Full text of "Oriental religions and their relation to universal religion"

' I ::, ; mm
|

; . ' #.-. . !-=' ..-.. ..-,

REESE LIBRARY

OF THK

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA.

^ f; : ;aA f ' ^

Accessions No. /&. ^ - Shelf No. _ .

I mi

1 1 1
m

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

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. p age

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 7 l $-7 l 7

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

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. V IV. 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.

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 Vednta 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^ te e n
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< ^ as pi ra tion, this necessity of letting them slip
it y ." 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. i8 4 s\ 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^ d of
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 no tions 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. o f crue jty 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 hundrds 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 u y 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 b y 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 stucl y 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.

3 2 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.

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 P r P eQsit y-
becomes a species of fatalism. In times t of 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 save f his 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 \y f as j s we ^ k nown> j n 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 tmt y b *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.

48 ELEMENTS.

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 tmt y b ^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.

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 Pass i on
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 unres t, 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 w i res 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 t p h rif t y d
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.

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 S mind -
kind of antiquated babyhood. But the steady plodding has
recorded itself in a wonderful industrial development ; the

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,
onhhT 5 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. rout j nes . out o f ^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 P roducts -
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 s he 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 j apan ese
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.

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- i nve ntive
vented, the whole together would not be more ex- in g enuit y-
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.

88 ELEMENTS.

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.

QO ELEMENTS.

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, t d ^fo"~
nevertheless, have an ideal value, as originating science.

g ELEMENTS.

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 P re- 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 P ermanent 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.

96 ELEMENTS.

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,
comprehended ; but the fact of a systemic circulation
seems to have been recognized, and its rate measured. 6
The existence and force of subtle fluids (called airs) in the
body, as in the forms of nature, is fully perceived, though
not scientifically developed. The spinal marrow is traced
to its expansion in the brain, called " the sea of marrow."
A current belief in the unity of man with Nature involved
the discovery that he is a microcosm.

That the Chinese are, as Medhurst says, " a quack-ridden

1 China Review, Sept. 1874; Lockhart, p. 229. * Wylie, p. 80.

8 For their theory of the pulses, which they refer to the various internal organs, see
Duhalde, History of China, III. 366. * Lay, p. 224.

Wylie, 80; Am. Or. Soc. Journal, May, 1869. Vaccination, introduced into Canton
in 1805, has been widely practised ever since. Lockhart, p. 120.

6 Girard, II. 329.

98 ELEMENTS.

race," is obvious ; yet that they are more so than other
races is not so certain. Medical instruction consists mainly
in the study of a few ancient treatises ; l but the Pe-king
"Gazette" protested against this system in the national col-
leges of medicine, in 1866, and called for a better. The
physician is apt to practise as he pleases, according to old
receipts preserved in families, 2 and finds his credit mainly
in the length of his ancestral line of doctors. The literati
have been wont to hold him in contempt, and most of the
profession have been slaves or freedmen. For lunacy the
Chinese have no remedy ; they scarce attempt its treat-
ment. In a sense, then, medicine is here in its infancy.
Is it not so everywhere ? When one considers how little
light we possess on the treatment of the most common
diseases and the most destructive appetites, with all our
microscopic science and endless nomenclature, he cannot
but think that some future day will look on our pretensions
to medical wisdom, much as we now do on the Chinese
doctor, who plies his old treatises of Hwang-ti, and drives
his patient to "hug his own coffin for consolation."

It would be hard to say of a people who have combined the
finer forces of Nature in so many marvellous ways
f ' as the Chinese, that they are ignorant of chemistry.
Yet their practical skill far outruns their theoretical knowl-
edge. They have rich store of subtle and brilliant proc-
esses ; but no minute analysis of elements, and no large
generalization of results. These devotees of concrete
labors are so absorbed in arts of manipulation, that no
fresh speculative movement is possible. Their ideal chem-
istry remains therefore, to a great extent, in the stage of
alchemy ; and has been derived, in part, from Arabic and
Byzantine sources, .though greatly promoted as a native

1 See Rev. des Deux Monde 's, LXX. 2 De Mas, I. 45.

SCIENCE. 99

product by the growth of Taoism in the fourth cen-
tury, B.C.

The antiquity of astronomical science in China, as re-
corded in the oldest classics, and asserted by the Jes-

Astronomy.

uit missionaries of the last two centuries, who are in
turn endorsed by Biot, has of late been seriously doubted.
The Chinese has not power of pure abstraction to pursue
the mathematics into their relations to the laws of motion
in space. His written language has not the definiteness
requisite for mathematical expression. Astronomy is
therefore still in its earlier stages, and an astrological
scheme is annually put forth by the Astronomical Board
at Pe-king, fixing times and seasons for every enterprise,
rite, or task. But there was certainly a practical signifi-
cance in the astrology of the primitive Chinese, who
watched the stars while they tilled their soil, with a dis-
tinct sense of close connection between the movements of
the heavenly bodies and the seasons and products of the
earth. It was an intuition of that unity of the cosmos, on
which the largest theory and the most practical utility
alike depend. Upon the whole there was a sobriety and
truthfulness in their sense of these physical relations and
laws, hardly to be found in any other ancient people. We
may not believe a legend in the Shu-king, that the mythical
emperor Tao, twenty-four hundred years B.C., sent forth
messengers to the four quarters of space, to determine the
equinoctial and solstitial times, for regulation of the labors
of husbandry, and the customs of the people ; l though to
modern knowledge of Assyrian and Egyptian antiquity
there is nothing improbable in the tale. It may not be
proved that the precession of the equinoxes was noted by
the public astronomers of those early times, and months

1 Shu-king^ Pt. I. ch. i. A passage which Julien supposes to have a popular ast~;?->mical
sense.

IOO ELEMENTS.

intercalated to bring the solar and lunar periods into har-
mony ; nor that the ecliptic was divided into twenty-four,
afterwards twenty-eight mansions (sieu) to mark the daily
progress of lunar revolution, according to a system well
known in later Chinese astronomy, and on the origin of
whose main principles in China, India, or Chaldea, there is
now such warm discussion among Orientalists. 1 . The nam-
ing of certain circumpolar stars, and the determination of
the length of the year in days, are less improbable. But
the fact that Chinese belief is unanimous in referring these
discoveries back to such early periods is at least important
as showing a national interest in such phenomena, which
might well have resulted in much real knowledge at a very
remote epoch. Biot's theory of these claims to early dis-
covery on the part of the Chinese is, however, opposed by
a stronger probability that they had not arrived at these
important scientific data, till about the time of the Han dy-
nasty, from the second century before, to the second after,
Christ. At this time the native astronomy was recon-
structed, partly from tradition and partly from fresh knowl-
ledge imported from Greece and India. 2 The famous sixty
years' cycle does not occur in early times. 3 The meteoric
falls recorded for a thousand years begin in the seventh
century, B.C. 4 The mathematical science of the older
works is very rude and undeveloped. 5 Four hundred and
sixty eclipses are recorded (singularly enough, not one from
2169 B.C. to 776 B.C.) ; but most of them have failed of veri-
fication, and the oldest cannot be identified as having been
visible in China. The Tcheou-li, a work due largely, it is
probable, to these reconstructions, reports of the old Tcheou

1 Biot, Journ. dcs Savants, 1849, 1861 ; Weber, Trans. Berl. Acad., 1860-61 ; Whitney
Journ. Am. Or. Soc. vin ; Burgess, Ibid.; Carre, L* Ancien Orient. I. 488; Amyot,
Mem. d Miss. II. 104.

2 Burgess, Amer. Or. Soc., 1866, p. 325 ; Chalmers in Leaf's Proleg. to Shu-king.
8 Piath, Bay. Akad. 1867. * Cosmos, I. 118.

8 Tcheoupei trans, by Gaubil, Lettres Edifiantes.

SCIENCE. 101

dynasty a thousand years back, that it had a grand astro-
nomical officer with a corps of service, whose function was
to record the celestial changes, and divide the land into
dependencies of certain asterisms. 1 Writers, Jesuit and
native, of the last century claim that the rotundity of the
earth and the difference of diameters were known many
centuries ago ; also the suspension of the earth in space :
but these statements require proof. 2 Biot has collected the
records of comets from the seventh century B.C. to the
seventeenth A.C., out of Ma-touan-lin ; and for all of them,
down to those of the fourteenth century, these Chinese
data have furnished elements to European calculations. 3
But the data have not been tested, and their real value
seems to be in their indications of a deep interest in celes-
tial phenomena at a time when Europe was too barbarian
to note any thing in comets but signs of ruin. The popu-
lar belief in China and elsewhere that an eclipse was the
effort of a monster to swallow the sun, who must be driven
off with gestures and noise, was doubtless in part symbol-
ical ; and must not cover the fact that there was always
an Astronomical Board, noting the progress of the eclipse
and computing its elements with rationalistic scientific
interest.

It is at least clear that the Chinese have been busy reg-
istering facts of celestial observation during the greater
part of their history. Their mechanical appliances must
have been very imperfect ; yet they claim to have had ar-
millary spheres as early as the second century, B.C., arid to
have constructed celestial globes, with water machinery to
represent apparent movements, in the eleventh of our era. 4
Astronomical charts and atlases, too, were common, with
distances of the constellations carefully marked. 6 It is true

1 Tcheou-li, B. xxvi. ; Wuttke, II. 92.

* Girard,JI. 318; Wylie, p. 86.

8 Humboldt's Cosmos, I. 92, note 42 ; and IV. 185, 186.

Wylie, p. 86. Ibid. p. 104.

IO2 ELEMENTS.

the Jesuits, in the seventeenth century, found them unable
to measure the shadow on a sun-dial ; corrected their cal-
endar, constructed instruments, and taught them scientific
methods. But it was precisely their astronomical science
that drew the attention of the Chinese government to these
learned men, and secured them high positions of trust.
Schaal found Chinese scholars ready to join him in draw-
ing up a great work on astronomy, which however adhered
to the Ptolemaic system. 1 Later missionaries have taught
them the ellipticity of the orbits, the sun's parallax, Kep-
ler's laws, logarithms, finding willing ears. 2 Perhaps
much of this teaching was anticipated ; at least the intel-
lectual and official conditions of it were prepared, and
even familiar. 3

That they seem to have used a decimal system of notation
at a very early period is no more than can be said of
almost all other races ; counting by the hands and
toes being the earliest stage of numeration. Of more
importance are arithmetical works two thousand years old ;
books of mensuration, trigonometry, and the elements of
the calculus ; the extraction of roots to the thirteenth
power, and the solution of unknown quantities by mathe-
matical rules, five and six centuries ago. 4 Father Ricci
was aided in his translation of Euclid by a native scholar
(1608) ; and another during the present dynasty prepared
a supplement on Geometry ; while a third was the chief
originator of the recent completion of the Euclid by Mr.
Wylife. Mr. Wylie's list proves how carefully the later
Chinese have preserved their astronomical and mathemat-
ical treasures, reviewing them from time to time, and crit-
ically reporting their condition, in theory and practice. Of
such reports a great Thesaurus was published in the reign

1 The beautiful astronomical instruments, so well-preserved in the observatory at Pe-king,
and described by Duhalde and others, are memorials of the science and artistic taste of Father
Verbiest.

2 Wylie, p. 89. 3 Lockhart, pp. 342-352. * Wylie, p. 94.

SCIENCE. 103

of Kien-lung. Elaborate collections of formulae for calcu-
lation have been made down to the present day, when
there is no lack of native mathematicians in China.

It is, of course, no evidence of the contrary that the
masses still believe the earth to be flat, bounded by four
seas, and construct fanciful distances of the sun and stars
down to feet and even inches. 1 The current cycle of sixty
lunar years is curiously constructed and named, combining
twelve kinds of animals, five elements, five colors, and the
male and female principles. But there were in old time
three ways of representing the sky : the first, as a concave
sphere ; the second, as a globe with stars on the outside ;
and the third, as undefined space. 2

It is far from true that the exact sciences are wanting in
China, though there must be great hindrance to their
growth, not only in the difficulty of expressing distinct
and unequivocal ideas in the written characters, which
have great scope of meaning, but still more in the ten-
dency to formulize in sets of numbers unchangeably fixed
and predetermined, so that science and mythology cannot
be fully separated.

Of historical data the pragmatic Chinese possess an un-
limited amount; of the science of history a bet-

History.

ter conception than most ancient peoples, since
they have always carefully registered events in their rela-
tion to causes and effects. But this correct basis is dis-
turbed by being obliged to adjust itself to a theory that
events proceed from the maintenance or violation of a
pre-ordained harmony between earth and heaven, the fixed
norm of which is a set of institutions established in the
earliest time. Behind all this mixture of history with
fable, however, stands a very clear conception of moral

1 Chalmers, in Legge 's Proleg. to Shu-king.

2 On the various estimates of Chinese Astronomical Science, see Seances du Congres
Internat. des Orientalistes (1873), I. p. 290.

IO4 ELEMENTS.

sequence, in national penalty and reward, according to un-
changeable right. Full responsibility of nations and their
governors to forces of moral and spiritual order as supreme
is the ideal of historic justice. Of the complexity and
variety of human relation and motive the uniformity of
the national type allows less perception. Here as else-
where, the main aim is to collect details ; and the passion
for calendaring facts has kept historic documents nearer
to sober truth than those of any other Oriental nation,
with perhaps the exception of the Egyptian.

The Annals, secretly drawn up during each reign, and
making known at the opening of each the character of
that which preceded it, written by officials without fear
of punishment and under solemn injunction, as a part of
the national religion, to set down the truth about their
rulers, are the most valuable documents in ancient his-
torical literature. The great historiographers were not
mere annalists, but moralists and statesmen ; most of
them had struggles with the government independent of
their work as reporters, and the biographies of the prin-
cipal men among them as drawn by Remusat are a won-
derful record of heroic conduct amidst vicissitudes of
fortune. 1 The great work of De Mailla, published in
twelve quarto volumes by the Abbe Grosier, 1777-1783,
is translated from a compilation of these Annals by the
historiographer Sse-ma-kouang, and contains but a frac-
tion of the whole. Sse-ma-thsian's " Historical Memoirs"
(Sse-ki), compiled in the first century, are surpassed by
the " Investigations " of Ma-touan-lin, thirteen centuries
afterwards ; which cover thirty-seven centuries, and form
the treasury whence have been taken, often without ac-
knowledgment, almost all European accounts of Chinese
history and archaeology, and of the races connected there-
with. In this marvellous monument of historic labor all

1 Remusat, Nouv. Mtlanges Asiatiques^ Vol. II.

SCIENCE. 105

the facts are classified, their sources indicated, the authors
discussed, all related documents transferred directly from
the original sources ; and not an important branch of the
national civilization is omitted or lightly treated. 1 Twenty-
four Dynastic Histories contain chronological records,
memoirs on every department of science, and narratives,
personal and ethnic. 2 That of the Ming dynasty is in
three hundred and thirty-two books ; that of the Sung
II., in four hundred and ninety-six. Never had a people
such materials for history, vases, monuments, inscrip-
tions ; official records, memorials, and State papers ;
repertories of laws, treatises, criticisms ; biographies,
lists, and registers ; libraries and catalogues without end.
Never is lost a scrap of official writing, or the record of
a fact ; and the incessant revisal and reconstruction has,
in the main, been guided by a sincere desire to preserve
the truth. The Chinese eye is in search of the actual ;
even poetry must point to fact. The oldest odes of the
Shi and the Shu claim historic basis, and the abundance
of lyrical effusions in all periods testifies to a popular
desire to celebrate the facts of actual life. 8

Genuine criticism is by no means wanting. The ration-
alistic spirit keeps watch on the mytho-poetic, and

Criticism.

counteracts to some extent the conservative traits
of literature. The study of the Classics has been a work
of elimination. Confucius himself is believed to have set
the example by reducing the hundred chapters of the
Shu-king to fifty, and selecting for preservation only three
hundred and eleven of the three thousand pieces of verse
originally contained in the Book of Songs. The Li-ki has
been reduced to one sixth of its former dimensions. The

1 Plath. Schule und Unterricht bei den Alt. Chinesen, Bay. AkaJ., Juli, 1868;
R&nusat, Nouv. Mel. Asiatigues, Vol. II. ; Schott, p. 109-111, 60.

2 Wylie, p. 12.

8 The Romans also had their Book of Annals ; but it was not instituted till the third cen-
tury, B.C.; Mommsen, B. II., ch. ix.

IO6 ELEMENTS.

authenticity of these Classic Books has been discussed,
and by the keenest minds denied. Sse-ma-kouang in the
tenth century rejected all the national traditions previous
to Fo-hi. Sse-ma-thsian, like Herodotus, puts into his story
all the old legends of useful inventions by primeval kings,
but simply as historical traditions. 1 The fantastic fables
about lines of kings previous to Hwang-ti, quoted by Pre-
mare 2 to discredit the historical value of Chinese records,
are products of a mediaeval degraded form of the Tao-sse
school, and rejected by the national historians ; though
none the less accepted by many Christian missionaries,
as vestiges of Biblical characters and events.

Mere chronological calendars, like the early Anglo-Saxon
Chronicles, are indeed the common form of annals ; but a
more philosophical construction is not lacking, which fol-
lows the order not of dates merely, but of events and
principles. 3 The scientific defect is absence of variety and
development ; neither of which is possible, because all this
recording is not pursuit of a free ideal, nor quest of fresh
adventure and discovery in the world of mind, but effort to
conform to a rule already ordained. To this rule nothing
can be added ; from this nothing dropped. The best criti-
cism, therefore, lacks the element of surprise. To find an
old belief erroneous does not here mean, as with us, to
become inspired with a sense of light wholly new, but to
confirm a truth that is older and more obvious still. The
narrow eyelid never expands with wonder before discovery.
The new event is but another stone cast on the heap of
instances under a prescribed law, as well known from the
beginning to all men as the yearly rise of the Ho-ang-ho.
Original and suggestive presentment of the facts is thus
almost impossible. We honor the courage of the censor

1 On the critical care and fidelity of Sse-ma-thsian, see Remusat Mem. del'Acad. des
Inscriptions, vii. 4.

2 Introd. to P. Gaubil's translation of the Shu-king ; also see De Mailla, History, I. 17.
8 Schott, Chinese Literature, p. 75.

SCIENCE.

who writes down the truth regardless of consequences, and
the critic who weighs with tact and skill the evidences of
a record ; but the biographical result is after all, to a great
extent, a monotonous and wearisome nebula of names and
incessantly repeated situations, pervaded by a chronic wail
over the shortcoming of the present in comparison with
the past. Even here, however, the taste for biography has
great value, always the best basis for history. There is
no end of Chinese Plutarchs ; and as the emperors receive
a new name after death, so the great and the little men,
rulers, scholars, inventors, heads and disciples of sects,
military and rebel chiefs, live again in their collected
conversations, plots, vicissitudes of fortune, held up for
the gratitude or contempt of millions. 1

We should expect that chronology would be found per-
fected in Chinese literature. The effort to arrange chro-
and harmonize details is here instinctive, and there nology -
is no history whose designations of time are more distinct
for a space of at least twenty-five hundred years. Chron-
ological tables are, in fact, abundant ; that of Kang-hi,
issued in 1715, is in one hundred volumes. It is curious
however that the old Classics, though purporting to be
historical, have no chronological arrangement. The cycle
of sixty years although ascribed in late times to Hwang-ti,
and even to Fo-hi is not found in the Shu-king, where
the only cycle chronicles the days. In the old time, epochs
were marked by names of sovereigns and length of reigns,
of course often legendary, and based on astronomical con-
ditions. 2 Confucius and Mencius, careful students of rec-
ords, afford the best data for periods that preceded them.
The Tchun-tsieu, or " Spring and Autumn Classic " of
Confucius, is a continuation of the Shu-king, and con-

1 See Plath's analyses of many of these biographies, Bay. Akad.^ Feb., 1868.

2 Legge, Proleg. to Shu-king, ch. iii. 81.

IO8 ELEMENTS.

sists of a very meagre list of names, events, and dates ;
whose value, if we may judge from Legge's careful com-
parisons of the text with its best commentary, is mainly
chronological. The uniformity natural to reports of events
in a community so prosaic, and so careful of what is
ascertained; the immemorial habit of registering facts at
the moment, and connecting every record with the regular
return of times and seasons, and with the notation of nat-
ural phenomena, give ground for great confidence in the
main points of their chronology, even to remote epochs ;
and while nothing can be more positive than their lists of
dates commencing with the eighth century, B.C., the
opening time of the Greek Olympiads also, and of positive
Hebrew history, there is almost if not quite equal cer-
tainty for such data, even relating to earlier dynasties, as
are confined to names of rulers, lengths of reigns, and
records of important events ; these being often confirmed
by a great amount of independent testimony. Thus the
existence of the Chinese people more than two thousand
years B.C., the close of the Shu-king in 769 B.C., and the
length of the great Tcheou dynasty, 1 122-249 B - c -> are posi-
tive landmarks in this vast expanse of time ; and the lists
of dynasties and their several kings, covering with perfect
distinctness every moment of history, may reasonably be
trusted for at least three thousand years. The ante-Con-
fucian literature, however, rests on data which are ex-
tremely unsatisfactory ; and with all our respect for the
patient researches of Dr. Plath, we can hardly feel on safe
ground beyond the opening of the Tcheou dynasty twelve
hundred years B.C.

The genius of the Chinese makes trustworthy chro-
nology easy of construction, just as the opposite qualities
of Hindu mind have darkened and confused that of
India. Chu-hi strikes the key-note of their success when
he bases the possibility of chronological science on the

SCIENCE. 109

regularity of natural processes, and pronounces time to be
man's conception of the movement of the universe.

What chronology is for time, geography is for space.
The passion of the Chinese for registering the Geog-
physical features of their great empire has been raphy *
extremely productive ; but it does not amount to scientific
genius. Their geographical descriptions are here but
heaps of well-arranged facts, without reference to large
relations, general ideas, or constructive laws. 1 Yet in no
department have they been more serviceable to science
than in their careful observation of localities, their minute
itineraries, their full descriptions of lands, productions,
climates, races. 2 Their researches on the mountain sys-
tems of Central Asia greatly aided Humboldt in his study
of that region. 3 The records of the Pilgrims, Fa-hian and
Hiouen-thsang, are of great interest. Reports of officials
and commissions to neighboring countries are generally
models of compact, simple, business-like statement, and
reach back for two thousand years.

It is not easy to say when so industrious a people began
to map out the features of the land they cleared and tilled.
The Shu-king has a famous chapter descriptive of the
nine provinces of Yu's primitive Chinese empire ; their
limits, products, natural phenomena, soils, tributes, 4 per-
haps in its details a " romance," but certainly very old,
and pointing to the indispensable conditions of all Chinese
industry, even from earliest times. The " Nine Vases of
Yu," inscribed with charts of the empire, are doubtless
another mythical expression of the same truth. A later
work, the Tcheou-li, ascribes to the geographical depart-

1 Schott, 49, 50.

2 See especially " Notices sur les pays et les peuples itrangeres\ tirees des geographies et
des annales Chinoises," by Julien (Journal Asiatique, 1846-47); also for specimens, Bret-
schneider, Chinese Mediaval Travellers (Shanghai, 1875).

8 Aspects of Nature, p. 76. * Shu-king, Pt. III. i.

I IO ELEMENTS.

ment of this dynasty a corps of two hundred and twenty
officers ! Ma-touan-lin used many early topographical works
in preparing his great Cyclopaedia. 1 Minute descriptions
of the different provinces have been revised and rewritten,
some of them from ten to fifteen times. From the fourth
century to the present time, all Asia to the borders of
Persia has been under the patient and steady pencils of
Chinese geography. 2 The " Complete Survey of the Em-
pire," in one hundred and eight volumes, printed in 1744,
covers boundaries, climate, history, natural phenomena ;
manners and customs, towns, edifices, canals, schools, -and
libraries ; area, population, official list ; mountains and
rivers, antiquities, castles, passes, bridges, dams, monu-
ments, temples ; distinguished persons, religious and offi-
cial ; and productions of the soil, for every province and
every dependency. In accumulating these materials, Chi-
nese, Mongols, and Manchus have been equally diligent,
and the researches of scientific commissions have gone
hand in hand with military and commercial expeditions,
down to the present day. Of the accuracy of the earlier
geographies there is reason to doubt ; the first clear ideas
of the form of the earth and the measurement of its sur-
face being given by the Jesuits, whose survey of China,
in 1707-1717, is still in high repute. Wylie, however,
regards the testimony of Chinese books about China as in
general unimpeachable, and even in their reference to for-
eign countries as not more given to fable than our West-
ern literature on kindred topics. 3 They certainly bear very
favorable comparison with the old Greek and Roman ge-
ographers, who wrote of the far East ; with Ptolemy and
Strabo and Ctesias and Pliny ; with all map-makers and
travellers during the Middle Ages, and even down to
recent times. 4

1 Schott, p. 80. 2 Ritter on Asia, in Knight's Store of KnowL, p. 172. 8 Wylie, p. 54.
4 Behaim's Maj> (Niirnberg, 1492), placed Zipangu a short distance west of the Cape
Verd Isles ; in later maps it was just beyond Cuba.

SCIENCE. 1 1 1

But it is in the science of government that this race
of organizers have done their best work, anticipat-

Politics.

ing the West by many centuries, both in noble
definition of public duties, and in practical construction of
the political and civil elements. It is a wonderful subject,
worthy of all study, this tribe of Mongolic settlers, bear-
ing within them the prophetic gifts of industry and mutual
service in a remote antiquity ; gradually transforming the
flooded wastes and wandering races of Eastern, Asia into
a vast and orderly civilization, under more or less cen-
tralized administrative rules ; and evolving steadfast con-
ceptions of civil order, of equal rights, of law above personal
caprice ; of official functions open to all competitors and
due only to the best ; of personal responsibilities and pub-
lic tests, instituted and maintained with greater or less
fidelity while so much of the West was in a state of bar-
barism. Here, at least, we cannot refuse the recognition
of scientific capacity, even though deficient in the qualities
that prompt to indefinite progress.

Under the patriarchal system, government is father,
teacher, preserver of the people ; yet not, as will hereafter
be mere fully shown, by divine right of kings to the absolute
allegiance of the people. It represents the relation of the
whole race to the universe, expressed in principles and laws
higher than personal caprice. It originates in the moral
needs of men, and in their spontaneous recognition of
right. In the old time, it affirms, rulers wrought not by
laws, but by example ; not by rules, but by instinctive per-
ceptions. They laid down the maxim, even in dealing with
rebellion or invasion, that doing justly would conquer an
enemy more effectually than force of arms. 1 This, of
course, means that such was the aspiration which, in later
times, this peaceable and civil race pursued, affirming its
success to have been apparent in the divine and creative

> Shu-king, II. 2.

112 ELEMENTS.

past. Through the supposed degeneracy of centuries it
has endured, and is still visible in many institutions imply-
ing the highest forces of moral culture, amidst the special
laws that prove such forces far from available. In what
ways, and how imperfectly, the actual framework of gov-
ernment is adjusted to the strict demand for concrete insti-
tution of virtue will be considered elsewhere. Works on
judicial precedents, reviews of criminal legislation, records
of causes ctlebres, discussions of the theory and practice of
government, abound ; and the law codes, whatever mixture
of good and evil they may contain, are models of direct,
practical, unmistakable dealing with the facts, and monu-
ments of sincere effort to deal justly. They consist, it is
true, of bald detail, though arranged with the utmost clear-
ness. Thus the Tcheou-li J is an amazingly long, minute
enumeration of official functions. The Ming published a
description of their government in the sixteenth century
in nearly three hundred volumes. The present dynasty
has issued a still more comprehensive collection of laws,
not only in their actual form, but in all the stages of their
growth The Penal Code of the T'sing 2 is a compilation
of extreme minuteness and reach, abounding in just* dis-
tinctions and noble equities. It is but here and there that
startling anomalies, in principles and estimates, interrupt
the great preponderance of mercy over severity. Its
accomplished translator claims that, "if not the most just,
it is at least the most comprehensive and uniform, and
suited to the genius of the people for whom it is designed,
perhaps, of any that ever existed." 3

This review of the results of Chinese industry justifies
us in claiming for such assiduity, patience, loyalty to con-

1 Translated into French by Ed. Biot. 2 Translated by Staunton.

8 Preface, xi.

SCIENCE. 113

ditions, and conservation of materials and uses, that it is
no less than a Religion of Labor. These results are

, . . ill Compara-

stupendous in amount; their services invaluable to tive resu i ts
civilized life ; their elements organized in stable of Chinese
and productive processes with a fidelity nowhere
equalled. The visionary splendors of Far Cathay for med-
iaeval fancy are surpassed by the realities of her practical
resource and splendid gifts to modern civilization. Her
over-speed from head to hand, her absorption in the con-
crete, her plodding conformity to fixed ideals, bid us pause
to observe what moral and spiritual secret hides in an
earnestness so effective on a ground so confined.

Confined it surely is. In all this wealth and orderly
construction there is defect of inner relation ; of that
power of combining phenomena to large results, which is
requisite to science ; and of that openness to fresh maxims
and formulas which is essential to progress. These fail-
ings are so familiar in Chinese labor, that they have almost
seemed to belong there exclusively ; and we are apt to for-
get that they are precisely the obstacles which have beset
science in the West, and which neither the friction of
races, nor the supposed tendency of Christianity to eman-
cipate the mind, had overthrown, or even shaken, as late as
a hundred years ago. It is only within that period that we
can find a basis even for the distinction drawn by Ampere,
which allows the West the power to "apply and perfect"
what the East " invents and preserves."

In accounting for the unprogressive element in arts and
sciences pursued with such devotion, we must re-
member that, in so vast a population as the Chinese, ph j los P h y

' 'of its "un-

cheapness of labor will naturally foreclose the use progress-
of machinery : an immense demand for employment lv
does not favor the growth of labor-saving inventions ; and
simple tastes -and easy subsistence will maintain old proc-
esses of industry against whatever tends to their disturb-

I 14 ELEMENTS.

ance. But it is plain from our analysis of Chinese
character, that we must go behind the statistics of popula-
tion to solve this question. The physical circumstances of
the masses, indeed, fail to stimulate them to progress ;
but the national type itseff presents positive drawbacks to
the charms of growth. What has been called the idealism
of this people is not contempt for material things, but pre-
occupation of the ground by fixed formulas and habits,
held absolute and unimprovable. A primitive simplicity
constantly taught and pursued ; adherence to conventional
formulas of number on which every thing in the universe is
constructed, and which predetermine the forms of analysis
so that there can never be more nor less than so many
elements ; intentness of a concrete habit on petty details ;
religious objections to the use of dissection, or other interfer-
ence with the dead body ; and the inevitable plodding that
must result from following prescribed rules, are illustra-
tions of this foreclosure of scientific progress. Behind all this
is the great uniformity of the Chinese type itself, due to its
comparative isolation. Moreover, though comprising many
elements in its Chinese form, this Mongolic blood lacks
the live chemistry of commingling qualities, and the mobil-
ity of resources that need not to repeat their forms. To
the physiological distinctness of the race has of late been
added a deliberate withdrawal from the magnetism of com-
mercial relations ; so that its progress, which with all these
drawbacks was by no means insignificant, has been seri-
ously checked. Japan, but a few years since more hostile
to foreign influence than China, has a bolder outlook and
swifter conversion.

But the old inventions that illustrate Chinese labor must
not be forgotten, nor the great and happy civiliza-
tion that has been built on them, transmitting them
to us also, and starting us on the track of many noble sci-
ences and arts. " If the importers of silk," says Gibbon,

SCIENCE. 115

" had introduced printing, already practised by the Chinese,
the comedies of Menander and entire decades of Livy
would have been perpetuated in the editions of the sixth
century. A larger view of the globe might have promoted
improvement of speculative science ; but the Christian
geography was forcibly extracted from texts of Scripture ;
and study of Nature was the surest symptom of an unbe-
lieving mind." The time has gone by for regarding the
Chinese as a hopelessly unprogressive race. Here is no
dank moss-grown forest, where the falling leaves of cen-
turies have lain undisturbed, only to be overshot with
dead trunks of the trees that bore them. How decisively
recent wars with European powers have opened the way
for China to fresh interest in their cultures, and earnest
efforts to stand abreast with them in social progress, will
perhaps be more manifest after a short historical review of
the relations of the Empire, commercial and social, with
the outside world.

EXTERNAL RELATIONS.

prevailing belief that the Chinese are an unsocial
people, who have always haughtily closed their Ancient
doors against foreigners, is at variance with the intercourse
facts of history. It proceeds from a misunderstand- Jhina.
ing of the causes which led to a policy adopted by
the Empire only in recent times. The Romans had simi-
lar impressions concerning this remote, and by them
scarcely visited, race. Pliny describes the Seres as " shun-
ning intercourse, and awaiting the approach of those who
would traffic with them." l Yet he admits that they sup-"
plied Rome in his time with greatly admired tissues, made
of what he describes as carded wool ; with the best kind
of iron ; with skins and silks. 2 It impresses him with ad-
miration at the progress of mankind, that "we should now
be reaching the Seres to obtain our clothing, and the emer-
ald in the bowels of the earth." 3 The " Serica vestis " was
a luxury which had more than once to be abated by sump-
tuary laws. The old Greeks knew only that from an unseen
people at the borders of the world came a delicate mystery
of fibre and color, to be wrought up by the looms of the
-^Egean into precious fabrics, which they called, now Me-
dian, now Assyrian. By ample testimony we know that
this reserved and silent sphere of civilizing powers was

1 Natural History, VI. 20. * Ibid. ; and XXXIV. 41. Ibid. XII. i.

I2O ELEMENTS.

open, before the beginning of the Christian era, to Persian
and other traders from the West. 1 Such interest was felt
in these relations that somewhat later Chinese annals re-
cord numerous embassies from Ta-tsin (or Great China),
bringing tributes, as they express it, and asking the benefits
of trade. As early as the second century, M. Aurelius
turned to China from his Parthian conquests, to secure the
nobler unities of commerce ; binding the ends of the
known world by interchange of courtesies and gifts. 2 Ref-
erences to Indian and Persian relations in much earlier
times than any of these might be given, 3 but the details
are of doubtful value. The Chinese must have been too
much occupied in guarding their borders from barbarous
tribes, and in developing their own immense territory, to
seek intercourse with distant countries. A vast rim of
desert intervened on one side, an ocean on the other. It
is not strange that their earliest records make no mention
of distant trading marts, nor that we are indebted to the
eager and inquisitive Arabs for the first important notices
*of their commercial relations with the West. Their very
name, old as it must be, is of unknown origin ; by some
supposed to be the native Tsin, by others the name given
the empire by the Hindus, who connected it with the An-
namese peninsula (Cochin}.* Nevertheless, it is certain
that their industry was the first to open up the wilds of
Central Asia, and to civilize its wandering hordes. It is the
glory of their Han emperor Wuti to have established
a secure commerce with the opposite border of the conti-
nent in the second century B.C. ; with one hand suppressing
predatory tribes, and with the other protecting the regular
movements of trading caravans to more distant lands.

1 For early relations of China with the West, see Lasseds Ind. A Iterth. II. 606-620 ; Notes
and Queries, June, 1870: Gibbon, ch. xl.

2 Pauthier, Relat. Polit. de la Chine av. les Puiss. Occid. p. 17-18.
8 Ibid. p. 14 ; Martin's China, I. p. 257.

* Mayers in Chin. Rev., May and June, 1875.

EXTERNAL RELATIONS. 121

This adventurous spirit, so rare in Asiatic monarchs, was
rewarded by the arrival of one of his generals, if not at the
Caspian Sea, yet near the Persian Gulf, whence the vine,
true symbol of social unity, was carried to China ; whose
exchange for the gift came some centuries later, when the
silk-worm, symbol of productive labor, was brought to Con-
stantinople by Nestorian monks. From the date at which
Ma-touan-lin begins his notices of Indian relations, religious
and commercial, 1 not far from the Christian era, two,
and probably three, great lines of traffic were fully organ-
ized across the continent. One high-road is described by
Ptolemy as coasting the desert on the south from Bactria
to the Western sea ; another led from Samarcand to the
northern provinces of China. In nine months the cara-
vans crossed from sea to sea ; and the Romans met these
returning land-galleons at the fairs of Armenian and
Persian towns. 2

So wide-reaching were the attractive powers of industry
in an age when the present centres of civilization

Chinese

were a wilderness, and railroad and ocean-steamer interest in
beyond the world of dreams. But the persistent foreign

* * countries.

faith of the Chinese in their own cosmopolitanism
has recorded much earlier intercourse with the nations
immediately in contact. The Shu-king records tributes to
the great Emperor from foreign as well as native States.
Hospitality to guests is one of the eight " principles
of government ' laid down for the earliest kings. 3 The
Tcheou-li describes the reception of foreign embassies at
court, in those remote ages which it professes to represent',
they were not interrogated at the borders, but greeted with
cordial ceremony by officers despatched thither for the
purpose, escorted to the capital, and lodged at the public

1 Journ. R. As. Soc. VI. 457- 2 Gibbon, ch. xL

3 Shu-king, V. iv. 7.

122 ELEMENTS.

expense. 1 Interpreters were charged with the duty of
teaching them the customs of the kingdom, and facilitat-
ing intercourse ; an institution now expanded into that of
the " Ninety-six Translators," who mediate between the
empire and all the languages of Asia. 2 Treated as^ the
children of their host, strangers were expected to conform
to a ceremonial indispensable to his position and functions.
" The Emperor," says the Li-ki, " without ceremonial, can-
not exercise hospitality." Not less were this great people,
grown from a tribe of nomads, disposed to seek distant
countries, than to accept their allegiance and tributes. As
early as the T'sin dynasty, in the third century or earlier,
all Tartar races to the borders of Turkistan were subject
to their sway. 3

Stanislas Julien gives account of nearly thirty books on
the Si-yeh, or countries west and north of China, from the
fifth to the eighteenth centuries, by official persons on em-
bassies political or religious. 4 Nine books of Ma-touan-
lin's geographical researches (thirteenth century) relate to
native, twenty-five to foreign, localities. Cosmas tells us in
the sixth century that the Chinese brought their silks and
sandal-wood to Ceylon, where they were met by traders
from the West. 5 Here was, perhaps, initiated the extensive

commerce carried on by the Arabs with China for
The Arab man y centuries, not only by sea, but across Persia

and Thibet ; and it has become more than probable
that many of the inventions supposed to have been intro-
duced by them, such as paper and the mariner's compass, 6
were brought from the Pacific shores. In the seventh
century these masters of the carrying trade start into

TcJteou-li, B. xxxix, 43-44 ; xxxm. 61.
Pauthier, p. 12. Also Prejevalsky, Mongolia (1876) I. 67.
Chinese Recorder, January and February, 1876.

Chinese Repository, 1848. For mention of Western Lands, Neumann's Pref. to Chi-
Pirates ; and Bretschneider, " Chinese Mediceval Travellers"
Knight's Commerc. Interc. with China (Cyclop. Use/. Knowt).
Draper, Intellectual Development of Europe.

EXTERNAL RELATIONS. 123

prominence in the Chinese annals. The attention of the
Government was called to large numbers of Western trad-
ers settled in Canton. They are described as " dark-bearded
men, who take no wine and use no music ; but are brave
because their heaven is promised to those who shall die in
battle." One of their embassies refuses to fall down before
the emperor, as wont to bow to God only.

By and by came the Arab travellers, Wahab and Abuzail,
famous for bringing back the first substantially authentic
account of this veiled and mystic land. 1 When, they wrote,
in the ninth century, the Moslem were but traders in Asia,
not yet conquerors of India. They met no form of exclu-
siveness worse than the warehousing of trader's goods in
the ports for six months and a duty on them of thirty per
cent, taken out of them in kind. 2 They were free to trav-
erse, open-eyed, the wondrous land ; saw its customs and
productions, its marvellous social order, and civil adminis-
tration ; the " majesty of its tribunals," always rendering
justice; its offices held by "men of experience only." 3
They tell of the judge's proclamation, repeated thrice
daily, that if any one had been wronged by the king him-
self he should have immediate justice. 4 They describe the
strangely pictured dresses, the copper money, passports,
registration of travellers ; the drums at the official gates,
and trumpets sounding the hours, and bell-rope reaching
three miles (sic) from the governor's head, that all might
get at it who had been wronged ; the light taxes, the severe
laws ; the eunuchs, the penal rod, the revenues from salt
monopoly, and from tea, which they praise as cure for all
diseases. 5 Alas, we fear good Ebn Wahab stretches a
point when he reports the emperor as saying that he
honored the King of Irak as king of kings, himself being

1 Transl. by Renandot ; our references are to a very rare old English version (1733).

2 Mahom. Travellers^ etc.. p. 21. * Ibid. p. 23, 73.

* Ibid. p. 74. 8 Ibid. pp. 18-26, 34, 48, 74.

122 ELEMENTS.

expense. 1 Interpreters were charged with the duty of
teaching them the customs of the kingdom, and facilitat-
ing intercourse ; an institution now expanded into that of
the " Ninety-six Translators," who mediate between the
empire and all the languages of Asia. 2 Treated as the
children of their host, strangers were expected to conform
to a ceremonial indispensable to his position and functions.
" The Emperor," says the Li-ki, " without ceremonial, can-
not exercise hospitality." ^Not less were this great people,
grown from a tribe of nomads, disposed to seek distant
countries, than to accept their allegiance and tributes. As
early as the T'sin dynasty, in the third century or earlier,
all Tartar races to the borders of Turkistan were subject
to their sway. 3

commerce carried on by the Arabs with China for
The Arab man y centuries, not only by sea, but across Persia

Tcheou-li, B. xxxix, 43-44; xxxm. 61.
Pauthier, p. 12. Also Prejevalsky, Mongolia (1876) I. 67.
Chinese Recorder, January and February, 1876.

Chinese Repository, 1848. For mention of Western Lands, Neumann's Pref. to Chi-
nese Pirates ; and Bretschneider, " Chinese Mediaeval Travellers"
Knight's Commerc. Interc. with China (Cyclop. Use/. Knowl).
Draper, Intellectual Development of Europe.

EXTERNAL RELATIONS. 123

prominence in the Chinese annals. The attention of the
Government was called to large numbers of Western trad-
ers settled in Canton. They are described as "dark-bearded
men, who take no wine and use no music ; but are brave
because their heaven is promised to those who shall die in
battle." One of their embassies refuses to fall down before
the emperor, as wont to bow to God only.

By and by came the Arab travellers, Wahab and Abuzail,
famous for bringing back the first substantially authentic
account of this veiled and mystic land. 1 When^ they wrote,
in the ninth century, the Moslem were but traders in Asia,
not yet conquerors of India. They met no form of exclu-
siveness worse than the warehousing of trader's goods in
the ports for six months and a duty on them of thirty per
cent, taken out of them in kind. 2 They were free to trav-
erse, open-eyed, the wondrous land ; saw its customs and
productions, its marvellous social order, and civil adminis-
tration ; the " majesty of its tribunals," always rendering
justice; its offices held by "men of experience only." 3
They tell of the judge's proclamation, repeated thrice
daily, that if any one had been wronged by the king him-
self he should have immediate justice. 4 They describe the
strangely pictured dresses, the copper money, passports,
registration of travellers ; the drums at the official gates,
and trumpets sounding the hours, and bell-rope reaching
three miles (sic) from the governor's head, that all might
get at it who had been wronged ; the light taxes, the severe
laws ; the eunuchs, the penal rod, the revenues from salt
monopoly, and from tea, which they praise as cure for all
diseases. 5 Alas, we fear good Ebn Wahab stretches a
point when he reports the emperor as saying that he
honored the King of Irak as king of kings, himself being

1 Transl. by Renandot ; our references are to a very rare old English version (1733).

2 Mahom. Travellers^ die., p. 21. 3 Ibid. p. 23, 73.

Ibid. p. 74. Ibid. pp. 18-26, 34, 48, 74.

1 24 ELEMENTS.

only the second ; while the King of the Indies, or of Ele-
phants, was the third, and the King of Greece, or of come-
liest men, the fourth. 1 But the story proves how liberal a
spirit this foreigner found in the Chinese government ; as
does his tale of a eunuch, high in position, who was de-
graded for cheating a Persian merchant, and sent to penal
service for life. 2 He reports, admiringly, that the poor and
rich alike everywhere learned to read and write ; that wars
were not made for conquest ; that works in art were so per-
fect that other nations could but faintly imitate them. 3
After all this we are hardly prepared for the charge that
this highly civilized people were cannibals, eating all who
were put to death ! 4

Then come toiling across the steppes indomitable Cath-
The Cath- ^ c P r i ests > Carpini and Ruysbrceck and Oderic,
oiic Mis- in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, sent
to convert the Great Khan, or get his infidel aid
against the infidel. They too are hospitably received.
Carpini finds a " very courteous and gentle people ; " even
ibn fancies they worship Christ. 5 Then roving Ibn

Batuta. Batiita of Tangier, hunting up Moslem friends at
the ends of the earth, sails over sea from the Sunda Isles
to this land " without parallel " for products and resources ;
"for its fruits, agriculture, silver, gold." He sees the poor
going clad in silks ; the porcelain, the painting not to
be surpassed ; marks the strict rules of registration in
full use for vessels in port. He finds a town for Mahom-
medans in every province ; and in one chief city great
numbers of Jews, Christians, and Turks, "whose great
men are exceedingly rich." " The care they take of trav-
ellers is surprising ; for these 'tis the safest of countries
and the best." Innkeepers take one's property in charge ;
are held responsible for it ; provide all he can want. He

1 Muhom. Trav., p. 53. l Ibid. p. 72. 8 Ibid. pp. 22, 33, 50.

4 Ibid. p. 33. 6 Hakluyt Collection.

EXTERNAL RELATIONS. 125

is himself everywhere honorably entreated, even in the
prodigious capital, three days' journey long ; feasted at the
houses of very high officials, who invited his fellow Mahom-
medans to meet him. 1 Then the two Venetian Marco
Polos, not following after commercial gain, but in Pol -
pure desire to see the mysterious Kitai, stretch away
thither from Bokhara to find the great Kublai so inter-
ested in the West and its faith, that he sends them back
for a hundred teachers of Christianity, with respectful
message to the Pope. Then with papal dignitaries in tow
they make another yet wearier stretch of three and a half
years through all seasons, whose perils prove too much
for his Holiness's show-men ; but reach at last the gates
of Clemenfou, where grand rejoicings are their meed. For
seventeen years young Marco acts as ambassador in every
part of China, commending himself to public service by
learning four languages. Our " Middle Kingdom " opened
the Eastern hemisphere to this earlier Columbus, as she
was by and by to draw the later by her beckoning hand
to explore the Western sea. In his charming narrative,
to which, as to old Herodotus, every year adds fresh
authority, he describes the frequent arrival of caravans,
on whose cargoes the prices were fixed by experienced
officers, fair profit being allowed ; and reports that the
Government issued paper-money, made exchangeable for
other articles, or for bullion at the mint, a charge of three
per cent, however, being made for all renewals of worn--
out bills ! 2 A thousand horse-and-cart loads of raw silk
entered Pe-king daily ; " to which city every thing most
rare and costly from all parts of the world finds its way." 3
There are strange things about this old opener of the
Orient ; such as his having so greatly improved the maps

of the world, though without science ; and his not men-

1 Ibn Batuta, ch. xxra. * Marco Polo, B. II. ch. xviii. (Wright's Ed).

3 Ibid., II. xvii.

1 26 ELEMENTS.

tioning tea, printing, the written characters, and com-
pressed feet, while noticing so much that was far less
remarkable.

In the sixteenth century the Portuguese found Arab
merchants quietly settled in the chief cities of China, in
Reception full freedom of traffic. In the seventeenth, Father
of the Avril enumerates as many as six or seven great

Dutch and

Russians, routes of Chinese trade across the continent. 1 In
Navarrete. j^g^ the Dominican Navarrete, sharp of eye for
" heathen idolatry," bravely penetrates into China without
help, " destitute of all human dependence ; the first," he
is assured, " that ever ventured among these heathen in
this nature." Deceived by Christians, whom he has en-
gaged to attend him, he finds " an infidel, who conducted
me with very good will and at a small charge." His expe-
rience is worth noting. Uncivil Christian soldiers robbed
him of his money and church stuff. " I was on my guard
against infidels, but not against Christians, which was the
cause of my misfortune." Three native soldiers sailed up
the river with him, and " could not have been civiler. All
the way I never gave any man the least thing but he re-
turned me some little present ; and, if he had nothing to
return, there was no persuading him to accept a morsel
of bread." Tired one day with climbing, he was kindly
led into a guard-house by the captain, who " showed com-
passion to see me travel afoot and weary, was sorry my
things had been stolen, and took leave of me with much
civility and concern."

Nieuhoff, Dutch ambassador in 1654, found at Pe-king
envoys from the great Mogul, Tartars from the West,
Lamas from Thibet. Jesuit Father Schaal sat in white-
haired reverence in the cabinet, and the Khan graciously
studied the geography of Holland, and admitted the claims
of this political atom, which might have been dropped 'into

1 Chinese Repository^ June, 1841.

EXTERNAL RELATIONS.

a Chinese province and lost there, to national dignity ;
treating her envoys with extreme liberality and respect. 1
They failed only because foiled by Portuguese priests. 2
The reception of the later Dutch embassy by Kien-lung,
in 1795, was none the less gracious for the new foreign
policy which made their mission of small effect. Special
officers were appointed to see that they had every atten-
tion that had been bestowed on any other embassy, and
that their time was occupied as pleasantly as possible ;
and a letter was sent by the emperor to the Dutch gov-
ernment, announcing that he made no distinction in his
paternal love for all the nations, being entrusted by Heaven
with the common care of all. 3 The Russians were re-
ceived disdainfully in 1650 ; for they not only refused
obeisance, but were busy in securing territory on the
Amoor. Yet prisoners from their defeated army in 1680,
taken to Pe-king, were permitted to build a church and a
college. In 1689, a caravan trade was opened by them to
the capital. In 1738, a Russian spiritual mission was
established at Pe-king, the terms of whose charter have
been faithfully adhered to by the imperial government,
and which has obtained some of the most valuable infor-
mation on China thus far accessible to the Western world. 4
Down to the close of the eighteenth century, boundary
disputes have interfered with the natural relations of trade
between these two great empires ; till, in 1860, free com-
munication with Pe-king was conceded to Russia, together
with a large portion of Manchuria.

The first Portuguese comers in 1517 were kindly re-
ceived, though expelled soon after for good rea- of the
sons. Occupying Macao, their commerce was Portu -
developed through the seventeenth century, till E

1 Chinese Repository, August, 1844.

2 Nieuhoff, Embassy (Ed. 1673), p. 139.

8 Pauthier, Hist, des Relat., &c., pp. 51-71.

EmuatsSiteria, II., 168-170; also, Abhandl d. Russ. Gexandsch.

128 ELEMENTS.

they succumbed to Spain ; since which time Macao has
fallen into deserved decay, not so much from Chinese
opposition, as from its vices and obsolete ecclesiastical
institutions. 1

America cannot complain of her relations with the Cen-
of the tral Kingdom. Our earliest trade to her ports was
Americans. ' m ^ Q f urs Q tlie sea _ ot ter opened by the discov-
eries of Captain Cook, it became at once one of the most
lucrative fields of traffic then known. Owing to the
failure of furs in Siberia, this peltry of the Pacific coast,
and especially fox-skins, brought such incredible prices
in Canton, that in 1792 there were twenty-one vessels,
mostly Bostonian, trading on that coast for cargoes, to be
exchanged in China for cottons and teas. 2

The results of the first opium war with England facili-
tated the Cushing treaty of 1844, at Wanghai ; in
which full freedom of religious teaching was ac-
corded in return .for the just promise of the United States
to give no countenance to the opiAm trade. After the
war, in 1857, these provisions were renewed. Mr. Bur-
lingame's appointment, in 1867, to direct an institution
for instruction in the arts and sciences of the West, and
as Minister Plenipotentiary of China to the Western world,
was an event of the highest significance, as the immediate
results revealed. Mr. Seward's Treaty of July,. 1868, while
it secured for China eminent domain over her own land
and waters, and consulates in American ports, guaranteed
perfect freedom of faith in both countries, the right of
emigration, penalties for illegal and . treacherous trade in
laborers, and permission for the youth of each nation to
attend the schools and colleges of the other ; at the same
time leaving naturalization laws an open question, and
proposing aid in constructing railroads and telegraphic

1 Montfort'^ Voyage en Chine, p. 60.

* Irving's Astoria, I. 32; Silliman's Journal, 1834.

EXTERNAL RELATIONS. 1 2Q

lines. Similar treaties with England, France, and Prussia
made the epoch one of universal meaning. These details
give evidence of a recognition of international interests
and duties, not to be explained by Christian diplomacy,
cannon, nor creed.

The Chinese have held more intercourse with foreign
nations than any other Asiatic race. McCulloch

< Proofs

says they are "a highly commercial people, and that the
the notion of their contempt of strangers is utterly Chinese
unfounded. Nowhere can cargoes be bought and naturally
sold, loaded and unloaded, with more business-like exclusive -
activity than at Canton." l The ever advancing line of
their limits reached at last, a thousand years ago, the
western borders of Asia. 2 Later came quaint pieces of
Mongol diplomacy, laid up in the French archives, written
from the grandson of Genghis Khan to Philip the Fair. 8
During the Tartar dynasty distinguished Mongols visited
Rome, and a Frenchman was archbishop of Pe-king. Peter
the Great sent agents to China to obtain knowledge of
the science of government, and learn the art of building. 4
Russians, Hungarians, Flemings, lived in Tartary, and a
Tartar was contractor for helmets in the French army.
Genoese, Pisans, Venetians, made the round tour with
interpreters through Central Asia, returning by way of
Russia ; and Mongol cavalry was offered for the conquest
of the Holy Sepulchre. 6

What Oriental religion has not been freely admitted to
take root in China ? From what neighboring language
have not her scholars translated its volumes ? Into what
one of those tongues have they not, to this day, translated
her own ? Her vocabularies and dictionaries are in Man-

1 Commercial Dictionary, Article on " Canton."

1 Ampere's account of Remusat's Essay on this subject (Science en Orient, pp. 79-81).

8 Pautliier, Religion, &c.

4 Pallas and Klaproth, Mem. rtl. a FAsie, I. 4. Ampere.

1 3O ELEMENTS.

churia, Corea, Japan, Thibet, Tartary, Siam, and the Pacific
Isles. Of all Central Asia she made the earliest charts,
and protected the oldest commercial roads, and inspired
the busiest enterprise.

Acts and policies of exclusion towards foreigners have

not been wanting. How long is it since any thing

like freedom in trade began to exist between the
of for- States of Europe ? Such procedures, however, on

the part of China were far from being due to in-
hospitality or incuriosity, and had to contend with the
strongest natural inclinations. They have mainly arisen
from two causes. The first is the refusal of foreigners to

comply with the national ceremonial, especially the
kotow. kotow ; which, like all State forms, is a constituent

part of Chinese religion. The kotow is not pecul-
iar to the Chinese. Prostration was the demand of the
old Persian monarchy, and history traces it back to Cyrus. 1
Many instances are recorded of the refusal of Greek am-
bassadors and officers to degrade themselves by such a
performance ; not however on religious grounds, but from
personal and national spirit. Timagoras, the Athenian, was
put to death by his indignant fellow-citizens for submitting
to it. The Tartar Khans made similar assumptions. In
all the great empires of the East prostration and adoration
were the symbols of allegiance. So far from being of
Chinese origin, the kotow does not appear in China at
all in early times. It is not in the older classics, nor is
it recognized by Confucius, nor even by the Tcheou-li ;
and it may have been introduced with the centralization
of the monarchy by Chi-hwang-ti, as late as the third
century, B.C.

The emperor himself must perform it at the great sacrifi-

1 See the quotations In Brissonius de Regno Persarum, p. 22 ; also Herodotus VII. 136;
and Pauthier, Hist, des Relat. &c., p. 219; Arrian (Alex. IV. 119) and Xenophon (Cyrop.
VIII. 3) speak only of adoration, not of the kotow specially ; but this is undoubtedly meant.

EXTERNAL RELATIONS. 13 I

ces ; and even to his mother. The symbol, therefore, is not
considered as centring in his personal claims, but includes
him as a worshipper. This adoration is for the patriarchal
idea, and is held to be the due of whatever represents that
sovereignty : the kotow is even made to the imperial cur-
tain. Napoleon, it is well known, did not share Greek
and Saxon scruples, but sharply criticised the Amherst
embassy for refusing to recognize this custom of a court,
of which they were the guests. Many other European
diplomats have acted on the idea, that those who are seek-
ing the benefits of trade should not ask the added privilege
of setting at nought the laws of the people they solicit.
Kang-hi himself set an example of international respect, by
instructing his agents in Russia (1712), if invited to court,
to conform to the customs of the land. 1

The jealousy of the Chinese court for the honor of this
ceremony has been irritated by such instances as that of
the Siberian, Baikov, who remained six months in Pe-king,
in 1655, refusing to conform to the rules, even to those for
presenting his letters. 2 With rare magnanimity, Kien-lung
dispensed with it in the case of Lord Macartney, the first
English ambassador, 3 who simply bent his knee, as to his
own monarch ; of course a precisely analogous perform-
ance. No embassy was more honorably treated than this.
Of the rough dismissal of Lord Amherst in 1816, the
kotow question was not the only cause ; there were many
mutual misunderstandings, brought about mainly by the
hostility of Chinese officials. 4 Mr. (J. Q.) Adams ascribed
to arrogant demands for the kotow the origin of the Brit-
ish opium war. 5 But sufficient proof to the contrary is af-
forded by two facts : first, that Lord Napier violently broke
through the rules which prescribed that all foreign com-

1 Dudgeon in Chinese Recorder, May, 1871. * Erman, II. 166.

8 Staunton's account of the Macartney Embassy, ch. x,

4 Davis's Sketches, p. 74-81. 6 See his Lecture in Chin. Repos., May, 1842.

132 ELEMENTS.

munications with the government should be made through
the Hong merchants, persisting in direct intercourse with the
governor, and in going up the river to Canton, just as Com-
modore Perry afterwards forced his way into Japan ; and
second, that the Dutch, who sedulously submitted to every
ceremonial demand, were quite as unsuccessful in obtaining
satisfaction as the English who did not. Four Dutch and
Portuguese embassies kotowed with small effect, except to
add to their own humiliation. 1 In fact, without of course
denying that such claims ought to give way, as they have
already done, to a larger knowledge of mankind, we must
admit that these questions of etiquette have been compli-
cated by a previous state of suspicion and dislike on the
part of the Chinese towards foreigners, arising from long
experience of their worst habits. 2

This is the second cause of exclusiveness which I shall
mention. It has occasioned a positive change of

Character .

of Europe- policy, commencing in the seventy-third year of
an vigors t k e M an _ c hu dynasty ; but now, in part through
physical force, abolished. Kang-hi, in 1685, pro-
claimed free trade with all nations in all the ports of China.
But the Chinese have had good reason to dread the for-
eigner, and to label him "barbarian." He was not shut up
to Canton till the eighteenth century, when the Man-chus,
surrounded by enemies domestic and foreign in the land
they had conquered, very naturally set up defences on the
seaward as well as on the landward side. But experience
had its lessons as well as fear. The doubling of the Cape

1 Barrow's Travels, pp. 10, n.

2 The vehement Japanese have carried their dislike of foreigners much further than their
neighbors. They forced Dutch commissioners to crawl between their own gifts for the en-
tertainment of the court, and even to trample on the cross. See Kampffer, B. v. xiv. Oppo-
sition to the liberal policy of the Siogoon toward England and America, on the part of power-
ful daimios, produced civil war in 1864 ; and the fanatical patriotism of their retainers was shown
by continual murderous attacks ou foreign traders and officials for many years. See Mossman's
New Japan, (1873).

EXTERNAL RELATIONS. 133

was no sign of promise to China, for it brought the Portu-
guese with their lust of slaves and gold. One of
the Andradas, their earliest traders with China,
was a pirate, maltreated the native merchants, and carried
off women and children. 1 Pinto, also a Portuguese, plun-
dered the tombs of Chinese kings. The humiliating treat-
ment of foreigners commences with the first Portuguese
embassy, immediately afterwards. 2 The Macao settlement,
made up of Portuguese convicts turned pirates and smug-
glers, had not existed forty years when the native popula-
tion were obliged to wall it out from the mainland to
protect their children from being kidnapped. The slave
trade, supplied from all regions around, was carried on
extensively at Macao. " True believers did not scruple to
abduct children for education by the Jesuits, to purchase
them, or to conceal them when carried off by kidnappers." 3
In 1606, the Chinese were led to believe that the Portuguese
of Macao were about to attempt the conquest of the coun-
try, and that a Jesuit Father was to be made its ruler ; in
consequence of which, armies were raised and sent to the
neighborhood. The shores of China were the scene of con-
stant contentions between the Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese,
and English. 4 The harshness of the Spaniards towards
Chinese in Manila is said to have provoked that system
of commercial espionage by the Hong in Canton, which
gave the English so much trouble in i842. 5 Previous to
this, the quarrels of the Dutch with the Spaniards, and
their severity towards native laborers, had brought on their
expulsion to Formosa, in 1624. The Jesuits who had
been received with delight, and raised to the high- Political
est posts with perfect liberty of teaching, by Kanghi interfer -

1 Neumann, Preface to translation of Chinese Hist, of Pirates (Oriental Fund, 1831). It
was the same in Siam and in Japan. Koeppcn's Relig. d. Buddha. I. 470.
1 Davis. I. 13, 15.

' Lyungstedt's Hist. Sketch, quoted in China Review, July and August, 1873.
* Knight's Cyclop, of Knowl. p. 140. * Williams, II. 437.

136 ELEMENTS.

strife with an Aryan race, should be quick to feel these
panic terrors ! Montfort says J " the sight of a European
overturns them ; discomposes their faces in a moment, and
sometimes produces real disorder in the animal functions."
Analogous alarm approaching panic, in view of the grow-
ing strength of European powers, notwithstanding their
apparent self-exaltation, has probably had great influence
in determining the foreign policy of the Man-chu rulers.

The Chinese would not suffer the Portuguese to ap-
proach at first nearer than thirty leagues, being terrified
with remembrance of their former calamity from Tartar
invasions. Soon their fears were increased by seeing the
Portuguese ships, like floating castles, with armed men
and thundering guns. And then the Moors who resorted
to Canton reported that these were Franks, " people of
prodigious valor, and conquerors of whatever they designed,
the unknown borders of whose empire extended to the
brims of the universe." 2 Subsequent experience has prob-
ably taught the mandarin mind that Portuguese valor and
sway were but trifles, compared with the power of foreign
trade to sweep away all their institutions in a tide of
strange inventions and destructive beliefs.

With the nervous dread of an unknown foe is combined
the self-sufficiency natural to a nation of such mag-
assert nitude, so full of resource, so self-sustaining, and
their self- so un iq ue> It is not strange that China should be

3jdeoua.cy.

aware of this adequacy ; nor yet that in its rela-
tions with suitors for its surplus products the State should
specially exploit its patriarchal faith ; that with naive be-
nignity Kien-lung should announce to the Government of
Holland his having found nothing in the language or spirit
of its messengers inconsistent with the deepest veneration

1 Voyage en Chine, p. 278.

2 Relation of the Embassies of the United Provinces to China in the Seventeenth Cen-
tury, published in two ponderous volumes, with quaint engravings; Pt. II. pp. 172, 173.

EXTERNAL RELATIONS. 137

for his person. The impression was a natural one that the
Europeans were not only by the laws of Heaven and Earth
made subject to the Central Kingdom (for the Chinese may
as well have their ''manifest destiny" as the Anglo-Saxon
his), but that they could not exist at all but for the pro-
ductions so eagerly sought by their ships ; so that during
the war the Emperor recommended the non-exportation
of tea and rhubarb, the one as indispensable to the "bar-
barians " for food, the other for medicine. The imperial
commissioner at Canton thus addressed the Queen of
England : 1

" Of the exports of the Middle Kingdom there is not one but
is profitable to men. Our teas and rhubarbs you could not do
without for a single day. Were we to grudge them these, and
show them no pity in their distresses, by what means would
these foreigners prolong existence ? But for our raw silk you
could not carry on manufactures. As for our sugar, ginger, cas-
sia, and articles of common use, such as silk piece-goods, porce-
lain, and the rest, which are indispensable to you, they exceed
enumeration. On the other hand, the commodities here imported
are all fit for nothing else than to look at or play with, and
whether we have them or not is a matter of no moment with us.
Were you not to traffic in opium, these gains would never exist.
How then can you bear to seek gain by means of an article so
injurious to man, and without compunction of conscience? We
have heard that you, the ruler of your honorable kingdom, have
an expanded heart ; and you must therefore be unwilling to do
to others what you would not desire to have done to yourself." 2

The strength of the moral argument here happily rein-
forces the weakness of the material ; an application of the
Golden Rule which might at least be possible for a Christ-
endom which looks down on this Confucian form of it as
merely negative and imperfect.

1 February, 1840.

2 Portfolio Chinensis, a collection of Chinese State Papers (Macao, 1840).

138 ELEMENTS.

Chinese political economy is the result of a long devel-
The sim opment of simple tastes and habits among a vast

population. "Foreign commerce," it says, " car-
r * es ^ our P r ducts, and makes them dearer ; and
we have no need of European silver. The more
chariots for the rich, the more people who go afoot ; the
more dainties on their tables, the more people who have
nothing to eat." 1 The idealism of Plato and the industrial-
ism of Yao and Shun are agreed in a jealousy of foreign
intercourse, arising from fear of the corruptions of trade.
In the earlier, stages of the nation's growth simple tastes
and fixed routines had been the path of prosperity, and the
fruits of these methods were not lightly to be exposed to
bold manipulation by strangers of questionable virtue and
very manifest irreverence for age and forms. So the court
appointed that a body of native merchants should take
charge of foreign commercial relations, with direct respon-
sibility to itself ; hoping in this way to avoid the dreaded
irruption of foreign inventions, manners, and vices.

The recent isolation of the Chinese and their ignorance
Mutual of our civilization forbid cordial intercourse. This
ignorance ignorance is reciprocal. The European comes in

of Chinese

and Euro- direct contact with servants mostly, and the lan-
guage is an insuperable barrier. When Macartney's
embassy went out, in 1792, no man capable of serving as
interpreter could be found in Great Britain. In 1856 prob-
ably not fifty Chinese in the Five Ports were able to read
and write English. 2 A total inability of the whole staff of
custom-house officials to comprehend European habits or
speech was at last remedied by the appointment of foreign-
ers to this function in all the ports. 3 Unwillingness on the
one side to submit to Chinese decisions in dealing with the
frequent brawls between sailors and natives, the tradi-

1 Girard, II. 439. 2 Meadows, Notes, &c., XVII.

3 Medhurst, Foreigner in Far Cathay, p. 56.

EXTERNAL RELATIONS. 139

tional rule on the other of interpreting every concession as
a tribute, and treachery developed through mutual ignor-
ance and suspicion, are all natural incidents of the anom-
alous situation in which an ancient, proud, and shrewd
people are confronted by new-comers from a remote and
utterly strange civilization, little recking of means in the
pursuit of their ends. Amidst frequent wrongs perpe-
trated on both sides in the trading ports, many instances of
real justice by native officials are on record ; together with
the admission that " Europeans resident there have found
their property as secure, in general, as in any other country
in the world." l

On the whole, the facts are probably here much as they
would be elsewhere. China is a civilized empire, resting
on its laws and manners ; and its relations with visitors
doubtless depend to a great extent on their behavior, being
regulated by social necessities beyond any special dispo-
sition of the government or the people. The custom of
conducting business through the medium of a comprador,
or commission-agent, has led to an impression that nothing
like a system of commercial rules exists in China. But
more careful study reveals well understood principles of
trade, the obligation to provide goods precisely according
to the sample ; the necessity of earnest-money to the va-
lidity of a bargain ; the joint responsibility of broker and
merchant ; the binding nature of a verbal guarantee. 2

The Chinese make a distinction between the Russians
and other foreigners, perhaps from a sense of nearer
affinities in race. 3 All important questions are settled ;
and the Muscovite advance is undisturbed along the lev-
els of Central Asia, threatening collisions, not with
China, but with England, who is moving on the opposite
line. Against other States there are special grounds of
grievance.

1 Davis, II. 90. * China Review, No. III. 1873. 5 Hubner, p. 636.

14O ELEMENTS.

Three causes of embitterment may be mentioned,
Chinese growing out of relations with the West in very
forTot recent times. These are the opium trade, the
tiihyto cooly trade, and the treatment of emigrants in

the West. America

It has been denied that the Chinese Government was
sincere in its opposition to the traffic in opium.
TrSe 1UIE There is no doubt that the evil was greatly aggra-
vated by the connivance of its officials, and by the
prevalence of smoking among all classes of the people. But
Earnest- State-papers afford ample proof of the energy of its
Chinese e ^ orts * which were certainly to the full extent of
resistance its powers. Emperor, commissioners, and prefects
argue, reprove, urge, threaten, decree measures, and
inflict penalties unremittingly. They were fully conscious
of the situation. Commissioner Lin goes to Canton with
as intense a resolution as any Western reformer could
exhibit.

" While this foreign opium remains in existence I will not
Commit return. I have sworn to carry this matter through, and
sioner m y purpose shall not be arrested." 1 " How can men
bear to sit down negligently, and not put forth a single
effort to save the people? If officers, who should lead the
people, do not change their own habits, of what use are they to
the Government ? We shall make vigorous search. The guilty
shall receive the severest penalties, and those who point them
out shall be liberally rewarded. Your life or death, as well as
the misery or happiness of your families, are at issue in this
matter." 2

And again to the foreign traders :

" Reflect, that if you did not bring opium where could our
people obtain it ? Shall then our people die, and your lives

1 Lin's Letter to the English, March 18, 1839 ; in Chinese State-papers (Macao, 1840).
* Lin to the Mandarins, March 15, 1839.

EXTERNAL RELATIONS. 14!

not be required ? You are destroying human life that you may
get gain. You should surrender your opium out of regard to the
natural feelings of mankind." l " That the barbarians are wrong,
and we are right, is evident to all men. Why should it be worth
while for us to regret what these foreigners bring on themselves ?
It is, therefore, right and proper that a final stop be put to Eng-
lish trade. Let every ship of that nation be driven out at
once." 2

Even after Commissioner Elliot has surrendered the
opium, before held by the traders, Lin is not satisfied till
the warehousing ships, which feed the trade, are cleared
off likewise.

"These barbarians receive the treacherous native boats with-
in their fleet, and afford them protection ; their sailors, too, go
ashore and excite riots." " I have learned that the Superin-
tendent has taken the newly arrived ships of the outside king-
doms and kept them back in the outer seas, instead of making
them give up their opium. " s

Finally, to the Queen of England goes this appeal:

" If the men of another country should seek to hold inter-
course with England, it would certainly be requisite for them to
obey her laws. How much more (sic) does this apply to the
Celestial Empire ! The law is that the opium-smoker shall die.
They who bring opium to sell it shall be beheaded, and their
cargoes confiscated." 4

All this sounds like something else than policy, or bra-
vado. Decisive measures were taken ; limits of time fixed
for the continuance of smoking, secret informers employed,
houses searched ; not even the highest personages should
have exemption from penalty; families must guarantee
each other. 5 Mr. Elliot reported, in 1839, "The Court has

1 March 26, 1839. * January 5, 1840.

Ibid. * March 12, 1840.

8 See the strong edicts of October and December, 1840.

H 2 ELEMENTS.

firmly determined to suppress, or extensively to check, the
opium trade." 1

That its reasons were all purely moral and humane we
shall not affirm. It is certain they were economical also.
" The prevalence of opium," says an imperial edict, 2 " has
occasioned a daily decrease of our sycee silver, the only
sure mode of preserving which is to prohibit its exportation
altogether."

The Chinese Government has constantly imputed the
opium evil to the Europeans, and specially to the
English. The quantity consumed previous to 1770
was very small. It was imported from Assam, and used as
a drug. Neither the Catholic missionaries make mention
of this article, nor Marco Polo, nor the classics, nor the
national annals, nor the old codes of law. At about the
period just mentioned, the Portuguese East-India Company
had imported a thousand chests from India. Complaints
were made by Cantonese writers of their depot at Macao,
established in 1780. Smuggling was carried on by fraudu-
lent transfers to native vessels ; till, in 1820, the Govern-
ment made every officer in the Canton customs responsible
for the offence. As early as 1800, a special edict forbade
the importation of this "vile ordure of the strangers." In
1809 the Hong merchants were required to give bonds for
every vessel ; but the connivance and venality of the local
officers frustrated the laws. 3 In 1833 half the British im-
port trade in China was in opium. 4 From 1792 to 1861 the
increase amounted to nine hundred per cent. 5 From the
beginning British officials treated this illicit traffic with re-
spect, as an element in the general prosperity of trade. Even
so conscientious and prudent an officer as Elliot urged upon

1 Letter of January 30 (Chin. Refos.^l. 353). See also Slade's China ; Amer. Eclec-
tic^ I. 305, note on Opium War; Neumann's Ost Asiatische Geschichte, p. 10; Chi-
nese Repos., VI. 341.

2 January 26, 1837; Chinese Refos., May, 1842.

8 Williams II. 385, 386. * Davis, III. 208. B Morache, p. 101.

EXTERNAL RELATIONS. 143

Government, in 1837, tne presence of armed vessels to pro-
tect it. 1 The warehousing ships, kept at anchor during the
whole period from 1821 onwards, a constant refuge "for
absconders," and for the "fast crabs" that plied between
the native dealer and the foreign supply, were denounced
by the Council of State as the main support and defence of
the traffic. 2 The cultivation of the poppy is prohibited by
edicts, incessantly renewed, though greatly evaded. 3

Prince Kung more than once declared that, if opium and
Christian missions were withdrawn, there was no concession
which the Government of China was not prepared to make
in furtherance of legitimate commerce. 4 " This traffic
taken away," said Sir R. Alcock, " no locus would be left
for the continuance of troubles." 6 But the high-water
mark of English official morality was advice to have the
importation legalized. The court was memorialized by a
very able native paper to this effect, and Elliot wrote Palm-
erston that he could not but think the hoped-for legalization
would afford his Majesty's government great satisfaction.
But petitions to the contrary poured in from every province,
and the measure failed. Historical justice demands a
stronger statement. Whatever reasons may be alleged for
the terrible lesson in British military power that followed,
such as treacheries, insults, cruelty to shipwrecked sailors,
official durance, Hong monopoly, 6 all of which are at most
secondary, one fact stands as overwhelming proof that
the war was waged for the right to violate native law in the
interest of traders in opium. The treaty extorted from
China in 1842 exacted full compensation for the twenty
thousand chests of smuggled opium, justly delivered smug-
up on compulsion to the Chinese commissioner at J^jJ*"
Canton. This compulsion was described by Elliot exacted.

1 February 2, 1837. * July M- 8 Peking Gazette, 1874.

4 Letters to the Parliament Commission. 8 Ibid.

8 Pottinger's Declaration of Reasons for the War, Chinese Refos., 1842, p. 511.

144 ELEMENTS.

as forcible spoliation, because effected by his personal
duress ; although it was employed to put down " a trade
which every friend of humanity must deplore." 1 Upon the
ground that England was fighting the battle of international
rights and duties, such indemnification for failure in the
attempt to violate them was a self-contradiction. It is
equally certain that, but for the determination to push this
shameful violation, the troubles might have been settled.
Davis wrote Lord Palmerston, in 1835, tnat " tne desire of
the Chinese Government to ameliorate the condition of
British traders at Canton is no less sincere than that of
England," quoting an imperial edict to the effect that
the extortions of native merchants may have occasioned the
ill-feeling, and that such proceedings must be severely pun-
ished. Elliot, whose efforts for justice were unwearied, was
permitted to go up to Canton as soon as the peculiarity of
his official position was comprehended by the local authori-
ties. He had the good sense to admit that they had acted
in entire conformity to the laws of the land in firmly resist-
ing Lord Napier's demands for direct communication with
the higher officials. 2 As early as 1837 he had pointed out
the real source of danger ; and the probability that hun-
dreds of armed and lawless men would, within less than
a year, be carrying on this illicit traffic " in the heart of
our regular commerce " was urged, in his note to Palmers-
ton of the date of January 2, 1839. His humane and con-
ciliatory policy was ridiculed, and the vehement resentment
of the envoy, who utterly forgot that he was in the waters
of a sovereign State, made peaceful settlement impossible.
The British defence of the indemnity clause rests on the
The plea that it was an outrage for the Chinese Govern-
British ment to compel the surrender of goods, in which
nce ' British subjects had been tempted to invest by its

1 Letter of April 6, 1839.

* Correspondence with Ki-shen (Chinese Repos., November, 1842).

EXTERNAL RELATIONS. 145

own long-continued connivance at their importation, con-
trary to its own laws. But such a plea does not justify
interference by a civilized State for the benefit of smug-
glers. Two things seem plain : first, the duty of a Gov-
ernment to refuse to stand sponsor for any violation of the
import laws of other States on the part of its own subjects,
and to warn them that they will not be defended in such
proceedings ; and second, the full right of a Government to
enter at once, at any moment, on the thorough execution
of its own import laws, without regard to previous neglect
or failure. By both these plain rules the claim of indem-
nity is condemned ; and his assuming responsibility for the
payment of the confiscated values was the one point in
which the commissioner seems to have transcended his
rights. Doubtless the native police were venal ; but that
connivance of the constable is to alter the nature of a tres-
pass, is a species of equity of which we may well desire as
little extension as possible. We may add that, however
ill-executed the laws, a very large proportion of the Chinese
people are wholly opposed to the manufacture or importa-
tion of opium, the great success of the Tai-pings, who
forbade it, being an illustration of the fact. 1 That the
Government has sometimes appeared to encourage its
home-growth is probably explicable as an attempt to make
the best of an enforced evil, and to keep the profits at least
from the hands of the stranger.

The plan adopted by the authorities, of compelling the
delivery of the contraband goods by imprisonment of Brit-
ish officers and merchants, was not such as would have been
chosen by a European government ; but it has as much to
recommend it as an administration of affairs which had
left not a single armed ship to protect the British mer-
chant from such aggressions, if aggressions they were.

The " British and Foreign Review," after setting up the

1 Meadows, Chinese Rebellion, p. 489.
10

146 ELEMENTS.

plea just discussed, closed its argument against China by
proposing to invade that country on account of the seizure
of the opium ; to summon the rebel societies, and dethrone
the Government without delay !

The Chinese argument stands on three charges : ( I)
the persistent determination of the English to hold direct
intercourse with the viceroy of Kwan-tung, contrary to law,
The Chi kut in accordance with the express command of
neseargu- Lord Palmerston from the outset, and the violent
ofBcial movement up the river; (2) their encour-
agement of the trade by storeships off the coast ; and (3)
their forcing the Hong merchants into a false position and
unjust responsibilities. To these must be added their pro-
tection of native criminals against penalties incurred from
the Chinese Government, and their resentment at the inflic-
tion of such penalties, as an insult to British dignity. Ac-
cording to Elliot, in 1837, the court had formally yielded
its principle that officers should not reside in the empire ;
the right to send sealed communications to the governor
was conceded ; mistakes involving derogation were recti-
fied ; and a disposition was manifested " to devolve on me
in my official capacity the adjustment of all disputes, even
between Chinese and my own countrymen." 1

It is indeed difficult to imagine what grounds the Chi-
Reflections nese cou ^ have had for maltreating a power from
whose trade, apart from opium, they had at least
some profit to expect : while the English envoys, on the
other hand, burdened with the protection of interests
admitted to be not illegal only, but to the last degree de-
structive, could not possibly avoid occasioning just offence.
The cannon that afterwards poured slaughter and the des-
peration of suicide through the astonished militia of Cha-pu
and Chin-kiang-fu, and the horrible excesses which attended
the sacking of these towns, were doubtless messengers of

1 Letter to Palmerston, Dec. 4, 1837.

EXTERNAL RELATIONS. 147

knowledge as well as power; but the responsibility of
choosing precisely such heralds of civilization must rest on
those whose " knowledge " does not prevent them from en-
forcing vices that involve the selection.

The authors of this state of things were the British East
India Company, the great opium dealers of the
Eastern seas. Their Indian politicians were im- d e ia Ea '
pressed with the importance of " bringing this mag- Company's
nificent country within the pale of the European ^ Ol
family," and their efforts to that end, by traffic in
such products as afforded themselves the highest profit,
were untiring. " Sometimes they frowned, sometimes flat-
tered : they made gifts of money and wines to the manda-
rins, and put heavy cannon in their factory to bring the
provincial authorities to terms in granting privileges." l
" The Directors," such their defence, " would gladly have
put an end to the consumption of opium if they could, in
compassion to mankind, so repugnant to their feelings was
the trade ; but they cannot do this : and as opium will be
grown somewhere, and largely consumed, they can only
do as they do." 2 How alike, the world over, are the trans-
actions of conscience with gain ! How similar their con-
sequences also !

The British wanted Hong-kong, and they took it by force
of arms. Amoy followed, Ning-po, Chu^san, Nan- Treaty of
king. Four large cities were burned or sacked, l842>
and large stores of private treasures confiscated as booty.
The Chinese fought with heroism, and learned the art of
war in impotent struggles to defend their homes. The
treaties of 1842-45 opened five new ports to foreign trade,
with a consulate in each ; ceded Hong-kong island to Eng-
land ; and gave certain personal rights of internal travel
and lease-holding in treaty ports : all which changes are
manifestly predestined in modern civilization as effectuated

1 Chinese Repository, March, 1842. Williams, II. 496.

148 ELEMENTS.

by the right of the stronger. But to these provisions is
added that master proof of the animus of the war, six mil-
lions of indemnity for losses of British smugglers, which
the necessities of civilization did not predestine, but the
barbarism of trade. Since 1842, the annual importation of
opium has averaged seventy thousand chests.

To the weak was left their one resort. The Chinese
committed the fresh crime of paying off the indemnity by
heavy charges of storage on teas, assessed by the Hong
merchants, and by them handed over to the Government.
The war of 1856 was based on the seizure of a native smug-
gling vessel by the Chinese authorities. Yeh surrendered
the crew on demand of the British officials, but claimed in
return that foreigners should not sell registers to native
vessels. In 1856 Lord Elgin and the American ambassa-
dor insisted on the opium trade, 1 and it was legalized at
Fu-chau, a British port. The bombardment of Canton, on
account of the opposition of the town-council to the open-
ing of trade, was followed by the advance of France and
England to Tien-tsin, where the second treaty (1858) was
dictated, toleration of the opium trade enforced, and the
drug admitted with a duty. Fresh fruits of civilized pre-
Treaty of destination : four ports on the Yang-tse, a diplo-
Tien-tsin. mat i c mission to Pe-king, free travel and toleration
of Christ, the epithet "barbarian" to be suppressed, and
indemnity paid to the allies !

The attempt to force a passage to Pe-king, in order to
ratify this treaty, contrary to the arrangements of the
court, was met by a resistance which proved how rapidly
the Chinese were learning warfare from their foreign teach-
ers. The French protested against the proceeding, judging
it at least premature. Respectable journals in England
denounced it. But heathqn "treachery" was the ready
answer to all rebukes. 2

1 De Mas, II. 135. St. Denys's documents in La Chine devant /' Europe.

EXTERNAL RELATIONS. 149

The Chinese on their part had their barbarism. It is
their custom to predestine the death of unsuccess- Two
ful officials ; and, in this case, the illustrious Key- dviiiza-
ing was the victim. It is also Chinese to commit t
great cruelties when under the influence of panic. An
outrage of peculiar atrocity, perpetrated on agents of the
allies by a bitter enemy of concession, but without sym-
pathy from the people, was punished in a manner which
showed that civilized revenge can be more severe than
heathen terror. Pe-king was invested (1860) ; the magnifi-
cent Summer Palace (or " Hundred Palaces ") sacked ; the
hoarded treasure of a line of kings destroyed or scattered ;
while Kung was taught his inferiority to the English offi-
cial, and Tien-tsin opened to Europe and the opium trade.
Doubtless the subsequent moderation of the allies in spar-
ing Pe-king and treating the people with humanity may
have helped to remove the dislike to Europeans, besides
giving political strength to the party of Prince Kung, who
were inclined to a liberal foreign policy, an advantage
enhanced by the admission of foreign ministers to direct
intercourse with the Government. The co-operation of
Western powers, since 1860, in urging better provincial ad-
ministration, as well as in aiding the rulers to suppress the
Tai-ping rebellion, has had the further effect, for a time at
least, of consolidating the unity of the empire, a point of
the first importance. Whether this result is too dearly
purchased, remains to be seen.

In one respect, certainly, the fears of China are con-
firmed. A new era comes pregnant with change Christi .
for a time-hallowed system, under which is com- amtyand
prehended the whole national organism, moral, in-
tellectual, social, and physical. The Aryan ideal of prog-
ress triumphs, and its work of creation through destruc-
tion begins. Inflowing Christendom is thus far known
chiefly as the bringer of a gift most conspicuous and most

1 5O ELEMENTS.

terrible. Less than a century ago opium was used only as
a medicine in China. To-day it enters through the breaches
opened by Christian cannon, by the six thousand tons a
year, 1 at a total profit to Christian merchants that has al-
ready reached seventy millions sterling. In the ears of
these sleepers England thunders, " Awake, thou slug-
gard ! " while with her right hand she reaches to their lips
the stupefying drug.

