ARTI N
V '
DR. W. A. P. MARTIN'
JEt 73
he Lore
or
The Intellect of China
BY
W. A. P. MARTIN, D.D., LL.D.
President of the Chinese Imperial University
AUTHOR OF
'A CYCLE OF CATHAY," "THE SIEGE IN PEKING," ETC., ETC.
ILLUSTRATED
EDINBURGH AND LONDON
OLIPHANT, ANDERSON & FERRIER
1901
Hlggs printing (Eompang
ALBANY, N. Y.
U. S. A.
TO THE
HON. JOHN W. FOSTER
FORMERLY SECRETARY OF STATE OF THE UNITED
STATES OF AMERICA
20C55321
PREFACE
<4P"T"1HE Lore of Cathay," is an essential comple-
ment to " A Cycle of Cathay." The latter
represents the active life of the Chinese as
it appeared to the writer in the course of a long and
varied experience. This book mirrors their intellectual
life as it developed under investigations extending through
many years of intimate association with Chinese scholars,
and of identification with Chinese education.
Its contents comprise the " Hanlin Papers," revised
and enlarged by the addition of much new matter. Its
materials have been drawn exclusively from native
sources, and are the result of original research. The author
has treated, with considerable detail, of subjects so diverse
as Chinese education and Chinese alchemy; and he ven-
tures to believe that he throws fresh light on some points
of Oriental literature, science and philosophy ; and that he
may fairly claim, as a field of his own discovery, the inter-
national law and diplomacy of the ancient Chinese.
In the San Kuo Chi it is laid down as a law of the
national life, confirmed by history, that the Chinese Em-
pire, when it has been long united, is sure to be divided ;
when it has been long divided, is sure to be reunited.
Just now the centrifugal forces are portentously active.
Should they eventuate in partition, that state of things
could not be permanent, though it might accelerate the
acquisition of our Western civilization by the people of
China. Quickened into new life, they would be sure to
2 PREFACE
reconstruct the Empire and to take their place among the
leading powers of the civilized world.
While the Manchu rulers have made grudging conces-
sions to superior force, they have always, with the ex-
ception of Kuang Hsu, contrived to maintain a latent
hostility in the minds of their people. That hostility has
diminished strange to say with each defeat by foreign
powers, and it almost disappeared during the reform
movement under the young Emperor, which followed the
war with Japan.
To prevent the recurrence of outrages it is necessary
to foster a fellow-feeling with the rest of the world. As
Captain Mahan says : " Toward Asia in its present con-
dition Europe has learned that it has a community of
interest that may be defined as the need of bringing the
Asian peoples within the compass of the family of Chris-
tian States. They will have to insist that currency be
permitted to our ideas liberty to exchange thought in
Chinese territory with the individual Chinaman. The
open door, both for commerce and for intellectual inter-
action, should be our aim everywhere in China."
One essential to this intellectual interaction is mutual
intellectual comprehension. If China is to be a part of
the family of civilized States Chinese thought, the
principles at the basis of Chinese history and life must
be understood. It is with the hope that this may be
furthered that " The Lore of Cathay " is offered to the
Anglo-Saxon public.
W. A. P. M.
PEKING, July ist.
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
PAGE
THE AWAKENING IN CHINA 7
BOOK I
CHINA'S CONTRIBUTION TO ARTS AND SCIENCES
I. CHINESE DISCOVERIES 23
II. CHINESE SPECULATIONS IN PHILOSOPHY AND
SCIENCE 33
III. ALCHEMY IN CHINA ; THE SOURCE OF CHEMISTRY . 44
BOOK 11
CHINESE LITERATURE
IV. POETS AND POETRY OF CHINA 75
V. THE CONFUCIAN APOCRYPHA 87
VI. CONFUCIUS AND PLATO A COINCIDENCE . . . 106
VII. CHINESE PROSE COMPOSITION in
VIII. CHINESE LETTER WRITING 130
IX. CHINESE FABLES 144
X. NATIVE TRACTS OF CHINA 148
BOOK III
RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY OF THE CHINESE
XI. THE SAN CHIAO OR THREE RELIGIONS OF CHINA . 165
XII. THE ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF THE CHINESE . . 205
3
4 CONTENTS
PAGE
XIII. CHINESE IDEAS OF INSPIRATION 234
XIV. BUDDHISM A PREPARATION FOR CHRISTIANITY . . 249
XV. THE WORSHIP OF ANCESTORS IN CHINA . . . 264
BOOK IV
EDUCATION IN CHINA
XVI. SCHOOL AND FAMILY TRAINING 281
XVII. CIVIL SERVICE EXAMINATIONS ..... 308
XVIII. THE IMPERIAL ACADEMY 329
XIX. AN OLD UNIVERSITY IN CHINA 371
BOOK V
STUDIES IN CHINESE HISTORY
XX. THE STUDY OF CHINESE HISTORY .... 387
XXI. THE TARTARS IN ANCIENT CHINA .... 409
XXII. INTERNATIONAL LAW IN ANCIENT CHINA . . . 427
XXIII. DIPLOMACY IN ANCIENT CHINA 450
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Dr. W. A. P. Martin Frontispiece
FACING PAGES
President Martin and Faculty of the Chinese Imperial Uni-
versity 18
Dr. Martin and some of his Students 34
Shrine and Temple of Confucius 88
The Temple of Heaven
167
The Altar of Heaven . )
Arch and Temple of Confucius 200
Gateway of Lama Temple 240
Buddhist Monument 254
The Imperial Ancestral Temple 274
The Watch-tower in Examination Grounds
Furnace for burning paper in Examination Grounds
Row of Cells in Examination University .... 326
The Imperial Lecture Room, Old University )
t 373
Prospect Hill where the last of the Mings hanged himself j
ld s}' ' 3 ' 4
THE LORE OF CATHAY
THE AWAKENING IN CHINA
FOR a long time the giant of the East has been
rubbing his eyes. Each collision with foreign
powers has had the effect of making him more
conscious of his helpless condition and more ready to
open his lids to the light of a new day.
Never was he more wide awake than during the few
years following the war with Japan, when the young
Emperor, Kuang Hsu, attempted to make his reign an
era of reform. The counter-revolution brought about
by the Empress Dowager,* and the cosmic shock by. which
it was succeeded, proved the strength and reality of the
reform movement. So far from extinguishing that
movement, the effect of this convulsion will be to wake
it into fresh activity. The Chinese people may be ex-
pected to welcome new ideas with more eagerness than
ever before.
This proposition will be received with distrust by some
who are skeptical as to the doctrine of human progress.
It will be questioned by others, who deride as visionary
the efforts of Christian enterprise. Nor will it be readily
admitted by that large class who are wont to regard the
Chinese mind as hopelessly incrusted with the prejudices
of antiquity.
* Having treated that subject in " The Siege in Peking," it is
unnecessary to enlarge upon it in this place.
7
8 THE LORE OF CATHAY
Never have a great people been more misunderstood.
They are denounced as stolid, because we are not in pos-
session of a medium sufficiently transparent to convey our
ideas to them, or transmit theirs to us; and stigmatized
as barbarians, because we want the breadth to comprehend
a civilization different from our own. They are repre-
sented as servile imitators, though they have borrowed
less than any other people; as destitute of the inventive
faculty, though the world is indebted to them for a long
catalogue of the most useful discoveries ; and as clinging
with unquestioning tenacity to a heritage of traditions,
though they have passed through many and profound
changes in the course of their history.
Nothing has done so much to lower them in our esteem
and to exclude them from our sympathies as the atrocities
of the Boxer outbreak. That, however, was the effect of
a sudden recoil, stirred up for political purposes by a
usurping Regent and her Manchu agents. Foreigners
themselves, they were jealous of anything that tends to
disturb the repose of the Chinese mind, or to strengthen
the foothold of other foreigners. Exasperated, too, by a
series of encroachments on their territory, they gave way
to a mad fury that proved contagious. But if the reign
of terror was the renovation of France, and the Sepoy
mutiny the harbinger of better things for India, why
may not this dreadful drama prove to be the birth-pangs
of a new China ?
