend to one's children."6 Principles like these, pervading the classics that form the basis of law, indicate at least the powerful hold which humane instincts have taken upon the national mind and conscience. The Tcheouli 7 pre- scribes the teaching of eight leading rules and nine ties of mutual benefit, as essential for guiding the people and pre- serving them in harmony. The first of the eight is family affection ; the second, reverence for age ; the last, kindness to strangers.8 It prescribes also, as points to be aimed at by the Minister of Instruction, the diffusion of love for the young, care for the old, succor for the distressed and bereaved, pity for the destitute, consideration for the sick.9 All current works of popular teaching are full of a similar

Plath, Verfass. u. Verwalt. d. Alt. China (Abh. Phil. d. Bay. Akad., X).

Shuking, P. V., B. xxi. 9. » Ibid., B. xxvii. ax.

Ibid., B. ix. 9. 6 P. II. B. n. 12. « Ibid.

An ancient code ; ascribed to the i2th century B. c., but without sufficient authority.

Biot's Tcheouli, B. n. » Ibid,, IX. 34, 35-

46 ELEMENTS.

spirit ; and the same may be said of the odes, proverbs, toy-books, tales, most widely circulated in the empire. The Penal Code itself opens with a distinction between nominal and actual punishments, which leaves a wide margin for humane administration. These are not the institutions of an inhuman people.

Even the religion of the Chinese is domestic, and cen- tres in the natural affections. Like that of the

Domestic

affections Mongolian races in their whole extent, it consists religion. ma\n\yf as js we^ known> jn reverence for ancestors ; while the forms in which the cultus has been developed by this eminently social people are more genial and bene- ficent than those which characterize the nomadic life of the races of Central and Western Asia^ Their family gather- ings at the temples and tombs are as pleasant as they are pure, and probably as productive of kindly sentiment as any religious festivals or social reunions in the world. The tablets in which the souls of the departed are supposed to dwell are a perpetual admonition to concord within fami- lies, as well as for the millions who at one and the same period of the year are moved by a common impulse to pay devotion at these shrines. Ancestral halls are often built by associations of families, and the prohibition of marriage between persons of the same name expands the circle of sympathy. The relation constantly maintained with un- seen relatives is that of mutual care and help, in minute and tender superstitions l whose influence reaches through social life, and pervades it with innumerable delicate forms of mutual service. Among these, the tenderness required of children towards their parents is to be mentioned as a school of sympathy. The Book of Rites teaches that the young should visit the chambers of their parents in the early morning, and perform every possible service with gentle looks and affectionate inquiries, never failing in any

1 Doolittle, I. 169, 173, 179, 185.

THE CHINESE MIND. 47

attitude or gesture of respect ; that at meals and at evening they should observe similar rules, anticipating every want with self-forgetful devotion.1 Even if hated, they must not be angry ; and, when admonished, never contend.2 Men- cius declares that one's love for his parents should take precedence of his love for his country.3 There are numer- ous significant ceremonies and customs in honor of mothers, and for their benefit, — such as those which celebrate the arrival of girls at the age of sixteen, by a festival of spe- cial thanksgiving ; and those performed to save the parent from supposed evils resulting from death soon after child- birth.4 In the rule that makes one's virtue redound to the honor of his parent, the Chinese have recognized the laws of hereditary transmission and given motive-force to sexual purity. Their social ideal consists in disciplines of devo- tion to certain personal relations, whose claims are inhe- rent.6 These relations are so defined as to keep self in the background, and the thought of subordination and respect- ful regard constantly prominent. Their prescriptive for- malism must have weakened the force of spontaneity ; but this constitutional propensity to work by fixed rules and in prescribed channels, while it represses the freedom of humane instincts, at the same time, after a Chinese man- ner, permanently organizes and applies them. The very games of the populace are of a comparatively refined and delicate nature, and never approach nearer the coarse and brutal spectacles of Western races than in matches of crick- ets or quails. The same ideal refinement is apparent in the special industries to which the people are devoted.

Their peculiar passiveness must appear in the tone of all forms and institutions of benevolence, not less than Defoctof in other products of the national character. This motive heart worships a fulfilled ideal. It entertains no im- p°*

1 Liki, XII. * Ibid., XXXV. » Mencius, VII. i. 35.

* Doolittle, I. 196, 197. ° Siaohiao, ch. ii.

48 ELEMENTS.

pulse to radical changes, and is defective in motive-power to meet great public calamities with salutary precautions and improvements for the future. Chinese humanity amelior- ates, but does not reconstruct. With its abounding charities, it does not establish reformatory prisons, nor institute meth- ods of restoring the degraded to social opportunity and diminishing the extent of beggary. It has an apathetic and languid air, and does not rise to enthusiasm ; which perhaps we have no right to expect anywhere in Chinese life. More than any thing else, it must suffer from the end- less pedagogy of moral precept, and from those assumptions of attained wisdom and of the all-sufficiency of words, which are to no small extent involved therein. Still, Chi- nese humanity is genuine ; and we cannot ignore its im- mense influence in maintaining this vast productive and coherent civilization. We must judge it by its fitness to meet the wants of that temperament to which it belongs ; and may well ask whether it has not on the whole secured to China a social order as favorable to personal happiness and mutual service as any Western civilization has been, down to our very recent and still most immature epoch of scientific discovery. Nor must the lack of reconstructive tendencies be too strongly stated. More than twenty dy- nastic revolutions ; two great intellectual revivals, one after the destruction of literature by the T'sin, and another when the invention of printing had prepared the way for the literary glories of the second Sung ; a total change in the land tenure and relation of the States to the central government, since early times ; the Taiping revolution, in- volving striking religious and social changes ; and, finally, the readiness of the people to profit by their recent lessons in war, and to accept European cultures and arts, — afford no slight guarantees for the adoption of reformatory meth- ods in dealing with social vices also, and for a more effec- tive system of public benevolence.

THE "CHINESE MIND. 49

The " immobility " of the Chinese type is, in fact, counterbalanced by a peculiar alacrity, within its social ac- limits and conditions, of the social sentiments and tmtyb*f-

ances this

attractions. Those lethargic, almost melancholic, inertia, features veil a lively sense of humor and a genial tone of feeling. With all their plodding and routine, these people are fond of festivals and merry-makings ; and, when they break away from task-work, their hilarity is unbounded. They delight in bright colors, gay processions, social re- unions, garrulous gossip, friendly discussion ; in clubs and associations ; in good-natured games of chance and the pleasant excitement of divination and fortune-telling. They elaborate their taste for ornamental work in writing, paint- ing, horticulture, and the domestic arts, with a minuteness which is the surest sign of the enjoyment they find in it. Their passion for burlesque was notably shown in the cari- catures of Europeans by travelling actors at Macao in the time of Ricci,1 and in the placards posted on walls during the late wars. That curious mixture of crudeness with luxury, of the silken robe with the rude bamboo stage, of strutting heroes with men on all-fours in painted frames, — which serves them for dramatic entertainment, — is at least a popular enthusiasm. Itinerant comedians are hired by the rich for pleasant domestic occasions, and street crowds will endure all weathers for days, while watching the progress of these rude shows.2 The feast is cheered, like the Greek, with music ; like the Saxon, with toasts and compliments : and the tea-house with lecturing and story- telling. Chinese religion is too genial to disdain the comic ; and plays are frequently performed in the courts of temples.3 Dances were prescribed in the Tcheouli as part of the religious service, varying with the occasion, and accompanied by corresponding styles of music.4 There are

1 Hue, Christianity in China, II. 150. * De Mas, I. 94 ; Knox, Overland to Asia. » De $las, I. 93. « Tcheouli, XXII.

4

48 ELEMENTS.

pulse to radical changes, and is defective in motive-power to meet great public calamities with salutary precautions and improvements for the future. Chinese humanity amelior- ates, but does not reconstruct. With its abounding charities, it does not establish reformatory prisons, nor institute meth- ods of restoring the degraded to social opportunity and diminishing the extent of beggary. It has an apathetic and languid air, and does not rise to enthusiasm ; which perhaps we have no right to expect anywhere in Chinese life. More than any thing else, it must suffer from the end- less pedagogy of moral precept, and from those assumptions of attained wisdom and of the all-sufficiency of words, which are to no small extent involved therein. Still, Chi- nese humanity is genuine ; and we cannot ignore its im- mense influence in maintaining this vast productive and coherent civilization. We must judge it by its fitness to meet the wants of that temperament to which it belongs ; and may well ask whether it has not on the whole secured to China a social order as favorable to personal happiness and mutual service as any Western civilization has been, down to our very recent and still most immature epoch of scientific discovery. Nor must the lack of reconstructive tendencies be too strongly stated. More than twenty dy- nastic revolutions ; two great intellectual revivals, one after the destruction of literature by the T'sin, and another when the invention of printing had prepared the way for the literary glories of the second Sung ; a total change in the land tenure and relation of the States to the central government, since early times ; the Taiping revolution, in- volving striking religious and social changes ; and, finally, the readiness of the people to profit by their recent lessons in war, and to accept European cultures and arts, — afford no slight guarantees for the adoption of reformatory meth- ods in dealing with social vices also, and for a more effec- tive system of public benevolence.