But the heart and sense of England made protest. Two
Protests nun dred and thirty-five merchants and. manufactu-
in Eng- rers admonished Peel of the great harm the crime
would do to English commerce. Gladstone called
the war of 1856 a defence of smuggling. Lawrence advised
a heavy duty on the export from India. The powerful
logic of the London Times assailed the arrogant business
pretensions by which the outrage on a foreign civilization
was upheld. 2 An enlightened statesman and official, Sir
R. Alcock, has urged the sincerity of the Chinese Govern-
ment and the justice of many of its demands.

Is it strange that fresh outrages in China should prove
Later that hostility is not yet effaced, when we consider
facts. h ow utterly such remonstrances have failed to pro-
duce a change of policy ? The Anti-Opium Society, styled
by an earnest writer " the last uncertain flicker of national
conscience on the subject of this great wrong," 3 has even
proposed free trade in opium. The same writer presents
more recent facts with much force. The official correspon-
dence on this question for the last ten years is " free from
any taint of moral considerations." Government has even
instituted inquiries into the " means of extending opium
culture in the north-western provinces." An increase in
the duty, consented to by Alcock in 1869, caused great
dissatisfaction to the Indian Government, and was aban-

1 .V. China Herald. = 1841.

8 Mr. E. Fry, in Contemporary Review, for February, 1876.

EXTERNAL RELATIONS. 15 I

doned. Ample proofs are given that China is ready to
suppress the home growth, if England will put an end to
the trade with India ; and that, this obstacle being removed,
the country would be freely opened to commerce and to
progress.

China's grievance from Spain and Portugal is the " Cooly
Trade." The term is inexact ; " coolies " being H The
Hindu porters of low caste, while the Chinese emi- Cooiy
grant on labor-contract, however poor, is untainted
by the caste system. But the Cuban trade in Chinese
labor, which began in 1860, was an unmitigated slave-trade.
Treachery, intimidation, and brutal force supplied the hu-
man material. The centre of this traffic, as of all other
evil-dealing with China, was Macao ; to whose barracoons
the clan-fights and man-hunts aided by native officials, and
the misery of the lowest classes, afforded abundant supplies.
Besides involuntary, there were other, victims ostensibly
voluntary. 1 Mr. Julius Palmer 2 stated that he had seen
copies of a hundred depositions by men taken from differ-
ent ships, who alleged that they were "got on board by
seizure, by promise of fabulous wages to do a day's work,
by narcotic cakes, and by the power of woman." The con-
tracts were such as no one who comprehended their mean-
ing could possibly sign ; bartering away every right without
one security. Many were " forced to affix their names by
torture or starvation." This kidnapping was followed by
such treatment aboard ship as well deserved to be called
the "Horrors of the Middle Passage," often resulting in
the death of half the number, as well as in the dreadful
self-immolation of firing their prisons in mid-ocean. 3 Fi-
nally, the condition of the victim on Cuban plantations, or

1 China Review, vol. n., No. 3, and Reply in No. 4 ; in which the main facts are
admitted, though the Portuguese Government is strongly exculpated.

1 Lecture in Boston, Dec. 14, 1870. China. Review, 1873.

152 ELEMENTS.

in the guano beds of Peru, was worse than that of veritable
slaves would have been, since the employers had not a life-
interest in the laborer. In less than two years a hundred
thousand Chinese were imported into Cuba alone. Of the
same number taken to Peru within twenty years, less than
ten thousand were living at the end of that time. 1 They
were driven by the whips of overseers to bring to the
shutes of the Chincha islands so many tons of guano a day,
to be shipped for English and American ports. 2 The bar-
barities of the trade caused the importation of labor to be
regulated by the Peruvian Government in 1856, and a
new treaty (1876) makes provision for the rights of the
laborer. But in Cuba it has continued in the old form,
under British and American flags. The Chinese Govern-
ment, which had prohibited the traffic, entered into con-
vention with the French and the English to suppress it,
in 1860 and 1866; and the United States forbade it in
1862. The convention of 1866 established provisions for
the protection of the emigrant, to be inserted in the con-
tract ; to which a voluntary assent was to be given in pres-
ence of a Chinese official, while the agents were to be
respectable persons licensed by the Chinese authorities ;
and the list was finally to be inspected by the foreign con-
sul. But even these provisions are criticised 3 as inade-
quate to protect the ignorant against cunning and greedy
speculators ; to thwart the keen scent of native man-
hunters, of whom there are at least thirty thousand ; 4 or to
hold agents to due responsibility.

Protests have not been wanting from the respectable
classes in Chinese ports against this exploitation of the
Protests ignorant and needy by native and foreign mis-
creants. Dr. Legge, a competent witness, ascribes

1 Cooper's Letter to Garrison, i6th, 2d mo. 1870.
* Weekly Tribune for June 30, 1855.
8 China Review, Sept. and Oct., 1872.
Ibid., September and October, 1873.

EXTERNAL RELATIONS. 153

the offence against strangers, in part, to this cause;
and explains the greater cordiality of Japan by the fact
that in matters of this kind we have given her less " reason
to fear and hate us." 1

Against Americans the only grievance of China is the
treatment of her free emigrants to our Pacific m. Treat-
Coast. The new gold regions, opened here in the mentof

emigrants

nineteenth century, conquered the strong local at- toCaii-
tachments of the'chinese, as the New World had foruia '
roused the Spaniard to a spirit of adventure in the six-
teenth. El Dorado was now the western, as it had been
the eastern, shore of the continent ; and the swift steamers
brought more yellow Mongolians across the Pacific than
the heavy-sailing galleons had borne of dark-browed Cas-
tilians over the Atlantic. Both races were drawn by the
sheen of gold, which knows no difference of race ; but the
hope of the one was in conquest, that' of the other in hon-
est toil. The. Spaniards represented an age that was pass-
ing away, the Chinese one that was opening. The one was
a barbarizing, the other a civilizing, force. Beginning with
three hundred in 1849, tne number of Californian Chinese
had risen in 1856 to forty thousand men and three thousand
women, and in 1869 to ninety thousand persons, more
than a fifth of whom returned. At present their numbers
are about one hundred and twenty thousand. An organ-
ized importation of labor, through agents, appears to have
been in the main honorably conducted, on free and fair
contract ; not, as was charged, by the sale of families on
security, a practice which would be regarded as criminal
in Chinese cities just as in our own.

These immigrants smuggled no baneful drug; they
hurled no cannon-balls at the great Republic ; stirred no

1 China. Review, November and December, 1872.

154 ELEMENTS.

strafe for putting down the idolatries of Christendom ;
Indus- made no attempt to proselyte in the names of
try a Kung-futze and Fo. They brought what was

stumbling J

block in most needed for the development of a new and free

, and willing hands to apply it as their
employers should prescribe. 1 But they were imported by
invoice, on demand, and their want of individuality was
like an influx of live machinery. Their strange aspect and
speech, their habit of herding, and their share of the low
morals which are so apt to accompany the first stages of
immigration, naturally made them objects of suspicion.
Perhaps many of the better class of citizens dreaded fresh
experiences, like those which came of the first rush of
native lawlessness to the land of gold. Such elements of
the situation may help to extenuate the subsequent treat-
ment of the strangers. But other motives were more po-
tent. These people had few wants, and could afford to work
at low rates. They were " heathen," who knew nothing of
" Bible revelation," and could not appreciate the " offices
of Christ." They invited persecution by their weakness,
as exiles in a civilization utterly unlike their own. For
these and similar reasons, their very virtues seemed to
rouse a spirit against them in the free State of California,
strikingly similar to that of the Slave Power towards its
victims. Contempt of the rights of weaker races is an
unlovely national trait which we have scarcely begun to
control. Many of the colonists of the Pacific States sprung
from the bosom of slavery, or 'else of that moral paralysis
of the North which was its consequence, and whose in-
stinct it was to sacrifice humanity to the interests of traffic.
The cry of danger to American labor was raised, in face of
the American claim to have superseded all oppressive sys-
tems of the Old World by free competition for the rewards

1 Hiibner's.tfa:;M? Round ike World) p. 156.

EXTERNAL RELATIONS. 155

of honest toil. It seemed easier to put down Chinese cheap
labor by "hoodlum " legislation and brute force than Barbari .
to trust America to the spirit of hospitality and the ties in a
law of justice. The lowest vagabond learned to
treat these guests of Industry as if they were horse-thieves
or mad dogs ; and the very boys were set upon them by
the cry that these " barbarians " were stealing their chances
of employment. They pr.oved the extent to which a repub-
lic can assume the nature of a despotism. They had come
from China to America to learn the possibilities of cruelty
in government. They were burdened with legalized wrongs;
paid license taxes for the right to work abandoned mines,
and a special police-tax, pronounced illegal by the judiciary ;
their testimony against whites was refused ; they were out-
lawed by the courts, as incapable of respecting the (Chris-
tian, not the Chinese) oath. They were free game for
rogues and pretended officials. They were stoned, beaten,
worried by dogs, mobbed, and murdered with impunity.
Secret societies were formed to suppress them. Their
employers were persecuted ; mills, breweries, hop-kilns,
fruit-stores, were destroyed to punish the courage that
withstood these outrages on free labor. Even churches
were torn down because opened on Sundays to Chinese
pupils.

Unquestionably the mass of this emigration was of the
lower class. It was almost wholly from Canton, or The te-
rather from the British port of Hong-kong, ship- timon y-
ment to our coast being a result of the opium war of I844. 1
Mostly adventurers, seeking to better their fortunes and
return, the laborers brought with them neither wives nor
children. A foreign world offers no inducement to a Chi-
nese married woman. But there was foreign demand for
the sex in less worthy capacities, and a corresponding class

1 Testimony of Rev. O. Gibson before a committee of the State Senate, in 1876; also,
Letter of Dr. Williams to same.

156 ELEMENTS.

of speculators in China was ready for the opportunity.
These men bought or stole women of the lowest class at
home for prostitution in San Francisco ; and the disease
and demoralization spread thereby was, as usual, ascribed
to this imported supply rather than to the vicious tastes
which beckoned over and fed a degradation from abroad,
because the native sort was not sufficiently bestial ! The
Senate testimony of 1876 presents the spectacle of an
elaborate effort to fix upon the Chinese, as a whole, the
odium of such degradation in every form as called for
instant suppression of this foreign element by the State ;
while the evidence shows that the feeders of Chinese gamb-
ling and prostitution were, to a large extent, native Ameri-
can ; that the laws were not executed ; that the police
took bribes to cover the offenders ; that the Chinese com-
panies had no interest in these vices, and could not prevent
them. It was even admitted that the first serious effort to
suppress the nuisances had been so successful that the
gambling dens were closed, and the importation of lewd
women had ceased. 1 On the one hand, officials reported
all Chinese to be liars and law-breakers ; while it was gener-
ally confessed that the difference of language and customs
formed an impassable barrier to mutual understanding, and
to the application of any thing like justice in their case. 2
They are described as living under a reign of terror ; yet
the statistics of crime did not bear out the statement, the
proportion of Chinese in the State Prison being but little
above the ratio of their numbers to those of the population
as a whole. 3

Whatever vicious elements exist in the Chinese quarters
of our coast cities can certainly be eliminated by righteous
laws, applied to the importation and distribution of the im-
migrants, and executed in good earnest. Political rights

1 Testimony of G H. Gray, Surveyor of Customs; of McKenzie, Gibson, Bovee, &c.

2 Testimony of Ellis, Chief of Police. 3 Report, p. 173.

EXTERNAL RELATIONS. 157

should depend for this class, as for all classes of our popu-
lation, on the ability to read and write our language, a rule
which will doubtless be furthered by the aid of the better
informed among them, while it should form an important
part in the educational system of the State. Equally in-
dispensable are trained interpreters. The churches will
make themselves more useful in such kinds of instruction
than in the vain attempt to proselyte for Christian doctrine
in this field. Some of the immigrants are cultivated men,
and good public speakers. Mr. A. D. Richardson wrote, in
1869, that as male servants the Chinese are superior in
morals to any other race. No Chinese beggars were seen
in the streets, and the first of the race unable to read his
own language had yet to make his appearance in Califor-
nia. 1 Dr. Williams says the emigrants are superior to the
average Chinese in enterprise, education, and skill. 2 Indus-
trial reports prove them to be all employed ; and, if sup-
planting white labor, it must be by greater fidelity, as well
as frugality. If their work is merely mechanical, its value
will not, in the long run, compete with labor that is more
skilled. As for its general effect, at present, many intelli-
gent witnesses believed that there were more white per-
sons employed in California than there would be without
them. 3

Spite of persecution they have continued to arrive, win-
nowed in by Western breezes through the Golden
Gate. A patient race, inured to hard lot, they have
done the work that waited for them and needed them ; proves his
by all accounts, the most efficient and least trouble- work.*
some laborers on the Pacific shores. Eight thousand
strong, they opened the mountain-passes for the great rail-
way that makes the continent a political unit. They proved
the most orderly sailors on our Pacific steamers. 4 They

1 Atlantic Monthly, Dec , 1869. * Letter to the Committee.

8 Testimony of Gibson, Brooks, &c. * Hiibner, p. 186.

158 ELEMENTS.

were invincible because they met wants stronger than
human will, and were an indispensable element in the devel-
opment of a continent. They were not enriched by credits
mobiliers, but their toil made all after-times their debtor.
They were ready for all functions, independent or menial ;
did the laundry work and the gardening, and gleaned after
the whites in the gold-fields. They taught how to organize
mutual-aid. Six great companies, under elective officers of
high character, watch over all their members, aid them in
difficulty, find them occupation, and send home the dead.
As elsewhere, from day-laborers they have become capital-
ists, advance all forms of enterprise, and serve all indus-
trial uses. 1 Their immigration is a national blessing, not
only as productive force, but as stimulant to the morals of
industry. Their cheap labor is a test of our theoretic and
practical liberty ; their inaptness for Christianization our
school of religious universality.

Many voices have been raised against the barbarous
race-prejudice under which they have suffered ; advocating
their admission, under proper provisions, to that equality
in civil and political rights which our republican theory
dictates, and every consideration of wise policy demands. 2
A native Protective Association was formed to screen
them from outrage, and counteract the cruelties of the
laws. Not less ably have they argued their own cause.
Their " Remonstrance," written by a young Chinese mer-
chant, is one of the most impressive pleas against cruel and
dishonest legislation upon record. 3 The publication of
" The Oriental," edited in part by a Chinese, and with the
help of Chinese associated companies, did good service in
repealing the acts passed in 1854 for reducing this unoffend-
ing race to peonage, or expelling them from the soil. 4

1 Pumpelly, p. 252.

2 Atlantic Monthly, Dec , 1869. Also Mr. H. C. Bennett's excellent Address at San
Francisco in 1870; and Pumpelly, p. 265.

3 It will be found in full in Dr. Speer's work on China. * Speer, p. 660.

EXTERNAL RELATIONS. 159

The dread of " cheap labor " is gratuitous. For many
reasons the Chinese are not likely to come in Fearo{
swarms. They do not, as a people, love to emi- "cheap
grate ; few women have crossed the ocean, and l!
these not of the better class ; no people feel such moral
pressure to return and be buried with their fathers. The
increase of immigrants is slow ; not more than twice as
many come yearly as came twenty years since. " Under
good systems of mining and railroads, Chinese laborers
would all be wanted at home." l They will come to our
Western shores as fast as they are needed, and no faster.
They in fact increase the amount of native white labor ;
the productive result immensely exceeds the value of earn-
ings carried home by those who return. As for cheap
wages, their natural shrewdness will not overlook financial
opportunity, and their special aptitudes will command
special value in a free market. Labor combinations to
exclude individuals or classes from the fair competition
which all alike demand afford a poor justification for the
claim of the Saxon to superior culture, and for the right
he assumes to supersede an industrial civilization like that
of China even on her own soil. What can be their effect
on the Chinese but to add new grounds to their distrust of
a " barbarian " Christendom ?

Notwithstanding these causes of offence, there has been
an openness to foreign art, science, and policy,
which confutes the old theories of voluntary isola-

tion. The minister Wen-siang said to Mr. Burlin-

teaching.

game on occasion of a presentation of pictures
from Washington : " Our maxim is to inquire in every
thing for the best method, and to adopt it for our own,
wherever it originates." It was natural to import the
sugar-cane, spices, and fragrant woods from India and the

1 Minister Seward, in Public Documents on Foreign Relations, 1876.

l6o ELEMENTS.

isles ; to accept improvements in glass and bronze work ;
to admire Swiss watch-making ; to build steamers and mer-
chant-ships, as well as armed craft for coast service, on
European models ; and to skip the stages in gun-making
in com- between the old arquebus and the modern per-
war ciission-lock. A bolder step was to put their armies

into the hands of British and American officers
for the suppression of the Tai-pings. They repudiated
the proceedings of a British agent for the purchase of
war-ships, as being in conflict with their laws ; yet have
not hesitated to charter foreign vessels, and to invest in
steam navigation of the Yang-tze on a large scale. The
great avenues to the heart of the empire are thrown
open to these revolutionary heralds. Steamboats of large
tonnage are owned in China. 1 In '1872, there were eigh-
teen United States steamers on that river, running six
hundred miles inland, 2 and an Oregon line was being built.
The American river and coast tonnage is already put at
thirty thousand tons. Mr. Burlingame introduced the
terrible telegraph ; and, though the Government cancelled
its agreement with one company, there is a school of tele-
graphy, and soon the native merchant will consult the wire
for market values, and the delicate Mongolian hand touch
it in " Frisco " without fear. A magnetic observatory sends
its reports from Shang-hai. Prince Kung is at the head of
the administration. The Government has adopted a con-
sular system. Emigration is free. The foreign customs-
office is directed by foreign residents of good culture,
under an inspector-general of remarkable administrative
faculty. So ardently have the new commercial opportu-
nities been seized, that the balance of trade is on the
native side, and the competitive energy of the people
has quite overturned the business monopolies of the past.
The first Chinese railroad (1876) is but fifty years behind

1 Knox. a Brooks, p. 138.

EXTERNAL RELATIONS. l6l

the first English one, and is engineered by the son of
one of the first movers in applying steam to travel. The
Japanese already go by rail from Yedo to Yokohama. Nor
can it be long before the electric stream will bind to-
gether all Eastern Asia, and the iron horse push his new
mysteries through the broken spells of Fung-shui and the
ravaged sanctities of ancestral graves.

In August, 1872, the China mail announced the first
number of a newspaper issued under native direction, on
a progressive and anti-obstructive basis.

The appreciation of Western therapeutic science by the
Chinese, ever since Dr. Parker opened his noble ophthalmic
hospital at Canton in 1835, forms by far the most interest-
ing chapter in the history of European relations with the
Empire. The doors of Drs. Parker, Lockhart, and Hobson
were crowded by thousands of patients of all classes,
whose gratitude was most earnest and enduring. 1 Works
of medical and anatomical science were eagerly studied by
native youths. In twenty years, more than fifty thousand
patients had been entered on the records of the Canton
hospital. Other similar institutions were planted with
like success. The heroic humanity of the English and
American surgeons, who shrank from no personal peril,
was respected by all parties throughout the barbarous
conflicts of Triads, Tai-pings, and Imperialists for the
possession of Shang-hai, in 185 3-54^

The visit of Pin-tchuen to Europe resulted in Shang-
hai College, with its European staff. An English

In culture.

school was founded in 1862, and raised to the

rank of a college in 1866, for advanced native pupils. 3

1 Lockhart's Medical Missionary in China (London, 1861); especially the Memorial
of Thanks presented Dr. L. by more than fifty native merchants and gentlemen, p. 283.

* Lockhart ; also Williams, II. 346-351 ; Brine, p. 59 ; Martin, II. 493 ; Nevius, p. 341 ;
Dr. Parker's Reports in Chin. Repos,, 1841-1843. For Chinese tributes to the works of Dr.
Dudgeon, see China Review, May and June, 1875.

8 Chinese Recorder ; June, 1871.

1 62 ELEMENTS.

The Pe-king University, founded by Kung in 1867, for
completing native education by studies in foreign lan-
guages, after some opposition and much discouragement
was revived by the arrival of Dr. Martin, its president,
from America (1869), who was cheered by the unexpected
tordiality of the mandarins, and has written favorably of
its prospects. 1 His translation of Wheaton's International
Law has been adopted as a classic by a commission ap-
pointed by the Prince. A hundred and twenty Chinese
students are now (1876) preparing in America for func-
tions in the military and foreign service of the Empire, and
large numbers are in the literary institutions of Europe.

The desire of the Government to preserve cordial re-
lations with Western powers has been shown by vari-
ous acts that would once have seemed impossible. The
Tien-tsin massacre, caused by popular suspicion not un-
like the delusions of mediaeval Christendom about the
Jews, or the later witchcraft mania, was atoned for to
the full extent of its power by execution of twenty-one
persons, banishment of twenty-five, and an indemnity of
3,500,000 francs, for losses by fire, and for the families of
the dead. 2 " In other countries," says Dr. Williams, perti-
nently, "this would be considered reparation ; but it is much
the case that, in China, nothing the people or government
can do is regarded by the majority of foreigners as right." 3

Mr. Seward's reception by the court was most cordial ;
yet he found that the Shang-hai people " talk of the
Burlingame treaty only to declare the utter absurdity of
expecting any good thing to come out of China except
through blockade and bombardment." 4 The dissatisfac- .
tion thus prevailing at Shang-hai is a natural result of the
new aspect of trade, involving smaller individual gains
and greater freedom of competition than before China

1 Am. Or. Soc., May, 1870. 2 Journal Officielde Paris, Nov. 25, 1871.

8 Am. Or. Soc., May, 1871. Seward, pp. 114, 160, 184, 185, 216, 217.

','<

EXTERNAL RELATIONS. * / 163 /^

>:, /

was opened to the spirit of the age, a change ipfeffec&Vy

ing which the natives themselves have been a very'i^J^r- /'
tant element 1 A minister has now been appointed tt^>
the United States; and China is on purely international */
grounds. x.

All this recognition of the outside world may seem -
tame, compared with the brilliant expansion of progres-
sive Japan within these few years ; but it may be all the
surer for its moderation, so fully in harmony with the
genius of the people, and for the natural show of reluc-
tance with which official China accepts the ominous rails
and wires of a new order of things.

Let us do them the justice to remember that the instinct
which prompts them to resist the sudden transfer-
ence of Occidental consolidation and its forces of ^ isdomof

Chinese in

machinery into a vast civilization, which has been resisting

developing itself from the oldest times by methods
precisely opposite, is one of wise foresight and
proper self-defence. The issue of such forced discontinu-
ity and reconstruction de novo would be fearfully destruct-
ive ; and no language can express the dismay of intelligent
Chinese at the prospect. Our own scientific principle of
evolution should teach us to respect the jealous conserva-
tism of a system that has grown so slowly and normally
as this. It is a sign of wisdom in the Japanese that they
are already substituting home-education of their young
men for training in the ill-related schools of the West.

And it surely becomes us not to force too eagerly a for-
eign policy which it requires all the statesmanship China
can muster to conduct to fortunate issues against race pre-
judices, and their long experience of the selfish motives
and conduct of European traders. 2 Let us fully recognize

1 Hvibner's Ramble, &c.. p. 469 ; also Western Review, Oct., 1868.

1 For an admirable instance of full understanding of these motives, and a liberal policy of
intercourse, see the Secret Memorial of Tsen-kwo-fan, Governor of the Two Kwang,
Westminster Review for Oct., 1868.

164 ELEMENTS.

the truth, so well stated by the " Westminster Review," as
early as 1868, that "China has already reached, so far as
foreign relations go, a normal condition of peace and pro-
gressive concession, and inaugurated a state of affairs in
which vindictiveness and cruelty are buried, and good faith
and forbearance are prominent." And we cordially en-
dorse the statement of one of the latest writers on the
Far East, that no Western nation has shown itself capable
of so extensive a change of policy in the same number of
years as China.

The exclusiveness of Japan, continued for two and a

half centuries, from causes similar to those which
reform. 86 determined the policy of China, was forcibly broken

up by Commodore Perry and Consul Harris, after
the British had captured Tien-tsin. In 1857, the Sio-goun,
resisting a strong conservative party, made treaty with
America and England. The new and free relations with
Western powers were originally rather matters of necessity
than desire ; the leaders of the revolution being at first
apparently opposed to foreigners, but finding themselves
obliged, from the dissolution of ideas they were produc-
ing, to seek outward means of reinforcement, and not less
moved by strong desire to participate in the profits of
foreign trade. 1 The recent revolution has abolished the
right of the nobles to levy taxes or issue money. The
currency is made uniform ; railroads, telegraphs, and mails
are in operation ; a university for advanced culture employs
nearly fifty teachers ; hundreds of students have been sent
to Western schools ; and European science is applied to
the army and navy, and to opening the resources of the
country. The heir to the throne put on a par with other
boys at school ; court officials in dress coats of marvellous
cut ; the Mikado suddenly exposed to public view ; the
daimios self-suppressed ; the long steps taken towards uni-

1 Mossman's New Japan.

EXTERNAL RELATIONS. 165

versal education, form a picture of radical change of which
no Asiatic people was ever deemed capable. Here is ap-
parently a total absence of prejudices. Kido, leader of a
clan, said that three years would be sufficient to remove
hereditary rights and change the habits of the people.
This is a step beyond the Confucian estimate of the trans-
forming capacity of good morals. It remains to be seen
whether an Eastern civilization can be unmade and remade
by edict, as it were in the turn of a hand.

In order to appreciate the resources of the race whose
leading characteristics have now been described, and to
recognize its power of sympathy, in other words, to reach
the elements of universality in this Religion of Organized
Work, we must note the composition of the Chinese peo-
ple and the nature of its habitat.

V.
ETHNIC TYPE.

ETHNIC TYPE.

r I ^HE startling Linnaean description, Homo monstrosus,
* macroceplialus, capite-conico, Chinensis, can hardly
be said to prepare us for the commonplace and prosaic.
Yet such is the uniformity of the Chinese type, The Chi _
that sculptors use one model for hundreds of faces. nese Eth -
It is like the homogeneousness of an undeveloped
order of life. To eyes accustomed to the mobility of Aryan
features this placid platitude seems almost inorganic, and
these accumulated living atoms are like dust of iron or
heaps of sand. But their lack of individuality would natu-
rally allow freedom of combination ; and it may be
the result of a corresponding precedent fusion. It is
a well-recognized law, that the resources of a great
civilization depend on the crossing of races. And such is
the extent of this fusion in all developed communities, that
some physiologists have denied the reality of race distinc-
tions, as mere theoretic solutions of problems too compli-
cated for analysis. 1 A people who have shown themselves
competent to such constructive force as the Chinese can
hardly be an exception to the rule, a pure, unmixed variety.
Yet, as was stated in the outset, the elements are limited,
and the result is unique among nations. There has been
an intermingling of Asiatic, chiefly Mongolian, tribes, whose

24, 25, 29.

I/O ELEMENTS.

marks are clearly visible in the varieties of the national
character. Nevertheless, the race-type as a whole is, as we
have said, the most distinctly individual in our existing
civilizations.

Distinct as he is, the Chinese seems to touch the ethno-
logic world at a great variety of points. In hint and shadow
he is a kind of Middle Kingdom. By his black eyes, thin
beard, high cheek bones, coarse lips, and impassive air, he
resembles the American race ; by his facial angle he ap-
proaches trie Aryan ; by his flattened nose, the negro. He
has Mongolic features softened as by a feminine element,
and bleached as by some Samoyede or Siberian infusion ;
his half-wild expression suggests the Greek satyr ; and the
apparent obliqueness of his eyelids, owing to the very
slight opening of their inner angles, points to his origin in
those high latitudes where Nature is observed to protect
the lachrymal structure of ruminants in the same way. 1

Thus widely related in form, the Chinese face is capable

of much dignity and beauty. The conventional

Quahty of chinaman on Canton ware is a caricature. I have

the type.

myself seen a large collection of photographic por-
traits, 2 in which the phrenological and aesthetic development
is fully equal on the whole to the European. Williams
observes that Chinese women resemble the Europeans,
more than Hindu or Persian, in preserving their vigor
after child-birth. 3 The beauty of the maidens is celebrated
by Fleming, and their healthy development and delicacy of
manners by Courcy. Whether the difference between the
natives of northern and southern provinces is as great as
has been represented is doubtful ; but the muscularity and
shapeliness of the peasantry in general is beyond dispute :
and in this respect, at least, they deserve the name of the

1 Smith's Natural History of the Human Species, p. 284.

2 In possession of my friend, Mr. T. F. Hunt, of Salem, Mass.
Middle Kingdom, I. 37.

ETHNIC TYPE. 1^1

" Anglo-Saxons of Asia." Owing partly to causes in the
climate, and to their industrious habits, they are superior
in physique to the surrounding races.

Their Mongolic relation is shown in a certain slow rate
of maturation, a prolonged infancy ; full stature
not being reached till the age of twenty-five, when
the first shoots of the beard appear. 1 Many old
nomadic traits adhere to the Chinese by reason of this
inertia, lasting through all changes ; such as the habit of *
sprinkling drums, and even doors, with blood ; sacrificing
the horse ; imbibing valor by tasting the flesh or blood of
dead braves, even of criminals ; 2 divining ; placing the
house door so as to look southward ; sitting on mats ; drill
in archery ; great hunting expeditions in the opening of
winter ; paying service to dead ancestors, and to the ele-
ments ; using the rod on criminals ; holding the first wife
in special honor ; 3 making generals responsible for the de-
feat of their armies, or for the death of princes ; toleration
of beliefs ; and claim of universal sway.

Their physical endurance also has, perhaps, a Mongolic
origin ; all accounts describing the Tartar as having " brown
skin, large high shoulders, immense neck, bony hands,
short legs, spread nose, black oblique eyes." 4 Not less
striking the connection of their strong local and clan in-
terests with the tribal organization of the Mongols. The
annals of feudal China constantly suggest the " twenty-four
tribes and forty-nine banners of Inner Mongolia, each com-
prising two thousand families, and under hereditary prin-
ces." The predaceous spirit of these tribes, the Turk in
them, which caused the Christian world to regard them
as demons sent to scourge mankind, has but a dim and
faint survival in many familiar elements of Chinese char-
acter. Carpini's description of their features differs but

Morache, p. 149. Marco Polo (Yule\ I. 61.

8 Ibid. I. 51. 4 Courcy, p. 30.

I/ 2 ELEMENTS.

little from those of the modern Chinese. " In habits," he
says, " they are more obedient to their lords than any other
people ; they honor one another exceedingly ; they return
carefully beasts that have gone astray ; towards foreigners
they are insolent ; they are intolerant exactors, covetous
possessors, and niggardly givers." l We can hardly wonder
at this hard judgment, when we consider the sufferings of
the old monk in wintering on the Tartar steppes. But it is
*easy to recognize in the traits he notes qualities of char-
acter very commonly ascribed to the children of Han.
With these Mongols of Inner Asia the Chinese have
been in constant contact, by war and by trade, with

Ethnic > "*

relations alternate invasion and retreat, and frequent con-
Mon 'ok ( l uest by b tn sides, from very early times. Eight
centuries before Christ, perhaps earlier, they
ravaged Northern China. Chi-hwang-ti drove them out,
and built the Great Wall to exclude them. The rulers of
the Han dynasty (A.D. 202-255) bribed them to quiet by
giving their own daughters in marriage to their chiefs. In
the T'sin (264-420) they divided the empire. Hordes of
Neutschin, Kitan, Kin, followed each other, moulding its
destinies. Military colonies came and went on both
sides. Large numbers of independent kingdoms were
founded by Tartar conquests, even within the empire. At
last, in the thirteenth century, Kublai conquers China, and
a Mongol dynasty holds it for nearly a century. After the
succeeding glories of the native Ming come the Man-chus,
whose end is not yet. With the exception of the Man-chus,
who are in many respects of a higher type, these Tartar,
or rather Mongolic, races seem to have supplied inorganic
elements, to be vitalized by structure only in the Chinese
organization. Elsewhere they are gathered up and swept
on as by whirlwinds, and perish in their birth. At the
word of Tching-gis Khan they spring into being, instinct

1 Hakluyt Collection, 1599- Vol. I., p. 6oj

ETHNIC TYPE. 173

with the dream of universal conquest ; they sweep across
the field of history on their wild horses, and as suddenly
dissolve : without special faith ; without enthusiasm for
uses ; without permanent result ; not organizing empires,
but overriding them, and terribly destructive. Their cry
was, " One World, one King ! " and they aimed at the re-
motest bounds of space. Remusat counts fifteen embas-
sies, sent by them to European potentates, 1 during their
short career, most of them claiming absolute submission.

This instinct of universal sway has found its civilized
development in Chinese institutions, while its cruder stages
survive in the manifold forms of childish self-sufficiency
peculiar to that people. The extreme simplicity of the
Mongolian mind is further represented in Chinese frugality
and fear of innovation.

The Man-chus, intermediate between Chinese and Mon-
gols, represent the constructive, as the Mongols do with the
the inorganic, elements in Chinese character. They Manchus -
are of Tunguse origin, lighter in complexion than the
Chinese, have more prominent features and fuller beard,
and are endowed with an elasticity and love of humor in
striking distinction from the qualities of other Mongolic
races. 2 Rising to national importance in the fourteenth
century, and rapidly appropriating Chinese culture, they
mastered the empire in the seventeenth, after enduring
many aggressions ; 3 and have held their ground, like the
Turks in Europe, ever since. From them have come govern-
mental capacity, largeness of plan, organizing power : they
had the art of setting others to work, and bringing order
from chaos by forces of discipline. Their name means mas-
ter f and they are in fact the martinets of China. Their
power of assimilating elements of constructive force had

1 Melanges Asiafiques, I. 407. ' Erman's Siberia, II. 367.

8 Chinese Repos , 1842 ; pp. 592-614. * Arbeiten d. JKuss. Gesellsch., I. 385.

1/4 ELEMENTS.

enabled them to absorb literature, social organization, edu-
cation, and religion from China ; so that their Bochai had
become a "land of enlightenment" before the conquest. 1
Three times these Tunguse tribes have founded empires
in Upper Asia, whose record has been written by Chinese
hands. 2 The Man-chu language, which is alphabetical, is
remarkable for simplicity and directness, and free from the
ambiguities of expression so common in Chinese. 3 The
Tunguse, of which it is a dialect, much modified by the
Chinese, has also a much greater organic development of
grammatical forms than the latter language. 4 In its abun-
dant literature the ethico-political proverbs are especially
attractive. 5 During their dynastic periods of two centuries,
the Man-chus have given China the completest national
organization it ever possessed, and the characters of their
great emperors, Kang-hi and Kien-lung, will bear compar-
ison with those of any rulers of modern time. Separated
by national prejudice and patriotic instinct from the con-
quered race, they have nevertheless, to a certain extent,
coalesced with them in ties of blood.

The Thibetans contribute Hindu elements, a reli-
withthe gi us temperament, a theological literature, a
Thibet- priestly government, the thread of contemplation
that is interwoven with this rationalistic and utili-
tarian warp, and appears in the philosophies of Buddha and
Lao-tse. They have furnished an important part of the
rich ethical wisdom of Chinese literature. 6 A native Thi-
betan fetichism, a cultus of elements and spirits opposed to
Buddhism, and called the " Bon," 7 or Master, corresponds

1 Upgorski, ibid., vol. II. 2 Plath, Gesch. d. Ostl. Asiens.

8 Chinese Repos., June, 1844.

4 Lucien Adams, Grammaire de la Langue Tungouse (Paris, 1874).

6 Sentences Mantchoux et Mongols, par L. Rochet (Paris, 1875) ; Wollheim's Nation.
Liter, der Volker des Orients, II. 663. Ibid , p. 767.

7 Csoma, in Journal R. A. S., of Bengal, I. 124 ; Hodgson, ibid., XVIII. 396 ; Schmidt's
Sanang-setzen, p. 351.

ETHNIC TYPE. 175

with the popular superstitions of China. The relations of
the Chinese with Thibet have been very intimate through
frequent conquests and incessant travel, so that much in-
termixture of the races must have been effected.

Through the more or less independent aboriginal tribes
(Miau-tse), 1 whose origin and affinities are as yet but whh the
little known, there must have come continual infus- Aborig-
ion of a natural energy, much needed by the artificial
civilization of China. These tribes hovered over it as the
barbarians over the later Roman empire, though without
similar resources or equal result ; and their perpetual bor-
der warfare has helped to counteract the enervation that
threatens jt. In this " classic land of freebooters " whole
armies have been swallowed up, and ages of strife spent
with but little conquest. More effective means of fusion
were the markets and fairs, where they were feasted by
the national officials. They were not without organiza-
tion. One of their ancient States is recorded to have
contained a host of villages. 2 Some of these tribes are
supposed to be in possession of books, written in the
oldest characters and carefully kept from the common
eye. They show respect for age, similar to that of the
Chinese ; but while many industriously till the soil, others
are nomadic and predatory. Their customs are described
as cheerful and cordial, and their fetichism as free from
grossness or barbarity. Their religion centres in ances-
tral rites and spirit intercourse, as well as in the custom of
carefully saving up the bones of the dead, a kind of
primitive relic worship from which the Chinese have mainly
freed themselves. The sexes are equal, and the daughter
inherits her father's rank whenever the male children are
held unfit to do so ; while in some of the' tribes women

1 Williams, I. 37, 147; Martin, I. 80; Chinese Repos., March, 1845.

* St. Denys, from Ma-tonan-lin, Seances du Cong. Internal., 1873, pp 360, 361.

1/ ELEMENTS.

seem to have the energy to maintain a higher position than
men. 1

It has been a Chinese fancy that their own ancient rites
were preserved among these barbarians, on whom their
ancestors had bestowed language and writing ; and that, if
lost in China, the sacred lore could be recovered of the
Miau-tse races. Confucius, when told of their ignorance,
said, " Where the wise man dwells, ignorance cannot con-
tinue." Thus the term barbarian was not used of these
tribes in contempt, though many of them are described in
the Li-ki as blackening their teeth, wearing long unkempt
hair, painting their bodies, and dwelling in caves. They
were familiarly named according to the quarter of the
heavens where they bordered on the Central Kingdom,
and according to their color, as red, white, black, and yel-
low ; 2 and described as " baked " or " unbaked," according
as they were, or were not, converted to Confucius. 3 Tra-
ditions show an intimate connection with these aborigines,
and their gradual civilization by the patient labors of the
" black-haired families of Han."

In thus recognizing the diverse race-elements combined
. in the Chinese type, I do not assert that its corre-

Hypothe- J r

sesasto spondent qualities were wholly derived from the
intermixture ; nor do I see evidence to establish
De Rosny's theory of a connection of the yellow Asiatic
race with Egypt ; nor the likelihood of explaining by this,
as an intermediate family, the traits of the white races. 4
As little proof is given us of the conjecture that the North-
ern Chinese were anciently influenced by the invasion of
some white tribe. We do not even know that the " hun-
dred families " 6 descended from the Kwan-lun, 6 or that they

1 Lay, chap. xxxv. * Ma-touan-lin, transl. in Atsuma Gusa.

s Congr. Internal , 1873. * Conferences at Paris, 1869.

5 The Annals explain this name, by Fohi's having regulated marriage relations upon such
a division, which has ever since been maintained. De Mailla, I. 5.
Biot and Kauffer.

ETHNIC TYPE. 177

combined in one the Turanians of the north and south ;
but as the Hoang-ho is fabled to rise " in a hundred
springs, shining like stars," so nearly every form of Asi-
atic nationality, except the most westerly, has its limited
expression in this strangely uniform Chinese type. Dif-
ferences which do not appear in the written language come
out in the dialects of the empire. The many partially
absorbed elements in this hospitable mediative civilization
constitute minor distinctions and contrasts. Pe-king is
described as in this respect peculiarly suited for researches
into the anthropology of Asia, so complete is the conflux
of typical races. 1 Here is a floating population of Mon-
gols, Thibetans, Turcomans, and Lamas, of every tribe.
Here are political and commercial legations from most
Asiatic States : ten thousand Mussulmans, dating from the
ancient times of Arab traders ; five hundred Russians, whose
ancestors were transported hither in 1688, and who have
adopted many Chinese customs ; Jews also, and even Zin-
gari, the " wandering Jews " of India. The Man-chus in
Pe-king, locally apart from the Chinese, frequently inter-
marry with them, though till very recently a law forbade
the relation ; 2 and concubinage has been a fruitful source
of fusion. Monuments in various parts of China bear wit-
ness to the extent of race intercourse on the soil. Bastian
mentions an inscription, in six languages, on the wall of
a mountain pass. 3 The Mongol rulers in the twelfth cen-
tury poured through China their whole vast assemblage of
Central Asiatic tribes. The Hanlin, during this cosmo-
politan dynasty (Yueri), contained members from all im-
portant races of the East.

1 Morache, pp 72-75. * Notes and Queries, September, 1868.

Peking, p. 355.

VI.
RESOURCES.

RESOURCES.

HE land has as composite a structure as the people.

With its eighteen provinces, and its Thibetan,
Mongolic, Turkic, and Manchurian dependencies,
the Chinese Empire fills a circumference of twelve thou-
sand miles, and covers an area of five million square
miles, nearly twice the extent of the United States,
exclusive of the lately acquired Russian possessions. It
includes the whole plateau of Central Asia, the hive of
nomad conquerors, the head-waters of all the great rivers
of th6 continent, and the ancestral shrines of its beliefs.
A natural pride in this vast territory is expressed in the
names, " Middle Kingdom," " Heavenly Flowery King-
dom," "Earthly Heaven;" just as Pliny describes his
Italy as " chosen by the gods to render heaven itself more
glorious, and become the mother country of all nations."

Within this area is every form of climate, scenery, and
product. A colossal mountain girdle ; a central des- Itsvari _
ert with moving sands ; an immense plain densely ous eie-
peopled ; endless variety of shore-line, archipel-
ago, reef ; four-fifths the country hilly, and mainly fertile.
Two great rivers, as opposite as Yn and Yang, the one
passionate and destructive, the other calm and creative,
symbolize the national character. The Hoang-ho, without
an affluent, unnavigable, follows its wild instincts and ca-

1 82 ELEMENTS.

prices, often breaking all bounds in disastrous overflows, like
sudden outbursts of Chinese passion. The Yang-tze-kiang,
of " Golden Sands," most serviceable and orderly of high-
ways, most readily influenced by navigation, opening free
access to the interior, and leading by its tributary streams
even into the recesses of the mountain world, joining this
heart of China to London and New York, fifty miles
broad at its mouth, by its tides the " Son of the Sea,"
lined with flourishing cities for hundreds of miles, is
the type of Chinese industry, of all mediative and produc-
tive powers. 1

The social and organizing genius of the people finds its
symbol in an unsurpassed natural drainage and intercom-
munication by water ; and even their superstition has free
play in the solitude of wide-reaching deserts, where spirits
are heard whispering or calling from afar, and lure the
traveller from his way. 2

The climate varies from the extremes of northern and
southern, through alternations of the Pacific Coast
and strong winds of the plains, to the equability of
the hill country and the dryness of Thibet. The soil a'ffords
immense supplies of salt, marble, sulphur, and coal, and
abundance of metallic treasures. The wonderful diversity
of local scenery, the exquisite beauty of the cultivated
plains and river courses, verdant terraces mounting to the
hill-tops or crowned with acres of white camelia, wide ex-
panses of domestic comfort and rural prosperity, endless
variety of trees and flowering shrubs, seas % of vegetation
sweeping up into recesses of majestic mountains, all this
would hardly be credible had it not its vouchers in de-
scriptions by such eye-witnesses as Williams and Davis,
Fortune and Fleming, Montfort and Barrow.

1 Magaillans voyaged through China from Pe-king to Macao, in 1656, for six hundred
leagues, with but a single day's journey on land ; and all along the Kiang passed trains of
boats " that would make bridges it would take days to cross."

2 Marco Polo, I. xxxvi.

Climate.

RESOURCES. 183

The same diversity of character is to be noted in the
great cities of China. Pe-king, the city of Kublai,

' The cities.

is a crowded Tartar camp, in the whirling sands
of the steppe, with selenite water, heaps of offal, decayed
hospitals, and army of beggars licensed to pillage and
mob : yet also a confluence of races around an ideal of
universal sway ; a vast religious symbolism crystallized in
political forms ; a huge fortress, with walls fifty feet high
and equally broad, and a circumference of twenty miles ;
with such monuments of splendor as its colossal Temple of
Heaven, its watch-tower with the Drum of Equal Justice,
its mountain of stone coal, its enormous Gate of Lions,
and the ruins of the most superb of summer palaces, sad
monument of Christian revenge.

Nan-king is the city of arts and letters, the Florence of
China, " where six kingdoms rose and fell ; " girded with
its seven leagues of wall, entered by high arched gates,
and crossed by immense parallel streets ; its tombs of
kings, reached by avenues of statues ; its soil thick with
dtbris of old civilizations ; its Tartar city apart from the
native population, and, though now empty, not touched by
them, because their patriotic hope has reserved it to re-
ceive, by and by, the returning glories of the Ming; twenty
years ago a brilliant city of half a million inhabitants, then
the stronghold of the Tai-ping rebellion, at last a melan-
choly ruin, yet still a centre of hopes for letters and arts.

Hang-chau, with its prodigious population, busy indus-
tries, wealthy stores, and well-paved streets, is the Kin-
sai of Marco Polo, his " celestial city, the grandest and
most beautiful in the world;" whose vast extent, innu-
merable bridges, stately squares, and splendid palaces, as
reported by this old traveller, 1 helped to get him the nick-

1 B. II., LXVIII. Navarrete also describes it as a day's journey through for a sedan,
from suburb to suburb, having broad, stone-pawd streets and arches, as curiously wrought as
any at Rome.

184 ELEMENTS.

name of Messer Millione with the incredulous merchants of
Venice. Its environs are still a paradise, amidst which
rises, fourteen stories high, the Tower of Thundering
Winds.

Kai-fung is the old city of the legendary Fo-hi, and the
cradle of the monarchy, the type of its vicissitudes and its
permanence, fifteen times inundated, eleven times be-
seiged. Its great dike against the dangerous Hoang-ho
was pierced by a patriotic general, to save it from the in-
vading Man-chus, at a fearful sacrifice of life,

Ning-po boasts its Tower, four hundred years old, and a
hundred and sixty feet high ; and Yao-chau blazes, with its
five hundred porcelain furnaces, night and day.

Su-chau-fu was, before the civil wars, the metropolis of
industry, and common centre of the lines of canal, both
great and small ; famous for the pacific spirit of its thriv-
ing traders, rivalling Nan-king in a national admiration,
which " holds nothing to be beautiful, graceful, or elegant
but what comes from one or the other of these cities."
It was the " Chinese Capua." " In heaven Paradise, on
earth Su-chau."

In one vast plain, at the junction of the Han with the
Yang-tsz, stand side by side three great cities, surrounded
by waters ; a Chinese inland Venice, crowded with wealth
and population. Lecomte (seventeenth century), who trav-
elled over China with eyes wide open, tells of seven or
eight cities as large at least as Paris then was ; of eighty
equal to Lyons, and more than a thousand of lower grade,
besides innumerable villages.

Of the great ports which sprinkle the immense coast

line we may note Canton, perhaps the finest in the

world, whose beautiful river archipelago, surrounded

by an almost tropical wealth of woods alternating with rich

gardens and villas, reaches up towards the far mountains

one way, and down to its bright city of painted boats and

RESOURCES. 185

floating flower-gardens the other way ; Shang-hai, gate of
the Empire, and its fur-trade station, unrivalled for in-
ternal communications, closely connected with the great
productive centre Su-chau-fu, and destined, as Fortune
thinks, to be the " port of the future East ;" ancf Hong-
kong, traditional depot of foreign trade.

There are islands of peculiar value to China, Tchu-
san, her Holy Isle, whose rocks are covered with
the name of Amida Buddha, and with convents * nds
and temples of his faith ; and Formosa, her gran-
ary, as Sicily to Rome, on whose rice crop depend the lives
of millions, while it is still partially in the hands of abo-
rigines, and has but recently been wrested from bands of
pirates and rebels, at once a nurse of industry and a nest
of strife.

The most careful estimates of population correspond with
the Chinese census of 1812. This made it three

The popu-

hundred and sixty-two millions, which, at the usual lation>
rate of increase, must now be raised to four hun-
dred and fifty millions. The numbers involve a ratio of
two hundred and sixty-eight persons to the square mile, or
ten per cent, more than that of England ; and the density
of the Eastern provinces, four hundred and fifty-eight to
the square mile, is greater than that of any other known
community. The organizing genius of the Man-chus has
given a value to their census returns beyond most that
have preceded them, placing every street, and even
house, under official charge, and requiring every family to
keep its register of members. 1

In all times the numbering of the people has been held
a sacred duty ; but no effort could secure accurate statis-
tics from such elements of uncertainty as the frequent
civil wars, and the vast extent of vagrancy and transloca-
tion that attended them ; the sudden fluctuations in revo-

i Williams I. 216, 227.

1 86 ELEMENTS.

lutionary periods, amounting sometimes to loss of half the
population in half a century ; treachery of officials ; and
the habit of numbering by families instead of individuals,
different numbers being counted as a family at different
periods. 1

Biot has faith enough in .Ma-touan-lin's traditions to put
the population, in the old wonder-days of Yao and Shun,
at thirteen millions (!) ; which is like believing in the ages
of the patriarchs as given in Hebrew tradition. The " ten
thousand vassal chiefs " of their great monarchy of dream-
land vanish in proportion as we approach historic times.

The immense fertility of this human seed requires all
its pres the cult ivable sou1 f r its support. An empire of
sure on four hundred millions, without an acre laid to
the land. g rass j Their poorer soil-is full of graves, and the
insatiable demand of death for the spaces beneath their
feet is met by removing the ashes from older coffins into
urns, and replacing them with the newly dead. Man has
converted the very earth into his doings and his dust, till
even this supply fails ; and the Malthusian therapeutics of
war and famine are confuted on their own ground, where
they have had full play. The " strife for survival " in these
crowded cities has been an application of Darwinism on
the largest human scale ; but the " natural selection " has
not resulted in that adaptation of man to outward con-
ditions required by the theory, so much as in the conver-
sion of Nature itself into the strange likeness of a peculiar
race of men.

The human causes of this prodigious increase of popu-
lation are manifold. Honor to agriculture, and
taxation according on the whole with values, have
made the cultivator feel at his ease. Emperors
have exhorted to frugality. A long peace from the begin-

1 SacharofPs careful review of the population of China in A rbeiten d. Russisch. Gesattdsch.
II. pp. 192, 193 ; also Biot in Journ. Asiat. 1836.

RESOURCES. ig/

ning of the eighteenth century preserved the vital forces of
the country. The universality of marriage ; the custom of
betrothing in childhood ; laws and manners on the whole fa-
voring monogamy ; the requirement that even female slaves
shall be provided with husbands, and shall not be separated
from them ; mutual-aid societies ; laws discouraging emi-
gration, especially of females ; the comparative retirement
of wives during critical periods, and the constant adoption
of homeless children, all have contributed to produce a
high rate of increase. And it should be noted that most
of these laws and customs form parts of a deliberate system
of incentives to secure an abounding posterity, which is
inherent in Oriental life, and is the reflex of its patriarchal
traditions.

On the other hand, China has been subject to special
drawbacks to the growth of population. Besides wars and
far expeditions to the bordering wastes, which in almost all
ages have swept off great multitudes, ignorance of physi-
ology has made infectious diseases prevalent and destruc-
tive. The estimate that forty millions have perished during
the last eighteen years by war, pestilence, and famine must
be excessive, and serves only to indicate the great scale
upon which depopulation from these causes is admitted to
be going on in the empire, in an age which some have
imagined to be the period of its final decay. 1 Opium has
slain its hosts. Suicide has often, in times of public ca-
lamity, become a mania, and probably on a scale unprece-
dented in human history. From many great cities, if we
may judge from their actual tracts of ruin, emigration must
have been very extensive, and much of it to far coun-
tries. The laws against expatriation are easily evaded.
The inhabitants of the coast are bold, lawless, and enter-
prising ; especially in Fo-kien, whence most of the movement
of emigration proceeds. The world beyond sea beckons
these insatiate work-seekers to India, California, Luzon, the

1 Knowlton in Notes and Queries, Aug., i86S.

1 88 ELEMENTS.

Pacific islands, especially to Australia, and to service in
merchant ships. Yet over-population must add its stimulus
to effect the sundering of local ties which are probably
stronger than those of any other people. And the vast
population of China was in fact never so impressive a
phenomenon as it is to-day.

What enormous resources have repaid these swarms of
laborers, in whom labor is not only an organic in-
stinct > but tne substance of religion ! Mark what
force of civility is shown in the fact that this con-
centrated mass-power has not hurled its Mongolic passion
for universal sway upon the minor races 'of the continent !
What other people has ever attained such predominance in
material force without making itself a terror to weaker
nations, a conqueror by physical and destructive means ?
China has preferred to teach labor and letters ; to build
-empires, to convert its very conquerors to peaceful enter-
prise. Is it from inherent want of power to use the strong
hand ? If Christendom pursues its past methods, it will
perhaps find that it has chosen for itself the mission of
endowing this patient, plodding giant with a new and fatal
fire. What armies he could organize, what fleets build and
man, what services command from European science in
the arts of war! On these endless coasts, whose hardy
tribes are amphibious, and divided between piracy and'
traffic; on these mighty rivers and these inland seas,
what materials for the rapid growth of an inexhaustible na-
val power ! It was Napoleon who warned England against
her Eastern policy. " The worst thing you have done is
to go to war with an immense empire like China. These
people will imitate you, build fleets, arm them, and in time
defeat you." Napoleon's point of view was that of the di-
plomatist and soldier. The Religion of Humanity finds in
these indubitable relations of Christianity to Heathenism
fresh argument for insisting on its own new and nobler
faith, beyond them both.

STRUCTURES.

EDUCATION.

the three traits we have mentioned as characteristic
of the Chinese muscular type of mind, the first its
plodding persistence - has made its record in the wonderful
industrial development already described. The second a
dead-level uniformity is now to be traced through those
systems of popular education and that democratic tempera-
ment, by which it also has justified its existence.

As was said of Chinese industry, so we may say of this
second trait, that its elements of universality, and its thor-
oughly organic and earnest quality render it a positive
religions fact, a form of the concrete national ideal.

" Most beneficent," says the Koran, " is the Lord, who
hath taught the use of the pen." 1 Christianity, like Islam-
ism and Judaism, worships a Book. China adores
that which constitutes all books ; not a written
Word, but writing itself : Thought in the most
concrete, fixed, visible form. Writing, for her, springs
straight from the elements and forms of Nature, and rep-
resents man's unity with natural order ; it is the first reve-
lation, on the sands, on the tortoise and the river-horse,
in the tracks of birds, in the starry heavens, to Fo-hi,
primitive teacher of mankind. This reverence for the
familiar and constant instrument of thought forbids the

i Sura, XCVI. (Rodwell's Tr.)

STRUCTURES.

exclusive authority of any one Book : it is a germ of
Universal Religion ; the cultus of a permanent, inevitable
process of the natural method of mind.

China is a vast open volume. Every thing is stamped
with the written words of man. Walls, doors, pilasters, are
but the bearers of felicitous mottoes, apothegms, original or
proverbial. Apartments are covered by " flowery scrolls "
hung in pairs, artistically devised to express in elegant
sentences, ethical, amatory, dramatic, enigmatic, con-
trasted or corresponding images of feeling. Temples are
books of wise sayings, oracular responses, divine names,
which spill over on the surrounding rocks. Lanterns are
scribbled ; dresses are not only worn, but read. A good
sentence well pencilled is the most dainty of gifts ; a shop
front is a public gratuity of scribbled puffs and cards of
invitation ; a hduse-door sighs in the name of its owner,
" May I be so learned as to hide ten thousand volumes
in my mind," or announces that " by literature the people
become great."

As the Hebrew would not tread on paper, lest the name
of Jehovah might be written on it, so for our Chinaman
all written words are sacred ; and he has a double motive
for gathering up every morsel of paper : first, for the sake
of economy, to recast it into new supplies of a material in
such unlimited demand ; and, second, for the sake of the
characters, of whatever purport, that may chance to be
inscribed on it. European treatment of this god amazes
him. " Be respectful to written paper," say the urns placed
by waysides for its reception.

Appliances for writing have been pursued by the Chinese
as other races multiply and perfect the materials of trade
or war. 1 Tablets made of every available substance, bam-
boo, metal, bark, pith, flax, silk, straw ; the use of style,

1 Duhalde, Vol. II.

EDUCATION.

193

pencil, brush ; typography invented fifteen hundred years
ago ; elaborate researches into the history of the art of
making ink ; a great number and variety of styles in form-
ing the written characters ; l a marvellous adroitness in ex-
ecuting the strokes of which they are composed by rules
of calligraphy which they honor with the name of " ever-
lasting ; " 2 minute inquiries into the theory, structure, and
uses of written signs, all bear witness to the happy ear-
nestness of this service of recorded mind. Like the Norse
runes, these mystic characters are called " eyes of the
wise ; " and he who does not respect them shall be born
blind hereafter. 3 Here their routine-bound habit escape^
into the geniality and individuality of fine art. Of all feti-
chism, this is surely the most promising. How it bridges
over the ages of human progress in the evolution of speech,
the conservative loyalty of the East inviting the diffusive
science of the West ! Even in its Oriental phase we shall
see it seizing, as by a divine instinct of logical sequence,
the great idea of universal education. By her invention of
printing, and -of good material for diffusing it, China out-
stripped the Roman world, which was reduced to the use
of palimpsests, and the consequent ruin of much of its
own work.

Every thing is recorded, hastening to the written sign as
to its final purpose. The whole thirteen books of
the Classics are inscribed on stone tables of mas- Ktetuure
sive granite at Pe-king. At Singapore there is a
similar stone library. 4 Before a temple in the capital is
a " Forest of Tablets," containing the list of all who have
attained the highest doctorate, sixty thousand names
in all. 5

The "Public Annals" (Shi-lu), secret records of the
doings of each emperor and his administrative boards,

1 Wylie, p. 117. 2 Lay's Chinese as they Are, ch. xx. 8 Doolittle, II. 168.

* Chinese Recorder, Sept., 1871, p. 88. 6 Ibid. p. 87.

194 STRUCTURES.

written out by official hands day by day, are by law depos-
ited and kept inviolate till the end of the reign ; at which
time they are brought forth, like the Judgment-Day
Books opened in the Egyptian, Jewish, Mahommedan, and
Christian religions, to decide the historical destiny of
the past ruler, and for warning or example to the new
one. 1

Every three months the name of every functionary is
recorded in the official almanac, with the designation of
his place and work. Of the annual calendar of works and
days, of astronomical, phases and modes of divination,
more copies are printed and sold than of any Bible in the
world.

The accumulation of books in libraries is, of course,
prodigious. Kien-lung's select classical collection alone
consisted of ten thousand five hundred works, and its cata-
logue gives fourteen hundred and fifty commentaries on
the Yking, and three hundred and three encyclopaedias.
The " Catalogue of the Four Libraries " is in one hundred
and twelve octavo volumes, of three hundred pages each,
and contains an account of twenty thousand works. The
provincial topographies are exhaustive ; one of them fills
one hundred and eighty-two volumes. A single modern
collection of Chinese books in possession of the East India
Society can show two hundred volumes of plays. Five
great catastrophes by fire have done nothing towards de-
stroying the enormous treasures of a literary industry of
three thousand years. It is Chinese immortality, this
phoenix of letters. It is the analogue of Western science,
as entire persistence of force. The " Collections of Re-
prints," as described and in part analyzed by Wylie, surpass
all other records of literary conservation in human history.
Separate anthologies embrace more than a thousand au-
thors. Chinese encyclopaedias are to ours, for size at least,

1 De Mas, p. 257.

EDUCATION. 195

as plesiosaurs to lizards. One of them contains extracts
from seventeen hundred works, and fills fifteen hundred
volumes. The Ming emperors set, at one time, one hun-
dred and fifty compilers at work on these collections ; at
another twenty-two hundred ; and then the vast result was
destroyed by fire. New commissions and new ordeals of
flame succeeded ; till at last a " Liber redivivus " stands in
four hundred and fifty books, comprehending more mate-
rial than ever. Kang-hi leaves Solomon in the distance.
He wrote one hundred and seventy-six books of Literary
Recreations, and two hundred and eighty-nine poems.
Kien-lung compiled a body of thirty-four thousand poems
from works produced during his own reign. The quality
of all this is not for us at present to estimate ; but we may
note the strong utilitarian bias of the imperial House of
T'sing. Kang-hi kept eighty scholars at work for seven
years on a dictionary of those prolific elements of litera-
ture, the written signs, and wrote an excellent preface to
this new classic.

The Chinese are the most patient and thorough bibliog-
raphers in the world. There are public libraries in every
provincial capital, and nearly three hundred celebrated
ones. Circulating libraries, new in the West, are in the
East immemorial. Thousands of light publications issue
continually from the press. Standard works of history,
law, and letters are published by the Han-lin (Royal Acad-
emy), and distributed to the learned world, which in
China consists of at least two millions of scholars. 1

In no other nation has such honor been rendered to lit-
erature and to literary men. Academies are at the

Honors to

summit of the State, and public instruction is its culture.
first requirement. The number of colleges of the
first and second orders is more than two thousand. Revo-
lutions turn on the destruction of books. All this enthu-

1 Medhurst.

196 STRUCTURES.

siasm and faith deserve no less than to be called a Relig-
ion. A nation of four hundred millions falls at the feet of
a philosopher, and burns incense to the tablets of scholars.
An old description of the Chinese in Hakluyt 1 says that
" their literature is in a manner infinite." The Chinese leg-
endary prophet is a resolved youth, who fastens his hair to
the ceiling when he studies ; or reads by the light of glow-
worms ; or puts sticks for a pillow, to keep off sleep ; or
says, " I will cease from literature when I have made a hole
in this iron inkstand with grinding my ink." Mencius's
mother cut the web she was weaving, to show him the folly
and mischief of giving up his studies. This more prosaic
passion answers, in the son of Han, to the spirit of Hebrew
seers, who smashed tiles to foreshow the wrath of Jehovah,
or ate little books for a sign that what is sweet in the
mouth shall be bitter in the stomach. Martyrs to litera-
ture in China have numbered hundreds to one as compared
with those whose blood has sealed the Hebrew faith. The
peaceful examinations in every great city of the Middle
Kingdom rouse an ambition whose toils and disappoint-
ments more frequently result in the sacrifice of human life,
than the exciting appeals or denunciations of Jehovism. In
every revolution, loyalty to the rights and duties of the lit-
erary class has issued in the suicide, banishment, or mas-
sacre of large numbers. The soul of Chinese patriotism
and piety is identified with the claims of culture, in the
name of its divine origin, its ethical purity, and its univer-
sal spirit of equality and diffusion, to rule the State.
Learning takes precedence even of. age. The literary per-
son, ever so young, is a "venerable father;" like the Hin-
du Brahman, but with a widely different social meaning.
Learning in China is more than wealth. There are no
property entails, but the descendants of great scholars are
ennobled.

i ii. 564.

EDUCATION.

197

So spontaneous is this Religion of Culture that its ele-
mentary work is not subjected to an organic rule

J This relig-

or system, but is left, safely enough, to the force of ionspoma-
public sentiment, the incentives of social and po- neous and

earnest.

litical aspiration. " A youth," says Confucius, " is
to be regarded with respect. How do we know that his
future may not be equal to our present ?" 1 This instinctive
recognition of the right of education even supplies the
place of our colleges and universities, with its enthusiastic
competitive examinations. While there is not, properly
speaking, any public-school system in China, yet proba-
bly a larger proportion of the population have acquired
those elements of knowledge which fit them for pursuing
the further disciplines requisite for position and distinc-
tion, than in any other nation in the modern world, except
perhaps Switzerland and Prussia.

A groundwork for universal education is secured by the
public reading of Kang-hi's " Sacred Edicts " every
half-month in the towns ; to which are added the
comments of the Emperor, Yung-Ching. These
sixteen Shing-yu are apothegms of public and private
duty covering the whole ground of Chinese ethics, and
the comments expand them into applications historical and
social. The custom is as old as Chinese traditions run. 2
This national rubric, however, not being enforced as of su-
pernatural authority, its ethical excellence can appeal far
more directly to the free conscience than the stated read-
ing even of the Decalogue or the Sermon on the Mount in
Jewish and Christian schools. In fact, while sufficiently
circulated by political regulation to keep good ethical prin-
ciples and public interest before the popular mind, this offi-
cial proclamation of virtues is open to much laxity in its
stated performance from the absence of ecclesiastical sanc-

1 Lunyu, IX. 22.

1 Biot's Tcheou-li; and Plath, July, 1868.

I9 8 STRUCTURES.

tions, a freedom which may help to counteract the dead-
ening effect of its pedagogy and routine.

The educational impulse, thus encouraged, expresses it-
se ^ ^ n t ^ le sma ^ private schools which are every-
where supported by the people, day-schools in
the poorest country towns, and evening schools for mechan-
ics in the cities, 1 the teachers being usually graduates of
higher schools, who have not been able to secure official
posts. It is probably the great difference between the
numbers of written characters learned by different classes
and at the different schools, that leads to the widely-vary-
ing estimates, now before us, of the number of persons in
the Empire who can be said to " read and write." Two
facts are beyond question. All classes are admitted to
the schools without distinction, 2 and the price of tuition
is very low, parents in fact paying according to their
means. Persons of almost every class make efforts to send
their children to school 3 " All parents," says Brine, " deem
placing their sons at school a matter of first importance ;
and I have seen agricultural laborers and boatmen save as
much as possible from their small earnings from the day of
marriage, and look forward to the time when the boy could
be sent to pick up the small amount of learning so requi-
site for his future success in life." 4 " Every one," says De
Mas, " reads the bulletins on the walls : the poor can read
what characters belong to their occupations. Often in
the British Consulate, when British sailors have to make
their mark, Chinese will be able to write and sign their
depositions." 5

This open opportunity applies only to the elementary
schools, since the expenses of competitive examinations
must shut out large numbers from the higher grades. The

1 Williams, I. 427; Fleming, p. 150. 2 Chinese Repos., July, 1835, P- "8.

3 Nevius, p. 62. 4 Tai-ping KebelL, p. 13.

c De Mas, I. 255. Girard, II. 26; Lockhart, Medical Missionary in Ckina, p. 6.
London, 1861.

EDUCATION. 199

masses are taught those written characters mainly which
represent ideas and objects of ordinary use ; but the num-
ber of years spent at school is naturally determined by the
resources of the parent. A very large proportion of the
schools at least direct the mind to the classics and the his-
tories, and teach the composition of sentences. The es-
sentials of practical business are learned in offices and
shops, to which the young people are transferred at an
early age.

Their entrance to the gates of wisdom would seem to be
no path of roses. School hours are from six A.M. to five
P.M., with an hour or two of recess, and without vacation
except at New Year, and a few holidays. No outward
comforts commend the dull routines ; and the masters
being usually disappointed men are not likely to prove
encouraging guides.

The nature of the language requires that primary edu-
cation should consist mainly in committing: char-
Nature of
acters to memory. Sounds and forms must come education.

first, and without regard to meaning. These char- J VIemor -
acters are not the alphabet of Chinese literature,
they are the substance of it : every one means a sen-
tence, an idea, a concrete fact. Words are studied, not in
their elements, but as ready-made designations ; and there
is little room for analysis or composition, or for the proc-
esses that initiate philosophical thought or simple reflec-
tion. It is but appropriation of the concrete material of
speech, provided ages ago for the uses of life. On the
other hand, this rote-learning, which has the advantage
over our a b c work that it deals directly in real wholes,
and does, not require to be unlearned in forming these,
is the main necessity ; for philologist or for child there is
no other way to Chinese wisdom. The object being to re-
member, not to comprehend, the text-books are generally
beyond the reach of the faculties ; and being held, like the

2OO STRUCTURES.

individual characters which compose them, indispensable
to knowledge, are also committed to memory with great
zeal, like Bible texts in Christian lands : the little puppets
" back the books," which means reciting passages with the
back turned to them. 1

Next to memorizing, the chief object of this training is

to acquire a mechanical handiness in writing the

characters. First of arts is penmanship, learned
g and as a purely imitative process ; first discipline in

that conformity to rule and law which is the pith
of Chinese virtue. Large red characters are first traced
in black, then through increasing thicknesses of paper, till
the sight has less to do than the memory ; at last, the
original being taken away entirely, the triumph of mechan-
ism is complete. 2 Chu-tsze defines learning as imitation,
conformity to a prescribed standard ; and in these schools
even organization holds an inferior place to the mere act of
" repeating after the teacher, each by himself, in a shrill
voice, rocking to and fro." 3 This perfect image of automa-
tism is not without resemblance to the arrangements into
graded classes, so much admired in our Western school-
systems, and to those arts of "reading in concert" which
are believed to have such virtue in our democratic culture.
It would in fact be difficult to imagine a better outward

symbol of the mental status produced by these

Analogues r . .

in the processes or an excessive organization, so widely
American ac j m ired in the public schools of America. They

schools.

tend to destroy all possibility of original force.
Reading, for instance, is becoming reduced to as purely
mechanical a conformity to prescribed tone, time, and em-
phasis as the Chinese custom of repeating words after the
teacher has produced without any organization whatever.
Chinese boys, rocking out their parrot tones, eagerly copy-

1 Doolittle, I. 378. 2 Girard, II. 70.

8 Morache, p. 84 ; Brown, in Journal Am. Or. Soc., II. 174.

EDUCATION. 201

ing the master or " backing the books," do but openly con-
fess, in their noisy rout of imitation, the mental slavery
which our prevailing system disguises under the varnish
of " drill." " Reading in concert " has played its part in
the Chinese system also, with effects upon voice and
manner which we need not cross the hemisphere to find
in full operation.

Concerning " imitation " as a principle of culture, let us
add that, false as it is, its moral quality at least is Dangers
higher when it follows, as in China, a type that frommech -
does not change with human caprice, than when it in teach-
is subject to arbitrary crudities and idiosyncracies lngt
imposed on the pupils by individual teachers. In both
cases, however, the real ultimate reference is to an all-
powerful authority in that public sentiment and common
belief of which these educational systems are meant to be
the expression. And when this public control has become
all-pervading, as it steadily tends to be, whether as Chinese
tradition of ages, or American fashion of the hour, its effect
through imitation, in levelling and trimming young minds
into a dull, self-satisfied uniformity, is indisputable. In the
course of ages it has cast all Chinamen in one mould, and
made their intellectual productions as monotonous as their
physical type. The warning is for us, even at the opposite
pole of social and political character.

There are signs that the amount and the mischief of this
endless rote-learning are not unperceived. The

. . , TheChi-

noble Japanese maxim, "True study is that which nese aware
one pursues in order to direct himself," is thor- ofthese

dangers.

oughly in the spirit of Chinese didactics, and prob-
ably derived from them. Nothing is more common in the
text-books than advice to avoid mere rote-knowledge, and
to lay to heart what is read. 1 A popular writer on educa-

1 Davis, I. 270.

202 STRUCTURES.

tion advises to " read much, keep commonplace books, and
practise undistracted attention." 1 Confucius says : -

" When a man does not ask, * What shall I think of this and of
that ?' I can do nothing with him. Learning without thought is labor
lost ; thought without learning is perilous." 2

As if to compensate for the lack of individuality, a pa-
tient endeavor to comprehend what is studied is constantly
urged.

" The attention should be exerted as intensely as that of a general
at the head of an army, or judge in a criminal court." " Do not fear
being slow; fear only indolence." " Con over the best compositions
till you feel their spirit." " Better have but one book which you make
wholly your own than a library of ten thousand books, which you keep
only to look at." " Something is learned every time a book is
opened." " Who swallows quick can chew but little." 8

" Do not imitate useless men, nor read useless books, nor speak
useless words." " The good bee sips not a fallen flower." " Instead
of asking from others beg from yourself." " The wise man is not a
talker, nor the talker a sage." 4

And it is but just to these efforts to secure mental free-
dom and force, that we should reflect how thor-
Paiiiatbns oughly original the culture of the Chinese really
Chinese is, and how much they have actually achieved by
strenuous application alone. Rote-learning, as the
natural method of a constitutional idolatry of the past, is
of course much more spontaneous in Chinese than in
Western civilization. Of such mental habit the memory
is of course the chief instrument ; and the immense part
which this faculty plays in culture is intimately related to
religion, resulting in a prodigious amount of oral tradition,
and in feats in the transmission of formulas and texts of
which we have but slight conception. It is said that, if the
Four Books of Chinese Classics were destroyed to-day, there

Williams, I. 425. 2 Lunyu, XV. 15, II. 15.

8 Davis, II. ch. xvi. * Morison's Dictionary.

EDUCATION. 2O3

are a million persons who could restore the whole to-mor-
row. What imagined miracle of biblical conservation
could compare with this natural inspiration of the memory,
as proof of authority in the symbols of a faith ? Or if
labor in memorizing texts be a sign of religious ardor, our
best-booked Bibliolater might well learn earnestness at the
feet of the Chinese Doctor of Letters.

But the religious element in this educational system is
not shown by its earnest culture of the memory
only. More prominent than rote-work in the pro- ^u^
gramme of the school system is respect for moral moral eie-
laws as eternal and divine. Modesty and humility ; ^"in.^
reverence for the old ; the evil of war and the wick-
edness of cruelty and conquest ; the love of truth, purity,
and self-restraint ; delicacy of feeling, devotion to duties,
fidelity to functions, are the burden of this popular teach-
ing, the very substance of text and precept. I believe, not
only that the whole series of reading books used in the
schools of China does not contain a single impure precept,
but that there is scarce one noble conception of duty and
humanity that cannot be found represented in the daily
recitations of these children of a grand ethical literature,
who are taught to prize it, not with slavish superstition,
but for the naturalness of its ideal. Nor does this textual
teaching fail of a practical basis in the home. It would
be difficult to find any treatise on home education more
admirable than the Instructions of the Sacred Edict,
whose utilitarian wisdom is here overflowed by tenderest
sentiment.

The regular text-books for younger children are the
Siao-hiao, or "Guide of Youth;" the Tsien-tsze-
wan, or " Thousand-Characters Classic ; " the Hiao-
king, or " Book of Filial Duty ; " and the San-tsze-

2O4 STRUCTURES.

king, or " Trimetrical Classic." The pith of all these is
morality, taught by precept and example.

The Siao-hiao} supposed to have been compiled by
Chu-hi in the twelfth century, circulates the life T h e siao-
of Chinese faith through every artery and vein of hiao -
the nation. It opens with the principles of education.

" The children of the people are taught to love parents, respect
superiors, honor teachers, select friends ; fundamental principles in
governing self, regulating the family, ruling the State, tranquillizing
the world."

Then come duties prescribed for the different epochs of
life, and for the "five great relations," father and son,
king and minister, husband and wife, elder and younger, and
friendship. Their definiteness of concrete detail leaves
no room for doubt nor for choice of method ; the ready-
made ideal is just to be put on and worn. But the moral-
ity is humane, gentle, even tender. Oriental subjection, as
of a child to its parent, or a wife to her husband, is tem-
pered by precepts implying mutual sympathy and devotion.
If the son shall keep even his own wife, only by and during
the parental consent, he is also to

" Warn his father and mother if they do wrong, and to love what
they love."

" If he loses them, he should think of their death when winter
winds blow, and of seeing them again when spring is warming his
heart. When he looks at their tablets, let him feel that he sees them,
and believe that they hear his sighs of regret."

Filial piety is thus his teacher of immortality, as well as
of reverent love.

" However poor, let him not sell the vessels of his ancestral wor-
ship ; however cold, let him not put on the dresses that belong to it,
nor cut down trees on the hirls where his parents are buried, to build
his own house."

1 Translated by Pere Noel, in his Confucian Classics, into Latin ; thence into French
by llAbW Pluquet.

EDUCATION. 2O5

" Let him care for his own body, avoiding negligence and base uses,
as for a trust committed to him by them." l

The spheres marked out for husband and wife in Eastern
society are to be equally respected by both. The husband
should not speak in loud or harsh tones in the female
apartments, nor use gestures of contempt. Woman, sub-
ject of course to man, yet has her " empire in the inner
apartments ; " nor may she be divorced, if she have no
parents to receive her, or if she have mourned with her
husband for his parent's death ; or if she has gained part
of the common stock of means. 2

Respect for older persons is to be shown by the bearing,
and by modesty in asking questions. If one meets an old
man carrying a heavier load than one's own, he should
assume it all, or as much of it as he can bear. 3

" Take only such friends as will advance you in piety and virtue.
Friends must give each other good counsel, and animate each other
to the love of goo'dness. Do not exact from others that they love you
as much as they can and ought, but exact this love from yourself for
them. Reprove and warn your friend, but if he is not tractable, de-
sist ; do not disgrace yourself." 4

Under the head of " Care for One's Self" are given very
proper rules of good manners, which would be as pertinent
to Western as to Chinese society.

" Do not thrust out your ear to listen, nor answer in loud tones;
nor wag the head like an empty person; nor strut; nor sprawl the
legs in sitting ; nor laugh at others ; nor speak precipitately ; nor
maintain your views with obstinacy."

" Honesty and equity will appear in the movements of your body,
in sweetness of countenance, in kind words, in decent commands." 3

Temperance as a part of decent behavior at meals is
enforced by reference to ancient drinking laws, so careful
of excess " that those who observed them could drink all
day without intoxication." 6

1 Siao-hiao, II. i. Ibid., II. in. Ibid., II. iv.

Ibid., II. v. Ibid., III. Ibid., III.

2O6 STRUCTURES.

Then follow examples of ideal characters, of which this
literature knows no end ; and their frequent extravagance
is often relieved by practical wisdom.

A whipped boy cries for fear that his mother will weaken
herself by the effort to punish him ; a princess keeps her
faith as if married, after her lover's death ; another stands
fast by her betrothed when he is stricken with contagious
malady, saying, "his disease is mine ;" a foolish youth of
high family reproves his mother for spinning, as an igno-
ble employment, and receives in reply a lecture on the
nobility of labor, ending thus :

" It is because I am concerned for the honor of our family that I
often counsel you not to tarnish, by a useless life of pleasure, the noble
record of your father." l

Next come admirable maxims from various sources ;
such as the dying words of an emperor, to his son,

" Never allow yourself to do a wrong thing because it is a trifle, nor
to neglect a good action because it seems mediocre ; "

and the aphorism of a wise minister,

l< He who is reckless of his own reputation dishonors his parents :
from this flow the great vices ; "

and the advice of another to a nephew who beset him for
an office :

" Maintain in yourself always a sentiment of fear mingled with
respect, and be assured that great application, and study of manners
and government, are the real essentials to high position. Avoid every
thing that would cause you to blush when you pay to others the respect
that is their due : seek public good more than your own advantage.
Beware the love of wine that has been the downfall of kingdoms.
Speak little. Do not fall out with friends for a word. The ancients
held flatterers in horror. You see me at the summit of grandeur, and
on the brink of an abyss : pity me, and do not add to my burdens.
Live retired ; fly celebrity and power. Heaven gives honors : wait its
time. He who runs too fast, loses his labor. An old book says,

1 Siao-hiao, IV.

EDUCATION. 2O7

1 The whole day is not sufficient^for a happy man's power to do good,
nor for an unhappy man's to do evil.' "

Sects are severely criticised for pretending to know the
nature of spirits, and explain all phenomena.
Here is a bit of theological common sense :

" Deluded men believe that presents to idols save them from hell,
and open heaven ; and that in hell people are cut to pieces, and burned ;
not reflecting that at death the body is dissolved."

The characteristic work-impulse is encouraged, and
guided into patient conformity to the real conditions of
success.

" Learn one thing to-day and another to-morrow, and in time you
will know an infinity of things ; discuss one thing to-day, and another
to-morrow, and in time you will have fathomed an infinite number ;
undertake one hard thing to-day, and another to-morrow, and in time
you will acquire constancy in meeting difficulties. Thus you will learn
to love reason, and enjoy the delights which it has earned."

M When Yao-kam, governor of Quan-chen, had nothing to do, he
carried two bricks out of the house in the morning and brought them
in again at evening, to keep himself in habits of work. Formerly, he
said, the Prince Yu feared to lose a minute : should not a common
man grudge it even more ? Seeing mandarins neglecting their duties
for dice, he overthrew their tables, and flung their dice into the
river."

There are tales of hard-working men, who left their
children security and ease instead of trouble and danger,
teaching the wisdom of earning their way instead of seek-
ing office ; of self-denying sons, heroic women, humane
statesmen ; rich men who preferred making others happy
with their wealth, to leaving it for their children as a bur-
den or a snare. And the ethics of self-culture rise to
a manly tone in such instructions as these:

" The most stupid people are wise in censuring others ; the most
sharp-sighted are fools in censuring themselves. Change this method :
mark your own defects as you now mark those of other men, and their

2O8 STRUCTURES.

defects as you now mark your own. But do not despair if you do
not equal men who have raised themselves to lofty virtue." '

Its complete expression of the qualities of Chinese mo-
rality, built into a permanent educational ideal and diffused
throughout the Empire, renders the Siao-hiao a very sig-
nificant element of culture, and must justify our extended
analysis.

The HIAOKING is traditionally compiled by one disciple

of Confucius from his answers to another. 2 But

The Hiao- j ts rea j au thor is unknown. For at least a thou-

King.

sand years it has been a school-book of the Empire.
It teaches the scope of " Filial Piety," which covers far
wider ground than in any other system of faith ; and its
philosophy, based on the regulative harmonies of Nature,
on the law of imitation, on reciprocal duties between those
above and those beneath, and on the force of example, is,
in relation to Chinese social life, what the order of celestial
movements and the exhaustless productivity of the earth are
to the visible universe. 3 In short, we have here the rationale
of patriarchalism, and the simple, easy evolution of those
beliefs and institutions that flow from the idea. The ethics
of the nation are justified to the mind of its youth, while
a deep religious element appears in the child-likeness of
its faith in its own principle and law. Pan-kou, a great
scholar, says of the Hiao-king,

" It is the Book of Heaven, the duty of Earth, the rule of action
for peoples : every word elevates the heart."

A few extracts will convey its substance.

" Of filial piety the first principle is to preserve, in integrity and
force, the bodies we have received from our parents ; its perfection is

1 Siao-hiao, V. VI.

2 Its eighteen short chapters are translated by Noel into Latin, by Pluquet into French, and
by Bridgman into English. Chinese Repos. for 1835; a ls La Chine Ouverte, pp. 257-259;
Wylie, p. 7.

8 Hiao-kine, ch. vii.

EDUCATION. 2O9

in cultivation of virtue, and earning a name whi.ch does honor to their
memory."

" Its model is the constancy of the heavenly bodies in procuring
what is needed by the earth, and regulating the actions of men."

" Of all virtues it is the greatest ; of all vices, none so great as the
lack of it."

" The kings of old, fulfilling it, would not dare despise an old person
or a widow, nor one famed for wisdom or virtue. Prefects, following
their lead, failed not of good manners to their humblest servants. And
domestics, won by this treatment, entered with joy into rites in honor
of their own parents. Hence the whole Empire enjoyed peace."

"One virtuous king draws after him a whole people. In honoring
one, he makes an infinite multitude happy. Let a king therefore fear,
as if walking on thin ice. Let fear of harming the memory of your
parents have the first thoughts of your dreams, and let not sleep drive
them away.''

The TSIEN-TSZE-WAN l is a quaint conceit of literature, con-
taining just a thousand different characters ; teach-

i . i i _ i f The Tsien-

ing by its very structure the dainty love of manip- tsze . wan .
ulating these symbols, which absorbs so much of
the national mind. Composed as a literary feat thirteen
centuries ago, it has kept its ground as a text-book by rea-
son of combining most elements inherent in Chinese char-
acter. Concrete, prosaic, pedagogic, it backs unexceptionble
moralities with practical examples, and treats the relations
of natural phenomena to human life in an industrial in-
terest quite suggestive of Hesiod's " Works and Days."
Of course a Poor-Ricliard quality of motive runs through
it, a takc-carc-of -oneself virtue ; yet not without intima-
tion of something higher.

" Leave behind you only purposes of good, and strive so to act as
to command respect. When satirized or admonished, examine your-
self. And do this the more thoroughly when favors increase."
" Let your step be even, and keep your head erect."
" Command your thoughts, that you may be wise."

1 Translated in Chinese Repos. September, 1835; a ^ so Williams, I. 532.
14

210 STRUCTURES.

"Sounds reverberate through deep valleys and re-echo through
vacant halls. Even so misery follows vice, and happiness virtue."

Its bare enumeration of natural routines breathes the
tranquillizing spirit that attends acceptance of orderly law.

"The heavens are sombre, the earth is of yellow hue.
The whole universe was once one wide waste.

The sun reaches the meridian and declines ; moons wax and wane ;
In divisions and constellations are the stars arranged ;
Heat and cold alternately prevail ;
Autumn for ingathering, winter for hoarding up.
Music harmonizes the two principles of Nature," c.