That China is not incapable of reformation, we shall
show first by a glance at changes that passed over the
national mind prior to the first war with England. We
shall then pass in review the steps taken in the way of
reform in the course of the next fifty years. Finally, we
shall describe in outline, the reform movement under the
Emperor, Kuang Hsu, which has more right than the
THE AWAKENING IN CHINA 9
Boxer craze to be accepted as the real attitude of the
Chinese mind.
The Chinese have not been stationary, as generally sup-
posed, through the long past of their national life. The
national mind has advanced from age to age with a stately
march ; not indeed always in a direct course, but at each
of its great epochs, recording, as we think, a decided gain ;
like the dawn of an arctic morning, in which the first
blush of the eastern sky disappears for many hours, only
to be succeeded by a brighter glow, growing brighter yet,
after each interval of darkness, as the time of sunrise
approaches.
The existence in such a country of such a thing as a
national mind is itself an evidence of a susceptibility to
change ; and, at the same time, a guarantee for the com-
parative stability of its institutions. It proves that China
is not an immense congeries of polyps, each encased in
his narrow cell, a workshop and a tomb, and all toil-
ing on without the stimulus of common sympathy or
mental reaction. It proves that China is not like Africa,
and aboriginal America, or even like British India, an
assemblage of tribes with little or no community of feel-
ing. It is a unit, and through all its members there
sweeps the mighty tide of a common life.
In the progress of its enormous growth, it has ab-
sorbed many a heterogeneous element, which has always
been transformed into its own substance by an assimila-
tive power that asserts the marvelous energy of the
Chinese civilization. It has, too, undergone many modi-
fications, in consequence of influences operating ab extra
as well as from within ; and though the process of trans-
mission has often been slow, those influences have al-
ways extended to the whole body. Within the bounds
of China proper, there is no such thing as the waves of
io THE LORE OF CATHAY
Buddhism or Taoism being arrested at the confines of a
particular province ; nor is there any district in which the
pulsations from the great heart of the empire do not, by
virtue of a common language and common feeling, meet
with a prompt response.
Yet the existence of this oneness and sympathy, this
nationality of mind, which brings modifications on a vast
scale within the range of possibility, necessarily inter-
poses an obstacle in the way of their speedy consumma-
tion. Planted on the deep foundations of antiquity, ex-
tending over so wide an area, and proudly conscious of its
own greatness, its very inertia is opposed to change. In
China, accordingly, great revolutions, whether political,
religious, or intellectual, have always been slow of ac-
complishment. Compared with the facility with which
these are brought about in some Occidental countries,
they resemble the slow revolution of those huge planets
on the outskirts of the solar system, which require more
than the period of a human life to make the circuit of the
sun, while the little planet Mercury wheels round the
center once in three months.
Great dynastic changes, involving as they do a period
of disintegration, and another of reconstruction, have
usually occupied from one to three generations, while the
growth' of those grand revolutions, which resulted in the
ascendency of a religion or a philosophy, must be reck-
oned by centuries.
A brief review of some of the more remarkable changes
that have occurred in the progress of Chinese civilization,
will enable us better to understand the nature of the in-
tellectual movement now going on.
To begin with the development of political ideas. In-
stead of being wedded to a uniform system of despotic
government, the Chinese have lived under as many forms
THE AWAKENING IN CHINA n
of government as ancient Rome or modern France.
While the Romans passed under their kings, consuls, and
emperors, the Chinese had their tis, their wangs, and
their huang tis. And as France has passed through the
various phases of a feudal and centralized monarchy, a
military despotism, and a republic, so China exhibits an
equal variety in the forms of her civil government.
When the hand of history first lifts the curtain, two
thousand years before the Christian era, it discloses to
us an elective monarchy, in which the voice of the peo-
ple was admitted to express the will of Heaven. Thus,
Yao, the model monarch of antiquity, was raised to the
throne by the voice of the nobles, in lieu of his elder
brother, who was set aside on account of his disorderly
life. Yao, in turn, set aside his own son, and called on
the nobles to name a successor, when Shun was chosen.
Again, Shun, passing by an unworthy son, transmitted the
" yellow " to an able minister, the great Yu.
Yu, though a good sovereign, departed from these illus-
trious precedents, and incurred the censure of " convert-
ing the empire into a family estate." The hereditary
principle became fixed. Branches of the imperial family
were assigned portions of the empire, and their descend-
ants succeeding to their principalities, the feudal system
was confirmed.
This, in China, is the classical form of government, but
it was overthrown completely two thousand years ago,
by one of the most sweeping revolutions on the records
of history. Since that date, China has been a consoli-
dated monarchy, living in complete isolation; without
neighbors, and without a conception of international inter-
course. This has been a fruitful source of conflict with
the great nations of the West and East.
Under the dynasty of Han, about the commencement
12 THE LORE OF CATHAY
of the Christian era, a still more important modification
was introduced into the constitution of the empire viz.,
a democratic element, in virtue of which appointments to
office were not left to the caprice of the sovereign and
his favorites. This consisted in testing the capacity of
candidates by a literary examination; and it operated so
well that it was not only adopted but greatly improved
by succeeding dynasties, and continues in force at the
present day. The Americans would as soon surrender
their ballot-box, as the Chinese that noble system of lit-
erary competition, which makes public office the reward
of scholarship, and gives every man an opportunity of
elevating himself by his own exertions.
Nor are the Chinese less familiar with the idea of
change in the region of religious thought. Three systems
of religion have appeared on the arena of the empire, and
struggled for ascendency since the sixth century before
the Christian era. Confucianism was persecuted under
the dynasty of Ch'in; and Taoism and Buddhism alter-
nately persecuting and persecuted, kept up a conflict for
ages, each in turn seating its own disciples on the throne
of the empire. The last of these is of foreign origin;
and its universal prevalence does much to reconcile the
people to the introduction of religious ideas from abroad ;
while it stands forth as a visible proof of the possibility
of converting the Chinese to a foreign creed. A leading
statesman* of China has made use of this as an argu-
ment to show that the emperor should not object to the
propagation of Christianity. " From the time of Ch'in
and Han," he says, " the doctrines of Confucius began
to be obscured, and the religion of Buddha spread. Now
Buddhism originated in India, but many of the Hindus
have renounced Buddhism and embraced Mohammedan-
* Tseng Kuo Fan, viceroy of Nanking.
THE AWAKENING IN CHINA 13
ism. The Roman Catholic faith originated in the West,
but some nations of the West have adopted Protestantism,
and set themselves in opposition to the faith of Rome.
Whence we see that other religions rise and fall from
age to age, but the doctrine of Confucius survives, un-
impaired throughout all ages." The writer is careful to
disavow any sympathy for Christianity, and he by no
means recommends its adoption; but he wishes to assure
His Majesty that there is no serious evil to be appre-
hended even if Christianity should succeed in supplanting
Buddhism, as long as the people adhere to the cardinal
doctrines of their ancient sage. It is a great thing for the
leading minds to acknowledge the possibility of a change
even in this hypothetical form.
Aside from these religious revolutions, and altogether
distinct from them, are several periods of intellectual
awakening, that constitute marked epochs in the history
of literature.
The first of these was occasioned by the teachings of
Confucius. Another occurred in the time of Mencius,
a century later, when the ethical basis of the school under-
went a searching revision, the great question of the origi-
nal goodness or depravity of human nature being dis-
cussed with acuteness and power. A third and more
powerful awakening took place, when the classic books
which Lu Cheng had burned, rose, phoenix-like, from their
ashes, or to speak more correctly, issued, Minerva-like,
from the retentive brain of those venerable scholars who
had committed them to memory in their early boyhood.
This was the age of criticism ; the very circumstances
which roused the national mind to activity, directed its
efforts to the settlement of the text of their ancient
records. But it did not stop here. Slips of bamboo, and
tablets of wood, the clumsy materials of ancient books,
H THE LORE OF CATHAY
gave place to linen, silk, and paper. The convenience
and elegance of the material contributed to multiply books
and to stimulate literary labor.