THE "CHINESE MIND. 49

The " immobility " of the Chinese type is, in fact, counterbalanced by a peculiar alacrity, within its sodaiao- limits and conditions, of the social sentiments and tmtyb^f-

ances this

attractions. Those lethargic, almost melancholic, inertia, features veil a lively sense of humor and a genial tone of feeling. With all their plodding and routine, these people are foid of festivals and merry-makings ; and, when they break away from task-work, their hilarity is unbounded. They delight in bright colors, gay processions, social re- unions, garrulous gossip, friendly discussion ; in clubs and associations ; in good-natured games of chance and the pleasant excitement of divination and fortune-telling. They elaborate their taste for ornamental work in writing, paint- ing, horticulture, and the domestic arts, with a minuteness which is the surest sign of the enjoyment they find in it. Their passion for burlesque was notably shown in the cari- catures of Europeans by travelling actors at Macao in the time of Ricci,1 and in the placards posted on walls during the late wars. That curious mixture of crudeness with luxury, of the silken robe with the rude bamboo stage, of strutting heroes with men on all-fours in painted frames, — which serves them for dramatic entertainment, — is at least a popular enthusiasm. Itinerant comedians are hired by the rich for pleasant domestic occasions, and street crowds will endure all weathers for days, while watching the progress of these rude shows.2 The feast is cheered, like the Greek, with music ; like the Saxon, with toasts and compliments : and the tea-house with lecturing and story- telling. Chinese religion is too genial to disdain the comic ; and plays are frequently performed in the courts of temples.3 Dances were prescribed in the Tcheouli as part of the religious service, varying with the occasion, and accompanied by corresponding styles of music.4 There are

1 Hue, Christianity in China, II. 150. * De Mas, I. 94; Knox, Overland to Asia. » De Mas, I. 93. * Tcheouli, XXII.

4

50 ELEMENTS.

five great Festivals, all of a social and joyous character. The Festi- One greets the new year with ten whole days or vais. more of mutual congratulations and exchange of gifts, good wishes, and respects. Another welcomes spring with jocund processions and official breaking of the ground, when the farmer feels common interests and hopes with the emperor and the nation. A third rejoices for fifteen days over the harvest ; and the people, male and female, crowd the theatres, bent on amusement from phantasma- gorias, cosmoramas, and other light and merry shows. A fourth sets the land ablaze with lanterns of every size, hue, shape, and adornment, and vexes the air with a rain of fire in pure love of jollity, — nominally, in honor of the first full moon of the year ; really, a feast of homes. And a fifth, in early April, brings all with one accord to honor the tombs of their ancestors, and deck their tablets with willow boughs, in token at once of unseen guardianship and of a historic deliverance from great peril in the old time.1 Then there are feasts of birthdays, and of old age, and of dragon-boats for children, and of ornamented eggs, and for congratulating the emperor at the winter solstice as their earthly sun, and on numerous other occasions and emergencies, — sprink- ling the works and days with shining spaces. Marco Polo describes their salutations as made with cheerful counte- nances and great politeness ; 2 and modern observers note the easiness of their good breeding, and the ready way in which ceremonious forms are thrown aside.3 Even the materialism of religious rites is genial, setting out tables for the dead, feasting these gods, transforming tombs into dwellings, and coffins into domestic gifts and treasures; and treating death as a mere transference of the friend into closer dependence on the affection and respect of those who remain in the light of day.

1 Doolittle, II. 50. 2 II. xxvi.

3 Williams, 11.69. •

THE CHINESE MIND. 51

But this vivacity of the social sentiments is not the only

counterpoise to a constitutional passiveness and Other

counter- immobility. Nature has her revenge on all repres- poise to

sion of human faculty, and will not be cheated of 1"erUa'.

* ' Natural

her balance by temperament or by laws. Some reactions, semblance of growth man must have. If free development be checked, he will caricature change by grotesque and petty artifices. The Chinese protect themselves against monotony by out-of-the-way devices in doing common things. The passion for whimsical variations, within the limits allowed by prescription, really measures their en- deavor to escape rigid mechanism and close confinement of the ideal. Europeans are fond of illustrating this passion by the oddity of a Chinese book, — printed on one side of the leaf only, and in perpendicular lines ; titled on the edges of the leaves, and opening at the back ; marginal notes at the top of the page ; table of contents at the end of the chapter ; binder's thread outside the cover ; every de- tail directly opposite to what they have come to regard as most natural and becoming. But these peculiarities really have their source in special requirements in the material used and the end proposed. Like the choice of white as color of mourning, or wearing the hat as mark of respect, they simply indicate difference of taste on matters more or less arbitrary. More to the purpose are the fantastic forms devised with endless ingenuity for their flags, pagodas, and lanterns ; and their application to horticulture and kindred arts of the principle of altering Nature at every point. " Where there is a waste they cover it with trees ; a dry desert, they water it with a river or float it with a lake ; a level, they raise it into hillocks, or scoop it into hollows, or roughen it with rocks." l They make Chinamen of trees, dwarfing them with such art that they seem hoary with age though only a few inches high, and distorting them

1 Lord Macartney's Journal.

52 ELEMENTS.

into strange imitations of traditional animals and men.1 They twist flowers into monstrosities ; and plant bulbs upside down. They confine the circulation of sap, and divert it into paths it would not choose. They have learned to prick oysters with needles to obtain the diseased deposit of pearl ; 2 to compress the cormorant's throat that he may not swallow the fish he catches for man ; to cramp women's feet ; to plunge into gambling to escape ennui and make up for want of athletic games. They weave pictures into their clothing, and used to go covered with emblematic fig- ures of sun, moon, and elements ; of birds, beasts, snakes. They delight in exaggerated and misshapen forms in art ; and in manners avoid direct address, and heap up formal repetitions. The Chinese proverb puts "novelty in the garment" against "antiquity in the man." A study of the older prints will show that, in such matters as dress, great changes have occurred in the course of ages : a progress even towards simplicity and purity of taste has been se- cured by these minute variations.3 The measured pace and imposing air, once believed a sign of worth, has disap- peared. So has the extreme minuteness of legislation in matters of food and dress and structure of houses, that we find in the old law-books,4 and much room is left for indi- vidual tastes and caprices.

The Christian monks of the Thebaid, renouncing every luxury, became extreme ascetics ; and then copied their Bibles in purple and gold letters, and invented the most imaginative border-ornamentations. Thus, in one way or another, Nature protests against systematic constraint, enforced routine, conformity to systems of prescription ; against uniformity of method and aim. The Chinese garden is symbolical. Bind a capacity from shooting freely upwards, it will work out sideways ; awkwardly and absurdly

1 Fortune, Wanderings, p. 83. 2 Montfort, Voyage en Chine, p. 210.

s Tcheouli. Plath, Bay. Ak. XI. * Ibid.

THE CHINESE MIND. 53

enough, yet as it can. Open no great paths of progress to walk in, yet there must be exercise, and men will invent odd postures and movements within the space left them. Man cannot be wholly deprived of the instinct of growth. And like as young impetuous America, so inert custom-ridden China, dwells, like the nomad, in the fluttering tents of change.

Here are Saturn and Mercury in one : the fixed and the fugitive, tradition and transition, curiously Passion combined. Such conjunction of adhesiveness for traffic, with social susceptibility naturally results in a peculiar talent for transacting business. " In China every thing is matter of trade, every thing for sale to the highest bidder." 1 These natural shopmen surpass most races in shrewdness and diplomacy, and the finesse of traffic. They are sharp observers of character ; however heavy and indifferent they may appear, they show no lack of knowledge in their esti- mates of those with whom they have to deal. " They easily undo by stratagem what the European powers force them to concede at the cannon's mouth." 2 They have a passion for statistics, as for all minute details ; and, for all matters within the scope of their trades and interests, their itiner- aries furnish close and complete descriptions of the eigh- teen great provinces of China.3 Not less strong is their love of calculating chances, of combining numbers : the mysteries of banking and insurance are familiar to them. In all the great cities the former function is fulfilled by respectable merchants, who afford facilities for commerce, payment of taxes, and the administration of the State.4 Mercantile credit is everywhere sustained by mutual in- surance companies, by which aid is given in business diffi- culties.5 So universal are mutual-loan societies, that, out

1 Courcy, p. 470. * Speer's China, p. 655.

3 Chinese Repository, March, 1842. * Courcy, p. 472.

6 La Chine Ouverte, p. 166. In this direction they greatly surpass the more ardent and impetuous Japanese, who have always placed the merchant low in the social scale (Smith's

56 ELEMENTS.

immutable order, the firm-set granite of the ages ; which is constant in temperament, instinct, ideal ; enforces itself as public opinion, sways emperors and people alike. And this rests, as he believes, on nothing else than the order of Nature, — the inherent harmony of the universe with man. It is not arbitrary, nor transitional ; but cosmical and eternal : so conservative is the setting of all this passion for contrast, transference, and interchangeable detail ; so loyal in essence this love of license in petty change. Politics were never separate in China from this higher law ; they were from the beginning its concrete form : as if Nature repeated her successions, alternations, seasons, polarities, in human institutions which could have no other basis, and follow no other track. Here then, in man, we have a piece of the sun and moon, of the orbits and the elemental laws.