It is an acquiescent reassuring calendar of natural times
and seasons ; the image of Chinese routine, of rotary, piv-
otal motion. Enumerations are made in a true spirit of
positivism, stating facts and relations, without seeking
causes or dwelling on hidden powers.

Similar is the SAN-TSZE-KING, compiled by a private
The San- teacher six hundred years ago, and a school

tsze-king. text-book CVCr SlttCC. 1

Opening with a philosophy of universal education,

" All men, at birth, are by nature radically good, 2
But, if not educated, the natural character is changed,"

it exhorts to study with undivided attention :

" As jade unwrought is imperfect material for vessels, so a man
without education does not know what is right."

Then follows the long list of things everybody should
know, the obvious facts of nature and experience strung
on a thread of numerical categories, forms and elements
being arranged for convenience to the memory, like our
almanac doggerel about the length of months.

1 Translated by Malan (1855), by Neumann (German) 1836, and by Bridgman. Chinese
Repos. IV. ; also Williams, I. 430.

* Or " susceptible of goodness" (Neumann).

EDUCATION. 211

The natural facts laid down, next comes a list of books
classical, moral, historical, philosophical, the names of
which are to be committed in view of future study ; then
a summary of the national history, epitomizing the thirty
dynasties for a similar purpose.

" Have them in your mouth and recite them ; in your heart, and
ponder them. In the morning be at the work, and in the evening
also."

The usual list of old sages and wonderful boys is brought
out to inspire emulation, by their marvellous feats of per-
severance and endurance, the martyrology of learning.
Obvious analogies from nature are used to enforce the love
of study ; and the whole argument points forward to final
rewards of effort, in 'public advancement and the power of
doing good.

" Study in youth, and act in manhood ; you will approach the king,
and bless the poor ; you will honor your own name, and shed lustre
on your father's, and exalt your descendants'."

"Some men leave gold to their children ; but I give them instruc-
tion, and leave them a book."

" There is merit in diligence, but no profit in idleness ; therefore I
warn you to do your best."

The same exhortation to make the most of opportunity
and pay the honest price for success -is the burden of the
horn-books, books of proverbs, and children's rhymes that
circulate in the schools. They are but versions of the Tri-
metrical Classic.

" Do not say your families are poor. Those that can handle the
pencil, go where they will, need never beg for favors."

" Civil and military office is not inherited, and men must rely on
their own efforts. In all the world nothing is impossible; only the
hearts of men want resolution."
" Polish the mirror, and light is reflected ; sift the sand, and gold

appears :
And they who wish to learn must put forth all their powers." 1

1 Chinese Repository, 1835, P- 2 %7-

212 STRUCTURES.

Williams criticises the Trimetrical Classic, as well as

Chinese school-books generally, as unfit for begin-

christian ners because unprovided with sanctions, and com-

p 6 t e nt only to serve in a system of rote-learning.

But let the reader compare its simple details, histor-
ical, ethical, practical, and its every-day illustrations appeal-
ing to the sense of duty, the love of culture and humanity,
with the theological manual which has been constructed by
a Protestant missionary on the same outward plan and un-
der the same title, to supersede it. 1 Here are propounded
the mysteries of the Fall, of total depravity, atonement,
resurrection, and final judgment ; of the efficacy of prayer
and of divine grace, abundantly supplying what our good
missionary would call " the want of those powerful motives
which the Bible contains as the sanctions of its precepts."
Conceive of the experience of a Chinese child in reach-
ing, by the path of paradoxes utterly inexpressible in
his language, after the repulsive dogmas of man's nat-
ural hatred of good, the impotence of human reason, and
the wickedness of the heart, the pure contradiction of
every incentive and association capable of leading him
to moral endeavor !

Somewhat more spiritual, as well as more comprehensi-

ble to Chinese faculties, is the " Trimetrical Classic "
The of the semi-Biblicised Tai-ping rebels ; 2 a curious

Classic!* farrago of Shemitic and Chinese theism, of Chris-

tian personages transmuted by Chinese dress and
traditions, of Old and New Testament mythology sketched
in the dull gray color of Chinese concreteness ; Jesus,
elder brother of the Tai-ping-wang, wived and domiciled
in a Chinese heaven, and sent to frighten impish spirits.
But the national taste intersperses even in this many
simple and excellent moralities.

1 Chinese Repository, 1855. * Ibid., 1855.

EDUCATION. 213

How largely the moral element enters into the ideal of
Chinese culture will appear from passages in which
study is mentioned in the Confucian " Lun-yu," Stud y a s
first of the five books which contain the teachings Confucius.
of the "Great Master" and his disciples. The ex-
tracts are not selected for their special excellence, but as
forming the substance of what is there said about study,
and presenting fairly the spirit of the Classics on the
subject.

Confucius describes the true scholar as one who, in per-
formance of public duty, is " ready to sacrifice his life."

" When the opportunity of gain is presented to him, he thinks on
virtue. He is reverent in sacrifice ; in mourning, absorbed in the sor-
row he should feel. He who cherishes love of comfort is not fit to be
a scholar. The main object of study is to unfold the aim ; with one
who loves words, but does not improve, I can do nothing. The
scholar's burden is perfection : is it not heavy ? It ends but with life:
is it not enduring?" 1

"Learning is like raising a mound : if I stop with this basket of
earth, it is my own fault. It is like throwing earth on the ground ; one
basket at a time, yet I advance." *

" The true scholar is not a mere utensil." " Leaving virtue without
proper culture ; failing thoroughly to discuss what is learned ; being
unable to move towards the righteousness of which knowledge is
gained ; and being unable to change what is not good, these are the
things that (in my scholars) give me anxiety." 3

" If a man keeps cherishing his old knowledge, so as ever to acquire
new, he may be a teacher of others." " I marked Yen- Yuen's constant
advance ; I never saw him pause." " Often the blade springs, but
the plant does not go on to flower : often the plant flowers, but pro-
duces no fruit." 4

" Having completed his studies, the scholar should devote himself to
official functions. He should say, ' I am not concerned that I have no
place : I am concerned how I shall fit myself for one. I am not con-
cerned at not being known : I seek to be worthy to be known.' " 5

i Lunyu, XIX. i ; XIV. 3 ; IX. 23; VIII. 7. * Ibid. IX. x8.

Ibid. II. 12 ; VIII. 3. * Ibid. II. n ; IX. 20, 21.

Ibid. XIX. 13; IV. 14.

214 STRUCTURES.

Nothing can be manlier or humaner than the ethics taught
the people by public reading of the " Sacred Edict "

the sacred of Kang-hi with the commentary of Yung-ching. 1
Its counsels are worthy of Epictetus or Aurelius.

A few sentences will suffice.

"In every affair retire a step, and you have an advantage."

" Seeing men in haste, do not seek to overtake them."

"Each grass-blade has its drop of dew. The wild birds lay up no
stores ; but heaven and earth are wide. Strange, indeed, if you can-
not rest in the duties of your sphere."

" If you reject the iron, you will never make the steel."

" To starve is a small matter, to lose one's virtue is a great one."

" Covet not an empty name."

" If treated rudely, return it not, but examine yourself."

" The modest gain, the self-satisfied lose."

" The more unlikely I am to be successful, the more diligently
will I study. What have I to do with fate ? "

" Teach children that in friendship one should be one, and two, two ;
there must be no deception."

" Let the root be good, and the fruit shall not be evil."

"Culture in manners will make the blustering soldier view the Shi
and Shu as his coat of mail."

"Becoming manners shall bring back the lovely unity of ancient
virtues. Do you think that, by bearing with insulting persons, I shall
fall into dishonor ? "

"Should right principles be separated from right manners, they
would no longer be right principles. But without sincerity manners
are mere apish bowing and scraping."

" They who say conscience may be good enough, but it does not sup-
ply one with food, are fit materials for the cord and the bamboo."

" Set not dthers at variance. Suppress slanders, and protect the
innocent. Frame not indictments to defraud and oppress."

" Maintain a love of harmony, that throughout your families the
common speech shall be, * Let us help one another.' Then shall the
world be at peace."

" Let young and old be as one body ; their joys and sorrows as of
one family. Let the instructed lead the way by example. Let the
unity of the Empire extend to myriad countries, and spread harmony
through the world."

1 Translated by Milne, 1817.

EDUCATION. 215

" Though at the height of fame, you ought in the watches of the
night to lay your hand on your breast and ask yourself, ' Have I cause
of shame, or not ? ' ' :

These may serve as hints of the quality of the " Edicts,"
whose enlightened definitions and precepts cover every
sphere of life. Their rationalistic spirit will be treated
elsewhere. The drawback of a pedagogic and prescriptive
manner is of course not lacking, and submission to impe-
rial wisdom is their beginning and end.

As the moral relations are expressed in a concrete ideal,
in which no change is supposed possible, so they
are embodied in rites and ceremonies which share Rites and .
their sacredness. As the child learns ideas in the a is.
form of actual written characters, so he conceives
duties in the form of strictly regulated actions. Hence
the prime importance of the " proprieties " in education.
They are not affectations, but recognized as the natural
order of conduct, the virtue of behavior. The Li-ki, or
Book of Rites, says of music and ceremonies that " the one
reforms the inward, the other the outward man. Whoso is
thus perfected has joy in the heart, respect in sen-
timents, sweetness in manners." 1 The Li-ki has Theirbasis
been for ages the hand-book of that ritual or for- order.
ma I order, which is the reverse side of the moral
order, as the latter rests on the cosmical. For the au-
thority of fixed rules of behavior, while scarcely more
absolute than that of fashion in Western society, is not,
like fashion, detached from the highest law of ethics
and faith, but strictly identical with it. To the Chi-
nese, their ceremonial is simply man in his manifold rela-
tions. 2 Its minute rules, which appear to exhaust the
possibilities of prescription, are believed to express man's

1 Li-ki, VIII.

1 The wide extent of these ritual relations is unfolded in the Tcheou-li chapter on "Minis-
try of Rites."

2l6 STRUCTURES.

normal relations to the universe. They seem, in fact, to
have historically grown out of the national consciousness
of these relations, instead of being imposed by arbitrary
authority or transient will. What they correspond with
in Western life is not our etiquette, red tape, or religious
formalism, but such conformities as are admitted by all
of us to be natural and proper to all right performance of
functions, and therefore of highest import. These con-
formities would of course differ from those of the Chinese,
being based on more complex relations and wider knowl-
edge of nature, and hence more open to changes of detail ;
but their ethical ground is really the same. Thus the mi-
nute ritual of Chinese filial piety consists in routines of
conduct which are recognized as beyond all question the
best, and indeed the only, ways in which an ideal love and
reverence can be fulfilled. It is sufficiently clear, from the
spirit of these prescriptions, that this minuteness itself is
simply an endeavor to inspire the whole of domestic life
with real reverence and love. For the Oriental mind the
very permanence of the form imports, not its rigidity, but
the absoluteness of moral relation, and the pure content
involved in whatever harmonizes with the constitution of
(Oriental) man. "Ceremony," says Pan-kou, u is in no
sense arbitrary ; in its establishment, men found their
proper rules, and checked arbitrary force." We have here
an exact opposite to the oppressive constraint of rites and
observances imposed by a religious law in recognized
antagonism with human nature, and revealed as alien to
reason. So far, it is a form of evolution ; while the other
is a form of subjugation.

No Chinese boy is ever taught that the ceremonial is
purposely enforced against his innate tendencies ; nor is
the ground of its authority placed in mere antiquity, nor in
arbitrary appointment or divine choice. It does not com-
mend itself by the destruction of natural self-respect, but by

EDUCATION. 217

its appeal to the highest assurances and aspirations of his
social life.

Let us cull the soul of the Li-ki, for it has a soul ; and
Chu-hi says : " He who would study rites need only THE LI-KI.
glean from the Li-ki passages of sound morality ^y^*"
and practical wisdom." 1 Upon this work it may rites -
fairly be said that the State religion is substantially
founded.

Laws, according to this philosophy of manners, are of
diverse origin. Some are copies of natural forms ; others
(rcligiojts) proceed from the cultus of ancestors, breathing
humanity and justice ; others (local), from mountains and
rivers ; others (family), from the five domestic relations.

"Rites proceed from the one great Principle of all things, distin-
guishing them, some for heaven, others for earth. When pro-
claimed, they are called commandments ; but they are always copied
from Heaven." 2

Here is no hint of a purpose to legitimate personal,
even imperial, sway. The ceremonial goes behind what is

1 More than a thousand commentaries have been written on the Li-ki, three hundred of
which remain, all dating previous to our age ; besides others continually added (Gallery). It is
classed among the canonical books, and supposed to be founded on the I-li, or Ritual of Man-
ners, ascribed to the great Tcheou-kung, reputed author of the Tcheou-li, 1120 B.C. (Wylie.)
These works, however, have faded out of sight, while the Li-ki still stands, having been, though
without adequate proof, associated with the teachings of Confucius. Gallery's charge, that it
puts unworthy sentiments into the mouth of Confucius, is not very well sustaiend ; and his con-
clusion, that it was written from notes and fragments of his sayings, has as little proof as the
old legend that seventy disciples compiled it from his own manuscripts. More probable is the
suggestion that its diversities of style imply a slow process of accretion. It is a multifarious
work, and deals in every thing relating to Chinese life. The I-li, Tcheou-li, and Li-ki may
have drawn from common sources. The last can be traced with certainty to the Han revival of
letters in the second century B.C., in which it figures as one of the recovered works of great
value. But this was much larger than the present Li-ki, whose date must be about the com-
mencement of the Christian era. It has ever since been regarded as a classic or King. The
history of its growth is given by Pauthier, from Pan-kou, in the Journal Asiatique (Septem-
ber and October, 1867); see also Mtmoires cone, les Ckinois, II. 71-73; Schott, Entwurf,
&c.,p. 17; and Plath, Bay Ak. Jan. 1870. It has been translated into French by Gallery (Turin,
1853), who studied and spoke Chinese for twenty years, passing a long period as missionary in
that country. He thinks the Li-ki " the most complete monograph that the Chinese have
given to the world." Plath calls it "the most important of the old institutes." Williams
thinks " it has had more effect than any other work on Chinese life."

2 Li-ki, ch. viii.

2l8 STRUCTURES.

called "divine right" of kings, or peoples, to the freedom
of nature. Its inmost being is identical with that of man
himself.

" Man emanates (for moral part) from the virtue of Heaven and
Earth ; (for physical) from the union of the two principles Yn and
Yang ; (for spiritual) from the union of spirits and gods ; (for his
proper form) from the subtlest essence of the five elements." *

" Rites must be in harmony with the seasons, related with the pro-
ductions of the earth, and accordant with the sentiment of man ; treat-
ing all things according to their special nature." z

Their symbolism, then, does not follow arbitrary beliefs,
but the order of the universe. It is the record of an im-
memorial moral loyalty, an organized conviction ; and the
Li-ki devotes much space to the physical and moral signifi-
cance of each observance, such as attitudes towards the
quarters of heaven, gradations according to age at feasts,
archery, the use of jade, the marriage rite. 3 Thus, "tak-
ing the virile hat " is the " beginning of rites ; " since

" It is not till filial piety, fraternal regard, fidelity, and loyalty are
well established, that one is truly a man : and only when he is a man
can he govern others." 4

" Confucius said, ' Why should I speak so confidently (about rites) ?
Because I know perfectly the way of acting suitable to each enter-
prise.' " s

" Rites are ways of regulating things : the wise has always a way
for all things in life ; the wise does nothing without rule." 6

" Without rites, virtue and justice are not perfect, nor is education
in manners complete. Nothing is sincere or grave in prayers, sacri-
fices, worship of gods or spirits, without observing them." 7

" By rites, nearness or distance of relationship appears ; doubts are
solved ; true and false set in clear light." 8

Thus their morality is not formal only, but real.

" To practise rites without justice as basis, is to labor and not
plant." 9

1 Li-ki, ch. viii. * Li-ki, ch. ix. s Ibid., chs. ix., x., xvi., xxx.-xxxv.

* Ibid., ch. xxx. B Ibid., ch. ix. 6 Ibid., ch. xxiii.

7 Ibid., ch. i. Ibid. Ibid., ch. viii.

EDUCATION.

2I 9

"Think you that to prepare tables, offer wine, or drink health is to
be called a rite ; that to march about with staves, striking bells and
drums, is to make music ? To speak, and (then) act accordingly, that
is ritual ; to act and find joy therein, that is music." l

" Confucius said, * Return we to ourselves.' The wise has no need
of affectation to appear modest, nor of severity to appear grave ; nor of
speech to inspire respect ... He will blush to have' speech without the
virtues that correspond to it, or to have these virtues without putting
them in practice. It is for this reason, that when he is clothed with a
mourning dress he looks sad ; and when he wears the helmet he has
the air of one whom it will not do to offend." 2

The highest morality is spoken of in direct line with the
observance of rites, as if they were but the reverse side of
the same ideal.

* Wen-tze, Minister of T'sin, had a modesty which made him assume
a bended attitude, as if wanting strength to hold up his dress. His
words were measured, as if he was tongue-tied. He raised more than
seventy persons to high office in finance, yet in his whole life he never
took a bribe." 8

" Compose your exterior ; listen with respect. Do not appropriate
the sayings of others, nor blindly accept all you hear. These the wise
maxims of our oldest kings." 4

" The Prince must respect the old ; he must remain outside his
chariot till he has passed where the great dignitaries sit." 6

Respect for the lowly and for teachers, care for comfort
of the poor and of colonists, and for the rights of farmers
to rest from government-work in hard seasons, filial piety
and well-ordered feasts for old men, speaking truth and
making peace, are prescribed in this Book of Ceremonies
as the ritual of royalty.

" A good emperor uses the justice and order established by the rites
to rule human passions." 6

So the sage's composure is simply the air natural to his
self-respect.

1 Li-ki, ch. xxiii. 2 Ibid., ch. xxvi. 8 Ibid., ch. iv.

< Ibid., ch. i. 6 Ibid. 8 Ibid., ch. viii.

22O STRUCTURES.

" The wise man carries an empty thing with the same calm move-
ment as if it were full ; enters a place where no one is with the same
gravity as if there were people there." l

A part of his ceremonial is independence.

" A sage has said, * A great virtue is not absorbed by a single pub-
lic office ; a great capacity should not be limited like a utensil ; nor a
great loyalty be bound down to terms of contract ; nor a great epoch to
such and such seasons and events." 2

" The wise respects all men, but most himself ; obeying the measure
and limits of right."

" What is it to attain perfection of the person ? Nothing else than
to maintain one's self in duty." 3

Education itself is reduced in the Li-ki to so definite a
system of rules, that it seems to fall fairly enough
within the scope of a " Memorial of Rites." But
and pupil. th ese rules have a natural basis.

" All study should be directed towards learning what properly be-
longs to the function one is to fulfil : if it is letters, the true prepara-
tion is no other than virtue." " Of old, examination was made the
first year to discover the amount of intelligence in the pupil ; the
third year, to learn what occupation he enjoyed and what company he
liked ; the seventh, if he could discuss what he had learned, and who
were his friends, this secured a lower grade of rank ; the ninth
year his knowledge of relations, his insight, and the firmness of his
principles were tested, and this opened the higher grade." " Young
pupils must be taught to listen, but not ask questions beyond their
stage, nor jump from class to class : the teacher can vary methods
according to capacity, and the ability to do this wisely makes the good
teacher, who is equally fit to be a ruler, since the wisdom required
for both functions is the same." " In higher schools the great art is
to prevent vices not yet apparent, by seizing the proper moment and
profiting by time : the true stimulants are to restrain over-haste in
passing from grade to grade, and to let the pupils note each other's
progress." 4

On these generalities are based the Rites of Instruction,
whence is deduced a truth, still unappreciated, even in our

1 Li-kty ch. xiv. z Ibid., ch. xv.

8 Ibid., ch. xxii. * Ibid., ch. xv.

EDUCATION. 221

own school systems, that the choice of teachers cannot be
too carefully made nor the function too highly honored.
A prince's deference to his teacher is homage to virtue,
and the people are taught to respect study. In two cases,
as to the treatment due the representative of ancestors in
religious rites, and the teacher in the exercise of his
function, the prince should not act towards men as sub-
jects. 1 To teachers certain forms of etiquette at court
are remitted.

Religious rites are founded in the same respect for moral
laws.

" Only a man of eminent virtue can properly sacrifice to the Su-
preme ; only the pious son to his parents." 2

"Sacrifices are for him who has made good laws ; to him who has
suffered through his zeal for the public good ; to him who has borne
much toil in giving peace to the Empire ; to him who has prevented a
great calamity." 3

" The pious son walks to the sacrificial rite with timid air, as fear-
ing his filial love is not great enough. In the libation he bends his
body as if he would speak to his parents, and drives away all wander-
ing thoughts. After sacrifice he moves away slowly, not suffering his
eyes and ears to stray from his heart, nor his thought from his father
and mother. Respect and love must show themselves in all his per-
son." 4

We do not enter into the details of ceremonial forms,
because it is more important to vindicate the prin-
ciple of moral fitness and natural order on which Educated

in mutual

they are based in the national mind. However respect.
childish and commonplace these minute prescrip-
tions may appear to us, they are its direct inference
from this principle, and are accepted as absolute types
of the allegiance of mankind to this law. Many of them,
as in instances already given, really approach that value ;
and, notwithstanding the pettiness and formalism involved

1 Li-ki, ch. xv. 2 Ibid., ch. xix.

8 Ibid., ch. xviii. * Ibid., ch. xix.

222 STRUCTURES.

in all ritual performance, must serve to educate a delicate
mutual consideration and social respect, the absence of
which is poorly compensated by any form of " liberty " that
recognizes no law of manners beyond individual caprice.

But there is another aspect of the Rites. It is best in-
Distinction dicated by those passages in the Li-ki which point
riteHnd out the distinction between Rites and Music, the
music. third great element of Chinese education.

" Music makes unity in the sentiments ; rites establish distinctions
between classes of persons: unity produces affection; differences,
respect ; in rites the noble are distinguished from the common, but
in music accord is effected between them. Music has harmony, like
that which exists between heaven and earth ; rites have gradations
similar to those which exist between different beings therein. All
beings having different modes of existence, rites were instituted. The
unceasing mutual movement of heaven and earth gives birth to all
things; hence springs music. Related to music is humanity; related
to rites is justice. Music answers to heaven, rites to earth. When
both are rightly combined, heaven and earth move perfectly, all things
grow, and all creatures are blest." l

This definition seems to point to the ceremonial as a
means of maintaining social subordinations : the differ-
entiating element in nature, human as well as cosmical,
finds expression in its forms of obeisance. But we must
mark the immense difference in meaning from the corre-
sponding Hindu principle of castes, or the fixed hereditary
classes of feudalism. China recognizes neither of these.
From the palace to the hovel the doors stand open, and
there are no essential distinctions between men. But the
son of Han believes in the sacredness of social organiza-
tion, and in the permanence of those distinctive functions
which are founded on natural relations and on the theory
of civil and political life. And it is these differences of
function, not claims of persons and permanent classes,
that rites are supposed to maintain in their integrity.

1 Li-ki, ch. xvi.

EDUCATION. 223

Music is the complement of rites, 1 based on harmonies
as they are on diversities, representing humanity as they
represent justice. It should seem, therefore, to be more
fundamental, as unity is more essential than differences.
In fact the Li-ki expressly declares that

" Rites are from without, music from within. As rites hold the
place of finite beings, so music holds the place of the great Principle
of all things (Tai-ki), in knowing which the knowledge of rites is
involved." 2

" Both possessed together constitute virtue, which means pos-
session, and gives power to do all things without effort." 8

We have here a Chinese expression for the freedom of
one whose faith and works are from one root.

For this prosaic people, also, music is the world of the
ideal. " Only the wise comprehends it." 4 It sig-
nifies the power of sentiment, the inward mystic Chinese
force that blends all differences of outward rela- music .
tion in a common humanity. This is the sub-
stance of the Memorial Chapter of the Li-ki, devoted to
the subject. " Rites are justice ; music is humanity." As
with the Greeks, so here it played a large part in the theory
of education, especially as the divine method of harmo-
nizing passions and guiding the whole emotional nature ;
and to this end the airs suited for different moral effects
were not only carefully distinguished, but, as in the Tcheou-
li, 5 subdivided with a characteristic minuteness that could
have had but little bearing on actual life. The virtues thus
made dependent on music are those which make the Chi-
nese ideal, observing the just mean, concord, veneration
for spirits, respect for superiors, filial love, and friend-
ship. Modes of musical conversation ; musical dances, with
strange barbaric titles ; the six perfect (Yang) and six

1 Commentary to Tcheou-li, B. xvni., 44. 2 Li-ki, ch. xvi.

8 Ibid. So the Tcheou-li, B. xviii. ; see Comment on Sect. 43 and 44.
4 Li-ki, ch. xvi. 6 Tcheou-li, B. xxn.

224 STRUCTURES.

imperfect (Yin) tones ; the eight sounds produced by va-
rious substances ; the nine grand airs suited for bringing
man into close relations with spirits, with animals, and
stars, so as, Orpheus-like, to move their powers ; and the
styles suited for saluting the different seasons, for the
feasts of old men and husbandmen, for great public occa-
sions of all kinds, all under the supervision of the Court
Minister of Musical Instruction," make up the extraordi-
nary picture of music which the unknown authors of the
Tcheou-li J have constructed to match some national idea,
which it is impossible to verify as historical institution.
The representation is, however, interesting, as a sign of
the earnestness with which the idea of harmony as a
human force was traced through every realm of nature
and society.

" The ancients were ashamed of the disorderly expression of joy ;
hence chants were devised to regulate it, so as in different ways to
move the human heart to good." ' 2

The Li-ki traces the relations of music to bodily evolu-
tions ; and Confucius explains its effects by defining it as
an "image of actions and.events."

The inevitable want of spontaneity and moral energy
is less apparent in the Chinese ceremonial, on ac-
. count of these relations to essential morality. The
tone of education, of which it forms so important
an element, is, nevertheless, as we all know, to the last de-
gree pedagogic. This matter-of-fact race moves in ruts of
predetermined purpose. Their ideal is a disciplined con-
formity to precept. Reaction of the mind on the materials
given it, reconstruction of the past in the light of fresh
experience, and sense of creative force, are unprovided for
Result of in the system. Patriarchalism does not contem-
piriT pl ate emancipation from parental care, in this life
or in another. Thus its idea of a teacher is not of

1 Tcheou-li, Bb. xxn. and xxiii. * Li-ki, ch. xvi.

EDUCATION. 225

one who brings forth true manhood from the child by right
suggestion, but of a providence that feeds him with
infusions duly prepared ; just as its idea of a ruler is
that of a protector. Government is defined as " providing
for the wants of the people without indifference or neglect,
tracing for each person his duties, according to position,
and not needlessly multiplying his obligations." The peo-
ple, though of supreme dignity, are for ever a little child.

State and school alike represent the effort to meet man's
need of conformity to a higher law than private

Chinese

fancy, caprice, or power ; but without recognition education
of the equal necessity for personal liberty to test, < j^^ s
doubt, choose, as to the special mode of fulfilling laws be-
such higher law. This liberty, which is man's edu- y nd P"-

J ' vate will.

cation in the meaning of duty, is buried under reit-
erated maxims of antiquity, assumed to carry this meaning
with them in its perfected state. All possible cases being
settled by rule beforehand, a deliberate appeal to reason
in unlooked-for emergencies becomes impossible, and the
plodding routine is vexed by any sudden violation into
helpless panic, and even a kind of madness ; whence the
violent outbreaks that surprise us in so peace-loving a race.
But the suppression of spontaneity by these perpetual
didactics is even worse than the suppression of deliberate
search and choice. The vitality of the moral sense depends
on impulse and direction from within. How much more
readily we spring to a duty that is conceived by ourselves
or only hinted by another, than to one that is stated and
prescribed ! It would not be strange if the Chinese were
specially deficient in the very virtues most forced on the
jaded attention by rote-and-task work. It is not in China
only that ears grow dull to precepts, and limbs are hardened
against the goads of law and gospel. Even in China, were
there no reaction, that great civilization could not have
endured. Elsewhere the protest is more trenchant. The

226 STRUCTURES.

most cherished systems, the highest names, having become
prescriptive ideals enforced by organization, routine, text,
are giving way to new types and symbols, simply because we
demand fresh associations that time and authority have not
spoiled. Such spiritual life as is not paralyzed by their
incessant repetition forsakes them, and no galvanic shocks
nor rallying slaps can make the dead body live. For
heathen, Jew, Christian, the same law of character holds.
Old rituals and symbols must give place to new gospels.
In Church, State, School, incessant blast of law and text
suppresses the natural heat, or else drives it to reaction
against their mechanism, which is of course the only
result consistent with health.

The schools of America and of China alike demonstrate
that the danger of doing too much is quite equal to
^ doing too little, in the way of instruction.

ing in the Our science has broken up much traditional routine,
WwtaHke. an d its stimulus to freedom can hardly be overrated.
But science is as perilous a master in education
as any other. The inconceivable heaps of detail and phrase-
ology, the rote-work of rapid processes assumed to be the
best because rapid, the applied mechanism of culture aiming
at effective exhibition, as seen in drill and concerted per-
formances, reduce the reading, writing, speaking, thinking
in our public schools to a set of uniformities, as destructive
of individual genius as the old jejune Chinese routines.
The importance of the idea justifies repeated reference.
In the plethora of knowledge, as well as its poverty, lurks
the old snare of patriarchalism. There is the same attempt
to read into the child's mind the accumulated wisdom of
maturity, while leaving no room for the play of his own
faculties. Here the same tyranny of method folds him,
with ancestral care, in a rigid machinery of discipline, in
the interest of educational and social economies.

EDUCATION. 227

Rules must be imparted ; but the passion for imparting
rules is the bane of education. Schools must have
organization ; but the sacrifice of personality to The P^-
organization is the return to barbarism. The child formulas,
must learn the laws of Nature ; but let him model
its forms with his own hands, and feel the sense of dis-
covery, and even creativity, whenever he learns a law. A
pure conformity to laws, felt as producing truth and beauty
under one's own self-conscious will, is the inspiration of
culture ; but it is the feeling that makes this conformity
to be life rather than death.

The didactics of a theology that repudiates nature would
have proved at least as suppressive of freedom and
progress in Europe, as the didactics of a natural

morality embodied in educational routines have capes ex-
been in China, but for the secular influences of fu- didactics,
sion among bold, ardent, and enterprising races in
love not with the old but with the new. The long reign and
development of Christian dogma made indispensable an
emancipation of European thought ; which came by trade
and science, and the renaissance of classical culture.
Science itself is subjecting us to the perils of a peda-
gogic phase, as prescriptive religion has already done. But
for East and West alike, great contrasts and contacts
of differing civilizations, with revolutions in religious
thought, prepare the antidote, whose scope will be as
wide as its process is effective.

The Chinese will wonder at our assumptions and rou-
tines as we at theirs, and the revelation of dangers

JMutUcil

and duties will perhaps be mutual. Meanwhile, help of the
we may profitably notice the entire absence of ^ t c
theological exclusiveness, and even dogma, from
the Chinese school system. Education is as secular as pos-
sible ; and those controversies are escaped which concern
not the essence of morality or religion, but the authority of

228 STRUCTURES.

supernatural dogmas, persons, and books. Instruction in
China was never in the hands of monks or priests. As
the only pure example of secular education on a great scale,
it deserves our close examination.

Chinese culture is a process of evolution, whose germs
are in the town and village schools, and expand

The com-

petitive into detailed adaptations to public wants through
tiemT" 1 *" a ra ded series of competitive examinations ; the
ultimate point being the supply of civil and politi-
cal administrative force. This is the motive power of the
process. Its severe tests are a constant sifting of faculty
under the law of " survival of the fittest ; " and the limited
number of public functions, compared with the number of
competitors in these examinations, makes them a fair illus-
tration of the laws of "natural selection." It is thus a kind
of applied Darwinism, in which Chinese " immobility " sup-
plies the place of the immutabilities of Nature. Whatever
its defects, it is a singularly original and profound concep-
tion of the Chinese mind, and one of the greatest contri-
butions to the philosophy of education in human history.
It elevates the school to the place of chief corner-stone in
civilization, makes popular culture the basis of government,
and carefully tested fitness the ground of official position.
No pains have been spared to make this process of selection
thorough, and even to utilize the failure of individuals to
meet its tests. Its principle of securing the best men for
public office, so elaborately wrought out, is the grand justi-
fication of our third main element in Chinese character,
its minute fidelity to the conditions of right work.

Of this most interesting system, brought substantially to
its present form during the period between the eighth and
twelfth centuries, 1 we shall now sketch the main features.

1 Neumann, Lehrsaal d. MittelreicJies, p. 6.

EDUCATION. 229

I. The bachelor's degree, Sin-tsai (Flowering Talents),
is the reward of success in three examinations,

... ... .. P The three

held annually in the district capitals, after pre- Degrees,
liminary visitation of the schools by officials who
prepare and pass up lists of candidates. It is conferred by
the literary chancellor of the province, who is usually a
member of the Han-lin, or of a governmental Board at
Pe-king. 1 The perquisites of this degree are a certain posi-
tion and badge, immunity from corporeal punishment and
right of trial for offences by a literary tribunal ; but its
chief value for the aspirant to public life is that it qualifies
him to be a candidate for the second degree. The impris-
oned competitors write essays on themes appointed by the
chancellor, and but few reach the bachelorship awarded
for the best handwriting and style. The standard is kept
at a level by limiting the number of diplomas obtainable in
each district. 2

II. The next stage is the rank of Kti-jin (Promoted Men),
conferred on success at triennial examinations held in the
provincial capitals before two imperial commissioners, and
simultaneously in all. The occasion corresponds to our
election days in its national character, exciting trie highest
interest, and concentrating personal and patriotic feeling.
Crowded cities testify eager sympathy with the competi-
tion, which has so direct a bearing on the future of the
whole community. The number of candidates in each
province will average six or seven thousand, and sometimes
amounts to thrice that number. 3 The trial lasts nine days,
proving at once the earnestness of the system and the tre-
mendous forces of competition when organized on a national
scale. It is by far the severest of the three trials for literary
honors. The harshness of its solitary confinement day and
night within narrow cells, exposed to wind and rain with-
out a single article of comfort, and its intense mental

1 Doolittle, I. ch. xv. ; Williams, I. 437. 2 Doolittle, I. 352. 8 Brine, p. 21.

23O STRUCTURES.

concentration, especially on the memory, resemble the
asceticism of Hindu or Christian monks, a literary as
theirs was a religious enthusiasm, and result in frequent
cases of exhaustion, paralysis, and death, especially among
the old. 1 As monachism was mostly the creature of an
ecclesiastical police, so this competitive system is under the
strict watch of officials, who search the candidate when he
enters his cell, see that he does not leave it on any pre-
tence, and bring out the victims, if such there should be, for
their friends to carry away. All ages, as well as ranks,
participate in the intellectual struggle. Dr. Martin men-
tions a list of ninety-nine successful competitors, in which
sixteen were over forty years of age, one was sixty-two,
and another eighty-three ! 2 The successful cannot num-
ber more than a tenth of the whole, and disappointment at
failure often ends in suicide. Proclamations and military
salutes greet the victors ; runners and carrier-doves are in
waiting, and boatmen lie on their oars, ready to compete
for the rewards of spreading the news of their success.
Like the Greek athletes, these more peaceful conquerors
are honored with olive boughs borne in procession by
boys. Thanksgivings are paid to Heaven and Earth, an-
cestors blessed, and living relatives put on festive robes. 3
Of these licentiates, 1,300 to 2,000 are created triennially.

III. A triennial examination of Kn-jin confers the mas-
ter's degree of tsin-tsze. This diploma, awarded in larger
proportion to the number of candidates than the rest, se-
cures introduction to the Emperor, and the three highest on
the list receive special official rewards at his hand. 4 From
150 to 400 members of this literary knighthood are created
every three years. Many are selected for special functions
or tasks desired by the State ; and most receive district or

1 Meadows' s Chinese and their Rebellions, pp. 405-6; Lockhart, Med. Miss, in China,
p. 16.

z Article on Chin. Camlet. Examinations (N. A . Rev. 1870).
8 Doolittle, I. 413, 414. 4 Williams, I. 445.

EDUCATION. 231

provincial offices, distributed by lot. The examination lasts
thirteen days, 1 and is conducted by the highest officials.

Finally, the tsin-tsze compete for admission into the Im-
perial Academy, the highest literary body in the
State ; whose labors are pursued under the direct e Han "
supervision of the Emperor, and represent that
supremacy of literary culture among the elements of na-
tional life, on which Chinese civilization rests. The Han-
lin, or " Forest of Pencils," received its name from the
employment of a host of scribes in the transcription of
books, by the emperor Tai-tsung of the T'ang dynasty,
1,200 years ago, before the invention of printing ; constitut-
ing but a portion of the tasks assigned by this scholarly and
liberal prince to his ablest literati, of which this Academy
was the result. 2 Its members are the national historians,
poets, translators, and commentators ; encyclopedists, lexi-
cographers, compilers on a great scale. They frame docu-
ments for public uses, patents, titles, addresses, and prayers,
inscriptions on state seals and on public monuments. They
are the Emperor's councillors, censors, recorders of his daily
doings, and assistants at his studies, reading and expound-
ing the classical writings ; high examiners in the provinces,
publishers of the best essays there produced, and general
managers of education. All their functions are, however,
under supreme direction ; and their numerous branches,
composed of Manchu and Chinese in about equal propor-
tions, are organized with much care for the purposes of
national centralization. A place in this literary House of
Peers, whose active members number but about seventy, is
of course the highest goal of personal ambition, especially
as it is a result of open competition, and the reward of real
ability. The examination is triennial, and held in the
palace in presence of the highest personages of the realm. 3

1 Plath. 2 Martin, N. A. Rev. 1874; Bazin, Journ. Asiat., January, 1858.

Ibid.

232 STRUCTURES.

The culmination of this pyramid of national endeavor is
Theiau- tne choice, every third year, of a literary laureate,
reate. the symbolic glory and crown of the Confucian
institutions, who receives honors second only to those of
imperial dignity itself.

We complete the picture of competitive culture when we
add the trials in archery, horsemanship, and strength intro-
duced by the present dynasty among the imperial troops.
They are of a very primitive character, and imply no sys-
tematic military education whatever. 1

Of the scope of studies comprehended in these examina-
tions we may at least say that the term literature
The ma- i s coextensive with the objects of public spheres
study and functions. The themes of the common-school
programme are taken from the Confucian books.
The main object being to learn how to write and compose,
the first reward is given to the best essayists on matters
suggested by the study of these works, which illustrate in a
great variety of ways the duties and opportunities of the
State. There is but little teaching in branches of special
science outside these and other similar compends of moral
and historical principles. The arts and sciences are taught
in China only in their actual manipulation, on which the
youth enters without preliminaries. Their principles are
studied only in the concrete process. But if the old adage
be true, that " he who knows the powers of ten thousand
written characters is qualified for the degree of bachelor,"
the task of attaining this honor will certainly bear com-
parison with the labors of students in the lower schools of
other countries. It must bring training to the eye and
to the memory, and enforce the association of forms with
facts, of names with things.

1 Williams, I. 446; Doolittle, I. ch. xvi. ; Chittese Repos., 1835; Plath, Schule und
Unterricht \\\Alt. China (Bayer. Akad., Juli, 1868).

EDUCATION.

^v X/"/. H

At the higher schools a broader range is taken^ a^^T the
examination for licentiates adds the Five Kings (or Sacfech *
Classics) and their commentaries, embracing the whole /*y
substance of Chinese thought in all times. 1 The scholars
are invited to show all they know on astronomy, topog-
raphy, the political divisions of the Empire and the history
of changes therein, as well as on questions of literary criti-
cism and the schools of commentators ; on the treasures of
the libraries, their collection and destruction ; on the his-
tory of military rules, hydraulic and agricultural achieve-
ments, and the currency. 2 Penmanship figures at the end,
as at the beginning, of the series.

The length of time and mass of literary records covered
by these questions demand of the essayist great
research. The critical faculty is brought into ex- ^J^* "
ercise, and within the limits set by Chinese rever- brought
ence for the past there is a place for original 2l**
judgment and for fresh combination of the old
materials to new suggestions. The bounds are set rather
in mental organization than in the nature of the questions,
which are of the widest bearing. 3 The concentrated rev-
erence brought to bear on literary treasures as such, and
the practical application of them to governmental affairs,
are themselves an education in refinement and taste which
places China among the first of nations in the scale of
civilization. That extreme regard to precise and perfect
expression, which has prescribed minute rules for the struc-
ture of these competitive essays, cultivates, like Greek
letters, many delicate moral and aesthetic qualities which
offset their mechanical tone, and which are less conspicuous
in the freer literature of the West. On the one hand, the
highest merit of these essays is to contain abundant cita-

1 Doolittlc's Account of the Fu-chau Colleges, I. 378. 2 Brine and others.

3 In Meadows, Chinese Rebellions, p. 404, there is a paper from the Shanghai Almanac
descriptive of these questions.

234 STRUCTURES.

tions from classical authorities ; and the specimens we
have at command are exceedingly commonplace, ringing
verbal changes on the power of example, the expansive
force of virtue from the man to the mass, the prince to the
people, the importance of the national virtues of polite-
ness and mutual deference, the adaptation of qualities to
functions, and the sacredness of filial and fraternal piety.
But, on the other hand, we shall not do justice to this end-
less moral iteration if we do not weigh well its persistency,
its enthusiasm, and the faith of three hundred millions
in the all-sufficiency of its eternal basis to preserve the
State. Nor has any other known system come so near
to practical success in securing the best talent of a people
to the public service.

In its strict adherence to the national classics, this Chi-
nese curriculum may be compared with the regula-
from SI ' tions of the rigid Christian Emperor Justinian for
christen- t ne study of Roman law, after he had reconstructed
the Corpus Juris in the sixth century. No com-
mentary was allowed the student, who must study the
Digests alone for five years. 1

The " Trivium and Quadrivium " of the mediaeval col-
leges were quite as jejune as the Chinese programme in
respect of positive science, though comprising rhetoric,
logic, grammar, arithmetic, astronomy, geometry, music.
Seneca mentions the same, all but the first two, as the
sum of Roman teachings in his day. The Chinese course
yields at least an acquaintance with the whole history of
public administration, from abundant records, for more
than two thousand years. The way is certainly opened
here for engrafting as broad a scientific training as the
more expanded social experience of the West imparts.

The abuses of the competitive system are perhaps not

1 Hadley's Roman Law, p. 19.

EDUCATION. 235

greater than so vast and complicated a mechanism so
beset with incentives to private ambition and self- Abuses of
aggrandizement of necessity involves. They are ^JT"
bribery of the examiners and of the attendants ; system.
forgery of diplomas ; purchase of honors by subscription to
public works ; brains of poor but able scholars loaned to write
essays in the name of rich and stupid ones ; betting on the
chances of candidates ; and the sale of degrees by Govern-
ment whenever its financial resources fail, as especially
during the last half century of wars, rebellions, and public
calamities. > The last-mentioned vice is in such utter viola-
tion of the whole spirit of the system, so incompatible with
its very existence, that it must be 'exceptional. 1 Strong
protests have in fact been made to the Emperor, showing
how cruelly it deprived real licentiates of their just earn-
ings. In 1822 it was urged by the censors that five
thousand doctors and twenty-seven thousand licentiates
were waiting employment. What, a hive of discontent is
here ! A bad case for Chinese political virtue is set
forth by some of the missionaries who have detailed these
abuses ; 2 but after our American experience it will hardly
be maintained that the sale of "button-scrip" in China
is an anomaly in political history, or a special result of
heathenism.

It is scarcely fair to reckon among the abuses of the
system the gift of offices properly the perquisite of licen-
tiates, for patriotic services, and for conspicuous talent and
fidelity. This is rather a proof of its power of expand-
ing beyond formal routine, to recognize noble and saving
work outside the schools. It supplements the purely lit-
erary element with practical checks and balances of obvi-
ous advantage.
.Williams, by no means a partial witness, allows that

1 Lockhart, p. 6. * Especially by Doolittle.

236 STRUCTURES.

" the highest officers carry on the unwieldy machine
its moral with a degree of integrity, patriotism, industry,
" esults - and good order which shows that the leading
minds in it are well chosen." l Public opinion compels a
reasonable fairness in the conduct of these literary camps,
whence issue every three years a band of well-drilled,
ready-witted, and enlarged statesmen of the Chinese
stamp. 2 These have the self-respect of persons conscious
of having earned their positions by fair and open competi-
tion. We may well believe the statement of Dr. Martin,
that they are the best specimens of the educated classes,
and that they are held by public opinion to a high stand-
ard of ability, as well as of devotion to the general inter-
ests of education. 3 The Han-lin scholars, whose science
has its share of delusions, and whose memoirs are but a
meagre and trivial record of imperial doings, adminis-
ter public and provincial affairs with energy, publish a
vast amount of literature, and exhibit the fruits of their
training in a wonderful development of memory, acute-
ness, and literary taste, which is wholly at the service of
the State. Mandarins who have bought degrees are not
treated with respect. 4 Those who ride into office on the
paid work of others are styled " siu-tsai on the crupper."
Forged diplomas are against the pecuniary interest of the
examiners, and the crime is apt to be severely pursued and
punished. 5 The law has strong precautions to prevent
collusion between examiners and students. 6 The students
are equally interested in fair-dealing, and frequently rise
in concert against injustice on the part of the State offi-
cials in charge of examinations. 7 That there is compar-
atively little corruption 8 in the general management is but

1 Middle Kingdom, I. 451. 2 Chinese Repos., July, 1835.

8 North American Review, 1870. * De Mas, II. 334.

6 La Chine Ouverte, p. 224. 6 Doolittle, I. 427.

7 Williams, I. 453. 8 Martin, in Journ. Am. Or. Soc., May, 1869.

EDUCATION. 237

the natural result of these causes. The President of the
Board of Examiners at Pe-king was recently put to death
for issuing fraudulent degrees. 1 To debase this system
is to overturn the very corner-stones of Chinese opportu-
nity and faith.

Even the disappointed competitors flung off by its relent-
less mechanism serve to strengthen it ; for Chinese culture
knows no refuse, but returns every thing in some form back
to the soil. These victims of the system are provided
for. They are the village schoolmasters, the private in-
structors, the petty officers without national weight. They
are also the protestant element, that helps save the system
by revolt against its pedagogy and its merciless rigidity
of grasp. Most rebellions in China, safety-valves to its
conservatism, originate in disappointed literary ambition,
the efforts of defeated candidates to make themselves a
career.

Beyond question this educational system, so centralized
and so uniform, is the real unitary force that over-
comes local differences and natural barriers over
the vast area of the Empire, by giving every man
an equal interest in the whole nation. The Chinese could
never have fallen upon it by chance, or by the inventive
genius of any man ; nor indeed by any other fact is it
explicable but the marvellous force of solidarity which
resides in this self-organizing race, whose central motive
is never in the individual, but in the whole. By its steady
circulations, the philosophy of life and duty adherent to
the national type becomes a common treasure in its high-
est and fullest meaning, a heritage of all generations ;
literature and patriotism are identified, as soul and body ;
real study absorbs the youth, to the exclusion of political
manoeuvre ; an ideal test and standard animates all effort,

1 Martin, in Journ. Am. Or. Sac., May, 1869.

238 STRUCTURES. '

incessant and inevitable ; a democratic principle of free
competition counteracts the absolutism of patriarchal gov-
ernment, sifting out the energy, talent, and devotion of
the masses ; offices are filled from the ranks of those who
comprehend the public needs. In a word, the school-house
is a nursery of public duties and national aims ; nor are
there wanting records of its being used for public meet-
ings, in which free criticism of the Government found
utterance. These are, each and all, profoundly important
elements of national good. So far as the unprogressive
round of Chinese experience permits them to go, they are
real powers, protective and directive ; and so vital and
supreme over personal caprice that they may be regarded
as supplying what we shall venture, at some risk of being
misconceived, to call ^^constitutional charter of Chinese free-
dom. It seems to have been a gradual result of the sense
of national unity, which followed the abolition of feudal-
ized States by the Chinese Charlemagne, Chi-hwang-ti, in
the third century, B.C.

We shall hereafter have occasion to study more care-
fully the actual influence of this constant supply of
uses. lg tested officials to the public service, in securing so
long a lifetime to the Chinese Empire. At present
we need only point to the equity of the system and its
universal opportunity, to its appeal to the natural tests
of character, io its stimulative qualities, the scope of
the interest it awakens, and its reach down to that best
principle of administration, the right of those alone to
official position who have earned it by discipline and fit-
ness. These grounds suffice to excite our admiration at
the wisdom that created out of the patriarchal absolutism
of the East, without scientific or external aid, such a polit-
ical system of rational economies, as well as of checks and
balances to control despotism, as this. They prepare us to
listen with respect even to the enthusiastic testimony

EDUCATION. 239

recorded by competent observers of its working results.
Speer was so impressed by the jubilee with which the suc-
cessful candidates are greeted, as to shed tears at the
thought that no such sublime and delightful spectacles were
witnessed in his own country. 1 " Whatever imperfections
may attach to her system," says Dr. Martin, " China has
devised the most effectual method of encouraging effort
and rewarding merit. Here is at least one country where
wealth is not allowed to raise its -possessor to a seat of
power ; where even the will of an emperor cannot bestow
its offices on uneducated favorites ; and where the ca-
price of the multitude is not permitted to confer the
honors of the State on incompetent demagogues." 2

The most serious defect of this system is its exclusion
of woman. The prejudice against female educa-
tion universal in the East might even seem to be ^^2!
intensified in China, by an absorption of the whole
educational idea in the interests of that one sphere which
has been in almost all ages monopolized by the other sex.
The term political disfranchisement is hardly applicable
in China ; but the absence of what is embraced in polit-
ical education suppresses of course the most powerful
stimulus of the intellectual life. The educational condi-
tion of the poorest class of women must be deplorable, as
it is in every country of Christendom : yet such statements
as Bridgman's, that not more than one in a hundred females
can read, and Morrison's, that no poor women can read,
and but few rich, can hardly be accepted on such author-
ity, 3 missionaries, although in some measure acquainted
with the language, being naturally almost wholly excluded
from female society in China. We may even say that the

1 Spear's China, p. 540.

2 North American Review, 1870; see also Meadows' s Notes, &c., XI.

3 See on the other hand De Rosny, Seances des Orientates (1873), I. p. 154; Giles's
Sketches, pp. 11-13.

240 STRUCTURES.

obstacles to equal opportunity arise here from the politi-
cal purposes of all teaching, not from prejudice against the
pursuit of knowledge by the female mind. In fact, public
opinion has hardly any more to learn on this last point in
China than in Europe or America. The contents of Chinese
novels, their wide circulation, and the universal habit of post-
ing scrolls, placards, and mottoes, prove that the supposed
illiteracy of half the population is an exaggeration. We
may draw the same inference from the " letter writers "
compiled for the use of women, and the pride taken by girls
in showing their knowledge of letters. The education of
the favored classes consists mainly in embroidery and
painting on silk, with music. After these, however, accord-
ing to the " Female Instructor," come rearing silk-worms
and preparing food and sacrifices, then, "study and learn-
ing can fill up the time." " Some women are school-
teachers, who instruct in needle-work and domestic duties ;
and ladies are to be found who are learned in ancient law, and
who make verses." * Not only have educated women had
fame in China, but the highest honors are represented as
paid to female paragons of classical and poetic culture by
the emperor himself in the most admired works of fiction in
the Empire. 2 The Tcheou-li (VII. 32) mentions a class of
female annalists who registered matters pertaining to the
empress. The heroine in a popular novel is usually well
versed in literature, and the plot is apt to turn on the sym-
pathy of the sexes in the honors and pleasures of literary
pursuits. Memoirs of eminent persons, in which China
abounds, invariably treat literary women with respect, and
commend the careful training of girls in all branches by
parents and teachers. In no other country of the East is
there so much respect for female scholarship as in China,
or so much desire on the part of literary persons to have
their daughters noticed as musicians, poets, and classical

1 Chinese Refos., Sept., 1837. 2 L es Jeunes Fslles Lettrees, translated by Jnlien.

EDUCATION. 241

students, for the sake of the family name. 1 Long lists of
distinguished women are given ; one compilation of me-
moirs, made in the second century, B.C., fills one hundred
and twenty-five volumes. 2 The " Precepts of Pan Hwi-
pan " (A.C. 80) are in high repute, serving as foundation to
many similar works. Lu-Chau's "Instructor" ascribes
good manners to the influence of woman, as well as orderly
home disciplines.

A brief sketch of the history of education in China will
show the depth of its relation to patriarchalism, and History
reveal a universal element in that root principle of * the .'

educational

the national religion. system.

From this relation comes its political aim and function.
The State is the embodiment of paternal cares and Qri inin
duties, and education is its minister for their accom- patriarch-
plishment. In the idea of governmental care for a
the people this public instruction originates ; in govern-
ment administration, for a similar purpose, it terminates.
Confucius and Mencius trace it back to Yao and Shun.

" If men are well fed, clad, and lodged, without being taught, they
become like beasts ; for man possesses a moral nature. This was
Shun's anxious care, and he appointed a minister of instruction to
teach the relations of humanity, how between father and son there
should be affection; between sovereign and minister, righteousness;
between husband and wife, regard to their separate functions ; be-
tween old and young, proper order ; and between friends, fidelity. To
him the Emperor said : ' Encourage, lead them on ; rectify them ;
straighten them ; help them ; give them wings ; causing them to be-
come possessors of themselves.' " 8

That so noble an impulse should proceed from the oldest
social system in human history, the patriarchal, A
suggests certain questions, too large to be here tionfor
discussed : for example, whether we, who have repub
outlived its infantile theory of the origin of authority,

1 Williams, I. 453, 454. * Schott's Entwurf, &c., p. 77.

8 Mencius, III. pt. i. iv. 8.

242 STRUCTURES.

have as yet vindicated our transfer of this principle to
the self-governing power of the masses, by free choice si
equally noble ends ; whether the majority-rule in our own
public-school system is not practically as absolute as the
patriarchal in the Eastern world, in dealing with its com-
plex interests ; whether the indirect influence exerted by
current political motives and methods upon the spirit of
this American institution is not rendering it as subser-
vient to the political sphere as the Chinese system ; and,
finally, whether it at present embodies the genius and
desire of the people more fully than the latter does a
national faith, of which we can hardly conceive a more
consistent expression.

We trace the theory of governmental duty just quoted
Records through all the standard records of Chinese belief,
of the in the different epochs of its history. " A disciple
goTe- asked, ' Since the people are so numerous, what
mental more is needful ? ' Confucius replied, ' Make them
ttwLds wel1 fc' ' After that what else ? ' ' Instruct them,'
schools. replied the master." 1 The Li-ki urges popular
instruction as the first of governmental duties. It de-
scribes imperial visits to the provincial schools, to offer
sacrifices to famous teachers, and to proclaim the principles
of natural ethics to the people. 2 In the Tcheou-li, which
claims to be much older, imperial functionaries read the
laws and precepts to the masses, inquire into the conduct
of officials, select the best graduates, and advance them to
public posts. The Shu-king itself mentions triennial ex-
aminations of merit, the promotion of deserving persons
after three competitions, and the appointment of a superin-
tendent of music, as among the institutions of the great
Shun. 3

Confucius says that the essential constitutions of the
first three dynasties were the same. 4 It is interesting to

1 Lunyu, XIII. 9. 2 Li-ki-ch. HiokL

Shu-king, P- II- I- 27, 24. Lunyu, III. 2.

EDUCATION. 243

notice that the Shu-king describes the substance of tuition
at the beginning of the national history as included in " The
Five Instructions :" a phrase which has continued to cover
the whole educational ground in the same way down to the
present time ; embracing the ethics of man's natural rela-
tions to himself and to others, the unchanging Chinese
ideal.

A chain of documentary harmonies like this renders it
extremely probable that the general educational And uh
principles and methods now prevalent in China of Chinese
go back to a very remote date. 1 Yet it gives us s
little information on the details of their popular develop-
ment. Even if we accept the Tcheou-li as representing a
period many hundred years before Confucius, we find that
its references are mainly to special schools for the young
princes and nobles in the feudal period of China, and teach
us nothing about the people. It is somewhat different
with the Li-ki, which speaks of district and town schools
as universal. 2 Mencius, whose authority on ancient mat-
ters is slight, refers to graded schools in the first three
dynasties. 3 What is reported of pupils in the Tcheou
period, with so much definiteness, their study of writing,
numbers, and domestic duties at the primary schools, from
the age of eight years to fifteen ; then of rites, music,
and customs, civil and political, at the higher ones ; their
academic course in the principal provincial towns ; the
presentation of the best to the Emperor for official educa-
tion, after examination in rites, morality, and exercises of
war ; the inquiries made of the people as to their opin-
ion of candidates, all this is manifestly a later theo-
retic construction. The practical method of conducting
such arrangements is nowhere given ; their execution was
plainly impracticable in the then condition of China ; and

1 See Plath. * Ch. xv.

8 Mencius, III. pt. i. iii. 10.

244 STRUCTURES.

the Tcheou-li itself is far too minute in its whole structure
to represent any actual governmental organization. Its
elaborate details of education in the royal schools, with
programme for every year of the life and subdivisions of
studies for every season, are open to the same objection.

There is in fact a serious defect of evidence as to the
extent and character of the school system in very
e^idlnce! ancient times - We sha11 hardly find grounds for
Biot's positive belief that public schools existed
under Yao and Shun, since they are probably mythical
monarchs, analogous to the first Hebrew patriarchs, and
are referred back to twenty-four centuries before our era. 1
The Li-ki's enthusiastic laudation of the primitive Chi-
nese and their perfect institutions throws discredit on its
statement that in the oldest times each street had its " halls
of instruction," each canton its schools, each department
its colleges, each principality its learned academy. It is
not only contrary to the laws of human progress that such
completeness of organization should have existed so early
in the life of a nation, but the feudal States of China, down
to the age of Chi-hwang-ti, were full of wars and jealousies,
and nothing like a central government, with powers ade-
quate to such results, could possibly have existed. The
most that can be inferred from the testimony of the Chi-
nese books to a great uniform system of public instruction
in the primeval past is that the educational impulse is so
deep and earnest in this people, that even in early times it
must have had some definite expression, that
Conciu- schools O f some sort were open to the people dur-

sions.

ing most of the Tcheou epoch (1200-250 B.C.), and
that the immemorial ideal of governmental duty would
have closely connected them with official stations. The
political theory of moral qualification, as condition of ad-

1 Public Education in China.

EDUCATION. 245

vancement, may well be held to have already lasted more
than 3,000 years. The Shu-King is certainly at least as
old as Confucius, and probably embodies what is even
much earlier. It describes this substance of good govern-
ment in terms that have not since been improved, in the
charge of Shun to his twelve mou (pastors of the people) :
" Cultivate the abilities of those near you ; give honor to
the virtuous ; put confidence in the good." l And Yu is
charged by his own minister : " In employing men of worth,
let no one come between you and them." 2 The Tcheou-li
further defines the six tests of public capacity, one and all,
as combinations of integrity with special distinctive traits. 8

Whatever elements of unity China may have possessed
at an earlier period than the eighth century, B.C.,

Historical

the demoralization which steadily advanced from origin of

that date onward must have speedily destroyed *
them. In the feudal discords that disintegrated the
Empire, Ma-touan-lin tells us, schools were neglected, offices
became hereditary, and competitive examinations under the
auspices of the literati were no longer held. But a reaction
came two or three centuries later in Confucius and Mencius,
who, in the depths of this degeneracy, revived the national
idea ; reconstructing and practically creating those classic
books by which the materials were supplied for a national
system of popular instruction. But the wars of rival chiefs
and States grew more desperate ; and anarchy raged, with a
violence that perhaps has never been exceeded, down to the
third century, B.C. The peaceful ideal of the prophets
could only be accomplished by the sword of a conqueror.
The combatants were mastered by the prince of Influence
T'sin, and China became a centralized monarchy, otchi-
The new military hero, it is averred, brought
the barbarism of the West to sweep away every ves-

1 Shu-king, P. II. i. 16. 2 Ibid. II. 6. Tcheou-li, B. III. 24.

246 STRUCTURES.

tige of the literary spirit of older China ; his first acts
were to burn the classics and silence the teachers, mas-
sacring the recusant among them ; apparently resolved
that China should date her history from himself. 1 What
he did with the schools is not clear. But it seems hardly
probable that a rulqr who opened public roads, achieved
great national works, gave landed rights to the people, and
reduced ideographic writing to unity and simplicity, 2 and
one of whose generals invented paper and the use of ink
and brush, instead of the style on bamboo plates, thus
opening a new era in literary progress, should have
abolished popular education. But all Chinese literati agree
in describing him as a barbarian, and relating atrocities
that would go near to proving a Caesarian insanity. 3 What
else could they do with the radical reformer who dared to
strip China of her sacred past ?

It is probable that the military spirit, essential in that
epoch of disintegration to national consolidation and de-
velopment, found the pacific and pedagogic character of the
literary class in its way, and was compelled to suppress it
for the time, by forces stronger than personal ambition or
the interests of a class. It was significant of this higher
meaning that the great invention which initiated popular
literary progress, the use of the pencil upon paper, came
from the military sphere. This at least T'sin Chi-hwang-ti
did. He organized a great Empire in place of utter feudal
disintegration. And only out of this ferment of germinating
forces, and his final solution of it, could any thing like a per-
manent uniform system of public education have emanated.
That this was the almost immediate, though unintended,
effect of his conquests proves the prodigious force of the
national bias in this direction. Thirty years after the death
of the great innovator his dynasty was overthrown, to be

1 Mhn. des Missionaires de Pekin, III. 269-70.

2 De Mas, 366-368. 3 PJUzmaier, Wien. Akad. October, 1859.

EDUCATION. 247

thenceforth a byword on the lips of the nation. The Han,
as famous as the T'sin is infamous, re-estabrished
the old laws, recovered the books, re-created the an

libraries, restored the political supremacy of the um P hsof
i T r* i ^ i i i . r the s y stem -

learned. So short-lived was this suppression of

the great idea of honor to the wisest and best. China, say
the historians, was at once filled with schools and colleges,
and Confucius received divine honors. Here was probably
the true beginning of the great educational system.

Buddhist kings succeeded, opposed to the literary prin-
ciple ; eunuchs, powerful at court, persecuted its adherents ;
Taoism on the throne and in popular superstitions, it is
said, discouraged it; 1 anarchy threatened it. But the brill-
iant T'ang dynasty completed its renovation ; perfecting
the school system amidst the Augustan age of China. The
competitive examinations for public office, originating in
the seventh century, are believed to have been fully organ-
ized during the eighth, and the Great Academy was in its
glory at the head of the literary life of the nation by the
middle of the tenth ; furnishing not imperial poets and his-
torians only, but directors of instruction and examiners of
the schools. During the same period the Tao sect accepted
the system, and the eunuchal power, hostile to literature,
was crushed.

In the twelfth century, invited to aid in subduing a re-
volted tribe, and then turning against his allies, came
Tchinggis Khan with his rovers of the steppes, to sweep all
the old stabilities like dust before the blast of their speed.
They began by making pastures of the provinces for their
herds ; a few years pass, and they are sitting at the feet of
Yao and Shun, fulfilling the peaceful disciplines of the
schools. This latitudinarian Tartar dynasty invited the
literature of all races. They renovated the ethico-political
theory of teaching, built temples to Confucius, translated

1 Bazin, Journ. Asiatique, 1858.

248 STRUCTURES.

his works into the Mongol tongue. When they dropped
off from the 'national ideal, they were dethroned and ex-
pelled.

The patriotic Ming encouraged letters. The Han-lin
was reorganized, with a bureau of legislation for discussing
projects of laws, and other special committees for trans-
lation, science, history, and letters. As the crown of the
educational system, it passed its members through ten years
of study before bestowment of public functions.

Last of all came the Man-chus, present rulers of China,
entering as pacificators, and really carrying out the insti-
tutions of the conquered dynasty. While fastening certain
marks of degradation on the subject race, they have re-
spected the ancient " rules of Yao and Shun." The com-
petitive examinations have supplied their civil list, and the
Great Academy has probably published more volumes,
such as they are, than all the learned bodies of Europe
combined. 1 Its decaying halls in the now impoverished
capital, as recently described by Dr. Martin, afford no indi-
cations of its real efficiency as a civil and political force.
The corruptions of the politico-literary system, that have
grown out of the disturbed state of the Empire, and its
financial distresses during the last half-century, have been
confessedly great. But they have not impaired the con-
fidence of the nation in the principles of its system, which
still overrides all differences and underlies all desires.

Here then is a spectacle for the nations. A political
system founded on competitive disciplines in the
best historical and literary resources attainable,
of this this material substantially moral, and this culture
tory * in theory, and to a good degree in practice, peace-
ful, philanthropic, democratic ; a political system like
this taking precedence of war, policy, trade, subsisting at

1 See for list, Bazin, Journ. Asiat., January, 1858, pp. 65-104.

EDUCATION.

249

the very least for two thousand five hundred years, perhaps
much longer, through all changes natural and civil, control-
ling wild nomads and bringing hundreds of millions into a
single whole, as uniform and orderly as it is complex and
refined. Is there any essential quality of religion that is
wanting to this record of China's fidelity to the principle
that the authority of knowledge and virtue is the only
foundation of a State ? Making due allowance for the
peculiar form under which Chinese idealism appears, his-
tory will be searched in vain for a parallel to this testimony
to the persistency and vigor of a moral conviction, the all-
sufficing strength of an ideal faith.

Admit that it is formal, unprogressive, the fond at-
tachment of a routine-bound people to the lessons of their
infancy ; admit that if more freedom in pursuing and
unfolding the abstract principles of social science, in place
of crystallizing these in their earliest expression, had been
according to the Chinese mind, it would have said and
thought less of this "exclusively moral" culture; admit
that the construction is artificial, mechanical, overstrained,
nevertheless it is conscience ; it is benevolence ; affirm-
ing their intense vitality, century after century, in the soul
of the least ardent, the least speculative, and apparently the
most materialistic of civilized races : an impressive fact,
that will lend its weight on the side of human nature
against many hopeless and exclusive dogmas of theolo-
gians.

Where else in the history of States shall we find a per-
manent national endeavor to give practical effect
to the theory that government properly belongs to
the wisest and best persons ? Plato theorized :
" Not for a child only, but for a man also, it is better to be
ruled by his better than to rule." 1 His affirmation though
capable of being misconceived, to the disparagement of

1 First Alcibiades.

25O STRUCTURES.

j^-government, or of government by principles indepen-
dently of persons really gives the corner-stone of political
ethics. His " golden, silver, brazen, and iron souls " are re-
alities, and the oracle in his " Republic" tells very palpable
truth where it says, " Whenever iron or brass shall hold
the public guardianship, the State will perish." But the
Platonic wisdom provided no practical method for accom-
plishing its ends, and no Grecian State ever made serious
attempt to adopt it in the form of disciplines or institu-
tions. Pauk predicts that the saints shall rule the earth ;
but Paul's " saints " were worshippers of Jesus, a body of
spiritually " elect " persons in the first century of the
Christian faith, as far as possible removed from practical
or political wisdom, or even from belief in the capabilities
of the natural world for continued existence as a political
sphere, even for a generation, In classical heathenism the
grand abstract truth of the right of the wisest and best to
rule was held to be Utopian : in Christianity it held itself
to be supernatural only. Men shrank from the hopeless
task of determining its positive conditions, of marshalling
the social elements to its control, of applying its tests
and instituting its disciplines. It was for the plodding,
matter-of-fact Chinese, obeying their instinct of bringing
the ideal at once into concrete and permanent form, to put
that truth straightway into governmental administration,
with a heartiness of faith that has seemed imperishable.
All great religions have ideally announced it. The human
conscience affirms its " Higher Law." But only the beard-
less Mongolian ever set steadfastly about making it the
real and positive law. The civilizations have said, " Poli-
tics and morality are distinct spheres." " Not so," say the
far-descended State-builders of the tribes of Han ; " politics
are morality, or they are nothing." The difficulties do not
appal them, the fearful failures in practice do not quench
their faith in that eternal principle. It stands as absolute

EDUCATION. 251

as the faith of the older Hebrews in their doctrine that
suffering is always the consequence of sin, and happiness
the sign of virtue, which they cherished through all prac-
tical refutations and rebuffs for ages, with the simple rev-
erence of primal human conscience for what seems to it a
self-evident ethical law. But the Chinese ideal of positive
government stands fast for mankind, while the Hebrew
theory of evil yields to wider experience of spiritual
laws.

For the Chinese man in his concreteness had a presenti-
ment of science. He instituted a method of testing the
virtue and knowledge required for political uses, and com-
mitted himself to that method without reserve, staking
upon its truth all his patriarchal ties, traditions, hopes.
For thousands of years he has found that method adequate.
It has been his substitute for what other races call enthu-
siasm, inspiration, progress. The largest science of the
nineteenth century has no better method to offer than his.
Unquestionably the principle it embodies will have to
enter into political institutions in a form nobler than any
ever yet conceived. But the Mongolian realist, led by
natural conscience, not forced by terrible retributions as
the West is, at least did his best to enact it as the one
thing needful, he alone. The ancient Persians were
said to have taught their children virtue as other nations
taught theirs letters ; but nothing like the vast organized
machinery for that purpose, which China has maintained,
ever existed in Persia or anywhere else.

Make what deductions we will ; allow that the man or the
nation, whose very selfishness, having separated

. . Estimate

politics from the conscience, has yet by its own O fthe
penalties forced the maturer powers to reconcile facts -
what Nature forbids to put asunder, stands far in advance
of the child who has never dreamed of the separation,
when we have granted all that is herein implied, the

252 STRUCTURES.

long reach of this Chinese record of moral vitality does not
lose its impressiveness. It is not pretended that history
is a degeneration, nor that we are worse off than the
Orientals were centuries ago. Higher possibilities have
come with social growth, whether well or ill improved.
None the less do these busy mechanicians rebuke us with
their endless endeavor, under conditions in many respects
primitive, to establish a virtuous commonwealth.

Their obvious shortcomings in practice do not contra-
vene the steadfast appreciation which has adhered to such
a theory through the vicissitudes of ages, while so many
empires have come and gone. Nor must these defects be
exaggerated. Tricks of petty Canton traders it will hardly
become those who study human nature in the columns of
the American daily press to judge with rigor. The probity
of leading Chinese merchants will not suffer by comparison
with the mercantile houses of any Christian State. Spite
of Confucius, China has had its full share of border and
civil wars. What shall we say of the war debt of England,
or of the military history of the American Union in its
dealing with slavery, with the Indian tribes, with the ele-
ments of discord on its borders, and in the half-met issues
of its civil war ? Spite of the theory of honor to merit,
corrupt officials pervert justice in China as elsewhere : it
is no easy matter to give the saints their political and civil
rule ; but at least the Chinese have never learned to mock
at the idea of such a thing. They not only firmly believe
in its possibility, but stake their political existence on the
steps to it. It has been theirs to show to what lengths
men can go in an evidently honest assertion of belief in
the power of the conscience. Probably the most signal
instance of such belief on record is the deliberate relation
of the three hundred and ninety criminals, whom an em-
peror of the T'ang dynasty sent to their homes to attend
to their affairs, on parole, and who, every one, returned at

EDUCATION. 253

the time promised to receive the death penalty, of course
being thereupon pardoned, in view of such an example of
truth. Similar is the legend of the youth who offered to
suffer death in place of his father ; and who, when the
life of the latter had been spared, refused public honors at
the Emperor's hands, lest they should remind him of his
father's crime. The passion for such tales of ideal virtue,
which abound in their annals, is not mere garrulity and
bravado of self-righteousness, but the expression of a faith
in personal character which ages of instituted culture have
rendered instinctive and constitutiohal.

The preceding account of Competitive Examinations,
with view to official function, as conducted in

,. . ... . Contrast

China, suggests the inquiry, as pertinent to our w ith
own public experience at this time, whether that American

J methods.

Empire of the past has not herein a gift for the
free States of the present of more value than her tea, silk,
or porcelain, and more creditable to her practical genius
than her precedence of us in discovering the compass, gun-
powder, and printing. The Chinese competitive system, in
its general idea and in its adaptation to the people who
constructed it, is probably the best organized system for
securing character, culture, and ability to the service of the
State ever devised by man. 1 Contrasted with the utter
lack of arrangements for this purpose in our own institu-
tions, at least till the very recent and short-lived experiment
of the Civil Service Commission ; with the prevailing theory
of an unconditioned right in every person, by virtue of a
natural equality, to hold any official post, at however critical
a moment, which he can succeed in obtaining, and of his
adequacy to fill such post ; with the entire absence in this
scramble through the gates of office of any noble conditions

1 In Meadows's admirable work on Chinese Rebellions, an elaborate system of competi-
tive examinations on the Chinese plan is offered to the public as the best method for "The
Improvement of the British Executive and the Union of the British Empire."

254 STRUCTURES.

to be fulfilled, of any higher tests than the art of gratifying
personal or associated interests, or of any recognized rule
of moral accountability or ideal demand to make politics a
culture and a faith instead of a scandal, whose daily phases
are a diet of foul garbage, a mere function of ferreting out
corruption by corrupt means, as contrasted with these
ideas and policies, the Chinese principle of making office
the reward of victory laboriously and honestly earned
through recognized tests of knowledge and virtue has
surely a heaven-wide superiority.

" What the wise call equity," said Confucius, " is that in
the Empire every one have his own work." 1 That func-
tions should be filled by the fittest, that the law of " every
one in his own place " should reign in public as well as
in private spheres, is valid for all ages and races. 'The
patriarchal Empire transmits this first-born word of practi-
cal wisdom to the latest democratic Republic, as a father's
counsel to his child. But the principle is not valid only :
it is indispensable that we accept and obey it without
delay.

The so-called " practical statesman " may shrug his
shoulders at its idealism. But as things now stand
d U U t y inStant ( l8 7 6 ), common prudence might suggest that it is
high time at least to make a beginning in this di-
rection of aiming at moral guarantees in civil and political
functions. Every social right is sheathed in a correspond-
ent duty : to assume the right without accepting the duty
that covers and limits it, is the brandishing of a naked sword
in a maniac's hand. How long can a people whose claim
of political rights is of the most ideal description safely de-
lay the stringent self-disciplines and responsibilities that
balance them ? A people without a master, either king,
prelate, lord, traditions, institutions, or authoritative faith,
harnessing nature to its will, shaping its own destiny by

i Li-ki, XXVI.

EDUCATION. 255

sheer majority rule, may with impunity refuse the self-con-
trol that makes the less wisdom and virtue know how to
yield precedence to the greater, when gross saurians can
live in the refined atmosphere that feeds the lungs of man.
Such liberty is but the right of self-destruction.

The need of competitive examination as a test of fitness
for functions of public import is now widely recosr-

. , i i r ' Thecom-

nized ; and it has its forms in most modern States. pe titive
In England it is successfully applied to the East method

J discussed.

India Administration, and to many other branches
of civil service, as well as to military schools. 1 In Prussia,
an educational diploma of this nature is a rigid condition
of holding office, and even of professional practice. 2 Our
own Civil Service, whose departments had become " asy-
lums of incompetents," as well as nests of intrigue and
dictation, under the recent Act purported to be filled, with
the exception of the higher grades, by competitive proc-
esses ; and we may well hope for a future sustained de-
velopment of the system, as the only way to a reformation
of evils grown intolerable. Mere pass examinations have
been found wholly unfit to secure impartial tests of capacity
and character. They were abandoned in England for the
competitive method after fifteen years' trial, in 1870 ; and
similar experience in this country led to the adoption of the
Act of Congress in 1871.

It was framed with so much forethought and skill, that
it seemed a first step in the ri:ht direction which

Th u /"* "i

should not need to be recalled. In place of the service
familiar ruts of private greed and party expediency, Act " of

' J ' Congress.

ot venal patronage and a scandalous use or local
offices to control elections, its open, impartial examinations
promised to provide a manly and honorable path of admis-
sion to lists of candidates for the use of the appointing
power. It promised to abolish the mischievous interference

1 Printed Report on the British Civil Service for 1872.

1 Matthew Arnold's Higher Schools and Universities in Germany, 1874.

256 STRUCTURES.

of members of Congress in the choice of civil functionaries,
a hot-bed of corrupt influence and dictation, from which
only here and there a representative has the courage to
stand off, and which can be broken up only by positive
withdrawal of the right of patronage itself. It sought to
give unity to the public sense of rights and duties. It
sought to lift politics to the level of an educational sphere
for the moral and intellectual force of the nation. As in
imperial China such methods have served to balance the
central authority by a steady influx of the best life of the
people, so strong as almost to justify describing her as a
constitutional State, much more in a Republic like our
own would they protect the people from executive usurpa-
tion, and give tone to local self-government. The growth
of an aristocracy, even of culture, is farthest from their
purpose. Both in England and America they have pro-
ceeded from the most radically progressive element, and
embody its deepest faith. Their very definition is the
unity of liberty with loyalty, of character with institutions,
of public safety with public faith. Without large infusion
of these guarantees, representative government can hardly
be any thing but farce and fraud. Practically, too, every
competitor would be on picket-guard against partiality and
corruption, while devotedly laboring to do his best. The
requirement, in all ordinary local offices, of good vouchers
for character and capacity at home would raise the educa-
tional standard of the whole country, and help to sift out
the baser element that infests all political centres. Testi-
monials from the great majority of our higher officials had
already (1874) confirmed these promises, and opened the
hope of an ultimate moral purification of our national
capital by means of this system, as well as of placing its
benefits, at slight expense, at the gates of all offices where
it is needed. 1

1 The admirable Report of the Commission (dated April 15, 1874) affords an elaborate
view of the theory, method, and results of this measure The sincerity of President Grant's

EDUCATION. 257

It is obvious that the Chinese system cannot be applied
to American institutions without important modifi-
cations. The competitive method cannot with us Wherein
absorb all departments of public administration, to pethive
the exclusion of other methods of choice. For the f^f" 1 ' 3

inadequate.

whole political as well as civil list to be determined,
as in China, by competitive examinations would be sub-
versive of the direct action of the people, and would in
fact abolish representative government. The only ground
for such exclusiveness would be a false presumption of
some unchangeable rule of choice which the popular voice
is never, except by revolution, to transcend. An intelli-
gent and free community may indeed be conceived as bind-
ing itself to require of all candidates evidences of a certain
standard of education and good purpose, as essential for
all civil and political spheres. But it will hardly abdicate
the right of going behind any system of machinery for
eliciting such evidences, and of supplementing all rigid
forms by the direct use of its own selective judgment upon
the whole body of the citizens. There must always remain
a margin of this sort for what may be called the free intu-
ition of the public mind.

We may, therefore, easily expect too much from this as
from any other organized contrivance. There are
obvious limits to the power of competitive tests to n e h e e d deeper
secure moral guarantees, however strenuous and
impartial the process of applying them. The "good mor-
als " that yield a fair repute are not equivalent to the clear-
sighted integrity and self-respect that we demand of a pub-
lic guardian. Purity of this sort is to be discerned only by
the pure mind. A representative body is not likely to be
found, under any form of selection, upon a higher moral

unsuccessful effort to enforce it is not questioned by the present writer, who firmly believes
that in all our recent national emergencies he has left a noble record of public service, which
will find more and more grateful appreciation as historic justice shall bring into clearer relief
that " iron nerve to true occasion true." (March, 1877.)

258 STRUCTURES.

level than its electors. It will be quite as unreasonable to
expect the article of fitness to be provided us, upon the
mere security of diplomas, under any system of tests what-
ever, as it would be to deny the very great value of a good
competitive system as an aid to earnest public sentiment in
its search for the best men. A free people cannot escape
the condition of depending for freedom on its own undele-
gated wisdom, its own direct perception of personal char-
acter. Even as a test of capacity, a competitive examination
is by no means conclusive : it is a result of sudden strain
and skilful cramming. The Chinese avoid these, in part,
by the long space of time through which their preparatory
disciplines extend. In any system culminating in such
tests, what the State needs to emphasize is, after all, not
the ultimate trial itself, but rigid proof, however secured,
that the candidate (or pupil) has really passed through such
continuous and thorough disciplines as make the result of
the special trial comparatively unimportant ; a mere inci-
dent, which may or may not do him justice. No mechani-
cal contrivance of school-boy marking up and down can
afford adequate guarantees in so complex a system of pub-
lic duties as ours.

While making the most, then, of competitive tests, a
Conditions further basis of right selection of officials in the
dvn S s!r- d Republic will probably be found in the four follow-
vice. ing conditions :

1. Provision in the common-school curriculum for as
thorough instruction in the nature of our political institu-
tions and in the practical duties of citizenship as is pos-
sible, as well as for teaching our youths to regard public
office as a momentous task and sovereign test, and to be
infinitely more concerned in discovering the fittest men to
meet its duties than in pursuing it as a prize for them-
selves.

2. Schools for special departments of public service, or

EDUCATION. 259

provision in the universities for voluntary study of these
branches of administrative science.

3. Recognition, by public opinion, of a general rule of
preference for those who have shown aptness and diligence
in pursuing such studies ; affording the student of politics
guarantees of due appreciation analogous to those afforded
by imperial selection in China.

4. Substitution of the habit of advancing tried and
experienced public officers, and of retaining them where
they are needed, for the current passion for what is called
" rotation" whose least mischief is in its turning the public
service into a feeding-stall, where every creature that can
creep or push into it may claim to take his turn.

The last of these conditions was met perhaps, as far as
is practicable for a system, by that provision of the Civil
Service rules which forbids direct admission by examina-
tion to any but the lower grades of service, in order that
fresh men may not supplant more experienced ones. But
all requirements must be more or less results of public
intelligence and virtue. They belong to a republican gov-
ernment in distinction from one of prescription and me-
chanical routine, like the Chinese.

Again, the stimulus of competition without drawback
inevitably runs, with us, into excess. It is well
fitted to rouse the lymphatic blood of the race of C ompeti-
Han, and they have fallen on a real incentive to tionin

i i- rr America.

patriotism in its democratic equality, which off-
sets their patriarchal rule of one man. But the American,
unchecked by the past, urged by a boundless thirst for dis-
tinction and an undefined opportunity, is goaded by the
competitive stimulus into frenzy. Already his very
play is but a strife for mastery ; all its spontaneous JJ*"
impulse is lost in the dead earnest of " champion-
ship ; " the heartiness of boyish sports is foreclosed by the

26O STRUCTURES.

premature rivalries of men, and their natural healthfulness
by strenuous toils ; every motion put on record, with a
technical precision ; the boy's muscle paraded like a drill
corps on training day ; and every goad to an egotistic and
reckless strife for victory plied at once by the press, by an
exacting demand for " science," and by the gambling of
excited spectators. Everywhere in American life we note
this drift towards exaggerated competition. It is made
master of every field by the perversion of our republican
principle of equal opportunity for all, into the selfish false-
hoods of universal equality in personal claims, and of un-
conditional right to equal powers and trusts. The preva-
lence of these absurd conceits throws all upon a common
level of expectation and desire, with no alternative but
strife for common goals of victory. All relations run to
this, intermunicipal, intercollegiate, interorganizational, in
every form. The victor, not the principle, is in honor.
" Show us a champion," is the cry ; nor is any tie so sacred
nor any emergency so private but its hints of discord are
exploited to gratify that zest for personal antagonism which
in darker times fed on gladiatorial games, now superseded
in the lowest strata by the prize-ring, or, more happily, by
the peaceful contests of the hippodrome.

Even the mechanism of our common-school system is
charged with a similar driving force, which over-

In schools. . ' . . .,

rides the nobler motives while it stirs many un-
worthy ones. The human atoms are concentrated on one
common competitive plane, where all are urged "forward
to a common goal, under sanctions that reward the ready
brain and mortify the slow one. That our prescriptive
mechanics of school drill must suppress individuality is
obvious, not only from the nature of things, but from
the character of these public exhibitions of easy mental
legerdemain and formalized writing and speaking in which
they culminate, and to which previous reference has been

EDUCATION. 26l

made in this volume. Never was there greater need of
recognizing that the proper limits of the emulative method
in education contract in exact proportion to tJie dignity of
the aims with which education is pursued. Ignoring this
law, it must exclude the higher elements of personal cul-
ture, pressing all young minds, without regard to differ-
ences of gift or bent, into a dead-level race in prescribed
grooves of conformity, under mutual inspection and con-
trol. The remedy is of course to be sought in real educa-
tion ; in evolution of the special forces which reside in
each boy or girl, making our school system the producer
of thoughtful, self-reliant mind, and not of manufactures
to be sold by sample and on warrant, to suit the public taste.
As it is, the drift of republican education is not without
its suggestion of Sir Thomas More's Utopians, who all
wore the same kind of clothes, and knew, every man, just
what he was to do all the time, as a piece of the public
machinery.

After all deductions and warnings, it may well be urged
that a tendency so powerful as emulation should be
utilized for the general good, especially in those C om P eti-
public spheres where it must inevitably come into |^ nisuse -
effective play ; and that the reduction of it to a
system, in which a course of real study should take the
place of crude haste to snatch the official prize, might
even serve to mitigate 'present perversions of the natural
ambition to excel. It may be further maintained that the
recent Civil Service rules, properly administered, are a long
step in the required direction. And all this is probably
true. The competitive passion would be tempered by dif-
fusion over so large a field, and by moving in regulated
channels. It would be ennobled by association with the
habit of honestly earning the right to public honors. Its
stimulation by the greed of immediate gain would be re-
strained by the indirectness of its path, the examinations

262 STRUCTURES.

serving merely to supply lists for the selective judgment
of the appointing power.