But the grandest of all the revivals of learning, was,
as might be expected, that which ensued on the discovery
of the art of printing. In the period above referred to,
about A. D. 177, the revised text of the sacred books was
engraved on tablets of stone, by Imperial order, as a pre-
caution to secure it against the danger of another con-
flagration. Impressions must have been taken from these,
and the art of printing thus practiced to a limited ex-
tent at that early date ; but it was not till the eighth cen-
tury that it came into general use for the manufacture of
books.
It was not so much the augmented rate of production
that marked this epoch, as the improved character of its
original literature. This was eminently the age of po-
etry ; when Li Tai Po, and Tu Fu, and a whole constella-
tion of lesser lights rose above the horizon. The Poems
of T'ang are still recognized as forming the text-books
of standard poetry.
This period was succeeded by another in the reign of
the Sung dynasty (960.1279), when the mind of China
exhibited itself in a new development. It became seized
with a mania for philosophical speculation, and grap-
pled with the deepest questions of ontology. Choutze,
Chengtze, and, above all, the famous Chu Hsi, distin-
guished themselves by the penetrating subtlety and the
daring freedom of their inquiries. Professing to eluci-
date the ancient philosophy, they in reality founded a new
one a school of pantheistic materialism, which has con-
tinued dominant to the present hour.
The last two dynasties have not been unfruitful in the
products of the intellect; indeed, there seems to be no
THE AWAKENING IN CHINA 15
end or abatement to the teeming fertility of the Chinese
mind. Less daringly original than in the preceding
period, it has yet, under each of these dynasties, appeared
in a new style the writers of the Ming being distin-
guished for masculine energy of expression, and those of
the Ta Ch'ing for graceful elegance.
Enough has been said to show that the Chinese have
not maintained through all the ages that character of
cast-iron uniformity so generally ascribed to them.
Worshipers of antiquity, they certainly are, and strongly
conservative in their mental tendencies ; but they have
not been content, as is too commonly supposed, to hand
down from the earliest times a small stock of crystallized
ideas without increase or modification. The germs of
their civilization, like those of any civilization worth pre-
serving, are not precious stones to be kept in a casket,
but seeds to be cultivated and improved. In fact, modi-
fications have taken place on an extensive scale, foreign
elements have from time to time been engrafted on the
native root, and the native scholar, as he follows back
the pathway of history, fails to discover anything like
uniformity or constancy, except in a few of the most
fundamental principles. The doctrine of filial piety, car-
ried to the point of religious devotion, extends like a
golden thread through all the ages, as the foundation of
family ties and social order; while the principle of the
divine origin of government, administered by one man
as the representative of Heaven, and modified by the
corresponding doctrine that the will of Heaven is ex-
pressed in the will of the people, is found alike in every
period, as the basis of their civil institutions.
Though not so much given to change as their more
mercurial antipodes, it is still true that the constant
factors of their civilization have been few, and the varia-
16 THE LORE OF CATHAY
ble ones many. Bold innovations and radical revolutions
rise to view all along in the retrospect of their far-reach-
ing past, and prepare them to anticipate the same for the
future. With such antecedents, and such a character for
intellectual activity, it would be next to impossible that
they should not be profoundly affected by their contacts
and collisions with the civilization of Christendom.
In point of fact the impression was profound, though
it was not immediately apparent. For over half a cen-
tury the West had been acting on China by the combined
influence of its arms, its commerce, its religion, and its
science. Some of these influences commenced to operate
at a much earlier date, and their effects were by no means
insignificant. But of late years all of them have been
combined with an oxyhydrogen blow-pipe intensity, that
one would think sufficient to melt a mountain of ada-
mant. They could not, in the nature of things, have been
brought to bear on China so effectively at any earlier
period on account of her geographical isolation. The na-
tions of the West were too remote to cause solicitude ; but
when steamships and the cutting of the Isthmus brought
them nearer, and when in two wars they displayed their
ability to beat her in every battle, they taught her a les-
son, without which all attempts to benefit the Chinese
must have proved like irrigating the side of a mountain
by projecting water from its base.
The effect was immediate. The Chinese were for the
first time convinced that they had something to learn.
Within less than a year from the close of hostilities in
1860, large bodies of Chinese troops might have been seen
learning foreign tactics under foreign drill-masters, on
the very battle grounds where they had been defeated.
Arsenals, well supplied with machinery from foreign
countries, were put in operation at four important points,
THE AWAKENING IN CHINA 17
and Navy Yards were established at two principal sea-
ports, where native mechanics were taught the construc-
tion of steam gun-boats.
Such, indeed, was their proficiency in the arts of war,
that they supposed themselves able to cope with a first-
class power, until the war with Japan dispelled the illu-
sion.
Nor was education in other lines wholly neglected. A
school for the training of interpreters was opened in Can-
ton, and a similar school established in the Capital. It is
significant of the animus of the ruling race that in both
schools the students were exclusively drawn from the
Tartar tribes, or from Chinese whose families had been
adopted into the Manchu race in the age of the conquest.
The government was not desirous of extending the bene-
fits of the new education to its Chinese subjects. One
Manchu statesman there was, with sounder views and
greater breadth Wen Hsiang, the enlightened chief of
the Board of Foreign Affairs. He induced the throne to
open the doors of the College to Chinese who were high-
class graduates in letters; but the haughty graduates de-
clined to enter. Wojin, the Emperor's teacher, de-
nounced the proposal to have her learned doctors sit at
the feet of foreigners as derogatory to the dignity of
China. Being at the head of the Imperial Academy, he
encouraged the Hanlins in their opposition to such an
innovation. Unable to reach the higher literati, Wen
Hsiang had to content himself with recruits from lower
grades. The number of scholarships was raised from
thirty to one hundred and twenty, and the curriculum en-
larged to embrace a liberal course in sciences and arts,
as well as languages. The Imperial T'ung Wen College
became an important factor in helping forward the cause
of progress.
1 8 THE LORE OF CATHAY
Some of its students found employment in schools and
arsenals. Many of them were attached to embassies in
foreign parts, and two of them had the distinguished
honor of becoming tutors in English to His Majesty, the
Emperor, then in his early minority. Instead of printed
books, they were required to place in the hands of their
Imperial pupil, a series of lessons written out in beauti-
ful manuscript. These they always brought to me to be
sure that they were correct. I may here mention that
my first appointment in connection with the T'ung Wen
College, was the charge of a class of boys, ten in number,
who were studying English. After a short time, I pro-
posed to give up the charge. An aged minister, who had
the oversight of the school, inquiring my reason for re-
signing, I told him 1 thought the business too small
for me.
" Don't call it small," he said, " some of your students
may yet become teachers of the Emperor."
Needless to say, this argument proved conclusive; not
only was his prophesy with reference to the students ful-
filled, a prediction which he had a good deal to do in
fulfilling, but, in the further enlargement of the institu-
tion, I was appointed to the Presidency in connection with
the Chair of International Law, a two-fold position, which
I continued to hold for twenty-five years, until ill-health
compelled my resignation.
Our students, who went abroad in connection with em-
bassies, were some of them interpreters, some secretaries,
some consuls and vice-consuls, while one or two even rose
to the dignity of minister plenipotentiary: notably was
this the case with Mr. Ching Chang,* late minister to
France.
* The late Marquis Tseng, Minister to England, though not a
student of the College, took private lessons from me, and always
manifested towards me the respect due to a teacher.
THE AWAKENING IN CHINA 19
The embassies themselves must not be overlooked as
an educational agency. Each minister and his suite re-
garded themselves as on a mission of exploration. Some-
times the minister embodied his observations in a set of
volumes. More frequently their secretaries published an
account of their travels. These publications, not being
pigeon-holed like official reports, had the effect of doing
much to awaken the reading class.
One of the most remarkable enterprises of that age was
the educational mission originated by Mr. Yung Wing,
a graduate and doctor of laws of Yale University. By
him and his successors, about three hundred picked youth
were led to Hartford for training in every branch of
knowledge that could make them useful to their country.
The mission was, as I have elsewhere stated, finally re-
called, because it was thought these young men were
learning too much.
The efforts hitherto made in this direction, were mainly
official, and intended for the use of the Government.