In such conservatism we may be sure that nothing is Conserva- suffered to be lost. All this ephemeral flutter of Nothing unrest, this destructiveness of lives, this mobility lost. of aims, is but an inner molecular movement with- out substantial change. This dissolving glare of lan- terns, rockets, and burnt paper marks not the loss but the transmutation of forms. The spirit of economy overrides the whole, and its chemistry is amazing. All soils and substances utilized, all droppings gleaned up, all decay made tributary to growth ; no written word suffered to perish ; the whole literature of the past forced to survival, again and again restored, as nearly as possible, 'after de- structive fires ; every pretension to antiquity heard, com- mented, sifted ; the records of ages reproduced, if not in fact, at least in faith, reviving, phoenix-like, in some form from the ashes ; all breaks in continuity closed. An Old Mortality who never dies, China spends microscopic labors on renovating her inscriptions of belief and conduct, words and deeds ; turning them over again and again, as her

THE CHINESE MIND. 57

farmers turn the clods of a land already full of graves. A scientific faith will trust progress as inherent in that dy- namic law, which preserves the phases only in their results ; but this careful, anxious economy of conservative China must gather up every minute detail, and make the most of it as of a child that cannot go alone.

But there is no melancholy in this secular life of the miner, apparently in the dark and among the dead, cheer- As the shadows in which he shrouds his ancestors fulness- do not sadden his ancestral feasts, so there is for him no element of gloom or decay in these tracks of the old wis- dom of precept and institution, in which he is for ever plod- ding. He is not bent like a grim theologian over his medi- aeval creed ; he is erect and cheerful, and genial in his toil. For the past and the present do not need to be joined by painful straining to span a chasm, while one picks at its gulf ; since all the ages are continuous with the undoubted validity of the same set of truths. But he lacks the im- agination that would traverse these vast spaces of historic time with a sense of awe, and ponder over their mysteries of human experience. His strongest emotion is a plain- tive and patient wonder at the transiency of things. This unfailing Methuselah, to whom a thousand years are as a day, wrinkled and hoary as he seems at first sight, senti- mentalizes like Horace on 'the swiftness of time. His earnestness has its focus in the moments ; he is utilitarian and acquisitive, and holds fast every shred of their gift. His art in making the best of failure, and carrying off defeat as if it were victory, is sublime. It is said that the emperor indemnifies his dignity for the refusal of certain invincible tribes of the west to accept his government, by conferring the title of imperial official upon the chiefs whom they have elected. A high officer, refusing a pass- port for Peking to a friend of Mr. Lay, the English consul,

5 ELEMENTS.

and being informed that he would then proceed thither without one, at once replied : " I do not choose that this foreigner should be guilty of breaking the laws. Here is the passport." 1

It would not be strange if the very coil of these rigid Causes of wires °f tmie anc^ fate around him should pinch shy, sharp his sharp wit to that subtlety and petty craft with which he is credited, by races probably not less gifted in this line. Adroit management doubtless does something to offset the constraint of routines that cheat his powers of their natural play. But it is late in the day to bring special grounds in Chinese human nature to account for faults which, whether truly or falsely charged upon it, the Anglo-American conscience, at least, must blush to refer to heathen blindness or inferiority of race. Thus it is charged with a sharp practice, a want of integrity, which is said to have defeated every attempt to carry out laws against opium or gambling ; and with special pro- pensity to act from interested motives, and to turn high moral ideals into incentives to the love of gain. We may be permitted to doubt whether this habit, however con- spicuously it may appear in the schoolboy competition that forms so large an element in their educational and political methods, really exceeds similar faults arising in Western races from quite different causes. Chinese policy does not suffer by comparison with the morality of Paley and " Poor Richard ; " nor Chinese exploitation of noble maxims with the egotistic pretension to official rewards for party services, with which we are more familiar, or with our neglect of natural disciplines and right subordinations for lofty phrases about patriotism and public duty. Proba- bly the celestial appeal also is extremely apt to be made to terrestrial motives, and the idea of right to revolve about the poles of covenant or bargain.

1 Hiibner, p. 475.

! , V'y ^

THE CHINESE MIND. *l / ''V$Q

''/",

This love of gain is to be distinguished from thirst for monopoly and accumulation. The habit of the Chinese is not so much to heap, as to dif- fuse, the materials of comfort. As a people they gam. sim- are not luxurious, and the life of the masses is tphriftyd remarkably simple. The women are less given to habits- ornamentation than in any other Asiatic race except the Japanese. The laborer subsists on small means, sweetened by industry. Clothing, house, and food cost but little. For a few " cash " he dines sumptuously, even in the city. The greater part of the country population in northern China have their little houses and farms, which support them with content.1 With its floor of earth, paper windows, plain cooking utensils, and small brick range that serves for fire-place and bed, " the house keeps itself ; " 2 though, it must be allowed, with not so much regard as might be for sanitary laws. Fortune, in describing this country sim- plicity and want of healthful conveniences, says " there is no people so contented and happy ; none in which there is so little of real misery and want." '6 With all the brill- iancy of such centres of art and wealth as Canton or Hangchow, the national ideal of dress and living is frugality and self-restraint. This is constantly urged by the Board of Rites, who determine the fashions, but is conformed to by the people as part of the unwritten natural law.4 The wise men of the Confucian and Mencian books are Stoics, or even Cynics. " How admirable was Hwuy ! with a single dish of rice, a single gourd of drink, and living in a narrow lane, what others could not have endured did not disturb his joy." " Shun [afterwards emperor] ate his parched grains as if he expected nothing better his life through." "A scholar whose mind is set on truth, and who is ashamed of poor clothes or food, is not worthy to be

1 Fortune, Wanderings, pp. 190, 191. 8 Notes and Queries, July 1868.

8 Fortune, Wanderings, pp. 68, 190. * Mikado's Empire.

6O ELEMENTS.

conversed with." "The wise man," says the Shu-king, " understands the painful toil of sowing and reaping, and how it conducts to ease." The Chinese in California are allowed to be an admirable illustration of such maxims as these. Their sturdy labor, apt for every kind of service, — quiet, orderly, temperate, persevering, unambitious of future indolence, — already lends such aid to American enterprise and morality as well compares with that of any other class of immigrants. " They glean after the whites in the gold-fields ; they are content with small returns ; " they love work too well not to be satisfied to work for such wages as they can command.1 In Japan, they are the most industrious nationality. Tastes in food, as well as in dress, are regulated in China by rules believed to be rooted in Nature. The Liki shows that they must be har- monized with the seasons : the five elements are related to the five colors, and these with the five sorts of taste. Manner and form of eating are laid down for the rich, and the royal institutes of cookery and diet given in the Tcheouli with crushing minuteness. At the ancient feasts, where drinking was common, the rules provided for small goblets to prevent excess, and multitudes of gestuies intervened between the draughts. Rules for self-regula- tion and restraint, that seem to have grown up out of the national tastes, were spontaneously prescribed and applied in profusion to every pleasure and task. And we find in this fact some explanation of the very high, and in many respects unsurpassed, attainment of the Chinese in the arts and amenities of domestic life.

To these helpful elements we must add the affirmative spirit which leads them to accept and imitate whatever they see to be of use, with rare aptness and fidelity. There is much error current on this point in their character, and abundant testimony to refute it. "The Chinese laborer,"

1 Bowles, Across the Continent; Speer, p. 526; Pumpelly, p. 252.

THE CHINESE MIND. 6l

says Morache, " does not look with indifference on things : talks much ; tries to instruct himself ; has not the pride which hides ignorance, like the literati." 1 It will be seen in our account of their industrial arts, and of the history of their commercial relations with the West, that even their wonderful skill in manipulation has not surpassed the interest which they have shown in greeting the achieve- ments of other nations, and, after their own way, in profit ing thereby. i

Such the active qualities of persevering cheerful indus- try, of social constructiveness, competitive ardor, summary economic method, and assimilative power, that oftraits

and ten-

eminently fit the Chinese to enter into the spirit dencies. of the present age, and to work in its paths as a ^e^°"ra twofold force of moral conservatism and industrial needs. progress. Not less do they serve to warn us by the stunted state of their imagination and ideal faculty, by the lack of free individuality and original force, of the dangers of mechanism and uniformity in culture. And this is timely service, in view of many similar educational ten- dencies that begin to flow already in America from the jealous assertion of a universal equality of minds, and of every one's capacity for all functions ; an unlimited power being expected from prescribed methods and the machinery of drill. Many prejudices will be removed, and wider con- ceptions of the unity of races will prevail, when our grow- ing acquaintance with this great people shall bring us to do justice to their democratic instincts and affinities, to their local liberties, to their universal aim in education, and to that grand theory of office as a function of knowl- edge and virtue, which they have so' persistently striven to embody with more or less success, while free America, by general confession, has of late most perilously thrown it aside.

1 Morache, p. 82.

II.

LABOR.

LABOR.

HPHE Chinese must be judged, not by what they have thought, but by what they have done. Their

, Religion

speculative performance cannot be seen apart from of the chi- their practical, nor understood till this has been meas- nts*:.*° !*

studied in

ured. For them the ideal means a concrete fact, a their visi- positive product. Their religion, technically a wor- b ship of spirits and elements, is really a worship of uses achieved, of relations fulfilled. We must approach the study of their philosophy and faith through the visible civilization in which they have embodied their qualities, so as to test whether they have manifested that earnestness and devo- tion which would constitute their use of these qualities a religion. On the gates of the " Celestial Kingdom " is very legibly written : Do not ask here what mysteries have been fathomed ; but behold what realities have been achieved.

The three obvious traits of this muscular type, or work temperament, have at first view an unpromising ^^^ aspect. They are its instincts for plodding labor, obvious for dead-level uniformity, for minute fidelity in de- traitsof

*' J the mus-

tails. Looked at from their grotesque side, these cuiartyp* instincts are familiar to the Western mind as a °Smind- kind of antiquated babyhood. But the steady plodding has recorded itself in a wonderful industrial development ; the

5

66 ELEMENTS.

dead-level uniformity, in systems of universal education and democratic habits of thought ; and the minute con- formity to conditions, in a complex political mechanism for appointing to public offices those who are fittest to fill them. Each of these great results we shall examine in detail.