Nor can these examinations become so absorbing with
There- us as to supplant all other avenues to official life,
served The appointing power cannot, any more than the
yoncuii 6 ' elective, be superseded by Examining Boards. It
systems. w ^j retain a certain discretionary right ; as is
illustrated in the recent rules, which provided that a list
of fifteen successful candidates in each series of exam-
inations throughout the country shall be submitted to the
executive for the exercise of its free choice, and enjoining
the advancement of persons already found competent in
preference to new ones fresh from the examining board.
In cases of promotion, it seems peculiarly fit that a discre-
tionary power should be vested in the heads of departments ;
and it is probably at this point that the rules will require
readjustment, complaints of their working having been
mainly confined to this class of appointments. 1 But the
supreme reason for maintaining a certain freedom of direct
choice by the elective and appointing powers is the supreme
necessity that they should possess the combined virtue
and intelligence which justifies such freedom, or at least
should practise the art of pursuing it ; that they should be
competent to survey the whole field of national capacity,
selecting the best material it affords for filling the more
important functions of government. The safeguard of a
free people is a public opinion that knows so well how to
place men at their true work, that it can trust itself to
select its own highest agents, and then trust these with a
reasonable freedom in the choice of their subordinates.
This public insight, while it freely uses the aid of compet-
itive tests where direct knowledge is impossible, must be
competent, in respect of the largest responsibilities, to go
behind all systems of machinery whatever. Care of the

1 See Report as above.

EDUCATION. 263

individual by the sifted capacity of the land is the ultimate
aim of the Chinese State. Development of the individual
to the power of judging both who should represent him,
and how the representative fulfils his task, is the aim of
the Republic.

In China, public administration is the chief final cause
and motive force of education. The classics are
mainly devoted to the moralities of government. O f the free
The superior man, even in Confucius, sighs when P ersonal

ideal.

out of office. The teacher, while bound to main-
tain independence of character, must yet seek public em-
ployment as the highest path of man. Literature, while
loved and even worshipped for its own worth, finds that
worth in being identified with civil and political service as
its central sphere. Confucius, indeed, affirms that all pro-
ceeds from the individual outwards. But, instead of devel-
oping what is involved in this abstract principle, he passes
it directly over, Chinese-wise, to its earliest concrete expres-
sion ; namely, that the individual is an atom in the mech-
anism of the State. Thus the grand object of culture is
constantly to supply the best men for public functions.

There is with us a corresponding and even intenser con-
centration of interest on political life, though with very
different aims and results. In both cases, literature, made
convergent to politics, lacks independent being ; fails of its
full purport, which is to serve, not civil and political admin-
istration alone, but high ideals of culture and faith. These
are our most pressing need, for these are the roots of pub-
lic sanity. Political purification can come only from moral
inspirations in the public conscience, and in that public
sentiment which is the atmosphere of manners and the
tribunal of conduct. Of these inspirations the real school
and the main guarantee is a devotion to self-culture for
love of the noble society both of universal ideas and of the

264 STRUCTURES.

best men of all times ; for the sake of the beauty and liberty
of truth, and the dignity of generous, life-ennobling tasks :
and the presence of men and women thus devoted,
whether in public or private life, is the magnetism that
lifts a nation to the level of its best opportunity.

The Chinese find such moral inspiration as they possess,
in their organization of immemorial routines, whose service
is their virtue, and whose rewards enlist all their love and
faith. But with the Aryans, or rather the coming republic
they are to share, inspiration must be found, not in the
routines and their rewards, but beyond them, and flow in
upon them from a free pursuit of the ideal, as a power of
growth for the actual and concrete ; as product of no pre-
scribed mental drill or moral gymnastics, but of pure home
and school cultures that shall quicken self-guidance and
self-consecration into spontaneous habits, and domesticate
mutual deference and helpful aims. The institutions we
seek to purify can be reformed only by a sense of respon-
sibility to ideal law, embodied in the popular mind and
will.

II.

GOVERNMENT.

EGEL defines the State as the " concrete realization
of all the relations that refer to the idea of good."
Confucius and Mencius describe Government in TheCh; .
terms of equal scope. But the Chinese conception nese poiit-
differs from the German in these respects, (i) Its ^ned
"State" is not an ideal concrete, but a concrete and con -
ideal ; this totality of all elements of good being
believed to have actually existed, and from the remotest
times. (2) It is not the ideal of a special State, but the
one only real State ; its relation to the idea of good includ-
ing allegiance from all nations and races to its own exclu-
sive authority. That unity which Catholicism affirms for
its one church universal, the Chinese idea asserts of its one
State universal, as the sole expression of the relations of
Heaven and Earth. The ground of this exclusiveness,
however, goes back to another distinction from both Ca-
tholicism and Philosophy. The conjunction of ideal and
actual, of Heaven and Earth, which in all three constitutes
the authority of the State, finds its centre, for Christian-
ity, in a special miraculous revelation at a given epoch ; for
Philosophy, in a process of development, by which it is
becoming realized ; for Chinese Imperialism, in the de facto
inherent concreteness of the ideal itself. Such are the
postulates to which these three forms of universal author-
ity appeal. That form which Christianity claims comes

with Na-
ture.

268 STRUCTURES.

by supernatural grafting on a fallen nature. That on which
modern philosophy stands comes in free realization by
man of an inalienable nature by laws of growth. ' That
which Chinese Government asserts comes by an actual
and inviolable unity between the nature of man (which it
expresses) and the nature of the world. 1 According to
this theory, man was never outside the true cosmic order.
He has not this order yet to discover, nor to fulfil. His
relations to it are inherent, obvious, revealed from the
beginning.

Thus the exclusively Christian State (in theory) would
despotize over Nature ; the philosophical would

Intimate . ....

relation (rightly, we should say) divide it into many phases
of growth and differences of form ; the Chinese
would neither despotize nor divide, because re-
cognizing nothing outside itself : it claims to be coextensive
and identical with Nature, the very concreteness of real
being ; and so it runs back of man through inconceivable
time to find its beginning in the origin of the universe.

Like the highest science, it holds Nature to be all in all ;
but unlike science, it describes Nature as a prescribed and
perfected concrete. Its universality is therefore the unity
of undeveloped instinct : it is the unlimited self-assertion
of a child.

Yet the child's universality, reading his realized ideal
everywhere, and adoring its sway, is not mere primitive
homogeneousness and senseless social plasm. It is presen-
tient of that identity of ideal with actual, of thought with
act, of the One with the Whole, which is the real meaning of
Nature ; and the political structure, however imperfect, in
which it has sought to embody these identities, may well
have stood fast through the ages, just as its appeal to nat-
ural authority, and to that only, unites the whole of prog-
ress with the beginning.

1 See the Chung- Yung, ch. i. ; Menc., VII. n. 24.

GOVERNMENT. 269

The Chinese political system gives universal meaning to
the Family, and to Patriarchalism as its earliest social
expression. King Seuen of Tse asked Teen Kwo, onthe
" Which is most important, a parent or a ruler ? " Famil y-
Kwo replied, " A parent." The king asked angrily, " How,
then, does a man leave his parents to serve his ruler ? "
Kwo replied : " If it were not for the ruler's land, he would
have no place for his parents ; not without the ruler's pay
could he support them. All that is received from the ruler
is that it may be devoted to our parents." The king looked
disquieted, but gave no reply. 1 " People," says Mencius,
"have this current proverb: 'The Empire, the State, the
Family.' The root of the Empire is in the State : the root
of the State is in the Family : the root of the Family is in
a person." 2 This ideal of a natural relation interprets for
the Chinese the whole order of Nature, and is identical
with it. The Emperor is Heaven, the people Earth. He
is the active principle Yang, it the passive principle
Yin. The fatherhood on one side and the filial piety on
the other, which the State implies, are so inter- An inter .
woven with cosmical processes that, when they are potation
rightly fulfilled, these pursue harmonious paths,

there being but one law for the two realms. As order -
the patriarch is the centre, in whom reverence and author-
ity meet, the line of the past and the line of the future,
so the Emperor is at once the Son of Heaven and the Father
of Men. He solemnly invokes the dead, and instructs the
living.

He represents the unity of the patriarchal household as
image of universal Nature. "As there is one TheEm .
Heaven above and one Earth below, so there is

r i t . i_i symbol.

but one relation of prince and subject, says the

Li-ki. / " Heaven," said a Chinese official, taken prisoner

1 Han-ling's Illustration of the Shu-king, translated by Legge.
* Menc., IV. i. 5. Compare Ta-hio (text of Confucius) 4th par.

2/O STRUCTURES.

by the Man-chus, "cannot have two suns, nor earth two
emperors," and killed himself in despair at the anomaly.
Even the Tai-ping rebels regarded their king as lord, not
of China only, but of the world.

The Emperor recognizes that impersonal supremacy
which resides in the enduring law of the family as the
root of man's continuance, by an allegiance in apparent
contradiction to his authority as sovereign of men. Placed
in the sacred centre between rights and duties, obedience
and command, he symbolizes the ideal " mean " between
these antitheses of Nature. Thus identified with cosmic
order, this centre and pivot of human order means the
absolute and universal. And so in the imperial pomp, on
great occasions like the reception of ambassadors, are gath-
ered up all symbols of splendor and power known to the
strange Mongolic history of the nation, as to their focus of
meaning, 1 umbrellas, pennons, lines of kneeling men on
marble steps below the throne, and of white horses on
either hand ; the crack of whips, the wild barbaric music
of the steppes. The Emperor is the summary of history ;
enduring type of the mystery of its origin, and image of
the holy seed that makes a nation out of a man. This is
Abraham on the throne ; the patriarch faithful to his
household when it has grown into a mighty multitude. And
as the patriarch is absolute, so the Emperor's authority
means that right of the father to ownership in the person
of his offspring which underlies the old laws of Rome as
well as China, and forms the primary stratum of political
history.

But we must distinguish this sway from the absolutism
The idea ^ a personal will. The Emperor, whose dress in
of the the old time was covered with emblematic figures
real sov- f sun and moon, dragons and insects, mountains
an( j streams, a composite type of all powers, has

1 See a description by the Dutch Embassy (i/th cent. ), Relation, &c-, P. II. p. 326.

GOVERNMENT. 2/1

this universality purely as symbol of the State ; which
means, after the ideal of the family, providence and
obedience in their simplest and broadest sense. Under
this form, it embraces morality, politics, faith, all in one :
it is the beginning and end of culture; it is the only
church; and its ancestral rites embody the initial mystery
of faith. It is not objective to thought and feeling, but
their main constituent, the proper personality of the China-
man ; whose national character reports its inworking in a
curious mixture of pride and submission, each member of
the State at once rejoicing in the assured sense of possess-
ing a perfect law, and bowed to the earth in conformity
to its command. He realizes in the form of instinct Dr.
Johnson's theory of political relation, that " there is a
reciprocal pleasure in governing and being governed."
"The slavishness of the Eastern Asiatics," says Neu-
mann, " causes them to name themselves from dynasties ;
and so China has had as many names as the thirty-four
dynasties have chosen to give themselves." But the term
"slavishness "is far from conveying the meaning of their
pride in a perfect patriarchal order as represented in the im-
perial office. The adoption of the imperial name by the na-
tion is simply symbolical, and proceeds from respect for the
majesty of the State, which absorbs his personality. The
Emperor must drop his family name, assuming a dynastic
one, consonant with this transcendence, such as Hia
(splendor), Ming (light), or Tsing (purity) ; or he may
transfer to his line the name of his province, as aggran-
dized by having given it a founder (Han, Tsin, T'ang).
For himself, he loses even his "milk" name in this absorp-
tion, and instead of taking a borrowed one like the pontifi-
cal "Peters" and "Pauls," is simply designated as Sovereign
Throne, Son of Heaven ; the high-sounding titles by which
he is known to Western nations being either names given to
his reign, such as Kang-hi (profound peace), or Kien-lung

2/2 STRUCTURES.

(heavenly protection), or Tao-kwang (light of reason) ; or
else posthumous tributes, like Tai-tsou (great ancestor), or
Wu-ti (warrior prince). 1 So strong is the force of social
cohesion and organic unity in the Chinese, that they have
brought patriarchalism to perfect political unity in their
emperor ; while neither the Romans, who likewise instituted
its absolutism in their family and civil laws, nor the He-
brews, who based their nationality on its traditions, 2 ever
organized it in any corresponding way. But this fact does
not imply enslavement to the imperial person. It is the
symbolism of the State that rules. The silence into which
the individual monarch withdraws before this invisible idea
is as perfect as the stillness of his people when he passes
through their crowds. As they fell on their faces at every
refrain of the great Birth Ode, sung by hosts in honor of a
sixty years' prosperous reign, " Bow down your heads, all
ye dwellers on the earth, before the great Kien-lung," so
did this great Khan prostrate himself before the ideal of the
State, to which this long retrospect called him to account.

It is a popular proverb in China, " To violate the laws is
equally criminal in Emperor or private person." 3

When the Emperor is congratulated, upon the failure of
an expected eclipse, that Heaven has dispensed with the
event in order to lend a fortunate omen to his reign, it is
to the State, as identical with cosmic order, that the tribute
is paid. When all officials in China bow down, or kneel,
on a certain day in each month, before the boxes which
contain their seals of office received from the Tien-tse, it
is the State, not the individual, that the worship recognizes
as its end.

1 See Re*musat, Nouv. Melanges Asiatiques, II. pp. 5, 7; Schott, Chines ische Sprach~
leftre, p. 146.

1 The Hebrews wholly lacked cohesive power to develop the patriarchal unity into polit-
ical. Their rude sway of judges and tribal chiefs, followed by a short-lived theocracy, passed
into royalty, whose speedy disruption issued in the destruction of the State. For the influence
of the persistent carrying out of patriarchalism in the tenure of Roman estates upon the growth
of poverty, debt, and slavery, see De Coulanges's Inst. Pol. de la France, pp. 154, 208.

8 Morison's Dictionary.

GOVERNMENT. 2/3

The mineral symbol of this absolutism of the State is
jade, a silicate of magnesia, " indestructible as dia- i ts sy m-
mond, and nearly as hard." As the toughest of bolism -
minerals and one of the rarest, it has always served the
most important purposes known to its users, from the
building-tools of primitive Swiss lake-dwellers to the scep-
tre of the Chinese ruler. 1 Here its meaning is the strength
of unchanging sway. 2

The astronomical symbol of the State is the Calendar,
annually prepared by the Board of Rites, with specific
tables of lucky times and ceremonial occasions, and sold
in enormous quantities throughout China. The imperial
copy is carried on a gold litter, enclosed in case of gold,
and borne by forty footmen in the imperial yellow ; others
in different symbolic colors, for princes and officers, are
received with reverence and distributed with ritual forms.

The adulatory forms of address to the Emperor have
their familiar analogues in Western monarchies,

' Adulation

and are only more elaborate here than elsewhere. in western
We need but mention the praise of Nero by Lu- States '
can, 3 of Alexander by his generals, 4 or of Louis XIV.
and Napoleon by the French Academy, one mem-
ber of which apostrophized the latter as " having a destiny
grander than Nature," and as one who "cannot belong to
time ; " while another hailed him as a deity ! 5 These were
tributes exacted from courtiers by individual rulers of great
power. The doctrine of the divine right of kings, as held
in Western nations, has often led to attitudes even more
similar to the Chinese worship of an ideal State than these.
The resemblance seems to have been sometimes formally

1 Notes and Queries, II. No. 2.

2 The word is used in compounds to describe any thing strong, beautiful, or desirable, as
"jade-sound" for the voice of the Emperor; " jade-brother " for true friend; "jade-juice"
for wine. (See Julien's Circle of Chalk.}

3 PJiarsalia, I. 37, 38. * Chassang, Hist, du Roman.
6 Mesnard, Hist, de V Acad. Fran., pp. 348, 242.

274 STRUCTURES.

perfect, as in the results of ages of such influence on the
French mind of the eighteenth century, of which Morley
has said that even in its clearest social expression it " never
rose to a higher conception of national life than the su-
preme authority of a benevolent monarch giving good
gifts," 1 and in opinions like that of the Academician
Fontanes, in the time of Louis XVIII., that "the mild
and regular movements of a paternal monarchy will give
to talents the security they need." Such statements would
be perfectly natural from the lips of a Chinese statesman ;
but the " divine right of kings " does not reach the root of
the Chinese political idea. That vast concentration of
reverence on a central sovereignty, which combines hun-
dreds of millions of souls in homogeneous experience, is
something more radical and organic.

The patriarchalist of the Middle Kingdom believes in the
The duty 'right to be governed and the duty to be led. His look
to be led. is to a superior care. His faith is undoubting that
the world has been so ordered as concretely to provide for
this right to be well governed, this duty to submit to the best
leading, not by a supernatural volition, which might or
might not be, but in the very necessity of nature ; not as min-
istry of gods and angels, but by methods essentially human
and familiar. It is a providence of superior men ; to them
are due the inventions that have lifted him from barbarism,
the institutions that reflect the order of the universe. ' No-
thing is possible to man but through the exercise of his
own faculties : the only divine laws are the positive laws
of body and mind, reaching out through heaven and earth f
expressions of perfect intelligence and will (Shang-te), and
incarnated best in those benefactors of the race who have
founded society and endowed it with practical processes
and powers. These are the patriarchs, fathers of man-

1 Life of Voltaire, p. 79.

GOVERNMENT. 275

kind ; and it is the " will of Heaven," or the meaning of
the world, that the Emperor shall concentrate and repre-
sent these primal kings of men. That he should not rep-
resent them is contrary to nature, and to the nature of
government. As he is Heaven and the people Earth, the
Emperor as sucli, that is, the good Emperor, must
make the people happy.

Hence an absolute confidence in the power of official
virtue to govern with perfect success. It has all Moraland
nature on its side, and all humanity. "The peo- poiitic.il
pie," says Mencius, " turn to a benevolent rule as optin
water flows downward, and as wild beasts fly to the
wilderness." 1 Confucius claimed that he could perfect
the fallen State in three years, if he were given full control
of affairs. 2 Of such assurance Chinese literature is full.
Its terms may be called the Chinese syllogism, analogous
in its scope to the inductive process, considered as the in-
strument of modern science. 3 Given a ruler who rules
himself wisely, his household imitates him ; the high offi-
cials follow ; capital, provinces, cities, towns, hamlets, house-
holds, individuals in millions, all feel the inaugurated
harmony of heaven and earth, and are blest. For what
has the just ruler to do but permit the operation of the
just governmental law ; which already exists, with all its
arrangements around him, a pre-established order ? What
more easy than for him, as Mencius says of Wu-ti, " to hold
the whole kingdom in the hollow of his hand ? " If, how-
ever, he be not good, equally inevitable is the perversion
of this whole process of natural evolution. The duty to be
led fails - of support by the corresponding right to be gov-
erned. This man, out of his place, which belongs to virtue
and obedience, is not Emperor. Heaven wills his over-
throw, and the people must effect it.

The facts of Chinese history so well bear out this

1 Mencius, IV. 1.9. Lunyu, XIII. 10.

3 See especially Ta-kio, ch. 5, and its Commentary, x. i.

276 STRUCTURES.

theory of correspondence between the character of the
Theoretic Emperor and the moral condition of the people,
ommpo- t h at we are a i mos t impelled to trace the phenome-

tence of r

ruler for non to the peculiarly imitative quality of the race.
And to this special ethnological cause we must add
the rapidity and force of example in so centralized a mon-
archy, holding its officials under close inspection and con-
trol. But even in China the relation is far from holding
, good in the absolute sense claimed by the theory. 1 Such
entire confidence, not only in the right of virtue to rule,
but in the certainty of universal happiness as the immedi-
ate result of virtue in the ruler, 2 in fact seems to belong to
similar to the same class of convictions as the Hebrew belief

Hebrew ^^ J on g Jjfg j g tne sure rewar d Q f rightCOUSnCSS.

earthly Both retained their hold unweakened, in spite of
retribution. re peated contradiction, as if resting on a deeper
basis than experience. We may call them superstitions,
but their permanence is to be explained only by the
power of a moral ideal to overbear transient experiences,
by reading them in the light of a validity accordant to its
origin in the conscience. It was the ethical force of patri-
archalism that made Old Age the divinity of Hebrew
faith, and Organized Government that of Chinese.

The reliance of the latter race on the efficacy of right
Sponta- ruling does not rest on law-books, nor on special
neous force decrees, which neither in the West nor the East

of right

in human can explain, as they certainly do not create, any great
nature. social conviction. It goes behind them to a percep-
tion of the inherent force of goodness, 3 acting under such

1 Mencius actually affirms that " there is no instance of the whole Empire being obtained
by any one without benevolence;" VII. n. 13. " Were any of the princes to practise the
government of King Wan for seven years, he would be sure to be giving laws to the Empire ;"
IV. i. 13. " Never," says the Ta-hio, " has there been a case of the sovereign loving benevo-
lence, and the people not loving righteousness." (Comm. X. 21) ; so Menc., IV. i. 7.

2 See especially Mencius, VII. i. 13.

, 8 Mencius says, " Never has there been one possessed of complete sincerity who did not
move others." (V. i. 12.) And conversely (VII. IT, 9), " If a man do not walk in the right
path, it will not be walked in even by his wife and children."

GOVERNMENT. 277

changeless conditions as the national conscience held to
be its organic expression. In the oldest time, according
to tradition, there were in fact no law-books, nor even laws,
their use being foreclosed by the spontaneous obedience
which virtue inspires. "The ancients," says a native
writer, 1 " prepared no law-books ; for laws make

Chinese

people contentious, so that they can less easily be traditions
preserved." "They administered justice by cus- of |L
toms and preserved it by truth. They honored the peo-
ple by humanity, taught them by uprightness, inspired
them by example, served them with joy, watched over them
with respect, governed them with power, judged them
with strictness, put wise and true men over them ; thus
trusting them, and preventing disorder and calamity."
" A noble law was the Emperor Wen's virtue," says an old
poem ; " daily it gives peace to the four regions. If that
be so, what need of laws ? I have heard that when king-
doms are about to go down, they have many laws." 2 " Let
there be the men" says Confucius, 3 " got by means of the
ruler's character, and the government will flourish ; but
without the men, the government ceases. " A " Shun selected
Kaou-yaou from among the people, on which all who were
devoid of virtue disappeared." 4 And this primeval norm
of virtue is the only one to which such efficacy is, after all,
ascribed. " It is not a benevolent heart alone that makes
good government, nor laws alone, which do not carry them-
selves into effect ; but to put in practice the ways of the
ancient kings." 5

This theory of a primitive government by force of char-
acter alone, without aid from laws, is of course far No very
more valuable as an ideal faith than as a historical old laws

. 111 extant.

statement. But it is certain that no very old col-
lections of Chinese law now exist ; and though the Shu-

1 See Plath, Gesetz und Recht in Alt. China, Bay. Akad., X. 682.

* Plath (as above), p. 683. Chung-yung, XX. 4 Lunyu, XII. 22. Menc , IV. i. i, 2.

2/8 STRUCTURES.

king, while making mention of many old laws, speaks
so indefinitely of them as to make it probable that the
reference is only to edicts. The Tcheou-li, which purports
to be the oldest code, but is probably of late origin, refers
mainly to the royal domain. The deep ethical loyalty of
the Chinese may well have ascribed a great force of con-
science to their earlier efforts to institute the State, which
is their ideal good. Beyond this, there is room for explain-
ing their disparagement of laws as in part an expression of
their faith in the right to be governed, and the duty to be
led, by the highest virtue alone ; for which the open study
of written laws or constitutions would have seemed likely
to substitute discordant popular interpretations of -a book or
a code.

" For the people is a child." Whether in old Rome or
The people older China, the patriarchal idea made the son,
a child. however mature in years, a minor and instrument
so long as his father lived. Aryan energy mastered this
subjection in Europe, but Chinese conservatism made
it a basis of the political ideal. " The people," says Con-
fucius, " may be made to follow a path of action, but they
may not be made to understand it." 1 King Woo, in the
Shu-king, counsels his brother K'ang to act in government
" as if watching over an infant." 2 " The saint," says Lao-
tse, " considers the people as a child." 3 By the theory,
the prince is the father, teacher, high-priest, all-director of
the permanently immature life of his vast family. Laws
are his resort only when the people fail of the sense of duty
to be led ; both prince and people recognizing their neces-
sity as signs of their own inferiority to the norm of con-
duct, which was realized in the primeval days of Yao and
Shun.

But though laws are secondary to these natural condi-
tions, there is a Law higher than the wisdom of princes

1 Lunyu, VIII. 9- 2 Shu-king, Pt. V. B. ix. 9. s Tao-te-king, II. 49.

GOVERNMENT. 279

or the weakness of peoples, a principle, on which rest
the rights and duties of both ; namely, the Uni- universal
versal Good. This is the real basis of government s odthe
in the Chinese theory, conceived as conferred by govem-
Heaven on the people without distinction of class, ment<
as those who have a right to be led in the best way. To
sustain, to tranquillize, to educate, to harmonize the whole
people, this is the sacred mandate that princes and
dynasties must obey. Hear Confucius announce it ;

" The requisites of government are sufficiency of food and military
force, and the confidence of the people in their ruler. ... If the
people have no faith in their ruler, there is no standing for the State." l

" Precede the people by your example, and be laborious in their
affairs ; do not become weary in these things." z " That is good gov-
ernment, when those who are near are made happy, and those who are
afar off are attracted." 3 " Heaven and earth are parent of all creatures.
Sincerity and wisdom become the sovereign ; for he is the parent of
the people." 4

One passage from the Shu-king suffices to give the pur-
port of all the classics on this theme.

"Yue, having received the presidency, said to the king: 'The
founding of States and setting up of capitals, and the appointment of
kings and high officials, was not designed to minister to the idleness
and pleasure of one, but for the good government of the people.
Heaven is all-wise. Let the ruler take it for pattern ; his ministers
will accord with him, and the people will be well ruled.' ....

" The king said : ' O Yue, your words should indeed be followed. If
you were not so good in counsel, I should not have heard these things
for my practice.'

"Yue did obeisance with his head to the ground, and said : * It is
not the knowing that is difficult, but the doing.' " 5

This upward look, this trust in right leading, coupled
with the humanity which sees the good of each to

Patriarch-
depend on the good of all, is the fact of import to a iism and

universal religion in these embryotic methods of
the patriarchal State. Before us, on a colossal

* Lunyu, XII. 7. 2 Ibid., XIII. r. Ibid., XIII. 16.

* Shu-king, V. B. I. 3. , 6 Shu-king, Pt. IV. B. vni. 2.

28O STRUCTURES.

scale, stand the enduring elements which justify patriarch-
alism as a stage in social construction, its germs of the
liberty of obedience, its participation in the substance of
religion, morality, science. The peculiarities of the Mon-
golian race, in their Chinese or typical form, have elected
them to serve as a permanent record of its significance,
little individuality, great centripetal impulse, a plodding
temperament, slow to self-assertion, and submissive to
The oldest the steady operation of organic laws. These are
posiuvists. our oldest positivists, who combine with Comte's
theory that man is to be governed as much as possible an
ideal of spontaneous obedience to the law of his nature,
which corresponds to Spencer's anti-Comtist doctrine that
he is to be governed as little as possible, though taking
this perfect state to be the primal fact of history, not, as he
does, only the final result of its evolution. They made social
order their religion, and had perfect faith in it as the end
which all human forces pursued. Disobedience to the wise
who led the way to it was against nature. " It is better,"
said Confucius, " to be mean than to be insubordinate."

We have presented only one side of the Chinese political
idea, the duty to be led. There is also the right to be
governed. We must emphasize that word right.

China is loosely called a despotism ; and of all forms
Govern- ^ despotism tne Oriental is supposed to be the
mentof most oppressive : but the judgment is superficial,
a despot-* Taking the term in its modern sense of arbitrary
ism. personal government, it is scarcely applicable to

the great Eastern systems at all. The Hindu priest, the
Chinese emperor, are subject to restrictions such as no
written constitution could impose on a great Western con-
queror or on a slave oligarchy. Remusat observes : " If by
despot is meant an absolute master, disposing at will of the
property and life of his subjects, usingj and abusing a bound-

GOVERNMENT. 28 1

less power, I can see none such in the East." If this view
be correct, it is plain that the transition of patriarchalism
from the domestic to the political stage was a real step of
progress, involving the gradual dropping away of the father's
unconditioned right over the life and death of his offspring.
Such a step is in fact manifest in the imperial " absolu-
tism ; " which, in theory, appears a complete negation of
public liberty, but in fact is qualified by important limits
and responsibilities. Hegel's formula, " In the East, freedom
is for one ; in the antique world, for several ; in the modern,
for all," is misleading. The Emperor is farthest i mpe riai re-
possible from an autocrat. Caprice does not enter. strictions<
into his definition. He is the creature of a formal and
ceremonial determinism as strict as the modern doctrine of
philosophical or theological necessity. Master of the world
and Son of Heaven, he cannot without sin go out of his
round of etiquette, nor interpose an impulse of caprice into
the prescription of times and ways, nor escape his palace,
nor choose his food, nor use a fan. To all that enters into
the concrete norm of the traditional State, this type of
Heaven, this representative Father, is responsible.

I. The basis of authority is, first of all, religious. To
" Heaven," whence he receives his function, 1 he is Responsi .
accountable for its record and results. If the peo- biuty to
pie surfer, it is his fault, and he must atone by
prayer, sacrifice, and repentance, as a disobedient son.
Hear the ancient emperors :

" The crimes of the people are all chargeable on me. How much
more, when the report of them goes up so manifestly to Heaven ! "

" I, who am a little child, am filled with fears. I have offered sac-
rifices to Shangte, also to the earth ; and now I lead you to execute
Heaven's penalty on the tyrant Chow. If I subdue him, it will not be
my prowess, but the virtue of my dead father. If he subdue me, it will
not be my father's fault, but because I, who am a child, am not good." 3

1 Menc., V. I. 5. * Ching in Shu-king, Pt. V. B. ix.

3 Woo in Ibid., Pt. V. a i.

282 STRUCTURES.

" It is given to me, the one man, to give tranquillity to your States
and families ; and now I know not whether I may not offend the powers
above and beneath me. For the evil in me I will not dare to forgive
myself. I will examine all things in harmony with the mind of God." l

Here is the prayer of a recent ruler in time of drought :

" I, the minister of Heaven, am placed over mankind, and am re-
sponsible for keeping the world in order. Trembling with anxiety, I
remember that the cause of this dire calamity is the enormity of my
transgressions. I am impelled to imitate my fathers, and examine
whether I have failed in sacrifices, or suffered pride and prodigality in
my heart, or been remiss in the duties of government ; or violated
equity in rewards and punishments ; or distressed the people by costly
tombs and gardens, or by appointing unworthy officers ; or refused the
appeal of the wronged, or persecuted the innocent, or pursued war for
the sake of gain. Prostrate, I implore Heaven to pardon my ignorance
and folly, and grant me self-renovation ; for myriads of innocent people
are involved by me, a single man." *

This excess of responsibility is but the reverse side of
TO the cor- tne divine powers with which the imperial office is
relation of supposed to be endowed. It is a natural develop-
IrithTu- merit of the custom, which is found to prevail
ties - among rudest tribes, of holding their chiefs ac-
countable, with their life, for the consequences of that
entire faith which has been reposed by the people in
their authority to rule. 3 The official fetich, like the carved
or moulded one, is made answerable for the failure of his
powers to effect the promised good of his worshippers.
The correlation of duties with rights, the soul of highest
public culture, is thus traceable far back into the primitive
stages or first essays of social construction, affirming the
transcendence of the moral law to all personal pretensions.

The Chinese emperor mediates with the higher powers
by prayers, divinations, and the unremitting cares of gov-
ernment ; strictly held to the standard of his theoretic

1 T'ang in Shu-king, Pt. IV. B. in.

a Kea-king (1802); see Martin's China, I. 64. So Hien-fung, in the crisis of the recent
civil war.

3 For curioul illustrations, see Bastian, Das Bestdndige in den Menschenrassen, p. 93.

GOVERNMENT. 283

position, as the typical functionary, the best man in the
best place. It is the recognition of a diviner than kings,
the universal law of justice.

" Let not the Emperor set example of indolence or dissoluteness to
the rulers of States ; but be wary, remembering that in one day may
occur ten thousand causes of things. The work is Heaven's, and man
but its workman. 1 ' l

" Laws, rites, rewards, and punishments, all come from Heaven. Its
will is to reward the good and punish the guilty ; and, when it punishes,
neither great nor small escape it." 2

" One may occupy the throne, but if he has not the proper virtue he
may not dare to make ceremonies nor music. But the good ruler pre-
sents himself before heaven and earth with his institutions, and with
undoubting confidence, showing that he knows Heaven." 3

What a force is the loyalty of a people that fall down,
with tears and blessings, along the Emperor's track when
he visits the tombs of his fathers, yet break out in rebellion
when he violates the order of the State ! The records left
by such rulers as Tai-tsung, Kang-hi, and Kien-lung in the
heart of the nation, and in the empire that sprang from
their virtues, make good all that Confucius taught of the
power of the righteous king to transform his people to his
own ideal.

II. He is responsible to the earthly record of his conduct
as well as to the heavenly ; to the remonstrances of a Board
of Censors, and to the official register of his words and
deeds, written in secret, and opened only when his death
leaves the public judgment free to determine under what
name he shall go down to future ages, as the
glory or the shame of his country. Egyptian e
judges exhorted their kings to do justly and love
mercy. Harm's law imposed a similar duty on the Hindu
judge. The Roman censor could degrade any man from his
rank or tribe for misconduct ; but the first and second of

1 Shit-king, Pt. II. B. in. 5. * Confucius in Chung-yung, XXIX.

8 Comment, to Ibid. ; quoted in Pauthier's transl.

284 STRUCTURES.

these instances relate to what were, doubtless, largely mat-
ters of ceremonial, and couched in formal phraseology.
The jurisdiction of the Roman censor never reached over
the imperial person, and the office was either set aside by
the Caesars or else made a part of their functions. But the
office of the Chinese censor was in no sense a formality ;
he was appointed to maintain real watch over the daily and
nightly doings of the Son of Heaven, and, in the name of
morality and the laws, to remonstrate and reprove. His
office was the sign that rulers were personally accountable,
while ideally absolute ; personally imperfect, while theo-
retically perfect. He mediated between the idea and the
fact, the common sense that checked and balanced idola-
try of a personal symbol. The necessity was perfectly well
understood, and something similar has entered into the
structure of all Eastern States, with a real force to which
its analogues in the less absolute monarchies of the West
were far from equivalent. The freedom of the Chinese
censors is very great. 1 It goes back in tradition to the
words of the Emperor Yu to his minister :

" When I am doing wrong it is yours to correct me : do not ap-
prove me to my face, and when you have withdrawn take up a different
tone." 2

" He who restrains his prince," says Mencius, " loves his
prince." 3 The record of the censorship is perhaps the
most creditable thing in Chinese history. Though a recog-
nized function of the State, its task was a perilous one ; and
instances of martyrdom for the rights of the weak and the
supremacy of law over arbitrary will are frequent. The
Emperor. Kang-hi published a collection of remonstrances,
selected from all ages of Chinese history, documents for
the most part in a severely circumspect style, as of men

1 Duhalde, I. 71, 250; Le Comte's China., p. 255.

2 Shu-king, Pt. II. B. iv. 8 Mencius, I. n. 4.

GOVERNMENT. 28$

who felt great danger, yet very clear and strong. 1 A writer
counsels the censor thus :

" The thunder issues from all sides of the throne ; a syllable may
kindle it, and it may carry death to the Empire's end. Meditate day
and night to write ten words of a remonstrance, and efface six of
them." 2

This was not such advice as was likely to be given to a
Hebrew prophet, but its prudence is strictly in accord-
ance with Chinese reverence for form and office, and by
no means inconsistent with heroic fidelity. 3 The arbitrary
rule of Tsin Chi-hwang-ti forbade criticism of the Govern-
ment. But the next dynasty (Han) at once abrogated a
law so contrary to the national traditions. It is always in
order for the Emperor of China to be addressed by his
counsellors in the spirit of the Platonic admonition : -

" You are created for the sake of the whole, not the whole for the
sake of you. Take good heed of the powers of justice, for a day will
come when they will take heed of you." 4

III. The Confucian Classics take precedence of political
or military authority. Confucius has been called Tothe
the real Emperor of China. His disciplines have classical
brought Tartar Yuens and Man-chu Tsings under
the power of systems as remote as possible from their native
Mongolic traits. The literary compilations of his school are
studied by successive dynasties as the will of Heaven, and
published on a scale of labor and expense unrivalled in
the enterprises of monarchs. They are an imperial Bible,
though not in the exclusive, supernatural sense which
Judaism and Christianity have given to the word. Digests
of their substance have been prepared for the private use

1 Girard, II. 307. 2 Ibid., 308.

8 In the Peking Gazette for 1873 will be found an instance of bold censorship punished,
and yet repeated without delay, calling on the throne to humble itself on account of the public
sufferings, and " to tremble with awe." See also a demand made by the censor for the degra-
dation of the high officer Ki-shen, in 1843 ; Martin, I. 113.

4 Plato, Laws, X.

286 STRUCTURES.

of princes, and for imperial tuition, not only by the doctors
of the Han-lin, but by literati, whose work is traceable as
far back as the beginning of our era. 1

The responsibility of a " Son of Heaven " to such a stand-
ard as this is certainly an anomaly in " autocracy." Con-
sider, for instance, Mencius's doctrine of the independence
of ministers, and their claims on imperial respect :

" Superior men of old time, if received with the utmost respect and
polite observance, so that they could say to themselves that the prince
would carry their words into practice, would take office with him.
Afterwards, though the polite demeanor might not cease, yet if their
words were not carried into practice they would leave him." 2

Mencius himself came a thousand le to wait on a king,
but " not finding in him a ruler to suit him, he took his
leave." 3 The prince who does not listen to his ministers
is " a robber and an enemy." 4 The Shu-king abounds in
ministerial counsels to monarchs, and in recognitions of
their authority by those to whom they are addressed.

A king (of the Shang line) who had passed his time in
silence, fearing that he should disgrace his function, says :

" But while I was thinking of the right way, I dreamed that God
gave me an assistant who should speak for me."

Search being made, the great Yu-e is found, " a builder
in Foo-yen," and forthwith installed prime minister, with
exhortations like these :

" Suppose me a steel weapon, I will use you for whetstone ; sup-
pose me a stream, I will use you for a boat ; suppose me a year of
drought, I will use you for a copious rain. Open your mind and
enrich mine. Be like medicine, which will not cure the patient if it
do not distress him. Think of me as one walking barefoot, whose
feet are sure to be wounded if he do not see the ground. Cultivate
me ; do not cast me away." 5

" Paou-hang said, * If I cannot make my sovereign like Yao and
Shun, I shall feel ashamed as if I were beaten in the market-place." 6

1 See Wylie's Account of Chin. Lit., p. 145.

2 Mencius, VI. 11. 14. Ibid., II. n. 12. * Ibid., IV. u. 3.
6 Shu-king, Pt. IV. B. vui. Ibid.

GOVERNMENT. 28/

E Yin, retiring from the ministry, thus exhorts the
young Emperor on his accession :

" Make new your virtue ; make daily renewal. Let your officers be
the right men, hard indeed to find. The only rule for virtue is to love
goodness. No special characteristics can be laid down for determining
wh.it is right ; it is found where there is conformity to principles. Do
not consider yourself so great that you hold others to be little. If the
people do nofcfind opportunity to develop virtue, the prince cannot fulfil
his proper work. 1 ' 1

The Emperor reads in Mencius that " good instructions
are better than good government ; " that the business of
the ruler is " to sympathize with the people ; " that the
people looked to the great T'ang as men " look to clouds
and rainbows after a drought ; " that the peace of the Em-
pire lies in the performance by every one of his nearest
duties. 2 He is warned by Confucius that the ruin of a
country is in one sentence, "a ruler whose words are not
good, yet with no one to oppose them ; " 3 and taught that
" to govern means to rectify ; " that every one is a ruler
who discharges his filial and brotherly duties ; that he who
cannot govern himself cannot govern others, and has, prop-
erly, nothing to do with governing ; that they who are far
from the good ruler look to him in love, and they who are
near are never wearied with him. 4

Both the Shi-king and the Shu-king are one long enforce-
ment, by history, legend, moral precept, sermon, and song,
of the lesson that the virtuous ruler is the salvation, and
the selfish one the ruin, of the nation, by supreme laws of
retribution that know no distinction of persons, and never
fail to " find the way to their mark."

IV. These limitations do not execute themselves, and
may, as personal restraints, be less real than theo- Tothe
retical. But the responsibility of the Emperor to P e P le -
the people is real. It is a fixed principle of Chinese tra-

1 Shu-king, Pt. IV. B. vi.

2 Mencius, VII. i. , 4 ; I. H. 4 ; III.n. 5; IV. i. 11.

3 Lunyu, XIII. 15. Ibid., XII. 17; II. 21; XIII. 13; Chung Yung, XXIX.

288 STRUCTURES.

dition that he is not the master of slaves, but the father
of a household which tests his legitimacy by his behavior.
The end of government is the good of the people. For
this the imperial power itself was instituted. 1 Mencius
even says, " The people are the most important ele-
ment in the nation, the spirits of the land and grain the
next ; the Emperor the least." 2 Royal functions centre in
this final cause. To divide and redeem the land, to organ-
ize its distribution for the common good, to fix times for all
occupations, and to provide all persons with sustenance
and relief, with work and education ; to care especially for
the poor and the old, for orphans and widows, and right
all injustice, giving ear to the humblest sufferer, com-
prise the sum of imperial duty in the oldest books. 3 So
distinctly does this fact lie in the national mind, that the
earliest (mythical) monarchs were believed to have been
elected by the people. 4 ' Further down, the son of Yu is
made his successor by the choice of the chiefs. 5 Later
still, Mencius declares the universal law that,

" The Emperor can present a man to Heaven, but he cannot make
Heaven give that man the Empire. Yao presented Shun to Heaven,
and the people accepted him. Heaven does not speak. It simply in-
dicated its will by his personal conduct and his conduct of affairs." 6

Being the representative of Heaven only through his
virtue, the Emperor is not properly a hereditary ruler ; and,
though in point of fact the dynasties have followed that
rule, it has been antagonized by the incessant breaks of
revolution. The idea does not rest on birth. Yu calls
together his best men to consult on the succession.

All through the Shu-king the popular voice is the sign
of divine approval. That the ruler must recognize this is
the burden of instruction.

* Shu-king, Pt. IV. B. vin. 2. * Menc., VII. n. 14.

a See also Menc., I., i. 7. 4 See Wuttke, II. 173.

6 Menc., V. i. 6. fl Ibid., V. i. 5.

GOVERNMENT.

289

"Heaven hears and sees as the people hear and see. Heaven
shows its approval or its wrath, as the people theirs : such connection
is there between the upper and the lower worlds. How reverent ought
the masters of earth to be ! " 1

" What one only desires cannot be executed ; to oppose the whole
brings evil. When the masses are aroused, resistance is vain." 2

In the " Book of Poetry," it is said :

" Before the sovereigns of the Yin dynasty had lost the hearts of
the people, they could appear before God. Take warning from them.
The great decree is not easily preserved. This shows that, by gaining
the people, the kingdom is gained ; and, by losing the people, the king-
dom is lost." 8

" When a prince loves what the people loves, and hates what they
hate, then is he the parent of the people." 4

" To close the people's mouths is more dangerous than to dam the
torrent." 5

" Do not be ashamed to ask counsel from those who carry grass on
their shoulders, and gather firewood." 6

In the treatment of the people, the highest ideal of
moral fitness, and the "Golden Rule," are the tests of
imperial duty. 7

No republic ever proclaimed a representative responsibil-
ity more absolutely.

Nor is the Chinese ark too holy to be touched by uncon-
secrated hands. Yao chooses Shun for his successor, a.
poor man who had been a common farmer, a potter, and a
fisherman, 8 who was son of a blind and bad father, and
brother of a rebel. Yu and Tseih were husbandmen, and at-
tained the Empire. 9 " Yu lived in a mean house, and spent
his strength on the water channels." 10 The founders of
dynasties by revolution in Chinese history are generally
men of humble origin. " Yao and Shun," says Mencius,

Shn-king, Pt. II. B. in. 7.

Plath, in Bay. Ak. X. 470.

Shi-king, quoted in Takio, X. 3.

Old proverb ; quoted in Shi-king, III. B. IT. 10.

Menc., II. i. 8 ; VI. n. 15. 9 Lunyu, XIV. 6.

Tahio, X. i.

5 Sseki, quoted by Plath.

7 Tahio, X. i, 2.

w Ibid., VIII. 21.

2QO STRUCTURES.

"were just the same as other men. All men can become
Yaos and Shuns." 1

The Tcheou-li mentions three cases in which the people
are called to give advice : when the kingdom is in danger ;
when a city is to be built ; when a prince is to be installed,
an heir being wanting, 2 all of these being emergencies that
call for a return to the recognized sources of government.
The Tcheou-li was certainly written in the bloom of Chi-
nese imperialism, and the testimony to traces of popular
sovereignty is therefore more valuable than any isolated
facts to the same effect, which might have been exceptional.
The same Institutes mention consultation of the people in
order to determine penalties in cases of capital crime. 3

In what ways the will of the people, thus affirmed to be

authoritative, can be fully ascertained except by

popular observation of their condition, the ballot being un-

wiiiisex- k n own, is not easy to say. But there has never

pressed.

been wanting such expression of it as could be
given by speech of leading men, by satires, pasquinades,
and popular demonstrations. An idea so fundamental to
the State does not lack channels of communication. Re-
monstrances and reproofs to Government by unofficial per-
sons are as common as those of censors and mandarins. 4
.Many satires, complaints, and indignant or pathetic appeals
are preserved in the Shi-king. The protest against impe-
officiaiin r ^ ca P r i ce nas been heard in the free speech of
depen- courageous ministers whenever there was need.

There is probably no nation where history is more
fertile in examples of such independence, in face of ex-
treme peril, than China. Confucius was not prevented by
his rules of obsequious bearing toward princes from insist-
ing on proper deference to the person of the teacher, and

1 Menc., IV. 11. 32 ; VI. n. 2. Tckeou-li, XXXV. 17. s Ibid., 25, 26.

4 Pfitzmaier gives extracts from some of these, dating in the Han ; and Wuttke has some
account of this branch of popular expression, Gesch. des Heidenth. II. 192.

GOVERNMENT. 2QI

refused to visit a prince who neglected to pay him this trib-
ute. According to the whole teaching of Confucius and
Mencius, the official should only obey orders when they
are right ; and, even if in danger of losing his head, must
not forget his duty.

" There is no one in T'se who speaks to the King about benevo-
lence and righteousness. Are they silent because they do not think
these admirable ? No ; but in their hearts they say, * This man is not
fit to be spoken with about benevolence and righteousness.' Thus
they manifest the greatest possible disrespect. I do not dare to set
forth before the king any ways but those of Yao and Shun. ' Let
rulers have their wealth,' said the philosopher T'sang : I have my
benevolence. Let them have their nobility : I have my righteousness.
Wherein should I feel inferior to them ? ' Shall we say that these sen-
timents are not right ? The prince who does not honor the virtues, and
delight in their ways, is not worth having to do with." 1

"To urge one's sovereign to difficult achievements is showing re-
spect for him. To set before him what is good, and repress his perver-
sities, is showing reverence to him. He who does not do thus, plays
the thief with his sovereign." 2

" One's principles must appear along with one's person. One's
person must vanish along with one's principles. I have not heard of
one's principles being dependent for their manifestation on other
men." 3

"Once rectify the prince, and the kingdom will be settled. Only
the great men can do this." 4

" Can there be loyalty which does not lead to the instruction of its
object?" 6

" Tse-loo asked how a sovereign should be -served. The Master
said, l Do not impose on him, and moreover withstand him to his
face.' "e

" The man who, in the view of gain, thinks of righteousness, who in
view of danger is prepared to give up his life, and who does not forget
a promise, however long past, such a man maybe reckoned a complete
man (i.e. fit for a minister)." 7

" The true scholar will sacrifice his life to preserve his virtue
complete." 8

1 Menc, II. n. 2. Ibid., IV. i. i. Ibid., VII. i. 42.

Ibid., IV. i. ao. 6 Lunyn, XIV. 8. Ibid., 23.

7 Ibid., 13. Ibid., XV. 8.

2Q2 STRUCTURES.

" Men of principle are sure to be bold, though the bold may not
always be men of principle." 1

In the Shu-king the same ideal is constantly presented.

" E Yin, minister of a young Shang monarch, having dared to
imprison him for a season for the public good, receives him on his
repentance, with head bowed to the ground before the majesty of the
office, saying, ' O King, do justly, and I shall respond to your virtue
with endless devotion. Let the One man be greatly good, and the
myriad regions will be righted by his endeavors.' " 2

" Tsoo E proclaimed to the tyrant Chow-sin (twelfth century B.C.)
that his dissoluteness was bringing the line of Yin to destruction.
'On this account there is famine in the land and general disorder.
The people cry, " Why does not Heaven send down its wrath ? Why
dees not some one appear with its great decree ? What has this King
to do with us ? " ' The King said, * Is not my life secured by decree of
Heaven? ' Tsoo E returned and said, 'Your many crimes are regis-
tered above. Can you speak of your fate as if you had given it in
charge to Heaven ? The end of Yin is at hand.' " 3

Mencius denounces the rulers of his day in the broadest
terms :

" Never was there a time farther than the present from the appear-
ance of a true ruler; never a time when the sufferings of the people
from oppressive government were more intense than now." 4

" King Seu-en said to Mencius : ' May a minister put his sovereign
to death ? ' Mencius said : ' He who outrages righteousness and love
is a ruffian. I have heard of the cutting off of the fellow Chow, but I
have not heard of putting a sovereign to death, in his case.' " 5

" A sovereign who oppresses his people will be slain, and his kingdom
will perish." 6

" When a prince endangers the altars of the spirits of the land and
grain he is changed, and another is appointed in his place." '

Wan-te, in the second century, B.C., issued an edict,
abrogating a law against freedom of speech, in which he
says :

1 Lunyu, XIV. 5 ; Passages like XIV. 4, and XV. 6, intimating that in times when bad
government prevails a wise man would neither take office nor always express his principles in
words, though in action he would be bold and straightforward as an arrow, seem to mean sim-
ply that common sense must choose the sort of protest most likely to be of use.

2 Shu-king, Pt. IV., B. v. s Ibid., B. x; see also B. xi. * Menc., II. i. i-

* Ibid-, I. n. 8. Ibid., IV. i. 2. 7 Ibid., VII. 11. 14-

GOVERNMENT. 2Q3

" There exists a law severely punishing those who criticise the
ruler. The effect is that the people and ministers dare not express
their honest thought about us, and that we are thus prevented from
being informed of our faults and errors. How will superior men
from foreign countries come to enlighten us with their counsels ? I
abrogate that law."

Practically, imperial responsibility to the people resides
in the right of rebellion. This at once distinguishes Thg
the Chinese theory of government from that of of rebei-
4< the divine right of kings," and shows that long hon '
before representative systems, or the rule of the ballot, the
caprices of arbitrary power were held in check by a well-
understood prerogative in the interest of the community.
The ultimate source of rights and the final appeal against
wrongs were in the whole people. " Stand in awe of the
people," is the counsel of the Shu-king to rulers. 1 The
right of rebellion is not only always asserted in theory, but
has been resorted to by the masses in all ages of Chinese
history ; and the chiefs who have led in these insurrections
against imperial despotism Woo Tang, Lui-yu, Tai-tsu
are the heroes of national gratitude and praise. The Chinese
have been called " the least revolutionary but the most
rebellious of peoples." 2 Most dynasties have ended in this
way. The miseries of poverty and excessive taxation have
been a fertile source of popular insurrection, a phenome-
non so frequent that nothing but the innate reluctance of
the Mongolian mind to assume entire self-guidance can
explain the absence of republican institutions from the
history of a people so apt for democratic appeal. The
very beggars of Pe-king have organized a right of revo-
lution.

The practical acceptance of this right is universal. Not
only is China, like Turkey, undermined by secret associa-
tions, many of them aiming at the overthrow of the ex-

1 Shu-king, V. B. xii. 13. a Meadows, p. 25.

294 STRUCTURES.

isting dynasty, but the people are systematically educated
in the knowledge of their reserved rights. The old songs
and satires of the Shi-king, abounding more in dispraise of
rulers than in their praise ; the legends and speeches of the
Shu-king, enforcing the duty of Government to respect the
people's voice and dread their indignation, are constantly
read in the schools. The great historical uprisings ; the
appeals of insurgent princes to the people ; the overthrow
of dynasties by shoemakers, scullions, school-masters, and
monastery boys, leading troops of ill-armed, famine-
maddened peasants, 1 are treated in the examination
themes as freely as the rest of Chinese history. The praises
of tyrannicide stand in the text-books of law and ethics,
which everywhere throw prince and people back of all dis-
tinctions of rank, upon moral sovereignty and the instincts
of humanity and justice, reiterating that the selfish oppres-
sive ruler is no ruler, and that he must, in the very name
of government itself, be overthrown.

The prevailing notion of " Oriental autocracy," as pro-
" oriental tectm S tne caprices of despots against all manifes-
autocra- tation of public feeling and every personal safe-
guard, breaks down on the fact that the right of
rebellion enters into the very texture of Chinese edu-
cation, in forms so plain and direct that they would have
' involved death even to their theoretic supporter in any
period or state under the regime, so long prevalent in
Europe, of the divine right of kings. Hardly shall we find
a national history in which there is so little unresisted per-
manent tyranny, however cruel may have been the sudden
outbreaks of power, as in China. Whenever foreigners
have invaded the throne, the patriotic masses have given
the intruders no rest. The late rebellion is no strange
experience for the Chinese, who are used to resisting, not

1 See Pfitzmaier's articles on the Fall of the T'sin Dynasty, in Wien Akad., July, 1859.
Chinese Re(>os., 1842, pp. 592-614, on the rise of the Ming; Brine on the Tai-ping Rebellion.

GOVERNMENT.

295

only the violation of the ancient rules on which their
civilization rests, but the signs of incapacity in their Gov-
ernment to uphold its own dignity and fulfil its proper
functions. In tenacious adherence to their ancient liber-
ties they resemble their European analogues, the laborious,
conscientious, courageous Dutch. The Declaration of In-
dependence issued by these patriots against Spanish rule,
in 1581, reads like an extract from Mencius :

" If a prince is appointed by God over the land, it is to protect
them from harm, even as a shepherd to the guardianship of his
flock. . The subjects are not appointed by God for the behoof of the
prince, but the prince for his subjects, without whom he is no
prince."

At the same time the severest punishments are levelled
in Chinese law and precept against treason, slaying or
expulsion of a ruler, and all offences against that sanctity
of his person which only palpable moral unfitness can
annul.

In truth, the root idea of the Chinese State is a mutu-
ality of rights and interests between prince and Mutuality
people as the two terms of one divine order, neither ^Tknd
of which can fail of its part without defeating the P e P le -
whole. The primitive simplicity of this recognition of
justice has not unfolded into those practical mediations
which political experience has elsewhere devised for regu-
lating and correcting the relations between ruler and ruled,
and which have ultimately identified the two in pure self-
government by the people. On both sides the corrective
force is directly destructive of its opposite. The prince
compels obedience by peremptory edict, without constitu-
tional check or balance, and the people make resistance or
compel justice solely by resort to rebellion, unmediated by
elective processes or limitary laws. This statement must
of course be qualified by the references already made to
abiding instincts and forces, which serve a kindred purpose

STRUCTURES.

with such mediations. But, on the whole, the method is as
simplistic as it is sincere. It is the most direct path of a
religious consciousness of the right to be governed and the
duty to be led by the best, maintaining its ground against
perversion, while as yet ignorant of the means by which
changes can be made steady and constructive. These
contrasted means, so far as they are now discerned, we sum
with repre- U p un der the term representative self-government,
govern- They involve an analysis of the social body which
reaches to its ultimate molecules ; to the indi-
vidual, his functions, duties, rights. In the East, society
is still unanalyzed. Only the grand antithesis is recognized
of unity in the ruling force and multiplicity in the ruled,
but without the mediating Jterm of individuality, through
which the interests of both are harmonized in the justice
that guarantees fair hearing and full opportunity for all.

What concerns us most is to note the development, out
of the oldest type of social life, and in democratico-
O f the cw- monarchical form, of the idea of universal service
nese pohu- through government by the best, and the rule of fit-
ness to functions as its practical interpreter. The
association of this idea with responsibility to the people as a
whole, seems natural enough, when we consider its truly
prophetic intimation of that yet unfulfilled ideal of freedom
to which the latest republic, as well as the earliest mon-
archy, must aspire.

I am therefore far from allowing that " there is, properly,
The people no people in China," in the sense of a body-politic,
tile "body w ith definite meaning and function, " but only a
politic." somewhat, crude and undeveloped, fitly represented
in its written ideograph as a wild plant, vegetating with-
out insight, and 'forming only the body of the State, of
which the prince is the soul." * The rights already men-

1 Plath's Confucius. The current term for " the masses " is wan-min, the myriad
people.

GOVERNMENT.

tioned, and the recognized responsibilities of the State,
indicate not only that the idea of " the people" so dear
to the classical writers and teachers of China, involves a
vital force and real whole ; but that so completely do per-
sonal distinctions rnerge in the sense of universal equality
for the purposes of justice, as the soul of this idea, that
the Emperor himself, the fountain of honors, cannot sub-
stitute his own interest for the public good without a
wide-spread protest, and all inherent and inalienable dis-
tinctions like the ranks and castes of Aryan society are
unknown.

Offices, titles, temporary privileges, are inevitable, and
represent the necessity for some kind of grading
in the plane of social respect. Probably they are Equallty<
all the more conspicuous and complex because tJiey alone
represent it. The instinct is satisfied, without essential
differences of class, by shadings of functional importance,
under tests of fitness. In the old fetes described in the
Shu-king, no distinctions of rank are recognized, differences
of station being referred to no other ground than utility and
convenience. Nothing is commoner in China than radical
protest against even these, by writers and philosophers,
whose errors are usually confuted by the wiser national
creed, and the distinctions involved in social order recon-
ciled with real equalities. Mencius, for example, replies to
one who argued from the times when the Emperor ploughed
with his own hands and prepared his own meal, like other
men, while he carried on the government, by convincing
him of the necessity for a division of labor, and by putting
the authority of government itself on this ground, in a
sentence of profound and enduring meaning :

"Great men have their proper business, and little men have theirs.
If every man must make his tools before he uses them, the whole Em-
pire would be kept running about on the roads. Hence the saying,
* Some labor with their minds, and some with their bodily strength.

298 STRUCTURES.

They who labor with their minds direct others : they who labor (only)
with their strength are directed by others.' " x

This characteristic logic goes far towards explaining the
Absence of remarkable exception afforded by China to the
other great primitive civilizations, in its entire free-
dom from caste. The fact itself seems at first to contra-
dict that view of the origin of castes, which ascribes them
to the force of conditions natural to the early stages of
society. In the volume on India, I have defined them as
the result of an early effort at the organization of labor
under the influence of the religious idea, considered as
guide to a determination of the comparative values of func-
tions for the general good. This given, the secondary
agencies of conquest and tradition, and the powers of a
separate priesthood, accomplished the rest. But religion
in China, instead of influencing the organization of labor,
has been absorbed- in it and constituted by it. Work is
not estimated and distributed by an ideal above itself : it is
the ideal. The result is obvious. No contemplative class
could be formed at the top of the social scale to hold a body
of sacred traditions by supernatural right ; no contempt of
physical industry could remand the industrial class to the
bottom of that scale ; no expansion by conquest made the
soldier a higher power of national defence than the peace-
ful pioneers of labor ; no separation of interests could arise
in a commonwealth of industry to put the trader perma-
nently above the farmer or the artisan. In place of the
fiction of essential difference between classes, the realities
of productive force were in honor ; the producer of univer-
sal uses and economies could nowhere be ignored ; and if
literary culture, which was held to be the culmination of
ethical and social wisdom, was made the ground of highest
social respect, it must be remembered that its substance
was democratic, the literary class being recruited from the

* Menc. III. i. 4-

GOVERNMENT. 299

people, and that its gates were open to fair competition
for rewards, which, as the fruit of honest toils, educated
the whole nation in self-respect. The secret of this Chi-
nese democracy is a religion of work. Labor and freedom
go hand in hand. For society cannot escape the spiritual
law, that liberty is only in patient conformity to the condi-
tions of Nature.

Hereditary rank is contrary to the Chinese social theory ;
and even the prince, usually with the advice of ofhered .
his ministers, can nominate his successor from itary right.
among his sons. There have been periods when the he-
reditary principle received great expansion ; but these pe-
riods and notably that of the later Tcheou, in whose
feudalism it took root are regarded as the product of a
perverted state of society. It is traced by Chinese writers
to the reduction of the people to a condition of dependence
on great officials, who were paid, not from the total reve-
nue, but in rights of .attachment on the soil and its prod-
ucts, to be levied directly on the laborer. 1 The protest
against the principle of entail is declared to have been con-
stant and strong, even while the process of enfeoffment
was going on. Confucius and Mencius, who belong to
that epoch, insist that, in imperial succession, virtue must
take precedence of hereditary right. 2 The introduction of
eunuchs into court offices is believed to have been in part a
plan to get rid of the latter principle. 3 Where it still
remains, as in certain privileged classes, it confers no real
power beyond a certain social respect. 4

Equally vain has been the effort to establish primogen-
iture. It was prevented by Wu-ti in the second century,
B.C. ; and the eldest son was allowed no more than half
the paternal estate. 5 Fortunes seldom descend in families,
and all professions are free.

1 Biot, Mem. de la Constit. Polit. de la Chine au Xllme Silcle pp. 28, 29.

2 Menc. V. i. 6 ; also Plath, Bay. Akad. X. 535.

3 Biot, from Matouanlin. * Williams, I. 316. 6 Wuttke, II. 151.

3OO STRUCTURES.

If the old titles of feudal times which figure in the An-
nals, and are quaintly translated by the terms, " duke,"
"count," "baron," "knight," have not quite disappeared,
yet the rank of noble, as now dispensed, carries no perma-
nent authority, nor even influence ; nor any immunities,
other than such as may be specially granted as reward
for public services or literary merit, or in view of the
honor that flows so freely in the East upon children from
the virtue of their fathers. Officials of distinction, wise
and virtuous dead, and pre-eminently the family of Confu-
cius, have been ennobled. Females as well as males
receive this honor. It has been liberally conferred, and is
naturally enough sold in times of financial distress. In
the second century, B.C., the whole people were ennobled
as a means of attaching them to the dynasty of Han. 1
The ennobled classes are submerged in the general equal-
ity. Wealth and ability determine influence in China as
well as in America, and the highest posts are continually
supplied from the humblest conditions of social life. The
assurance that public good is the final cause of government
is not disturbed by the grade of honor due to the special
color of a mandarin's cap-button, or peacock's feather, or a
flight to right and left before the official whip that precedes
his sedan. In the ritual laws there are rules of social pre-
cedence, based on estimates of the respective values of occu-
pations, but nowise inclining to caste. And observe the
order: (i) Literati ; (2) Husbandmen ; (3) Manufacturers ;
(4) Merchants. 2 Again, among husbandmen, the producers
of grains take precedence of gardeners or fruiterers. A
few classes are specially marked with social contempt, such
as jugglers, actors, executioners, police-runners, beggars,
aliens, slaves ; but their disqualifications, however discred-
itable to the community, are by no means crushing or radi-
cal, and affect, after all, but a small portion of the body
politic. 3

1 Kidd's China, p. 261. * Davis, ch. viii. 3 Williams, I. 322.

GOVERNMENT.

301

The difference of Chinese traditions of social order from
those of Japan is radical. Japan has been aristo-
cratic, China democratic. Although so largely
under Chinese influence for a thousand years, Japanese
society fixed every man's condition irrevocably, and the
government was a close corporation of nobles. It has
been even called " a despotism tempered by assassination."
No political reward was offered to literary attainment, and
the military class was in a sense supreme. The abandon-
ment of feudal rights by the daimios, in order " to enable
their country to take its place by the side of other nations,"
the recognition of the right of petition, and of laws as the
basis of government, are late revolutionary results, while in
China these popular liberties are traditional.

Slavery.

The earlier periods of Chinese history yield no signs of
the existence of personal slavery. 1 The earliest
mention of slaves (mi) belongs to the twelfth cen-
tury, B.C., at which time this class consisted only of public
convicts, doomed to penal labors for such crimes as rebel-
lion, or as prisoners of war. 2 Old men and children were
exempted. In the time of the Han, the number of such
State convicts was from one to three hundred thousand,
and emancipation was often a public necessity. 3 The T'ang
Emperors freed all government slaves, and we thenceforth
hear only of persons condemned to banishment, as the
Man-chus send criminals to government forges and salt-
works on the Amoor, their children, however, being given
to officers as personal slaves.

In the second century, B.C., after the terrible desola-
tions of the civil wars, the founder of the Han permitted
parents to sell their children. This seems to have been

1 See Plath, Bay. Akad. X. 688.

* See Biot's account, from Maiouanlin, Journ. Asiat. 1837.

8 Martin, I. 218.

3O2 STRUCTURES.

the first definite step to private ownership in persons. 1
There were three classes of bondsmen : (i) prisoners of
war ; (2) persons selling themselves, or sold ; (3) children
of slaves. A long series of laws have prohibited child-
selling as well as trading in the bodies of persons born
free; 2 and man-stealers are severely punished. Yet the
former practice has been too deeply rooted in social dis-
tresses to be extirpated by laws.

But emancipation was never prohibited. Kwang-woo
(first century, A.C.) deserves special honor. He enacted
that every female sold should become the purchaser's legal
wife ; released officers who had been reduced by poverty
to selling themselves ; amnestied public slaves ; forbade
killing or branding, and gave freedom to all branded per-
sons. Edicts of emancipation have often been issued in
times of distress, to increase the number of tax-payers. It
is observable that the act is always immediate and com-
plete. No gradualism complicates the evil. The great
severity of certain penal laws in their bearing on slaves
appears to be an attempt to give full validity to patriarchal
absolutism, which could not be fully Carried out upon free
men.

But, however severe the laws, the actual status of slaves
Not of the m China in no sense answers to that total absence
western o f rights by which the term, in our usage, is de-
fined ; and still less admits the cruelties of the old
Spartan or Roman slave laws. "The Anglo-American,"
wrote Biot, in 1837, " resembling the Chinese in his love of
gain and his practical spirit, is inferior to him in humanity
as judged by the severity of his black laws, and the bar-
barities he inflicts on his slave. In America, it must be
remembered, the master is white and the slave black. In
China they belong to the same race, and are intellectually
equal. In China the master knows that poverty may re-

1 Plath and Biot. * See Wuttke, II. 153.

GOVERNMENT. 303

duce him to the condition of his slave, as well as imperial
anger or physical calamity. So he inclines to mercy and
fellow-feeling towards him." l Other authorities are agreed
that the treatment of Chinese so-called " slaves " is ex-
tremely mild. 2 We are told that they are wont to eat with
their masters. If they are ill-treated, the magistrate must
interfere. The romances represent them as confidants of
their masters. Nor does Chinese history record any revolt
of slaves. They often engage in trade and redeem them-
selves from bondage. The marriage of a female slave makes
her free ; while unmarried, she is treated like a hired ser-
vant ; nor does slavery descend to female children beyond
the first generation. The number of male slaves is small ;
and their sons often reach official position and wealth. 3
Yet it is in the male line only that the condition becomes
strictly hereditary. There are recognitions of natural free-
dom in such facts as (i) the punishment of the master and
his whole family in case of his murdering a slave and their
concealment of the deed, as contrasted with the Roman
custom, when a master was murdered, of putting all his
slaves to death ; and (2) the prohibition of a husband's
selling his wife, even to be the full wife of another man,
without her own free written consent. 4

It is a fair inference from facts like these that the
so-called slave class in China, recruited mostly from the
necessities of poverty, is continually being resolved back
into the free community, through that democratic instinct
which overrides the whole system of formal grades and dis-
tinctions.

The word liberty is said to be "unknown to the Chinese
language." 5 This is of course applicable only to Chinese
the definition of liberty as pure and simple political liberty>

1 Journal A siatique. - Wuttke, II. 153. 8 Doolittle, II. an.

Doolittle, II. 209. Williams, I. 321.

304 STRUCTURES.

self-government. For inward freedom, for a higher law
of conscience and reason as the ground of personal cul-
ture, for the spontaneity of virtue, the classics have not
only many terms, but a constant zeal. The whole purpose
of the Ta-hio is to teach the origin of all power in the dis-
ciplines of personal character.

" The point of rest is in the highest excellence." l " From the Em-
peror down, the root of every thing is in the cultivation of the person." 2

" Not to do what one's own sense of right tells him not to do, nor
to desire what it forbids him to desire, is the sum of right action. 1 ' 3
" He whose goodness is part of himself is a real man." 4 " Though
poor, he does not let go his virtue, nor, though prosperous, leave his
own path." 5 "A counsellor to the great should disregard their pomp.
Why should I stand in awe of them ? " 6 " Men have true honor
within; but they do not think of it. The honor men confer is not
honor. Whom Cheou ennobles, he can make mean again. 1 ' 7

This is the Platonic education, teaching " how rightly to
rule, and rightly to obey." 8

" If a minister cannot correct himself, how can he correct others." 9
" A true man will sacrifice his life to save his principles." 10 " He is
in the right way who naturally and easily does right : choosing and
firmly holding what is good." 11

An instance will illustrate the scope of this possibility.
A great ^ nas been said of Ye-liu, minister of the family of
minister of Tchingis Khan, and a Tartar with Chinese culture,
that he was a " mediator between an oppressed race
and their oppressor, his whole life being spent in pleading
with triumphant barbarism for the cause of law, order, and
humanity." He saved whole provinces of China from being
depopulated to make pastures for the Tartar horse, and
protected the cities from being sacked with all their arts
and industries ; restrained the custom of filling the harem
of the Khans with the flower of Chinese families ; obtained
for the conquered nation the right of holding office ; pro-

i Tahio, c. ii. * Ibid., c. vii. 8 Menc. VII. i. 17.

* Ibid., ii. 25. 8 Ibid., i. 9. Ibid., ii. 34-

7 Ibid., VI. i. 17. 8 Laws, B. I. 9 Lunyu, XIII. 13.

Ibid., XV. 8. Chung-yunz, XX.

GOVERNMENT. 305

tected many of their old institutions ; opened educational
and civil rights even to slaves ; repressed corruption and
exaction ; rebuked an Emperor's taste for strong drink ;
and availed himself of an imperial sickness to procure a
general amnesty. Charged with having enriched himself,
at his death he was found possessed only of a few pictures
and books. In brief, " he prepared afar off the revolution
that sent the Mongols back to their deserts, and gave China
a government founded on national manners and traditions." 1
In the first century, B.C., a governor in North-eastern China
literally taught people to sell their swords and buy oxen,
and brought banditti by amnesties to honest labor at the
plough : whence the saying that in his province " men wore
oxen at their waists and heifers in their belts." 2

Liberty, in the now too popular acceptation of the word,

as the unconditioned right to do as one pleases, Not "the

is no part of Chinese mental experience. All r j s g ^ d
freedom is associated with loyalty, either to the wuis."
ruler, the traditional institutions and ceremonial grades,
or, when these lose their hold, to the inherent sense
of necessity for being governed, which characterizes the
race. This necessity, in the highest minds as elsewhere,
takes the form of reverence for the moral and spiritual
ideal, as is manifest in the whole tone of the classical
writings ; while in ordinary experience it merges in typical
rights of the people as such. The validity of an ultimate
appeal to the sense of the people subsists in spite of the
absence of those methods of effectuating the popular will
with which Western races are familiar. Though China is
the inventor of paper and printing, nothing has existed,
until the present time, more nearly approaching a popular
press than the court bulletin of such events, petitions, edicts,
honors, services, ordinances, as are thought fit for general

1 See Re"musat, Now. Mel. II. pp. 64-88.
1 Mayers? s Manual, p. 90.

3O6 STRUCTURES.

perusal. Nevertheless, the popular sentiment gets expres-
The voice s ' on m sat i res > stories, placards, remonstrances, dis-
ofthe cussions, and in the secret societies whose germs
people. are - n t ^ e older records of the nation. 1 Legis-
lative institutions in our sense are wanting ; but official
conduct is ventilated in the town councils, and an unpopu-
lar mandarin is frequently driven from his place. The
responsibility for popular commotions being by law laid
upon these government officers, their disposition is to
avoid giving cause of offence to the community. But, after
all, we must observe how entirely the interest of the indi-
vidual is sacrificed to the ideal of public rights in the fact
that those last, self-destructive resorts for the overthrow of
unjust officials, suicide and oath-bound conspiracy, are ex-
ceedingly prevalent. 2

The imperial theory would hardly seem to recognize
Local lib- local self-government. Yet the communal organi-
vaiage zation in China, and even Japan, 3 as in India, main-
system, tains the idea of a popular commonwealth in many
important ways at the base of the social structure ; and
in the former States, far more than in the latter country,
yields practical instruction in the school of liberty. In
every part of China towns and villages abound, where the
officials of government are scarcely ever seen, and affairs
are administered by local authorities, selected on the basis
of the national respect for culture, and forming bodies which
direct affairs by open discussion, sometimes amounting to
decision of peace or war between neighboring clans. 4 These
municipal institutions, even in the poorer communes, rest
on a kind of patriarch o-universal suffrage, to which all heads

1 See especially Hue's Chinese Empire, II. 83-86; St. Denys, Patsies de f Epoque des
Thang (Paris, 1872), p. xxviii.

2 See Mcfarlane, TJte Chinese Revolution; Meadows, p. 115.

8 Smith's Ten Weeks in Japan. " The Japanese peasant is jealous of his rights and asserts
them." See also Seances des Orientalistes, 1873, I. 199.

4 Meadows, p. 47 ; La Chine Ouverte, p. 191 ; Chinese ReJ>., January, 1836.

GOVERNMENT. 307

of families are entitled, or on choice of elders by lot 1 Or-
ganizations of the people, for the detection and punishment
of robbers and other social offenders, are very common. 2
The elders of town councils, even where government has
its ti-paos, or mayors, possess very considerable powers ;
communicating with the prefect through these latter offices,
administering justice and directing the police, regulating
ceremonies, settling disputes, and estimating taxes. They
remain in office during the good will of the people. In
dangerous moments, these councils unite for consultation,
from fifty to a hundred combining for discussion in some
central hall ; and their decisions are of great weight with
the central government. Their power over State officials
was seen in the resistance of the Canton city council to the
opening of that port to the British in 1857. "There are
customs, privileges, and laws in every province which the
government dare not abolish, and which destroy that civil
and administrative unity which Europeans have been pleased
to attribute to this colossal Empire." 3 The habit of free
discussion is further developed in the direction of an in-
terest of prime value in China by the trade associations,
which exercise immense influence, and in Canton alone
make use of more than a hundred halls. In the East or the
West, no institutions can prevent the tendencies of industry
to diffuse freedom.

The dialectics and narrations of Mencius often reveal a
socialistic element, as apt to crop out in this soil of Chinese
free discussion. 4 Re"musat gives an interesting account of
an effort of this kind on a national scale, led by Wang-ngan-
che, a reformer of the eleventh century, who carried even
the ruling prince along with him for a time, in schemes for
introducing equality of property, abolishing monopolies by
making the State the only creditor, in the name of the

1 Bazin, Keeker ches sur les Instil, de la. Chine, 1854; Plath, Landwirthsch. d. Chine-
sen (1874), p. 40.

Hue, II. 82-84. > Ibid., II. 49- * Menc. III. 14; Vl.ii. 10.

3O8 STRUCTURES.

working classes, and substituting for superstitious rites to
remove disease and famine, earthquakes and droughts,
those sanitary and other social duties that belong to a re-
sponsible government. 1 That the crude mixture of sense
and folly in this bold reform should soon break it down was
but natural ; yet it is none the less impressive as a sign of
opportunity to conceive and propagate principles of social
justice.

Not less effective sources of popular activity and com-
The clans kination are the clans, of which there are said to be
nearly five hundred ; originating probably in the
old tribal divisions of feudal times, and in the large diver-
sity of ethnic elements out of which the nation is composed. 2
But the value of the clans, as schools of social organization,
is fully offset by their disintegrative effects on the State
as a whole. So violent are their contentions that they
frequently interrupt trade and production, and defeat all
attempts to execute the laws. As the clan is but a develop-
ment of the patriarchal family, retaining in large degree the
forms of that primitive system, it is natural to find in China,
where those forms have undergone less change than in
Aryan States, whole neighborhoods bound by ties of a
common ancestry, and whole tribes united by recognition
of common chiefs and elders. The law which forbids in-
termarriage among persons of the same surname must tend
to dissolve these family concretions.

That the elements of political self-government, now
mentioned, should not have been developed into

Supposed . e f ... .,,

absence of some torm or parliamentary institutions, will seem
progress. i nex pii ca ble, till we reflect on the peculiar instinct
of this people to bury itself in organization, without secur-
ing freedom to the individual atoms, on whose self-asser-

1 Nottv. Mel. Asiat. II., " Life of Ssemakwang."

2 These elements have not been clearly discerned, though several careful studies have been
made on the Hakkas and some Miautse tribes.

GOVERNMENT. 309

tion such progress depends. The want of progress in
Chinese institutions has probably been exaggerated. The
native writers, indeed, regard the later centralization as
but return to a primitive perfect monarchy. But it may
well be believed to represent the gradual working out of
the demand for national unity inherent in Chinese nature.
It took a decisive form in the great change effected in the
third century B.C. from feudal anarchy to democratico-
monarchical institutions. Not only were the hereditary
chiefs of States absorbed, and their exhausting wars
quelled, but the old aristocracy and its land tenures were
levelled, the paths of distinction opened to the humblest
classes, and a general application of the educational tests
of fitness for public functions was made possible. These
were the ultimate outcome of a revolution which seemed at
first to be the subjugation of all existing local liberties
under the sway of a single despot. It has certainly been
a revolution in the interest of social order and growth ;
and the result has been wrought out through long ferment
of the elements} and at vast sacrifice of human life. It has
been a triumph over barriers of tribal tradition and the
rivalries of States and clans, that deserves to rank among
the great facts of progress, and proves these not to be
wanting in the patriarchal Empire of Repose.

The immutability of China is a fiction ; though the vast
scale and patient uniform pressure of the forces Chinese
at work may almost remind us, in their power to immobility"
disguise movement, of the molecular changes of
geology. There must be motive force in a nation which
has passed through twenty changes of dynasty in as many
centuries. Comparing the earliest and latest epochs of its
history, we note the striking difference in land tenure,
which at first was wholly vested in the State, but, since
the great revolution just referred to, has been steadily trans-
formed into private ownership. Freedom of locomotion,

3IO STRUCTURES.

however hampered by local causes, has advanced to that
extent, that for the last few centuries no equal area on the
civilized globe can be traversed by its own inhabitants,
with so little interference from officials, as the two thou-
sand miles square of Chinese territory. Immense changes
in diet, dress, products, culture, organization, administra-
tion, have slowly penetrated it. 1 How vast, original, com-
plex, and refined a civilization has been evolved from the
rude tribes that descended thousands of years ago through
the wildernesses of the Hoangho, and in a space of time
which the prodigious ethnic scale on which it proceeds
seems to reduce to a day !

The Chinese themselves, contrary to the general impres-
Traditions sion, distinctly recognize progress. They begin
of progress. w j t ^ a picture of their forefathers, as a race of
men scarcely above the condition of brutes, without
fire or dwelling, clad in skins, and eating roots and
insects, but gradually lifted by wise and practical persons
to that stage of development in which they could receive
the normal institutions depicted in the Shu-king. 2 They
have characteristically described these teachers of hut-
building, cooking, and dressing, as well as of writing,
music, medicine, agriculture, and historical construction,
as princes ruling nations and forming long dynasties.
Their series of inventions is as unscientifically constructed
as the order of creation in the Hebrew Genesis ; yet the
long period conceded in the mythology to this prehistoric
development is a clear recognition of progress as a princi-
ple in human nature, beside which the three or four thou-
sand years of a supposed degeneracy which constitute
their real history seems but a mere streak on the surface
of an evolutionary deep of time.

1 See Hellwald, Culturgeschickte (Augsburg, 1874), pp. 79, 80.

2 Biot, Journ. Asiat. 1846 ; also, the ' Bamboo Books" of the Shu-king^ and De Mail-
la's Hist. Gen. de la Chine, I. i.

GOVERNMENT. 311

Curiously combined with this positivist instinct is their
reference of the ideal of government to a remote Past po ii t _
past, beyond recorded history. How far we accept y^^* 15 '
this firm postulate of Chinese belief depends very shun,
much on the degree of influence we ascribe to the
national habit of treating the ideal as existing only in an
immediate concrete, an instant realization. While the tra-
ditions and records from which Confucius compiled the
description of the old monarchy, as contained in the Shu-
king, could not possibly have been formed in his day,
since they required a long period for their elaboration,
they must not, on the other hand, be carried back so far as
to defeat this requirement on the other side. A central-
ized government, ruling several principalities and parcel-
ling out large domains by investiture, was never, even in
China, brought to birth in a day.

There is no question in Comparative Politics more inter-
esting, as there is none more recondite, than the siowevo-
process by which the Family Idea unfolded into a Monof
vast imperialism like that of China, without losing ar chai
its essential character. This evolution must cover state>
many stages of the growth of nations in general ; but in
China we may observe its normal course, because the
supremacy of the idea has not been interfered with from
without nor from within. That the patriarchalism of the
Family has passed on into the Village Community or clan,
and the authority of the Father into that of the Chief ;
and that ties of blood have transfused their virtue into rela-
tions of landed, interest, and other great political and civil
components, are facts which have proved to be of widest
application in the study of national origins and institu-
tions. The subject has lately attracted much close inves-
tigation, in which Sir Henry Maine and Mr. Edward L.
Freeman have, been especially prominent. The latter has
called attention to the substantial identity of the " yevos "

312 STRUCTURES.

of Athens, the "gens" of Rome, the "mark" of the Teu-
tonic nations, the " Village Community " of the East, and
the Irish "clan" as a transition from the Family to the
Tribal Union, which in its turn is the basis of the City or
the State. 1 The former has devoted a large section of one
of the most remarkable works of modern times to tracing
the effect of that " mental sterility " which confines nations
in their early stages to the Family Idea, in expanding that
idea, by a series of constructive fictions, " into the House,
the Tribe, and lastly the State." Thus in races as distinct
from each other as the Hindus, Romans, and Irish, the
actual name of Family, with many of the associations
thereto belonging, has been transferred to the results of
personal adoption and assumption of new ancestral cults,
to septs, guilds, religious bodies, as well as to the rela-
tions of foster-parent and spiritual instructor. 2 The grow-
ing associations of natural relatives open their gates of
privilege and safety to artificial membership ; and the
State is formed before the nucleating conception of a
Family Bond is lost. An element of equality in this con-
ception is developed by the ownership of land into the
village community ; and the patriarch becomes transmuted
into the Chief or King by the natural effort to discover in
whom the purest ancestral blood has descended, a deci-
sion made by the tests of fitness, so that election gradually
supersedes birth. These researches of Maine do not cover
the history of China, which will hereafter afford a vast
field for such inquiries. Enough is already known to ena-
ble us to bring this marvellous civilization, so long sup-
posed absolutely unlike any other, into the line of these and
similar universal laws. The patriarchal village community
still constitutes the basis of Chinese society. The clan
distinctions testify to the prodigious force of the family

1 Comparative Politics, Am. ed. 1874, pp. 102, 103.
* Maine's Early History of Institutions.

GOVERNMENT. 313

bond on which they rest. The earliest land systems of
Chinese tradition, whose traces still remain, not in books
only, but in the divisions of the soil, are evident efforts to
adhere as closely as possible to the primitive equality of
families. The princes of the petty States were separate
nuclei of patriarchalism not yet absorbed into a whole.
The tradition that the imperial office was originally elec-
tive, the strange combination of its paternal authority with
local liberties and instinctive equalities, and its responsi-
bility to the test of fitness, are all readily explained as
results of patriarchalism in its natural evolution. And
this mighty witness to the self-perpetuating and productive
force of the Family Bond, at the farthest pole of civiliza-
tion from our own, adds weight to the urgency of its
demand on us also for that special guardianship which
properly belongs to the first principle of social safety and
growth.