They were feeble in comparison with the strength of the
movement which followed on the war with Japan. The
first effect of defeat was to excite earnest inquiry as to
the cause of China's humiliation. Those haughty schol-
ars, the members of the Hanlin, who had disdained to
enter the T'ung Wen College, now became convinced that
the Japanese were victorious because a new education had
supplied them with new sources of power. They began
the organization of reform clubs in the capital and
throughout the empire, in many places. They sought the
advice of missionaries, such as Dr. Allen, the Rev. Tim-
othy Richard, and the Rev. Gilbert Reid. They were en-
couraged by Viceroys and Governors. The Great Vice-
roy, Chang Chih Tung published a book to stimulate the
movement, showing that a change of base for the educa-
tional system is " China's Only Hope."
20 THE LORE OF CATHAY
In 1897, the eminent Cantonese scholar, Kang Yii Wei,
went to the capital to compete for a place in the Imperial
Academy. He won for himself a more distinguished
position by getting the ear of the Emperor. Deeply
penetrated with the conviction that China's safety re-
quired her to imitate the example of Japan, he fired the
mind of the Emperor with enthusiasm to be the leader of
his people in the path of reform.
The Emperor issued a series of decrees, all commend-
ing themselves to the judgment of reasonable men, but
fraught with the spirit of innovation. He proposed, in-
stead of choosing the employees of the government as the
result of a competition in ornamental handwriting and
verse making, to have them examined in sciences and
practical arts. With this in view, he ordered the estab-
lishment of common schools, for which the idol temples
in the provinces were to be thrown open, an act regarded
by his people as equivalent to confiscation. He also or-
dered the creation of upper schools and colleges in the
provinces, and established a University in the capital,
which should gather in the provincial graduates and train
them for the service of the state. The writer was called
to the Presidency of this institution. It had been in op-
eration for two years with a corps of ten foreign profes-
sors, and twelve native assistants, mostly Christian grad-
uates of mission schools, when its operations were brought
to a standstill by the Boxer outbreak.
That temporary madness which showed itself in the
burning of the Hanlin Library, the destruction by fire of
the richest sections of the capital, and the destruction
by water of the library of our University, is sure to have
the effect of giving a fresh impetus to the cause of edu-
cational reform.
BOOK I
China's Contribution to Arts and
Sciences
20 THE LORE OF CATHAY
In 1897, the eminent Cantonese scholar, Kang Yii Wei,
went to the capital to compete for a place in the Imperial
Academy. He won for himself a more distinguished
position by getting the ear of the Emperor. Deeply
penetrated with the conviction that China's safety re-
quired her to imitate the example of Japan, he fired the
mind of the Emperor with enthusiasm to be the leader of
his people in the path of reform.
The Emperor issued a series of decrees, all commend-
ing themselves to the judgment of reasonable men, but
fraught with the spirit of innovation. He proposed, in-
stead of choosing the employees of the government as the
result of a competition in ornamental handwriting and
verse making, to have them examined in sciences and
practical arts. With this in view, he ordered the estab-
lishment of common schools, for which the idol temples
in the provinces were to be thrown open, an act regarded
by his people as equivalent to confiscation. He also or-
dered the creation of upper schools and colleges in the
provinces, and established a University in the capital,
which should gather in the provincial graduates and train
them for the service of the state. The writer was called
to the Presidency of this institution. It had been in op-
eration for two years with a corps of ten foreign profes-
sors, and twelve native assistants, mostly Christian grad-
uates of mission schools, when its operations were brought
to a standstill by the Boxer outbreak.
That temporary madness which showed itself in the
burning of the Hanlin Library, the destruction by fire of
the richest sections of the capital, and the destruction
by water of the library of our University, is sure to have
the effect of giving a fresh impetus to the cause of edu-
cational reform.
BOOK I
China's Contribution to Arts and
Sciences
24 THE LORE OF CATHAY
The author of the Liao Chai, a popular story book
compiled about two centuries ago, describes a tube into
which a message might be spoken and conveyed to a dis-
tant place, when on the removal of a seal the words
become audible. I am not going to champion Chiang
Hsien-sheng against Mr. Edison, as the inventor of a pho-
nograph. His specifications are too few and vague to
pass muster in our patent office. Like many anticipa-
tory hints to be found in the literature of other countries
this fanciful outline seems rather to indicate the con-
sciousness of a want than to show the way in which the
problem was to be solved.
Discarding fancy, we shall confine ourselves to solid
ground, and after vindicating for the Chinese the honor
of discovery in two or three important arts, we shall indi-
cate in a few words what they have done in the less famil-
iar domain of science.
I. i. Gunpowder, which Sir James MacKintosh
brackets together with printing as securing our civilization
against another irruption of barbarians, is, in my opinion,
to be set to the credit of the Chinese. The honor is con-
tested by English, German, Arab and Hindu; nor is it
impossible that the discovery may have been made inde-
pendently by each. Its ingredients, sulphur, nitre and
carbon, were in constant use by alchemists, and it was
inevitable that the explosive force of the compound should
be found out if only by accident especially as no fixed
proportion is required. The first to meet with this happy
accident would be the Chinese, who were the first experi-
menters in the field of alchemy.*
The pretentions of Schwartz and Roger Bacon need not
be discussed on account of their comparatively recent
date. As for the Arabs, they were transmitters, not
* See chapter III.
CHINESE DISCOVERIES 25
inventors. The only people who can seriously compete
with the Chinese are the Hindus. Their knowledge of
gunpowder is certainly of great antiquity, but their
ancient dates are difficult to fix, and the balance of evi-
dence as to priority appears to be in favor of China.
One of the weightiest documents bearing on the ques-
tion is a paper set for a metropolitan examination about
twenty years ago. The answers given by the candidates
would be of little worth ; but the facts stated or assumed
in the questions are of great value, emanating as they do
from the chief examiner, one of the most learned men in
the Empire.
" Fire-arms began with the use of rockets in the dy-
nasty of Chou (B. c. 1122-255) m what book do we
first meet with the word p'ao, now used for cannon ? "
" Is the defense of Kai Feng Fu against the Mongols
(1232) the first recorded use of cannon?"
" The Sung dynasty (A. D. 960-1278) had several vari-
eties of small guns what were their advantages ? "
These three questions all relate to fire-arms. They
imply an explosive, but it does not follow that such ex-
plosive was always employed to discharge projectiles.
Indeed the rockets referred to can scarcely be reckoned
as projectiles, being used for signals or for festive display,
rather than as weapons of war. The famous siege re-
ferred to in the second question was more than a hun-
dred years earlier than the first incontestable use of
cannon in Europe (1338).
If we turn to the Ko Chieh Ching Yuan, " The Mirror
of Research ", the best Chinese authority on the subject
of invention, we obtain a little light on the transition from
*
signal rockets to fire-arms properly so-called. The
26 THE LORE OF CATHAY
author cites an ancient book to the effect that in 998 A. D.
one Tang Fu produced a rocket of a new style having a
head of iron, proof that it was not intended for a mere
signal or a feu de joie. He also cites another book which
relates that in A. D. 1131 a piratical fleet on the River
Yangtze was destroyed by a " thunder bomb ", secretly
sent among the ships. The bomb made of paper was
filled, he says, with sulphur and quicklime. As it rose to
the sky with a report like thunder, it must have been
launched from a mortar by the force of gunpowder.
He further quotes a statement that at a date not men-
tioned, but earlier than the defense of Kai Feng Fu the
walls of Hsi An, the ancient capital, were provided with
cannon which went off with a report that could be heard
thirty miles and spread flames over half an acre. The
balls or bombs for these guns were made of iron, but
porcelain was also used.
Goubel, cited by Pauthier, says that cannon throwing
stones were used in the defense of T'ai Yuan, A. D., 767,
and that mines were employed. He says no explosive is
mentioned by the native author, its existence being taken
as well-known.