Of all Mongolic races, this alone has shown the persist- ent working-faculty to create an enduring civiliza- tion. The crude Turanian energy that so often swept the great steppes in predatory warfare, and followed Tchinggiskhan and Tamerlane through the

type. length and breadth of Asia, overturning and fusing empires, " like primitive convulsions of Nature " or a storm of inorganic atoms, — only to disappear as swiftly as they came, — developed into permanent wonders of agriculture and manufactures in the great Eastern plain by the sea. Here the "hundred black-haired families " settled in remote ages, and forthwith began another sort of raid, — to drain off the floods, to burn up the wilderness, to expel the wild beasts, to portion the land into farms. Their industrial achievement has given them, as it progressed through the ages, the commanding place they. hold in modern civiliza- tion. It has been estimated that they perform from six to seven tenths of the manual labor done in the world. May I not go behind the more obvious traits of the Turanic type, all of which would leave this record an unexplained excep- tion, — and ascribe it to a constitutional necessity of the type in question to bury itself in the actual and concrete, conceiving only in the very act of executing ?

All testimonies agree that the Chinese as a whole are Practical what the sway of such realism would make them, — onhhT5 cheerful, observant, keen of wit ; earnest, abound- facuity. ing in the virtues of patience and self-discipline.

LABOR. 67

No people better understands the uses of organization ; and it has been observed that their business-like character and habits of laboring for common ends suggest resemblance to the French and the American much more than to the races of Southern Europe.1 " They are equal to any climate," says Medhurst ; " and nothing else is needed but teaching and enterprise, to convert them into the most effective work- men on the face of the earth." 2 They astonish foreigners by the apparent ease with which they perform what we re- gard as the functions of beasts of burden. Labor, in fact, seems to have been brought to a sort of science by their habit of relieving it with frequent intermissions, and thereby maintaining an independence in it which is probably neces- sary to their constitution ; the result being, that, notwith- standing the inferior quality of their food and their appar- ent lack of blood and muscle, they perform an equal amount of work with Europeans in a given time.3 Women are said to work no harder than corresponding classes in other coun- tries ; yet families are provided for, and absolute destitution is more rare than in England.4

The force of this impulse to industry is seen in the fact that they seldom exert themselves for any other purpose. Their work is work, and their rest is rest. Walking, even riding, for health or pleasure is said to astonish them, and they stand agape at sight of it.5 Reaction against a phys- ical strain so constant and organic is natural enough, and exhibits itself in such habits among the richer classes as letting the nails grow long, in proof that the wearer has escaped into a rare and crowning leisure. The passion for elaboration makes Chinese art pre-raphaelite in its minute- ness. An object is valuable according to the amount of labor expended on it, apart from the mere question of cost.

1 Davis, II. 67. * Foreigner in Far Cathay, p. 183.

9 Julien's Industr. d. FEmf. Chin., p. 216. 4 Giles's Chinese Sketches, pp. 11, 12. 5 Meadows's Notes, 6r*c., pp. 220, 222.

68 ELEMENTS.

Where we should exclaim, " How beautiful it is ! " in Canton they would say, " How much work there is in it ! " :

The old Chinese lived close to Nature; took on them- selves her tasks, made the most of her gifts. They

Agriculture.

had superintendents of the mountains, the woods, the streams, and the lakes ; they worshipped gods of the land and grain. From oldest time, the ruler, as represent- ative of the national religion, has paid annual honors to the spirits of the land, holding the plough and opening the first furrow of the year, in presence of the people. The earliest king in the national legend, except Fo-hi, who revealed the primitive forms of Nature, was Shin-nung, the divine Hus- bandman. The Athenians too, a very different people from the Chinese, rendered homage to the plough and the oldest husbandry ; tracing their own origin to agricultural deities and laborers.2

Nature is man's mother, as Spirit is his father ; and his first aspirations are the groping of his infant hands for her bosom. The oldest form of laws recognized by the great races of antiquity seems to have been what the Greeks called thesmoi ; meaning that natural order, preceding all human statutes, which governed the seasons and blessed the toils of men. Their thesmophoria were probably anal- ogous to the Chinese festivals in honor of the first husband- man.3 The mythologies of the Hindu Ramayana and the Eleusinian mysteries alike centre in the sacred Furrow of the Plough ; signified by both names, Sita in India, and Kore in Greece. The vast systems of irrigation that chan- nelled the plains of ancient Babylonia and Southern Arabia were doubtless as old as the Hamite or Cushite populations, whose physical mass-power and industry resembled those of the tribes who were fertilizing the opposite side of Asia. Even the Shemites, a pastoral race, and psychologically as

1 Arb. d. Russ. Gesandsch. z. Peking, I. 252.

2 Duncker, Gesch. d. Alterth., III. 93.

8 Cf. Burnouf, Llgende Athenienne, pp- 136-143.

LABOR. 69

far as possible from the Chinese, go back to legendary labors of the same kind ; and their dyke of "Lok-man " re- minds us of the pioneer toils of Yu.1

At the same season, the labors of the other sex in China were religiously opened by the empress with her attendants, entering on the delicate task of breeding silkworms in the palace park.2 Of this industry one of her first predeces- sors was, in the same way as Shin-nung in agriculture, re- garded as the inventor.

It was held from the beginning that man could not be- come good nor happy until he had enough to eat and drink ; and the great care of Government was to see that provision was made for the security of labor in the enjoyment of its earnings, and for the employment of the poor.

This piety toward labors upon the earth was symbolic of the national character. In the first traditional organiza- tion of China there is a Ministry of Public Works ; 3 and the last chapters of the Tcheouli-Institutes contain prob- ably the most elaborate record of industrial rules and pro- cesses in ancient history, — including at least a hundred trades. A Shi-king Ode celebrates the primitive virtues of an ancestor of the dukes of Tcheou : —

" Kong-lieou, our prince, did not shrink from toil :

He sought neither pleasure nor repose.

Devoted to husbandry, busily portioning the lands,

With harvests he filled his granaries every year.

He went over the country, and saw peace and content ;

Ascended the hills — laborers were tilling their summits ;

Descended into the vales — they too were peopled.

He measured the fields, dividing each into nine lots,

The central lot to be tilled by the common toil, for the State, —

Regulating the labors of farmers and fixing the tithes of the harvest.

Resting on a height, he had mats spread, and on them were stools,

On which his officers took their places.

1 Cf. Lenormant's Ancient History of the East, II. 297, 299.

* Tcheouli, B. vn (13).

8 The Yukung chapter of the Shirking.

70 ELEMENTS.

He sent to the herds ; he took swine from the pens, And poured out spirits in gourds for his attendants, — They, eating and drinking, acknowledged him their lord." l

In these institutions, land was made the civil and politi- cal basis, — a sure sign that the old Chinese knew

Its honors

in old how to lay foundations of a great empire, and that time. their later success was no accident, but cumulative incomes wisely earned. Husbandry, in Europe slowty devel- oped after the age of Charlemagne, was here the first and earliest thing : special officers stimulated it ; its inventors were honored ; vagabonds punished ; taxes levied on the idle ; unimproved lands resumed by the State. The in- terests of agriculture have always taken precedence of those of war, and have never ceased to be regarded as the foun- dation of political economy. The labor of the farmer is emphasized as the root of productive industry, in all public announcements bearing on the subject of national resource. To exhort to this form of industry, as well as personally to do it honor, is a traditional function of the emperor. In the " Sacred Instructions " of Yung-ching, for instance, read at stated times throughout the empire, it is said : —

" When a man ploughs not, some one in consequence suffers hunger ; when a woman weaves not, some one suffers cold. In ancient times the Son of Heaven himself directed the plough, the empress planted the mulberry tree.

" You, O soldiers, ought to consider that to the cultivation of farms and mulberry trees you owe every grain and every thread by which you and your families subsist.

" The late emperor [Kang-hi] ordered representations of the arts of weaving and husbandry to be engraven for distribution, that the people might be stimulated to the culture of their lands."

The laws followed the rule that " they who will not work

i Shi-king, III. ii. 6.

LABOR. 71

shall not have." No outer coffin for those who planted no trees ; no silk garments for those who raised no silkworms ; no full morning dresses for those who did not spin ; no animals nor plants to be offered by any one which he had not raised.1 Alvarez (i6th century) says no traveller is allowed to stay more than three or four days in a place where he has no occupation, and every one is obliged to exercise some function.2 That none be publicly supported who can maintain themselves is still the law of the land. Fortune tells us that nowhere in the world are the farming popula- tion on the whole in better condition.3 They have small estates, freehold but for a small tax paid the crown ; under laws of primogeniture indeed, but practically divided at death in equal shares among the male children, since all can remain thereon with their families : and the ties of kindred are thus enlisted in development of the land.