We know not at what remote epoch the " black-haired "
tribes first appeared on the soil of China ; 'but Secu]ar
there can be no doubt that long stages, similar to stages of
those of other nomadic or patriarchal tribes, pre- c^iTese"
ceded their political consolidation. The traces of History,
these have not been wholly covered by later construc-
tions. How very gradual must have been the extension
of a centralizing force through wild regions and their
barbarous hordes, is shown by the free spirit of these
native elements with which it had to deal. Covenants are
recorded between their princes (or sheikhs) and the people,
in which the democratic instinct, so conspicuous in later
times, shows a rude strength. " If you will not fall away
from us, we will not force you to sales, nor beg nor extort
from you." " We have believed and kept our covenant, to
this day. If you exact aught from our traders you will
teach us to break our faith."

The consolidation of tribes of this temper under one

314 STRUCTURES.

monarchy must have been slow. That their princes were
ever the fiefless vassals of a great central power, such as
the Shu-king describes, does not seem very credible. The
old Chinese, whether an immigrant tribe or not, were at all
events a settled community, engaged in culture of silk and
grain, and expanding by the power of industry rather than
by that of conquest. Yu redeems the wilderness and
divides the cleared land for purposes of culture. The
heroes of this march on Nature are busy hewers of wood
and drawers of water. Wars with the aboriginal tribes are
not wholly wanting ; l but Yu conquers the barbarous
Meaou by withdrawing his army, and setting a good moral
example. A chief of Lu, dissuading from war, said, " Do
right : submission will follow. When the enemy is cold,
clothe him ; if hungry, feed him ; be his true ruler in
weariness and want, and he will of himself return to you." 2
Confucius, Mencius, and Laotseu echo the strain of peace,
and have no toleration for great conquerors, or expansion
by force of arms.

Compared with conquest, the agricultural ardor of the
Traditions Chinese would be a slow process of territorial ex-
O f territorial pansion, and hardly consistent with the traditions
growth. ^j. Shun distributed fiefs to a great number of
vassals; 3 that "ten thousand kingdoms held Yu's stones
and silks in hand ; " 4 that eight hundred princes united
under Woo-wang, founder of the Tcheou dynasty in the
twelfth century, B.C. ; and that seventeen hundred and
seventy-three feudal fiefs belonged to the early rulers of
this line, 5 who are said to have absorbed and given away
kingdoms by the dozen to strengthen themselves on the
throne. 6 The revolutions by which the earliest dynasties

1 Sku-king, Pt. II. B. n. ; Pt. III. B. II.

2 Plath, from Tscho-chi (Bay. Ak. X. 465).

8 Bamboo Books of Shu-king. * Sseki.

6 Matouanlin. 6 Plath, ut supra.

GOVERNMENT. 315

(Hia and Shang) were overthrown, and the long-lived
eventful Tcheou established, their warlike and generous
heroes, Tang and Woo, and the great and good Duke of
Tcheou, the Joshuas and the Moses of Chinese tradition,
as Fo-hi was the Abraham, even if historical, must have
filled a much smaller stage of action than the old books
imply. Confined to the region of the Wei and Ho, 1 it
embraced not more than a sixth part of the eighteen prov-
inces now included in China Proper. The great empire of
Yao and Shun, as a primeval rock which fell apart into the
disorganized feudalism of the later Tcheou, and was re-
constructed as far as possible after the monarchical con-
quests of the T'sin in the third century B.C., can hardly be
accepted as historically proven. More probable is the
gradual absorption of the numerous tribes into the indus-
trial civilization of the " black-haired " races, to which, as
in Egypt, Babylon, Phenicia, and elsewhere, the centraliza-
tion of monarchy, as an industrial convenience, was but a
natural incident.

Even Mencius says, " It would be better to be without
the Book of History (Shu-king) than to give entire credit
to it." 2 If we are right, the fact is valuable as confirming
the conclusions of modern criticism for a largely mytho-
logical origin of the Old Testament records, by the case of
a people far more careful in preserving historical data than
the Hebrews ; thus affording added evidence that these
conclusions represent a universal law.

The Shu-king picture, however, though needing to be
much reduced in scale, and sifted of elements grow-

3 Real value

ing out of later governmental ideals, may neverthe- O f the
less possess great historical value, -as indicating the
germs of imperial relations, afterwards more fully

1 Plath ; also Legge's Prolegomena to the Shiking. The odes indicate this very clearly.
Ssemathsian speaks of inroads by barbarous tribes into Shantung, one of the oldest States, as
late as noo B.C.

2 Menc., VII. n. 3.

STRUCTURES.

unfolded, and may even deal with historical personages. It
is too prosaically realistic and detailed to be summarily
ascribed to the mytho-poetic faculty. Its minuteness of
organization has an accordance with Chinese tendencies ;
and the steady insistence on such early centralization,
through all ages of Chinese experience, points to some
antecedent germ which it is the function of history to
trace.

The early books of the Shu-king 1 may be called a Chi-
Eariiest nese Declaration of Faith in the power of ideal
shubooks. government to assume immediate concrete being,
and possess the world. Their record of Yao and Shun, and
of Yu as founder of the first (Hia) dynasty (2300-2200
B.C.), is, in our opinion, an effort to erect on the historical
data afforded by the more or less primitive relations of
a number of semi-civilized tribes an elaborate imperial
organization ; and in such full harmony with the ideal of
Chinese statesmen, that we actually find in it the whole
substance of their perfected state. Observe its thoroughly
practical character.

All power proceeds from the Emperor, who, however,
The ideal consults his ministers in appointing his successor,
monarchy. an( j holds himself responsible for the condition of
his people. Yao selects Shun as morally fittest to rule
and by the general voice. Shun seeks to " see with the
eyes and hear with the ears of all." He appoints twelve
" pastors " of provinces (Mou), and bids them " sustain
the people with food, treat strangers kindly, instruct the
neighbor, appreciate the good, discountenance the evil,
and so bring the barbarians into subjection." He allows
banishment and money-fines in commutation of the " five
great penalties." We have already the whip in the courts

1 The passages adduced in illustration of the Shu-king are of course drawn from the
most authoritative translation of the classics which we possess, the invaluable labors of
Dr. Legge.

GOVERNMENT. 317

and the stick in the schools. But he says to himself : " Let
me be reverent, and let compassion rule in punishment."
Inadvertent offences are pardoned, obstinate ones are pun-
ished to extremity.

His supervision over vassal princes is exercised (i) by
the Mou ; (2) by requiring them to come to court every
four years, receiving chariots, robes, and gems, according
to their doings ; and (3) by tours of personal inspection
every fifth year, giving audience, arranging times and
seasons, weights and measures, ceremonies, music, official
rites to Shang-te, to the six " holy rulers," the hills, streams,
and spirit hosts. These tours were a father's visits to his
children, who was also priest, judge, mediator, chief
shepherd. An old proverb of the Hia says : " When the
Wang does not make his appearance, how shall we have
rest, how find help ? "

His administrative force embraces, in addition to Yu, as
Prime Minister, a Chief of Agriculture, " to sow grains for
the needy ; " of Moral Instruction, to set forth with gentle-
ness the lessons of duty ; of Crime, of Works, of Forests,
of Ancestral Rites, of Music, of Public Communication by
Edict or otherwise. These nine, added to the twelve Mou,
and a chief of somewhat uncertain functions, make the
" Twenty-two " whom he exhorts to aid him in the service
of Heaven. All, in true Chinese humility, decline their
honors, but are forced to accept office. 1

Like the later censors these ministers are endowed with
many prerogatives ; their advice and reproof, in all the
earlier reigns, are given in very bold and lofty sentences,
which are often received in humility. These counsels and
confessions, and the frequent royal appeals to the people,
are more than germs of later democracy. Even the com-
petitive examinations are in full course ; every three years
comes an inquiry into the merits of officials, and after

1 Canon of Shun; see also Plath, China vor 4,000 Jahren, Bay. Ak., June, 1869.

3l8 STRUCTURES.

three such the undeserving are degraded and the deserving
advanced.

As Shun organizes the government, so Yu the land and
the people. He surveys the territory, confines the floods,
clears and maps out the soil. His nine provinces are
minutely described, though not now identifiable, 1 and en-
graved on Nine Vases, preserved as the national palladium
for centuries, and believed to manifest coming changes in
the State. He invests princes by bestowing on each a
piece of sod of the color of the soil of his country. 2 The
princes, on their part, bring for tribute samples of the prod-
ucts of their dominions, which are described in minute
detail. 3

The land is divided in a highly artificial manner, which
reminds us of a nest of boxes, and seems devised to meet
the characteristic national love of mechanical symmetry
and distributive function. Five concentric squares consti-
tute as many domains ; the imperial is in the centre, sur-
rounded by four others ; the second is for nobles ; the third
for education ; the fourth for punishment and restraint,
reaching out to the wild tribes, whose domain is the fifth
and last. Each sends its portion of the public grain.

The mutual dependence of prince and people is fully
recognized.

" Of all who are to be loved, is not the Emperor the chief ? Of all
who are to be feared, are not the peoples the chief? If the mass have
no ruler, whom shall they honor ? If the prince have no people, who
shall guard his land ? " 4

The Emperor is but servant of Heaven.

" Let him not set example of idleness and vice to rulers, nor allow
officers to be cumberers of their places. The work is Heaven's ; it is
men's to act for Heaven. All duties, distinctions, ceremonies, are from
Heaven." 5 "Laws, rites, rewards, and punishments come from

1 The indications of the names are that the country was very limited.

* This is a governmental application of the theory of five elemental colors.

8 Yu-kung chapter. * Shu-king, Pt. II. B. n. 17. 5 Ibid., B. n.

GOVERNMENT.

Heaven : when it punishes, neither great nor small escape
none come between you and men of worth. Do not go against
to get popular applause ; do not oppose the people to follow your o
desires." 2

His ministers are his " legs and arms, ears and eyes ; "
to give effect to his wishes to support his people, whose
will represents Heaven by signs of favor or discontent. It
is theirs to correct him if he goes astray. 3

On his official robes figures of all forms, elements, and
creatures are embroidered ; and every good success is cele-
brated by joyous rites that mark the genial spirit of these
relations.

"When the nine services have been performed, let the end be cele-
brated by songs. Unite the people with gentle words, and correct
them with the majesty of law. Stimulate them with song, that your
success may never suffer loss." 4

Yu announces, even so early, that

'* Virtue is to hold fast the mean; for the mind of man is restless,
and prone to error." 6

And Kaou-kaou has determined the exact number of vir-
tues to be nine, each a form of mean between extremes. 6

" Punishment should not descend to heirs, but rewards should
reach to future generations. Rather than put to death one innocent
person, run risk of irregularity and error. This virtue has penetrated
the minds of the people." 7

Moral suasion and forgiveness is the sovereign power
over enemies. Yu proclaims his principle of conquest
thus :

" Entire sincerity moves spiritual beings ; how much more this
prince of Meaou ! " 8

The perfect powers of sincerity, however, did not suffice,
any more than in later days ; and in the very next reign the
Emperor K'e has to " execute reverently the punishment of

1 Old Commentary on the same. * Ibid., B. 11. 8 Ibid., Pt. IV. B. vin.

Shu-king, Pt. II. B. ii. 6 Ibid. Ibid., B. in.

7 Ibid., B. n. Ibid.

32O STRUCTURES.

Heaven " on the prince of Hoo in a great battle, and threaten
rebellious princes generally with condign destruction. 1 In
less than a century from Yu a monarch appeals to " older
statutes " to justify the immediate execution of great officers
for " stupidly going astray " in the matter of observing and
reporting the appearances of the heavens. 2 But the oldest
wars are not aggressive, nor for conquest, but to put down
rebellions, in the name of a divine social order.

The difference between this and other golden ages, con-
Concrete- structed in the past out of later experiences, is that
ness of the it assumes not an abstractly ideal State, with the

picture. .. f r

license or mythical iancy, but a positive govern-
mental organization in full detail. The Chinese ideal is a
concrete government. It is a working order in public rela-
tions ; no dreamland, but operating machinery. This char-
acteristic of the race is the only explanation of the early
Shu-king Books.

The elaborate organization thus ascribed to the opening
Probabiii- of the first dynasty implies a passivity in the ele-
purety 'ideal ments > as we ll as an ingenuity in the founders,
character, quite incredible at so early a period even in the
Chinese. The wonder increases when we look at the
alleged Institutes of the Tcheou, several hundred years
later, where the extent and fixedness of pre-arrangement
is such, down to dress, dwellings, eating, etiquette, and
means and methods of every kind, and the distribution of
functions so inconceivably minute, as to resemble one of
those intricate patterns wrought out by the cunning fingers
of Chinese women, in many-colored threads. Such recep-
tivity in the people, such shaping power in the rulers, is
practically impossible. It is, more probably, the national
ideal ; a bloom from the inmost heart of this people's faith
in the self-organizing power of virtue and the necessity of
being led from above while growing from beneath. Yu and

i Shu-kin S , Pt. III. B. H. * Ibid., B. iv.

GOVERNMENT. 321

Shun are the myth of the Child-People, who must have
grown gradually to these elaborate formations of faith,
though even in infancy indicating them in germs which we
can in some measure discern. The advanced morality of
the Shu-king is of course very much older than Confucius,
with whom every thought is more or less traditional. The
elaboration of it in speeches is doubtless largely due to him ;
yet the materials must have been given in old facts and
names, and in the far-brought national ideal which flowered
in him and in his school. He himself declares that the
remains of antiquity are inadequate, and that his statements

about it cannot be attested. 1

Between the putative age of Yu and the next gr5at epoch
of politico-ideal construction, the accession of the The Hia
Tcheou, intervenes a space of a thousand years andshan s-
(2200-1200 B.C.), embracing the whole period contemporary
with Hebrew tradition from the Abrahamites to the Judges,
as also with that of the Greek builders of cities and the
Trojan war. Sixteen kings of the Hia and twenty-eight of
the Shang, most of them known to us only by name, are
followed by the overthrow of Chow-sin by the prince of
Tcheou, at the head of a confederation of chiefs roused by
the cruelties of that ruler. Two dynasties, each opening
with a model prince, have ended in imperial degradation
and popular misery, and in that appeal to the right of revo-
lution which is so familiar to the Chinese race. The ideal
has faded in the very first century after the death of Yu.
The " songs of the seven sons of K'e " lament the failure
of these institutions and the consequent ruin of their royal
family. 2 Already in Yu's time, alcohol has begun its rav-
ages, and, though its discoverer is banished, brings about
the ruin of both the dynasties. The astronomical chiefs of
the third prince in the Hia line are put to death for drunk-

l Lunyu, III. 9. * Shu-king, Pt. III. B. in.

322 STRUCTURES.

enness, and his general must pronounce a serious temper-
ance discourse to his troops. 1 The merciful reliance of
Yu's creed on moral forces yields to the maxim that " when
sternness overcomes compassion, things are successful."

But the ideal endures in great ministers, who teach nobly
The first and reprove bravely, and in great emperors, who
deliverer, represent the people and the throne in one. Four
hundred and thirty years after Yu, arises a hero of the
highest order, " T'ang the victorious," who renews the
imperial glories, as founder of the line of Shang. He is a
Chinese emancipator ; visiting Heaven's vengeance on a
degenerate State, and appeals to the people, yet as their
master :

" Come, ye multitudes, listen to me. Not I, the little child, dare
undertake rebellion. But I dare not refuse to punish the tyrant, as I
fear God. Aid me and I will greatly reward you ; but if you do not, I
will put you to death, you and your children : you will find no forgive-
ness. 1 ' -

He asserts, in the spirit of Mencius, the universality of
conscience, and the duty of the prince to compel justice :

" The Supreme has given a moral sense, even to the humblest of
the people. If they conform to it, their nature is justified in them ;
if not, it is the prince that must cause them tranquilly to follow its
path. And now I know not whether I may not offend the powers
above and beneath ; I am fearful and trembling. If you do any thing
good, I will not dare to conceal it ; and for the evil in me, I would not
dare to forgive myself." 8

His ministers are no less admirable. " WHat Shun
was to Yao, and Yu to Shun, and Yih to Yu, that is E
to T'ang."

As tutor to the young prince, he teaches that " virtue
begins at home, and is completed in the State," and that
moral retribution is inevitable ; and when his pupil proves
unfit to rule, he imprisons him till he reforms. 4

1 Shu-king, Pt. III. B. iv. 2 Ibid., Pt. IV. B. i.

8 Ibid., B. m. < Ibid., B. iv.

GOVERNMENT. 323

" Heaven loves only the reverent ; the people cherish only the
benevolent ruler ; the spirits accept only the sacrifice of the sin-
cere." 1

Resigning his functions, he enjoins on the emperor mod-
esty, humanity, favor to the best and fittest men, supreme
regard to principles rather than formal precepts, love of
goodness as the only rule of virtue, and recognition of the
right of the whole people to full opportunity of moral and
rational growth. 2

Yu enters office with the brave declaration that " States
are not founded, nor rulers appointed, to minister to the
pleasure of one, but for the good government of the
people." 3

" Heaven is all-seeing, all-knowing. Let the wise king take it for
pattern."

" Before shield and spear are used, one should examine himself."

" Indulging a consciousness of goodness is the way to lose it."

"Boasting of ability destroys the merit it might gain." 4

" For all affairs let there be preparation."

" Do not be ashamed of mistakes, and thus make them crimes." 8

The Emperor asking to be taught the best aim, Yu
replies,

" If in learning there be an humble will, and striving to be earnest,
wisdom will surely come. Follow the perfect ways of former kings,
and you shall not err." 6

A democratic ruler is Pwan-kang, who forbids the
princes to " suppress the complaints of this people ; "
rebukes " noisy talk which would silence the cry of the
oppressed," and gives free audience to all men.

" Think reverently, ye chiefs, of my multitudes." " I will not
employ those who seek gain ; but those who labor vigorously for the
life and growth of the people I will use and respect." 7

1 Shu-king, Pt. IV. B. v. Ibid. 8 Ibid., B. VI.

* Ibid., B. vra. Ibid., B. vmu Ibid. Ibid., B. vn.

324 STRUCTURES.

There are great blanks in the story of the Shang
dynasty ; but, as the vices of its rulers grow, it
hastens to its fall. The wise minister lifts up his

The second vo i ce to echo the cry of the people to Heaven for

Deliverer. . J .

deliverance ; the wise tutor advises the king's son,
who sees with grief the dissoluteness of the court and the
miseries of the masses, to flee from the coming storm.
Chow-sin's barbarities rouse the great insurrection of Woo,
whose whole army has the hearing of his explanations and
excuses for that step, the most famous in Chinese history,
by which all subsequent revolts against oppression are jus-
tified. Woo is a model revolutionist. His victory shall
" redound to his father's honor ; " his defeat " only to his
own disgrace, as a little child, and not good." His speeches
are always opened with wise proverbs, followed by rousing
exhortations to battle for righteousness and the ancient
laws, like wild beasts, yet not harming those who submit,
by rehearsal of the crimes of Chow, and of his own duties
as the instrument of Heaven. Woo is a great organizer
as well as soldier.

" He had only to let his robes fall down, and fold his hands, after
teaching the people the five great social relations, caring for their com-
fort and faith, and honoring merit, and the empire was in perfect
order." 1

But a Chinese ruler is nothing, if not a philosopher.
And Woo does not fail to inquire of his wisest man as to
the real constitution of that human nature which he pro-
poses to perfect. The Shu-king accordingly gives us what
it calls the " Great Plan," 2 a numerically formulized de-
scription of Man and the Universe with special relation to
the ideal of right government ; which is a striking picture
of the old Chinese mind, as well as perhaps the earliest

1 Shu-king, Pt. V. B. in.

* Legge ascribes it to the great Yu, and thinks it was, at all events, older than Woo. Shu-
king, Pt. V. B. iv.

GOVERNMENT. 325

attempt of the kind in history. We shall here draw atten-
tion only to its statement of the eight objects of govern-
mental attention, namely, means of subsistence, materials
of traffic, rites, public works, instruction, penalties, enter-
tainment of guests, and the army, and to its moral
ideal of royalty, which is in the loftiest vein of Chinese
political ethics.

" The ruler, having concentrated in himself the five forms of happi-
ness, health, wealth, long life, peace of mind and love of virtue, and
the crown of success in life, and fixed his ideal of virtue, diffuses
these among the people ; who, resting in his perfection, enable him to
preserve it." "Do not oppress the friendless or childless; do not
fear the great. Cause people of ability to improve their powers, and
the State will prosper." " Without swerving or partiality, without
selfish likes or dislikes, pursue the royal path of virtue. ... If gov-
ernment is wise, heroic men are eminent, and in the families of the
people are prosperity and peace."

Then we have the noble figure of King Woo's brother
and grand councillor, the good Duke of Tcheou, The
who stands in this far time an earlier Confucius, Lawgiver,
with happier power to mould his age. This is the tradi-
tional Father of Chinese Law, the ideal of Chinese politi-
ical, as well as personal, virtue. He is introduced to us in
the pleasing legend of " The Metal-bound Coffer," praying,
mace in hand, to his great ancestors for the privilege of
dying in the place of his royal brother, who is sick unto
death to the great distress of the people. The king, how-
ever, recovers, and the prayer is preserved in the archives
of the State. On the death of Woo, the good Duke is
shamelessly accused of treason, and goes silently into
exile. But a great storm arising, the coffer is opened,
and his fraternal devotion revealed ; together with the fact
that he had enjoined on the officers not to make it known.
The exile returns in triumph, and the penal storm with-
draws. 1

i Shu-king, Pt. V. B. vi.

326 STRUCTURES.

Great is the wisdom of this Tcheou-kung, learned in his
youth in the hard school of suffering for the sake of others,
being punished for the faults of the young prince with
whom he was brought up. He " teaches the king how to
govern ; " ascribing the success of princes to the righteous-
ness of their civil-service rules ; rebuking rebellious chiefs,
while showing leniency to their offences ; and proving his
principle of fitness to functions by making it the key to
the whole national history. His advice to Prince Fung
must be quoted :

" ' Deal with evil as if it were a disease in your own person, and
the people will put away their faults. Deal with them as if you were
guarding your infants. Do not cut off noses or ears at your private
inclination, but let there be fixed laws for the proper officers to ob-
serve. In examining evidences of crime, reflect on them five, six, yea
ten days, or three months : then act boldly on your decision. See
that the laws are righteous, not warped by your caprice ; even then
you must say, ' perhaps they are not yet wholly in accord with right.'
If you cannot manage your own household but by terror and violence,
you set aside the charge of a king, and seek to rule in defiance of vir-
tue." l " The ruin of States may be traced to criminal use of spirits.
Love labor and youth, and indulge in eating and drinking only when
you can observe decent limits. Warn your officials of this, O Fung,
and sternly avoid intemperance.' 1 2

And here are counsels to a minister :

" Remember that the end of punishment is to make an end of pun-
ishing." " Be not passionate with the obstinate, but forbearing.
Seek not every quality in one person." " Advance the good, that they
who are not so may be led to follow their example." " Seek the judg-
ment of the people about affairs." <k Lay good plans before your sov-
ereign, and ascribe their merit to him." 3

Mencius says of the great Duke that he sought to unite
the virtues of T'ang, Wan, and Woo. " If he saw any thing
in them not suited to his time, he meditated on it into the
night, and when he had solved the problem, he sat waiting
for the morning." 4

i Shu-king, Pt. V. B. ix. 2 Ibid., B. x. 8 Ibid., B. xxi. * Menc. IV. n. 20.

GOVERNMENT. 327

With the Duke of Tcheou, of whom Mr. Legge says, " I
know not the statesman of any nation with whom The
his countrymen need shrink from comparing him," Tcheou
we enter on the second great political organization,
ascribed by the Chinese to very early times. It is declared
to have been modelled on that of Yao and Shun, but is in
fact much more elaborate. Certain new offices are to be
filled " only when the men are found fit to fill them'' 1 The
number of ministers is still six: but a department of War
is added. The princes attend court with tribute and hom-
age every sixth year, and the king's tours are every twelfth.
But the bowed heads bring counsel as well as homage, and
exhort him " to be reverent in his function, and preserve
the heritage of our ancestors from harm." 2 At his inaugu-
ration the king receives a symbolic cup and mace-cover
from the minister of rites ; and listens to the testamentary
charge of the last ruler to his successor, "to follow the
rules of Tcheou, adhere to the laws and maintain harmony,"
read by the national annalist, responding with self-depre-
ciation and awe before the magnitude of his task. 3 On the
Grand Banner, besides figures of the sun and moon, and
the dragon, symbols of authority, are inscribed the names
of meritorious living ministers. 4

The Duke of Tcheou had declared the end of punishment
to be "making an end of punishing." The prince of Leu
" thinks with reverence of penalty, because its end is the
promotion of virtue."

" Gain got by penal decisions is no prize, but a heaping up of guilt,
and will have its reward : stand in awe of Heaven !

" I will tell you, O ye rulers, how to make punishment a blessing.
Hear both sides, and carefully adjust the case to its proper penalty.
The dangers to be avoided are the being warped by power, or private
grudge, or female solicitation, or bribes ; all of which make the judge's
sin equal to the criminal's at his bar. In doubtful cases, infliction of

1 Shu-king, Pt. V. B. xx. * Ibid., B. xxin. s Ibid., B. xxii.

4 Legge' s note to B. xxv.

328 STRUCTURES.

punishment should be forborne. The chastisement of fines is short
of death, but would produce extreme distress. Therefore only good
Persotis should determine criminal cases. Settle them with compas-
sion and reverence, and strike the proper mean." '

The further history of the Tcheou dynasty, as sketched
by fragments in the closing chapters of the Shu-king, shows
them at frequent war with rebel chieftains and with border
tribes. During the long reigns of Ching and Khang, the vir-
tues of the emperors secured profound peace, and, accord-
ing to commentators, punishments were out of use for forty
years ! Yet the Shu-king gives no details of this blessed
period. King Muh charges his minister to make him no
unworthy descendant of Wan and Woo ; also to remember
the hardships of the people in the extremes of summer and
winter. He " rises at midnight to meditate " how he can
avoid the faults that beset him, and obtain help in " correct-
ing his bad heart." But the path of the line of Tcheou is
downward. Vicious monarchs, corrupted by their wives
Fail of the an d favorites, are set aside by popular revolts and
Tcheou. by leagued nobles. Petty States are growing into
power, and busy in repelling the inroads of free hordes, or
absorbing their territory. 2 We have select instances of
personal loyalty like thajt of the Duke of Shaou, who sacri-
fices his own son to save his prince ; and some of a less
questionable virtue, as in Pih-k'in's orders to his soldiers on
the march, not to injure cattle or horses by traps, nor to
shut them up, nor to leave the ranks to pursue them, nor
to fail of returning them, when astray, to their owners. 3

By the close of the period here gone over in patches
(B.C. 620), the feudal empire of the Tcheou was in a fair
way to dissolution, and the perplexing strifes of the rival
States are further recorded by Confucius in his meagre
annals, entitled "Spring and Autumn Classic."

But the Shu-king fragments by no means represent the

) Pt. V. B. xxvn. 2 Ibid., B. XXVHI. 8 Ibid., B. xxix.

GOVERNMENT. 329

whole national indebtedness to that grand epoch of recon-
struction which Chinese tradition associates with the name
of Tcheou.

The Institutes of Tcheou, imperfectly given in the Shu-
king, are (ideally) presented in an elaborate descrip- THK
tion, in which the national passion for subdividing TCHEOU-LI,

r . .... , . . . OR INSTI-

functions, multiplying officials, regulating minute TUT ES OF

details, in short for governmental manipulation and
care, is carried not only beyond all possibilities of On g i H
fact, but beyond the power of most American readers to
conceive.

The Tcheou-li, 1 in its original form written, according to
Confucius, on tablets of bamboo, and traditionally ascribed
to the great Duke, purports to record the political and civil
organization of China between the twelfth and eighth cen-
turies B.C., as proposed by this statesman, and accepted by
the tribes after the overthrow of the Shang.

There are many reasons, besides its important differences
from the Shu-king, for believing it to be the construction
of a much later period. Mencius reports that the princes,
disliking the arrangements of dignities by the house of
Tcheou, had made way with their records before his time. 2
Confucius leads us to infer that the present Tcheou-li was
not in existence in his time ; for he is far from having re-
produced its rules, and never cites it in his works. Matou-
anlin, accepting it as on the whole authentic, admits that,
while it represents the laws of the first three dynasties, it
could never afterwards be put into practice. 3 Its internal
characteristics are the strongest proof of its late origin ;
and many adverse judgments on its historical value have
been given by Chinese critics. A great hold on the na-
tional faith has nevertheless been secured by the highly

1 Translated with incredible patience by M. Ed. Biot, with the aid of Stan. Julien.

2 Menc. V. H. 2. 3 See Biot's Introd. p. 27.

33O STRUCTURES.

ideal form in which it is cast. A judgment by the great
critic and philosopher Chu-hi, in favor of its antiquity as a
whole, added to its repute. It was a text-book in the great
epochs of the Han and the Soung, and has been much
commentated at intervals since. Kien-lung added it by
edict to the canonical "Classics," in I/54. 1

Its value for us is in its illustrating, more than any other
work, the Chinese constructive ideal of imperial govern-
ment as a ready-made, crystallized fact. Biot thinks it rep-
resents the important epoch of transition from pastoral to
agricultural life, and the permanent settlement of the tribes
under a uniform administration. That this is the basis of
the original work is probable enough. But it is scarcely
possible to conceive that such refined and complex forces
of organization on the one hand, and such extreme plas-
ticity on the other, as its present form implies, could have
existed at so early a stage of national progress.

The land allows itself to be divided into three definite
Mechanical classes by public survey, with such marvellous geo-
Divisions. g ra phi ca i adaptation that a certain quantity of each
class can be allotted to every family ! The cultivators
submit to be divided into groups of nine families each,
portioned with lots of equal size, symmetrically arranged in
squares for purposes of irrigation, and each enclosed by a
trench and path, with a centre lot for public uses ; the
whole ten again surrounded by a larger conduit, and each
hundred by a small canal and road ; and each thousand by
a larger canal and highway ; and every ten thousand by a
river with a great road beside it. 2 How the rivers were
squared with the watercourses, whose sizes and lines were
thus fixed by rule, the world-shaping dynasty does not in-
form us. But the limits of cities, cantons, principalities,
also follow official measurements, made with the shadow of
the sun. 3

1 Blot's Introd., pp. 32-35. 2 Tcheou-li, B. xv., xvi. 3 Ibid., B. xxxm.

GOVERNMENT. 33!

The territory is again divided into twelve sections, cor-
responding to the twelve celestial signs ; and into nine
concentric zones around the capital for regulation of trib-
utes and taxes. And the whole population is organized by
families for public labors ; also for mutual service in bury-
ing the dead, supporting the poor, relieving the unfortunate,
performing rites, and giving honor to good men. Groups
of five and its multiples form sections, communes, cantons,
departments, districts : each group having its elder (or patri-
arch), as a centre of harmony, and all working to the com-
mon good. 1

The village system of government is in operation, but
under the administration of a " grand director," village
who registers names, supervises lodges of mutual s y stem -
aid, organizes sowing and reaping, fixes the corvte con-
tingents, and collects the grain from the States' land. 2
An officer determines what shall be sown there, and
how the land shall be improved. Another determines
when trees shall be cut and the pastures burned over.
Others regulate taxes and labors by the good or bad for-
tunes of the year, or by the quality of the land, and in
inverse ratio to faithfulness of culture? The very markets
are in squares, and attended by officers who determine
prices, punish frauds, examine the quality of goods, and
levy entrance and exit duties in port, for the benefit of the
poor and old and the " children of the State." 4 Of course
weights and measures are equalized, quarrels appeased, and
virtue sped.

A minister oversees the civil service for the promotion
of worthy persons, according to three tests of Govern .
merit: (i) the six virtues, (2) the six good deeds, m * d
(3) the six sciences. 5 As already stated, the masses
are convoked at the gates of the capital in times of national

1 Tckeou-li. B. xi. 2 Ibid., B. xv., xvi.

8 Ibid., B. xvi., xxxii., xin., xn. * B. xiv. 6 B. ix.

334 STRUCTURES.

. IL Multitudes." He instructs them by twelve " rites," l

Director of -

the Mum- each teaching^ some form of virtue. Among them
he inculcates the excellence of hereditary occupa-
tions. He applies twelve rules for increasing population,
by alleviating public burdens in times of famine, and six
forms of succor to all needy people. 2 He is grand sur-
veyor, measuring off the squares by the gnomon, and
regulator of agriculture, teaching how to multiply animals
and plants, and to sow and fell to the best advantage. 2 He
groups the people and consecrates the fields to the genius
of the land and grain. 2 His department includes markets,
village affairs, collection of grain, corvtes, marriage-laws,
disputes, equalizing taxes and punishing idleness, distribu-
tion of imperial gifts on periodical circuits through the
country, music and dancing at the religious rites, censor-
ship of morals in prince and people ; 3 and to these is added
the care of the royal game preserves, where humanity to
animals is enforced. 4

A third minister presides over forms of worship, and
m P avs homage to ancient sovereigns by nineteen
Minister of kinds of rite, classified according to their spirit or
ltes> purpose. 6 Here are elaborate details of sacrificial
emblems, symbolical dresses, talismanic tablets borne by
officials, or bringing virtue to places and occasions ; augu-
ries, burial customs, invocations, and salutations, all of
which are numerically regulated. 6 <c The musical virtues "
and "musical conversation" are taught the sons of digni-
taries by this bureau ; the virtues being concord, reverence
for spirits, respect for superiors, filial love and friendship. 7
By its instructions in the twelve tones and the six dances,
it brings into sympathetic harmony all forms and creatures,
their " spirits " coming forth to bless occasions and unite

Tcheou-li, B. ix. * Ibid. B. x.-xvi.

* B. xvi. 6 B. xvm.

c B. xvni.-xx., xxiv.-xxv. 7 B. xxn.

GOVERNMENT. 335

mankind. 1 Sacred formulas for sacrifices, treaties, prayers,
and thanksgivings emanate from this source. 2 Under the
same religious charge are the royal chariots and standards. 8
Here too belongs the Grand Annalist, who registers all
public proceedings, corrects the calendar for the regula-
tion of labor, divides the land into dependencies of special
asterisms, and preserves the oldest recorded traditions of
the nation. 4

The Minister of War maintains obedience in the lesser
kingdoms, fixes military contingents, presides over IV
minute ceremonies that make royal hunting excur- Ministerof
sions a kind of ritual. 5 His department, besides
military examination and instruction, has charge of be-
stowing honors for brilliant actions, by inscribing the
names of the doers on the royal standard, or endowing
them with untaxed lands. 6 It attends to sacred usages
about fire, to the holy cup used at sacrifices, to the puri-
fication of houses from disease, to the care of roads and
the circulation of products, to the etiquette of chariots
and the honors paid to the first breeder of horses, and to
their presiding genii. 7 It tames wild animals, destroys
noxious birds, and provides young domestic ones for old
men to raise, as symbols of renewed youth. 8 It equalizes
weights and measures, and receives tributes from foreign
tribes. 9

The Minister of Criminal Justice is at the head of the
central court of final appeal, securing equity by tes- v Minis _
timony of two classes of officials, and, in capital ter of jus-
cases, by the voice of the people. 10 The parties
bring a sum of money, if able ; but if poor, a complainant
who has failed of a just hearing has but to stand, for three
days (!), before the red stone, or strike the drum at the

1 Tchemt-li, B. xxii. 8 B. xxv. 8 B. xxvn.

4 B. xxvi. s B. xxix. 8 B. xxx.

7 B. xxx.-xxxin. B. xxx. 9 B. xxxni. 10 B. xxxv.

33 2 STRUCTURES.

emergency and on the accession of a prince, and arranged,
according to age and place, by their prefects. Their judg-
ment is also taken in cases of capital offence. 1 Passports
are provided by the village elders, stamped with symbolical
figures of creatures and elements. 2 Every thing relating to
individuals is officially recorded, down to their private
character, their happiness and misfortune, health and re-
source, for the Emperor's paternal use. 3

A minister protects the people against oppressive chiefs,
but no mercy is shown subjects who expel their prince. 4
Disputes are settled by testimony of persons of the same
group with the parties. 5 The great drum hangs at the
palace gate for those who desire justice at the imperial
hands. 6 Food is provided at the royal table for State
orphans, old officials, the infirm and poor. 7 Travelling
officials bestow aid on the needy in the royal name. 8 There
are no other slaves than public ones, for crime, and these
only of middle age., The aged and the young are also ex-
empt from corvfe, as well as strangers newly arrived. 9 Every
man must marry by the time he is thirty years old, and
women before twenty. 10

The Tcheou-li Emperor, as in the Hia and Shang, is
owner of the soil, installs princes and confers fiefs.

The ad-

ministra- But the great vassals, the successors of the tribal
chiefs, have received more permanent authority,
for which they pay tributes out of the incomes of their
States. The unity of the kingdoms is maintained by
mutual visits and interrogations between the princes and
by emissaries of the Board of Justice, who disseminate the
imperial love and care. Every twelve years the Emperor
makes the circuit of his States, " to harmonize and tran-

1 Tcheou-li, B. xi., xxxv. B. xi., xxxvin. 8 B. xxxvm.

* B. xxix. 5 B. x. 6 B. xxxi.

i B. iv. 8 B. x. 9 B. xvi., xxxvi. 10 B. xin.

GOVERNMENT. 333

quillize." The intermediate years are devoted to consolidat-
ing the Empire, each in some special way. Thus the first
year is given to statistical and other reports ; the third, to
their verification ; the fifth, to general examinations ; the
seventh, to re-unions of interpreters to harmonize language ;
the ninth, to meetings of blind musicians and annalists,
who improve sounds and letters ; the eleventh, to unifying
weights and measures, and verifying honorary tablets. 1

In the opening of spring, the breaking of consecrated or
public ground with the plough by the Emperor, who makes
three furrows ; by his councillors, who make five ; by the
feudatories, who make nine ; and by representatives of
the people, who finish the field, symbolizes the unity of
the commonwealth on the basis of agricultural labor. 2

The Prime Minister and his five colleagues are entitled
Heaven, Earth, and the Four Seasons, as symbols Board of
of universal government. They are supported by Ministers -
a mighty host of subordinates, distinguished as graduates
of three classes. Thirty-four hundred of these are L
enumerated as in the Prime Minister's special Prime
charge, with an indefinite number besides, busied
in more than sixty sub-departments, whose chiefs have
distinct titles. His government is an arithmetical mystery,
employing six forms of administration, eight of official
regulations, eight of cantonal statutes, eight ruling prin-
ciples, nine kinds of taxes, nine associative ties. 3 One of
his aids applies six principles to the investigation of official
conduct, making his circuit with a little bell, crying woe to
all law-breakers. 4 His Chief of Records reports the statis-
tics of administration, personal property, families, lands,
geographical features, and animal life, and audits the taxes.
Finally, he aids the sovereign in performing ceremonies and
rites.

The second minister (Ta-sse-thu) is " Director of the

1 Tckeou-li, B. XXXVHI. s B. iv. 8 B. n. * B. m.

33^ STRUCTURES.

palace gate. 1 The penal code of the Tcheou-li has its muti-
lations and other barbarities, all of which, however, are to
be applied only after strict inquiry and within well-defined
limits. 2 Here belong elaborate rules for reception of princes
at court, and their hospitable treatment on the way to the
capital, with endless forms of " interrogation, invitation,
consolation, obeisance ; " 3 also the facilitation of inter-
course between the States by means of passports and gifts,
and whatever conduces to make known the providential
will and purpose of the sovereign, so that it shall not be
disobeyed, but fulfilled by all. 3 By the itinerant corps of
this bureau is registered the moral and physical status of
every family and neighborhood, with all events that have a
bearing on public and private happiness. Its officials over-
see walking in the country ; clearing streets for the passage
of the Emperor or army ; removal of criminals and mourners
from the sacrificial rites, and destruction of certain noxious
animals and plants. 4

The final section of the Tcheou-li on the Board of Public
vi. Board Works is wanting. Great sums were offered for
of works. j ts rec0 very in the revival of letters by the Han,
but it was not found. But a memoir on the functions of
this ministry and the industries over which it presided,
contributed at that time by the prince of Hokien from his
famous collection, was added to the Tcheou-li in after
ages. It is of great value as an ideal picture of labor-,
superintendence, as well as of the love and patience be-
stowed by this assiduous race on every form of work.

The "hundred artisans" are distributed among the fol-
"The Ar- lowing six classes of laborers arranged by functions,
tisans." the word hundred meaning doubtless a great number :

" To deliberate on governmental rules is the office of the princes ;
to put these in practice is the office of prefects and graduates ; to ex-

1 Tcheou-li, B. xxxv. 2 B. xxxvi. 3 B. xxxvin.-xxxix. 4 B. xxxvn.

GOVERNMENT. 337

amine the form and quality, and distinguish the uses of instruments of
labor, is that of the hundred workmen ; to transport valuables to the
four quarters of the Empire, that of merchants and travelling agents ;
to increase the products of the earth, that of cultivators ; to work in
silk and hemp for their perfect uses, that of the working women of the
court." l

Here follows a sentence of Labor-wisdom, still valid and
needed :

" Wise men invent ; skilful men have combined what these began.
They who preserve from age to age the processes thus discovered are
artisans. All the operations executed by the hundred artisans are the
work of the wise. 'Twas they that forged metal to make swords,
hardened earth to make utensils, built vehicles and ships. The
heavenly seasons, the earthly emanations, the virtues of matter, the
skill of the workman, must all be combined to form good work." l

Then come minute rules for constructing chariots, accord-
ing to a prescribed pattern, with symbolic signifi- Artrules
cations for every part, based on universal relations ;
the body of the car being earth, its dais heaven, its rayed
wheels the sun and moon, and so on. 2 Then the art of
combining colors after rules drawn from supposed relations
between them and the elements. 3 We have prescriptions
for making armor, drums, bells, tablets, goblets ; for cast-
ing and mixing metals, alloying, dyeing, pottery, silk-making,
painting feathers ; * for laying out a city, for surveying
with the gnomon, and the use of the plumb-line. 5 The
exact proportions of parts in all manufactured articles, and
minute adaptation of each to its function, are here ordained.
Fifty-two pages of text and comment 6 are given to the
construction of bows, in special adjustment to the body,
the blood, the will, and the judgment of the user. 7 Almost
equal care is expended on the proportions of cart-wheels.
We should suppose that all this formalism must be intended

1 Tckeou-li, B. XL. Plutarch tells us that Numa distributed the laboring class in ancient
Rome into companies, according to their arts or trades, and gave to each halls, courts, and rites
of its own.

1 B. XL. * B. XLH. * B. XLI. * B. XLm.-XLIV.

Biot's Translation. 7 B. XLiv.

338 STRUCTURES.

only for the court artisans, did not the old commentator of
Confucius x tell us directly from his master that in his day
all over the Empire carriages had wheels of the same size.

We may safely leave this analysis to tell its own story of
signm- the sources whence the Tcheou-li Institutes are de-
oTThe rived. While conveying an admirable picture of the
Tcheou-ii. genius of the Chinese, and embodying a vast num-
ber of their actual or historical institutions, the mechanism
is too artificial and complex ever to have been imposed on
a mass of living and laboring people, and quite as unlikely
to have actually grown up out of their spontaneous self-
culture. How it was transmitted, how it obtained credence,
we cannot now determine : even Chinese lore cannot trace
it beyond the age of the Han. But its existence and repute
are proofs that, substantially, it represents the traditional
faith and form of the Chinese State. And nothing can hide
its transcendent testimony to the refinement and breadth
of this antique civilization, the fulness of its development
in labors and arts, and its aspiration to bring the order and
harmony of cosmical movement into the social and indus-
trial spheres.

While the Shu-king and Tcheou-li describe a thoroughly
RELA- organized imperialism at the outset of Chinese
history, directing subject States by an elaborate
supervision, and dividing land and people by mathe-
ma ti ca l ratios and geometrical lines, the stronger
probability is that these structures are, at least in much of
their detail, and even in their general plan, ideals of gov-
ernment arising out of a mixture of history, tradition, and
fact in later times, and teaching what ought to be, more
than what had been.

1 Chvng-yung, ch. xxviii.

GOVERNMENT. 339

There is, however, no reason for rejecting the whole of
Chinese tradition, and the recorded lines of rulers. Early
These point to some kind of central authority union im-

. . 1-1 perfect.

dating from very ancient times, to which associated
tribes paid an imperfect allegiance maintained by royal tours
and feudal tributes, and which was really combined with
many of those germs of democracy apparent in the Shu-king
and the Tcheou-li. l How imperfect the allegiance of the
chiefs must have been, appears by their warlike record, both
in the Shu narratives and the Shi songs, 2 and still more
clearly in the extent of their independence at the moment
of their emergence into the light of positive history. This
occurs in the " Spring and Autumn " Classic of Confucius,
opening with the eighth century, B.C. He describes the
state of national disintegration as being such that nothing,
in his judgment, could remedy it but a return to the old
and lost institutions of Yao and Shun. This was but the
natural advance still more striking two centuries later,
as we see in Mencius of the self-destructive forces in-
volved in that feudalism which succeeded the loose cen-
tralization of chieftaincies in early times. The real unity
of the State came later, out of the solution of these forces,
little more than a generation after Mencius, by the victory
of T'sin over its competitors, the turning-point of Chi-
nese history, 250 B.C.

The evidences of this gradual process seem clear. It began
in the relations of simple patriarchal tribes, whose Deve]o
natural tendency was to expand the family idea ment of
to larger and larger unities, and whose more or less
feudalized condition appears in the Shu-king tributes and
wars. 3 The princes were hereditary rulers at the opening
of the Tcheoti, a fact which is hardly consistent with a
previous compact monarchy proceeding from the popular

1 See also the Li-ki ; and the Chung-yung, XX. 14.

J Chuhi fully admits this in his comments on the Shi-king Preface.

8 See the Yu-kung Chap, of the Shu-king (Pt. II. B. i.).

. 34 STRUCTURES.

will, but would be perfectly natural to the semi-isolated
tribes of the steppes. Under the Tcheou these princes,
while paying tribute with heads bowed to the earth, and
regulated by six royal guardians (Kung and Kow), still
exhort the monarch, like the old Spanish Cortes, to be
reverent and maintain the ancient laws. 1 To reduce their
rebellion required no less powerful a hand than that of the
"Great Duke." If the monarchy was of such dimen-
sions as to be able to distribute kingdoms by the hundred,
as asserted in the Shu-king, where Woo is said to have
given eight hundred, and in Matouanlin who puts the num-
ber of fiefs in the Tcheou at seventeen hundred and sev-
enty-three, 2 it is strange they should have dwindled in the
Tchun-tsieu age to less than two hundred, and in that of
Mencius to less than ten. Doubtless during the long thou-
sand years of the Tcheou' period, there was space for almost
any amount of change ; but the figure of a central imperial-
ism is very dim amidst this incessant movement of dissolv-
ing views, that afford the eye no point of rest. Says the
Chinese proverb : " As mountains become valleys and val-
leys heights, so with rulers from of old." 3

As in the outset we have independent tribes, so from the
eighth to the fourth century, B.C., we find a few powerfully
organized States, under their own monarchs, paying slight
regard to the central power. Whether this long process
involved the falling to pieces of a vast empire, like that of
Charlemagne, into local chieftaincies, and then the absorp-
tion of these into a few great States, is a question we have
no adequate data for solving, even in Chinese records.
But the improbabilities of the theory are great.

From Li-wang (842 B.C.) to Chi-hwang-ti (248 B.C.) is
Fail of at all events the period of the Fall of Feudalism.
Feudalism. -phc rude tribes of the east and north have their

1 Shu-king, Pt. V. B. XXIH. * See also Plath, ^er/ass., S>c., Bay, Ak. X. 501.

3 Plath, Ibid., 561.

GOVERNMENT. 34!

princes," says Confucius, " and are not like the States of
our great land, which are without them." 1 " In the Tchun-
tsieu," says Mencius, " there were no righteous wars." 2 The
miseries of the people from famine, homelessness, and cold,
from military raids and forced labors, are vividly painted by
this greatest of Chinese prophets, born in the darkest time
of his country's history, to denounce the rulers who " led on
beasts to devour men." 3 " Their perils they count safety,
their calamities profitable, and they have pleasure in the
things by which they perish. If it were possible to reason
with men so inhuman, how could we have such destruction
of kingdoms and ruin of families ? " 4 The wars that deso-
lated the States are ascribed to the vices of princes, to
quarrels about succession arising from the constant inter-
ference of polygamy with the laws of inheritance, and to
incessant revolutions, often bloody, in the ruling families,
from the same or kindred causes. Plath, who believes in
the great primitive monarchy, ascribes the fall of the
Tcheou to its habit of freely scattering its domains upon
chiefs and officials, who gradually reduced it to insignifi-
cance. 5 But we must remember that the greater States,
like T'sin and T'soo, were in fact formed mainly out of the
border lands, where independent chiefs could readily build
up little empires ; and that the expansion of Chinese civi-
lization through regions to the West and North involved
a political weakening at its earlier centre, that would need
no aid from the self-spoliating habits ascribed to the line of
Tcheou.

Before Mencius's time the imperial visitations had ceased,
and vassal princes had grown into nearly, if not quite, co-
equal powers with the sovereign. Mencius seems scarcely
to recognize any actual difference. 6 Seven kingdoms were
engaged in constant warfare within the limits of China,

1 Lunyu, III. 5. * Mencius, VII. ii. 2. 3 Ibid., I. i. 4.

* Ibid., IV. i. 8. 8 Plath, 543. 8 Mencius, I. i. 3, 5, 7; I. ii. 4.

34 2 STRUCTURES.

each having its border barriers, where customs were levied
arid travellers stopped. Gradually certain of these princes
had become independent sovereigns, under the name of
Pa. They were chosen by lesser chiefs to rule in place of
The feudal tne Emperor ; assumed such imperial rights as ap-
chiefs (/). pointing tribunals, constructing calendars, drawing
up systems of law. So completely had the old monarchy
lost prestige that they took the names of Emperors of the
East and West, titles which Confucius had refused them,
calling them simply dukes. They often assembled the
chieftains for consultation in these unsettled times, and
caused them to swear peace and alliance ; usually declar-
ing, perhaps for form's sake, perhaps in the hope of
calming the excesses of revolution, their common allegi-
ance to the Emperor. Some were barbarous, like Mu, who
adopted the custom of burying men alive at funerals, from
the savage tribes included in his princedom of T'sin ; others
had a constructive spirit of the highest order, like Hwan-
kung of Tsi, who set himself against the main sources of
this social dissolution.

" Of the five Pa the most powerful was Duke Hwan. At the
assembly of the princes in Kwei-k'ew, he bound the victim
and placed the writing upon it, but did not smear their
mouths with blood. The first injunction in their agreement
was : ' Slay the unfilial ; change not the son who has been appointed
heir ; exalt not a concubine to the place of wife.' The second was :
' Honor the worthy, maintain the capable.' The third was : ' Respect
the old and be kind to the young. Be not forgetful of strangers and
travellers.' The fourth was : ' Let not offices be hereditary, nor offi-
cers be pluralists. Select fit men for office. Let not a prince put to
death a great officer on his own authority alone.' The fifth was : * Do
not make embankments to the injury of adjoining States ; place no
restrictions on the sale of grain ; make no feudal investiture without
notifying the chief of the confederation.' All then united in a league
of amity." 1

1 Meticius, VI. ii. 7 ; see also Lurtyu, xiv. 18.

GOVERNMENT. 343

This enlightened movement took place in the latter part
of the seventh century B.C. 1 Mencius adds, sadly :

"The princes of the present day all violate these five prohibitions,
therefore I say that they are sinners against the five Pa."

" Although a prince should have the empire given him, and yet pur-
sue the paths of the present day, and not change its practices, he could
not retain it for a single morning." 2

It redeems those barbarous epochs from entire condem-
nation to find the record of such counsels as these of a
leader in the State of Lu :

" It is not good, when a man of Pi is seen, to freeze him, but rather
to clothe him ; if he is hungry, to feed him. Be to him a noble master,
care for him in want and fatigue. Then Pi will come back as if to its
home." 8

A prince of T'sin, withdrawing his army from a siege,
said :

" Faith is the most precious treasure of a State ; it is the guardian
of the people. If I win Yuen and lose my faith, how shall I protect

it?" 4

The Tchun-tsieu, or "Spring and Autumn" Classic,
ascribed to Confucius, purports to continue the
line of history, from the date at which the Shu- TCHUN-
king record ends, to the time of the great teacher TSIKU -
himself. It gives the annals of his native State (Loo) and
its relations with its neighbors, during that period of ex-
treme anarchy which elapsed between 722 and 480 B.C., and
has always held very high, though not undisputed, reputa-
tion as an authentic history. 6 Though confessedly written
in view of the degeneracy of the times, and for the purpose
of reviving the national unity, no such design is apparent
to us in its meagre outlines, which are utterly without hint
of philosophical connection, or of any other principle of

1 Biot, Journ. Asia*., November, 1845. 8 Mencius, VI. ii. 7, 9.

8 Plath, p. 553. Plath, Bay. Ak. 1873.

8 Translated in Dr. Legge's Chinese Classics.

344 STRUCTURES.

construction whatever, beyond that which the name of the
work conveys, of making a calendar of events according to
times and seasons. The native commentaries, however,
the principal among which, the Tso-chuen, made very soon
after the appearance of the text, is a valuable historical
record, 1 make both its silence and its speech significant
of much that a foreigner would not discover ; and doubtless,
if we may judge by analogy from commentaries on other
venerated texts nearer home, of much that only the eye of
a worshipper could discern. But whatever its purpose, its
general acceptance for ages as edifying in the highest degree,
as well as its manifest accordance with the spirit of its times,
give great value to its decided affirmation of the persist-
ence of the ethico-political idea we have been tracing, even
amidst the terrible demoralization of these intestine wars,
not one of which, according to Mencius, was just

Its records consist of things commonplace and things
marvellous ; relating to the weather and to the signs of
events, famines, locusts, eclipses, rebellions, invasions, in-
cessant wars, private feuds, and crimes by both sexes ;
conspiracies, conferences of princes, combinations of States,
marriages and divorces, multitudes of petty details which
have not even the merit of variety. Yet it is easy to select
illustrations of the principles to which we have referred, in
no sense at variance with the spirit of the whole.

" The strength of the kingdom depends on the virtue of the sover-
eign, not on the tripods. Heaven blesses the goodness of the wise :
'tis there its favor rests." 2

" The ruler is the host of spirits and the hope of the people. If he
straitens the people, and causes the Invisible Ones to lack the sacri-
fices, of what use is he ? What should they do but send him away ? " 8

u Heaven's love for the people is very great. Would it allow the
one man to take his will and way over them, indulging his passions
and disregarding heaven and earth ? " 4

1 See Legge's Prolegomena. * Tchun-tsieu,Vll. 3.

s Tso-chuen on Ibid., IX. 15. * Ibid

GOVERNMENT. 345

A well-managed State is described as one in which pun-
ishment is justified as the suppression of rebellion, and
virtue shown in gentle treatment of those who submit ; in
which the calling out of forces does not interfere with
labor, and the army is ready for any emergency without
special orders ; where office depends on fitness, and rewards
are conferred according to service, and special kindness is
shown the old ; where strangers receive privileges and
exemptions ; where officials are distinguished by their
dress, and each person comports himself with the position
he holds in rank or class : 1

" The defeat or death of a good minister is like an eclipse. He is
the bulwark of the altars. To slay him is to give victory to the nation's
foes." 2

" Superior men should labor with their minds ; smaller ones with
their strength." 8

" When an army has right on its side it is strong : when the expe-
dition is wrong it is weary and weak." 4

Tsze Muh said : " If we get our will, what use is good faith ? " To
which the Chief Minister replied: "How can one's will be got by
casting away one's honesty ? It is by good faith that the purpose of
the mind itself becomes realized." 6

Here is another effort by a covenant of princes to heal
the evils of the time :

" All we who covenant agree not to hoard the produce of good
years, not to shut each other out of advantages, not to protect traitors,
not to shelter criminals. We agree to aid each other in disasters, to
cherish the same likes and dislikes, to support and encourage the
Royal House. Should any prince break these agreements, may He
who watches over men's sincerity, the spirits of the land, our prede-
cessors, the ancestors of the twelve States, destroy him, so that he
shall lose his people, his family perish, and his State be utterly over-
thrown." 6

" A struggle is not to be maintained by whitening the plains with
bones to gratify our pride." 7

i Tchun-tsieu, VII. 12. s Ibid. s Tso-chuen, to IX. 9. * Ibid., VII. 12.

5 Tchun-tsieu, IX. 27. Ibid., IX. n. Ibid., 9.

34-6 STRUCTURES.

To an officer who wished to lead an army against Tsin,
the Earl of T'sin said : " Its ruler is evil, but of what have
the people been guilty ? " i

Another chief in T'sin advised sending grain to the
enemy in their distress, saying :

" To succor in calamity, and take pity on one's neighbors, is right ;
and he who does so has the blessing." 2

Tsin was ungrateful and made war, but was defeated.
T'sin treated it with kindness and sent it supplies, and the
Earl said :

" I am angry with its ruler, but I pity its people. How can I ex-
pect to annex Tsin ? Let me meanwhile plant my virtue more deeply,
and wait for a good ruler to arise there." 3

The Marquis of Tse, invading Loo, said to Chen-He :

"The houses of your people are empty, there is no grass in their
fields. On what do they rely that they are not afraid ? "

Chen-He replied :

" They rely on the charge of a former King : * From generation to
generation let your descendants refrain from harming one another.'
Thus Duke Hwan, assembling the States, took measures for healing
and relief in conforming with this ancient charge. When your lord-
ship took his place all the States were full of hope, saying : * He will
carry on the good work of Hwan.' Therefore our poor State did not
attempt to protect itself by force of men, and now we say : ' Surely he
will not forget that ancient charge of his father.' On this we rely, and
are not afraid."

The Marquis of Tse returned home. 4

There was a great drought, and the Duke of Loo wanted
to burn a witch and a very emaciated person. But Tsang-
wan-chung said to him :

" That is not what it is needed in time of drought. Put your walls
in repair, lessen your food, be frugal in expenses, and encourage people
to mutual help. What have the witch and the lean man to do with the
matter: '

Tckun-tsuu, V. 14. 2 Ibid., V. 14. ' Ib. 1., V. 15- Tbic., V. a/ .

GOVERNMENT. 347

Best of all, the Duke followed the good advice. 1
Confucius asks,

" How shall a kingdom be ruled, when there is no distinction, no
higher nor lower, among men ? "

A strong sense of the necessity of rights and duties
according to functions, and of functions according to pow-
ers, is apparent in such sentences as these :

" Equal queens, equal sons, double governments (favorites made
equal with ministers), and equal cities (large city made equal with
small one), all lead to disorder." ' 2

"It is only the perfectly virtuous who can keep a people in sub-
mission by clemency. For the next class severity is the necessary
way. To carry on a mild government is a difficult thing." 3

The strife for hegemony lasted, as in the old Greek States,
for centuries, relieved by noble instances of self-

J End of the

denial among brothers, of humanity and magnanim- strife of
ity among chiefs, and darkened by unnatural hates, States '
till the final victory of T'sin over the six great States which
had absorbed the rest. The great scale of numbers and space
on which this triumph of concentrative force was effected
bears witness to the national bias towards unity and order.
In the quality of its special elements, the growth of T'sin to
supreme power has been likened to the rise of Prussia, as
the result of a patient and persevering policy of invitation to
strangers, choice of best leaders, and furtherance of talent
without regard to its origin, as well as of long disciplines
by border wars with the surrounding barbarous tribes. Yet
the record of its barbarities in war is monstrous, and, like
analogous ones in the Hebrew Book of Chronicles, beyond
belief. 4

T'sin Chi-hwang-ti was a reformer " who had learned to
despise old paths and to subdue kingdoms," says Chi-
the Sse-ki with sharpness. He was in fact a dis-

1 Tso-ch,ien\o V. 22. * Ibid., II. 18.

3 Ibid., X. 21. Plath on Milit. Affairs of Chinese.

34-8 STRUCTURES.

ciple of the Tao-sse school, which despised history and re-
acted against the whole spirit of Chinese culture. His
cruelty, as the censors of the succeeding Han dynasty are
eager to assert, 1 caused a universal league against him,
which perhaps did more than any thing else towards estab-
lishing nationality on a firm basis, in place of feudal dis-
union. 2

The changes introduced by this short dynasty, which
sweeps like a tornado across the track of Chinese history,
have been already suggested ; the bounds of the empire
widely extended to the south and west ; the people, freed
from a warlike aristocracy, and their path opened to all
public functions, as well as to ownership in land ; the edu-
cational examinations, only temporarily suppressed by Chi-
hwang-ti, to reach much higher development by means
of the political institutions which he founded. The order
and efficiency thus secured by unity in public adminis-
tration readily commended themselves to a people so apt
for peaceful association as the Chinese ; and it is from this
epoch, which may be said to open with the reaction against
feudal disintegration by Confucius and .his school, that we
may date the real history of the Chinese State.

Since the T'sin monarchy there have been many changes
Later in the relations of the States to the central power.
The proverbial stability of Chinese life is hardly
borne out by the history of these relations. Besides
Shun's distribution into twelve provinces under the Mou,
and Yu's into nine natural and five political divisions, in
the old ideal monarchy, and then the Tcheou partition into
twelve domains answering to the zodiacal signs, Chi-
hwang-ti is credited with substituting for the old feudal
States thirty-six Kuen, or provinces, under guardianship of

1 Pfitzmaier, Wien A kad, , October 1860, November, 1861.

2 The reader will find resemblances in many of his institutions to those introduced into
English feudalism by William the Norman. Cf. Green's Hist, of England.

GOVERNMENT. 349

prefects. In the seventh century, the Tang made a new
division into ten departments (tao) with new functionaries.
On these followed a long line of changes rung on the titles
of offices combining civil and military authority, ending in
the present viceroys (ta-fu) 1 of eighteen well-organized
States.

We have seen (i) that the oldest tradition makes the Em-
peror owner of the whole territory, distributing the LAND '
land among the people, colonizing and organizing LAWS -
the cultivators according to their need, so as to secure as
equal a division as possible of landed property ; and Early
(2) that the nobles were supposed to have gradually histor y-
acquired proprietary rights, which were held in the time of
the Tcheou on terms of feudal service and tribute. The
historical fact is simply that, when we find these chieftains
emerging into view, they have a quasi-imperial tenure of
their territories : how long they have had this tenure, or
whether it was original, is not within our knowledge. The
old authors speak of a process as going on from early times,
by which imperial officials, receiving their salaries in lands
instead of money, acquired powers over the people dwelling
thereon, who were therefore called their men.' 2 ' But the
Tcheou-li embodies what the Chinese for ages regarded as
the true land legislation : the soil divided as equally as pos-
sible among cultivators, who pay tithes according to values
of harvests officially estimated, with discrimination against
negligent farming ; taxes lightened in hard times ; careful
registers kept of every location ; minute supervision for
increasing products, population, and stock ; for fixing the
times of sowing and felling, and the kind of seeds ; and for
protecting animals ; with other governmental arrange-
ments tending to the security, comfort, and local attach-

1 Mayers in Notes and Queries, III. No. 8.

* Biot, Mem. de la Constit. Pol. de la Chine au XII. Siecle, &v., p. 29.

35O STRUCTURES.

ment of the landholders. To whatever extent this ideal
was disappointed in the constantly disturbed and finally
Demands decadent epoch of the Tcheou, we find Mencius not
of Mencius only familiar with what is best in it as theory, but
y< boldly insisting on the broadest and most humane
political economy consistent with it, as the right of a suffer-
ing and even starving people. Mencius demands a return
to " equal homesteads for all farmers, under their own
mulberry trees," for sericulture, with such freedom from
public labors (corvee) as would allow them time for the
support of their families ; imperial inspection-tours to see
justice done ; fixed tithes on land free of official caprice ;
abolition of game laws ; free trade and commercial inter-
course between the towns ; deliverance from devastation
of the farms by armies on the march ; and from mockery
of the miseries of the people by royal pleasure and hunting
excursions. 1 This demand of Mencius for the removal of
custom-houses was very remarkable in an age so remote
from the present, and in a country so disunited as China
two thousand years ago. His idea of equalizing property
in land was not so irrational as it would be in the political
economist of our day ; since it was based on imperial au-
thority to construct social relations, and was the only pro-
test left possible in the dreadful miseries which he depicts
with so much sympathy. He earnestly advocates the old
village system of " mutual aid," through common labor on a
central public field by every eight families ; as well as
through friendly offices between these members of a single
agricultural section or square. This would enable the la-
borers to pay their dues to government, as well as cause
them to put the general good before private interest (since
the public work must take precedence), and to live in har-
mony and comfort. He contrasts this with the taxing of
each person according to a fixed rate, which bore hard in bad

1 Menc. B. i. i. 3 ; ii. i, 5 ; B. n. i. 5.

GOVERNMENT. 351

years. " When the parent of the people causes them, after
a year's toil, to be unable to support their parents, so that
they proceed to borrow, till the old people and children are
found lying in the ditches, where is his parental relation ? " 1
The T'sin dynasty neglected land regulation for

Effect of

extensive public works and military enterprises, the T'sin
which bore harder on the persons of the farmers Laws-
than on their situation as tax-payers. It was probably due
to this looseness of land administration that private prop-
erty in land began to be recognized and developed, in place
of absolute ownership by kings and nobles. Thus land be-
came heritable in the fullest sense ; and so great was the
revolution that ineffectual efforts were afterwards made to
overthrow it in the name of imperial ownership itself. 2
This change had in fact already commenced in the king-
dom of T'sin in 349 B.C., before its accession to the empire,
and was simply expanded by Chi-hwang-ti into national
dimensions. 3

The property rights of an industrial people are sure to
assert themselves fully at last through its production of
values that must be recognized as at the foundation of pub-
lic good. The evil that lurks as a kind of irony, in every
forward step of society, showed itself in the development of
private servitudes out of the vast public works set on foot
by Chi-hwang-ti, which drove multitudes to dependence on
richer persons. 4 So that slavery and the free tenure of
land grew up, as afterwards in America, under the same
political institutions, and at the same epoch. But the free
methods of such a people bear larger and more lasting fruit
than its oppressive ones. It was otherwise in the indolent
life of the Roman upper classes whose estates, held in per-
petuity and cultivated by slaves, were the germ of social
dissolution.

1 Mendus, B. in. i. 3. Wuttke, II. 156.

8 Matouanlin. * Biot, Jonrn, Asiat.> 1838.

352 STRUCTURES.

At present, in the tea districts of China, the farms are
Present four or five acres in extent, and every cottager sup-
plies his wants, after the Mencian ideal, from the

ures in

china. produce of his tea garden. The same may be said
of cotton, silk, and rice farms. " Labor is a pleasure there,
for its fruits are eaten by themselves, and the rod of the
oppressor is unfelt and unknown." l The multitude of
these small holders is like " a swarm of bees." " No feudal-
ities or servitudes have burdened the land for centuries."
The cultivator reaps the benefit of his own improvements,
the government only taking its tax. For neglect of culti-
vation both the cultivator and the head-man of the district
are responsible. 2 Second mortgages are forbidden, tres-
passes and frauds in relation to farm property are severely
punished. 3 Officials are not allowed to own lands in their
jurisdictions, but returning emigrants are assigned unoccu-
pied tracts in return for their cultivation and payment of
taxes. 4 And all this in China, while England is still largely
under feudal tenures, and the condition of the agricultural
population throughout most of the rural districts is to be
learned from reports of an Agricultural Commission in
1868-69, of which the "Fortnightly Review" says: 5 "A
more piteous array of powerless poverty, a blacker catalogue
of national blunders, national disgrace, and national crime,
has probably never been produced by any civilized gov-
ernment." 6

The Chinese believe that legislative sanctions were fully

OLD PENAL established from the beginning of the State. Yu

had said : " Control the people with gentle words,

1 Fortune's Wanderings, 1847 PP- I 9> I 9 I

2 Penal Code of CAina, xcvii.

8 Ibid., xciii., xcv., xcviii. * Ibid., xciv., xcvi. B July, 1874.

6 See also Kay's Social Condition of the People of England.

GOVERNMENT. 353

but correct them with the majesty of law." 1 "The Five
Punishments" are placed by the Hia under direc- T h e irethi-
tion of a Minister of Crimes, 2 and a special domain cal tone -
reaching to the wild tribes is set apart for penal restraints.
The five punishments were cruel, but Shun appointed fixed
commutations, saying that " compassion ought to rule in
punishing." ; From the first, penalty is referred to its
higher ethical grounds. " Only virtue conquers vice." 4
Moral suasion is preached, if not practised. " Let rewards,
not penalties, be heritable." " Risk error, sooner than
punish the innocent." 6

Obedience from love, not law nor fear, is made the germ
of social order. The Sse-ki says : " Fo-hi and Shin-nung
taught, but did not punish. Hwang-ti, Yao, and Shun
punished, but without anger." The Shu-king explains that
robberies compelled the use of penal laws in the Hia age,
and that the barbarism of the Meaou, confounding good
and evil, was met by the virtuous edicts of Shun.

No better philosophy of penalty has ever been reached
than that contained in the old Shu-king maxims, Ideaof
some of which have already been quoted : that punish-
" the end of punishment is to promote virtue ; "
"to make an end of punishing;" to bring "blessing" by
the just appreciation of guilt ; that " only good persons
should be judges, because penalties may bring extreme
distress ; " that " evil should be dealt with as if it were a
disease in one's own person ; " that " none should be pun-
ished whose guilt is in doubt."

We may add from the Li-ki :

' " Seek out the good side and pardon ; change criminality by hu-
manity. For a deadly crime, the great thing is to convert the criminal
to goodness." 6 -

" The good judge will study each case thoroughly. If it is doubt-

1 Shu-king, Pt. II. B.II. Ibid, B. i. Ibid., B. i. 10.

* Ibid., B. ii. 20. Ibid., B. 11. 12. Sect. Ta-tai. See Plath, p. 735.

354 STRUCTURES.

fill, he will make it known to a number of persons ; and if they are
also in doubt, he pardons." l

" In trying cases, let not the judge look to his own profit ; treasures
so won are no treasures, but a heap of sins that bring penalty." l

" Penalties will be used with great caution by the wise ; because
they cannot be retracted or undone." l

Confucius and Mencius ascribe vice to bad conditions,
such as want of certain livelihood, or occupation, not to evil
intent. The remedy with both is "benevolent government."

" To involve the people in crime through vicious conditions, and
then follow them up with punishment, is to entrap the people." 2
" Therefore, a good ruler will observe regulated limits in his dealing
with wrong."

This wonderful theoretic wisdom of the Chinese is offset
its contra- by the prevalence, in these elder days, of some very
diction in barbarous forms of punishment, which seem to
show that their higher tendencies had to struggle
against many elements inherited from the Mongol and the
steppe. A large portion of these were, however, enacted
by tyrants, and so were transient ; such as embracing a
burning pillar, or being torn in pieces between chariots.
While mutilation, at times very common, seems to have
been, as with other Oriental races, 8 a permanent part of
criminal justice, we do not find torture or ordeal applied to
elicit truth from witnesses or the accused, who are tested
by observation of signs in their bearing and features. The
employment of mutilated criminals in public labors stands
side by side in the Tcheou-li with the less creditable exclu-
sion of released prisoners for three years from the recog-
nized population of the State. 4 The destruction of the
whole family of a parricide, and adherence of penalty to the
descendants of the offender, were incidents to rude stages
of a patriarchal religion. Mencius tells us that Wen-wang

i Li-ki, ch. 5. * Menc., III. i. 3.

8 Lenormant, Anc. Hist, of East, II. pp. 106, 109. * Tcheou-li, B. xxx. vii.

GOVERNMENT. 355

refused to permit that the wives and children of criminals
should be involved m the penalty of their guilt. 1 Finally,
it must be observed that great care seems to have been
expended on discriminating degrees of guilt, separating
involuntary from intentional wrong, and taking counsel, in
all important cases, of every class of witnesses, besides
guarding the right of appeal.

The actual Penal Code of China (Ta-tsing-leuh-le), ot
which we have a very careful abstract by Sir George THHPE _
Staunton, 2 aided by an authoritative exposition from NAL CODE
the Emperor Yang-ching, is of the highest value OFC " INA -
as embodying the results of the old national ideals we have
been reviewing, as well as such practical institutions as have
proved best suited to the character of the race. We find
in it most of the substance of the Shu-king and Tcheou-li ;
and, while enlarged by constant additions during the last
two centuries, its thorough revisal every five years has
brought it to a very compact and simple form, which may
well be regarded as a model for codes intended to be read
and understood by the people.

It embraces seven divisions : (i) General Laws ; (2)
Civil Laws ; (3) Fiscal, including laws relating to Its con .
Land and Marriage, Public Property, Customs, Pri- tents -
vate Property, Sales, and Markets ; (4) Ritual ; (5) Mili-
tary ; (6) Criminal, divided under the heads of Robbery,
Homicide, Quarrelling, Indictments, and Information,
Bribery, Fraud, Incest, Arrest, Imprisonment, Trial, and
Punishment ; (7) Public Works.

Kang-hi's definition of the objects of punishment, pre-
fixed to the translation, is in the spirit of the old ideals.

" Punishment is instituted to guard against violence and injury, to
repress inordinate desires, and secure the tranquillity of an honest and
well-conducting community."

1 Menc., I. ii. 5. Published in 1810.

356 STRUCTURES.

The Code abounds in applications of justice and be-
lts Be- nignity. The progress of humanity is recon-
nigmties. ciled ^^ ^t Oriental reverence for what is
written, which forbids expunging obsolete law from the
statute-book, by the device of a distinction between
nominal and actual punishments. Tables of pecuniary
commutation are also drawn up, the amounts being pro-
portioned to rank and position. Of humanities relat-
Astothe * n g to tne Family, where we should expect the
Family. most rigid rules, we may mention (i), concern-
ing Women : mitigation of corporeal punishment by
permission to wear a garment during its infliction (xx.),
and by exemption from it for a hundred days after child-
birth (ccccxx.) ; commutation of banishment by fine (xxi.),
and permission to follow husbands into exile (xv.) ; bail in
place of imprisonment, for all crimes except the highest
(ccccxx.) ; limitation of the right of a husband to divorce his
wife, even on any of the seven legal grounds, when she has
mourned for her parents-in-law for the appointed period, or
when the family has become rich during the marriage by
her aid, or when she has no parents living to receive her
back again (cxvi.) ; severe penalties for breach of promise
(ci.) ; for lending wife or daughter for temporary wife (cii.) ;
for degrading first wife to concubine (ciii.) ; for keeping two
first wives (ciii.) ; for effecting a marriage contract by terror,
resulting in death, suicidal or other (ccxcix.) ; and for
accepting the wife or child of a debtor in pledge (cxlix.).
(2) Concerning Children : equality of son and daughter be-
As to chii- fore the law (xxxviii.) ; 1 right of succession in the
dren - true wife's children (xlvii.) ; adopted sons not to be
abandoned nor sold by their quasi parents (Ixxviii., cclxxv.) ;
laws against selling a child of free parents for a slave (Ixviii.),
and against cruelty to adopted children (cccxx.). (3) Con-

1 As in the patriarchalism of ancient Rome.

GOVERNMENT. 357

cerning the Old and Helpless : severe punishment for neg-
lect of aged parents (cccxxxviii.), especially for leav- As to the
ing them for the purpose of holding office (ibid.) ; old -
right of redemption from all penalties lower than the high-
est, for the young, the old, the sick, and the maimed (xxii.).
And (4) injuries, however severe, inflicted in defence of a
father, held to be non-criminal (cccxxiii.) ; as also efforts of
relatives to screen one another (xxxiv.) ; offenders under
sentence of death who have sick or infirm parents or
grandparents dependent on them for support, recommended
to imperial mercy (xviii.).

Passing from special family laws, to more general ones
in the interest of humanity, we note provisions for General
the maintenance and care of poor widows and Human-
widowers, when helpless and childless, by the mag-
istrates of their native towns (Ixxxix.) ; mitigation of
punishment in seasons of heat, and prohibition of capital
punishment between the first and sixth moons of the year
(appendix) ; limitation of a legal day's work to the time
between sunrise and sunset .(xli.), and of public labor (cor-
7vr) to three days at a time (Ixxxvi.) ; right of defending
one's house with arms against night robbers (cclxxvii.) ;
penalties for depriving people of raiment in winter, or the
hungry of food, or taking away a ladder from one who is
climbing it, or a bridle from one on horseback (ccxci.) ; for
cruelty to animals (ccxxvii., ccxxxi.) ; for damaging anoth-
er's land or tools, or tilling his soil (xcvi.) ; right of appeal
for the poor, when injured by taxation, to all tribunals in
succession ; and, in general, right of all to impartial treat-
ment in laying and collecting taxes (Ixxx.) ; death penalty
for causing revolt by official oppression (ccx.) ; laws against
annoyances in collecting the revenue (cxxxiv., ccxxii.) ;
relations of deceased soldiers to be returned to their homes
at public expense (ccl.) ; returning emigrants to be reas-
signed their lands (xc.).

358 STRUCTURES.

Wise distinctions are taken in the same spirit, bearing
Discrimi- on the administration of penal law ; such as that
nations. between principal and accessory (xxx., cclxviii.,
cclxix.) ; between attempted, and actually committed, crime
(cclxxx.) ; between reckless killing or wounding, and the
same acts where no sufficient warning could be given
(ccxci.). No increase of punishment to enure from aggra-
vating circumstances not kri*own to the offender (xxxv.) ;
designs punishable in one set of offences not to work the
same effect in a different set (ibid.) ; limitations to the time
within which one is responsible for the effects of a wound
(ccciii.) ; just debts not to be recovered by violence (cxlix.) ;
fighting punished according to the amount of injury done,
and the question which party is in the right (cccii.). Pro-
vision is made for punishing actions done contrary to the
spirit of the law, though not breaches of any specific clause
(Ixxxv.) ; and for determination of cases not coming within
the statutes, by comparison with others and subsequent
reference to the highest tribunal in the land (xliv.). 1

Interference of the military with the course of the law is
The Courts strictly forbidden (cccxli.) ; statements of witnesses
of Law. are not to k e altered (ccccxxii.) ; examinations to be
confined to the charges made (ccccvi.) ; offenders to be
confronted with their associates (ccccv.) ; witnesses not to
be imprisoned, nor examined with cruelty (cccxcvi.) ; testi-
mony of interested parties, of the very old or the very
young, not required nor received (cccciv.) ; magistrates
known to be interested for or against the parties, not to
try the case (cccxxxv.). Refusal to hear proper informa-
tion, and acceptance of improper (cccxxxv.) ; conviction on
anonymous information (cccxxxiii.) ; recrimination of offend-
ers on innocent persons (ccccviii.) ; wilfully unjust sen-
tences (ccccix.), are all severely punished. Judgment is
to be rendered according to laws and precedents, without use

1 For a similar principle among the Hebrews, see Deut. xvii., 8-13.

GOVERNMENT. 359

of previous imperial edicts (ccccxv.). The Emperor is ex-
pected to reverse any false judgment (ccccx.). The false
accuser shall reimburse the loss of the person he has
caused to be unjustly punished (cccxxxvi.).

Unnecessary severity to prisoners is punished (cccxii.,
cccxcv.), as also injuries by the police to offenders

. . . . . . Prisoners.

who make no resistance to arrest (ccclxxxvin.).
Prisoners are to be provided with food, clothes, and med-
icines on application to authorities ; they may be released
from fetters and close confinement when sick, or allowed
to hold free intercourse with their families ; and jailers are
responsible for refusing to make such application (cccci.).
The right of the convict to protest against his sentence is
secured (ccccx.), and the execution of the death penalty for-
bidden till after ratification by the Emperor (ccccxxi.). In
the primitive spirit of domestic discipline, the criminal is
tempted to confession by promise of pardon (ccxvii., xxv.,
xxix.).

The minuteness of governmental supervision is made
to subserve good aims, by penalties, for neglecting Prote ctive
to interfere to prevent violence (ccci.), or to deliver supervision.
up lost property within five days aftep finding it (cli.) ; for
exciting litigation (cccxl.) ; for suppressing the discovery of
stolen goods (cccliii.) ; for circulating immoral writings or
keeping places of vicious amusement (ccclxxxiv.) ; for usury
(cxlix.), monopoly (clvi.), and tricks of trade by false weights
and labels (ibid.) ; for forming secret societies harmful to
the public peace (appendix) ; for neglecting to cultivate
one's land (xcvii.).

For their ethical value we note laws against bribery
(cccxliv., cccliv.) ; embezzlement (cxix., cxxv.), espe- Other good
cially of sums due to soldiers (cxxix.) ; dilapidation laws -
of property held in trust (cl.) ; fraudulent land sales (xciil),
and false appraisements (cliii.) ; second mortgages (xcv.) ;

360 STRUCTURES.

partiality in examination of candidates (lii.) ; kidnapping
(cclxxv.) ; torture of old, sick, or young (cccciv.) ; black-
mailing (cclxxiii.) ; non-burial of corpse (clxxx.) ; disturbing
graves (cclxxvi.) ; defacing public monuments (ccclxxvi.),
and injuring public ways (ccccxxxiv., ccccxxxvi.) ; sorcery
and magic for malignant purposes (cclxxxviii., cclxxxix.).

As tending to public security the strict responsibility
offi iai ^ offices is to be praised, though the laws are

exceedingly severe. Thus, pretending to official
authority, and official interference without author-
ity, are capital crimes (ccclx., ccclxii.). For recommending
bad men, death is the penalty ; for falsification of an edict
or counterfeiting a seal, the same (xlix., ccclv., ccclviii.) ;
non-report of offences, non-prevention of crime where it is
possible ; false appraisement, embezzlement, waste or con-
cealment in collection of imposts ; non-recovery of escaped
felons, or failure to secure culprits within a stated time ;
treating subordinate officers with contempt, or surrendered
prisoners with harshness, are all punished in various
degrees, from banishment to castigation.

Combined with these just or benignant statutes are
startling many startling anomalies. We find scales for esti-
anomaiies, ma ti n g guilt which are incomprehensible till we
from vari- refer them to the social traditions under which the

ous causes.

oriental conscience is trained. They may be clas-
sified as proceeding,

i . From the patriarchal rule of honor to the old. Pen-
From alties are proportioned inversely to the relative
honor to ages of members of the same family. Even for
the old. guch O ff ences as stealing (cclxix., cclxxii.) or killing
(cccxxxv.), as well as for extorting by threats (cclxxiii.),
striking (cccxvi.), or disturbing graves (cclxxvi.), the pun-
ishment of the elder is less than that of the younger

GOVERNMENT. 361

brother. 1 Accusation of a father by a son, or an elder
brother by a younger, is an offence, even if true
(cccxxxvii.) ; a marriage contract by a son is to be given
up, if the parents have arranged a different one (ci.).

From this patriarchal principle come extreme severities,
because intended as safeguards against crimes that threaten
the very foundations of religion and social order. The pen-
alty affixed to striking a parent is decapitation, the highest
known to the law (cccxviii.) ; to killing, even by accident, a
hundred blows and perpetual banishment (ibid.). A child
abusing his parent may be put to death, if the latter enters
complaint (cccxxix.). For killing one's own child, the pen-
alty is but sixty blows, and banishment for a year (cccxx.) !
For killing a son or grandson who strikes him, one is not
punished (cccxx.).

These paternal rights were not greater than in ancient
Rome, where a son could not only hold no property during
his father's lifetime, but could be sold or slain, at his will. 2
The Mosaic penalties for abuse of parents were equally
severe. 3 On complaint of father and mother, a rebellious
son was to be given up to the people to be stoned. 4 The
Egyptians burned the parricide alive, after torture. 5 So
inconceivably wicked was parricide to the Hebrew con-
science that it is not even recognized in their law. 6 Herod-
otus says that the ancient Persians did not believe it
possible. 7

2. From reverence for the family bond. Scale of pen-
alties proportioned to nearness of relationship with Fromthe
the injured party. This rule, applied to criminal family
intercourse (clxviii.), to assault (cccxvii.), and even
to the treatment of slaves (cccxiii), is reversed in the case
of theft (cclxix-cclxxii.). A curious ethical satire is involved

1 So Plato. See the curious passages in his Laws, B. ix; also, Republic, B. in.

* Hadley, pp. 120, 124. * Exod. xxi. 15, 17- * Deut xxi. 21.

e Diod. I. 77. Saalschutz, Mosaische Reckt, ch. 35. 7 Herod. I. 137.

362 STRUCTURES.

in the law that punishes with whipping one who evades
the duty of mourning for his relatives (clxxix.).

3. From* marital authority. A man may divorce his
From w ^ e ( w ^h certain limitations already stated) for
marital au- barrenness, lasciviousness, disregard of her hus-
band's parents, talkativeness, theft, bad temper, or

permanent infirmity (cxvi.). If a wife absconds when her
husband refuses to be divorced, the penalty is a hundred
blows and to be sold in marriage ; and, if while thus absent
she contracts a marriage, it is death (cxvii.). A wife strik-
ing her husband is punished according to the injury done ;
a husband striking his wife only exercises his right, unless
he wounds her, when the penalty is two degrees less than
in the former case (cccxv.). There is much inconsistency
in these marriage laws. Thus a husband may put to death
his adulterous wife and her paramour ; and, if he spares
her, she is to be sold. 1 Yet, elsewhere, if a husband kills
his wife for abusing his parents, without accusing her be-
fore a magistrate, he is punished with a hundred blows
(ccxciii.). If a wife accuses her husband, even truly, she is
severely punished, and the accused, if he plead guilty, par-
doned ; yet an exception, immediately added, in favor of
true charges relating to very serious crimes, and of real
grounds of complaint in maltreatment of any sort, seems
to rescind the whole law (cccxxxvii.).