2. China's claim to the discovery of the Mariner's
Compass is uncontested. The magnet was known at an
early epoch to both Greeks and Egyptians ; the former
gave it its name, and the latter, according to Plutarch,
employed it as a symbol for a good man who not only
attracts others but possesses the power of imparting his
virtues. Yet the first to observe its directive properties
were the Chinese. By them the polarity of the needle
was utilized long before the Christian era. Some of
their books assert that it was used to guide war-chariots
across a desert as early as 2600 B. c., but the war is
legendary and the assertion groundless. More within
CHINESE DISCOVERIES 27
range is their unvarying statement, that magnetic needles
were given to ambassadors from a southern country to
enable them to find their way home, uoo B. c. Those
ambassadors came by land, and from its use in their
vehicles the compass came to be described as Chih nan
chil, a "South-pointing chariot." A curious illustration
of that primitive application of the needle may be seen any
day in a small compass suspended in the sedan or cart of
a Mandarin.
The use of the needle at sea follows as a matter of
course. The Chinese employed it in coasting voyages as
early as the fifth century A. D., and it is probable that
their junks as well as their land carriages were provided
with it long before that date. Its use was known in
Europe as early as the twelfth century, and possibly much
earlier, the crusades, which mingled all nations, having
served to propagate the arts of the East but it was slow
in coming into vogue. In the bold hands of Columbus
three centuries later it pointed the way to a new world.
Yet Vasco da Gama seems to have made little or no use of
it in his voyage to India in 1497, which was in fact a
coasting voyage all the way. Camoens in his poetical
narrative Os Lusiadas, though he praises the astrolabe
and is ever on the alert for things marvellous and strange,
makes no allusion to the needle.
3. That Gutenberg's invention of printing was
prompted by the knowledge that something similar existed
in China is next to certain. For seven hundred years
the art had been practiced there, not in secret as he and
Faustus practiced it, but as a great popular industry.
Its origin is remarkable. A tyrant, determined to uproot
the principles of Confucius, burned the books of the Sage.
They were restored partly from memory, partly from im-
perfect copies found hidden in the wall of a house. The
28 THE LORE OF CATHAY
Emperor Tai Tsung, (A. D. 627) resolved that the sacred
inheritance should never again be exposed to destruction
by fire, caused the books to be engraved on stone. That
stone library is still extant. A hundred and seventy slabs
of granite bearing on their faces the text of the thirteen
classics may still be seen at Hsi An Fu, and a modern imi-
tation of it stands in the old Confucian University at
Peking.
No sooner was that Imperial edition completed than
the idea occurred of making it accessible to scholars in
all parts of the country by means of rubbings. That was
printing. Nor in China has the form of that art greatly
changed in the lapse of a thousand years. Wood has
been substituted for stone and relievo for intaglio, mak-
ing the page white instead of black, but the impressions
are still rubbings, made with a soft brush and without the
use of a press.
From the invention of block printing it was not long
until attempts were made to print with divisible type, but
they failed to supersede the primitive method, the Chinese
not having hit on that happy alloy known as " printers'
metal." It is not necessary to suppose that Chinese type
of wood, copper or terra cotta found their way to May-
ence; the smallest fragment of printed paper carried in a
China vase or roll of silk would be sufficient to suggest
the whole art to a mind like that of Gutenberg.
4. The art of making porcelain is so obviously Chi-
nese in its origin that porcelain continues to bear the
name of China ware.
5. The same may be said of the manufacture of silk.
The name is somewhat disguised, but it is obviously de-
rived from Seres the Latin for Chinese, through the ad-
jective scricum, which dropping the final syllable becomes
serie-silk, i. e., China stuff. I need not push the argument
CHINESE DISCOVERIES 29
so far as to assert that ser is Chinese for silkworm;
though that derivation is not without plausibility. In
the making of paper, not only were the Chinese far in
advance of us they preceded us in the special art of pro-
ducing it from wood pulp. Paper was invented by China
about the beginning of the Christian era; but for many
centuries preceding their books were engraved on slips of
bamboo with the point of a stile.
It is a curious fact that arts originating in China seem
to require transplanting in order to attain a higher de-
velopment. Witness the marvellous improvements made
in the application of gunpowder, printing and the mari-
ner's compass. This may be due to an inborn conservatism
which makes the Chinese reluctant to alter the methods
approved by their fathers.
II. The same observation may be made in regard to
their essays in the field of science. Ideas which in their
native soil have remained stunted and deformed yield a
rich fruitage under a more genial sky.
1. Notably is this the case with Alchemy,* which in
the western world has expanded into a vast body of sci-
ence which, in no mean sense, fulfils its promise of trans-
muting baser elements into gold. In its native soil it con-
tinues to be an occult art laden with all the superstitions
of the middle ages.
There is no other science for which we are indebted
to China, but there are many in which the Chinese made
a beginning at an epoch when Europe was still in a state
of barbarism.
2. Astronomy. In this they made a good beginning
twenty-two centuries before Christ. They had an astro-
nomical board with regular professors, two of whom were
put to death for failing, as some think, to foretell an
* See chap. III.
30 THE LORE OF CATHAY
eclipse of the sun. Others, however, suppose that their
offense was failing to solemnize the event with proper
rites.
At that epoch they had fixed the length of the year
more exactly than it was fixed by the Romans in the time
of Numa. In their later astronomy Indian and Babylonian
influences are conspicuous and we are unable to assign to
them any credit beyond that of being good observers.
.3. Mathematics. Decimal Arithmetic, we are told,
was brought to Europe by the Arabs, along with what we
still call the Arabic figures. That the Arabs obtained
it from India requires no demonstration ; but did it origi-
nate in India ? Whether it passed from China to India or
vice versa is not easy to determine. It is not very likely,
however, that the Chinese would borrow it as early as
2600 B. c., when their chronological computation was
adopted a system in which it is manifestly involved.
Their oldest arithmetic, the Chou Pel, proceeds upon it,
and that dates, in part at least, from the Chou dynasty,
whose name it bears, 1125 B. c.
Not a little remarkable is it that this venerable book
contains a treatise on right-angled triangles, bearing the
name of Chou Kung, the founder of the House of Chou.
Trigonometry as it appeared in Europe is ascribed to the
Hindus, but with them it dates from the Greek invasion,
having been developed from the Geometry of the Greeks.
Of Algebra the Chinese possess an original form called
Tien Yuan, which though not found in any book earlier
than A. D. 1247, gives signs of being of indigenous
growth. The words Tien and Yuan are equivalent to x
and y signs for unknown quantities.
4. Physics. Ether, that mysterious substance which
of late has forced itself on the attention of our
philosophers as a necessary postulate, was known to the
CHINESE DISCOVERIES 31
Chinese a thousand years ago. It is, says Professor
Lodge, " The simplest conception of the Universe that has
yet occurred to the mind of man one continuous sub-
stance filling all space, which can vibrate as light, which
can be parted into positive and negative electricity, which
in whirls or vortices constitutes matter, and which trans-
mits by continuity, not by impact, every action and re-
action of which matter is capable this is the modern
view of ether and its functions."
This conception, as I shall show in the next chapter,
is not new to the philosophers of China. How early it
appeared there it is not easy to affirm perhaps eleven
centuries before our era, when the earliest speculations on
the forces of nature were embodied in" the / Ching, or
" Book of Changes." It is found as a full-fledged doc-
trine in several writers of the eleventh century of our era,
who not only speak of an ethereal medium, but ascribe to
it all the properties above enumerated, except that of pro-
ducing electricity.
The word Ether is Greek, but our scientific use of it is
essentially Chinese. That we borrowed the idea from
China I will not assert, but it is easy to point out a way
by which it might have passed into Europe. The author
of the modern theory of ether is Rene Descartes. Edu-
cated at the Jesuit Seminary of La Fleche in France, who
can prove that he did not there meet with fragments of
Chinese philosophy in the writings of Jesuit missionaries?
5. If the Chinese had the Cartesian philosophy before
Descartes, it is equally true that they understood the
Baconian method before Bacon. They knew the doctrine
only to reject it, as did Descartes at a later date. Even
such general ideas as that of Biological Evolution, and
that of the conservation of energy, they appear to have
apprehended with great clearness, but they never took the
32 THE LORE OF CATHAY
trouble to fortify them by the laborious process of sys-
tematic induction. Says Mencius, " The study of nature
has for its object to get at the causes of things. In causes
the ground principle is advantage. Tho' heaven is high,
and sun and stars are far away, if we could find out the
causes of their phenomena, we might sit still and calculate
the solstice of a thousand years."