It has been said by Plath, one of the most devoted stu- dents of Chinese history, that this people were in ancient times " organized as a great industrial army." And if we read the minute regulations for such purposes in which all their old governmental systems abound, we shall hardly think the language too strong.4

It would seem that these mechanical arrangements by imperial authority are but the natural flow of popu- Love of lar instinct. The busy life of the modern Chinese ^^c street, where crowds, however close, fall spontane- processes, ously into good order and mutual deference ; the ease and grace with which their movable workshops come and go ; their conformity to nature and good sense in closing their shops at nightfall, and resorting without curfew to their

1 Plath, Rel. u. Cult. d. Alt. Chin.(Denkschr. d. Bay.Akad., IX. 867.) Gingell'sTcheou Laws ; Tckeou-li, B. xn. ; Mencius, V. ii. 2.

1 Hakluyt Soc. ; Mendoza's History of China.

8 See also Lay, Chinese as they A re, p. 268.

* See especially Mencius, V. ii. 2; the Yukung chapter of the Shu-king; and the land arrangements of the Tcfeou-li.

72 ELEMENTS.

homes ; their proverbial punctuality in work ; that economy of time and means which is no less than a form of genius ; that delight in labor which makes the Californian immi- grant cheerfully hold on for eleven hours a day, and which draws the highest compliments alike from manufacturers and railroad contractors, — indicate that the great indus- trial civilization of this people is the fulfilment of a psycho- logical destiny, and that to ascribe it to the force of rules and laws imposed by the State is to mistake effect for cause. Nature's Nature has here framed her own journeyman out own jour- of her seasons and conditions, continuities and neyman. routjnes . out of ^g fidelity of her laws, and the persistency of her processes. These are his element : though he cannot report, he can as little escape them. He is productive as the sun, and finds it no harder to create material values by steady toil than the sunbeam to travel onward without rest.

Montfort,1 describing the working season in Fo-kien, says Labors of that " men, women, and children poured out into L^F^idln tne fi^ds of sugar-cane ; and the noise of their im- &c. plements. was mingled with the murmur of Chinese

syllables like the monotonous cry of the cricket." " When near Nan-king, I could hardly take a step in the country without hearing the whirr of the shuttle, and whenever I entered a peasant's cot I always found the family at work ; sometimes, even in miserable huts, three looms were going at once." Six hundred and fifty millions of acres are under Vast ro- cultivation in China alone, independent of her colo- ductive nies.2 The hundred million pounds of tea exported in 1846 were but a twentieth part of the annual product in that article ; and so vast is the amount of this that a sudden failure of the whole Western demand would scarcely affect the home price.3 The tonnage of the coast

1 Voyage en Chine, pp. 199, 247. * Notes and Queries, July, 1868.

3 Fortune's Wanderings, pp. 207, 214, 215.

LABOR. 73

and river craft alone exceeds that of all other nations to- gether.1 Mountains of silk are produced every year. The manufacture of porcelain at King-te-chin has employed a million of workmen ; and the light of its furnaces by night resembles an immense conflagration.2 In all fine work- manship for literary or aesthetic uses the industries of Nan- king, previous to their desolation by the Tai-ping war, were equally productive. What nation has public works on such a scale ? China is veined with roads ; with rivers navigated to their springs ; with canals of irrigation. Hundreds of thousands were often busy on this kind of labor at one time, as in the T'sin and Ming periods. The mammoth of canals belongs to China, six hundred and fifty miles long ; its bed cut down in some places seventy feet, its banks twenty feet above the country, and a hundred feet thick. The leviathan of walls is here, one thousand two hundred and fifty miles long : very unequally built indeed of earth enclosed by brick and cement, but resting on granite blocks, and containing material enough to girdle the globe with a thread several feet in thickness.3 Here are imperial palaces encircled with six miles of wall ; temples thousands of feet in circumference ; artificial lakes and mountains, of great size. It is a people with 'whom only the Aztecs and the Egyptians are to be compared for physical toil ; and who seem to have worked sometimes, indeed, under com- pulsion, yet from an innate love of labor, and usually for ends in which, — as for instance in the great protective wall of the T'sin dynasty, — they must have had the same interest as their rulers.

Almost all labor in China is human. The few beasts of burden, starved and overworked, apparently exist Exclusive. but to show how the teeming population grudges iy human space and food even to man's most efficient helpers

* Williams, II. 24. * Girard, II. 316.

3 Hue, II. 177 ; Fleming, pp. 319, 342.

74 ELEMENTS.

in his heaviest tasks. Here all processes are but forms of human agency. Man is beginning, middle, end of Nature's circle. He is the consumer of the earth ; and he only, its compost. He eats all things, and he repairs all things. Filial piety itself is not strong enough to turn the plough- share aside from ancestral graves. " Suffer not a barren spot to remain a wilderness," says the Sacred Edict, " nor a lazy person to abide in the town." All materials are utilized in the service of life. Hills are terraced to their tops ; millet is sown between rows of mulberry trees, cotton in just reaped cornfields.1 "Not a weed nor a waste yard," says a traveller in Northern China ; " not a hedge nor fence to steal space from the limits of an unsurpassed frugality." The plain of Shang-hai is perhaps the richest in the world. The laborer uses no complicated machinery, but has most of the simpler tools employed by us ; and the multitudinous hands are probably more effective than any machinery, in the finer processes of agriculture. Every part of the cotton plant is used : the wool is woven into clothing ; the seeds yield oil ; the stalks are fuel ; the ashes are manure, and fresh crops are planted before the earlier ones are removed.2 Preparations of vegetable ashes are in use for expelling insects ; and the old law books abound in strange prescrip- tions for agricultural uses, many of them more valuable to us as signs of zeal than of science, but others undoubtedly the result of experience in a pursuit which has absorbed the interest of the nation from earliest time. With a wisdom unknown to the Celt, imperial instructions have often urged a twofold industry ; that, when one failed, the other might preserve the people. " Let the farmer attend to his grain, and the women to their cloth ; and the superabundance of the one will supply any defect of the other." 3 Simon,

1 Williams, II. 103 ; La Chine Ouverte, pp. 163, 164.

2 Fortune, Wander ings, p. 277. For the uses to which the bamboo is put in China, see Grosier, II. 381. 3 Martin's China, I. 87.

LABOR. 75

sent by Napoleon to report on the Chinese system of agri- culture, stated that in no other part of the world had he seen such results as were here produced by manual and personal labor. The Northern provinces are said to yield two crops annually ; the Southern, five in two years : and this has continued for ages, aided by skilful processes of sowing and rotation.1 If China or Japan followed our methods of tillage, famine and death would soon destroy millions.2

With such success do they apply their instinct for cyclic movement to the art of restoring to the soil all ele- Economic ments that have been withdrawn from it, that China, processes, alone among civilized countries, has preserved her acres from exhaustion. A thousand years of culture make as little change in their productiveness as time has wrought in the physical and mental type of her people. So wonder- fully pulverized is the soil by incessant handwork, that not a clod can be found, after a long rain, in some cultivated dis- tricts.3 No spendthrift throwing aside of old soils, as in America, to scratch the surface of new. Agriculture here reflects the moral laws and noble conditions of human growth. " Better manure your old land than buy new," says the national proverb. Agricultural treatises have abounded in all times ; and two great encyclopaedias, issued in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, cover this branch of industry with a fulness that proves unabated interest in the development of the soil.4

The distribution of this immense industrial product is on a proportional scale. On the vast network of rivers,

r Distribu-

the movement of boats bearing the sugar, oil, and tkm of rice of the South ; the tea, silk, cotton, and crockery Products- of the East ; the grain and medicines of the North ; the

1 Julien and Champion, Industr. de F Empire CAtnffis, p. 176.

* Smithsonian Ref>. on Agric., 1862.

8 Cooke's China, p. 247.

4 Plath, Die Landwirthschaft d. Chin. u. Jap. (1874).

76 ELEMENTS.

metals and minerals of the West, — is described as prodigi- ous. The swelling population has overflowed into the rivers, and built out another continent for its surplus productive energies upon their oceanic tides. The postal service car- ries letters two hundred miles a day, to offices in all the important towns, at the cheapest rate.1 Many imperial high- roads in Northern China, now in partial decay, are seventy feet broad, set with five rows of trees, with signal towers every few miles, and excellent inns for couriers and travel- lers. Cartroads are innumerable. The graveyard question will stand less in the way of introducing railroads into China than is often supposed : the depredations of rebels alone will have nullified this objection.2

Horticulture is a passion, and the vegetable garden is the Horti- Chinaman's paradise. Four or five crops easily culture. come of his acre, per year. Every elegant mansion has its ornamental grounds. A French writer says the English have found their models in this line in China, and the French have followed them.3 Chinese parks are vast free gardens pointing back to periods of liberal thought and culture.4 The arts of grafting, pruning, dwarfing, enlarging, and 'varying species, and the laws of selection, have been well understood for ages. Of the tree-peony alone hundreds of varieties have been cultivated, some for more than a thousand years.5 The Dutch embassy in the seventeenth century observed that farmers put their fruit whole into the ground, and then set out the shoots at good distances apart ; so raising great trees in a short time.6 Odes of the Shi-king and elaborate treatises on floriculture" testify to a constitutional delight in flowers, like the taste

1 Giles's Sketches, p. 61. 2 Williamson, N. Chin. Br. R. A . Sac., Dec., 1867.

8 Girard, II. 10. See also Lord Macartney's enthusiastic description of the imperial parks at Gehol.

* Koch. Varies. Of. Dendrol. (Berlin, 1874, 1875).