The apparent impartiality of the law on avenging adul-
tery, as to male and female offenders, is proved fallacious
by the entire absence of opportunity for the wife to protect
herself from infidelities on the part of the husband, whose
remedy against both her and her paramour, in case of her
being the guilty party, is in his own hands.

4. From Slavery. Harboring a fugitive servant or
From marrying one is punished in the same manner as
slavery. ^ s j ave himself (cxvi). A slave striking his mas-

1 By Hebrew law, both parties are stored (Dent. xxii. 22.)

GOVERNMENT. 363

ter, or even accidentally killing him, is to be put to death
(cccxiv.). A freeman striking a slave is punished one de-
gree less than in case of equals ; a slave striking a freeman,
one degree more (cccxiii.).

Yet killing a slave is murder, and punished with death
(cccxiii.). Nothing in Chinese slave laws equals in injustice
the Hebrew statute by which illicit intercourse of a free-
man with a slave is punished by scourging (not death) for
her, " because she was not free ; " while he is let off with
a trespass-offering for his sin. 1

5. From reverence for official or social position. For
wounding, the scale of penalties is graduated ac- Fromoffi .
cording to the nearness of the injured to the Empe- ciaireia-
ror (cccv.) ; for assaulting officers, according to their
rank (cccx.) ; for abusive language, the same (cccxxiv.
cccxxvi.). Special indulgences are granted to persons of
high rank or great services (ccccii., cccciii.). These distinc-
tions have a certain justification for the Chinese mind in its
rooted belief that rank is the reward of merit, and the earnest
efforts of the nation to carry the belief into practice. Here
belong the curious laws which embody the sacredness of the
imperial dignity ; such as prohibit travel on roads that have
been expressly prepared for the royal march (clxxxiii., clxxxv.,
clxxxvii.), or severely punish informalities in the use of the
royal name (Ixiv.), or errors in transcribing royal edicts
(ccclv.). By a law now designated as obsolete, imperial
personages and high officials were not to be represented in
theatres ; but fictitious characters, fitted for good moral
effect, as just men, chaste wives, and obedient children,
were permitted (ccclxxxiv.).

Here, too, we class those provisions of public policy,
which aim to secure the loyalty of officers by clothing them
with strange and vast responsibilities to the central power ;
for example, by forbidding them to form local ties in *:heir

1 Levit. xix. 20.

364 STRUCTURES.

own districts either by marriage or by real estate (xciv., ex.) ;
by exacting from them full report of all calamities and all
misconduct, even their own (xci., clxxi.) ; by making them
inspectors of each other's conduct, with penalties for con-
cealing their knowledge (cxxx.) ; and by holding them re-
sponsible for the remissness of their inferiors in detecting
criminals, and for their oppressive dealing with the people
(ccx., ccclxxxvii., cccxciv.).

6. From the peculiar nature of Chinese religion as a
From re- cultus of elemental powers, by the Head of the State.
hgion. NQ private person shall perform rites to Heaven
(clxi.), nor pretend to discover prognostics (ccclxiii.) j 1 nor
shall an official astronomer fail to announce such signs as
really appear, on penalty of the rod (clxxvii.). As the ra-
tionalism of this State religion is expressed in severe laws
against sorcery and magic, 2 and even noisy processions with
idols (cclxxxix., cclvi., clxii.), so its superstition is betrayed
by making the stealing of articles used in religious rites,
during or after their use, a capital crime in the first case,
and next to capital in the second (cclvii.).

We come finally to laws which express the intense hor-
ror of the race for certain kinds of crime, for which
tne highest penalty seems to be regarded as inade-
quate. Of these the most prominent are, of course,
offences against the life of that Government which is the
will of Heaven and the hope of Man. High treason is de-
fined as "attempt to subvert the government or destroy
the imperial palace, temples, or tombs," and the penalty for
principals and accessories is to be " cut to pieces," which
means killed in any cruel way that may chance to be de-
vised ; while all male adult relatives are to be beheaded, and
all minors and females enslaved (ccliv., cclv.). Rebellion,

1 So the Hebrew Law. (Deut. xviii. 20).

* The Hebrews stoned both witches and conjurers of spirits. (Exod. xxii. 18 ; Levit.
xx. 27).

GOVERNMENT. 365

defined as " attempt to violate the divine order," is punished
by beheading, confiscation of property, and banishment of
relations (cclv.). Sacrilege is a capital crime (cclvii.), as is
all dealing in sorcery to compass death (cclxxxix.) ; and
murder for magical purposes is pursued with penalties
whose severity can only be explained by a half-believing
horror of that great darkness of superstition which brooded
over the rude Shamanism of the steppes whence the race
had emerged, and which has always beset its better civili-
zation. The criminal is doomed to die by slow and painful
execution, and all inmates of his house to perpetual banish-
ment. The idea involved in such now obsolete penalties,
that the force of laws can exterminate the very seeds of
unnatural crimes, is not peculiar to the intense faith of the
Chinese in police-regulation and machinery ; and its com-
bination, as here, with a superstitious belief in invisible
powers of evil apart from the human will, has been devel-
oped in the Christian world into processes of atrocious
cruelty, infinitely surpassing any thing which has been pos-
sible for the semi-rationalistic Chinese.

The anomalies of this Penal Code, so startlingly combin-
ing mercy and cruelty, enlightened principles and Expiana-
barbarous applications, remind us of the heteroge- tlonof

anomalies

neous composition of Oriental Codes in general, in Oriental
whose characteristics have been explained in a for- c
mer volume. It is doubtful if these inconsistencies of leg-
islation are greater in the East than in the West. We
should expect much incongruity in that of the Chinese,
from their peculiar tendency to a balancing of unreconciled
opposites, to a centre of indifference between poles, whether
in emotion, thought, or action. The dualism of Yin and
Yang finds its expression in jurisprudence also.

It must not be forgotten that these Codes, whether of

366 STRUCTURES.

the Ta-tsing, Mann, or the Pentateuch, embody the laws,
customs, and rules of many successive ages, gradually work-
ing themselves free from the imperfection of the Family-
Idea, and all preserved together with less regard to consist-
ency or to possibility of execution, than to the conservatism
that shrinks from disturbing the old records of the fathers ;
while the need of progress is met by fictions of interpreta-
tion suited to the time. These venerated statutes only
illustrate on a greater scale the defects attached to our
own codes, of obsolete laws and impossible presumptions,
lingering on through all revisions, monuments of the slow-
ness of the human mind in arriving at clear statements of
social relations and wants. Their continuance of course
allows a certain play, where the spirit itself is narrow or
harsh, or even barbarous, to those darker passions which
descend in the blood and brain of all races, and leap into
unexpected power on occasions of social excitement and
surprise. For this reason alone, a cruel or unjust principle
should be utterly and for ever wiped off the statute-book
the moment 'its applications cease to be allowed by pub-
lic opinion, with that alacrity which Milton, in his plea for
a thorough Reformation, calls " shaking fire out of the
bosom." 1 This is a necessary safeguard in the education
of the mass of men, whose social life is largely instinctive
and traditional, retaining, skin-deep, and ready for moments
of temptation, the old passions and superstitions which
should have been deprived of all educational prestige what-
ever. In the Ta-tsing-leuh-li stand laws of paternal rights
over life and liberty, as well as slave penalties, which we
know to have no validity in the Chinese courts. A civilized
sentiment has outgrown them ; nor do occasions arise to
stir the fanaticism of such patriarchal and slave-holding tra-
ditions in a community steadily emancipated by labor. But

1 The same is to be said of superstitions which stand in statutes long after they are out-
grown by the enlightened conscience, and afford hold for the blind bigotry of unreasoning
people ; such as the Sunday laws of the New England States.

GOVERNMENT. 367

what must, after all, be the effect of the barbarous pen-
alties of the Shu-king and the Tcheou-li, as continually
associated with names and books held in the highest honor,
upon the popular conscience and conduct ? We are assured,
by such authorities as Wells Williams, that. " the inflic-
tion of these penalties, still not uncommon in Persia and
Turkey, is not now allowed nor practised in China.'.' l Yet
may we not in part ascribe to their currency in law codes
and classic books, publicly read and taught, that propensity
to torturing criminals in illegal ways which the same au-
thor describes as rendering Chinese courts a real terror to
the people ? 2

The ethical contradictions involved in transmitting the
whole mass of codes, dogmas, and traditions, which
constitute a people's history, as one sacred canon,
make the Bible of every positive religion in the a tr y-
world demoralizing to the popular conscience, in propor-
tion as it is made a part of education to reconcile them in
some way as portions of an authoritative record. That the
Chinese penal code, commencing in reality not less than
two thousand years ago, should contain much of this self-
contradiction, is not more natural than that the same should
be true of the Christian Old and New Testaments, which
are regarded with far more exclusive reverence than is
shown by the Chinese to their classics. Not only are they
made mischievous to those who hold them to be one relig-
ious law and rule, through their obvious mutual incongru-
ities, but each contains within itself such opposite ele-
ments that both alike have served for centuries to bewilder
the moral sense, inspiring noble humanities on the one
hand, and furnishing authority on the other for the un-
matched barbarism that has grown out of belief in sorcery

1 Williams, I. 306.

1 Ibid., I. 409. Mendoza, writing in the sixteenth century, describes Chinese capital pun-
ishment as of the most barbarous character. (History of China, II. 116).

368 STRUCTURES.

and diabolic possession, as well as anthropomorphic features
that are little or no better.

The cruelties of the Chinese code, in fact, compare very
a- f avor ably with those of other races. In China,

tive miid- there has been no use of the ordeal, which has been
Chinese universal in the East and in all Christian nations
Code. down to the thirteenth century, and was fostered
for ages by the Christian Church. In China, there is no
penal burning at the stake, so fearfully common in the
West at the opening of the modern age. In China, torture
was forbidden to touch the persons of the old and the
young. The witchcraft persecutions in Europe and Amer-
ica, down to the last century, directed their cruelties
especially against old women ; and children of nine and
ten years did not escape them. Torture was embodied in
all mediaeval codes, in proportion to their origination in
Roman law ; diffused over Europe by the Inquisition ; de-
fended by minds like Bacon, resisted and abolished mainly
by free-thinkers like Montesquieu and Voltaire ; not aban-
doned in the principal European States till the close of the
last century, and in some smaller ones lingering far on into
the present. It is common to refer to such penalties as
" pagan ; " but the most careful inquirer into their history
says, without qualification, that " Christian communities
have systematized the administration of torture with a cold-
blooded ferocity unknown to the legislation of the heathen
nations whence they derived it." l Two centuries have not
elapsed since ten of the English regicides, condemned for
high treason to the divine right of kings, were every one
of them hanged, then cut down alive, disembowelled, be-
headed, and quartered by judicial sentence of the royal
court. 2

The forms of punishment employed by the Chinese are

1 Lea, Superstition and Force, p. 389 ; also pp. 379-387 ; Lecky, Rationalism, I. 333-
349-

* See Westm. Rev., January, 1873.

GOVERNMENT. 369

similar to those of other races, imprisonment, exile, death
by strangling and beheading, or even by cutting in
pieces ; 1 and last, the rod, applied in all ordinary
cases on a scale rising from ten to a hundred blows. The
Roman fasces and the Russian knout are familiar instances
to prove the wide use of a punishment which only associa-
tions peculiar to ourselves lead us to regard as specially
degrading or cruel. The Hebrews used it in all ordinary
cases of crime. 2 The Puritans in America whipped men
and women for not showing respect to a clergyman, and
for staying away from church. On the widest esti- The death
mates, the number of crimes punishable with death P enalt y-
by Chinese law does not compare with that prescribed by
the old English statutes, which the Massachusetts Puritans
stripped of two-thirds their barbarity by reducing their
death penalties to the Hebrew standard. Yet even these
humaner codes doomed men to death for blaspheming the
Trinity or the king, and even for profane swearing. 3 Sir
Thomas More, who was humane enough to oppose the
death penalty for theft, apparently preferred cropping the
ears. 4

There is undoubtedly an element in the Chinese charac-
ter to whjch these darker features of legislation The dark
correspond. It appears in all times of excitement "jjj^
and panic, keeping its hold mainly through the character,
singular insensibility of the Mongolian to physical pain.
But, after all, the ideal, and in great part the practice also,
are humane ; and if the Code be closely studied, it will be
found to carry its own antidote to these destructive forces.

Thus the distinction already mentioned as laid Penal
down . in the outset between " nominal " and Mitiga-

tions*

"actual" punishment, so that "where ten blows

1 Williams, I. 415.

2 Deut. xxv. (1-3). For the widespread use of this punishment, and its possible superiority
in some respects to other and severer penalties, see Cooper's Hist, of the Rod (London, 1869).

s See Westm. Rev., January, 1873, p. 61. * Utopia.

37 STRUCTURES.

are specified four are to be inflicted," appears intended to
cover the whole code, and of course gives room for neu-
tralizing the severest features of the law. So with the
tables of money commutations, and the abundant -mitiga-
tions provided for office, rank, virtue, services. Some of
the harshest are obviously absurd and impossible, and evi-
dently meant only to express detestation of crimes believed
too horrible ever to be committed. That a child should be
strangled for harsh words to his father cannot be seriously
intended, as is evident from the punishment being made to
depend on his parent's doing so incredible a thing as enter
a complaint to compass his death (cccxxix.). That slaves
should be beheaded for merely striking their masters is less
improbable ; but the object of the statute was evidently to
emphasize the unnaturalness of the action. Whether the
laws against rebellion, sacrilege, and treason have been to
any great extent carried out on the innocent families of
offenders is questionable. 1 They are the language of in-
tense desire to root out the very stock capable of bearing
such fruit. Instances of the banishment of whole families
of noted rebels are, however, not infrequent. It was pro-
posed to abolish this form of imputation, but imperial fears
have hitherto resisted the effort.

A highly reputed work, called " Advice to Officials,"
gives many humane provisions for lightening the painful-
ness of bambooing, for exempting certain classes, old,
young, sick, hungry, naked, and those already beaten, for
suiting the time to the criminal's comfort, for using the
smaller rather than the larger rod. The great point is to
admit compassion, without which the end of punishment
cannot be answered. 2

Such considerations help to justify the remarkable state-
ment of Staunton, that " one object much considered in the

1 Staunton, Introd. to Transl. of Penal Code, xxviii.
* Giles's Sketches, p. 141.

GOVERNMENT. 3/1

Code is to combine as much as possible seventy in denun-
ciation with lenity in execution." " With all its defects,"
he adds, " this Code is generally spoken of by the natives
with pride and admiration, and all they seem to desire is
its just and impartial execution." l

In external form, Chinese government is an imperial
bureaucracy. It centres, not in the expressed will .
of the people, but in the organized authority of the canceof
official ; who looks for reward and punishment to
a higher official, and he to a still higher board of
officials, till the fountain of office is reached in the x
Emperor, and its form resolved into an earthly of right
providence for the people, instead of representing,
as in a democracy, the people's allegiance only to them-
selves. In substance, this idea of office does not ignore the
authority of the people, but refers it to a higher principle
than mere popular will. This is the important germ of
political wisdom, folded in the crudity of Chinese official-
ism, which we must assign to its bearings on comparative
political science, and on the true idea of freedom. What
is the special meaning of this childlike acceptance of a law
higher than private will and embodied in official providence ?
Certainly it is not that pure self-government which performs
the duties and maintains the rights belonging to an indi-
vidual in society, without compulsion, because itself obe-
dient to universal principles, ethical, social, spiritual. But
it is at infinitely greater remove from enthroning individual
desire and egotistic dreams. It is the opposite of the Celtic
frenzy that would revolutionize and recreate institutions on
the instant, imposing the unlimited self-assertion of leaders
by force upon all mankind. It is equally opposed to the
pseudo-American claim of absolute authority for massed

1 Statin ton, Introd., xxviii.

3/2 STRUCTURES.

physical power, unity of numbers and wills, without regard
to that higher right so often embodied in the minority, and
still more often in the compacter and purer unity of a per-
sonal ideal. In complete contrast with these, here is a
social conviction, having the full force of religion, of the
reality of a best for each and for all, which is not subject to
the caprices of men or multitudes ; and which must find
its expression in official authority, entrusted to the best
and wisest persons.

For the Chinese, therefore, the secret of government is
function, function rightly fulfilled for the general good ;
function, not as official routine to be put through for the
mere continuance of government, still less to be pursued by
all men as carrion, flung out for voracious beasts of prey,
but as the root-fact in human nature ; the order, in whose
right administration is involved the very existence of society.

That this right sense of the value of functions is com-
Causesof kined with an over-intense faith in organization,
over- explains the main faults of Chinese officialism ;
sciaiism. wn i c ]-, are ^ excessive pedagogy and management
of details, extreme discipline and subordination, much
inertia and repression in the life of the individual and of
the State. The drift to organization hastens to merge the
abstract in the concrete ; so that the idea of government is
held fast in its own earliest moulds of function, in patri-
archal sovereignty, in the sway of family and clan, the rule
of the elder, the discipline of lower by higher members in
the domestic circle. Political science is thus forbidden to
develop into forms of progress, which require an unor-
ganised realm of study in the free personal thought and
imagination. To us, who are rapidly tending to an equally
exclusive faith in concrete values and organized sources of
power, the typical form of this tendency in Chinese bureau-

GOVERNMENT. 373

cracy is a lesson whose significance we shall probably be
forced to heed.

What redeems these puerilities and this arrest of de-
velopment is the relation of a true faith in function Faithin
to its own ideal ; its aim to fulfil the best social tmefunc-
service without compulsion, through the power of
personal virtue. That Chinese emphasis on function really
has root in this ideal is plain from the constant assertion
of it as the beginning of all real government. Self-disci-
pline in the narrowest private spheres is the recognized ba-
sis of power and right to rule the State. Every Chinese
teacher refers the sanction of the highest powers in the
land to the universal meaning of function, as accountability
to the duties of the position ; and so treats the idea in a
broadly democratic way. The oldest ideal monarchs, having
been faithful in lowliest spheres, were called from the shop
and the channelled fields to greater and the greatest spheres.
Influence flows from the person on his family, thence on
his neighborhood, town, country, mankind. It is so for the
peasant, so for the prince. The productive quality of virtue
is not of compulsion, but goes behind law, is the free flow
of nature, the original tide-way of the faculties fitly em-
ployed : this the source of law, of justice, of humanity.
The grand first kings, who could reach out to find and use
ministers like themselves, swayed mankind by noble ex-
ample in their special duties, and laws were needless.

This idealism of function reverses the apparent order of
things, and derives authority after all from the peo- ultimate
pie : so little does the external form of a gov- jJjTJIo.
ernment betray its secret quality. The Chinese, pie's good,
referring functions to universal principles in human nature,
declare that as the end of government is the good of the
people, so its sanction resides in their love and content.
This is its test. Their voice is sought on all momentous
occasions, in all high penalty for crime ; the sovereign is

374 STRUCTURES.

corrected by their sense of right, their murmurs of dissent ;
officers who are expelled by them for oppressive conduct
are put to death by the law for that cause alone. 1 The
secret is told, not only in the continued changes of dynasty
by popular revolt, but by the great amount of positive self-
government organized and constant in social life, in the
village communities, the local trade-unions and clubs for
discussion, the institution of the censorate, and the freedom
of appeal, in all cases of importance, to the highest court in
the land.

The two conceptions of government, as democratic re-
sponsibility and providential care, are reconciled in this
obviously imperfect way. The people having naturally
right and power of self-government are incapable of exer-
cising it ; do not know how to govern themselves, but do
know when they are well governed ; do know when the
functions they leave to their best men for fulfilment are
well fulfilled. Hence their condition, as tranquil or dis-
contented, is the constant burden of royal proclamation
and official charge. Unsatisfactory to us. Yet it is plain
that no government devised for enslaving the people would
thoroughly and constantly proclaim its responsibility to
them, although this might be done, as in France, by a
single ambitious and short-lived dynasty for momentary
effect ; nor would it keep the path of advancement wide
open to free competition ; nor preach the right of revolu-
tion at the corners of the streets, and tyrannicide in the
text-books of the schools ; nor submit to an institution like
the censorship ; nor make its courts free to the appeal of
the humblest person ; nor secure the best education the
land affords to every one in the community who can afford
time and means to pursue it. Obviously our Western ideas
of bureaucracy, as a rule imposed on the people, and our
objections to a paternal government, are not easily applied

1 Penal Code, CCX.

GOVERNMENT. 375

to a nation in whose heart the ideas of service and sway
are so fully reconciled as in China. And, if we would give
them the benefit of our forward look and free aspiration,
we must recognize the reverence with which they clothe
the idea of government as the rule of the best, aware that
nothing short of an homage to this eternal truth equal to
their own can make us fit to become their teachers.

These remarks are as applicable at the present as at
any previous period. The Man-chus, though mas-
ters of China by conquest, are pupils of her civil- Manchu
ization, and fully acquainted with all its qualities. rulers '
Their preparation for ruling the empire has not been
unworthy of the function. The Tsing has effected more
than any previous dynasty, not only in organizing the
State, but even in giving force to the traditional principles
on which its institutions rest. The writings of Confucius
have been the common culture of both races. Any collec-
tion of Man-chu proverbs will be found very largely made
up of his sayings. 1 For delicacy and humanity as well as
for close treatment of real life, even the original portions
of such a collection will compare favorably with Chinese
anthologies. The closest resemblance will be found in
prudential and political maxims.

The Administration of the Empire 2 is no artificial struc-
ture, but has grown out of the demands of a vast

& . The Impe-

civilization, for ages bent on utilizing all its re- rial Admin-
sources for the common good, and working with 1S
remarkable unity to that end. Just as its written language

1 See especially Rochet, Sentences Mantchoux (Paris, 1875), extracts from which will be
found further on; also Wollheim, Die National Liter atur der Volker des Orients
(pp. 663, 664).

2 Fully given in the Ta-tsing-Hwui-Tien, (64 vols. roy. octavo), the Manchu Blue-
~Book, which occupied the Han-lin from twenty to thirty years in preparation ; it contains
minute descriptions of every department in forty-eight chapters. See Chin. Refos., Jan. 1843,
and Aug. 1835. Also Martin's China, I. 125; F r an ck, ./*/<?$ Orientales, p. 148; La Chine
Ouverte, pp. 34S~354-

376 STRUCTURES.

has been made a bond of union for three hundred millions
of people, and its educational system binds the remotest
district to the capital by a common interest of the closest
kind, so the same centripetal force of the race has organ-
ized its various social interests in a central administration
which has retained the same leading features since its ear-
liest days.

Thus the present Imperial Councils, cabinet and general,
Con-e- correspond to the consultations held by the early
sponding kings with their wisest men, and with the chiefs

to the older &

regime. of tribes or States. The Cabinet (Nui-Koli) pre-
pares opinions for the Emperor's judgment, its assistants
being connected with the Board of Rites. The General
Council (Kiun-chi-Chii) comprises a large number of high
personages, princes, chiefs of boards and courts, with
other officials, selected by the throne. Its general func-
tion is distributive, and includes issuing imperial edicts,
regulating examinations and other national procedures,
translating documents for general reading, and directing
the affairs of Mongolia and Thibet.

The Six Boards (Luh-pu) a of Civil Service, Revenue,
The Rites, War, Punishment, and Public Works cor-

Bureaus. responc } verv nea rly to the Boards of the Tcheou-li,
and, though more concentrated, are not unlike those of Yu
in the Shu-king. Their natural origin in social needs is
indicated by the saying, " The Ly-pu is to govern the peo-
ple, the Hu-pu to support them, the Li-pu to guide ; the
Ping-pu to protect ; the Kong-pu to give them security and
repose."

These Boards are aided by a Colonial Office, a College
of Censors, a Court of Revisions in capital cases, a Court
of Petitions, and an Imperial Academy. There are also
Boards of Inspection for granaries, and for transports of
government stores of salt, corn, and customs.

1 Called also Luh-fang (the six rooms), a familiar term for the administration.

GOVERNMENT. 377

The College of Censors has six classes attached to the
six Boards to supervise their action ; it takes part in
reviewing all criminal cases coming up from the prov-
inces, and in directing the police of the capital. 1 A still
more important function is to reprove and admonish the
Emperor, of course with proper discretion and respect.

The Court of Requests receives memorials, and trans-
mits appeals made through the drum of justice at the
palace gate directly to the throne.

The Han-lin, or Royal Academy of Scholars, has been
elsewhere described.

To the early feudal States correspond divisions for ad-
ministrative purposes into provinces, departments, The
and cantons, whose subdivisions have their walled Provinces,
towns of similar names to their own ; and these divisions
are directed respectively by viceroys, governors, prefects,
and sub-prefects, with treasurers, judges, and a great num-
ber of subordinate officials, whose functions are too com-
plex to be here described. By official espionage from
above and from below, by registration of all important
facts, by transmission of every detail to the central
bureaus, by reports, expected from all, of their own do-
ings and misdoings, the administration of provincial affairs
becomes, theoretically, known to the Emperor, as fount of
justice and source of reform. The official list is filled
from the records of competitive examinations by the Board
of Rites ; and the control of foreign trade in the great port
of Canton has been maintained until recently, by holding a
company of merchants (Co-hong) responsible for the col-
lection of duties to the higher government officials.

The mandarin 2 holds his court as judge, jury, and bar,

1 See Williams, I. 338.

2 The name "mandarin" is probably derived from the Sanskrit " mantran" (counsellor),
from mantra (wisdom) ( Schott). Or perhaps, proximately, from the Portuguese mandar (to
Command). The Chinese name for a judge is kwan.

378 STRUCTURES.

in imitation of the imperial rule, though under account-
Mandarin ability in both directions to the government and
courts. tne p e0 pi e> His court-house (Ya-mun) is de-
scribed as a rambling fortress, garrisoned by officials, clerks,
free agents, and purveyors to his interest, and police. The
regular procedure is, however, without fee ; and rich and
poor alike may prosecute their cause, enter protest against
unjust sentence, and carry their appeal to higher courts.

The number of official persons, of importance sufficient
to be subjects of enumeration, amounted in 1845 to
20,000, with a proportion of one in five or six of the Tar-
tar race. 1

How does this vast regime of officialism work in practice ?
Staunton says that, "for the repression of disorder in a
Practical vast population, the Chinese laws are in general

working of equally mild an( i efficacious ; and that he traced

these insti-

tutions. almost universally the signs of a thriving and con-
tented people ; " among whom " flagrant and repeated acts
of injustice in any rank or station do not often escape with
impunity." 2 Testimony to the same effect is given by
Testimo Davis, Ellis, Meadows, Speer. Williams says that
meson the the Chinese race has perhaps risen as high as is

iect ' possible in the two great objects of government,
security of life and property to the governed, and free-
dom of action under restraints of law. 3 Wuttke thinks
" the humanity of the laws shames much of Christian legis-
lation." 4 Neither of these writers is elsewhere disposed to
be partial to Chinese character or institutions. Their
accounts fully correspond with that of the Arab travellers
in the ninth century.

The entertaining Jesuit, Lecomte, who spent ten years
in China nearly two centuries ago, is enthusiastic over the

1 See Brine. 2 Introd. to Pen. Code. 3 Letter quoted by Speer, p. 533.

* Wuttke, II. i S r.

GOVERNMENT. 379

road-making energies of the officials, the good regulation
of posts and couriers, the mode of collecting revenues, the
small number of officials compared with France in that
day, the careful registration of families and estates, and
the good order of the people in spite of civil and foreign

wars.

If, notwithstanding the frequency of civil wars, dynastic
overturns, popular commotions, barbarities arising C om P ara-
from panic, and cruelties by unjust officials, the tive - ualit y

i ' f of Chinese

testimony of travellers as to the general state of political
society in China is still similar to the above, histor y-
though the last century has been rife in demoralizing
influences from abroad, there must be much inherent
excellence in the established order of things. The sad pic-
ture of dynastic revolutions, imperial intrigues, and deaths
by violence, which may be studied in Duhalde and De
Mailla, Meadows and Martin, and even in the Trimetrical
Classic of the Chinese schools, could after all be easily
paralleled or even surpassed by a true account of almost
any European, monarchy during the last thousand years.
Probably no nation has made more strenuous endeavors
to restrain official abuses. There are imperfections inhe-
rent in all devices for securing justice between men, and
our boasted jury system is perhaps as far from immaculate
as the Chinese mandarin court ; the point of moment is
not the form of procedure, but the animus of the public
opinion which it represents. Doubtless the best form for
a right-willing community is the primitive and natural
resort to chosen referees. In China, fear of the people,
who keep well informed as to the laws, exerts perhaps as
potent an influence for good as the very imperfect public
sentiment which we bring to bear on our own courts of
justice, and which makes the worth or the worthlessness
of our special laws.

1 Lecomte's China, pp. 304-311.

380 STRUCTURES.

The Chinese have taken ample precaution against pun-
Precau- ishing innocent persons, especially in capital cases.
against in- Three superior courts unite with the Board of Cen-
justice. sors to form a Court of Revision, and the cases are
then sent up to the throne. The decisions of provincial
courts of appeal are re-examined, and the Peking " Gazette "
abounds in cases of resort to the censors to bar injustice.
The statistics of capital punishment have recently shown
an average of five hundred cases a year in an empire of
three hundred millions, which is one in six hundred thou-
sand, equivalent to two a year in the State of Massachu-
setts ; a small ratio compared with those of many epochs
in our own history. Under the great Emperors who have
fairly executed the laws, population has enormously in-
creased ; a fact which has its significance in relation to
the adequacy of these laws for public security and comfort.

This may be the place to ask how far the responsibilities
imperial theoretically laid on the Emperor, as the people's
how C fui Father, have been practically met ? The foremost
mied. of these, in the concrete logic of the .Chinese, is to
see that the people are supplied with food. This duty is
the more emphasized since the population has become so
vast, but it is natural enough to an agricultural race. The
location of public granaries, from the earliest times,

Granaries.

is in no sense an expedient of despotism to keep
the people quiet, as some have believed : : ease from self-
supporting labor is the last thing a Chinese government
would think of or desire for the people. It is only in times
of distress, and by violation of the whole system, that " the
provinces are drained so that Pe-king may be full." The
granary belongs to the idea of imperial care, as it has al-
ways done, whether in Egypt, Rome, or Peru. 2

In all times maintained as a vital part of imperial duty,
granaries greatly increased in numbers during the native

1 Morache, p. 50. 2 See Prescott, I. 57.

GOVERNMENT. 381

Ming dynasty. Provided on the frontiers for troops, and
in the large cities against times of scarcity, their supplies
are used for sacrifices, for the poor, for imperial wants, and
the pay of officials ; and they make it possible to apportion
taxation to the actual state of crops. As a balance-wheel
for the mechanism of an agricultural State, they have vir-
tues which China has never failed to appreciate.

The Emperor of China is never suffered to forget that,
as Frederic the Great said of himself, he is the charge of
" procurator of the poor." Besides his govern- the p or -
mental pawning-houses, poor-houses, homes for aged per-
sons and vagrants, and the great drum of appeal for wronged
parties at his palace gate, he has always been held to ren-
der homage and help to labor by rites to the gods of the
land, by symbolic assumption of the plough in the name of
his people, by issuing the annual calendar for the farmer's
guidance, and by providing for irrigation on a vast scale to
facilitate the free labors of millions in a spirit far more
democratic than that of those " Hamite " civilizations which
covered the plains of Mesopotamia with canals constructed
by slaves. Private petition is, theoretically at least, free ;
and an entry in the Peking " Gazette " shows that the cen-
sors have to this day no legal right to intercept such direct
appeal when made under proper forms. 1

The vices of Chinese administration 2 proceed from per-
versions inherent in the practical working of the Defects
providential theory of government. The Emperor's arisin s
responsibility for the moral and physical well-being r pr0 vj.
of his people is repeated in that of the mandarin dential "

i i- f - il theory of

for the condition of the community under his spe- govern-
cial charge, as well as for the conduct of his subor- ment>
dinates. The State is thus an embodiment of vicarious
atonement, and justice an officialism in which every holder

1 September 15, 1874.

1 Compare Peruvian Laws, Prescott, I. 42. See also Meadows, p. 170; Williams, I.
378-38i.

STRUCTURES.

is responsible to the law for the sins of other men. The
principle pervades Chinese legislation, and its presence in all
ancient law codes and positive religions generally, ancient
and modern, demands explanation.

The basis of vicarious atonement as a dogma is partly in
idea of tne instinctive ardor of sympathy which would re-
vkarious move penalty from others by sharing or assuming

atonement. ., 1-1

it ; partly in observation, even at the early stages
of social progress, of the law of moral solidarity, by which
each person does in fact become sharer in the common des-
tiny, and really bears the burden, in one or another way, of
all the vice and misery in the world ; and partly in con-
necting this law with official function as an element of
historical providence : thus making the supposed divinely
appointed saviours and guardians of men suffer with the
enemies of their work, even if they are not punished in
their stead. But such official function, again, is the ready
device for reconciling the vast amount of unpunished or
unpunishable wrong-doing in society with the crude idea of
justice, as a strict commercial squaring of accounts with the
highest ownership. And this plainly sets aside the other,
or sympathetic motive ; whereas nothing can be more vital
than sympathy to all real and practical justice. When this
unhappy divorce is widened by ascribing individual will to
the highest appointing and retributive Power, the tracks
are well laid for the extreme of injustice in the name and
pursuit of justice. The official function of "saving men"
becomes a form of responsibility which denies the very
essence of morality, organizing a legal accountability in the
good man, not to his own conscience, but to a want of con-
science in all other men ; and as its corollary a right in each
of these of shifting upon another the penalty for his own
sins, personal or imputed.

These vices,' which most modern civilizations in great
measure confine to the realm of their theological ideal, ap-

GOVERNMENT. 383

plying a wholly different rule to their practical affairs, are
organized by the Chinese, without theology, into positive
secular laws and penalties ; thus, in this matter, enlisting
freedom of will and strength of desire against that morality
which in other respects is their manifest aim. It is a ter-
rible violation of the rights of the person ; and though it is
a natural deduction from their premises that, if virtue and
vice in a ruler inevitably produce their like in his people,
then the conduct of the latter is the direct consequence
and sign of his character, yet it would seem scarcely credi-
ble that even the Chinese should so confound abstract logic
with concrete experience as to organize such a conclusion
in the physical force of the State. Yet so it is, and the
consequences are noteworthy.

There are at first sight certain apparent advantages in
punishing the mandarin for the undetected crimes

Its results.

committed in his jurisdiction. It is of course much
easier than to investigate them. It leads to extreme efforts
on his part to suppress offences. But since this is more
difficult than to compound for them, the more common
effect is concealment by collusion or for bribes, and the
punishment of the innocent, either by outrage or by the
singular custom of self-substitution for a price, natural
enough under a system of vicarious atonement. This cus-
tom, aggravated by the poverty of large classes, is a start-
ling sign of the demoralizing effect of the system on general
manners. Moreover, the people, made responsible for each
other, become afraid to prosecute justice.

All this seems incredibly blind and barbarous. Yet it is
doubtless only the imperfection of our sciences of Ana i ogies
heredity and psychological influence that prevents in Chris -

. . . tendom.

us from seeing that we ourselves have organized in
our legal processes the punishment of the innocent for the
guilty on a prodigious scale ; holding poverty and ignorance
responsible for crimes due mainly to the skilled tyrannies

384 STRUCTURES.

and robberies of competitive trade, and seeking to extirpate
vices like intemperance, propagated from generation to
generation or enforced by the habits of society, by chas-
tisement of those who are only their victims or their results.

Minute mutual espionage is another degrading trick of
The spy these pedagogic disciplines, fruitful of falsehood and
system. corruption. De Courcy says that " to escape the
tremendous power of this spy system a common under-
standing seems to have been made to permit every form of
abuse." Yet we must beware of reasoning too closely from
the analogy of our own habits of self-government to the
effects of what is here but a kind of monitorial system in
an immense school. 'Tis a people who can, with simplicity
of heart, accept the rule that a list of the merits and de-
merits of all officers in the Empire shall be triennially
submitted to the inspection of their great school-master,
prepared from the mixed confessions and talebearings of
these ushers themselves ! Espionage is in the East a recog-
nized means of national consolidation. That huge heap of
discordant atoms the Persian Empire of Darius was
brought to unity in great part through official spies, called
the " royal eyes and ears." And in Japan, where every one
is liable for the good conduct of some class of persons, and
every office is held by two mutual inspectors, the system
passes for the " safeguard of the people," and travellers
speak of it as " an important check on misconduct." 1

It is a tendency of civilization to subject the individual
life to an ever-increasing inspection and control. Whatever
be the power which assumes guardianship of the community,
as soon as it gets well organized, it will, if not self-restrained
by a respect for personality, of which only a small minority
of men are capable, become an intrusive supervision, tend-
ing to terrorism, and practically constituting a kind of
public black-mail. Its democratic form is probably more

1 Japanese Fragments, p. 22 ; Pumpelly, p. 117.

GOVERNMENT. 385

invasive and exacting than any other can be. We may fancy
we have escaped it, since we do not admit the right of
government to supervise the whole conduct of life, and are
far from respecting the spy in any form. But were we not
lately dealing with the question of employing feed govern-
ment spies in the revenue service as a necessary guard
against our own officials ? Is it probable that a Chinese
mandarin was ever more keenly watched by subordinates
for flaws in his conduct than the American official is tracked
even by members of his own political party, who desire his
removal (not to speak of " the outs "), and who may use
Congressional influence for their purposes ? But, beyond
these obvious forms of supervision, there is a deeper and
more general kind. We, who reject bureaucratic govern-
ment, find ourselves accepting the autocracy of public
opinion, or the majority's right by divine sanction to deal
with us as it will. This republican pedagogy has become
as thoroughly organized in the power of the free press as
the Chinese is in imperial espionage. And we are endur-
ing the result in a supervision of private affairs by the
correspondent and the interviewer, in the name of public
rights, which recognizes no personal reserves, no life apart
from inspection, no domestic sorrow nor sensitive wound
sacred from the public eye.

Excessive supervision will never purify the morals nor re-
fine the sentiments of a people. Its very motive demoral-
izes and counteracts its ostensible aim. In China, it does
not appear to have protected the sea from pirates, nor the
land from revolt ; and troops of wandering robbers have
always infested the outlying provinces. It does not repress
beggary, which is rampant in the cities, nor abolish the
trickeries of trade. Probably on the whole it tends to in-
crease these evils, though its influence is in large measure
neutralized by the general character and habits of the peo-
ple. Everywhere alike it illustrates the failure of organi-

386 STRUCTURES.

zation to do the work of personal culture and of private
aspirations to moral and intellectual freedom. Yet it is
difficult, in the face of the vast data on which Chinese
civilization rests, to believe, with Mr. Hart, that the whole
civil and military administration is founded on a lie. 1 No
such age is to be found in Chinese history as that of Eng-
land in the middle of the last century, when the statesmen
were almost universally gross and immoral in speech and
life, and the people ignorant, brutal, and uncared for to an
extent now inconceivable. Of popular representation, it is
sufficient to say that jobbers returned at that time all the
borough members of Parliament, and only 160,000 out of
eight millions were electors, while the king bought and
ruled the members at his will. 2

The multiplicity of functions filled by a single prefect or
Mixed judge is another source of official malversation in
Functions, china. This too arises from the greater ease with
which a central " providence " can be brought to bear on
provincial administration through one functionary than
through divided powers. With all their organizing faculty,
the Chinese have not learned the importance of separating
the various branches of administration. The district mag-
istrate unites judicial, political, fiscal powers. 3 De Mas
says that when he visited Shang-hai there were only the
mayor and two other mandarins, who yet employed two or
three hundred subordinates. 4 The mandarin is supposed
to be competent to all kinds of affairs ; so that, after all, the
great educational principle of fitness for functions has in
this respect serious detriment, and the mischievous results
of false positions ensue.

For this evil, also, our opposite form of government has
its analogue, in the propensity of majorities to heap their

1 Quoted in Hubner, pp. 642, 643, from his Memorandum to the Emperor.

8 See Green, English History, pp. 717, 744.

3 Meadows, p. 79. * De Mas, II. 36.

GOVERNMENT. 387

admirations ; to believe that a great leader in one sphere
must needs be equally great in all ; to force now one de-
partment, now another, to intrench on the independence
of its coequals ; to disregard special fitness, for the sake of
personal or party interests, and to expect every man to
serve these in any capacity at a moment's notice. Political
checks and balances are well provided in the division of our
public departments ; but the fully organized public will
overbears such political precautions, because it, and not
political government, is the American " providence."

Other vices of Chinese administration much dwelt on
are the assumption of illegal powers by magistrates, other de-
or by legates who are sometimes likened, though fects-
not very correctly, to Persian satraps ; l forgery of edicts,
which cannot be frequent, the penalty being death ; ill pay
of officials, resulting from bad times or public poverty, and
offset by extortions ; imperial interference with the course
of justice, since there is naturally some margin for caprice ;
influence of cabals by eunuchs or others in the royal house-
hold ; above all, the sale of offices, at last become a regular
method of replenishing the State treasury in hard times.
But this violation of the competitive system of examina-
tions is too unpopular to be suffered to go far, and is never
without open protest from the censors and the regular
graduates. Special examinations have been held for the
purpose of weeding out incompetent officials who have
purchased their posts ; and it is proposed to make these
tests universal. 2

The amount of petty torture in daily use in the police
courts is probably considerable ; and the condition of pris-
ons, if we may trust common report, could not well be
worse than it is. 3 Instances of arbitrary cruelty by jailers

1 Williams, I. 351.

1 Peking Gazette, June 21 and October 15, 1874.

Williams, I. pp. 409-416; Hiibner, p. 595.

STRUCTURES.

and judges 1 are naturally not uncommon where a stick is
the appropriate symbol of government. The arbitrary nat-
ure of criminal administration where the same person is
judge and jury is sufficiently obvious, even without the
testimony of the whole body of Chinese romance and drama,
so far as it has been brought before the Western public.
Yet the keenness of these functionaries in the perception
of truth and falsehood in witnesses is said to be remark-
able. 2

Notwithstanding these abuses and defects, even as in-
tensified by the present epoch of transition and demorali-
zation, there are, so far as we can see, no grounds for ex-
pecting the dissolution of the Empire, or any profound
revolution in its forms.

The permanence of Chinese institutions is due to their

growth out of the unimpeded genius of the people,
the Per- They are not the product of conquest, like the abso-
ofThe CC ^ ute monarcn y f Persia, or the Kshatriya kingdoms
Chinese of India ; nor subject to continual change by the

influx of foreign races, like the Roman State. They
are a form of the permanence of race qualities. So strong
has been their centripetal force, so vital their hold on the
patriarchal ideal in its concrete unity as State, that no
amount of local diversity, in the tribes and regions com-
prised in this colossal country, has thus far been able to
sunder the bond of nationality. It has withstood tremen-
dous internal conflicts, and endured the yoke of foreign
masters only to absorb them quietly into its unity. A pri-
mal gravitation, stronger than any causes of repulsion, holds
these unique tribes gathered about a common patriarch,
through all changes of experience. Quite as powerful is
the industrial spirit of their civilization. The aboriginal
mountain tribes which it cannot conquer beat in vain
against its calm, organic persistence, rude fragmentary

1 Meadows, Notes, XIV. ; Lecomte, pp. 241-311. * Giles's Sketches, p. 85.

GOVERNMENT. 389

impulses for ever flung back from the steadfast economies
of social law.

Again we are pointed to the mysterious secret of the
history of the Mongolic Chinese race ; its absorption in
concrete fact, and failure to extricate the idea into a free-
dom which would necessitate change. Government is an
already fulfilled ideal ; its principles identified with an act-
ual policy never to be dissolved.

The earnestness of this faith constitutes it a religion ;
and its history casts no discredit on the philosophy that
traces enduring things to the good and not the evil in hu-
man nature. The motive forces to which it theoretically
appeals are of a nature to insure the permanence of insti-
tutions through all practical collisions which might seem to
contradict their theoretic principles, and to make the inces-
sant assertion of them almost absurd. It is the only key
that will open this strangest of histories.

i. Materialistic and servile as it may be imagined, Chi-
nese civilization rests on the systematic preference ItsMotive
of moral to physical forces. This is as true of its Forces,
political method as of its literary culture. Not only L Moral
are local rights left very much to their natural in- Suprem-
fluence over the popular heart, while the sense of
justice is gratified by freedom of appeal to the central au-
thorities, but government itself is constantly presented in
the schools as resting on moral sanctions, the military arm
subordinated to the civil, the military spirit disciplined, not
to say systematically repressed, upon grounds of conscience.
The duty of patient endurance of evils, and the virtue of
laborious tasks in the interest of order and unity, are the
substance of a national gospel, whose restraining influence
on the passions is increased by a natural aversion to revolu-
tion, or even to that private self-dependence which is so
marked a trait of Teutonic character. The " Sacred In-

39 STRUCTURES.

structions " urge upon all classes mutual interest, counsel,
instruction, and aid the spirit of civil unity and social har-
mony with a directness and force which render them,
perhaps, the most remarkable document of royal political
teaching in human history.

The symbols to which the people bend are the gong, bell,
and wooden axe ; not the Mongol wolf, nor the Teutonic
bird of prey. The right of tyrannicide being at the same
time recognized, the conservative values of order, harmony,
and justice are the more strongly felt.

2. A second source of permanence is the industrial econ-
ii. Indus- om y of the State. No land is permitted to lie idle.
tf y- No person is suffered to go about stirring up the
unemployed to commit disorders. No one shall keep more
land than he can keep productively. Large estates are
thus prevented, and the national stability guaranteed by
hosts of small land-owners, busy in creating their own bonds
for the existing order. So long as the taxes are paid, the
farmer is undisturbed. Such an act as the expulsion of
whole counties of Scottish peasants from their holdings,
that the acres might be converted to pasture, would not be
tolerated in China, even were the conditions present to
make it possible. One who improves unoccupied land ac-
quires thereby a title in it. 1 Permanent ownership is encour-
aged by the right of emigrants on return to resume their
old estates. Nor does thirst for foreign conquest agitate
this busy hive of productive laborers.

3. The educational system which secures the State the
in Edu- sery i ce f its best and ablest men ; the union of
cation. local with national* interests effected by competitive
examinations in every large city for honors proceeding from
the capital ; the instruction thus given the people in polit-

1 Chin. Repos., November, 1849.

GOVERNMENT. 39 1

ical knowledge, and in the conditions of public security ;
the direction of private ambition into this current rather
than into habits of demagogical appeal or pushing for place ;
the dissemination of laws, edicts, and exhortations, often
carved in marble and posted in the streets, are all forces
of permanence and unity.

4. To these we may add respect for ties of family, and
even homage paid them, under forms common to IV Re _
the whole empire; enforcement of early marriage s P ect or

. the Family.

upon all, with its resulting advantages of settled
aims and duties ; the sober routines, the well compre-
hended relations, the ancestral works and ways ; and that
love of association by families, neighborhoods, crafts, as
well as for public duties, that marks the Chinaman both at
home and abroad.

5. A number of peculiar expedients for maintaining con-
trol over provincial administration, and preserving v> Poli .
unity in the national life, have become constituent des -
parts of the polity of the Empire.

Old officers are called to Pe-king to serve as hostages for
the good behavior of their sons in the provincial posts. 1
Nepotism is not permitted, nor any tie, by marriage or
property, with the place of one's official residence. The
functionary of the Empire must separate himself even from
his birthplace. The centre of official hope is thus always
Pe-king: by that gate of imperial inspection each must
pass to the place of his dignity. Official posts being held
but for short periods, the frequency of transfer keeps atten-
tion fixed on governmental interests rather than on local
opportunities.

That placemen are expected to confess their faults, and

1 See Chin, Kfjos., May, 1835, pp. 70, 71 ; Lecomte, p. 278.

39 2 STRUCTURES.

severely punished if detected in concealing them, 1 and that
every public personage from highest to lowest is under
judgment of the Board of Censors may at least be sup-
posed to exert a restraining influence on the spirit of inno-
vation. 2

The " Calendar," issued by the Astronomical Board, pre-
scribing uniformity of times and seasons in all industrial
or ritual matters for the whole nation, identifies these com-
mon activities and aims with the regular movement of the
State, as with pure laws of Nature. 3

6. Finally, the identity of religion with the concrete or-
vi. Re- der f things, in which all are alike interested and
ligious urged to unity, goes far toward preventing theo-

Liberality. . -...,. ...

logical controversy, which is elsewhere a most fruit-
ful source of political revolution. Nowhere is religion an
outside interest, or an instituted oppression. There is no
priestly caste nor class, no symbolic book, no enforced
dogma ; the one universal cultus, that of ancestors, is the
dictate, not of Church, nor of State, but of Nature.

Such are some of the elements of perpetuity in institu-
tions which seem in the main to repeat themselves
through all dynastic and civil changes in the history
of this persistent race ; not less wonderful, certainly, for
their adhesiveness, though to thoroughly naturalistic paths,
than the Jews for that intense self-concentration which has
been mistaken by themselves and others for supernatural
guidance. But, after all, these elements have not proved so
effectual as might be expected in the direction of internal
unity in this vast population. Its cohesion is not greater, by
the testimony of history, than the powerful element of race,

1 Williams, I. 358, 368. 2 Duhalde, I. 71, 270.

8 See Marco Polo (notes to Yule's edit.), B. n. xxxiii.

GOVERNMENT. 393

in this case most powerful, would require. Numerous and
destructive civil wars, and the very short epochs in her
long history of four thousand years during which China has
been united in a single empire, make us almost daubt
whether the word unity can properly be used of this enor-
mous number of beings aggregated by the force of race.
Race is the invincible quality which impels every man and
woman in China to seek organization with his like as the
breath of his existence ; which teaches every one to revere
patriarchal rule, as the ordainment of Heaven for the gov-
ernment of men. The ideal of this race is the Family.
For their vast schemes of universal empire, whether as
sweep of Tartar conquest, or serene absolutism of Chinese
polity, the logic is the same : As one Father for the Family,
so one Ruler for the World.

III.

LANGUAGE.

III.

LANGUAGE.

TT is one of the highest achievements of modern science
-*- to have rescued Language from the domain of Language
theology, and traced its continuous evolution by ^jon^o""
the natural faculties of man. History, however, aninven-
reminds us that this line of study was foreshad- n '

owed by Epicurus and his school, and especially s rowth -
by Lucretius ; who wholly denied that speech was either
a special invention or a divine communication, and indi-
cated the steps of its gradual birth in such instinctive
expressions as the cries of animals and the unconscious
gestures of infants. After nearly two thousand years of
supernaturalism, we are brought back with new experi-
ence to this old trust in natural laws.

A prolonged depreciation of the human faculties had
resulted in the last century in two extremes of theory on
the subject. One of these was expressed in the phrase
that speech was too amazing a product to have been
wrought out by man's " unaided powers." The other pro-
ceeded from that reaction to excessive self-confidence,
which, especially in France, felt itself raised up for the
reconstruction of the world by immediate human forces ;
and this philosophy of patent machinery naturally enough
referred language to the genius of some great inventor.
Both the miracle and the mechanism are now set aside for
good and sufficient reasons. On the one hand, that tran-
sition of inarticulate tongue-gestures into distinct words,
in which language begins, no more needs a special inven-

39^ . STRUCTURES.

tor than the organic necessity of self-expression, out of
which these primitive movements were born. And, on
the other hand, the theory of a revelation in aid of the
natural faculties breaks down on the fact that there can be
no revelation except the manifestation of these faculties
themselves, by whose stable processes alone we can know
or act.

Edkins, a zealous Orientalist, thinks that " the Biblical
account of man's naming the animals proves the divine
origin of language." But nomenclature belongs to the
sphere of scientific research, not of theological dogma.
The truth folded in that Hebrew legend is the natural
sovereignty of man as mind. Human intelligence does, in
fact, give names to all creatures and forms by its own
necessary and sovereign laws of expression. And then
science analyzes the process, thus poetically signified as a
whole, into its natural stages.

In the same way we may allow the theory that speech
is an "invention," if we divest it of individdal meaning;
since humanity everywhere reaches the use of its own
powers by a continuous discovery, which is of the nature
of creation. This theory, therefore, like the other, attains
an imperfect sense of the spontaneity of spiritual forces as
affirming themselves in natural law. The progress of
knowledge consists in the degrees of perception that the
highest of these forces are essential to the evolution of all
beneath them, the whole to every part.

Behind the various schemes of invention, inspiration,
its psycho- revelation, evolution, thus pointing to a common
truth, lies the fact that language is ultimately
referable to the necessary unity of essence with
manifestation, and the consequent law that every mental
act is also a bodily movement. The highest law of the uni-
verse works in the lowest stages of growth. What has
been calle$ an invention, or a revelation, is in fact given

LANGUAGE. 399

in the very existence of mind. Whatever may have been
the nature of the first articulate sounds, they belong to the
same organic and unconscious stages of expression with
the still earlier language of gesture and feature. Vowels
and consonants are not mere products of analysis. They
must have been instinctively uttered in the infancy of man,
long before they were combined into positive words. The
" click languages " of Southern Africa represent a still
more primitive expression. Through all such stages runs
the one law that every bodily motion is the reverse side of
a mental act. The inscrutable cosmic law of mind is essen-
tial to the growth of every germ of speech.

The capability of such primitive atoms of expression for
development into conscious methods of commu- Gesture
nicating ideas is seen in the great ingenuity of and feature
deaf-mutes in holding intercourse by means of
gestures before being taught to converse by strict system ;
and in the preponderance of sign language in the eloquence
of savage tribes. Such germs of speech, whether in gest-
ure, facial change, emphasis, or tone, are retained through
the whole course of human progress, and form important
elements in the highest kinds of art.

Language, however, in its technical sense, begins in the
use of sounds for the more or less conscious pur- Mystery of
pose of being understood. It is an ideal attrac- abe g inili g-
tion. It involves social relations ; it is a form of that
profound desire of communion which animates all human
growth. Here again we are thrown back on a remoteness
so far beyond recall, that Rousseau might well confess
himself unable to decide whether a social order already
formed was more necessary for the construction of lan-
guage, than was a language already discovered for the
construction of society. Such the eternal irony that
defeats our science in every search into the mystery of
origin. But while we should gain nothing by resorting

400 STRUCTURES.

to a miraculous beginning, we should thereby make all
science vain.

The phantasmal character of speech in these nebulous
Continuit sta g es ' 1S ^ n striking contrast with the immense
ofevoiu- periods of time which they undoubtedly involve.
It is no more practicable to fix the moment when
man became aware of using words for the purpose of being
understood, than to find the same moment in the conscious-
ness of a child. Yet it is certain that the organs of speech
are long unconsciously directed towards that result.

Renan has emphasized the fact that these processes
differ with different races. 1 But they are always prepara-
tory to that epoch in the growth of every race when it con-
ceives its own language as a whole, and deliberately sets
about adapting it to its moral purposes : the birth-time
at once of nationality and literature. And between the
infancy of words and this entrance on their higher func-
tion of carrying arts, sciences, and faiths, evolution is con-
tinuous ; and in certain great respects the same for all
races, however different the details, or numerous the points
of growth.

Systems have been devised to show that an organic
relation exists between each of the simplest pho-

Theories . .

of organic netic elements and a special form of emotion, or
relations. c i ass o f conceptions. 2 But the beginnings of lan-
guage could hardly have dealt in states of mind so simple
and clear as this correspondence requires. More probably
they expressed a confused mingling of emotions which no
analysis of ours can possibly unravel.

1 This is denied in Goldziher's Hebrew Mythology, ch. i. (1877), from the stand-point of
cosmical mythology ; but the argument appears quite insufficient to disprove special psycho-
logical distinctions.

2 See Hegel's Theory of the Emotional Meaning of the Vowel Sounds, and Grimm's Scale
of Sound and Color Correspondences, given in Benlcew's Aper<;u de la. Science Compar. des
Langues (1872), pp. 104, 105. Also the curious speculations in the Preface to Richardson's
English Dictionary.

LANGUAGE. 40 1

For similar reasons I hesitate to accept the current opin-
ion that the earliest form of words is the mono- Primitive
syllabic. Primitive speech must have been mainly 1 n a " t J^_
emotional or imitative. There seems to be no syllabic,
good reason for excluding polysyllabic forms from |J*"*
the earliest interjections ; and it is impossible that sounds,
imitations of animals should be other than for the most
part polysyllabic. In every case, the length of the word
would depend on the nature of the sound to be imitated,
or the feeling to be expressed. African languages contain
many imitative words in seven syllables. 1 Many of the
agglutinated sentences of the Red Race represent an ear-
lier stage of language than the monosyllabic. The simplest
words may have resulted from analysis, or they may be the
scattered debris of complex wholes. In a masterly essay
on the Origin of Language, Bleek has developed the state-
ment that an interjection was the product of an entire state
of mind ; each of these primitive words being a complex
of what may be called grammatical germs, which after-
wards, by analysis, appear as elements of the sentence, or
" parts of speech." It is certainly natural that the mind
should at first see things as wholes, and itself act as a
whole ; that verb, noun, qualifying particles, subject and
object, should all be commingled in each effort at expres-
sion. The rude instinct does not act as a body of distinct
relations, but in instantaneous flashes of feelings, habits,
perceptions, which the later reason cannot analyze. How
natural that it should agglutinate the syllables that spring
to birth out of the mysterious correspondence which unites
the organs of speech with the movements of mind !

Even the more abstract mental processes are involved in
this rudimentary period of language : for the crud- Compre _
est gestures and signs are evidently interpreted by hensivness
the hearers as expressive of divers classes of emo-

1 Bleek, Origin of Language.
26

402 STRUCTURES.

tions. The contents of such facial changes as physiog-
nomical science is now tracing in the more advanced races
indicate that an emotion, simple as it may seem, sways
every feature to a special language, and combines these
several syllables of expression in its single impulse. And
why should not the language of the vocal organs have
been equally complex with that of the facial ? Some anal-
ogous actions must have produced that agglutinative form
of words which opens the history of language in the proper
sense of the word.

It has been fully shown by Tylor that " the two great
methods of stating verbal relations namely, by metaphor
and by syntax belong to the infancy of expression, and are
as much at home in the language of savages as in that of
philosophers." l

Thus the definition of languages as the u living product
of the whole inward man " 2 is true even of the earliest,
whose complex units of speech contain in germ all the
generic forces that are to be unfolded in the future struct-
ures of grammatical science. 3

The derivation of languages from the simplest verbal

forms, or "roots," so general in modern linguis-

notthebe- tics, is therefore likely to mislead us. "Roots"

ginning of can hardly have been 'the first forms of speech,

language,

but a which properly begins in such combinations as are
necessary for the communication of feeling. It is
extremely doubtful if any of the root syllables to which we
reduce a language belonged to the primitive stock of actual
words. They are either products of analysis, reached by
stripping off prefixes and suffixes, and by other systematic
methods of reducing words to an ideal nucleus which was
probably never in use by itself ; or else they result from

1 Primitive Culture. 2 Schlegel.

This must hold equally of the ethical element. Yet Goldziher (Heir. Mythol.) attempts
to trace, not only distinct words, but even mythology as a whole, to an epoch in which he
affirms this element to have been as yet non-existent.

LANGUAGE. 403

the fusion of earlier polysyllabic forms (like the Saxon lord
from hlaford, or the English wont from will not). It is
probable that the verbal deliquescence which we observe
in later stages of inflected languages, dissolving out the
pronouns and particles, tense and mood signs, that are
imbedded in their grammatical forms, was equally active
in melting down the combinations that made up the primi-
tive words. Even such positively agglutinative structures
as the Tartar and North American dialects mark distinc-
tions between the syllables by emphasis, gesture, and tone,
which are properly the beginning of disintegration. On
the other hand, inflection also is but a finer and closer
kind of agglutination, peculiar to certain race-qualities, and
belongs probably to a much earlier stage than we are wont
to suppose : nor is it necessarily preceded by a mono-
syllabic formation. Thus the disintegrative and construc-
tive processes, so readily recognized in later stages of
linguistic growth, probably go on side by side in very
early ones. Man, the centre of polarities, at once destroyer
and builder, is true to his functions even in these infantile
motions of his thought. Mind and body are but sides of
one and the same incessant interchange of waste and
repair; the dual movement whence harmony issues, the
Yin and Yang of progress.

Such processes of separation and fusion, going on to-
gether, would obviously result in shortening words Forma-
from polysyllabic concretions into simple con- ^"J*,, b
densed forms, with breathing spaces, as it were, separation
between them. It is probably in this way that andfusion -
many of the monosyllables were produced which we have
4 agreed to call roots.

Is there sufficient ground for dividing languages into a
monosyllabic, an agglutinative, and an inflected Doubts as
stage ? Do even the Aryan tongues afford the evi- ^ h s j o " s ^
dences of such a process ? Humboldt has indeed languages.

406 STRUCTURES.

their grammatical homogeneousness and convertibility, hint-
ing of the lowest forms of organic life, have led to a
general belief that it represents a primitive stage in the
evolution of speech. 1 Even Renan, who doubts the prece-
dence of monosyllabism to agglutination, declares that the
Chinese absolutely lacks a grammar, and that the only
thing it has in common with Sanscrit, that perfection of
inflected speech, is the end to be attained. The compara-
tive fewness of words, 2 supplemented by varieties of tone,
and the great number of meanings for which many of them
are obliged to do duty, have been regarded as so many dis-
tinct proofs that we have here a language crystallized in
its first stages, and transmitted unchanged. " The self-
isolating quality of its sounds resists all attempts at com-
bination, derivation, formal distinction of the parts of the
sentence, or of the signs of grammatical relations." 3
Edkins believes that an original monosyllabic language,
common to all mankind, preceded the " dispersion of
tongues," and that the Chinese migration retained these
older forms.

That, even apart from Biblical deductions, the above
it is not theory of the Chinese language will be confirmed
ThTroots by m dern science, can by no means be regarded
show this, as certain. Its very monosyllabism has been
strongly disputed. Remusat denied it, and Meadows 4
asserts that nearly the whole spoken language consists of
compound words. Each element of the composition is, it
is true, a pure word ; but this aptness for combination at
least allows the supposition that the elements themselves
may have been fused from more complex forms. The lan-
guage abounds in verbal coalescences, and in many the

1 Miiller, Orig. of Lang., p. 287.

2 Four hundred and fifty in the Mandarin (or general) dialect, though in special provincial
ones old endings and quasi inflections increase the number to nine hundred. (De Rosny,
Grammar, p. 45.)

3 Schott, Chinesische Sprachlehre, p. 9.

4 Notes on the Government and People of China (1847), P- I ^-

LANGUAGE. 4O/

original words are not easily distinguished. 1 Bazin, the
pupil of Julien, at one time maintained that literary Chinese
was the contraction of a polysyllabic vulgar tongue. What-
>ever estimate be put on these opinions, there are many
reasons which make it difficult to believe that the actual
root-sounds represent an early epoch of speech. There is
nothing primitive about them. 2 With few exceptions they
neither suggest imitation of natural sounds nor typical
relations of the human organs to special forms of natural
feeling. 3 It is perhaps true that it would require a more
subtle physiology than we now possess to trace such rela-
tions in Chinese words. But, on the other hand, instead of
proving that to every elementary sound a special meaning
is prescribed by organic law, the facts of language seem
almost to indicate that every sound may become the sym-
bol of every idea. " Why should the Chinese express
greatness by the syllable fa, the Aryan by ma, the Semite
by ga ? " 4 To all appearance, certainly, the Chinese roots
are as artificial as can well be conceived, and their simple
and regular structure strongly suggests elaboration for
purposes of compact and terse expression. 5 Such expres-
sion is a marked trait of the national mind, and its influ-
ence is everywhere visible in the history of the language
as a whole. There is no reason why words should not
share the impulse. Their uniformity is the strongest
evidence that they are a product of national art. So strik-
ingly do the supposed " roots " differ from the earliest voca-
bles of other races, that they form a positive instance of that
specialism in races, which is likely to be substituted for

1 Bastian, Peking, p. 54.

2 Edkins ascribes the defect of consonantal endings to the falling off of certain final mutes
during the last twelve hundred years in the North and West of China, which he finds still
extant in Kwan-tung and Fo-kien, and in the old national poetry. (Internat. Congr. of Oriental-
ists ; London, 1874.)

8 St. Denys is, I think, peculiar in his views of the abundance of imitative forms. (Patsies
des T'ang, p. 95.)

4 See Benlaw, p. 118.

6 The English language illustrates this tendency to simplify and shorten words.

4O8 STRUCTURES.

the application of a single formula of evolution to all va-
rieties of human speech. That the demands of so vast a
civilization should have produced so scanty a vocabulary
needs some other explanation than a supposed entire de-
pendence on its primitive resources alone. 1

Quite as far as the vocables of the Chinese from an
The ram i nor g an i c condition, are its grammatical forms.-
mar not Whether we accept or reject the prediction of Mr.

inorganic. j^g tnat ft wi fl ver y soon be matter Q f surpr i se

that any one should ever have doubted the identity of its
structure with that of other tongues ; it is certain that in
many of its apparent peculiarities this language bears
witness to the universality of those logical processes to
which we are wont to refer the laws of grammatical sci-
ence. The use of one word for a great variety of mean-
ings is common in the Sanscrit and Egyptian, and well
known to all modern languages. Syntactical forms are
Grammat- not wanting to the Chinese, being represented by
icai ex- the position of words in the sentence, and the tones
of the voice. Even if it might seem that delicate
shades of feeling and thought were not as expressible by
such means as by inflection in other languages, we must
remember that the national mind has here created an
instrument suited to its own genius, and that it has per-
haps left all the more room for the action of such powers
as inference and association in interpreting its rigid words.
But this is by no means the whole. These expedients of
position and tone are well known to linguistic types of a
high order. The English readily marks in these ways the

1 Legge says that the language has so changed since the age of the Tcheou that the
Shu-king rhymes cannot now be found. Edkins has shown numerous " letter changes" in
the pronunciation of the roots, both in ancient and modern times. The actual diversity of
dialects in China indicates that the ingenuity of the people expends itself on these transforma-
tions rather than on inventing new words.

2 Chinese as they Are, ch. xvii.

LANGUAGE.

409

different uses of the same word for noun and verb : as in
pronouncing the phrase, with reason do we reason thus ;
or for noun and adverb thus, Jte does ive'll who opens a well ;
or for infinitive, imperative, and indicative, as in learn how
to leant, by resolving that yon will learn. The English
also indicates by position whether a noun is subject or
object in a sentence.

It is a law familiar to grammarians that the inflectional
stage of language is transient, and develops into another
in which the structure of a sentence depends no longer on
the mere forms of words, but on the logical relations of the
ideas which they represent. Thus, in the later English,
inflection has been reduced to a minimum : a word is in-
variable, its special meaning and force being shown by its
position, according to the natural syntax of the idea of
which it forms a part. This structure, which so closely
resembles the Chinese, is in modern languages the sign of
advanced intellectual growth ; and, as a result of the adap-
tation of speech to the growing demands of civilization, it
enables us to comprehend how large a scope of expression
may be secured by the uninflected syllables of that appar-
ently inorganic tongue. We may easily exaggerate the
importance of inflection in the expression of the relations
of thought. Some agglutinative languages, like the Qui-
chua, are said to accomplish this by means of particles
simply added to words, with more precision and compact-
ness than the inflected European. 1 Even the gesture-lan-
guage of deaf-mutes, which has no " grammar," conveys
ideas of relation with surprising ease. Speech is every-
where but the instrument of a force beyond itself, and all
grammatical forms hasten, as if gifted with insight, to
subserve the spiritual demands for communion and growth,
of which they are the product.

The Chinese has special auxiliary words that mark its

1 Markham's Grammar*

4IO STRUCTURES.

tenses. It distinguishes cases by prepositions, has a full
supply of pronouns, three ways of denoting numerals, and
a special sign for the plural, as well as the device of doub-
ling words for the same purpose. 1 For some of these ob-
jects it has transformed certain verbs and nouns into par-
ticles or qualifying signs, thenceforth called " empty "
words, in distinction from these which retain their inde-
pendent force, and are hence called " full." 2

It knows how to check the ambiguities arising from mul-
Howam- tifold meanings of the same word. Many terms
have distinctive force ; particles that always give a
checked, negative, or a possessive, or a verbal sense to the
word they qualify, particles transitive or copulative. Even
the pauses and end of a sentence are marked by words or
sounds, analogous to our rising and falling accents.

The special sense in which a word is to be understood is
further indicated by combining a general term with the
special one whose meaning is to be defined ; by bringing
together synonyma to direct the mind to their common
meaning, or by symbolic compounds, neither of which alone
could express the idea, as " head-eye " (overseer), " forest-
king " (tiger). All these ways are familiar to English use.
Determinatives are added to specify classes. Numbers
are affixed to designate wholes; as " the four seas;"
" the hundred grains ; " " the hundred families," or whole
nation. These are all products of grammatical elaboration,
and show how very far the language is from primitive and
inorganic.

Among such products we may count the expedient of
Uses of the determinative tones, by which the four hundred
"tones." anc j fifty monosyllables are multiplied threefold, and
materials afforded for combination to the extent of supply-
ing with sounds the fifty thousand signs in the Kang-hi

1 See Julien's Syntaxe Nouv. de la Langue Chin- (1869) ; Summers's Rudiments of the
Chin. Lang. (London, 1864).

2 Hoveclacque, La Linguistique (1876).

LANGUAGE. 411

Lexicon. This remarkable expedient stands almost alone
among linguistic constructions, if we regard the nature of
the attempt, or the scale on which it is applied. Such an
immense and varied use of intonations which in other races
are expressive of emotions, purely for phonetic needs, be-
longs, of course, to China alone. It is difficult to accept
any exact period for its beginning. 1 We should say of the
Chinese tone-language that neither Shemitic alphabet nor
Aryan inflection is a mdre positive mark of continued
culture than this artificial interweaving of the principle of
separating tone from feeling with the whole speech of a
people. Observe how enttrely it is in accordance with the
national genius for minute detail in all kinds of construc-
tion. There are eight or nine of these tones in the Southern
dialects, and five in the Mandarin. A natural expedient
of monosyllabism, and generally found connected with it,
tones are here worked out in so systematic a form as
scarcely to suggest such simple relations ; and the result
is a monument at once of national receptivity and art.

Finally, the hearer supplies defects of grammatical con-
struction by inference and association, based on a _

* Divination

common stock of traditions and customs. This is of mean-
made necessary by an elliptical style deficient in ing>
conjunctive particles, which are the articulation of the body
of speech. Thus linguistic divination has been elaborated
to an extent which shows what a magnetic force may be
reached by mutual understanding in a great and ancient
people. Scholars like Julien admit the absolute necessity
of minute acquaintance with national habits and history to
enable them to interpret a sign-language which does but
hint its meaning. There can be no evidence of maturity
in a language more striking than the instinctive supply of
its unexpressed logical connections, by long practice, out

1 The Chinese ascribe its introduction to Buddhist monks in the time of the Tsi and Leang
dynasties (Schott, p. 49) ; but we cannot suppose it to have been imposed at a given period by
invention, and without root in the previous habits of the people.

412 STRUCTURES.

of the associations of the popular mind. Humboldt has
ingeniously suggested that the very meagreness of the
grammar increases the keenness of instinct in recognizing
these connections ; while a more elaborate syntax may tend
to mystify or deaden such a sense. 1

After all these expedients, there remains a large inor-
inorganic ganic element in the stiff isolation of Chinese words,
elements. Jt i s in contrast with the social fusibility of the
race, and their defective individuality ; but it corresponds
with the measured uniformity of their mental action, and
the habit of seeing things in detail more than in wholes. It
illustrates the tendency of mecltanical routine to atomize
the mind, substituting the mere succession or repetition of
forms for the perception of relations. The ways in which
this defect is counteracted being so purely matters of na-
tional feeling and education, our acquaintance with the
literature must be of slow and difficult growth.

We have already noticed the imperfection of the Chinese
Lack of sense of sound. On that mystic world, intermediate
interest in between thought and concrete form, the Hindu
pauses, allured by its far reaches and hints of the
infinite. Notwithstanding his dislike of analysis, he has
pressed to its ultimate elements and constructed his won-
derful alphabetic speech. But the Chinese skips such
spheres in his haste for the written sign. His interest in
sound is confined to its moral uses on the one hand, and
its concrete materials on the other. No people has so
earnestly preached the educational uses of music, nor
sought so indefatigably to make effective actual music.
The number of instruments mentioned in their old books
is astonishing. 2 In this ethical direction is their ideal at-
traction. Yet the study of the art and science itself is in
its rudiments.

1 See also Bastian's Peking, p- 532.

3 Dennys's lecture in Journ. of N. Ch. Br. of R. A. S., No. viii.

LANGUAGE. 413

Sound has fared in its literary precisely as in its musical
relations. The instrument, whether as written Causes the
sign or musical invention, has received all atten- absenceo

an alpha-

tion ; while sound itself has never been resolved bet.
into its elements, either as words or as tones. Vocal analy-
sis has never reached an alphabet ; l though the words can
hardly be called syllables in our sense, since they are not
combinations of primary sounds. In what way they are
associated with the meanings they bear, we as yet have
little or no knowledge. The origination of words is far
more obscure than that of written signs. Such primitive
relations have been mainly effaced in the present language
of the Chinese. 2

As in their speech the imitation of natural tones is no
longer to be recognized, so in their writing the rude Great mu i-
picture of the object has mainly vanished through ^llSe"
successive changes of form. Yet the meaning of signs com-
these " ideographs " remains fixed ; they stand not ^wntsTof
for mere sounds, though so extensively employed words -
as phonetics, but for realities also ; and every new idea re-
quires a new combination of strokes, or compound figure,
as it would require a new alphabetic compound with us.
While therefore every old type holds its identity, subject
only to such changes as art or convenience may dictate,
great numbers have been added from time to time. 3 This
is the secret of their immense quantity as compared with
the deficiency of words. It is harder for a Chinese to make
new words than to paint new characters, partly because of
his special propensity to hand-work, partly because the
play of his organs of speech is limited more narrowly than
those of most other races, and partly because the rigidity
of the signs began at an early period to check that fusion

1 The Buddhist alphabet for transcribing Sanscrit words is a special instrument for that
purpose, and is not in general use. (De Rosny, Chinese Grammar, p. 45.)

* Edkins has made interesting researches in this direction. See his Introduction.

* Wiiliams's great Dictionary (1874) contains 12,000 characters.

4M STRUCTURES.

and combination of the sounds they represented, by which
alone the vocabulary could have been enlarged. To devise
a new picture was a simple matter ; but the art of forming
new monosyllables was a lost one. Therefore, with the
exception of a certain amount of the fusion above men-
tioned, he takes merely the old stock of words to express
, the new conceptions. The word chi is employed for 212
signs, chingim 113, and fou for 138. This defect of syl-
lables is wonderfully compensated, as we shall hereafter
see, by the extended uses of a written language of endless
resource.

Before indicating these uses, I proceed to trace, as far as
The Writ- I may, the universal laws and processes to which

' Slgns ' the Chinese graphic system invites our attention.

The wonderful art of communicating thought by written
Origin of signs has three stages, the ideograph, the rebus,
bg^eariy" tne a ^P na bet. This process is a pressure of ma-
stages of terials from below, through attractions to an ideal
above. It begins in the instinctive use of the

graph. nearest means for bringing thoughts to the eye.
The savage not only cuts figures on bark to inform his tribe
of his doings ; he tattoos himself with images of his totems,
from the mere love of reproducing that for other eyes of
which his own mind is full. On the Siberian rocks are
found rudely-cut pictures of men, animals, arrows, huts,
with other sprawling signs, some of which appear like a
looped and cursive writing, though of no known class, while
others, equally unrelated, are curiously enough mixed with
Arabic numerals and Roman letters. 1 This last fact ren-
ders their antiquity very suspicious. More significant are
the rude pictures, of expeditions or exploits painted on
buffalo robes by the North American tribes, which are real

1 See De Rosny, A rchives Palceographiqiies, I. 143.

LANGUAGE. 415

forms of inventive symbolism, and point to an instinct of
interpretation akin fo the fine scent and keen logic of the
Indian senses. 1 These are the hieroglyphics of the wild ;
some of them as well done as the Egyptian, and far better
than the old Chinese picture-signs. To these goes the
complex experience of the nomad in definite wholes, fa-
miliar to his fellows. 2 These are his simple science and his
intuitive poetry : their metaphoric meaning is his natural
history, raised into the language of feeling and imagination,
and the morality of fable. He has done more than picture
objects : this is dramatic combination. To find mere copy-
ing without conscious symbolism, we must, perhaps, go
back to the " Stone Epoch," " in which quite respectable
figures of animals are found, though wanting afterwards in
the-" Bronze." 3 It is at least a poetic, if not positively
historic, theory of the origin of the Gaelic alphabet, the let-
ters of which were named from plants or trees, that these
characters represented symbolical knots and ties formed
from branching twigs, by which knowledge was conveyed,
and which had been the mystic hieroglyph of the druid and
the bard. 4 Many have questioned the opinion of Oppert,
that all the cuneiform signs (as well as the Egyptian and
Chinese) are transformed ideograms, on the ground- that
this would leave no room for the element of arbitrary in-
vention ; but there is quite evidence enough to prove that,
as a whole, ideographic evolution is the main factor in the
written languages of mankind.

The qiiipus, or knotted cords, used in primitive China, /
and at a more advanced stage in Peru, are an appeal to -

1 In the Indian petition to the President of the United States in 1849, the unity of pur-
pose of the seven chiefs is expressed by lines passing from one to the others, and their per-
sons by the animals from which their names were derived (Schoolcraft). Something similar is
said to have been preserved in Egyptian inscriptions. f

2 Rude tribes of Central Africa communicate in this way. De Rosny, Ecritures Figvra-
tives, &c. (1870) p. 38.

8 Lubbock, Prim. Cond. of Man, pp. 28-30 (Am. ed.).
4 Logan, Scottish Gael.

4l6 STRUCTURES.

colors for picturing thought ; of all methods of expressing
grammatical relations .the most imp'erfect, but curiously
combining with its limitations a species of arbitrary selec-
tion which allies it even with the phonetic stage of written
speech. We note in these earlier expedients of language
the large function and discipline required of the memory,
as well as of the imagination.

The transition from imitative to phonetic signs is a very
Transition great and rapid step : since it opens the use of the
ics^ThT sign in the pure service of sound ; that is, as
Rebus. written speech in the proper sense ; thus proving
that the whole communicable life of man can be represented
to the eye. This step, however continuous as respects the
use of materials, is animated by a force of tendency
for which no materials can account. It involves aspira-
tions to a fresh ideal, and it is taken very early. In the
New World, as in Egypt, it begins in the use of images
of things to represent syllabic portions of personal names,
for which of course no direct imitative signs were possible.
Mexican picture-writing abounds in this element : figures
of animals, flowers, stones, plumes, are placed beside a
human head, their names yielding the syllabic sounds re-
quired to designate the person intended. 1 They are true
rebuses : picture-signs for sound, as ideographs are picture-
signs of thoughts. Ruder than the rudest playing cards,
and not unlike them, they reach the widest scope of poly-
syllabism and the largest mnemonic uses.

This step is perhaps involved in the growth of individu-
ality to a demand for those means of personal designation
which mere object-writing cannot supply. Sound, the har-
binger of fame, requires its own special servitors. It
would be worth inquiry, whether, as in Mexico and Egypt,
so also in China, where individuality is so feeble, the pho-
netic sign began in these personal requirements. It began

1 See De Rosny and Kingsborough.

LANGUAGE. 417

at all events very early to be associated with the ideograph-
ic, as determinative of its special sound in the given case. 1
All the great ideographic systems, when they first ap-
pear in history, already contain a mixture of the combina-
two kinds of picture-writing. To the Egyptian, tionof

T i /^-i phonetic

Japanese, and Chinese, we. must now add the with pic-
older (Anarian) cuneiform characters of Western t""- 8 ^ 8 -
Asia, 2 as a wonderfully transformed system of picture-
signs, with phonetic adaptations. It reached the same
stage with the Chinese, having a syllabary, but not an
alphabet ; an interesting fact when connected with the
possible origin of this system also in the Mongoloid, some-
times called "Turanian," races. 8 The proper name for
these transitional systems would seem to be ideo-phonctic.
What monuments of man's patient endeavor to combine
and develop, as well as interpret, the forms of Nature for
the clothing of his inner life !

The third grand step in written language, from pho-
netic signs to alphabetic, consists in reducing the Transition
great variety of such images to a select few, each to
appropriated to a special elementary sound. All upward
movement involves ideal attractions. Man has listened to
the instrument of his thought till he has caught its ulti-
mate component parts, and must combine them freely for
himself. His selection of signs corresponds with the an-
alytic nature of the process by which those ultimate ele-
ments have been reached ; its principle being to use a sign

1 Champollion imagined that the " whole phonetic system of the East " was the invention
of " some ingenious person, who thereby changed the face of the world and determined the
destiny of mankind " ! Probably the real relation to persons involved in phonetic signs was of
a very different nature.

2 Wrongly called "arrow-head," the wedge-shapes of which they are composed being
simply the convenient stamp of the graver's tool. In the older rudimentary forms this shape
does not appear. (Me"nant, Efiigr. Assyr. p. 48.) Maspero (Hist. Anc. de V Orient, 1875)
gives an interesting description of this writing.

3 See Lenormant, Anc. Hist, of the East, I. 433! Mehiant ; De Rosny, Ecrii. Fig.
The question of a "Turanian " origin is still open, and is being discussed with much warmth.
See also Lenormant, Langue Prim, de la Clialdte (1875).

2 7

41 8 STRUCTURES.

of whose existing name the sound to be represented forms
simply the initial or the end. 1 This " acrological " process,
by which the ideogram loses all of its correspondent sound
but the opening or the close, has an intermediate stage
before reaching the pure alphabet. Thus the Japanese,
Mexicans, Assyrians, stripped it of its termination only,
leaving the opening consonant and vowel, and forming
syllabaries mixed with alphabetic sounds ; while the Egyp-
tian and Shemitic languages struck away all but the simple
initial what we should call the letter sound and formed
alphabets proper. 2 Yet all alphabets have not been the
Sanscrit result of this natural evolution. To the Sanscrit,
and she- w hi c h [ s the product of an educated class, it has

mitic al-
phabets, no application. Of the Shemitic, too, it has been

strongly denied, yet by no means with equal force.
Whether those mysterious Phoenician signs, mothers of
the Hebrew and of so many other alphabets of the civil-
ized world, are derived, as the most competent scholars
now assert, 3 from the Egyptian hieratic (or simplified pict-
ure-signs), or were invented by some one or in some way
not now known, 4 they were at least acrologically " baptized."
They have received the initial sounds of the names by
which they are known ; and these names represented ob-
jects, of which the sign was either the altered image or
the fancied resemblance. 5 Renan goes further, and thinks
that " the fact of the forms of these letters representing
what their names signify is sign of a proceeding analogous
to that of the hieroglyphic writings. 6

1 This is true also of the Egyptian, the Persian, and even the Buddhist-Chinese for tran-
scribing Sanscrit sounds.

See Congres Iniernat. d 1 Oriental. (1873), II. 106-115 ; also, De Rosny, Ecrit. Figur.
See Lenormant, Anc. Hist, of the East, II. 208 ; Maspero, p. 600; De Rouge", A cad.
. 1874; Ebers, Egypten rind die Biicher Moses, pp. 146-151 ; Ewald, Gesch. d. Volkt
Israel, I. 78.

Wuttke, Zeitschr. der D. M. G., 1857.

Gesenius, Hebrew Grammar ; Furst's Hebrew Lexicon.

Hist, des Langues Stmitiques, I. p. 112.

LANGUAGE. 419

Of course the number of names suited for acrological
use renders the choice somewhat arbitrary. It is Continuous
here that writing begins to be conventional rather ^toT
than organic, and so falls into the position of a writin g-
ready servant to thought, instead of a controlling mould
for it. The estimate of the pictures as natural copies of
things must have become measurably lost before the purely
conventional signs we call alphabets got constructed arbi-
trarily for linguistic purposes, without regard to imitation.
Here the way opens for inventors, and alphabets have in
fact been constructed for semi-civilized tribes by ingenious
men. 1 But this has usually been for a specific purpose.
The formation of an alphabet without use of pre-existing
forms must be rarer still, and its propagation extremely
difficult. 2 Ordinarily the alphabet is evolved from picture-
signs. The primer tells their acrological secret : " A is
an apple" &c.

The whole art of writing is thus a continuous evolution,
every stage of which as mystery of progress involves an
upward, ideal attraction, from the first tattooing or cut-
ting of the human skin, to these fine products of analysis,
the alphabets of civilized thought. As the phonetic stage
continues in combination with the picture-signs, so it laps
over into the alphabetic, as for a long period in Egypt ; but
the tendency is for the latter to supplant it, as its perfected
form.