In this remarkable speech uttered 400 B. c. he shows
that he knew how to set about the study of nature. It
might perhaps be going too far to affirm, that in speaking
of " advantage " as a fundamental principle in natural
causes, he anticipated the author of The Origin of
Species ; yet this obscure hint, if followed up, might have
led to Darwin's doctrine.
As most of the points under this last head are treated
in the next chapter, I bring the enumeration to a close by
inquiring why the Chinese failed to profit by their discov-
eries? The answer is brief but decided : In the arts, the
slavish habit of following in the footsteps of their
fathers acted as a bar to improvement. In the sciences,
progress was rendered impossible by a system of state
education which made the ancient classics the only basis
of public instruction.
II
CHINESE SPECULATION IN PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE
THE term speculative philosophy* is a little hazy ;
perhaps, however, not more so than the thing
indicated. It represents an early stage of
thought prior to the rise of physical science may we
not add prior to, and for the most part in neglect of, that
logic whose office it is to analyze the process of reasoning
and to fix the limits of knowledge?
Irregular and haphazard as it has shown itself in most
countries, it is not inaptly described by the word specu-
lation, as understood in business transactions. Why is it
that the speculator in the stock market may, as by the cast
of a die, achieve fortune or provoke ruin? Is it not
because the unknown and the variable are elements that
elude his grasp? Yet the element of uncertainty is pre-
cisely that which contributes most to the fascination of his
ventures. Has it not been the same with most of those
early thinkers who have undertaken to explain the
mystery of existence?
When the pole of which they are in search is hedged
about by frozen seas, what wonder if their happiest efforts
have not been rewarded by complete success ? Yet has the
pursuit of truth in those regions and in all ages been
justly regarded as the most ennobling occupation of the
human mind. Nor has it been barren of results. Would
* This chapter is included under the head of Science, notwith-
standing the word Philosophy in its title, because it deals chiefly
with the study of nature.
33
34 THE LORE OF CATHAY
it not be a surprise to find that Chinese explorers in
these high latitudes have planted their standard nearer to
the pole than those of most other nations?
To show what they have accomplished, I shall not deem
it necessary to trace their philosophy, even in outline,
from the dawn of speculation, but shall select a period
when their speculative thought was most active and when
the now dominant philosophy was formulated. Of the
forty centuries included in the records of the Chinese
Empire, there is one century, and no other, that can be
selected as preeminently the age of philosophy. This was
at the beginning of the Sung dynasty ( 1020 to 1 120 A. D.),
when gross darkness brooded over Europe and when the
western world was convulsed by the Crusades. Earlier
dynasties had been distinguished by various forms of in-
tellectual activity, one by the invention of political sys-
tems, one by historical writings, one for poetry and the
drama, etc., but not until this epoch did the Chinese
mind evince a disposition to question everything in heaven
and earth. In the work of setting anew the foundations of
faith and knowledge, five men took the lead, whose family
names (two being brothers) fall curiously into an allitera-
tive line of four syllables, Chou, Chang, Cheng, Chu,
all so distinguished that they may be compared with a
Pleiad cluster, a constellation (and are there not many
such?) whose light has not yet reached our shores. The
last named is by far the most celebrated. Not more origi-
nal than the others, he combined the qualities of a labori-
ous scholar and an acute thinker, and knew how to gather
the scattered rays of his predecessors into a focus.
Though shining in part by borrowed light, Chu Hsi looms
up like a pharos, taking (after Confucius and Mencius)
the third place among the great teachers of the Chinese
people. All five were -Confucian scholars, but there can
DR. MARTIN AND SOME OF HIS STUDENTS
CHINESE SPECULATION 35
be no doubt that their mental activity was stimulated and
its direction determined by the speculations of Buddhist
and Taoist writers. Their writings derive immense im-
portance from the fact that for five hundred years, since
the publication by imperial authority of the great Ency-
clopedia of Philosophy, they have been accepted by the
government as the standard of orthodoxy to which all
who aspire to the honors of the civil-service examinations
are expected to conform. Their views are therefore to be
taken as the views of the educated men o-f the China of
to-day.
In their mode of philosophizing they resemble Des-
cartes more than Bacon. Their method is a priori, and,
like the great Frenchman who had read Bacon and re-
jected his doctrine, they adopted theirs, not through ig-
norance of the experimental method, but from choice.
Confucius himself had laid down the maxim that " knowl-
edge comes from the study of things," a maxim which
seems as much out of place in his pages as that fine
aphorism which sets forth the value of experiment does
in those of Plato : Ifnfeipia Jtotsi rbv ai&va rw&v xopeve-
atiat Kara Texvrjva, ittipia 8k Kara rv^rfr.*
The Chinese assert that their sage wrote a treatise on
the experimental study of nature, but that it was lost, and
this fact they offer as an excuse for the backwardness of
their country in that department of science. Descartes's
preference for the deductive method sprang from his
mathematical genius. On the part of the Chinese it was
due to a desire to follow what they considered the order
of nature. Both esteemed it most rational to do as Stan-
ley did in exploring the Congo to strike the stream at its
* Experiment for experience, for in Greek as in French the
word means both) causes the world to go forward in a scientific
way ; the want of it, in a haphazard manner. Gorgias.
3 6 THE LORE OF CATHAY
head and follow it down to the sea rather than with
Bacon to enter the mouth and creep slowly upward
against the current. Which is the more daring feat, and
which the more certain method, needs not to be pointed
out. To compare the two methods and define the province
of each, does not belong to our present theme. Suffice it
to say that the champions of the one not infrequently
made use of the other. When the Baconian got hold of a
great principle, he did not fail to deduce its consequences ;
nor, on the other hand, did a Cartesian neglect to appeal
to experiment. With the former experiment preceded
discovery; with the latter it was employed to confirm
conclusions.
Practical as the Chinese mind confessedly is, it is not
a little remarkable that in the study of nature Chinese
philosophers have never made extensive use of the in-
ductive method. That they have not been unacquainted
with it is evident from the following questions and
answers found in the writings of the brothers Cheng :
" One asked whether, to arrive at a knowledge of na-
ture, it is necessary to investigate each particular object;
or may not some one thing be seized upon from which
the knowledge of many things may be derived ? "
" The Master replied : ' A comprehensive knowledge
of nature is not so easily acquired. You must examine
one thing to-day and another thing to-morrow, and when
you have accumulated a store of facts, your knowledge
will burst its shell and come forth into fuller light, con-
necting all the particulars by general laws.' "
In view of this lucid response of one of their great
oracles, who can deny that the Chinese had a clear con-
ception of the inductive method five hundred years before
Bacon ? But, as Channing says, " Great men are not so
much distinguished by difference of ideas, as by different
CHINESE SPECULATION 37
degrees in the impression made by the same idea." Con-
trast with this a dictum of Chang, the second of the five :
" To know nature, you must first know Heaven. If
you have pushed your science so far as to know Heaven,
then you are at the source of all things. Knowing their
evolution you can tell what ought to be, and what ought
not to be, without waiting for anyone to inform you."
The former statement made no impression on the Chinese
mind, while the latter is universally regarded as its guid-
ing star. How different must have been the history of the
world had Chinese thinkers, instead of seeking for a short
cut to universal knowledge, been content to study one
thing at a time, with a view to " connecting all the
particulars by general laws."
In accordance with the principle so confidently enunci-
ated, Chang and his followers (and his predecessors as
well) have directed their main attack to the problems of
cosmogony, believing that they might thereby arrive at
the " source of all things." Tomes are filled with conjec-
tures and reasonings which it would be unprofitable to
follow out in detail. The results, however, if I may so
call them, which they reached by a sort of happy guess
work, are not unworthy of notice, forming as they do the
philosophical creed of educated China.
Stimulated, as I have said, by the speculations of Bud-
dhist and Taoist schools, they took care to follow neither ;
and betray the influence of these sectaries chiefly by the
pains they are at to steer a middle course between the two.