6 Darwin, A nimals and Plants under Domestication, 1 1. 248.

6 Dutch Embassy, II. 67. 7 Wylie's Chin. Lit., p. 120.

LABOR. 77

of the country people for having their rude hills covered with the beauty of the white azalea, with the honeysuckle, clematis, and brilliant shrubs. " This love for flowers," says St. Denys, " is a real worship, a mystic affection." Travel- lers descant on the charms of Chinese inns, set in a frame- work of asters, roses, and amaranths ; on the splendor of the flower boats ; 1 on wide areas of pleasant villages and culti- vated fields ; on the patriarchal simplicity of farm-life in portions of Northern China, where, as in Swiss villages, good wishes and counsels are inscribed on the doors.2 Romances deal largely in sentimental meanings of flowers ; effusions of lovers are hung in conspicuous places under the title of " Flowery Scrolls." China is itself the " Flowery Kingdom," and the splendor and perfume of our New-Eng- land gardens are specially due to shrubs from old Cathay. Utilitarian limits are escaped in this line, and even with a protest ; for the mulberry is banished from the gardens of the rich because it is- industrially profitable, and useful trees are admitted only when they yield perfume, fine foliage, or exquisite table fruit.3

We might indeed expect that so spontaneous a force as Chinese industry would exhibit ideal tendencies. ^sthetic A wonderful refinement of perception and delicacy Gifts, of handling here supplies the place of those grander forms of art which require abstraction and contemplation. The aesthetic gift of the Chinese is a fine sense of touch. The tender and watchful art required for protecting their silkworms, and for preserving the vitality of continually exfoliated trees ; the frequent removal of leaves by careful selection ; the perfect stillness, so needed for the whole process that the worms are kept apart in quiet groves ; the similar delicacy of their tea-culture, of porcelain manufact- ure, and of their lacquer-work, so guarded from dust that

1 Fleming, p 174; Fortune, p. 147. * Fleming, pp. 107-109, 115, 178, 179, 185.

8 Montfort, p. 252.

78 ELEMENTS.

the workmen do not enter the rooms in their clothing ; their paper, too delicate for press-work, or made of softest pith resembling rice ; their damasks of royal tints and strange intricate pattern; their screens and scrolls, too fine for furniture ; their rosewood chairs with silk cushions ; their fanciful lanterns, curiously-wrought cabinets, and variegated vases, — are all instances of a delicate, if not fully cultured, aesthetic taste. No importations have been so refining to European civilization as the tea, silk, porcelain, embroidery, which Chinese industry has contributed.

Musa, the Saracen conqueror of Spain, is recorded to Mechanical have said, that when Wisdom was sent down to dexterity. merjj she was lodged in the head of the Greeks, the tongue of the Arabs, and the hands of the Chinese. The strokes made by the fingers of a good Chinese writer with his camel's -hair pencil, and his rapid changes from the use of one finger to that of another, are almost beyond following. Barrow saw complicated European furniture taken in pieces and put together again with wonderful dexterity, by natives who had never before seen their like. One reason for the popular reverence for written paper is that writing is not a mere utility, but the most attractive of fine arts. What aesthetic progress, if we compare the Shu-king descriptions of public and private buildings, — wooden frames filled in with earth or stones, a rude art still prevailing in the interior of China, — with the modern Chinese mansion ; its rich vases, gay satin cur- tains covered with scenery and animal painting, quaintly carved furniture of ebony and rosewood, trellis-work in galleries, tiled walks, marbles, stuccos, scrolls, delicate pen- cil-work, and writing materials. The primitive tent-shape is scarcely suggested by the infinite modifications to which it has been subjected, — rising to their perfection in the threefold azure roof and the exquisite trellis-finish of the vermilion Temple of Heaven, lifting tent above tent from

LABOR. 79

its three marble terraces, out of nearly a mile square of groves and lawns. The temples are apt to be most like garden retreats or country residences : such happy love of art is expended on their surroundings. This daintiness is often replaced by a taste for the rude and colossal, as if the life of the steppe and forest had survived ; as in the stu- pendous rampart that toils along a thousand miles of mountain and plain, and in the fifteen memorial halls of the Ming emperors, described by Pumpelly and Hiibner, one of which is ninety feet wide by two hundred long and fifty high, and supported by rows of columns, each a teak timber of eleven feet circumference. But seldom does Chinese architecture indicate a desire to leave enduring monuments ; this love of work is too well satisfied in its own present relations, to pay homage to the future.

Painting and sculpture are not favored by the sages, and there have been Confucian statutes against Paint;ng the latter art as savoring of idolatry. The mon- andscuip- archical Semite does not repel image-worship more severely than these prosaic rationalists, whose State tem- ples are as bare of such symbolism as the Mongolian steppes. Even purely human statues do not often stand free, — the Chinese not apprehending individuality as the Greeks did, — but rest on a background of wall. Yet China is sprinkled with popular statuary ; mainly of sym- bolic Buddhist or other imagery, generally in grotesque or exaggerated forms. For this over-realistic people make of their religious art an escape for their repressed ideal, whose reactions break forth too crudely and spasmodically to be true to nature. Their allegorical sculpture is de- scribed as no less charming than it is in appearance bur- lesque ; its lions and tigers certainly suggesting the fact that these creatures do not frequent the Chinese empire. But, like every other product, it is almost without limit in amount and elaboration. Bastian saw stone figures of men

8<D ELEMENTS.

and animals at intervals all the way to Kal-gan. The Ming tombs are approached by lines of colossal monoliths in marble, for half a mile. Similar avenues are not infre- quent, as approaches to tombs.1 Jesuit letters of the six- teenth century speak of statues in the temples, of very great size, and covered with beaten gold.2

Even more astonishing is the quantity and quality of minute sculpture. The great pagoda of Nan-king was beset with innumerable images. The Chinese are elaborate workmen in ivory, horn, mother-of-pearl, jade, and bronze. The cutting of many a jade vase must have cost the labor of a lifetime, and this toilsomeness, hinted in their mak- ing jade the emblem of all virtues, enforced at last the substitution of their equally beautiful porcelain.3

Without perspective, shadows, or emphasis in tone, — all of which are rejected as optical illusions, — their paintings excite our wonder by skilful management and intense pur- ity of color ; whether heightened by the soft hazy texture of their pith paper, or imitating the primal greens, golds, and blues of earth and sky on their pagoda roofs. There are descriptive accounts of celebrated painters, one of which enumerates fifteen hundred names ; and full treat- ises on painting as an art.4 Their devotion to ornamental work is mechanized by the use of classic books of conven- tional forms, and each workman gives his whole attention to one kind of pattern.5 So much is art a matter of me- chanical dexterity, that the painters have learned a won- derful sleight in managing two brushes at once. Artists lecture to crowds by the blackboard, and execute pictures of birds and beasts with their ringer tips, with great address.6 Paintings from Buddha's life in the recognized attitudes cover the temples.

1 Girard, II. 87; Pumpelly ; Hiibner. 2 Alvarez.

8 Chefs d'CEuvres of Industry, p. 132. * Wylie, Chinese Literature, pp. 108, no.

6 Chefs d'CEuvres, p. 146. 6 Lockhart, Med, Miss., p. 105.

LABOR. 8 1

The older Chinese painters showed a vitality in forms akin to the wonderful Japanese art. The Arab

Compared

travellers in the ninth century, not very good critics with jap- probably, declared that Chinese painting surpassed a that of any other race. Painting has embodied the na- tional history quite as earnestly as writing ; and the figures on porcelain show so admirably the changes of manners and costume that it is much to be regretted that antique vases in this kind should be so rare ; few, it is now said, going back beyond the fourteenth century.1 The early art has the advantages of a less minute mechanical formalism, and of greater freedom of conception in the workman.

But in general, pettiness and confusion of details, defect of dramatic grouping, isolation of forms, absence of pettiness shadow and perspective, a constant and rigid turn in details- of portraits to face the spectator, with other ever-recurring childish traits, show that the fine arts are stunted by con- stitutional absorption in concrete things.

Probably the vigorous genius of Japan was stimulated in this as in almost every other sphere, by the potent japanese initiative of the Chinese. Much even of their mod- art- ern work, especially in Suchuen, is said to be very sugges- tive of that wonderful style which is now bringing the Western nations to the confessional of art. And their degeneracy, as a whole, while not unnatural in an old civil- ization of fixed routines, is certainly due in large degree 'to the demand of Western materialism and display for cheap mechanical products. Japanese art, for us a timely correc- tive of this, is too imperfectly known as yet, and too much aside from our theme, to receive in this place more than a brief reference. The enthusiasm it has excited is proof of • a recall to spontaneity and truth, as needful in our tastes as

1 Revue des Deux Mondes, LXX. 720. The bronzes are probably much earlier ; many are claimed to belong to the oldest dynasties. This would be earlier than any bronzes from either Assyria or Egypt.