Whether that step in analysis, of which alphabets are
the result, is taken or not, the ideographs themselves ideograph-
do not fail of development under the shaping hands iccha "g es -
of convenience or beauty. This can be checked only by an
invention like that of printing, which would also tend to
prevent the formation of a pure alphabet by holding fast

1 Mahaffy, Prolegom. to Anc, fft'st., p. 119.

2 The famous Moeso-Gothic characters of the Bible of Ulphilas were founded on Greek
and Latin letters.

420 STRUCTURES.

the mind within the syllabic signs. The fact of such an
invention may help to explain the failure of the Chinese to
reach this final stage. But ideographic changes go on to a
great extent, notwithstanding printing. The original figure
gradually becomes effaced ; just as words lose their primi-
tive inter] ectional or mimetic forms, and pass into more or
less conventional syllables, whose origin is inscrutable
without deep historical research. Thus the Egyptian hiero-
glyph became first a hieratic, then a demotic or cursive
script, the former being simply its characteristic part used
for the whole, and the latter a still more radical trans-
formation for rapid writing ; and these changes took place
in remote ages. 1 The Chinese cursive is analogous to the
Egyptian hieratic, and, though much more complicated,
sometimes even more fully effaces the rude ideograph than
either of the later Egyptian styles covers the more elegant
hieroglyph. The cuneiform writing is in a style analogous
to the latest Chinese stage, but so utterly non-ideographic
in form that, but for the recent discovery of some of the
original picture-signs side by side with the nail-like images
of them, 2 it would not be believed that the latter could
have originated in this way. The time and manner of the
change lie far back in some unrecorded mystery of human
demand and supply.

Chinese ideography, on the other hand, can be studied in
Can be all its phases : so distinctly has the national genius
thlfchl-" 1 for graphic art expressed itself, and so little has it
nese signs, been checked, even by printing, in the transforma-
tion of its instruments. 3 The living language, too, with its
literary treasures, makes all stages of past construction an
open book. And we are spared the long series of patient
and minute studies which the genius of Champollion and

1 The demotic was in use in the time of Herodotus.

2 Me"nant, Epigr., p. 51.

8 Lettre de Pekin, a rare old book (1773), in which odd theories are expounded, and
specimens of all kinds of Chinese writing given.

LANGUAGE. 421

Rawlinson would have found inadequate to open Egypt
and Assyria, but for the famous trilingual tablets of Ro-
setta and Behistun.

If the acquisition of such a language of symbols requires
more time and labor than we can expend upon it, we can
yet recognize the ingenuity implied in the six classes into
which these figures have long been divided. They repre-
sent forms of objects and symbols of abstractions. They
combine these images to suggest other ideas and objects.
They vary the attitudes of the same figure to convey
contrasts of meaning ; and they lend themselves immeas-
urably to phonetic uses, both with and without explanatory
additions.

The startling discovery of this symbolism of a great
civilization, two centuries ago, led Pere Amyot to Effect of
call it "the picturesque alphabet of the arts and theirdis -

covery on

sciences." Its uniqueness has grown more evi- Europeans,
dent with time. Of purely native origin, it is a genuine
triumph of the concrete genius of the Yellow Race ; yet
there is scarcely a system of ideography in the world
with which the identification of these signs has not been
attempted.

The natural hope of connecting them with the oldest
Egyptian proved a failure, in the fanciful analogies Theories of
of De Guignes, Amyot, and Kidd. 1 The Chinese theil : con '

J nections.

figures are more practical and less mythological ;
they have pure allegorical combinations, and none that unite
animal and human forms ; they are ruder than the hiero-
glyphics, where ideography is in its bloom. All these dif-
ferences point to the fact that the one system came from the
art-culture of a priestly caste, and the other system from the
practical needs of an industrial people ; though it is probable

1 The Lettre de Pekin gives De Guignes' s system. As he used the worthless authority of
Horapollo, so Amyot trusted a similar witness in Kircher. See also Notes and Queries;
Kidd's China, pp. 10, 68.

422 STRUCTURES.

that, in their more antique forms, the hieroglyphs were
employed for the ordinary affairs of life. 1 The very few
ideographic resemblances of Chinese and cuneiform afford
little ground for comparison. The exclusive use of the
wedge-shape is of itself a radical distinction. 2 The Chinese
signs have been connected even with the Mexican, which
have apparently more affinity with the picture-writings of
imaginary ^ e I n dian tribes. More marvellous still are the
Bibikai Christian antitypes traced by the Jesuit fathers in
these old mysteries of the illumined pagans of Ca-
thay. Fouquet treated the whole Shi-king as symbolical of
the life of Christ, and even found the cross and nails figured
in the signs. Cibot classified them in the same interest as
dogmatic, ecclesiastical, typical, and prophetic. Amyot
found the Trinity in the triangular sign for union, and
Lucifer in that for evil, composed of two figures, meaning
"lifted up" and "novelty;" a compound of mouth, eight,
and a vessel referred to the number of persons in the ark ;
" to show " and " trees " meant the Adamitic trees of know-
ledge and life ; " death " and a " woman " was an allusion to
the sin of Eve. All this typical writing was of course
invented (or revealed) before the Deluge, and transmitted
by Noah and his sons direct to Egypt and China. The
assured belief of the author is disturbed only by the fear
that his theory will be assailed on the ground of the ;< con-
fusion of tongues ; " but not at all by any suspicion that
the ideograph is too natural a form of primitive writing to
require being traced to one centre for mankind, even
though that centre be the all-sufficient family of " Noe."

Our chief interest is to trace the finer aesthetic element
that characterizes this art of expression by written signs in

1 Chabas in Lepsius's Zeitsch.filr Aegypt. Spr., Juli, 1869.

2 Pauthier worked out an old theory that the cuneiform signs were simply the Chinese, with
their lines turned from the upright to the horizontal. (Jour. As. Ap., 1868.)

LANGUAGE. 423

all its stages, from the rude scratch on bark or skin, to
the elaborate refinement of hieroglyphic painting, ^Esthetic
cuneiform printing, and Chinese chirography. So Element,
early did this element appear in China that the oldest known
writing (even if we should accept the genuineness of the
supposed inscription of Yu, which purports to be older
than 2000 B.C. 1 ) has already exchanged the rude primitive
figure for an arbitrary and selective sketch. In the tchouen
style, ascribed to the eighth century B.C., these outlines are
rounded and flowing ; an evident effort to secure freedom
of hand without sacrificing the original image. Even the
ancient vase inscriptions, referred by antiquarians to the
Shang dynasty (1750-1 1 10 B.C.), are very much advanced
beyond mere picture-writing, and really have a kind of
serpentine flow. 2 Less rude than these, though in similar
style, are the inscriptions descriptive of hunting and fishing
on the famous " Stone Drums " of the Tcheou, preserved
and copied several times with great care as national monu-
ments, and placed at the gate of the temple of Confucius at
Peking, in the fourteenth century. They were discovered,
half buried, in the province of Shan-si ; and the earliest
accounts of them, which belong to the seventh century,
ascribe them to a period one or two hundred years further
back. Chinese criticism is favorable to their antiquity. 3
Writing on stone afforded little opportunity for freedom of
lines, and we are the more surprised at the signs of prog-
ress on such material at so early an age. In this point of
view, the " Stone Drums " of Peking may well be held a
national monument by a literary people, and are of great
interest in the history of writing.

1 For the genuineness, see Pauthier (Journ. As. 1872); against it Williams ; and Legge
(Jntrod. to the Sku-king.}

2 See Thomas's plates and descriptions in Journ. of R. A. Soc., 1835 : also Schott, S-pracU.,
p. 100. Their real age is uncertain, but probably earlier than the Han.

3 The discussion is given in full by Mr. Bushell (Journ. of N. China Branch, R. A.,
Soc. VIII., N. S.), who styles the Drums "a fossilized stratum of transition from hieroglyph
to radical and phonetic."

424 STRUCTURES.

Of course the development we have been tracing depended
Its mechan . largely on the mechanical aids provided from age
kaiaids. to age. The oldest writing was done on bamboo
plates, or bark of trees, with an iron pen and a kind of
varnish. The use of various woven fabrics, and of the
brush, set aside this bamboo tablet, and led in the second
century B.C. to the freer form of character called li y which
was soon followed by the tsao (cursive) ; and this, aided by
the invention of fine paper (first century A.C.) and by that of
printing, issued in the present square style (kiai), in which
fine and body strokes are traced with the camel's hair brush
in great detail, and with an arabesque intricacy, fitly called
" grain-in-wood " or " veins-in-marble."

Chinese ideal analysis, but little interested in words or
Native an- soun ds, found readier uses in the more concrete
aiysisof the sphere of written signs. Not only have these been
referred to two hundred and fourteen u keys," or
elementary forms A (in part at least reduced from the later
compounds, and many of them no longer in use), but still
further resolution was made for calligraphic purposes into six
simple kinds of stroke, and the whole stock of radical signs
are classified according to the number of these strokes in
each, up to a seventeenth class, as a basis for writing all
compound forms. This is the crown of Chinese refinement.
It is the most remarkable simplification of graphic materials
known to history, with the exception of the cuneiform,
which sacrificed all character or historic meaning in its
monumental printing to the convenience of the graving tool,
using only the straight line, with slanting, horizontal, or
downward stroke.

The record of this calligraphic evolution is preserved as
caiiigraph- far as possible in its latest phase. Many of the
tc develop- s jg ns st iu contain as much of pictorial outline as

ment.

1 This selection was made by a scholar in the seventeenth century, whose work has been
accepted in place of a much earlier and larger list. (Schott's Entu'urf, and Edkins's
Introd., &c.

LANGUAGE. 425

the nature of the strokes allows : a crossed square for a
tilled field ; an empty one, open at one side, for a des-
ert ; a square without a covering line for a well; three
peaks for a mountain ; flowing lines for water and for hair ;
stems with crossing or oblique lines on each side for va-
rious kinds of grain ; three open buds for spring ; a rude
form of legs for man ; two trees for a wood. Many hint
more sketchily, as by four parallel lines for legs, and a line
twice bent backwards for a bow. Many are purely sym-
bolic ; but in most, convenience and minute calligraphy have
quite buried the original forms in a crowd of lines, points,
and curves, which yield no aid to the student from natural
association. Yet these, upon being traced back through
intermediate links to the original forms of which they are
the product, become often strikingly significant. Here at
least the workman cannot be charged with inertia or im-
mobility. Two-thirds of the actual signs are variants from
the classic, and many are no longer to be analyzed, at any
rate by the foreign eye. Of the two hundred and fourteen
keys, a careful scrutiny will scarcely detect in more than
forty- any ideographic relation, though a number are dedu-
cible from wider ancient characters, by much squaring of
lines and chipping of parts. The rest even of the radicals,
and the whole of the cursive, is a mystery of transmutation,
through which a Darwin or a Tylor will be needed to trace
laws of natural selection and survival. 1

The aesthetic value of the symbolic signs is more easily
recognized, though often obscured by their doubt- Poet ; ca i
ful origin and formation, and by their subtle literary Symb
association. The symbolism is ingenious and even poetic.
By the qombination of a picture-sign with a metaphoric
one, the faculties of abstraction and imagination are seen

1 Edkins has shown already how much the study of old forms of writing is to do for the
solution of these calligraphic riddles.

426 STRUCTURES.

in direct relations with concrete things. The following are
obvious types of abstract ideas. By a falling moon is
signified darkness ; by two hands, greeting ; by two flags
opposed, strife ; by a woman under a. roof, content ; by
heart and blood, compassion ; by an old man and a youth,
piety ; by a man and a sign for two, or by a heart and a
sign for thousand, philanthropy. Eye, plant, and heart
mean thinking; heart and white, fear; heart with slave,
anger ; with ear, shame ; with scholar or ten, completeness.
Two hearts are friendship ; man and word, fidelity ; fire
and water, calamity. A woman and child are tenderness ;
a heart between two gates, sadness, and under a field,
thought.

Other striking and poetic combinations are selected from
Mr. Lay's very attractive volume. They show how expres-
sive the picture-sign may become with meaning beyond
itself. A sheep (as docile), combined with strength, sig-
nifies authoritative instruction ; with water, it is the sea
which feeds the clouds as sheep are fed ; with heart, it
means following ; with mind, to cherish. A hand, with an
eye, means meeting of friends. Circular movement, with
a man, is regular routine ; with a hand, it is a functionary ;
with speech, discourse. First rudiments, with erectness,
mean a man of principle ; with man himself, a scholar.
Heart, with the grain of wood, is mental bias ; with a re-
volving wheel, mental concentration ; with a vassal, shame.
Gazelle, with man, means conjugal union ; with female,
\. beauty; with eyes, close attention ; with the sun, bleached.
Heart, with wilderness, is the maze of lovers' talk. " The
heart," says St. Denys, " was the graphic root of almost all
the original characters intended to represent metaphysical
ideas." It is interesting to recall Homer's similar use of
the same organ to represent all kinds of emotion.

In their legendary accounts of the origin of written

LANGUAGE. 427

signs, the Chinese naturally emphasize the imitative element.
Letters are but a form of man's closeness to Cosmic Legendary
Order. The eight trigrammes of Fo-hi (koua), to Origin>
which they are traced back, and which represent the male
and female principles of that order, combined in va- closeness
rious ways, are said to have been taken from the to Nature>
dragon's back. But before substituting elements of writing
for knotted cords, Fo-hi has studied the visible lines of heaven
and the products of earth. Of the six principles which he
lays down as the basis of writing, the first three relate to
imitation of objects, the fourth and fifth to expression of
ideas, and the last to the relations of sounds. Hwang-ti
invents figures from the shapes of clouds ; his minister,
from bird-tracks on the sand ; his successor, from flames
of fire ; and another, from the undulations of water.
Kien-lung collected thirty-two different kinds of writing
believed to have been used by the ancients, and all illustrate
the absorption of natural forms into expressions of human
thought. They do not all exhibit actual systems perhaps,
so much as testify to the instinct for putting every thing in
experience into written form. Vases, bracelets, serpents'
eggs, precious stones, dragon's nails, willow leaves, ears of
corn, are all represented. The Dutch in the seventeenth
century notice the passion of the Chinese for imitative
writing, and their expressing their apprehensions by nat-
ural things, birds, beasts, and insects. 1 Figures of ani-
mals, real and ideal, were embroidered in official garments,
and official names given from the animal world : such as
"dragon" for dignity, "swan" for respect, and "pigeon"
on some equally fantastic ground.

But the close relation of the signs to Nature hardly
proves them to be good data for reconstructing primitive
Chinese society. Remusat's enthusiasm went to the ex-
tent of attempting this feat on palaeographical grounds.

1 Nieuhoff, II. 759.

428 STRUCTURES.

The effort is interesting, however unsatisfactory, as con-
Attempts taining germs of a not unfair picture of the nation's
character. Of the supposed primitive signs he finds
primitive only seven referring to the heavens, and infers that
Smthe tne fi rst Chinese were not astronomical. He sees
signs. no marks of metaphysics or theology, none of the
abstract idea of God. No towers, gardens, city-walls, king,
or soldier, but the figure of a man bent over, meaning either
servility or superstition, and prefiguring the literate or the
bonze ! He finds no musical instruments, no money, glass,
or metal, but several kinds of weapons ; of domestic ani-
mals, the dog, sheep, pig, and ox ; of plants, millet, rice,
and herbs. The improbabilities of this picture in many
respects are obvious. 1 The two hundred and fourteen
"radical" signs widely differ from it, though these can
afford as little authority for such primitive construction.
Here are signs for metals, weapons, and city ; for the
cereals and the plough ^ for musical instruments and for
pottery ; for silk, pencil, vase ; for the workman and for
family ; for literature, spirits, and divination. Thus the
" radicals," though recently selected, afford a not inade-
quate idea of the tendencies of a race which regards them
as the earliest forms of its written word.

The merits and defects of this remarkable system must
be estimated by its relation to the character of the race
whose wants it supplies.

The comparative fixity of syllabic picture-signs was an
Defects obvious check to grammatical analysis and con-
andcon- struction. Preventing the resolution of words
into their elements, it forbade their free modifica-
tion by variation of form and inflection ; it forbade their

1 Chalmers has made a similar attempt to reconstruct the primitive Chinese man from the
oldest signs, and to reduce the ideographic language to simplest terms. (Origin of the Chi-
nese (London, 1868), pp. 3, 56-58 )

LANGUAGE. 429

absorption through diminished or varied emphasis, and their
articulation by means of the particles which such absorption
tends to produce. The Chinese blocked their own path to
such pliability in the instrument of language, and their
nearest approach to it was the use of phonetics. These
were developed in Egypt into an alphabet. In China, on
the other hand, the laborious process was continued of
makfng a new, or newly combined, character for every
new thought, a kind of labor which was more attractive
to their tastes than analyzing the structure of words or
thoughts. The effect of this peculiarity "on the mental
operations is obvious. The signs are suited only for ex-
pressing ideas of a fixed and recognized meaning ; and the
national mind must confine itself to these ruts of thought
for which language is already provided and prescribed.
But this is so conformable to Chinese temperament that
ideography not only has never been thrown aside, but has
been made susceptible of conveying very delicate shades of
feeling.

When the Chinese writes, his materials are of such a
nature that it is not easy to see how he can be free Effector
to modify the stock of ideas which they already ^^1-
express. They stand for certain wholes, well-de- ture.
fined by association, and his lines of thought are prescribed.
There may be latitude of choice in these associations, and
the structure of the sentence may present them under new
aspects ; and on these refinements depend the subtle ele-
gances over which the best translators are at fault : but in
the substance they constantly reappear. It is therefore in
beautifying the signs, rather than in multiplying the ideas,
that the interest centres. But the large range of inference,
allusion, association in the literary consciousness, Idealiza _
which makes Chinese fine-writing such a mystery tionof
to the foreigner, is the atmosphere of the native
mind, the life of mutual understanding ; and of this the

430 STRUCTURES.

written signs are the alphabet. Their forms are its ideals ;
their tracing is " the dragon's flight, the serpent's dance ; "
" the lotus bloom in the lake of ink ; " * their combinations
are history and legend ; their rhymes and parallel phrases
and manifold meanings are the miracles of taste ; learning
hides in their intricacy, and in the subtlety of their transi-
tions caught and carried on by rival songsters with the
pencil ; they are the picture-book of the child and the art-
gallery of the nation. In every sense, they are the happy
rites of a religion.

Doubtless th'e persistent use of picture-signs, and the
Their bear- interest in connecting writing with natural forms
nave powerfully reacted on the concrete realism
which produced them, by aiding it to build up this
immense industrial civilization with its wonders of pictorial
art and delicate workmanship of hand. The life of every
people is a whole, and its special tendencies can be judged
only as a part of that living body. Manifestly, the plan
of supplanting Chinese writing by some European alphabet
which seems so easy to Western self-confidence, or even that
of developing an alphabet from their own resources, is im-
practicable. They are not an alphabetic people, nor able
to recur to first elements, but a great race of ideographers,
their emphasis for ever flowing to forms instead of sounds :
the symbol of generalizing and synthetic, as alphabets are
of analytic, qualities of mind.

But this absence of necessary relation between the sign
Their use and the sound, and the persistency of the symbolic
a ? ame " image, make the Chinese ideograph a suitable me-

dmm of in-
tercourse, dium of intercourse between the Asiatic races.

Unattached to any special vocalism, it has not only fur-
nished a common script for all the widely differing dialects

1 The poet manages the pencil with "the swiftness of the rain," and his ink " spreads like
a cloud." Its motion is that of a " divine dragon." He writes a poem " on horseback," " in
seven steps;" "the spread of a lady's brush is the glory of letters." (Julien's Les Fillet
Lettrtes.)

LANGUAGE. 431

of the Empire, read by every man in his own provincial
tongue, but provided Corea, Japan, Annam, Manchuria,
with signs for their still more distinct forms of speech,
which are more or less arbitrarily connected with these
developed images so readily separated from their native
meaning. Buddhism, the great literary conductor of the
K;ist, carried them through Corea into Japan, associating
in one free bequest an alphabet and a faith : and syllabaries
were constructed from them ; one of which, made from
selected portions of their forms, bears a name, katakara
(fragments), that confesses its lineage. 1 The full figures
were also used phonetically, or with meanings now of
Chinese, now of Japanese origin, the latter at last outnum-
bered by the former. 2 They are pronounced in different
ways, according to the time of their introduction, or the
part of China from which they came. The Annamites have
taken them, likewise changing their meanings. Traditions
say that the old Tunguse, or Manchu, was a contracted
form of them.

This adaptability to mutual intercourse is a mark of uni-
versality that of itself redeems the Empire from contrasted
the charge of self-isolation. Spoken languages ^ enlan .
tend to atomism. North American tribes speak guages.
hundreds of dialects. The Caucasus is a " mountain of
tongues." The Aryan has split into a dozen families, and
each of these into troops of mutually exclusive individuali-
ties. But the rigid Chinese ideograph persists in its law,
and within its own race-limits at least is as unifying as
processes of Nature, while of course unfitted to inspire the
progress of which the pliant and plastic alphabet is the
symbol. De Rosny seriously considers their fitness for a
universal language. 3

1 De Rosny, Ecrit. Fignr. ; Congr. Intern, (f Oriental. (1873), II. 170.

2 Astor's Japanese Grammar. The native authorities say this alphabet came earlier by
three centuries, and De Rosny thinks there was a native system of signs still older. (Congres,
&c., pp. 221, 229.)

8 Letter to Oppert, in Archives Paleographiqites.

432 STRUCTURES.

They are a triumph of Mongolia genius, in many other
respects so imperfect. They are also, as far as

Originality. \ . . J

appears, a purely original product of the Chinese
people ; and, while serving to carry the literatures of so
many other races, seem to owe nothing to their aid. We
may yet learn that a kindred race in Western Asia provided
the common graphic medium for Persians, Medes, Assyrians,
Babylonians, and Chaldeans.

But the difficulty of learning such a script as this forbids
any great extension beyond its present limits. In
lated. their actual meanings, too, the Chinese signs offer
so many obstacles to European students that the con-
fessedly bad style of most translations, manifestly as poor
Chinese as they are vernacular, is perhaps natural enough.
It is a great mistake to hold these picture-signs, thus con-
verted into alphabetic phrases, responsible for a pompous
verbiage utterly opposed to the genius of the Chinese,
whose speciality is terse, and even elliptical, expression. 1
This latter style is not only a result of the practical quali-
ties of the national mind, but proceeds directly from the
nature of the signs, whose relations to one another must be
largely supplied by inference and common understanding,
like the conversation of friends.

With all the expedients devised for improving it as a
Defiden- medium of intercourse, the Chinese language has
cies - inherent defects which nothing can remove. It
has not the sounds of b, d, v, x, nor z. Many diphthongs
are unknown to it. Certain consonants cannot be detached
from vowels. Its power of syllabic change and growth is
extremely small. The difficulties of representing foreign
words in a language unanalyzed into letter sounds are very
great. 2 It may well be queried whether in the absence of
alphabetic forms the Egyptians would have produced their

1 Williams, in Journ, Ch. Br. R. A. S., VIII. 10 ; Meadows, Notes, &c.. pp. 23, 30, 39.
8 Introd. to St. Denys's transl. from Matouanlin, in Atsuma Gusa.

LANGUAGE. 433

vast historical and religious records. And we are thus
forced to ascribe to the Chinese, in explanation of their
fertility in every kind of literature in spite of such defects
in their instrument, even greater productive energies
than those of that wonderful people to whom the civilization
of the classical world, and the shaping of its great literary
instrument, the alphabet, are now primarily referred.

IV.
LITERATURE.

LITERATURE.

HE enthusiasm of Sir William Jones, when the treas-
ures of the Sanscrit began to reveal them- Scopeand
selves a hundred years ago, was more than equalled quality.
by that with which Abel Remusat, fifty years later, open'ed
the critical study of the still more remote literature of
China. His glowing description of this immense product
of forty centuries, " this eloquence and poetry, enriched by
the beauty of a picturesque language, which preserves to
imagination all its colors," has in one respect certainly
failed to be sustained by later research. Chinese litera-
ture appeals to the imagination by its amount, but makes
little use of this faculty in its constructions. A defective
sense of the infinite excludes it from the sphere of sublim-
ity. Such mental attitudes as depend on personal isolation,
and on that sustained self-abandonment to awe and wonder
which routine and prescription forbid, are here scarcely
possible. The Chinese eye is too close to concrete things
to get perspective or background of space. This brain is
too absorbed in details to confront the vast problems of
the free reason, or to dwell in mysteries insoluble by the
practical understanding. This distinction of the Yellow
Race from the Aryan and the Shemite is the more won-
derful, when we consider what it has accomplished in spite
of its inferior contemplative power. The practical achieve-
ments found packed in these stiff, isolated signs, in this
apparently stammering speech, make a marvel as startling
as any enchantment of an Arabian tale.

438 STRUCTURES.

Still more impressive is the continued fertility of a
force that lacks the highest elements of creative
power. Here is no monumental literature, depend-
ent on pyramid, tomb, or temple to hoard it up for ages
beyond its natural life : the record is trusted to tissues
whose evanescence is as close as possible to that of the
spoken word. Its circulation, for all it seems to lack ethe-
real qualities, has grown wider and swifter with time,
and it has freely assimilated with all social elements. It
is the literature of a race still pregnant, in full possession
of its peculiar gifts and its past achievements. After forty
centuries of a strange experience, it has opened out from
unpromising shells of graphic art and the stranger speech
of three hundred millions of living souls upon the latest
civilization of the globe, like the apparition of a fresh zone
of continents, or of a planetary race: to us a new attitude
of man ; a new form of genius, a type deficient in the qual-
ities hitherto held by our traditional culture to be indis-
pensable, yet coinciding with a tendency that is now
assuming large proportions in the Occidental mind ; an
unsolicited comment thereon, enhanced by its age, its
mass, its variety, its historical weight, and, we may add,
its orderly structure and normal growth.

The time has obviously not come for a thorough study
of the colossal theme ; but the resources already

Resources. . .

at our command comprise, beyond question, its
most typical forms and forces. It would be from our pur-
pose, were it in our power, to enter into the elaborate
catalogues and critical analyses of Wylie and Schott. No
such items could yield any definite idea of the spirit of this
race of penmen ; though the mere list of titles and divi-
sions of books we cannot yet read leave a vague sense of
immensity and variety not without its charm or its use.
Suffice it here to say of the whole that this cabala of
signs is a perfect die by which the whole land and people

LITERATURE. 439

has put itself into the form of written record, and that this
record includes every description of secular memorial
known to our own experience, elaborated by age after age
of utilizing effort. Of this systematic and all-embracing
construction for practical uses, the Cyclopaedia is c y cio P -
of course always, there as here, the crowning dias<
result ; and its compilation is a source of fame which em-
perors may well have coveted. The true imperial immor-
tality may be said to consist in collecting libraries and
securing the services of scholars like Ma-touan-lin and
Sse-ma-thsian ; sometimes in even presiding, like Kang-hi
and Kien-lung, over the whole process of literary enter-
prises that vie in vastness with the dreams of Mongol
world-conquerors, and infinitely surpass them in success.
That a still intenser elaboration is applied to the language
itself appears from the sixty dictionaries enumerated by
Wylie ; and prodigious stores of mathematical and astro-
nomical data testify to the patient struggles of this people
to master even those sciences for which they had no such
natural gifts as the star-gazing races of Assyria and Egypt.
Anthologies go back to the sixth century ; and have
once flowered out into a collection of fifty thou- A nthoio-
sand poems from a single dynasty, upon which two s ies -
thousand compilers were employed. Where every feature in
literature is colossal, we are not surprised at the mountains
of commentation that are said to have been piled, during
single epochs, upon the songs of more living ages that pre-
ceded them. Forms of ethical literature are exhausted ;
and it may suggest thankfulness that the difficulty of
mastering the language is likely to save us from the sud-
den avalanche of didactics which the nibs of busy pens
might bring upon our heads. But these snows from Chi-
nese mountains would at least be immeasurably purer
than the mud streams that pour from great sluices of the
Western press. And if the vast record is a monument of

44 STRUCTURES.

patience rather than of genius, it is at least not the dead
handwork of millions, directed by priesthood and caste,
but the spontaneous life of a people.

The revival of letters (150 B.C.) after the downfall of the
Extent of T'sin was the pivot, not of this whole literary his-

Revi^Tof tor y onl y> but of the national life of China ; since
Letters. it assured that supremacy of the literary class
which is her motive force. Out of that purgation by fire
arose the ethical and historical writings of Confucius in
their enduring form. The history of their recovery will
not be related here. It is evident, however, that the fires
of T'sin were far from effectual in any department. The
Catalogue of the Han revival gives systematic report of
thirteen thousand works recovered or gathered in all
branches, comprising those of nearly two hundred schools
in philosophy, discussing many of our own problems in
civil and social science, as well as covering the astrological
and divinatory systems which the developed fetichism of
the nation had produced. Pan-kou, the compiler, a ration-
alist of the thinking classes, was not only without faith in
these latter systems, but mourns over the degeneracy of
his time amidst the wealth he records ; over careless hab-
its of study, and neglect of the sages. He describes the
nine leading schools as a reunion of sick people waiting
a physician in a desert. This longing for the past is in
the ordinary tone of Oriental philosophers, and no more
conclusive against the value of the age he represents than
the dissatisfaction of a modern critic whose eye is on an
ideal future.

Nothing can be more characteristic than his comments
Pan-kou's on poetry, of which his lists could show thirteen
Report. hundred books and a hundred schools. His studies
taught him that he was living in a poor prosaic age, and he
longed for the old days when the missives between States
were couched in verse, and statesmen fell into disgrace when

LITERATURE. 441

they did not put high imagery enough into their documents.
Had not Confucius taught that the best study for a public man
was the Book of Odes, and that a noble style was impossible
to one not versed therein ? Alas ! wise men no longer used
a metaphoric style vivid as the picture-signs ; the poet's song
was empty and diffuse, and told neither the feeling nor the
life of the people. Notwithstanding this plaintive strain,
in which Pan-kou did but follow Confucius, there is devel-
opment in Chinese literature. It is shown especially in
the tendency to evolve and distribute the elements of
social good.

A brief sketch of the literary qualities of successive
epochs will perhaps make this evident. The Literary
Tcheeu dynasty (1112-256 B.C.) was the long and ^^^
stormy genesis of natural ethics, transmitting the Ethical
eternal lessons and appeals of Confucius, Mencius, epochl
and Lao-tse. The Han (200 B.C. -220 A.C.) gathered up
the past into an epoch of historians. Here belong the clas-
sic catalogues ; that vast cyclopaedia, the Sse-ki, covering
fifteen hundred years ; the reconstruction of the recovered
books ; the invention of paper, and the compilation of the
old "root characters" for the better transmission of thought.

A period of Tartar torpor followed in the north : but
several southern dynasties collected large libraries, and the
" Millenary Classic " was composed, spreading ancient ex-
amples before the children of the people to promote their
love of knowledge ; and then, after the Sui had prepared
the way by reuniting the nation, and put the old treasures
into more attractive forms of writing, came a fresh age
of lyric poetry, the immortal days of the T'ang Lyrical
(618-907), the days when the State carried peace- e P ch -
ful sway out into the west of Asia, and learning bloomed
within. History now began to be epitomized ; * the literary
examinations were fully organized, the Han-lin installed at

1 Schott, p. 72.

44 2 STRUCTURES.

their head ; the Hiao-king added to the national text-books ;
and the diffusion and utilization of knowledge crowned the
labors of a thousand years. The fragrance of this epoch
exhaled in an outpouring of lyric poetry by a thousand
bards. 1 Buddhist monks carried classical works and impe-
rial devotions to bordering lands ; and Japan had already
the five King, the prayers to Buddha, and seventy other
works from the " Central Land." 2

Next came the engraving of the classics on wooden
Phiiosoph- plates, so that copies could be circulated with
kai epoch, cheapness and speed ; books were no longer arti-
cles of " vertu," but open to all ; scrolls were superseded by
folded sheets ; and printing was invented (tenth century).
It was natural that this broadening of educational currents
should bring an " Augustan Age " of letters, and especially
of speculative philosophy. The history of the Soung em-
braces Ma-touan-lin's great encyclopaedia, and the writings
of Tcheou-tsi and Chu-hi, the chiefs of Chinese specula-
tive thought. Here, too, we find a really philosophical his-
tory, dealing in the causes and consequences of events. 3

As a natural expression of this universality, followed the
Dramatic epoch of dramatic art. From the Mongol dynasty
epoch. (Yuen) comes the national collection of the "Hun-
dred Plays," from which the most popular pieces have al-
ways been taken, and which we have ample means of study-
ing in translations by Julien, Davis, Bazin, and Premare. 4

This dramatic literature grew up against the influence
of the mandarins, and purely out of popular impulses.
Few or none of the higher classes have dared to claim
authorship in these attractive pictures of common life and
genial satire, interwoven with lyric snatches and a familiar
use of the old poets that was for them wholly out of order.

1 Williams I. 573.

2 Ma-touan-lin's Border Countries; tr. in Atsuma Gusa. 8 Schott, p. 75.

For Bazin, see Vols. XVIL-XVIII. of Series No. V. of Journ. Asiat. For Prepare,
see Duhalde's C&tna, &c.

LITERATURE. 443

The Mongols brought their latitudinarianism to letters.
The capital was alive with translators, and the provinces
with linguists, constructing alphabets, collecting data,
circulating books. Kub-lai's empire was the widest ever
known : he was the gatron of all races and all religions, and
his Royal Academy was the combined culture of the east ;
in some respects of the west also. At his instance a
Buddhist monk (Pa-sse-pa) attempted a new set of alpha-
betic signs 1 for transcribing literature into all tongues;
and they were introduced by edict into the schools and
civil service of China. The people listened more willingly
to the exhortations in behalf of their schools, than to the
transference of their literary interests to a strange body of
signs. Pa-sse-pa's alphabet was a failure.

The Mings signalized the recovery of the empire into
native hands by gathering up the whole harvest of cyclopedic
the past. An imperial library of three hundred epoch,
thousand volumes contained histories of all the The Mings *
dynasties, 2 and a full consciousness of nationality busily
resumed all the stages of literary achievement. It was the
age of collectors and commentators, gifted with that minute-
ness of detail study which sifts every mass into the atomic
state most fit for currency and use. The best science and
culture of Europe was welcomed in the Jesuit Fathers.
The history of cosmogonic philosophy was compiled in the
school of Chu-hi. 3 The national code of jurisprudence
was presented in full order and detail ; and the first great
description of the whole Empire published from minute
surveys (1587).

So steadily had literature advanced to broader and more
popular forms, when the terrible wars that brought the

1 From the Hindu Devanagari. See Pauthier on the Mongol Alphabet of Pa-sse-pa,
in Journ. Asia*., Jan., 1862.

See Zeittch. d. D. M. G. I., 117.
The Tsingli-ta-tsmen.

444 STRUCTURES.

Manchus upon the land threatened destruction to all this
Epoch of fr" 1 ^ f tne ages. But the Tunguse of the north
diffusion, proved apt pupils of the civilization which had been
their nurse from the beginning. No race in Asia would
have been better fitted to comprehend ajid carry out the best
elements of Chinese culture. The Emperors of the T'sing
(Pure) line were for a century and a half among the best and
ablest rulers that ever occupied thrones. Down to the strife
and demoralization that have never ceased since the interven-
tion of European trade and religion, they held China at her
highest level. Three of them were in the foremost rank of
scholars, and four were munificent friends of letters in the
most practical forms. Such works as Kang-hi's Imperial
Dictionary, a joint production of seventy-six scholars, a
Universal History in sixty volumes, a complete description
of China (1/44), enlargements of the old cyclopaedias,
translations into Manchu, and systematic Blue-books, are
instanced as marks of the construction of materials old
and new going on in the present dynasty, and show how
universal are its aims. The record we have traced receives
its crown in this tribute of a foreign master to the popular
tendencies of letters in China. Converted into museum,
academy, library, popular literature and social resource, and
surrounded with all the dignity that the present can throw
over the past, the noble national outfit presents itself with
the appearance of the nation on the field of modern thought.
This steady expansion of letters into more and more
stages of diffusive forms, this large respect for past stages
progress. o f growth, this persistent revisal and readaptation,
combine with moral excellence to prove the normal and
healthful quality of Chinese development. The elements
of universality in the process will be brought out in the
further course of our review : those specially relating to
literature will now be considered in the light of materials
already amply sufficient for a fair estimate.

LITERATURE. 445

The simplicity and directness which would naturally
characterize a literature expressed by pictorial THH
signs are very conspicuous in the Chinese dramas. DRAMA.
With laconic bareness the plot moves straight on, undis-
turbed by the play of fancy or reflection ; sometimes with
a rapidity that, for us, would turn tragedy into grotesque-
ness. Scarce a line could be lost without breaking the
thread, which is always continuous and clearly traceable,
however complex the situation. The tracks are mainly
prescribed. Certain prominent traits and classes in real
life are constantly repeated, and the ruts in which medita-
tions run seem to be their title to respect Even the solilo-
quy seldom leads to subtle springs of motive, or rises above
the interests and facts in hand. Individuality, the fulness
and flavor of the Western novel or play, is wanting ; and
the scene is a level steppe, not mountain, valley, and in-
dented shore. The pedantry of the academic essays, which
has brought so much discredit on Chinese letters, has no
place in the drama, and is not regarded with respect. The
plain and earnest diction of the dramatic masterpieces is
their real charm. They satirize pedantry as " gnawing let-
ters and licking characters," or " putting sables on a dog's
back." Under such sedate simplicity of purpose the ob-
vious and commonplace itself becomes in a sense ideal.

No nation has such a store of plays in constant use, al-
though, from causes already mentioned, comedians have suf-
fered contempt, and have even been persecuted by special
edict. Many plays have been written by women, though
the sex is forbidden to act, and the female parts are taken
by boys.

Dramatic literature has obeyed forces stronger than
imperial edict or social prudery, and its productive i ts pro-
power went on increasing from the T'ang (eighth ductivit y-
century) to its culmination in the You-en (fourteenth cen-
tury), when the drama was cultivated by literary people of

44^ STRUCTURES.

both sexes. 1 Still later, the great Manchu, Kien-lung, did
not share the prejudices of his scholars, who are said to
have excluded plays from his library : he even took a
player for a second wife. This passion for the stage has
grown with time : the superstitions of Buddhists and Tao-
sse have furnished machinery, and the history of China is
quarried for material. Such is the force of nationality in
the popular mind. 2 Plays are the cheapest things circu-
lated, and are even sometimes used as currency. 3 Troops
of comedians are in demand, on all occasions, from rude
country/"/^ to city dinners, court receptions, and public
and private re-unions.

The drama is still in the prose of narration, nor is
comedy distinct from tragedy. Its structure is

Structure. J J

primitive, the personages not being brought out
through the skilful play of action, but reporting directly to
the audience their own traits and interests and the part they
are to take ; often with absurd frankness. Unities of time
and place are little regarded. The action, like the language,
is elliptical, and leaves much to mutual understanding.
Declamations by the hero, studded with quotations and
invocations, take the place of dramatic evolution. Wher-
ever feeling is expected, enter a singer ; if a hero is about
to slay a villain or to commit suicide, he sings. 4 These
rhymed explosions scatter allusions and associations, packed
in the elliptic phrase as in a shell, which translators find it
hard to crack. 5

Chinese dramas have usually an ethical purpose. Like
Ethical the histories and the political writings, they gerier-
purpose. a u v assert poetic justice. Elaborate villanies, of-
ten woven into a complex web which betrays sad famili-

1 Ampere, Science en Orient, p. 227. Eighty-one litterateurs are mentioned as authors
of four hundred and forty-eight plays.

* Historical plays have always been specially popular in England, Germany, and France.

8 Girard, II. 301. 4 See especially The Orphan of Tcheou.

5 Yet Julien (Introduction to Les Jeunes Filles Lettrees) intimates that his predecessors
have made too much of these difficulties, which arise often from the differences of style in differ-
ent epochs. For an account of the Chinese theatre, see Girard's France et Chine, II. 284-300.

LITERATURE. 447

arity with crime, are constructed so as by their natural
consequences to justify the righteous side through whatso-
ever sufferings they cause. The Penal Code says the end
of the stage is "to offer true or supposed pictures of just
men, chaste women, and obedient children, who may inspire
the spectators to the practice of virtue." Nowhere is the
marriage tie disparaged, amidst the satire that assails all
classes and sects. The national reverence for those natu-
ral relations on which society is based is always treated
with respect. Gratitude, defence of the wronged, humanity,
power of "the right way" to deliver from life-weariness
and despair, are all enforced in special plays. 1

These inventions throw familiar ethical light over the
actual working of Chinese beliefs and institutions, The drama
and suggest ideal relations in the dilemmas, incon- a fo ^ r f
gruities, conflicts of duty, freaks of circumstance, seif-criti-
that arise in carrying out established principles. cism '
These collisions are very ingeniously and honestly treated.
The Chinese drama is a thorough self-criticism by the social
consciousness of the people. It prefers the materials of
actual history to free creations of imagination. It completes
the bald annals by giving the form and features of ages,
whereof these yield only the facts and names. No pictures
of manners can be more vivid than those in the plays of
the Youen. The writers have a keen eye for the faults of
classes and schools of official and domestic life. In preva-
lent forms of juggling and superstition, they find no end of
comic situations and strange adventure. It was in the
popular taste for burlesque and good-natured farce that the
Chinese drama, like the Greek and Roman, found its first
impulse. And this is the character of most plays previous
to the Youen, when history became more popularized, and
was treated on the stage in a more serious manner. 2 The

1 See The Deliverance of T' sien-hao (Journ- As., 1851), Dream of Lin-thong-pin, Ibid.
* Especially in the San-koue-tchi, and the Judgments of Pao-tching, a collection of
Causes Ctlebres ; see Bazin, Journ. As., Feb. and Mar., 1851.

STRUCTURES.

plots are apt to turn on criminal trials, and their contrasts
of iniquity and equity. Comedies of intrigue open the
secrets of the court and the harem, and all mazes of oppor-
tunity for craft and crime in social life. Naturally little
use is made of mythology, except in connection with the
Tao-sse.

A na'fve mixture of noble purpose with barbarous policy
Naive com- often testifies to fatal necessities involved in estab-
binations. lighgd customs and institutions, which is not with-
out its analogy to the fate tragedies of Greece. In the
" Orphan of the Family of Tcheou," a Chinese " Slaughter of
the Innocents " by edict aimed at the destruction of a right-
ful heir to the throne, results in a generous rivalry between
two old faithful functionaries as to which should be given
over to the Government by the other as guilty of secreting
the prince, for whom the child of one of them is to be
substituted and surrendered to death. It is finally decided
that one of these heroes shall give his child, the other his
life ; the true heir is then brought up by the survivor, sent
in due time to court, adopted by the cruel minister who
has full sway in the empire, and at last informed of the
whole truth. The terrible duty of retribution laid upon
him is immediately fulfilled. 1

The " Sorrows of Han" 2 uses the custom of Eastern
conquerors to exact from their rivals the tribute

The Sor- x

rows of of the most beautiful among their wives, as a set-
ting for a striking picture of self-abandonment to
loyalty and honorable love. A stronger protest against the
degradation of woman can hardly be imagined than is con-
densed into the amazing terseness of this little tragedy.
The ruler's effeminacy bringing the empire to the feet of
its enemies ; the corrupt official banished for having kept
a maiden from her rightful place as queen of the harem, in

1 This is said to have a basis in history ; the play is translated by Primare. See Duhalde.
* Transl. by Davis.

LITERATURE. 449

revenge for her father's refusing to purchase his favor ; his
scheme for turning her over to the Tartar ; the arrogant
demand of this chieftain for her person on seeing her por-
trait ; the anguish of the Emperor, her self-devotion to
save him and bring peace to her country ; her struggle
with her affection, and his recognition of its worth ; her
delivery to the Khan, and her death by suicide, calling on
the name of her husband : " Emperor of Han, this life is
over ; I await thee in that which is to come," combine to
show what moral appreciation can be maintained amidst
tyranny and barbarism, to centre in womanly virtues. The
simplicity of this play is suggestive of parables, or a child's
story of what he saw and heard. The dramatic quality is
another matter, and it is not easy to see how so rapid a
movement and so meagre a show can at all interest an
assembly. Yet the picture of the Tartar horde in the
desert is effective ; and touches of nature are not wanting,
as when the victim casts away her robes, remembering how
close beauty is to bitter fate : " To-day in the palace of
the Han, to-morrow given to a stranger ; " and when the
wretched monarch, dreaming that she comes back and is
again snatched away, awakes to hear the wild fowl's scream,
and asks : " Can it know there is one so desolate as I ? "

The " Heir in Old Age " 1 sets forth family reconcilia-
tion at the ancestral graves, and traces mischiefs

r 11- Heir

that grow out of the superstition that a male heir in oid
is indispensable to these oblations, when it is ag- Age< "
gravated by polygamic jealousies and intrigues.

Popular superstitions are wont to show a half-conscious-
ness of their own folly, and good-humoredly satirize them-
selves in dramatic form. This is as noticeable in Chinese
as in mediaeval Christian plays. " The Transmigra- Popular
tion of Yo-cheou " 2 figures the machinery of the
Tao-sse hells, with their oil-cauldrons for boiling i"d.

1 Transl. by Davis. Journ, As., April and May, 1)851.

45O STRUCTURES.

sinners, and the politeness of the officers to pious folk who
intercede for them and get them sent back to life in other
bodies, and the odd jumble and fracas that would come of
transferring the consciousness of one person into the out-
ward form of another.

The " Love-sick One " 1 satirizes the two souls in one
person, bodily and spiritual, of popular belief ; the one
staying in the maiden's body at home, the other following
her lover to the wars, and brought back by him as his whole
wife, to the natural consternation of her other part ; to be
appeased only by the equally amazing re-conjunction of the
two souls !

In one play Sakya Buddha appears as a fat priest, who
makes everybody laugh, and prints his doctrine on people's
hands, in the word patience. In another, a youth caught
by cannibals is released on parole, and, returning to be
eaten, constrains them by philosophical demonstrations to
let him go. A third brings the horse and the ass of a
priest into pitying conversation over the lot of poor fel-
lows who die insolvent : " Tis the reason," adds the horse,
"that I am now carrying this priest, who is my old
creditor."

All the qualities we have noted are combined in the

" Circle of Chalk," 2 where innocence is vindicated

"circle by the death of its persecutors, not through forms

of chaik." Q j aw ^ k ut though appeal of laws to ordeals of

natural feeling. It strikes at the domestic evils caused by
polygamy. The heroine, lifted out of habits of prostitution
enforced by her mother by reason of poverty, and becom-
ing the second wife of a rich man, is hated by the first,
who covers a liaison of her own by poisoning her husband.
Charged by this vile woman with the murder, she is brow-
beaten and tortured by the paramour himself into con-
fession, and this by permission of the magistrate ; while

1 Journal As fatigue, June, 1851. 2 Transl. by Julien.

LITERATURE. 45 I

paid perjurers swear that she is not the mother of her own
child. As usual, in capital cases, the matter is brought
for rejudgment before a higher court, where an upright
judge unexpectedly appeals to Solomon's test ; the rival
claimants being bidden to drag the child out of a circle of
chalk in opposite directions, the real mother is of course
discovered, and all the criminals are put to death.

The play deals freely with official misconduct. Arbitrary
proceedings in one court are contrasted with the careful
justice of the other ; showing how entirely the issue de-
pended on the character of the judge, not on the law.
Torture is arraigned in the sufferer's cry : " Overcome by
pain, I am forced to confess crimes I never committed."
Nor is the marriage system spared : " Alas ! these legal
wives," sighs the handmaid of the harem, " enrage their
husbands against us, and sacrifice us to their anger and
suspicions." Yet the difference between prostitution and
legal concubinage in China is shown in the satisfaction
with which the maiden contemplates her escape from the
one into the other position, in a soliloquy whose language
would equally serve for a person raised out of a life of deg-
radation into recognized respectability in a Christian land.

It has been said that all Chinese history has become
the material of romance ; a compensation, we may R
suggest, for the bald and monotonous character
of its narrative. But the fancy clings to solid special art
ground of fact, and runs easily into didactics. As e d t ^ lcal
in the dramas, so in the romances, rapid move-
ment of situations and events works up a crowd of details
into poetic justice and ideal good. The art of these story-
tellers consists in making this purpose assume a provi-
dential control, building circumstances to suit itself, and
curiously combining the nai've and the conventional, old
head and baby tongue. Their matter mainly concerns the

452 STRUCTURES.

conflict of moral ideals with the practical working of Chi-
nese society and institutions. The romances are a popular
re-action on organized traditions, on laws, customs, and
social arrangements. They criticise social evils, generally
with an evident faith in better foundations. Their frank
confession of these evils, without bitterness or contempt,
indicates a kind of higher assurance, preserved, with the
force of a religious instinct, in the real substance of human
nature and life. The inevitableness of penalty runs through
the minutest net-work of intrigue ; and this moral judicial-
ism, however prosaic, is as trenchant and thorough as
Hebrew prophecy. It is a rationalistic faith which my-
thology itself does not disturb. " The Family Portrait "
shows a just judge using a pretence of supernatural know-
ledge, but it is in order to detect a wrong by means of the
superstition of the wrong-doer. 1

These severe ethics are genial ; and, with all the preach-
ing tone, each personage is suffered to tell his story
genilnty. in his own way, and stands in his own right. There
Examples, fe no j ac k o f humor, and a finer sense of personal
relations is nowhere to be found than in these blooms of
Chinese life. The tale of the " Two Brothers of Different
Sex" 2 is an idyl of love in every form, of mutual affection
between youths, ripening into a tenderness scarcely in-
creased by the discovery that they can be united in a closer
tie ; of humanity in an old couple, who pick up these waifs
from wrecks, and give them homes and training ; of filial
piety, rich in gratitude and loving cares, the whole a
charming comment on the patriarchal ideal.

"The Visit of the Hearth God" 3 enforces the lesson
that outward conformities do not purify the heart nor
save from evil.

" The History of the Shores " is the great quarry of

1 Transl. in Journ. R. A. S., i. 308. * Transl. by Julicn.

3 Transl. by Julien.

LITERATURE. 453

genial humor. Its hundreds of intrigues and characters
are all imaginary, though located in the age preceding the
Mongol invasion, and its picture of manners is of the
sharpest cut. The popular proverb, coupling it with
another more historical romance of the Youen time, says
of an ignoble age : " The young do not read the San-koue-
tchi, nor the old the Chou-i." l The situations abound in
oddity, and the satire is fully worked out ; as in the initia-
tion of a burly rogue into the Buddhist priesthood, who,
cheating the simple monks, yet comprehends nothing him-
self, saying of the five rules : " Oh yes ! I am a good toper,
and will keep them in mind." Even here the moral law is
not forgotten ; and there are fine pictures of the strength
of virtue, and its mastery over temptation and supernatu-
ral terrors.

The San-koue-tchi (" Three Warring Kingdoms ") is the
heroic romance of China, which " every wise man The
will have read, at least once;" 2 crowded with " Three
legends of the civil wars, and traditions of the King-
witchcraft and spiritism of the Tao-sse, it is all doms -"
quite in contrast with the conventional structure most com-
mon in the tales, where a few types, deficient in shadowing
and balance, but representative of Chinese uniformity, con-
stantly reappear, charming the national taste for recur-
rence and repetition.

" The Death of Tong-tcho " 3 turns on vicious adminis-
tration and the terrible penalties of parricide and cruelty.
Again we have the appeal for rectification of wrong-*
doing, not to the processes of law, but to shrewd plot and
contrivance, by which alone criminals appear to be man-
ageable. It is surprising to find the defence of innocence
so dependent, in an empire of laws, on personal wits and
sharp practice. The result is a lenient treatment of petty

1 Extended extracts from the Chou-i are given in Bazin's Tabl. Hist, de la Litt. de
V Youen; Jour. As. 1850, 1851.

2 Introd. LIV., transl. by Pavie, 1845. 3 Tr. by Julian from the San-koue-tchi.

454 STRUCTURES.

falsehood and trickery, when resorted to in self-defence or
for good ends, while offences against the great social rela-
tions are severely dealt with.

In " The Fortunate Union," 1 two lives made for each
"The other are kept apart by a long series of villanous
Fortunate plots, by legal and illegal means, all of which their
Honor to personal qualities turn back upon the assailants,
woman. j^ ^ Q good and evil of laws and customs are
brought fully into the struggle ; and the purport is to show
that character must depend on its own mental and moral
resources, not on these outward defences. In this fate-
drama of the Chinese sort, the right of virtue to rule
events is cast on a national scale. The worst abuses of
legal and family authority, the exposure of reputation and
safety to every form of assault, the power of institutions
to victimize the weak, find their only antagonist in the
energies of an ideal woman.

" No match proved they for her intelligence :
The calumny that hung upon her name
Proved her of flowers the fairest ; she walked
Firm and alone, without support or aid."

Wile conquers wile ; learning refutes ignorance ; uncon-
scious purity puts espionage to shame ; and calumny fades
before a sensitiveness of personal honor that astounds the
common experience. No severer criticism on the public
management of personal rights can be imagined than the
, necessity laid on such a character to resort to small de-
ceits to save its honor. " Where," she asks, " was the
protection of the laws ? Where the restraints of public
opinion ? Where the succor of nearest relatives ? " Her
solitary struggle, perhaps, comes as near to the morally
sublime as Chinese literature has arrived.

The story shows clearly that the marriage law in China is
monogamic, and that the position of the "concubine" was

1 Transl. by Davis (Hao-khieou-tchouen\

LITERATURE. 45 5

secondary. The most profligate suitor does not pretend
to attempt marriage without having his previous union set
aside by law. Still more interesting is the hero's protest
against marrying by the choice of his parents, on the
ground that this is a union, not of friendship only, but " for
life ; " and the heroine's question addressed to an arbitrary
uncle : " Who shall compel me to marry against my wish ? "
Her father refuses to meddle with her right of choice ;
and the bridegroom at the wedding treats her with venera-
tion. The tables are curiously turned on " filial piety " by
the hero's lecturing his father, an imperial censor, on offi-
cial duties. It is refreshing to be assured, in China, that
"old prescriptions were not made for those who can do
right by force of their own minds;" and that " he who
would let another perish, for a point of form, would be
brutal;" that "one may be content, if he can keep his
heart free from taint," and that "virtue has its own lati-
tude and measure." Under threats of legalized cruelty,
the lady declares that " the Emperor himself could not
force rectitude to degrade itself." The imprisoned censor
is sustained by an inward witness that he is " clothed with
integrity."

" A single thought, unworthy the occasion,
Had earned the censure of a thousand years."

The young student, deprived of his betrothed, is re-
strained from self-destruction by the thought that his
mother would be left childless. " While the father's wish
is still untold, the daughter's love already understands it ;
as when, on the approach of spring as yet afar off, the Mei-
tree puts forth a southward bud." She advises her lover
to forgive his persecutor fallen into his power, in view of
his possible provocation, and of his toils in acquiring his
position. She sets him upon curing a boisterous demeanor,
and charms him by showing herself not only a benefactor,
but the wisest of counsellors. From her he learns self-

STRUCTURES.

reliance and the love of serious study without ulterior ends.
Her learning, prudence, delicate insight and wit, confound
all enemies, and anticipate and solve every emergency.
Her inviolate modesty is thus described :

" With faintly opening cup, its fragrance but half concealed,
'Tis like some half-told sorrow, drooping on delicate stalk.''

The sexes are equal in capacities and in dignity : " Where
sense and spirit beam, they adorn each sex alike." 1 The
daughter is entrusted with her father's affairs, and " supplies
the place of a son." " Brought up in tender female seclu-
sion, she is more delicate than a web of silk, but can show
talent and resolution beyond many men." The novelist
concludes that

" Reason's highway is straight and plain, unlike devious paths of the

wicked,

Did not a faultless heroine sometimes shine, Virtue's great cause
entirely would fail."

"Ask ye why sovereign Heaven thus vexes mortals? 'Tis to try
their hearts, like metal in the fiery crucible." ....

" The unblown flower exhales no sweets ; the gem, unpolished,

shines not ;

Did not the winter's cold once penetrate its stem, how could the
blossom emit such fragrance. "

The protest against corrupt officialism and the barbari-
ties of courts is startling. The hero has to compel justice
by breaking through all forms, thundering down the wicked
judge, and arresting criminals with a high hand. But the
purity of the higher courts is fully recognized as protecting
the innocent, and rectifying all wrongs down to the least ;
honors flow from imperial hands upon these protestants
against all Chinese ills, and are reflected on their parents
in national gratitude for bestowing such examples on the
people.

1 The same idea pervades the Young Female Scholars, translated into French by Julien,
and is common in Chinese novels.

LITERATURE. 457

Lay has said with truth that Chinese stories abound in
examples of love that knows no limit. l As we Love and
might expect, there is abundance of sentimen- friendship,
tality, and of desperate conjuncture from which suicide
is the only escape ; results of a popular taste for extrava-
gance like that which has given French fiction an equal
currency in the West. But the high-wrought situations
point to social defects, and are offset by a loyalty in love
and friendship which assures us that these sentiments
have stood unshaken. The influence of woman is usually
elevated, and more productive of good than in correspond-
ing tales of European origin. In the " Two Female Schol-
ars," 2 the Emperor, presiding at the union of the two
heroes and heroines, says : " Now that I have found two
men and two women of genius, I have united them to
show the happy influences of knowledge and peace : the
desire of my heart is fulfilled." Even in the extravaganza
of " The Flowery Scroll," 3 which glorifies the patriarchal
system of marriage, the womanly virtues of guardianship
and love are conspicuous. The woman is the man's good
genius in all his works and ways. Its legend of the peach-
blossoms driven on the wind, where the pilgrim following
them crosses a stream and enters a primitive paradise,
to which he forgets the way, and can never find it again,
might well serve as a symbol of this ideal of polygamic
love.

The short stories, of which the number is immense,
combine moral interest with fanciful belief. These short sto-
generally purport to be historical, and abound in J^p^j"
admirable maxims. The larger portion are of dence.
Tao-'sse origin, and embody the peculiar supernaturalism of
this school. Spiritist machinery is exploited to the fullest

1 Chittese as they Are, ch. ii. * Transl. by Julien (Vol. II. 296).

3 Transl. by Bowring.

45 8 STRUCTURES.

extent, in apparitions, resurrections, judicial remandings
back and forth between the worlds, and transmigrations
into human bodies, which bring the departed into as inti-
mate connection with this world as the strongest believer
in western stances could imagine. 1 Scarcely more rational,
though more refined, is the large class of stories which
substitute a subtle special providence for the direct intrusion
of genii and dead people into human affairs. Good actions,
shaped in this way from above, with such manipulations as
are familiar to the editors of Christian manuals and Sunday-
school books, bring about shifts of fortune, preservations,
deliverances, or justifications, highly agreeable to the popular
taste for ethical finish. It is the imperium in imperio which
belongs to virtuous maxims. Events are set in form of
riddle for providential solution. The philosophy is of the
" poor Richard " type, and never was honesty proved " the
best policy " with more unshrinking inventiveness, which
might even afford many shrewd suggestions to our own
artists in this line. A merchant, finding money, restores it,
and thereby recovers a lost son. With the reward received
from the owner, he is about to make a religious donation ;
but, reflecting that " saving life is better than maintaining
priests," he offers it to any who would save a shipwrecked
company : one of the rescued is found to be his own brother,
returning from a vain search for him made at the entreaty
of his wife. Further : the wife's fears for his safety have
been aggravated by the persecuting suit of a relative, which
drives her to attempting suicide. A curious turn of events
foils this offender ; while the arrival of husband and long-
lost son puts all to rights, and shows what blessings
hang on a single honest or benevolent action. 2 " Cast thy
bread," &c.

A dreadful series of misfortunes in which a poor scholar

1 See Plath Bay.Ak. Feb. 1868 ; Chin. Repos, April, 1842 ; Dreams in Red Chamber ,
Ibid., May, 1842.

3 Duhalde, Hist, of China, Vol. III.

LITERATURE. 459

is involved by the craft of an enemy, to the point of death,
is cleared away by providential skill ; whereat magistrates
are warned to regard the life of a man more than that of a
plant, and never to act as if at child's play, but as perform-
ing the duties of a parent. 1

The courageous and noble mandarin who shames the
common practice constantly reappears. One such, Typeso f
ordered to provide handsome girls for the Empe- ideal virtue -
ror's pleasures, replies that the Emperor must take his
three daughters, if he will, but he knows of no others :
whereat the rebuked messenger withdraws. Another
refuses obedience, on the ground of the higher claims of
personal example. And a third dies in poverty, and is
buried in old garments, leaving only his memory in all
hearts, and his dying hope that no poor man had through
him been brought to loss. A fourth, poor because faithful,
seeing a student lying dead by the wayside, covers him
with his garment, sells his horse and rides an ox for cheap-
ness ; then meeting a dying man, kills the ox to feed him.
" Not to succor those in want is to have no virtue." These
are but types of the whole class of Buddhist and Tao-sse
stories ; in which the excess to which a special virtue is
often pushed is attended by refinement of feeling, Extreme
and a constant dwelling on the absoluteness of duty optimism,
and love. We are told of a good man of such delicate
regard for the feelings of others that he afflicted himself
on seeing a poor relation steal a piece of silk, because he
might have gone another way, and so spared her the morti-
fication of knowing that he had seen her. He is comforted
by the suggestion of his wife to pay her a larger price
than usual, that she might not suspect the fact ! This is,
however, an extreme case. It has a quality not unlike the
parable of the Unjust Steward, and is probably quite as
innocent of any immoral purpose.

* Duhalde, Hist, of China, Vol. III.

460 STRUCTURES.

Tchoo-tse deserves to be recorded by name. Anxious
for his widowed and sick mother, he adopts an original way
of treating thieves ; speaking to them softly, and offering
to give them every thing if they would not disturb her.
The proposal so amazes their burglarships, that they incon-
tinently withdraw for shame ; and are out of sight, when
he returns to fetch them a parting gift. How creditable to
all parties concerned !

A Brutus-like father and mother refuse to petition for
their son's pardon, who is under sentence of death, because
the family would be wanting in fidelity to the prince.

A son, whose mother feared thunder-storms, was wont to
go to her tomb whenever one was coming on, and softly
say : " Mother, I am here."

In noticing the curious incompatibility of this high
Ground of ethical purity in Tao-sse tales with the quality of
ho^sVnd m ti ve to which they appeal ; 1 the quaint mixture
fears. of Sakya and Lao-tse with Solomon and Franklin,
and even with a Jesuit casuistry in the grading of rewards
and penalties, we must not forget that in all popular lit-
erature in current use, economic questions of consequen-
ces naturally enter largely, as constituting a large part of
practical experience. These tales are not the careful
constructions of philosophers, but spontaneous moralities
of the masses. And every religion equally testifies to the
hold of their method on common life, notwithstanding the
incongruities they reveal. Their best didactics are wont to
circulate about the not very disinterested motive, <c With
what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again."
We cannot wonder at the Tao-sse Ananias struck by light-
ning for withholding the property of orphans ; the false
accuser killed by the fall of the pole to which his victim
is bound ; the burner of holy books, to warm himself,

1 We shall refer to the subject hereafter, in speaking of the tales contained in the Kan-
ing-J>ien, or Book of Rewards and Punishments, used by the later disciples of Laotse.

LITERATURE.

461

dying of pestilence ; and one who cuts out a pie's tongtffe-of
ulcers on his own. But many tales are quite free of suCtt/
defects, and relate illustrations of the Confucian precept M.
to return good for evil ; of redeeming the wrong-doer to
virtue by showing mercy ; of noble preference of the spirit
to the form of conduct, from love of sincerity alone. 1

A community so ancient, vast, and social as the Chinese,
so fond of finalities in speech and belief, and so PROVHRBS
apt to bring every experience to literary form and Theirsig .
popular function, naturally possesses a prodigious nifkance.
number of proverbs ; embodying in them an impalpable
inmost life, which can only in this way find true expression.
A nation's proverbs are the ripe fruit of its character and
history, its true confession of faith, its alphabet of manners,
its outlet into cosmopolitan life. Not till adopted into
the universal brotherhood of the Proverbs do the maxims
of the wise wear their immortal crowns. Yet the recognized
sages are seldom the proverb-makers in an original sense ;
these are commonly unknown ; they live only in their winged
words, and pass into the circulation of the popular heart,
to which they supplied these mystic unappropriated vivaci-
ties. A shy literature is the proverb ; its tracks hid in the
infinite meshes of social magnetism and construction, by
no human wit to be unravelled. In the sea of uniformity
into which all Chinese individuality is speedily absorbed,
we should hardly expect variety in the experience set forth
by this form of expression, where the tides of ages would
be apt to roll the pebbles into common shape and break off
fresh fragments from the same old rocks. But precisely
here, Nature justifies herself in her Chinese children by a
remarkable diversity.

i. In illustration, we select a few from a large collec-

1 For illustrations, see Davis' s Sketches, Duhalde and Julien's Translation of the Kan-
ing-pien; Wuttke, Geschickted. Heidenth., II. 130, 132; Mayers in Notes and Queries, I.
10-12.

462 STRUCTURES.

tion, 1 taken from temples, tablets, scrolls, and the current
conversation of different provinces ; arranging them for the
purpose, under different psychologic classes.

I. Practical thrift and sense. If you would pluck flowers in the

moon, you will have to climb the sky. You cannot pick the
Examples.

moon out of the water. Chanty begins at home. If you

do not want a thing known, do not do it. To a sick man, medicine is
better than prayers. Remember the past, if you would know the
future. Prevention is better than cure. If you have money, the
spirits will turn your mill. Speak only three- tenths of your thoughts :
guard them as you would a city. The sage is not a talker, nor the
talker a sage. Better earn one cash a day than have myriads at your
bed's head. Get happiness out of calamity.

II. Cautionary ethics. Ill-gotten rice boils to nothing. A man is
not beguiled by beauty, but by himself. Better suffer from ingratitude
than be ungrateful. Judge not from appearances. Be always as care-
ful as when you cross a plank bridge. Search the heart and see if you
have reason to be ashamed. A quarrel may properly be ended, not
begun. Think not lightly of crimes : every one has its penalty. You
cannot shut off the sky with your hand.

III. Personal character. True gold dreads not fire. Deep roots fear
no wind. A bond is paper ; but the heart is worth a thousand of gold.
A good man may be slain, but his good name cannot be marred. The
steel cannot behead the innocent. Sincerity moves the gods. Virtue
wants no coloring. Nobility is hard to sell. Eyes of flesh see not
men of worth. Do your duty and rest in your fate. Best knowledge
is self-knowledge. Recede but a step, and the sky is high, the earth
broad. The good bee sips not at withered flowers. The more one
knows, the more he knows his ignorance. Three days without study
makes one's talk insipid. A night's talk with the wise is worth ten
years of reading. Better be without books than believe all that is in
them. To starve is a slight matter, to lose virtue a great one.

IV. Natural laws. Life and death are destinies. Sesam^ is
sesame, and beans are beans. Bitter gourd bears bitter fruit. Harm-
ing others is harming self. The willow stuck in the ground without

1 Doolittle's Chinese Dictionary,

LITERATURE. 463

design will grow. Innocence pierces to the sun. The dry tree buds
again. Joy is on the surface. Man is not perfected without trials.
Righteousness is the same for ever. Buddha's laws are without
bounds. The old man is like a candle in the wind. The old shield
wards off evil. May your old age, like the hills, ascend more and
more. The virtuous shall live to be old ; the wicked shall be cut off.

V. Trust. For every grass-blade its drop of dew. Heaven is
higher than the gods. As the helmsman guides the ship, so Heaven
man. Above us are the blue heavens : God is looking down. Heaven
turns no deaf ear to the distressed. The good rains know their season.
The wild birds have no garners, but the wide world is before them.
In time of trouble embrace Buddha's foot. Buddha is father and
mother. The great Watcher is on high, compassionate savior of the
sailor. The mercy-ship sails everywhere. 1

VI. The all-seeing gods. Heaven sees what is invisible to us. In
the ear of Heaven, whispers sound like the thunder ; in the eyes of the
gods our secret thoughts are clear as lightning. The smallest desire
to do good, unseen by man, is known above.

VII. The soul. The spiritual essence goes everywhere. All are
of Buddha's essence. To mind there is no far nor near. Mind is
infinite. In one's fate is a saving star.

VIII. Humanities. Children are one's heart and life. The son
pays the father's debts. A filial spirit moves heaven and earth. Two,,
lotus-flowers on one stem ; the phoenixes in concert : marriage is or-
dained in heaven. One's parents never do wrong : brothers are hard
to find. Good men seek each other. Buddha's heart and a genie's
hand. Preserve all who live : all hearts are alike, and all look
upward.

IX. Miscellaneous. Nine women in ten are jealous. A woman's
virtue and a wife's jealousy are without limit. The bamboo makes a
good child. A rebel who succeeds is emperor ; one who fails is a high-
wayman. Excess in politeness is sure sign of falseness. Three thou-
sand laws and five hundred books ; but it depends on your free will

1 Compare sentences from the Hindu Hitopadlsa, &c , in the first volume of the present
work, on India.

464 STRUCTURES.

whether you are good or bad. The gods honor the sentences of the
wise.

2. From " The Precious Mirror of the Heart " l we take
the following :

I. Indolence comes easily to the poor, arrogance to the rich ; to
the comfortable, extravagance ; to the cold and hungry, theft. When
food and dress are according to thy station, and thou hast joy therein,
why consult lots ?

II. When all love you, try yourself; when all hate you, do the
same. When you see good or evil in another, see if you have it : this
is to progress in virtue. Better teach your son the classics than win
yellow gold. First piety and love, then letters, is the student's true
way. The successful who looks not for misfortune is blind.

III. How shall not men withdraw from him who forsakes himself?
He who knows his true place, and stands in it, shall never blush. He
who bears musk is fragrant of himself : what need to place himself in
the wind ? A pure mirror will not receive the dust of an antelope's
foot. A great territory is not worth so much to one as the least of
talents in his own person. He who drops his head, hearing praise,
and is glad to be told of his faults, is a sage. A true officer fears not
deatji. To give unpleasant advice to a prince, as to his duty, is to
honor him. The official needs public spirit and pure hands.

IV. To plan is man's, to accomplish is Heaven's. Whoso ap-
proaches a pearl, becomes red ; or ink, becomes black ; or a wise man,

.becomes enlightened ; or a fool, foolish. Recompense follows good
and evil conduct, as the shadow the substance. Heaven leaves none
without income, as earth no plant without root. When the spirits of
wisdom try the secret things, they send not good fortune in return for
rich offerings, nor misfortunes on account of ceremonial neglects.

V. Nothing can surpass piety. If it looks up to Heaven, wind and
rain come in their seasons ; if it reaches out to earth, all things have
prosperous ending ; if it go forth to men, one attains all riches. Pearls
waste in using : piety blesses for ever. ,

VIII. If thou seest another do good, publish it ; if evil, hide it.
Hearest thou of another's sins, be it as if thou hadst heard reproach of

1 Translated by Plath, Bay. Ak. d, Wiss., July, 1863. The arrangement by numbers is
the same as before.

LITERATURE. 465

thy father and mother : the ear may hear, but let not the tongue speak
it. Join not their company who speak evil of others. It is joy to see
a good man ; to hear of a good deed ; to speak a good word ; to fulfil a
good aim. Sweep the snow from thy own door : spy not at the frost
on another's tiles. Hinder not the laborer ; insult not the good ; let
the traveller have the roadway ; let the old carry no burdens ; hate
contention ; help thy neighbor. The hate thou keepest for a day, a
thousand years will not root out. To return hate with kindness is like
throwing water on snow : to return hate with hate is like a wolf look-
ing at a worm. Is one good to me, let me be good to him ; is he evil,
let me still be good : how then can he hate me ? A beautiful word is
like a poem that sheds glory : a genial word is like bells, harps, and
lutes. Communion with the good is a fragrance of flowers that fills
the neighborhood.

3. A few sentences may be added from other selections
out of the same work by Davis and Williams. 1

Misfortunes issue where diseases enter, at the mouth. What is
whispered in the ear is heard miles away. The gods cannot help one
who loses opportunities. Dig your well before you are thirsty. Swim
with one foot on the ground. Forbearance is the jewel of home. A
great man never loses the simplicity of a child. Prefer right to kin-
dred (in patronage). He who soars not, suffers not by a fall. He who
combats himself is happier than he who contends with others. The
heart of man, at a foot's distance, cannot be known. Better not be,
than be nothing. If the blind lead the blind, both go to the pit. One
desires to hide his tracks, and walks on the snow. Correct yourself
with the same rigor that you correct others : excuse others with the
indulgence you show yourself.

4. These admirable sayings have been translated by
Lister : 2

Man has ten thousand plans for himself: God but one for him.
man cries, " Now, now : " God says, " Not yet, not yet." A good
Man protects three villages. Let your ideas be round and your con-
duct square. Right heart need not fear evil seeming. God drives no
man to despair. One day of wedded life deserves a hundred days of
kindness.

1 Davis's Chinese, Vol. II. ; Williams's Mid. Kingd. I. 587.

2 China Rev., November and December, 1874.

466 STRUCTURES.

5. Kindred to these are the cheerful Foo-chow prov-
erbs :

Heaven never turns a deaf ear to the distressed heart. In one's
fate is a saving star. Fleshly eyes cannot perceive men of worth. A
thousand pieces of gold cannot purchase one wish from the heart.
Adapt yourself to the situation, and listen for Heaven.

6. The following dignify the utilitarian test : 1

Do not imitate useless men ; do not do useless things ; do not read
useless books ; do not speak useless words. If you recognize the
limits of speech, your faults will be fewer ; of eating and drinking, your
maladies ; of desire and fancy, your covetous wishes ; of rejoicing, your
depressions. You may sit beside a man, while a thousand mountains
hide his mind. He who follows craft and deceit is like the flower of a
day. It is better to do good than to burn incense ; to dismiss hatred,
than to seek escape from evil by repeating the name of Buddha ; to
have nothing, than to steal in order to make gifts ; to be faithful in
private relations, than to seek favor from men in power. If you have
not passed the bitterness of starvation, you know not the blessings of
abundance ; if not through the parting of death, you know not the joy
of unbroken union ; if not through calamity, the pleasure of security ;
if not through storms, the luxury of calm.

7. The ethical capacity of the Manchus should not be
omitted. 2

If you receive an ox, give back a horse. Act with kindness, but do
Manchu not exact gratitude. A good word has heat enough for three
proverbs, winters : a hard one wounds like six months of cold. To
yield to Heaven is to save one's self. Give by day, and your reward shall
spring by night. If there is too much rice in the kitchen, there are
starving people on the road. Help another helps yourself. Drink less
and learn more. The spirits know your secret sins.

The white clouds pass ; the blue heaven abides. Noble natures
are calm and content. The song of a dying bird is plaintive : the
words of a dying man are just. How can man reward the care of
Heaven ? Mock not, O young man, at gray hairs ! How long does
the opening flower keep its bloom ? The wise place virtue in thought.

1 From a Collection of Pearls, by Nevius.

a See Rochet, Sentences Mantchoux ; Wollheim, Litt. Sdmmtl. Volk. des Orients, II.
663, 664.

LITERATURE. 467

Think reasonably, be strong for virtue, lean on humanity, and in all
things be content. Judge not by appearance : the sea cannot be
scooped up in a tumbler. The wise questions himself, the foolish
others.

When the prince goes to school, he is like other boys. The highest
official is subject to the law. Whoso is too subservient to masters
will reap shame. A good subject cannot serve two masters : lay not
two saddles on one horse. A minister who fears death will not be
faithful.

HISTORY.

A FAIR comparison of the modern newspaper with the
** monumental inscriptions of ancient races, as Ancient
data for the discovery of historical facts, might andmod -

, r ern records

result m a revisal of accepted opinions as to the compared
accrediting quality of our all-recording press. It would
contrast the simple themes and the official character of
those older archives with the bewildering complexity and
irresponsibility of the material we are gathering for the
future historian. It would mark what manifold interests
are now at work to vary the modes of conceiving and
representing the same events. It would observe not only
the continuance of the old perturbations of human vision
by myth-making desires and beliefs, by national prejudices
and passions, and by theological dogmas, but also many
new features in that ambiguity of human language which
arises from differences of personal culture and experience,
and increases with the number of classes who get expres-
sion in writing and speech. We should, perhaps, find it
difficult to state wherein the objective sense of historical
truth is the gainer by the prodigious mass of details which
we are accumulating with the full powers of the best re-
cording machinery ever known.

The fact seems to be that our advantage over the
ancients consists by no means in the truthfulness of our
records, but in the possession of* a scientific sense which
can sift out errors by the test of natural law. Our use of
this matchless instrument is, however, far from being made

47 2 STRUCTURES.

effective by a corresponding conscientiousness in the record
of what most concerns our life.

The progress of science within the last half-century, in
deciphering and verifying the records of Oriental nations,
has therefore far outrun its success in solving the still more
difficult problems of modern history. Our documentary
resources blind us, and we grope amidst conflicting illu-
sions. In the abundance of communication there is equal
scope for interpretation : the data become crowded, con-
fused, indecisive. We claim to be " making history " faster
than any age before us, because every act has unexampled
breadth of immediate effect ; but we may as truly be said
to unmake history in the obscure and untrustworthy data
we leave for future decipherment on all questions, bio-
graphical, literary, political, or social ; imposing a task
more difficult, and perhaps less conclusive in its results,
than the study of cuneiform tablet or hieroglyphic scroll.

The real way in which epochs " make history " is doubt-
History less in the transmission of their qualities as histori-
transrmts ca ] conc iitions, rather than in the record of definite

qualities

rather than historical facts. An unconscious revelation of
character is written on the products of an age or
a 'people, and compensates us for all the difficulties that
beset a critical study of details. To interpret this psycho-
logical testimony is not the province of science, which can
only bring the data into the best form for use by a higher
tribunal. Interpretation belongs to moral intelligence and
spiritual sympathy. Historical facts are no better than
fictions till they come under the touch of these magnetic
hands.

The real interest of remote times and records is in their
its psycho- bearing on the progress of mankind. It is when

logical they are regarded in this aspect that their psycho-
value is of . i .

primary logical meaning becomes indispensable. It is a
importance. g rea t satisfaction to observe such achievements of

HISTORY. 4/3

positive studies as the confirmation of Manetho's list of the
Egyptian dynasties, and of the Chaldean series of Berosus ;
the rich harvest of names, epochs, conquests, race-relations,
religious and social institutions, opened by the Assyrian
and Babylonian tablets ; and the hopes thus afforded that
we shall obtain better knowledge than we now possess as
to the credibility of the old Chinese records of similar
aspect. But the facts thus proved or promised are insig-
nificant, compared with the endless questions of fact they
will bring into discussion ; while, as materials for estimat-
ing the character of these races and their relations to the
laws of human nature, they possess a value quite independ-
ent of all such questions. Merely to know what is recorded
is of more importance than to decide the more difficult
question of its historical truth ; since it at any rate repre-
sented what the age or people believed, which is more to
our purpose than verifying the account of circumstances
that came and went, and of which not a thousand mil-
lionth part can ever be recovered.

It is in vain that we seek to reverse this precedence of the
spirit to the fact. Thus the pursuit of monumental studies
in the hope of proving the infallibility of the Hebrew Scrip-
tures in matters of historical detail is an illusion. It is not
only liable to incessant perversion of the facts, but forgets
that the presumed inspiration is itself contrary to all laws
of mind, and would, were it possible, defeat that very uni-
versality of law through which alone historical research
can be of any use to us. What concerns us is to discover
the human forces of which civilizations are the expression,
the unconscious and slowly developing unities that bring
their diversities of form into mutual service.

While so much is now being brought to view by which
these higher objects are furthered, we must, then, be con-
tent to recognize the doubts that continue to hang around
the details of ancient records as a part of the constant con-

474 STRUCTURES.

ditions of human knowledge. Let us be at least as thank-
ful for any light thrown on the psychological significance
of what we do know of past times and races, as for the
minute linguistic or other circumstantial discussions by
which specific facts are pursued. What though we cannot
see with bodily eyes the detail doings involved in what
these old upturned strata contain ? There is no human
record that does not reveal much more than what men say
or do, in its witness to what they are.

How interesting, for example, to note the unconscious
imagina- function of imagination in the construction of all
stmcthre n " S reat civilizations ! No ancient people is so prosaic
ofpre-his- as not to have antedated its history from a mythi-
cal epoch, usually of vast extent and under rulers
of ideal endowments. The explanation of this fact lies
probably in the mystery of unbounded time ; that vast and
vague conception whose envelopment of conscious mind, as
its proper space, is the condition of all human experience
whatever. The shoreless sea of an unknown past, filled by
science with the preparatory steps of evolution, must be
peopled for unscientific races by forces adequate to produce
what they most prize in their own civilizations. In thus
presuming cosmic or personal powers, 1 superior to the re-
sults they are believed to have effected, the imagination is
infinitely more logical than the supposed " science " which
ascribes higher stages to the inherent force of lower ones
the oak to the acorn, or the mind to primitive plasm
as mere outcome and product. To that higher procedure of
imagination, where science has not supplanted it with the
still higher perception of invariable laws, there is probably
no exception in the history of races. That such assertion
of the national ideal, as having been in some sense master

1 According to recent comparative mythology, a cycle of " solar myths," impressions from
cosmic phenomena, precedes personal legends, which etymology shows to be their unconscious
transformation.

HISTORY. 475

of the world from the beginning, is involved in the first
consciousness of national life itself, lends a dignity to the
early stages of progress ; crowning them with the graces
of ideality, creative thought, and loyalty to ancestral de-
scent.

Different forms are assumed by these mythic construc-
tions of pre-historic time ; but the law itself is equally
apparent, whether in the enormous periods of the oldest
Indian, Egyptian, and Chaldean mythology, in the vast
supernatural powers ascribed to the ante-human Buddhas,
or in the milder longevity accorded by the Hebrews to their
patriarchs, and the less florid style of miracle correspond-
ing to their monarchical faith, and rendering their traditions
inconspicuous among those freer blooms of the world-
garden of myths.

The matter-of-fact Chinese are no exception to the rule.
Their rationalistic genius, however, is apparent, TheChi -

nese no

even in the way in which they have conceived their exception,
primitive history ; and in this respect, as in many
others, it brings them into nearer relations with here,
the best modern science than belong to the other Oriental
races.

It is true they have fabulous dynasties, beginning with
Pwan-ku, as first organizer of chaos, and reaching on for
hundreds of thousands of years ; lines heavenly, earthly,
and human, all previous to Fo-hi and Hwang-te, mythical
founders of the State. 1 This primal world was peopled
with grotesque, semi-human beings and elemental prodi-
gies. 2 But such fables originated in the later degenerate
schools of the Tao-sse, and in books composed during the
Han, or possibly as late as the twelfth century. 3 They do
not represent the national faith. Neither of the recog-

1 See Mayers's Chin. Manual (1874) ; also Mem. cone, les Ckinois, Vol. XIII. ; Biot,
Journ. As., February, 1846.

8 For pictures of these mythical rulers, see Chin. Repos., 1842.
3 Cibot, Mem. cone, les Chinois, I. 101, 127, 158.

4/6 STRUCTURES.

nized historians pretends to commence history before Fo-
hi, 2,850 B.C., a very moderate antiquity compared with
the claims of Buddhist or Egyptian dynasties. 1 No intel-
ligent Chinese believes in the Pwan-ku legends any more
than we do in Jack the Giant Killer or Scandinavian troll-
wives.

Even the dynastic lists down to the eighth century, B.C.,
Soberness are far from being accepted by these historians
his^rianT as equally credible with the later annals. But their
of china, soberness appears still more in their rationalistic
treatment of history itself. Remusat said of Sse-ma-thsian,
who compiled the Sse-ki during the Han, and who has
been called the Father of Chinese History, that in his
annals of two thousand five hundred years he never ad-
mitted a fabulous account. It would probably be more
correct to say that he admitted no miracles. 2 The reader
of the Tong-kien of Sse-ma-kwang, 3 his descendant (elev-
enth century), will be surprised to find in this standard
history of an Oriental nation, written before the conception
of history had dawned upon the Christian mind, a work as
severely exclusive of miracle as Tacitus, a work as secu-
lar as Macaulay or Grote, as simple and direct as Herodo-
tus, and as noble as Thucydides.

The Shu-king, although hardly a historical authority,
of the and containing many incredible traditions, also
shu-kmg. avo j^ s miracle-legends ; and three books, offered
as belonging to it on the recovery of its text, and called
" Natural Prodigies," have fallen away for want of repute.

The " Bamboo Books," a very old chronicle, running
parallel with the Shu, are also, in their original form, free
from this element ; and the mass of fable which accom-

1 Carre's L 1 Ancien Orient, Vol. I. The monuments place Menes 5,000 years B.C. See
Brugsch, Mariette Bey, Owen, before Intern. Congr. of Orient, 1870.

2 His accounts of Yao and Shun may be legendary. Chalmers (f)rig. of Chinese) likens
them to Geoffrey of Monmouth's account of the Britons before Caesar's invasion.