To the one school, mind is the only entity, and matter a
deceptive figment of the imagination ; to the other, matter
is the sole essence, and mind one of its products. Each
inculcated a species of monism. The thinkers of the
Sung dynasty, combining these one-sided conceptions,
boldly assert a dualism in nature, and fix on li and ch'i,
38 THE LORE OF CATHAY
force and matter, as the seminal principles of the
universe.*
Is it not a little startling to find them at that early date
hitting on a generalization which to us appears among the
late results of modern science? Yet we shall see as we
advance that this is not the only instance in which their
unscientific speculations have anticipated the teachings of
modern science.
Both terms in their dual formula require elucidation.
Of the two principles, one is active, the other passive. I
have rendered li by the word " force," as being active, but
it is not mere force. The word signifies a principle of
order, a law of nature. It is often synonymous with Too,
" reason," answering to the Greek logos. When Chu Hsi
says that " heaven is li," he evidently means that the
prime force in the universe is reason, exactly the position
maintained by the Taoists, though they use Tao, and not
li, to express the idea. With both, this reason, if we may
so call it, is rather a property of mind than mind itself.
Each denies its personality, not perceiving that a property
implies a substance, and that in this case the substance
must be mind.
Ch'i, the second term of the formula, being passive, is
matter. In popular use, however, it is limited to matter in
a gaseous form and in these philosophical speculations it
means primordial matter. Hear what they say of it :
In a treatise called Cheng Mcng " Right Discipline for
Youth," Chang, with a thoroughness characteristic of the
Chinese, begins with the origin of the universe. " The
immensity of space, though called the great void," he says,
* They profess to derive their doctrines from the / Ching, the
Chinese Genesis and so do the Taoists. It is surprising with
what skill each school succeeds in reading its tenets into that
ancient text, parts of which are referred to B. c. 2800!
CHINESE SPECULATION 39
" is not void. It is filled with a subtile substance. In
fact, there is no such thing as a vacuum." Now what is
this omnipresent " subtile substance? " If we compare the
descriptions of it given by these writers, we cannot resist
the conclusion that it is ether ; not the ether of the Greeks,
the burning air, the empyrean, but the all-pervading ether
of our modern science. It is the stuff out of which matter
was produced. This is^now a familiar idea, not of sci-
ence, but of scientific speculation. It is set forth with
special fullness in a work on the unseen universe, by those
eminent professors, P. G. Tate and Balfour Stewart,
along with the correlative doctrine of the reversion of
matter to its primitive state.
Our Chinese philosophers taught the same thing cen-
turies ago. What says the author of Right Discipline?
His words are : " Within the immensity of space matter
is alternately concentrated and dissipated, much as ice is
congealed or dissolved in water." Not merely do they
antedate these English writers in making it the source
of matter, they seem to have hit on the dynamical theory
of the molecule, and particularly on vortex motion, as the
process of transformation. Chou, a contemporary of
Chang, is known as the author of a diagram of cos-
mogony. He begins with a ring or circle of uniform
whiteness, representing the primitive uniform ether.
Then follows a circle partly dark, which shows the origi-
nal substance differentiated into two forms, or rather
forces, called Yin and Yang. Speaking of this diagram,
" It shows," says Chu, the great expositor of the Chinese
canonical books, " how the primitive void is transformed
into matter." The two forces, mo lai mo ch'il, grind back
and forth, like millstones, in opposite directions, and the
detritus resulting from their friction is what we call
matter."
40 THE LORE OF CATHAY
Perhaps the most striking point in this Chinese cos-
mogony is the account it gives of the creation of light.
T'ai ch'i tung erh shcng yang. " The primal essence
moved, and light was born." That the mode of motion
was vibratory they also conjectured, but I do not assert
that they ever carried their researches so far as to measure
the length of a luminiferous wave, a performance which
may now be witnessed any day in our physical laboratories.
The Occidental theory of the ether and its functions is
confirmed by a magnificent array of scientific facts ; the
Oriental theory, standing apart from experimental sci-
ence, never emerged from the state of speculation ; a
speculation wonderfully acute and sublime, in which the
scientific imagination shows itself to the best advantage,
divining as if by instinct great truths which require
for their confirmation the slower process of patient
investigation. Nor must we forget that in the West
this theory existed in the state of a discarded specula-
tion for at least two centuries before it received the seal
of science.
The first European to get a glimpse of the circumam-
bient ocean was Rene Descartes. His mistake in referring
the motions of the planets to whirlpools of ether brought
discredit on his whole system, notwithstanding the fact
that he also held that minute vortices were necessary to
explain the constitution of matter. But what a glorious
resurrection awaited it ! In the last year of the eigh-
teenth century, touched literally by a sunbeam, it woke
from its long slumber. Young found it necessary to the
hypothesis of undulations, to which he was led by the
interference of rays, and Fresnel resorted to it to explain
the phenomena of polarization. If this revival enhances
the respect with which we regard the " father of modern
philosophy," should it not also reflect a little luster on
CHINESE SPECULATION 41
those early thinkers of the far East who made the
Cartesian ether the basis of their cosmogony?
Two or three doctrines that have played a great part in
the intellectual movements of our age remain to be
noticed as having been long ago propounded by the specu-
lative philosophers of China. That they should have
some conception of an evolutionary process in nature is
not to be wondered at. What but a most thoroughgoing
doctrine of evolution is to be expected from men who
begin with the evolution of matter? The original unity
of matter, suggested by modern researches in molecular
physics, we may remark, was assumed in all of their cos-
mological speculations. What the eminent physicist, J.
W. Draper, says of the alchemists of Europe is true in a
still higher degree of those of China, who led the way,
both in speculation and investigation. " They were the
first to seize the grand idea of evolution in its widest
extent as a progress from the imperfect to the more per-
fect in lifeless as well as living nature, in an increasing
progression in which all things take part toward a higher
and nobler state." This view is prominent in the writings
of many of the philosophers of ancient China.
Here is a statement from the works of one of the Cheng
brothers, which shows that they came very near to the
doctrine of the conservation of energy. He says : " Body
in motion is force. Its contact with another is followed
by a reaction or effect. This effect in turn acts as a force
producing another effect, and so on without end."
" Here," he adds, " is a vast subject for the student of
philosophy." The Chinese " students of philosophy " have
not troubled themselves to verify this, any more than
other shrewd guesses of their predecessors. The remark,
however, which Chu makes on this passage shows a com-
prehensive grasp of the idea. " Heaven and earth," he
42 THE LORE OF CATHAY
says, " with all they contain, are nothing but transforma-
tions of one primitive force."
In conclusion, the cosmogony of our Chinese philoso-
phers is by no means so atheistic as it might appear.
True, Chu Hsi, the authorized expounder of their system,
says : " We must beware of thinking that there is a man
up in the sky, who controls the motion of the universe."
But he does not deny that there is a power at work whose
nature is inscrutable. Says Chang, the most daring of the
five : " The great void is filled with a pure or perfect fluid.
Since it is perfectly fluid, it offers no obstruction to move-
ment " (i. e., it neither impedes motion nor is its proper
motion impeded). "There being no obstruction [i. e.,
nothing to bring about a change of state], a divine force
converts the pure into the gross." To explain the cre-
ation of matter, he invokes, though reluctantly, the inter-
vention of a divine power. Is it not what Horace calls
Nodus tali vindice dignusf
That our Chinese thinkers meant God in a proper
sense, I will not affirm, but they considerately leave room
for him. Have we not seen that one of the dual principles
postulated by them is invested with some of the " at-
tributes of mind?" They dogmatize about self-acting
laws, but there is reason to expect that another genera-
tion will come to understand that law implies mind, and
will proclaim with Emerson that
" Conscious law is King o kings."