6

84 ELEMENTS.

another China, history and legend, theatre and school ; plants, creatures, landscape ; life domestic and religious ; dainty tiles and proud pagodas ; public honors and private gifts ; mystery of her cunning and miracle of her fires ; rivalling gems and skies with arabesque of air-bubbles and lace-work of crackled radiance. The admiration of this porcelain in the age of Lous XIV. may well have made an era in Western ornamental work.1 And students are por- ing over the ceramic art of the old Etruscans, as well as of the Greeks, to find indebtedness to this far-descended product of the original genius of the Mongol.2

The combination of religious and moral ardor with crude performance, makes Chinese musical art almost a

Music.

burlesque. Music has been extracted from every thing, — skins, terra-cotta, metals, silks, wood, bamboo, gourds. Every thing was dimly suggestive of harmonies, as prosaic as those for which the fine ear of the Greek listened at every gate of Nature were poetic. The idea that musical relations are universal runs through the whole civilization of China, an inspiration alike of its philosophy and its song. Plutarch expresses the Greek conception, when he says that " the moulding of ingenuous manners and civil conduct lies in a well-grounded musical education." In China, too, music is the substance of virtue. The Shu-king says that Yu appointed a minister of this science "to teach our sons the ways of right conduct." 3 The Li-ki calls it "the union of heaven and earth, the abode of all their mys- teries."4 Older poetry celebrates it as "the echo of wis- dom and mother of virtue, the way of divine knowledge ; not for charming of the ear, but to expel discord from the heart." Ma-touan-lin calls it the substance of government. The Chinese, like the Greeks, had typical forms of music,

1 For Chinese porcelain, see Jaquemart's Hist, of Ceramic Art ; and Chefs d'CEuvres of Industrial Art, p. 148.

2 On Mongolic relations of the Etruscans, see Taylor's Researches, 8 Shu-king, II. i. 24. * Li-ki, ch. xvi.

LABOR. 85

supposed to be endowed with specific virtues in the disci- pline of the passions ; and made them the peculiar prov- ince of the blind, as capable of more undivided attention than others to their meaning.1 Their Orpheus, whose touch of mythic stones tamed savages and brutes,2 was an official, as we might anticipate, appointed to adapt melo- dies to the eight kinds of instruments. His music was of course a " middle path," making the young nobles earnest yet mild, strong yet modest, dignified yet courteous.3 But their true Orpheus is that wondrous rhythm of toil, which for thousands of years has here been building cities, and creating institutions on a colossal scale. In positive musi- cal art their failure is amazing. The octave is believed to have been recognized in very ancient times by means of tubes of different lengths, and divided into semi-tones.4 But the plaintive monotony, the confinement to one key and to the head voice, reveal organic defects that render the expression of feeling and taste impossible. Enthusi- asts have found in Chinese melodies resemblance to the Scotch, and even the Greek ; but the sense of metric pro- portion and recurrence is far cruder. Not even in music do these monotonists escape the rigid uniformity which makes their language a stream of monosyllabic waves. Yet travellers are impressed by the union of " cheerfulness with regularity " in the singing of sailors, keeping time to the movement of their oars.6

" If any man," says old Isaac Vossius,6 " should collect all that every nation that is, or has been, has in- inventive vented, the whole together would not be more ex- ingenuity- cellent and various than what is exhibited by the Seres

Tcheou-li, B. XVH. (Commentary.) * Shu-king, />., II. i. 24 ; ii. 9.

Tcheou-li, B. xvin.

Amyot wrote an absurd account of great discoveries in music by the Chinese, founded on "the relation of different terms of triple progression," from which he supposes the Greeks to have derived all they knew on the subject, possibly through Pythagoras.

Barrow, p. 81.

Description of Chinese Cities.

86 ELEMENTS.

alone." The Arab travellers in the ninth century had a similar opinion. And Ibn Batuta, in the fourteenth, calls them most skilful artificers.

Within the sphere of useful arts they have certainly been very ingenious ; though the antiquity of most of their inventions has b^en called in question, and they have failed to develop their possible uses. Their knowledge of the loadstone is doubtless ancient ; yet the familiar story of a ducal car that always pointed southwards, commonly sup- posed to refer to the magnet, is shown to be of compara- tively modern origin, even later than the Christian era.1 That gunpowder is a Chinese discovery has also been denied, mainly on the grounds that native writers ascribe it to the barbarians, and that it has been used almost exclu- sively for fireworks, and as a charm against demons.2 Yet it is admitted that the Chinese possessed the secret earlier than the tenth century.3 Tea was first manufactured in the fourth century ; linen paper in the third. Printing on wood belongs to the tenth, and was the oldest form of ster- eotyping. Designs, representing Buddhist deities, auto- graphs, and other figures, were taken from wood as early as the sixth, and perhaps as the third, century.4 Printing from stone was earlier still. Copies of the Classics were made on copper for better preservation, A.C. 943. In the eleventh century, a blacksmith invented movable types ; but these were scarcely suitable for Chinese characters, and the method has failed to pass into general use. Had Europe been in connection with China in the sixth century, it would have become acquainted with printing nearly a thousand years earlier than it did. Whatever their date, four discoveries of immeasurable influence on civilization —

1 Mayers, in Notes and Queries.

2 Ibid. ; before N. China Branch of R. As. Soc. ; May, 1867.

8 Amyot thinks it was used for military purposes as early as the Christian era. Mem. of Miss, de Peking, VIII.

* Chinese Encyclopedia.

LABOR. 87

the compass, gunpowder, printing, and tea — are referable to China. Porcelain is on record as perfected in the third century ; but the earliest furnace mentioned belonged to the seventh.1 Playing-cards are first heard of in the twelfth. The manufacture of ink from various substances is mentioned in many old works, and notices are given of a hundred and fifty persons famous therein.2 Paper sup- planted the bamboo tablet and the silk weft as early as the second century, B.C. Dyeing in sundry ingenious ways Ijas been understood from remote times. Weaving and embroidery are arts of immemorial age. The most exqui- site gauzes, crapes, and silks have been produced with hand-looms of the simplest structure, and by the poorest of the people. Silk goes back to pre-historic time, and ushers in the name of the wonderful Seres to the Western world. Silken robes rustle through the oldest poetry, and suggest the still mulberry groves of a dainty art. Steel needles are an old Chinese invention.3 Horn is softened by heat, and thinned out into fine plates for lanterns, by moans of pincers, a boiler, and a little stove. The bamboo has been put to all uses ; to the Indo-Chinese nations a real " staff of life." From the first, the Chinese have wrought metals for ornamental purposes ; they have also mined, but to little purpose, as they are wont to stop when they come to water. The arch was known to them earlier than to the European world. The admirable adaptation of their boat-building to the navigation of rivers and coast-waters is of very ancient date.4 The art of supplying business facilities by banking is older in China than European knowledge of finance. It has been claimed that the first circulating notes and bills of credit were issued at Peking.5 Paper money is heard of as early as the ninth century. In

1 Davis, ch. xviii. « Wylie, 117 ; Duhalde, II. 627.

3 Lockhart, Med. Miss. ch. v. * Davis, ch. x.

5 Knox, p. 332.

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the twelfth the empire was flooded with it, and the conse- quence of such inflation was, of course, to make it worth- less. The Mongols issued it in 1236, and Kublai-Khan con- tinued to do so throughout his reign. Ibn Batuta describes it in the fourteenth century as the chief medium of busi- ness. After 1455, it is not heard of for centuries in Chinese history, and recent attempts to introduce it have wholly failed.1

Julien and Champion, in their admirable work on " Chi- Certain nese Industry," 2 have instanced many original original inventions as yet unknown to our art ; such as the sonorousness of their gongs ; the fine polish and perfect surface of metallic mirrors ; certain uses of mordants and dyes ; a marvellous green color, extracted from the bark of a tree ; a white wax, the secretion of an insect, scarcely known to our entomologists, to obtain which three kinds of tree are cultivated ; white copper, made from some un revealed mixture of metals. The spe- cial inventions of China and Japan have so met the de- mands of furniture, dress, nutrition, and thought, as to be "always the core and axis as it were of the commerce of the world." These obligations to races that have been regarded as most isolated show that the destinies of a discovery are infinitely beyond the ken of the maker, and pay no regard to the limitations of the people whose func- tion it has been to contribute it to the improving hands of others. Of the disposition to adopt foreign arts mani- fested by the Chinese, I need only mention here the astro- nomical instruments which Ricci found in the Observatory at Nan-king,3 the introduction of glass for windows and lamps,4 and of rock crystal for spectacles ; the brass can- non cast by Verbiest in the seventeenth century ; vaccina-

1 See Yule's Notes to Marco Polo; and Ibn Batuta (tr. by Lee), ch. xxiii.

2 Industries Anciennes et Modernes de P Empire Chinois, Paris, 1869.

3 Hue, Christianity in China, II. 121. 4 Williams, II. 115.

LABOR. 09

tion,1 percussion guns, steamers, men-of-war of foreign models and other improvements, readily accepted as com- pensations for the bitter experience of their recent wars with European powers.

Many of their practical inventions have indicated good sense as well as ingenuity ; such as a curious, yet Practical simple, instrument for mowing and reaping at inven- once ; 2 straw layers in brick walls to keep out damp ; 3 fire-walls, rising above the partitions of buildings ; fire-engines and their appurtenances. Their small ox- plough, and water-wheel worked by hand, however rude, answer their purposes admirably, and serve better than labor-saving machinery for a crowded population. They have sunk wells to obtain gas for salt-boiling, two thousand feet in depth.4

They produce a transparent substance like glass, of sulphur, lead, and various alkalis, and mould it into vases by a process similar to glass-blowing. They reduce silver, tin, and copper from the ore, and obtain steel by methods like our own. They have wrought magnificent bronzes, and attained the highest brilliancy of vegetable colors.5 The farmer carries his implements on his back, yet knows how to make them procure for him the best harvests in the world. They train the pigeon to be their living telegraph, and to carry broker's quotations and business news upon his wings.

Yet with all this ingenuity their defect in inventive wisdom is shown, not only in a most imperfect Imper{eot development of many of their own discoveries, develop- but in the absence of even such an article as soap ; in slow travelling ; in the primitive condition of naval and military arts, of sanitary methods and materials. They try to make up by silks and furs for the want of warmth •

1 Davis, III. 56. » Fleming, p. 75. » Fleming, p. 183.

* Cosmos, I., note, 124. 8 Julien and Champion.