3 Translated by De Mailla, as Hist. Ght. de la Chine.

HISTORY. 4/7

panics the text, probably from much later hands, is treated
with entire contempt by scholars. 1

Confucius and Mencius are equally sober historians, and
no monarch previous to Yao is mentioned in their Of ]ater
writings. 2 Sse-ma-thsian's caution in receiving the writers.
old legends is illustrated by his commencing his history
at a period later than Fo-hi, in this point falling behind
the faith of his people, a national commission being ap-
pointed somewhat later, which completed the annals from
sources brought to light in the revival of old literature
under the Han. 3 A supposed copy of a lost history of the
most ancient date (the Ou-fen) was set aside by these crit
ics for want of evidence, though allowed to be mainly in
accord with what was already believed. 4

The praises of Pere Amyot, contrasting the sobriety of
the Chinese historians with the credulity of chroniclers in
most other nations, who in similar case would have drawn
up labored genealogies and made a wilderness of mythic
fancies about Fo-hi and his predecessors, do not seem to
be overstrained. ^These scholars were in fact ripened
fruits of the institution of official historiographers. Their
function was to study with care the national dy- The hb _
nastic annals, recorded and sealed up from public toriogra-
view by these officials age after age, and to com- phers>
pare them with other historical material, amply provided
by the national tastes, vases, inscriptions, 'astronomical
records, and oral traditions. They recognized as fully as
we do the distinction between legendary lore and authentic
record, and are as fully on their guard against supernatural-
ism as the critical European inquirer. The writers of the
great Chinese histories belonged to a family famous for

1 See Legge, Prolegomena, to the Shu, 106.

a The fft'tse, appendix to the Y-king, is now ascribed to a different hand from Confucius.
The Kt'a-yu, which recounts fables in his name, is not received as genuine history.

De Mailla, Pref., p. 25.

4 Crosier" s Prelim. Disc, to De Mailla, p. 34. Other similar instances in the Letters to
Frtret.

478 STRUCTURES.

many generations for their achievements in this difficult
function, a family whose reputation was a national trea-
sure. The father of Sse-ma-thsian, consigning to him on
his death-bed the task of continuing his great work, said :
" Our ancestors have been illustrious in historical func-
tions from the days of the third dynasty : study their writ-
ings." Like the great Italians, these high officials were at
once statesmen and scholars, wrote books and led armies.
The "Grand Historiographer" was a man of the world,
a magistrate, who had practical knowledge of the charac-
ters of men and of the events of the time ; and was edu-
cated in the closely criticised task of investigating the
truth without fear or favor. The record of the family just
mentioned was very honorable. Sse-ma-thsian was
deprived of his office and condemned to death for
taking the part of an officer defeated in battle,
against Emperor, court, and public ; but the sentence was
commuted, and he returned with greater devotion to his
studies, holding the office of literary chancellor till his
death. 1 Sse-ma-kwang, quick-witted enough when a boy
to save the life of a companion by breaking the vase in
which he was drowning, and in manhood sagacious enough
to suggest that an eclipse, turning out to be less than was
expected, was not a compliment offered by the sun to the
Emperor of China, but a sign of ignorance on the part of
the astronomers, was also remanded to private life for
opposing the imperial will. He too was reinstated and
covered with honors, which he in vain sought to escape.
His life was an ovation, his death a national grief; his
funeral was honored by the closing of the shops, by
kneeling of women and children around his bier, and by
prostrations before his picture. By a curious turn, his
honors were afterwards reversed, his tomb overturned, and
his writings burned ; but reinstatement at once followed,

1 Amyot ; Ma-touan-lin ; R^musat, Nouv. Mil. Asiat., II. 132-146.

HISTORY. 479

and his name was permanently inscribed in the temple of
Confucius as " Prince of Letters." l

Ma-touan-lin (thirteenth century) resigned office for the
sake of studies which resulted in his vast cyclopae- Ma-touan-
dia, of which it has been said that " one has but lin -
to choose his subject, he can study it in Ma-touan-lin." 2
From this work, as has been stated, the greater part of
European information concerning China down to very
recent times has been derived, not always with the proper
acknowledgment.

Ma-touan-lin called his work, " Profound Researches in
Ancient Monuments." And its sources demanded critical
studies that justified the title. The stancjard Chinese
histories are results of repeated revisals of the older works.
Sse-ma-thsian apparently had at his command, in the
treasures of the ancestral temple of the House of Tcheou,
every form of literary monument, except the modern
popular journal. 3 The literary resources of Ma-touan-lin
must have been almost unlimited.

The fact must be borne in mind that these men repre-
sent the spirit of Chinese civilization, the best Thdr
effects of a culture which made them quite as critical ca-
competent to detect signs of popular ignorance as pacity '
the literary critics of England or America. And when we
contrast this realistic culture with the inability of the
Hindus and the older Hebrews to distinguish fully between
fiction and fact, and with the inaptness of other ancient
nations to write pure history in accordance with nature, we
may be justified in the conclusion that the Chinese, above
all these nations except perhaps the Greek, have been gifted
with the " historic sense." They have clear consciousness
of an objective basis, independent of constructions by fancy,
and corresponding to the modern conception of scientific
law.

1 R^musat, II. 149-165. * Ibid., 170.

Plath, Wien. Ak. d. Wissensch., January, 1870.

480 STRUCTURES.

We have observed that this rationalistic spirit has not
Peculiar forbidden imagination to create its ideal pictures of
form of prehistoric times. Yet the sense of a real distinc-
ideaHzTtkm ^ lon between the naturally possible and impossible,
of early anc j the reference of old records to the test of pres-
ent experience in the laws of life, have prevailed in
China as nowhere else in the ancient world. The monu-
mental records of Egypt are distinctly historical ; but they
are intermixed with a minute mythology, the work of a
priesthood. The Assyrian exhibit more of the legendary
element, the more their riches are revealed. Neither
show any signs of the conscientious criticism displayed
by writings like the Sse-ki and the Tong-kien. The
Hebrew writers, from Genesis to Josephus, are uncon-
scious of any test of current traditions by constant natural
laws. And the same must be said of early Christian
literature, and of the whole development of the " Christian
consciousness " in relation to the life of Christ.

This superiority in historic perception is partially due to
the habit of referring every thing to concrete social and
public uses, uncontrolled by religious classes or institutions.

In the ideal picture given of the age of Fo-hi and his
The age of successors, we find no nearer approach to super-
Fo-hi and naturalism than the reference to a very early period
kings! -of what is properly the result of later growth. The
close reia- longevity of these patriarchs is so controlled by

tions with J

nature and good sense, as in no case to exceed very much the
use> natural span of life. Their achievements are not

wonder-working, but useful inventions, which reappear,
wearisomely enough, in every picture of the mythic cycles,
however remote and fanciful. 1 Even Fo-hi's all-sufficient
diagrams are a derivation of writing from natural forms.
The utilitarian instinct, keeping close to positive knowledge,
is lifted by the religion of patriarch alism into a force of

1 Mtm. cone, les Cfiinois, XIII., pp. 176-214.

HISTORY. 48 1

imagination capable of building with some freedom on
these fields of primitive life. What the Chinese throw
back into this period is what most conduces to well-being
and positive civility : they personify the main facts of this
kind under such names as Shin-nung (Spirit husbandman),
Tseih 1 (Grain), Se-eh (Writing), Hwang-te (Great Ruler).
Letters, husbandry, cultivation ; marriage, music, rites,
medicine ; weights and measures ; commerce and vehicles ;
the compass and silk manufacture ; historical bureaux, as-
tronomical studies, the cycle of sixty for measuring time,
and the worship of Shang-te, the Supreme Ruler, form a
picture of patriarchal forecast for the benefit of mankind.
In the order of development given to these useful arts, letters
and governmental organization precede agriculture and even
the use of weapons, which is the logical order of precedence
in the national mind. Sse-ma-kwang, however, true to his
clear sense, though beginning with Hwang-te, yet passes
directly on to Yao and Shun, without wasting time on such
minor questions as origin. Like Quetzalcoatl and Huayna-
Capac in American tradition, Hermes and Thoth in
Egyptian, Kadmus in Greek, Tubal-Cain in Hebrew, the
fabled progenitors of Chinese arts and sciences show
the form given to primitive patriarchalism by the loyalty
of the industrial nations to their own past. 2 The sober
lives of these races are reflected in this construction of early
history, as the unbridled imagination of more passionate
and dreamy ones is content only with solar and lunar
dynasties in gigantic play of gods and demigods with
the elements and forms of Nature.

Not less in contrast with the natural good sense of the

1 Tseih, in the Shi-king, is born of a shepherdess who treads on a "foot-print of God ;"
apparently an agricultural myth (III. B. H. i.) This ode is not regarded as belonging to the
so-called "correct class."

2 A precedent period of " solar myths ' ' is not here discernible ; though such an epoch may be
intimated for the "Turanian races "as a whole, by some of the Mongol and Finnish legends,
especially in the Kalevala (see Castr^n, Finnische Mythologie, pp. 52, 57, 274), or in the
Solar Deity of the Japanese. Burnouf. Congr. Internal, d. Orient., 1873).

STRUCTURES.

Chinese historians are the efforts of Christian mission-
contrasted aries to bring these old traditions into conformity

with Chris- ,1 .1 t r i T r

tian at- Wltn their own scriptures and system of beliefs.
tempts to Astonished at the evidences of an extended civili-

harmonize . . _,. .

the Bible zation in China, at a period close upon that which

tlie Bib ^ e describes as having destroyed the tribes
of the earth, and bound to reconcile Chinese certi-
tude with Bible infallibility, some of them threw aside the
Hebrew Scriptures for the Septuagint, where a different
mode of counting the ages of the Patriarchs enabled them
to carry back the deluge for some hundreds of years.
The Jesuit Riccioli went so far as to intercalate in the
Septuagint itself a space of five hundred years. The Fa-
thers were divided between accepting these devices and
rejecting Fo-hi and Chinese antiquity as anti-Biblical. 1
Some thought Zoroaster the founder of the Empire ;
others insisted that Ham diffused his "wicked doctrine"
there: but, says another, " as Ham and Zoroaster were the
same man, that makes no difference." "Dr. Paul," says
Navarre*te, " thought the idolatry of the three Equal Ones
(in Buddhism) was an emblem of the Blessed Trinity, which
he might as well let alone." 2 Another theory made the
Chinese kings emigrants from Babel, and even Hebrew
patriarchs, who had carried Noachic precepts with them, of
which, however, not a vestige could be found. Types of
the life of Christ were constructed in abundance. As late
as 1837, it was asserted in the "Annales de Philosophic
Chretienne" that the deluges of Noah and Yu were the
same, and that the " Five (primitive) Chinese Rulers " were
Adam and his family. 3 Dr. Speer says : " Which of the
solitary household saved in the ark emigrated to the Ho-
ang-ho, no inspired chronicle relates ; but evidently Fo-hi
is related to Noah, and Shin-nung is probably Shem" ! 4

1 De Mailla, I. 175; Mem. cone, les Chinois, XV. 261, XIII. 77.

a Churchill's Voyages. 3 Carre I. 352. * Oldest and Newest Empire, pp. 36, 37.

HISTORY. 483

Yet nothing 'can be more unlike the Hebrew and
Christian myths of man's original Eden, intimacy
with God, and fall, and of a ruined race restored and He-
by Incarnation, than the account of the original J^
condition of mankind given in the serious old Chi- veryun-
nese chronicles. 1 It foreshadows Darwin and mod- hke '
ern science, and is a curious commentary on the supposed
inability of the Chinese to conceive of progress.

The primitive teachers of mankind are shown in the
picture books as semi-brute shapes, and improve Anolder
in their human aspects as we follow down the Darwin-
series. 2 The first stages of the ascent are de- IS
scribed with much insight, as a change from roving to set-
tled life, learning to make huts, to produce fire, to cook
food, to worship and give thanks, to hold markets, and
converse by knotted cords ; to drop promiscuous sexual
relations and live in families. We have here mythic
license itself recognizing the slow laws of growth ; the
eternal necessity of conforming to conditions, and paying
the price of what is obtained ; the right of reason over
passion ; the indispensableness of obedience, mutual help,
and religious belief, as bases of social progress. 3

In the Hebrew patriarchal tradition, Adam gives names
to the creatures ; in the Chinese, Fo-hi teaches The Chi .
the art of writing. Life in Eden consists in tend- nese > He -
ing a garden planted by the Lord ; primitive life on Greek
the Hoang-ho, in the art of sowing seeds and grow- le g ends -
ing grains for public use. In the one legend, labor is a
penalty for sin ; in the other, a germ of civilization. In
the one, the rejected tiller of the ground kills his brother
herdsman, and is cursed ; in the other, agriculture is the
ground of social life. In the one, Abel, the transient (the

1 De Mailla, I. p. i. Chin. Refos., Feb. and Mar., 1842.

8 Compare the fine description in Juvenal (Sat. XV.) of the origin of society in instincts
of affection and mutual help.

484 STRUCTURES.

nomad), inherits the promise ; in the other, the fixed in-
habitant with his industry and social order. With the
Chinese, the Astronomical Tower is the oldest public
building ; with the Hebrew, the first effort of men at
mutual understanding and study of the heavens is toppled
down upon their heads, and they are scattered by a God
jealous of human knowledge. The glory of Abraham and
Lot is to wander about with troops of camels and asses ;
that of Fo-hi and the rest to redeem the wilderness for
permanent uses. The pith of the one tradition is in cove-
nants with the tribal god, in circumcision, in tests of obe-
dience to uncomprehended commands ; that of the other,
in intelligent invention, rational obedience, and social im-
provement. The one set of legends disparages surround-
ing races, and especially the settled tribes, and asserts
their inferiority to the chosen seed ; the other, with less
imagination, but -greater breadth, makes the glory of the
" hundred families " consist in absorbing other races into
their own development of natural resource. The one lays
its foundations in supernatural authority over human
thought and conduct ; the other, in the right of the human
to natural self-culture.

The happy Greeks begin with a golden age, life without
labor, disease* or grief, on the free bounties of the cosmos ;
followed first by a penalty for the gifts of fire and useful
knowledge, and then by the destruction of all human
blessings except hope. 1

In the Hebrew legend, there is an intenser ethical feel-
ing ; in the Greek, a more brilliant aesthetic interest : and
both are serious efforts to interpret the human conscious-
ness and the law of growth. But both fail of that sober
reliance on self-discipline, and that conformity to the
familiar facts of experience as significant of human good,
on which at last civilization must rest.

1 Hesiod's Prometheus and Pandora.

HISTORY. 485

It is entirely in accordance with these ethnic qualities
that Chinese authorities place the opening of au- Q enin Q{
thentic history no earlier than the eighth cen- genuine
tury B.C. This is the period at which Confucius (?) ^ghth
opens his " Spring and Autumn Classic," the oldest century
pure chronicle now extant, though the evidence is
strong that much older ones were extant in his day. 1
No authentic inscription dates earlier than the eighth
century. Positive records of eclipses are traceable no
further back. 2 Late research arrives at nothing beyond
approximate dates of the older dynasties. 3 But all this,
which is recognized by Chinese criticism also, does not
warrant our dismissing their careful compilations, based,
as they tell us, on official records of the States in early
times. Such a ground-work of historical com- Butan
positions cannot possibly be pure invention. We earlier
may doubt that historiographers were appointed W0 rkcer-
as far back as the Hia ; but that the office was tain -
of great antiquity, and preservation of comparatively
faithful records probable, there seems no reason for de-
nying in face of all the documents of the nation. 3 Nor
can they have been lost to the great historians of the
Han and Soung. Even after the fires of T'sin a single
century sufficed to show Prince Ho-kien in possession of
several thousand volumes, and the lists of the Han cover
every department of study with works that had survived
the barbarian edict. Historical researches are believed to
have been greatly stimulated by the materials brought
together with immense industry during the period which
succeeded the persecution of letters.

1 Tso-chuen ( Commentary on tJie Tchun-tsieu).

* See Plath, Bay. Ak., June, 1867, p. 13 ; Chalmers, in Legge ; Biot, Jour. d. Savans,
April, 1840. For two thousand years before Confucius, there are but two recorded eclipses :
one of which, at best, is uncertain ; the other (Ski-king, II., iv. ix.) could not have been visible
in China.

8 The earliest chapters of the Shu-king mention written authorities. The Li-ki describes
the duties of these officials ; the Tcheou-li mentions annalists of the States and of the interior.
De Mailla gives authorities for the antiquity of historical bureaus.

486 STRUCTURES.

In fine, the assured and sober tone, as well as the great
detail of the historians, persuade us that their work cannot
but be founded on such documents as they claim to have
used. What was thought of the nature of these sources
may be illustrated by a conversation recorded of Tai-tsung.
To his request to be allowed to see what the Board of
History had set down about his government, the officer
replied :

" No emperor has ever to this day been permitted to do that."
"Would you write it down, if I did wrong?" "Prince, I should be
filled with pain ; but could I, with such a function as mine, dare be
false ? Nay, more ; this very conversation will itself be put, in full,
into the Annals." l

The incessant critical study of his own literature shows
Historical that the conscience of the Chinese lay specially
of the 16 "' " m hi historical sense. His pride in the control
Chinese, of royal caprice by official recorders, and in the
annals of the State, as seal of its continuity, was so great
that it goes far towards guaranteeing fidelity in the record.
The " Twenty-four Dynastic Histories," constructed on a
uniform model, and preserved with care, prove the extent
of the materials and a thorough system in the collection
and use of them. Judging from Wylie's analysis of their
contents, we should suppose they aimed at something like
a photograph of the empire in all departments, political,
scientific, literary, biographical, yet as registers, rather
than constructed histories. Most of them are known to
have existed more than a thousand years ago, in a single
collection, and two have been added during the present
dynasty. In three thousand books they cover the whole
history of China, and though doubtless of unequal value,
are subject to the constant revision of fresh scholars. 2

1 De Mailla, Pref.^p. v.

2 Wylie's Notes; Schott's Beschr. d. Ch, Lit.; Kauffer (Die Chin, vor Abrahants
Zeit, pp. 55-58), who endeavors to prove the certitude of old Chinese history.

HISTORY. 487

It has been suggested at the opening of this chapter that,
while what a people has actually done will hardly THE SHU-
get correctly recorded, the substance of its doing t ? cal
will inevitably appear in the quality of its literature, data.
We have seen that, however free of the miraculous element
the great Chinese histories may be, the politico-industrial
ideal itself gave a mythical stamp to certain portions of the
sober records. Yet their testimony is as distinct as possible
as to the qualities of character which went to the making
of Chinese history. And down to the Tcheou period at
least, the value of the Shu-king, as now accessible to our
study, consists substantially in this fact.

Whether this work be, as Cuvier called it, " a moral and
political romance," or, as Cibot asserted, " the oldest and
most remarkable monument of antiquity that we possess,"
or whether the truth lies between these two judgments, it
seems plain that its object is to provide an ethico-political
norm 1 for educational purposes rather than to present a
continuous history. It has no chronology. It is a collec-
tion of old records, registers, maxims, edicts, royal and
ministerial utterances, all tending to illustrate the duties
of ruler and ruled.

Records as late as the sixth century indorsed the state-
ment of Confucius that he derived it from ancient docu-
ments, inventing nothing. The first reference of it to him
is four hundred years after his death. Its preface is no
longer regarded as the work of Confucius ; and it is still
open whether he did more than further its transmission
from earlier times. 2

Faber, on the other hand, rinding no earlier reference to

1 It is so entitled by the Manchus. Observe, too, the titles of the chapters : " Canon of
Shun," "Admonition of Kaou," "Great Edict," "Counsels of Yu." The word Sku-
king means the Book of Records.

1 This is Pan-kou's opinion, who seems to trace it back to the cosmos itself, and refers to
Confucius merely the re-editing, as in the case of the Y'king. (Pauthier in Journ. Asiat.^
September and October, 1867.)

488 STRUCTURES.

it than by the writers of the Han, doubts if it was based on
ancient annals at all. 1 Julien claimed that the diversities of
style in the different fragments were the strongest proof of
antiquity. Legge draws a similar conclusion from various
matters of detail. 2 The work itself appeals to earlier rec-
ords, opening with : " They who have studied antiquity
say." Plath maintains the validity of the whole, finding
its substance in Sse-ma-thsian.

The severest negative criticism comes from native schol-
ars. Their keenness and candor has anticipated Western
criticism, and thoroughly tested every chapter, with much
damage to the reputation of many of them. 3 Farther criti-
cism has swept away the authority of Gan-kwo's older
authorized text (Han), and he has acquired the title of
" the false Kung." Nevertheless, Dr. Legge sustains it, as
supported by the oldest authorities. He holds the narra-
tive to be in the main genuine, with the exception of the
prominence given to Yao and Shun in the earliest chapters,
probably by additions made in the Tcheou ; and believes
the work to be substantially the same as that known to
Confucius and his school.

On the whole testimony, the Shu-king seems to repre-
sent a body of traditions based on ancient records,

Its basis *

in ancient though not by any means to be a verbal transcript
of these. The mythology that has grown up around
the " Bamboo Chronicle" shows how differently the Shu-king
would have fared had it not been kept to the old simplicity
by a regard for historic truth. In their original form, the
" Bamboo Books " enable us to control the earlier legends
of the Shu itself. They modes*tly detail the national growth
from the simplest beginnings, and allow far less pretension
to the monarchy of Yao and Shun than the Shu-king ; the
Shu bears many marks of belonging to a period of histori-
cal study. The references in Confucius and Mencius con-

1 Lehre d. Confuc. 2 Prolegomena, p. 50. 3 Legge, pp. 35-39.

HISTORY. 489

firm its main outlines. 1 Its oldest names have no mythical
meanings, like Adam, Abel, Abraham, but are apparently
historical The possibility of written records at a very
early period is shown by the very nature and growth of the
written signs.

In regard to the main details of the earliest chapters, the
best Chinese authors agree. They accept the ar- Thefirst
rangement of the people by Yao according to the chapters of

, , the Shu.

demands of agriculture, and with reference to the
seasons ; the appointment of Shun on the ground of virtues
proved by heavy family trials ; Shun's division of the State
into twelve provinces, and his administration by Boards,
tours of inspection, and the advancement of the best men ;
the labors of Yu in leading off the waters of devastating
floods ; and the tributes of vassal chiefs to a central ruler.
The firm belief in these persons and events is of course no
evidence of their reality, but its psychological testimony is
none the less effective. The long speeches of kings and
councillors may well be due to later times, 2 while resting
on ancient traditions and ideals of conduct. The famous
tribute roll of Yu, 3 in which almost every product known
to later China is entered, has been favorably viewed by
most critics ; 4 though Legge regards it as a romance
transmitted from the Shang to the Tcheou. The traditions
of Yu's labors, read in the sober statements of the Shu-king,
have nothing inherently improbable about them. We could
not expect positive evidences of very early events in China,
since the older literary records were on bamboo, not on

1 See especially Lun-yu, VIII. 20, 21 ; XIV. 22 ; XX. i ; Menc. III. Pt. 11. ix. ; IV. Pt.
i. ii. ; V. Pt. i. iii. 9 ; VII. Pt n. xxxviii. Mencius definitely carries back the monarchy to
2300 B.C.

2 Biot, Journ. At., February, 1846. s Shu-king^ Pt. III. B. i.

4 Biot, ut ante, Bunsen, whose love of high figures assigns the Chinese fifteen to twenty
thousand years of primitive history, considers the Yu-kung to be "as truly a contemporary
document as the capitularies of Charlemagne." (Egypfs Place, &c., V. s. 287, Germ. ed.)
Plath has a similar view of the tribute andthe labors of Yu ; and Re"musat thought the former
an " inestimable record of the geography of the Empire 2300 years B.C." (Nouv. Mel. As., II.
283.)

4QO STRUCTURES.

stone. Antique vases throw little or no light on such
questions, except as indicating, in case the opinion of their
antiquity is correct, that the arts of writing and registering
were, even before the Tcheou dynasty, in full use. 1 The
" Nine Vases," engraved by Yu to transmit maps of the prov-
inces, were believed in later times to have been the safe-
guard of the nation, but lost in the river Sse. 2 Finally,
the much-discussed " Inscription of Yu," supposed to have
lain unnoticed on the top of a mountain for three thousand
years, and then to have been copied over and over again,
has certainly no claim to great antiquity. 3

These various opinions illustrate the uncertainty that
rests on the origin and age of the early chapters of the
Shu. While their naturalism is in favor of their substantial
truth, they show unmistakable signs of conformity with
later ideals.

Even if we allow these chapters the respect due to a
chiefvaiue ^ asls ^ ^ records, dating many centuries before
is psycho- Christianity, their chief value is that of recording
poHtico- a P ro f oun d elements of national faith. The Shu-king
ethical is by no means strictly historical, but ethico-politi-
cal : its purpose is to show by examples that the
duties of princes to the people, rightly fulfilled, bring bless-
ings from Heaven, and opposite conduct public misery and
dynastic ruin. The lesson is enforced by wise kings and
worthy ministers, in exhortations and warnings of the high-
est ethical quality, as well as by tales like the " Metal-bound
Coffer," which illustrates nobility in a ruler by his desire
to die in place of a brother ; 4 and the " Hounds of Leu,"
which teaches the duty of a prince to refuse tributes that
merely stimulate his love of pleasure. 5 The gaps in the
narrative show that no continuous account was aimed at

1 Pauthier, La Chine, I. 201-205. * Plath, February, 1867.

8 Legge, Proleg., p. 70. ' Shu-king, Pt. V. B. vi.

8 Ibid., Pt. V. B. v.

HISTORY. 491

The Shu is not the work of a historian nor of a poet. It
is not allegorical. It is preaching from history.

The deliverance of the State from debauched dynasties
by the heroism of T'ang and Woo, their recognitions of
duty, their self-criticism on account of the evils of civil war,
their appeals to the people in defence of the right of rebel-
lion, convey the lesson that this last resort of a people must
not be avoided when the offences of rulers are rank.

Mingled with humility and self-watchfulness, as earnest
as the energy of these model revolutionists, are exhorta-
tions to be generous amidst natural penalties ; to " add the
statesrnanly head to the vigorous hand ; " to remember that
" Heaven helps only the good, and that all good acts alike
contribute to good government, all evil ones to disorder ; "
" to give heed to the beginning by thinking of the end ; "
" to follow the mean, not assuming to be wise, nor throwing
the old statutes into confusion." }

" Reverence " is constantly urged in the sense of a tender
consideration for the ancient paths as leading to peace and
good will ; for the nicely balanced order of great social
relations ; and for the people's voice and good. " I will
examine my conduct," says T'ang, " in accordance with the
mind of God." 2

Every reign must illustrate the law that government de-
pends on the choice of the best and wisest for office, and on
studying to respect and imitate them. Thus is " All-wise
and All-seeing Heaven taken as pattern," 3 and blessings,
not penalties, descend.

The religion of the Shu is in three things : faith in
righteousness, in the people, in Heaven. A con- Re ii g i on
crete virtue : no abstract creed, no class nor caste ftheshu.
interferes from without with the movement of the political
order ; celestial wisdom is embodied in institutions, includ-
ing official rites as their safeguard and filial bond ; the true

1 Shu-king, Pt. V. B. xvn. Ibid., Pt. IV. B. in. Ibid, Pt. II. B. vni.

4Q2 STRUCTURES.

prince comes, by the divine appointment of character, to
enthrone righteousness ; the overthrow of an evil dynasty
is the justice of a divine order, whose indications are ever
at hand, shown indeed by divination to the wise, though
the interpretation must rest with human judgment, rightly
weighing the facts. 1

The student of the Shu is supposed to be capable of
reading and taking to heart any amount of didactics on
these few and simple, yet on the whole very noble, strings.
Now and then an elaborate detail of national resources, like
the " Tribute of Yu ; " or an ideal construction, like the
" Great Plan " of human nature, and the ends of govern-
ment ; or the exposition of an official system like the Tcheou,
bears witness to the manifold material to which this polit-
ical philosophy could make appeal. Every thing indicates
what need was felt of having conduct prearranged down to
details to satisfy the love of obedience and steadfast orderly
ways.

The " Great Plan " 2 sums up the five true ends of
living, as long life, riches, health of body and serenity .of
mind, love of virtue, and a happy death ; and the Six Evils,
as misfortune, short life, sickness, sorrow, poverty, wicked-
ness, and weakness : a list in which there must be shades
of distinction not conveyed in the translation. All this is
an early effort at philosophy, not unlike the old Vedic and
Greek efforts in the same kind.

At the base of the whole Shu-king is the characteristi-
Basisinthe cally Chinese faith in an inherent moral sense in
universal a ]j men> whose sanctions are not found in fears of
sense. hell nor hopes of heaven, and whose acknowledged
origin in the " nature of things " leaves no room for an
arbitrary divine will. In proof of its distinctness, we may

1 Ibid., Pt. V. B. iv. Later critics call divination the superstition of the Shang ; but
scarcely any have repudiated it (Legge, note, p. 338).

2 Shu-kiug, Pt. V. B. iv.

HISTORY. 493

note that concubinage is fully recognized as a constant
cause of public disorder, and together with intemperance as
at the root of all great dynastic calamities. 1

As we come down to the " Age of the Warring States,"
which ended in the destruction of feudalism, and character-
the unity of the empire under the T'sin, a far greater ^7^
distinctness of details indicates that we are on solid of histori-
historical ground. The object of narrative seems ^ e nar
here to be almost wholly biographical. The Sse-ki The civil
chapters are a gallery of war portraits, 2 and the v
accounts which have been drawn up from a host of author-
ities 3 by the German Orientalists, Plath and Pfitzmaier,
give minute details of internecine warfare between the
kingdoms. The total want of significance for us in Chinese
names, and the monotony of the narrative, make the story
of these wars very dismal reading ; and the effect is aggra-
vated by its painful incongruity with the lofty teachings of
the Shu-king. Yet it is no worse than the constant satire
on the Christian beatitudes presented in the military history
of Christendom. We are constantly reminded of Milton's
abstract of the old chronicles of the Saxon Heptarchy, and
of the strifes of the Hebrew tribes in the time of the
Judges.

In the compilation of the Tchun-tsieu, covering the period
from J22 B.C. to his own days, Confucius (if he is THB

TCHUN-

the author) must have used documents nearly, if not TSIHU.
quite, contemporary. Our expectations are height- ^ s d c r h g a ' r "
ened by his choice of this work as the one by which acter.
he would be judged, 4 and by the proverb that, " when

1 Further account of the Shu-king will be found in the chapters on Government and Relig-
ion. We consider it in this place only as illustrating the Chinese manner of conceiving history.

J Plath, Feb. 1870, p. 224.

8 Especially from the Sse-ki and the I-sse, in which works Plath finds " a clearer idea of
the period than can be formed of many epochs of Western history."

Menc., III., ii., ix.

494 STRUCTURES.

Confucius wrote the Tchun-tsieu, the rainbow turned to
pearls." This high-flown sentence really expresses the
general reputation of the work. After this, we are hardly
prepared to find such a string of meagre annals, almost
without comment on their tiresome and often trivial data,
covering only the history of the State of Loo and its
relations with other States. Most of the petty kingdoms,
we are told, were provided with similar chronicles. No
one could have invented this heap of items. Nor does it
seem worth any one's while to have altered the official
documents. But Dr. Legge adds to our discomfort by
char es cnar g m g Confucius with dishonesty from moral
against cowardice, his versions of the crimes of high pub-
confucms. jj c p ersona g es being often contradicted by the
commentary of Tso. It is to be observed on the other
hand that Tso himself has a very deep respect for his
author. Plath argues that some of these instances are
susceptible of very different explanations from those of
Legge. 1 If " the Master " had really shown such a spirit
of compromise from fear of power, Mencius, the boldest
of reformers, could hardly have used language like this :
" Confucius saw the falling away of principles, the spread
of perverse speaking, and oppressive deeds. He completed
the ' Spring and Autumn,' and rebellious ministers and
wicked sons were struck with terror." The Tso-chuen
labors to show that the apparent glosses in question have
well understood meanings, conveying the moral lessons of
the facts more powerfully than direct denunciation. 2

We have already referred to the absence of philosophical
was he its form in this singular record, which most resembles
author? an almanac, and to the pettiness of its details. It
is not strange that its authenticity has been denied by some
native critics, on the ground that it really contains nothing

1 Leben d. Confuc., pp. 75-78.

a Plath, p. 78 ; from the Tso-ckuen.

HISTORY. 495

that should " make villains afraid." l Yet, as early as the
Han, five schools were discussing its meaning. Confucius,
we may suggest in explanation, comprehended the taste of
his countrymen for embodied facts, for narrative in the
most concrete form, manipulated in a moral interest. Not
less competent was the national mind to interpret those
familiar arts of treatment by which the object was pursued.
Our best sinologists can as yet hardly have fathomed the
subtleties of a literary rapport to which centuries were
busy in bringing a homogeneous people.

The method and quality of Chinese historical composi-
tion have now been sufficiently treated. They point HOW the
to the way in which these people "make history," in ^"^is-
a deeper than literary sense. Their permanent tory."
character, as thus recorded, is a result of apparent inward
contrasts, whose working will best be seen in a short
review of their political history since the downfall of the
Tcheou.

The T'sin conquest, and the conduct of its leader, are
apparently the main pivot on which Chinese history T ^ n Chi .
turns. They were not, however, the thorough re- hwmg-ti's

.... , root in the

action on the national life that we might at first demands
suppose them. They depended, like all seeming ofhis age-
intrusions of new elements, on forces long at work, and
simply show what existing social conditions were capable
of effecting. Evolution is the law of nations, as of reli-
gions ; and Nature abhors gaps and miracles.

In T'sin Chi-hwang-ti the tendencies which we have traced
through all the earlier periods came to inevitable collision
and struggle for supremacy, resulting in a reconstruction
wholly in accord with the inner life of the race. Hence his
twofold aspect. He is a barbarian ; fruit 6f those fearful
civil wars which had shown the intense demand for con-

1 Legge's Prolegomena; App. to ch. i.

496 STRUCTURES.

solidation of petty tribes ; heir to the plans of conquest
already pursued by his father to a point where retreat was
impossible, and advance meant imperial power. Yet he
was not, like Genghis or Tamerlane, made for hurling
hordes of nomads upon surrounding States. China afforded
no field for such a function. He embodied the solution
which its civilization required. It was at that stage in
national development at which Greece broke in pieces and
went down. China showed in this semi-barbarian the
constructive ability to pass through it into the unity of a
great empire. What individual European States did in
passing from feudal atomism to monarchical institutions
was here accomplished on a continental scale. The result
proved that the native aptitudes for mutual aid and social
order, for loyalty and industry, were none the less real for
the persistent civil strife which seemed to deny their exist-
ence. It is one of the most striking facts in Chinese
history, that great and destructive wars go on in this
colossal empire without greatly deranging the invincible
forces of industry. 1 In early times, when China was much
smaller than at present, the phenomenon is still more im-
pressive. Even in these turmoils the literary class appear
to have had sufficient influence to obstruct that military
policy which the times required. The force of their criti-
cism, sustained by the mass of literary precedents, may be
measured by the cruelties of Chi-hwang-ti. The issue of
this collision of deep-rooted elements was the triumph
of a national democratic tendency which had been least
regarded. But this was not at first apparent, nor even
designed.

Tching-wang became chief of T'sin, after his father had

His er mastered the imperial domains of the House of

sonaihis- Tcheou. He is said to have entered on the study

of his resources and functions while but a boy, with

1 Brine (History of the Tailing Rebellion, p. 360) says this most threatening and destruc-
tive war did not disturb the progress of commerce and trade.

HISTORY. 497

a force of genius that was admirable. 1 Possessed by the
idea of nationality, he threw up walls to protect the bor-
ders, and engaged in other plans of like magnitude, such
as building great highways and numerous palaces ; all of
which were pursued without regard to their inroad on the
comforts and resources of the people. Such were his ex-
actions that " no one dared to use his own grain." His
freaks of passion made it dangerous to oppose his will, and
he resorted to treacheries and bribes. These are the vices
of the Napoleons and Alexanders, to whom it is given to
effect great social changes by military power. The deadly
strife he was engaged in permitted no quarter to enemies,
and no mercy to conspirators. Remonstrance and protest
are official traditions in China, and Tching-wang did not
escape them. Ming-tsao told him his misdeeds, and met
his rage by calmly reminding him that it is not the way
of a great sovereign to seize an empire and then destroy
it. 2 Tching-wang was subdued for a time, and promised
amendment.

A kind of insanity, caught in part from the times, set
him upon searching out local deities and supernatural gifts,
putting up monuments from frivolous motives in secluded
places, sending shiploads of young persons to some imag-
ined isle beyond sea in return for being endowed with
the gift of escaping death, all of whom perished. He is
reported to have bestowed a fief on a tree that sheltered
him, and stripped a mountain of its forests in revenge for
a storm, and put to death all the people of a district be-
cause a star had fallen there, supposed to foretell his ruin.
These may be calumnies, but there can be no doubt of his
having put to death hundreds of the literati, burned the
classical books, and ordered the burial of great numbers of
living workmen in the mausoleum built for his final sleep.

1 Tongkien, De Mailla, II., 37- * Tongkicn, II., 377, 378.

STRUCTURES.

Confucian historians ascribe these barbarities to the savage
habits of the T'sin, exceptional among Chinese States.

On the other hand, his equalizing and consolidating work
His con- nas ^^ady been described as of the most con-
flict with structive character.* His persecution of the Con-
fucians"" fucians was based distinctly on charges that their
natural. incessant opposition to his edicts made the people
disorderly, and that they sacrificed the demands of the age
to idolatry of the past. The conflict was between the right
of discussion always popular in China, the loyalty of edu-
cated men to an ideal past, arid the humane traditions of
Confucius, on the one hand, and, on the other, the new
idea of military reconstruction embodied in the ambition
of a dictator, a temporary evil that was also a condition of
national unity. The precepts of the teachers could not
avail in this day of the sword. The best way for them
to* serve the future was to die for their faith. This they
seem to have done ; the statement, scarcely credible any-
where but in China, being that not one of the four hundred
and sixty martyrs abjured his creed.

The best proof of the charges against Chi-hwang-ti is
the historical necessity of the times. Only such a nature
as his could have taken the first step towards that compul-
sory unity made necessary by ages of social misery and strife
for power. A new departure must be taken ; no backward
look was endurable. His intense self-confidence, his mor-
bid hatred of the past and contempt for its sacred tradi-
tions are in the order of things ; and in excepting from
the doom of destruction books on agriculture, medicine,
and divination, he showed himself still under the influence
of some of the strongest national tendencies. The burn-
ing of the books was the natural way of recommencing
Chinese history with himself. Berosus says of Nabonassar
that he destroyed all astronomical records in order that ex-
act chronology might begin at his reign. It is not specially

HISTORY. 499

Chinese to believe that human society can be remade at a
touch. The loss to Chinese letters was nothing in com-
parison with that inflicted on the Greek by those Chris-
tians who demolished the temple of Serapis in Egypt. 1 The
French revolutionists, in 1793, abolished the literary socie-
ties supported by the State, and put to death their leading
members. Two years afterwards these societies were re-
vived, and formed the basis of an Institute of Arts and
Sciences. 2

Tching-wang displayed an overweening sense of personal
importance, which but a few years were needed to Hisfunc
refute. His own function was transitional. " He tion tran-
thought his own wisdom effaced that of Yao and s
Shun. He took the name Chi-hwang-ti (First Sovereign
Ruler), and ordered that his successors should be called
Hvvang-ti II. and III. ; inventing new terms to describe his
own acts." 3 But his dynasty scarcely survived him. His
reign suggested the great demand, but did not fulfil it. Re-
bellion broke out in all quarters ; for if the people could
not rest till they were governed by one man, still less could
they rest till they were governed well. The old .strife for
mastery took a new form. The movements were popular,
not political ; not a war of States, but uprisings Overthrow
against oppression. Rebel chiefs rose from the T'sin!
masses ; day-laborers and peasants, at the head of multi-
tudes armed with clubs, rakes, and poles, ill-fitted, as was
soon evident, " to match the barbed lances of T'sin." But
T'sin fell ; and then the rebel chieftain of highest repute
was driven to despair by the prowess of a peasant Lui-
pang who became master of China under the title of
the Prince of Han. 4 He forbade his followers to commit
excesses, and abolished oppressions.

1 See Me'nard, Polyth. Hellenique, pp. 82-86.

3 Mdsnard, Hist, de PA end. Franc., p. 183. Tongk. II. 393, 394.

* Pfitzmaier Wien Akad., 1859.

5OO STRUCTURES.

The old causes worked on. The Han were heirs, not to
slow a united State, but to factions within and Tar-
movement t ar ra ids' from without. Not for four hundred and
mentsof fifty years were Southern and Western China
unity. really incorporated into the empire. A great nu-
cleus for unity had been formed ; but local autonomy was
The Han. also a rooted tradition, and was slow to be satisfied :
so secular are all great changes in this immense empire,
which is of itself hardly less than a race. Neither the
virtues of Wan~ti (180-157 B.C.), the patronage of letters
and the revival of the libraries ; nor the military genius of
Wu-ti and his long struggle with the Tartars ; nor all the
glories of the Han, such as the invention of paper and ink,
and the emancipation of slaves, prevented the division
of the empire into " Three Kingdoms," warring for a cen-
tury (A.D. 168-265). The story is told in the San-koue-
tchi, a historic romance in Homeric style, most popular to
this day, because these national traditions have never been
weakened by intrusive faiths or races. 1

Scarcely was this strife ended by the accession of the T'sin,
when the Tartars separated Northern from South-
ized under em China, forming no less than sixteen indepen-
the T'ang. fo n g tates w ithin the former; and the imperial
throne was transferred to Nanking. Two or three centu-
ries later, the earlier T'ang monarchs saw the completion
of that unity which had been slowly evolving for nearly
a thousand years. The Tartars excluded, Tai-tsung estab-
lished the educational system that now rules the empire
arid holds it fast together* But the later T'ang were de-
generate, and the Tartar again divided North and South.
To Southern China alone belonged the Augustan age of
the Sung II. (960-1260), the great epoch of printing, spec-
ulative philosophy and the later histories ; and the Mongols,

1 This romance, which gives the story of the great Yellow-Bonnet Rebellion of the second
century, has been translated by Theo. Pavie.

HISTORY. 5OI

already at home in the North, followed this famous dynasty
with a foreign regime. Now for a time were real- The Mon-
ized the grandest dreams of national unity as well JJjJf,,* 1 "
as glory. From this time forward there is in every nation,
sense a Chinese nation. In a single century, popular pat-
riotism substituted a native dynasty under the proud title
of the Ming (splendor) ; opened by a deliverer, who, sprung
from the laboring class and the Buddhist heresy, justified
his origin by announcing that the glory of a prince

... . The Ming.

was not in having sumptuous marbles, but in rul-
ing a happy people, by great extension of the power and
dignity of China, and by a code famous for its humanity
and wisdom. Yet rebellion was still a constant of the
national life. The Ming were divided. 1 The sons of the
founder were in perpetual feud. But Peking became
the fixed metropolis, and the national code now in use
was compiled. China opened its foreign intercourse in a
style of condescension, betokening assurance of sovereign
claims. Twenty-one histories were gathered up from as
many dynastic annals into her archives. Great libraries
and hosts of commentators concentrated the literature of
the past, that nothing which had helped to form the nation
should be forgotten. Not less worthy of record was the
guidance of the State for a regency of nearly twenty criti-
cal years by female hands.

It is worthy of notice that, from the completion of na-
tional union in the age of the Han, the exercise Adminis-
of administrative powers by women has been a ^^
marked feature of Chinese government. In two china,
instances of that period the Empress Dowager governed
with great energy, if not with womanly virtues ; and this,
although an old law pronounced women incapable of ruling.
The Tartar line of Wei (northern China, sixth century) was
governed by a woman, who led armies in the field. At

1 See China Review^ September and October, 1872.

502 f STRUCTURES.

various periods of the Tang and Sung, the State was di-
rected by rulers in the harem. The title of empress has
been borne, once at least, for a long series of years. 1 The
chroniclers do not speak favorably of feminine managers of
State : it is not to be expected that they should. It has
been more fashionable, in China and elsewhere, to lay
public demoralization at the doors of the sex than public
blessings. The Ming was equally under female influence
in the appointment of officials and the direction of its
policy. In recent times the imperial authority has been
exercised by two women, whose- support has greatly aided
Prince Kung in the liberal foreign policy which he has
been engaged in inaugurating.

The present line (Tsing) has maintained nationality
through continued collisions of central and local

The earlier

Manchu interests. The Chinese were conquered less by
emperors. f ore jg n arms t ^ an ^y intestine strife. Introduced
by the native feuds, obtaining mastery of the Southern
provinces by a barbarous war, and contending with the
mischiefs arising from bad administration and their own
ignorance of many of the requirements of an old and com-
plex civilization, the Manchus nevertheless found materials
for organizing the best imperial government ever effected
in the country. The transportation of the whole coast
population of a department into the interior as a protective
measure against piracy, though of doubtful policy and speed-
ily retraced, showed great executive power in a line just
seated on the throne of an immense nation. The division
of offices between the two races, and a generally wise treat-
ment of old customs and titles, with systematic civil admin-
istration rapidly consolidated the State. The earlier Tsing

1 Chow dynasty, seventh century ; see Mayers, Chin. Manual, p. 257. Women have
governed in Japan more frequently than in almost any other State, and the Annals abound
in allusions to conspicuous talents and virtues shown by many of them in public functions.
Prejudices of the Pauline sort do not seem to have reached the " Empire of the Rising
Sun."

HISTORY. 503

rulers were men of high abilities and virtues, and com-
petent to any constructive achievement. Yet not Theo i d
an hour of this foreign rule has been free from internal
local disturbances, which would have been the ruin ^
of any empire of less cohesive power. Ming re- contimie -
volts in the south ; pirates infesting the coast, and outlaws
the provinces ; Mohammedan and Tartar rebellions ; com-
motions on the accession of the profligate Kia-king at the
close of the last century, till the palace was assaulted by
armed bands, transmitted a coil of domestic troubles to
the thirty years' reign of Tao-kwang, whose solution de-
manded all that was claimed in his lofty title of the " Light
of Reason." To these were now added a prodigious in-
crease of secret societies, 1 the opium war with England,
and private afflictions which reduced the ill-starred Di.^^
monarch to despair. An edict, announcing in reigns of
tender terms the death of a beloved wife who had anTnTe^
shared the whole of his troubled reign, was speedily fung>
followed by the proclamation of his own. His burden of a
bankrupt and disorganized empire hopelessly divided on
questions of foreign policy, with renewed wars and revolts,
and above all the desolating Tai-ping rebellion, fell (1852)
on the shoulders of Hien-fung ("Complete Abundance"),
who, spite of his title, ended life in forced exile in less
than ten years ; and the succession of a child fitly sym-
bolized the impotence of imperial will to deal with these
elements of dissolution.

At this juncture, when the death of the Empire was con-
fidently predicted by European writers and states- Recovery
men, arose a new policy embodied in an unfore- p"f n e * e
seen personal force, and testifying to the remedial Kun g .
resources of the national life. A regency, hostile to every

1 For an account of these secret associations, on which the Tai-ping leaders drew for their
most efficient resources, see Macfarlane, Chin Revolution, p. 108; De Mas, La Chine, I.
159, 160 ; Ckin. Repos., February, 1845. Callery and Ivan say that " whenever three people
are together 'the Triad' is among them."

5O4 STRUCTURES.

concession in dealing with foreign States, was overthrown
by a combination of three members of the imperial family,
the widow of Hien-fung, his favorite queen (women of
political tastes and capacities), and his brother, Prince
Ktmg. If the sagacity of this statesman shall be success-
ful in directing the present critical transition, it will be
owing in no small degree to the firm and liberal conduct
of the two queens. Left by Hien-fung on his flight from
Pe-king, and appointed to treat with the allies, Kung had
the address to avail himself of the indignation of the em-
presses at being abandoned by the weak sovereign, and to
secure their aid in the coup cTttat which changed the face
of public affairs. 1 He put the customs under European
direction, appointed regular official fees, protected religious
freedom, and, though assailed by a powerful reaction under
lead of the famous general San-ko-lin-sin, set the boy prince
(Tong-che) on reforming his government, and conducting
affairs with clemency and wisdom. How the death of San-
ko-lin-sin, the drought, and the disputes about Hien-fung's
funeral rites became turning points of political change
cannot here be specified. Kung's management of foreign
affairs has shown no little dignity, especially in his opposi-
tion to European aid in the Tai-ping war, and in preparing
China to accept those inevitable changes in her relations,
which, if too violently carried out, would have destroyed
her. He has proved not only his own genius, but the force
of unity at the disposal of the Empire in times of peril.

The rebellions and secret associations which continually
Chinese assa ^ tne State, and produce great destruction of
rebellions life and property, 2 never aim at national disunion.
ftdissoi!r The Tai -P m g princes sought to expel the foreign
tionofthe dynasty, but not to abolish imperialism. The title
of the chief was imperial, and he assumed all the

1 Rev. des Deux Mondes, August i, 1870.

3 See SacharofFs startling account of the fluctuation in population from this cause.
Arb. d. R^^ss. Gesandsch. II.

HISTORY. 5O5

dignities of Chinese sovereignty over the world. The
whole network of carbonarism that covers the southern
provinces, Triads, White Lilies, Yellow-Bonnets, Pure
Tea and Solar Sects, assumes the unity of the State. 1
The organic vigor of this instinct renders feasible an ex-
treme license of revolt. The Yellow-Bonnet slogan in
the second century is significant : " The Gray Heaven is
dead, the Yellow Heaven succeeds, a new (dynastic) cycle
shall be the joy of the world."

The persistence of these vital antinomies in Chinese
political history, neither overcoming the other, but
thriving by mutual reactions, is of great interest,
Not only does the Yellow Race " make history," tendencies
as they make all thought, by the mean between ^f^
contrary forces ; not only does this dualism of Chi- state.
nese nature the two-fold diagram of Fo-hi, the continuous
and the broken line, the Yang and Yin organize itself in
government, literature, and life; a larger generalization
is to be suggested. A centripetal force of nationality
apparent throughout a history of three thousand years,
an instinct of solidarity as powerful to resist all atomizing
tendencies as it is powerless to destroy them, is a marvel-
lous witness to the strength of those qualities that Forceof
constitute race. In comparison with this strength "
of race, special institutions and customs are trivial, its practical
and may be exhausted by strife, while the great le
reserved force that has produced them shall stand without
change of curve or angle in its immortal form. These are
the qualities that explain history ; its philosophy is in their
common laws. To them a thousand years are as a day ;
'tis the same sun is shining at even and morn ; the germ
of the end is in the beginning. We can read our living
Germany in Tacitus ; our France in Caesar ; the Feudal
System, the Modern Codes, in Roman Jurists of the Em-

1 Macfarlane and De Mas.

506 STRUCTURES.

pire; Greeks, Persians, Hindus, in the Aryan Rigveda ;
the actual Chinese Empire, in the classic Shi and Shu.
The lords that descend in blood and bone are stronger
than the masters who build and destroy from age to age.
They are deeper than governments, and transform faiths
into their image. They are the meaning of titles and
names, political and religious. Their secret strength must
be respected in all efforts to introduce influences from
abroad. For their apparent contradictions are parts of
a more subtle whole, to which each is essential, and helps
to protect and balance the rest.

Such oppositions may be traced in all races, in different
Depth and forms which point to some deeper unity that is
meaning of unorgamzable and unseen. When the German
iemtobe tribes scattered themselves over the Roman em-
soived. pirej tnev were thoroughly comminuted by local
wars ; but the cohesion of race has proved stronger, and
makes Germany to-day the compactest of European powers.
The petty warfare of States, which forbade India ever to
become a nation under native rule, did not prevent a stamp
of unity on Hindu life, which must be recognized in every
effort to ameliorate or organize it from without. Panslav-
ism, not religious conviction, is the force that precipitates
Russia on the Turk, and summons the scattered members
of a race out of wide dispersion and hostile relations at
last. Similar facts of race have impressed us throughout
these studies of Chinese history. The oldest form of these
contrasts is in the hostile relation of those two tendencies
which prompt men to settled and to nomad life. This hos-
tility crops out in every state. It is Cain and Abel; Iran
and Turan ; Rome and the Barbarians ; strife of manufac-
tures and commerce ; of labor fixed and migratory. It is
the antagonism of rest and motion ; of equilibrium and
irritability ; of central and local powers ; of unity and
variety. It reaches down to the questions of Federal and

HISTORY. 5O7

State rights, not yet harmonized in the most advanced
nations. It must work itself out to solution, both in the
Chinese Empire and the American Republic, through larger
experience of the mutual dependence and social harmony
that lie predicted and demanded in the seeming hate.
Neither side can be destroyed. This is our solemn admo-
nition and sole guarantee amidst the problems of our day.

We are liable to forget that these elements of construc-
tion exist within a State, and must be developed Interna i
by internal forces. It is the current belief that forces to be
the Tai-pings were suppressed, and China saved,
by foreign power. But rebellions are chronic in China ;
yet there is a China still, and probably as strong now as
ever. The Tai-pings were checked quite as much by their
own excesses which made them intolerable, and by the
opening of country dykes upon their armies, as by the
forces of Burgevine and Ward, and the fleets of Europe.
Three great foreign wars have not weakened this passive
Chinese nationality. Perhaps the most important sugges-
tion afforded by our review of its history is this. The
incessant jealousy of centralized powers on the part of the
people, and the ease with which rebellions are fomented,
have really helped to nourish the instinct of unity. The
evident weakness of the Pe-king government is its safety,
since it forbids the suppression of a certain democratic
element essential to Chinese faith in political obedience.
A proverb says : " When the Empire has been long divided,
it will certainly be united ; when long united, it will as
certainly be divided."

VI.

POETRY.

all nations," says Ampere, " the Chinese seem to
be fondest of poetry. All the educated The pas-
write verses. As the hero of their novels carries rhylhrnic
the heart of the heroine by poetic skill, so in pub- expression,
lie office it is almost a necessity that the talent for states-
manship should be united with the gift of song." " In olden
time," says Pan-kou, " the sages themselves did not compare
with the poets in estimation."

The occurrence of rhythm in the early laws of nations
so different as the Hindus, Greeks, Hebrews, Celts, Chi-
nese, is to be explained in part from the aid it affords in
memorizing data not committed to writing. Rhythm is
not allied to innovation, but is in many respects its A conser .
antagonist. It has received in China a develop-
ment proportionate to the conservative element of
the national character: a love of orderly and periodic recur-
rence. Life is here a series of returns on familiar tracks ;
a chant of burdens and refrains, like those which look so
childish in the oldest Shi-king odes. Numerical categories
make up the science of cosmical relations, reflecting the
mental structure of the race. Pythagoras, Kepler, and
modern science are here foreshadowed on planes of instinct
and habitual formulizing. Music was inseparable from
poetry in the oldest time, and the pleasure felt in its re-
current tones had much to do with the marvellous powers
ascribed to it by the early Chinese. The Shi-king odes

512 STRUCTURES.

reputed oldest are squared and rhymed, and later culture
has tended to symmetry of meaning, a music for thought
as well as ear. Rhyme- hunting is an antiquarian mania
among these knights of the treadmill. The delight with
which every ballad of the Tang or Sung has been set to
an air of its own is as intense as that of their fathers in
their kin, or lyre of silken cords. Rhymed improvisation
is a national amusement.

The unmalleable square signs seem to yield to a secret
Music and dissolving spell, and flow into music as readily as
rhythm in our elastic alphabet. Chinese work-power is as
wonderfully illustrated by the laws of poetic com-
position that had resulted from ages of incubation in the
days of the T'ang, as by any of its industrial achievements.
Probably no nation has such a mass of criticism on such an
amount of native product in the poetic art. 1

This love of recurrent form is shown in a trick of the
older poets, who liked to use sounds without meaning,
merely to emphasize this safe return to the same impres-
sion ; as if we should add the mere sound, " alas," to every
line, even where there was no reference to grief. Parallel-
ism, beginning in the four-line strophe of the Shi-king, was
extended prescriptively from a rhyming accord of accent
and of tone to every word in the two successive lines of a
distich ; " full " and " empty " words must be opposed to
each other, and the successive steps by which the idea of
the verse must be evolved were defined by rule.

In stormy times greater license broke forth, and criticism
Rhythmic itself deprecated such formal construction ; but the
legislation. re fi nemen t of the T'ang carried rhythm-legislation
to such a degree, that Chinese poetry has acquired the bad
reputation of being a mere thing of mechanical cadences
and measures. A native author says that " the parallelism
should be such a chain, that not a line can be omitted with-

1 Wylie, pp. 203, 204.

POETRY. 513

out altering the point of the whole poem." l An art at
least of interfusing sound and sense.

A curious form of this passion for parallelism is to hang
corresponding rhymes side by side, or on opposite Parallelism
walls, on paper or wood, and always in pairs. Chi-
nese gymnastics are feats of versification in this style ; 'tis
a dainty civilization, whose amusement is capping verses
and constructing measures. Even geographies march in
rhyme. The " Two Literary Maidens " presents a literary
tournament, in which one of the verses to be paralleled
combined artfully the titles of the seven books of Mencius ;
and most of the themes were questions in mythology or
history.

With the exception of the epic, which implies ability to
combine all experiences under inspiration of a great wide scope
religious faith and national ideal, the Chinese have of p etic

treatment

worked up their syllabic signs and meagre rhymes
into every form of poetic composition. In odes, c
idyls, epigrams, ethical and didactic poems, proverbs, effu-
sions of all moods, their fertility has equalled, if it has not
greatly surpassed, that of any nation in the world.

Do appearances deceive us, then, as to the fitness of the
language for poetic expression ? Admitting an im- Facilitieg
perfect sense of rhyme, Davis has pointed out the n *he
numerous diphthongs that vary the form of the
monosyllabic feet, the varying accents and tones, the con-
stant caesura, the absence of harsh sounds, and the fitness
of the equal, unbroken words for parallelism. To these
capacities he ascribes the progress which " makes the
poetry of the T'ang as far beyond the Shi-king for har-
monious verse, as Virgil is beyond Ennius, or Pope beyond
Chaucer." 2

We have only to insert our connective particles between

1 See St. Denys's interesting work on the Poetry of the T'ang (Paris, 1812).
8 Transact. R. A. Soc,, 1830. We hope the statement has a force independent of the
value of this latter illustration, which to our own taste is quite an unfortunate one.

514 STRUCTURES.

the vivid symbolism of the picture-signs to reveal real poetic
meaning. 1 Nor are these symbols reserved for poetry ;
they belong to common prose, being crystallized in the
signs : as if our alphabet were made of real images instead
of conventional forms. Of course much of their meaning
is lost in the attraction of interest to the written shape.
The inspiration of these enthusiasts is probably less in
their ideas than in their pencils. But, on the other hand,
realism will keep their eyes more in contact with these
object-pictures, and maintain a certain scenic interest,
enhanced by the aesthetic habit of constructing them with
elegance and suggestiveness of form.

Every thing is thus brought to fixed symbolic meaning.
The animal world has functional relations with life.

Extent of

symbolism. The dragon, phoenix, ki-lin, and tortoise are com-
umais. pj ex em bi ems O f power, good fortune, and occult
destiny, as familiar to domestic art as to mythic lore. The
fox symbolizes official life ; the wild goose is conjugal fidel-
ity, in songs, dramas, tales. Goose and duck hold the same
place as the stork in German folklore ; and there seems no
good reason why our preferences for lions and eagles should
despise these less brutal images of perseverance, loyalty,
and love. The magpie, a mystic newsbearer and Chinese
Hermes, plays the part of prophet in the legends of royal
and race origins. The wild-ox tail floats from the Manchu
standard in wars and hunts. Clay figures of the cow are
divided at agricultural fetes ; painted sea-monsters are
guardian figure-heads for the junks ; boats resemble fishes.
The peach-tree is undying truth ; its stone, long
life ; its blossom, opening love. The /^-tree, of
white flower, scented leaf, and healing gum, is the dwelling
of genii ; and its autumnal splendor chants with hundred

1 Thus man (of his) word is fidelity ; word-nail (ed) is a bargain ; season (of the) perfect
number, antiquity ; rice (in the) mouth, comfort ; mountain (of) jade, the imperial voice ; jade
(like) sheets, paper; platform (of) jade, the shoulders ; jade (like) person, a beauty.

POETRY. 515

tongues the lesson that "beauty is most beautiful in decay." 1
The poets have found a bird that celebrates the changes of
life, singing twice a year, when the flowers open and when
they fade. 2 And songs describe an enchanted ash in sym-
pathy with national destiny, that moans when a dynasty is
failing, and sings when heroic deeds are done. 3

Colors are symbolic, and yield a pictorial register of
offices and personal relations. 4 The Tcheou-li is a

r Colors.

digest of forms and ceremonies, in which every
thing seems to be taken up into symbolism and gifted with
a functional meaning beyond itself. Doubtless this taste
for an inner sense in things adds suggestiveness to the
ideographs, and gives charm to poetic composition with
their visible types.

A poetic impulse is apparent, also, in the national passion
for floriculture, which often reaches delicate and Flowers,
tender sentiment ; in the selection of proper names &c -
from natural objects ; in the metaphorical shop signs ; in
the flowery titles of books, and the scribbling of impromptu
verses on every thing that will carry them. If this love of
endowing things with human meaning does not unfold into
high poetic power, it is because of a too close contact
with concrete details. It spends most of its force i ts formal-
in combining and varying given materials in recog- lsm>
nized ways and for routine experiences ; and memory is
mistaken for fancy, and even for imagination. Tricks of
sensational effect are required to give an air of invention
and novelty. Hence subtle and mystified allusions to facts,
traditions, customs, or classic books : 6 something is artfully
left to be divined, a half light is turned on an object already
well known, making a riddle or an ellipsis of its common-

1 Notes and Queries, III. No. 2. * St. Denys, p. 175.

8 Stent's Jade Chaplet, p. 49.

4 Red is virtue ; a red heart is the moral, a vermilion pencil the political, ideal. White is
purity and mourning ; yellow, supremacy ; purple, for grandsons ; green, for princesses.

8 See the subjects given out for prize poems in Les Jeunes Filles Littrees, I. 125 ; Davis,
in preface to the Fortunate Union.

5l6 STRUCTURES.

place ; even verbal or rhythmic analogies are exploited with
an air of mystery.

A large portion of Chinese descriptive poetry thus far
Qualities translated is a reiteration of certain moods, reach-
6 * n S ^6 same Pi nt of experience, but seldom trans-
cending it. The pervasiveness of these plaintive
or happy moods gives a unity to detailed pictures of Nature,
often of great beauty, which makes them effective pieces of
art. But they lack the inspiration of a sustained sense of
human relations with infinity. The sense is not wanting ;
it is passive and unproductive. The Chinese poet feels the
mystery of the world, is lost in the problem of origin and
end ; but he is not lifted by them to think or imagine. He
rests in reverie ; he sinks back from the vague feeling of
helplessness before change and loss, into passive resigna-
tion or sybarite self-indulgence. He finds sympathy in
Nature with the exile's despondency or the lover's pain ; he
invokes beauty and wine to offset the brevity of life ; he
less often escapes from these concessions and commonplaces
into manly protest or independent faith. Yet there is often
a delicate impressibility in these elegiac appeals to Nature ;
and in the happier moods it is quickened into a boldness
of fancy which reminds us of the abandon of the Celtic
bards.

The besetting fault of weakness and sentimentality is
N counterbalanced by the astonishing compactness and ellip-
tical force of the language, and by a realism which deals
directly with the facts of experience. A native good sense,
fully awake to the dangers of the national temperament,
shows itself in sound judgments and counsels on the poetic
art. For example :

" Say common things in a simple and noble style : introduce his-

Good torical allusions naturally." " Do not force your talent.

counsels to Whether you would describe emotions with seriousness, or

paint things supernatural and prodigious, follow freely your

POETRY. 5 1 7

inspiration." " Let the thought go deep ; but let not the labor appear :
let all the parts harmonize, as by Nature." '

We must beware of inferring from the utilitarian reputa-
tion of the Chinese an absence of sentiment or veneration
emotional aspiration. The poet is for them the forthe
ideal of genius, and " primus inter pares " in the
literary and governing classes. His gift has always been
the passport to high office, and prince and people alike
bend before the lines of his pencil. Kings engrave his
sentences upon stone, invest him with royal robes, and when
guilty of driving him into exile or to proud withdrawal have
sought his forgiveness with pleadings and gifts. A not
uncommon tradition of poets describes them as withdraw-
ing into solitude to escape corrupt courts or degrading
concessions, and composing immortal verses at home in
conscious self-respect. This poetry of the exiled or dis-
graced censors of imperial vices has a manly ring, and tri-
umphantly refutes the prevailing impression of the poet's
function in " Oriental despotisms." We have found no
adulatory petitions, even in the tyrannical days of the later
Han, degrading the masters of verse who have won a na-
tional fame. 2 The line of honor reaches through Chinese
official history in notable examples of a martyr spirit whose
natural vehicle seems to have been poetry, 3 and its argu-
ment the Socratic answer of Thou-fou to royal offers of
forgiveness : " I have fulfilled my duty, and ought to be
rewarded."

We are not disposed to be severely literal in our reading
of confessions by many Chinese singers of their The "To-
dependence on inspirations of a lower kind. As P erFoets -"
when Thou-fou, himself comparatively temperate, describes

1 Poesies des Thang, pp. 99, too.

s Biot (Introd. to Tcheou-li) observes that no servile office existed at the court of the
Chinese emperors.

8 Chaou-ke consoled himself in exile by writing Songs of A dversity, and commenting on
the books of Mencius, apostle of free speech to kings.

5l8 STRUCTURES.

the Round Table of eight toper poets transformed into
genii over their cups. Of this jovial crew was Li-thai-pe,
the most admired poet of the Tang ; a linguist and courtier
in high honor, famous for literary feats. His modest re-
spect for his art, which prompted him, on seeing the poems
of another, to retire from the field and write no more, must
be a pendent to his account of potations which brought him
a happy unconsciousness of the good and evil of life. 1

If we may judge from the specimens of his verse scat-
tered through the romance of the " Young Female Scholars,"
and the selections in St. Denys, the wine was not, in Li-thai-
pe's case at least, of so highly stimulating a quality as to
make him forget any recognized poetic rules. 2 So little of
extravagance disfigures the standard poetry of China, that
we incline to ascribe this customary tribute to the wine-god
to sentimentalism rather than actual devotion. Any mysti-
cal meaning is excluded by the strong realism of the poet.
The only frenzy shown by these favorites of the Muse is
for the calligraphic art. The swiftness of the pencil
measures the tide of inspiration. Allied to this is the
passion for handsome prosody. The praises lavished on
petty verselets of feeble significance in the romances, as
scintillations of genius, point to some dexterity in matter of
rhythm, too subtle for foreigners wholly to appreciate.

But these defects in the poetic ideal must not hide its pe-
Association culiar charm of refined and tender sentiment, the
of Poetry unm i s takable sign of which is the special associa-

with . *

woman. tion of poetic honors with woman. In the long lists
of learned women, a great proportion are poets. 3 Trib-
utes to female genius are a commonplace of the romances.
In the most famous of this class, 4 the heroine puts down

1 See A Spring Day, St. Denys, p. 32.

2 He inclines to dwell on the thought of death, and observes a refined mechanism in struct-
ure ; qualities not of a very bacchanalian type.

3 Williams I. 453-548. Wylie, passim.
* The Two Literary Maidens.

POETRY. 519

all competitors in poetry, receives a jade sceptre from the
Emperor, and, in conjunction with another maiden of like
gifts, exercises a sway to which all powers defer as to a di-
vinity. These two dictators confound all pretenders, deal
out satire, master the hearts of renowned youths by a su-
periority before which the laurels of the prize-graduate,
and even of the Han-lin, fade. A curious mixture of self-
depreciation with airs of inordinate assumption, common to
poets in the romances, is carried by the heroines unchal-
lenged to the height of vain glory ; an index, not only of
the high esteem in which poetry itself was held, but of the
recognition of a special aptitude in woman to wield its
refining powers, the entire title of the sex to engage in
free competition in this highest branch of the highest
sphere known to the Chinese ideal.

Love-plots are apt to turn on mutual appreciation be-
tween perfect strangers, through strophes and anti- "The Flow-
strophes posted in public places, usually in praise of erySo-oiis."
Nature or letters. We cannot say how far these posted
challenges served the purpose of advertisements for lovers ;
but they plainly mark a decided willingness on Cupid's
part to settle into an humble waiter on the Muse. Cer-
tainly a democratic freedom and self-confidence in the
aspirant for poetic honors can no further go. Thus an
ambitious poetess only twelve years old affixes her thesis to
the monument of a sage, to the effect that if any should
ask how she, a child, dared to rank herself among the
great, she would reply with Confucius : " If you rub the
jade you do not wear it down ; if you touch it with dirt, it
is not defiled. Shun himself was but a man. I also am a
part of humanity, and can resemble him/' 1 Of two poet-
esses who led their age, we are told that " they could not
open their lips without dropping pearls ; that they spoke
their minds before kings without flinching ; that ministers

1 The Two Literary Maidens^ I., 220.

520 STRUCTURES.

were humbled before them, and great scholars mortified
to learn to how little purpose they had spent their own
studious lives." 1

Here is the poem that wins for young Chan-tai "grave
A prize f a i r > white-robed, without ornament, and serene "
Poem. honors that are not lavished on the statesman or
the sage :

THE WHITE SWALLOW.

" When the sun sets, white hearts are few : From the strife I flee to the

blossoms of the pear.
I depart pale, but should blush to take the raven's hue : I return thin,

but only the snow shall fill out my shape.
Coming back through the night, my shadow can be seen. Bearing

away all the purple of the spring, my robes should still want no

bleaching.
How many bright-colored doves go astray ! Amidst all the jealousies,

I alone return pure and unstained."

That this dainty bit of natural painting should be chosen
for such honor, and put into the mouth of a girl, intimates
that tastes as refined as the handwork that nursed silk-
worms, or drew the fine patterns of flower and leaf on
bamboo tablets, presided over literary aesthetics in this
highly developed civilization.

The sympathy of Nature with human suffering is ex-

s m athies P 1 " 68560 * in a graceful little song, relating how a

with Na- mother, condemned to die, is saved by a miracle in

delicate accord with her sorrow : midsummer heat

turned to winter snow. 2

"Judge, guards, and headsman stand aghast ; while every head in

reverence is bent
Before the girl ; the snow-flakes falling fast, mutely proclaim that she

is innocent."

1 The Two Literary Maidens, I. 243, 244. * Jade Chaflet, by Stent, p. 115.

POETRY. 521

So the plaintive strains of the flute by night, like "Annie
Laurie" in the Crimean camp, steal away the sol- Music and
dier's heart, and a homesick army leaves the field H me ~

* sickness.

on the eve of battle. 1

" They must return : ere day broke, the foe sought them, and they

were gone.

The magic, the witchery of music, indescribable by tongue or pen !
The flute of Chang-liang, in that little space, had stolen the courage

of eight thousand men."

Best evidence of poetic capacity is a constant investment
of Nature with human expression.

" O the pleasant little rain, that knows so well when it is wanted,
Coming just in spring, to help the new life forward !
It has chosen the nighttime to come softly with favoring breeze;
Subtly and noiselessly, it has softened all things." 2

" This year's flowers succeed the last, and not less fair :

But last year's men are older by a year.

Thus men grow old, and flowers die.

Pity the fallen flowers : sweep them not away." 8

" Brave yellow, passing into tender green, The Willow

The glory of the spring-tide's early day ; Blossoms.

By eaves' side quivering, or in the sheen

Of lake reflected ; every tender spray
Dancing upon the wind, by silken thread suspended,

Or sighing for the mellow eve and moonlit play ;
O sweet and fair, too young as yet to bear

Plucking for love's last gift, with farewell ended.

O wilding flowers, ye steal my heart away.
The Eastern King, should he your beauties know,
Will look with kindly eyes ; nor rain, nor snow

Will send, nor any thing

To mar the crescent spring,
And breezes that your lengthening tassels sway." 4

1 Jade Chaplet p. 117. 2 Thou-fou (from the French of St. Denys).

3 Wang-tchang-ling (St. Denys). * Translated by Lister, in China Review.

522 STRUCTURES.

" Yonder falls a precipitous cascade three thousand feet.
The Here the mountain touches the sky, and divides the orbs.
Mountain Drifting snows fly amidst the thunder,
outlook, j am like a wnite bird am idst the clouds :

I insult the winds and invade the deep abyss.

As I turn and look down on each neighboring province,

The evening smoke ascends from the dwellings in blue specks." *

" See the five peaks of yon mountain, joined like fingers of a hand,

The Moun- Rising from the south as a wall midway to heaven !

tain Height By night it would pluck from the concave the stars of the

Milky Way:

By day it explores the zenith and plays with the clouds.
The rain has ceased ; the summits shine in the void expanse.
The moon is up : it is like a broad pearl over the expanded palm.
One might imagine the Great Spirit had stretched forth an arm
From afar, beyond the sea, and was numbering the nations." 3

" The mountains disdain the passions of earth : glory troubles not
their peace." 3

(i.) " The sun has crossed the high mountain chain to set behind them ;

Woodland Soon all the valley will be lost in the shades of eve ;

Home. The moon rises out of the pines, bringing coolness with her ;

The rustling wind, and the flowing brooks fill my ear with pure

sounds."
(2.) " The wood-cutter regains his hut, to repair his wasted strength ;

The bird has chosen his bough, perched in motionless rest.

A friend has promised to come and enjoy this lovely night:

I take my lute and await him alone in the grassy paths." 4

" Men pass their lives apart : like stars that move, but never meet.
A friend This eve, how blest it is that the same lamp gives light to

re-visited. both of US !

Brief is youth's day. Our temples already tell of waning life.
Already half of those we knew are spirits : I am moved in the depth

of my soul !
Could I have thought that after twenty years I should be again in your

home?

1 Davis (Sketches, p. 20). * Davis, in Journal R. A. S., 1830.

8 Wang-tchang-ling (St. Denys). * Mong-kao-jen (St. Denys).

POETRY. 523

To-morrow, mountains with cloudy peaks must sever us again,
And for us two the future be again a sea without a bound." 1

" I know not how many generations the moon has shone upon.

But I know these waves of the Kiang flow on, never to xhe long-
return, ings of the

As I sail, none knows me ; nor if the moon is shining on a seP 3 ^
far-off home where they think of me.

Sadly the wife too thinks of her husband : their thoughts seek each
other, though far apart.

Night comes : she dreams of fallen flowers. * Alas ! spring half gone,
he comes not yet.'

The river flows, the spring ebbs away : the moon sinks into the
waters,

Into the horizon mists : the setting moon sends pangs to her heart." *

Li-thai-pe and Thou-fou alike pour out their sympathy for
the poor conscripts on their distant campaign. The
latter, in almost Homeric strain, describes the de-
parture of the troops, -the women clinging to their Thou-fou.
garments, the questions of bystanders receiving but one
reply : " It is our fate to be marching for ever from boyhood
to old age."

" Then the village chief bound their young brows with gauze ; The con-
Now they return with whitened hair, only to set out again, scripts.
Insatiable in his plans of conquest, the Emperor hears not his

people's cry.

In vain brave women have seized the axe and held the plough ;
Thorns and briars cover the desolate soil.

Ever war rages, regardless of human life as of the dog's or fowl's.
' Have we not come,' say they, ' to take the birth of a son for a

disaster ?

O Prince, you have not seen the borders of the Blue Sea,
Where the dead bones are whitening and never gathered up ;
Where the spirits of the lately slain importune the long perished :
Dark the sky, cold the rain, in that drear clime, where groans for-
ever rise. ' " 8

1 Thou-fou (St. Denys). * Tchang-jo-han (St. Denys).

8 Thou-fou (St. Denys).

524 STRUCTURES.

A favorite theme is the praise of solitude, the com-
Praiseof panionship of Nature for the exile, the ascetic, or
solitude, the renouncer of cities :

" I return to the hills to seek my rest.
You will not need to ask me of new wanderings any more.
Nature does not change ; the white clouds for ever last." J

" The mountain is lone ; why stay you in this desert ?
Deep thoughts are hard to reach, and I walk alone.
I love the pure springs that wind among the rocks;
I love my rustic cabin in its peace among the pines." 2

" Approaching the holy hermitage, I was kindly met by the aged

saint.
I entered into the principles of reason, breaking the ties of earthly

desire.
United in one thought, all words being exhausted, we fell into

silence.
I saw the flowers as still as we, heard the hovering birds, and knew

the truth of truths." 8

" Have I not reached the purity of the wise ? Like flame borne by

wind,

My spirit will be detached from this inert body, and return no
more." 4

The poetry of the T'ang abounds in a vague, melancholy
Transient- brooding over the transientness of things, and
ness of life m e m ories of the lost :

" The flower fades and is swept away, but whither goes its per-
fume ? " 5
"For friends I had immortal men; in the glad eves we sailed the

lake.

My happy pen already drew the imperial eye.
To-day my songs are sad ; my bleached head is bent with woe." 8

1 Wang-wei. 2 Ibid. 8 Song-tchi-ouen.

4 Pe-lo-ye. 6 Tchin-tseu-gran.

6 Thou-fou's Autumn Ode (St. Denys) ; see the whole ode. Also Laprade, Le Sentiment
de la Nature avant le Christianisme.

POETRY. 525

The following is Horatian :

" Every day, alas, brings on the inevitable old age, " Carp*
While every year sees happy spring return. Diem."

Let us enjoy ourselves while our cup is full ;
If the flowers fade, let us try, O Friend, to ignore." 1

The Chinese, like the Hebrews, have their typical elegy
on the vanity of life, the Li-sao, 2 a strange, sad

J . The Li-sao.

poem, made up of faith in duty and unbelief in
men, which marks the dismal epoch of the T'sin conquests,
but outlived its fires, and has been in highest honor ever
since, as the keynote of a favorite national mood. Its
allegory takes the flowers for symbols of virtues and emo-
tions, of experiences that the poet gathers up, or fates by
which he is drawn. In disgrace for loyalty to the old paths
of right, he explores all spaces and elements, the homes of
gods and men, philosophy and magic, vainly searching
for sympathy, a good wife, a good prince, sustained only by
the perfumes of the flowers at his girdle. Alas ! the ideal
is not found :

"What is the sum of art and talent in this age of ours ?

To turn the back on square and compass, to follow crooked ways

as freedom ;

To lay plots with evil means, and make them serve for laws.
'Tis all in vain : there is not one who knows me."

On the luminous summits his heart gives out ; he will go
no further. Filled with the thought of his native land, he
" goes to rejoin Pang-kien," in death.

The civil wars following on the close of the Han brought
out a spirit of knight-errantry, fruitful in Oriental Love and
minnc-singing* with such refrains as this :

" A fair figure captivates men's desires,
But the real perfume of a woman is modesty."

1 Wang-wei. * Kiu-youen.

8 Described in D'Hervey St. Denys's charming volume on the Tang.

526 STRUCTURES.

" There is one of whom I think, a hundred mountain leagues away ;
But the same moon, the same passing wind, is for both : I muse on
our happy times."

Less suited to the sentimental Chinese muse would seem
to be the vigorous war-songs, of which the T'ang has many
specimens :

" Behold the times return in which the chief of a band of a hundred
Is in higher honor than a scholar of rank and talent." l

" At ten paces he has killed his man. A hundred leagues will not

stop him.
He has done it ; he shakes out his robes, and is gone. He leaves

no sign. of name or track.
A hero's bones have the fragrance of fame. Shall not the cheeks

of the mere scholar blush ?
Who could win such name with bent head and whitening hairs over

books?" 2

Two companion ballads celebrate womanly sacrifice and
Awoman's manly devotion with great simplicity and force. In
devotion. t h e fi rst) a q ueen saves the infant child of her slain
husband by another wife, and at the sacrifice of her own
life on the battle-field, where she is left wounded and
alone :

" The trembling Queen sat up ;

She saw the cold mist settling down, the beaten, withered grass :
Caressing the Prince in her bosom, she saw he was silent and still ;
Her color fled, and she gazed intently upon him ; the little Atou had

cried himself to sleep.

Turning her face to the little one, she cried, ' Awake ! '
She saw the tiny hand unclose, the eyes slowly open wide ;
His little face he in her bosom thrusts, and tumbles it in search of

nutriment.
She could but sigh, ' O bitter fate ! the babe is famishing, nor know I

whither your mother wanders.'
The little Atou, patient and good, never moaned . . .

1 Yang-kiong (St. Denys). J Li-thai-pe.

POETRY. 527

The mists disappeared, the sky grew bright. Looking over the deso-
late battle-field,

She sighed : ' His father has wandered half his life, and borne this
child alone :

If I would prove my faithfulness to him (by rejoining him in death)
this child will die.

But when I reach the " Yellow Springs," how could I face the ances-
tors of Lui's house ? ' '

So she struggles on, " racked with her own deep wound,"
rescued at last by a hero, who fights his way through the
enemy, bearing the two on his horse. To him committing
the child, she anticipates her approaching death, and
hastens away to heaven. The poet adds :

" The composition of my leisure hours has made me weep. The

entrusted orphan's fate

IVe writ, that, ages hence, men should blush for themselves, and
emulate a woman."

The second ballad describes the gallop of the hero with
the child on his bosom to its mother :

" What a glad shout did the brave herb greet, as he sprang from his

horse and fell at her feet ! A man's.

And cried, as exhausted he sank on the ground, ' Thy
dead son is living ; he was lost, and is found." 1

We must seek the religious element in Chinese poetry
in the seriousness of its interest in positive forms

The re-

of life and conduct, rather than in contemplation ligious
of Infinite Being. There is indeed no lack of the element>
fanciful anthropomorphism, which in every popular faith
has peopled the world with genii, local and general, though
the images are so vague and unstable as hardly to consti-
tute a positive creed. The combination of Buddhism with
the lower forms of Tao-sse spiritism brought fresh acces-

1 Translated by Stent, Jade Chalet, p. 22.

528 STRUCTURES.

sions of the supernatural in times later than Confucius ;
while of this there is in the older poetry, and especially in
the Shi-king, scarcely a trace. Magical lore and the Pro-
tean dance of transmigration found full scope in the fer-
ment of the national mind during the Han. A " storm
and stress " school grew up at this period, ambitious of
fantastic and bizarre situations, hinted in obscure phrases
like that social twilight which it described. The Chinese
themselves call it the Kouai (sensational) style. 1 But this
was transitory, and the later poetry of the Tang is, as we
have seen, as sceptical and rational as the later Roman,
or the modern English, muse. Through all intrusions of
asceticism, magic, and alchemical dreaming, the old simple
rites to Shang-te and the ancestors celebrated in the Shi,
and consecrating the labors and joys of real life, stood fast,
a poetry too deeply in unison with the organic life of
the race to yield to objective changes of literary taste and
construction.

To this venerable record, the sum of the poetic ideal
for near three thousand years, let us now address our-
selves.

The prosaic Chinese, as well as the imaginative Hindus,
THE SHI- venerate a collection of lyrics as the most precious
KING. treasure of their past. The three hundred and
eleven Odes of the Shi cover the whole period, more or less
Probable than a thousand years, during which the old States
oft^ were formed and feudally related, down to the
odes. eighth century, B.C. The latest of them are thus
beyond question from twenty-five to thirty centuries old.
Confucius, it is believed, selected them out of three thou-
sand as best suited for moral and political influence. But
it is the reasonable conclusion of modern scholars that

1 St. Denys, pp. 25, 26.

THE SHI-KING. $2$

a Shi-king substantially similar to the present was in use
and honor before his day. 1 The Odes are not only evident
products of special occasions, but indicate direct relations
with old customs and institutions. They have followed
the living movement of these as the recognized supply
of blended music and song at marriage feasts, agricultural
jubilees, court receptions, feudal assemblies, family re-
unions, religious rites and services to ancestors, to great
men, to the gods and spirits of the national faith. It is to
be noticed further, that a considerable period of veneration
for the book, as a whole, must have elapsed before the
public and political headings that have been attached to
the simplest effusions of private feeling in the earlier odes
would have been possible even in China, being the product
of their final symbolization in the interest qf the State. Yet
these superscriptions, analogous to those which Christian
commentators have given to the old Hebrew Psalms, be-
long to the oldest text of the Shi now extant, and date
from a period at least as early as the Christian era. 2

Whatever antiquity is thus made probable for the Shi-
king as a whole, the collection must have been of slow
growth. It must have required a long time to gather from
so many of the old feudal States these voices of all impor-
tant epochs of the protracted history of the Tcheou. The
hoard would naturally increase with more or less rapidity,
according to the fortunes of that imperfect imperialism, of
whose centralizing power it was the fruit and the guaran-
tee. But the dates of a large proportion of the The dates
Odes are still undetermined by the free criticism uns eied.

1 Confucius speaks of the " Book of Poetry" as already familiar, and with an apparently
traditional admiration for the work so designated. The present classification of the Odes is
mentioned in a book believed to have preceded the Confucian edition (Plath, Leb. d. Confuc.
II., p. 63). Many of them are cited by writers of his day, in different forms indeed, and under
different titles from the present (Ibid). He is asserted to have made changes according to
his judgment. What he himself claims is to have re-arranged the principal odes and reformed
the music (Lunyu, IX. 14). See also Legge's Prolegomena.

s Legge on text of Maou, pp. 10, 33.

530 STRUCTURES.

of two thousand years ; and though the best are as-
cribed to the Great Duke, who is the traditional Solo-
mon and Moses of the Tcheou, the real authorship of
by far the greater portion is as inscrutable as are their
dates. 1

But the different forms in which they are