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in their houses. They sleep on brick ovens, and amidst the gases from charcoal braziers.1 Their candles are offen- sive. Their healing art is based only on the study of the surface of the body ; and the Arabs, sharp-eyed in such matters, could not see that they had any resources beyond the use of hot caustics. These sanitary deficiencies seem to be a survival of nomadic habits, like the obliquity of the eyelid and the passion for fortune-telling. Other causes must be assigned for the singular failure to develop interests to which they have been peculiarly devoted. By what psychological defect in the powers of analysis can we account for the anomaly of a great people, devoted to industry and traffic, who have never maintained a currency of uniform value, either paper or metallic, and who make all large settlements in bullion ; a people, intensely absorbed in reading, writing, and printing their own literature for two thousand years, who have never invented an alphabet nor a printing press, nor metallic types ? The result indeed, apart from race qualities, must be in no slight measure ascribed to mechanical and automatic habits, and to the minute division of labor in this prodigious popula- tion ; the inferiority of whose later art teaches us how dependent is every element of integrity, originality, and beauty on the workman's perception of his product as a whole, and on his handiwork's expressing the love and freedom of his own ideal, not the treadmill round of a human machine ; — a lesson which equally mechanical methods of culture, growing out of very different causes, in American labor and art, are rendering of momentous import to the moralist, the artisan, and the citizen.

1 Morache, p. 41.

III.

SCIENCE

SCIENCE.

TN attempting to form a judgment of the scientific -*- capacity of the Chinese, we are met by the Diversit same extreme difference of testimony as on other oftesti- points of character. Davis, on the one hand, asserts that they " set no value on abstract science, apart from obvious uses ; " and Meadows, on the other, that they are " idealists, who despise utility." Our inquiries lead us to believe that both are right, the race being re- garded from different points of view. Their actual per- formance is to a great extent utilitarian ; while the theories of Nature which they carry ready made, and impose upon the facts, suppress practical observation. It must be re- membered that such theories, however abstract in reality, are not held to be abstractions, but fixed and normal rules of practical utility ; and thus limit the perception of what is actually useful. The generalizations on which science depends require the separation of its elements from em- bodied facts and objects, to be treated abstractly and cor- related with one another to form new wholes, not existent in any actual form. And this abstraction and suspension the mental structure of the Chinese forbids. The Arabs, not- ing this defect of free speculation, denied that they Mental had any sciences whatever. Their pre-conceptions, ^J^." nevertheless, have an ideal value, as originating science.

SCIENCE.

TN attempting to form a judgment of the scientific •*• capacity of the Chinese, we are met by the Diversit same extreme difference of testimony as on other oftesti- points of character. Davis, on the one hand, asserts that they " set no value on abstract science, apart from obvious uses ; " and Meadows, on the other, that they are " idealists, who despise utility." Our inquiries lead us to believe that both are right, the race being re- garded from different points of view. Their actual per- formance is to a great extent utilitarian ; while the theories of Nature which they carry ready made, and impose upon the facts, suppress practical observation. It must be re- membered that such theories, however abstract in reality, are not held to be abstractions, but fixed and normal rules of practical utility ; and thus limit the perception of what is actually useful. The generalizations on which science depends require the separation of its elements from em- bodied facts and objects, to be treated abstractly and cor- related with one another to form new wholes, not existent in any actual form. And this abstraction and suspension the mental structure of the Chinese forbids. The Arabs, not- ing this defect of free speculation, denied that they Mental had any sciences whatever. Their pre-conceptions, td^fo"~ nevertheless, have an ideal value, as originating science.

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not in mere considerations of advantage, but in the recog- nition of sovereign law. The difficulty is that they are rigid, and applied to phenomena in moulds as rigid as themselves. The Chinese, for instance, share with the Hindus the idea of the unity of matter ; but instead of holding it apart for speculative development, as the Hindus treat ideal premises, they apply it immediately to phe- nomena; so that their studies become foreclosed in imag- inary transmutations of matter, as absolute as the idea itself. In the same way, the dualism of the Yin and Yang elements, hereafter to be described, is carried through nature, prescribing fanciful relations in place of experi- mental research in the various branches of science. Here is a practical tendency checked by idealism without free- dom ; and an ideal tendency fettered by the grasp of practicalisrri. Analogous conditions occur in Western . thought, where they differ from the Chinese only in not being so organic, while quite as real : such as the long persistence of Semitic beliefs derived from the Bible, in prescribing the paths and results of science on such sub- jects as creation, development, moral and physical evil, death and birth, miracle and law.

While, then, both the ideal and practical elements of ideal Pre- Chinese mind prompt to the study of Nature, and concep- to the home-sense of a right to its uses, it is obvi- ous that their mutual relations are far from favor- able to the natural sciences. It has immense industry in accumulating details on the one hand, but according to moral or philosophical preconceptions on the other. Yet But strong °^ ^aw as Permanent an^ unchanging, its steady, sense of regular habit is clearly perceptive ; and this is the basis of its rationalism. It thoroughly believes in the essential harmony of the ^vorld witJi Jiuinan nature. The order of the heavens and earth is not divorced from the substance of human reason. That direful theological

SCIENCE. 95

chasm, as hostile to physical and social science as to religious liberty, does not exist for the Chinese. The world is neither man's- prison nor his curse. The actual is his home. Every thing his faculties can recognize is rational and true knowledge, and its truth is made for him to use ; nor does he doubt the reality and value of things, nor the certitude of his own perceptions. As little does ' he permit himself to forget what rules he has discerned ; he institutes them as binding methods of research and production.

In some respects, therefore, Chinese science will be found superior to that of most other races, Semitic and even Aryan. It lacks the genius which depends on free- dom, and the depth which absorption in details forbids ; but in certain directions it attains a truth, fulness, and ingenuity not to be found elsewhere, and affords firm basis for the new scientific principles which are emanci- pating the thought of our time.

It must have required no little ardor in the study of Natural History to produce the works called " Pents'ao," or " Herbals," — not less than forty-two of which are known to have been composed since the fourth or fifth century. These are not mere descriptions of plants, but collections of data covering the whole range of life, though with special relation to therapeutic uses.1 An idea of their character may probably be derived from an analysis of the principal work of the kind, dating from the sixteenth century.2 Its great divisions are water, fire, earths, plants, animals, men. The inorganic world is dis- tributed into earths, metals, gems (including crystals), stones, and salts; the organic, according to- obvious dis- tinctions of place, form, and qualities. Several hundred

1 Schott, Ch. Literat. p. 102 ; Wylie, p. 80.

1 Schott; Williams, I. 288; Davis, ch. xx. ; Kidd's China.

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families are mentioned ; classes are formed on something like Linnaean principles, and objects arranged according to such categories as — where they live, what they are good for, what they look like, and on the sexual theory of Yin and Yang. There are water plants, stone plants, marsh plants, poisonous plants, twining plants ;- trees are viewed ' as aromatic, lofty, luxuriant, or flexible ; insects, worms, and scaleless creatures are placed together ; so are lizards, serpents, fish ; then come creatures with shells, which are said to have their bones outside, — certainly a presentiment of real science ; then the feathered tribes, as of the water, the heath, the mountain, the forest. Finally, come hairy animals and man. A kind of unity is given all these data by constant reference to human, and especially to medical, uses.

This interest in the healing powers of Nature is traced to the first emperors, by the legends ; but the whole class of kindred sciences, especially surgery, has in fact been obstructed by the dread of dissecting, or in any way meddling with the dead.1 The theory that each organ is specially related to some one element of na- ture forecloses science, as it did in Europe in the Middle Ages. It is believed that thought proceeds from the heart, that the soul is in the liver, and joy in the stomach, also respiration. Such nomad fancies survive, as that the courage of brave men or fierce animals is imbibed by eat- ing their gall ; that memory is improved by the heart of a white horse, while the flesh of a black one is fatal. The Tcheou-li abounds in such prescriptions, besides dividing animals according to their coverings and such members as the neck, wing, or mouth.2 The test of physiological beliefs is their antiquity. The " Bible of Medicine " is a work ascribed to the pre-historic Hwang-ti, and certainly two thousand years old.3

1 Mayers, however, mentions a dissector in the sixth century, B.C. * B. XLIII. 3 Schott, 105.

SCIENCE. 97

Yet the quantity of data collected is incalculable. The materia medica includes most of the substances used by ourselves, often with analogy in special applications.1 The " Punts'ao " refers to eight hundred authors.2 A " Guide to Therapeutics " has two hundred and fifty dia- grams and twenty-one thousand prescriptions. The con- tents of such collections must be of very various quality. The Chinese cannot have toiled so long and so earnestly without important results ; nor can so vast and successful a civilization as theirs have grown up without extensive acquaintance with the relations of the human body to its environment. They are familiar with the medicinal effects of camphor, mercury, rhubarb, arsenic, salts ; with indica- tions of the pulse, the focus of their therapeutics ; 3 with acupuncture ; with the moxa. Julien finds that they used anaesthetics in the third century. The bamboo has been very skilfully applied for stays and splints in surgery.4 Small-pox has been studied with attention, and inoculation practised for centuries.5 No distinction is made between arterial and venous blood, nor is the special function of the heart, as the regulator and centre of the vital fluid, comprehend