To them our Western school of agnosticism is, as yet
unknown. In that line, too, they are in advance of us
by several centuries. But their agnosticism is of a milder
type than ours. It is not aggressive, neither is it so
bigoted as not to be open to conviction. It is, moreover,
as the Occidental is not. profoundly reverential. For this
CHINESE SPECULATION 43
habit of mind it is indebted to Confucius, who, to wean
his people from debasing forms of idolatry, employed for
the Supreme Being the vague term Heaven, and dis-
couraged them from prying into those transcendental
mysteries hidden by the veil of blue. He believed, how-
ever, in a moral government, and so do all his followers
to this day. He ascribed to the object of his reverence
more of personality than they are willing to admit. " The
superior man," he said, " fears three things, and the first
is Heaven." " With what words does Heaven speak to
us? " he asks again. " The seasons run their rounds, and
animal and vegetable life displays itself in a hundred
forms. These are the language of Heaven." He ap-
proaches far nearer to the Christian idea of God than the
negations of Buddha, or the metamorphoses of Taoism ;
and there is reason to hope that his disciples will come
back to the mental attitude of their great master, which
has been somewhat obscured by later speculations. To
bring them back, and to carry them beyond it, they
require, above all things, a truer logic and a juster psy-
chology than they have ever possessed.*
Happy will it be for China when those who control the
opinions of the people learn, in that vague Power of
which they stand in awe, to recognize the Pater Mundi.
* With a view to meeting this demand, I prepared three years
ago, in Chinese, a volume on Christian Psychology, which was in-
troduced to the Chinese world by a preface from the pen of
Li Hung Chang, and published by the Society for the Diffusion
of Useful Knowledge.
Ill
ALCHEMY IN CHINA, THE SOURCE OF CHEMISTRY
" The search itself rewards the pains ;
So though the chymist his great secret miss,
For neither it in art nor nature is,
Yet things well worth his toil he gains,
And does his charge and labor pay,
With good unsought experiments by the way."
COWLEY.
ONE in their etymological origin, the words Al-
chemy and Chemistry describe different stages
in the progress of the same science. The
former represents it in its infancy, nursed on the bosom of
superstition ; its field of vision limited to special objects,
and vainly striving to accomplish the impossible. The
latter presents it in its maturity, when, emancipated from
puerile fancies, it claims the realm of nature for its
domain, and the laws of matter as its proper study.
A glance at alchemy as practiced in the West will be
necessary to prepare us for understanding the role it has
played in the distant Orient.
In its earlier stage it acknowledged no other aim than
the pursuit of the philosopher's stone and the elixir of
life. In its more advanced state it renounces them both,
yet it secures substantial advantages of scarcely inferior
magnitude, alleviating disease and prolonging life by the
improvements it has introduced into the practice of medi-
cine; while by the mastery it gives us over the elements
44
ALCHEMY IN CHINA 45
of nature it surpasses the most sanguine expectations of
its early votaries.
Those early votaries, whether they lived and labored in
the West or East, should not be forgotten. They were
the intrepid divers who explored the bottom of the stream,
and laid the foundation for those magnificent arches on
which modern science has erected her easy thoroughfare.
Like coral insects, " building better than they knew," they
toiled upward in the midst of darkness, guided only by a
faint glimmer of the light, but without any conception of
the extent and richness of the new world of knowledge
that was destined to spring from their ill-directed labors.
Heirs of the world's experience, and themselves daring
experimenters, we need not be surprised to find them in
possession of a large mass of empirical information.*
The old Arabian Geber.f as early as the eighth century,
was acquainted with the preparation of sulphuric acid
and aqua regia, and gave an elaborate description of the
more useful metals. He was a chemist ; if A. Von Hum-
boldt is right in saying that " Chemistry begins when
men have learned to employ mineral acids and powerful
solvents."
In the twelfth century, Albertus Magnus J understood
* Cowley expresses this idea in the verses prefixed to this
essay, which, it must be confessed, contain more truth than
poetry.
tFrom his name comes gibberish much as dunce comes from
Duns Scotus.
t Humboldt speaks of Albertus Magnus as " an independent
observer in the domain of analytical chemistry ; " and adds,
" It is true that his hopes were directed to the transmutation o
metals, but in his attempts to fulfil this object he not only
improved the practical manipulation of ores, but also enlarged
the insight of men into the general mode of action of the
chemical forces of nature."
46 THE LORE OF CATHAY
the cupellation of gold and silver, and their purification by
means of lead, as also the preparation of caustic potassa,
ceruse, and minium.
In the thirteenth, Roger Bacon described with accuracy
the properties of saltpetre, giving the recipe for gun-
powder, and approaching very nearly to the explanation
of the functions of air in combustion.
In the same century, Raymond Lully described the
process of obtaining the essential oils ; and, a little later,
Basil Valentine obtained copper from blue vitriol by the
use of iron; and discovered antimony, sulphuric ether,
and fulminating gold. Isaac de Hollandais fabricated
gems and described the process. Brandt, while analyzing
a human body in quest of the philosopher's stone,
stumbled on the discovery of phosphorus.
In the early part of the sixteenth century, Paracelsus
did much to overthrow the inert methods of the Galenists,
and gained a great and well-deserved reputation by intro-
ducing the use of mineral medicines, i. e. of chemical
compounds.* This last-named individual, though among
its more modern professors, may be taken as the very best
type of the so-called science of alchemy, whether in its
wisdom or its folly, in the absurdity of its pretensions or
in the solid value of its actual achievements. His name,
Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastes Paracelsus
von Hohenheim, is synonymous with charlatan; and his
fate sadly illustrates the history of his profession, which
one of his fellow-laborers describes as " beginning in
deceit, progressing with toil, and ending in beggary."
* " With the rise of the Spagyrists and Paracelsus, who taught
that the true use of chemistry is not to make gold, but medicines,
we seem to perceive the first attempt at a rational pursuit of the
study " (review of article " Chemistry " in the Encyclopedia
Britannica; Nature, January, 1877.)
ALCHEMY IN CHINA 47
His life was terminated, like those of so many professed
adepts, by imbibing a draught of his own elixir.* Nor
was Paracelsus the last victim of this bewitching delusion.
In 1784, Dr. Price, an English physician, after having
made gold in the presence of several persons, and pre-
sented some of the precious product to George III., on
being examined by a scientific commission, committed
suicide to escape the shame of exposure.
Alchemy is not exclusively an old-world delusion. It
crossed the ocean in the Mayflower along with witch-
craft.
" One of the most curious things revealed to us in these
volumes (of voyages)" says Mr. Lowell, "is the fact
that John Winthrop Jr., was seeking the philosopher's
stone."
In Jonathan Brewster, we have a specimen (of a dif-
ferent kind). Is it not curious that there should have
been a balneum mortal at New London, two hundred
years ago? that la recherche de labiolu should have
been going on there in a log hut under constant fear that
the Indians would put out, not merely the flower of one
little life, but rob the world of this divine secret.f
Dr. Barnard, " the diamond-maker of Sacramento,"
with his feet on the auriferous dust of California, sacri-
ficed his life a few years ago in the vain attempt to manu-
facture something more precious than gold. Charging
* Of martyrs of science of this description, no country can
show a longer catalogue than China. It may be found in extenso
in native polemics against the Taoist religion, or scattered
through the pages of the national histories. It will be sufficient
here to refer to the Emperors Mu Tsung (A. D. 825), and Wu
Tsung (A. D. 847), of the T'ang dynasty, both of whom are said
to have shortened their lives by drinking a pretended elixir of
immortality.
f Among My Books, pp. 253, 256.
48 THE LORE OF CATHAY
a hollow sphere with the costly ingredients, which, on the
application of fire, were to crystallize into diamonds, he
was blown into the air by a premature explosion, and
died without revealing the secret of which he believed
himself to be the sole depositary.*
In Germany a Societas Hermetica existed as late as
the year 1819; and this suggests a suspicion that the race
of alchemists may not yet be altogether extinct, even
among us. In fact the papers tell us of a man, who, in
Canada, in 1877, committed suicide for the avowed pur-
pose of testing the virtues of a restorative elixir which
he professed to have invented. By the side of his lifeless
corpse a letter was found directing that " a few particles
of my ' creative all-changeful essence ' be scattered over
my remains, when the elements will resolve themselves
into a new combination, and I will reappear a living evi-
dence of the truth of this new discovery." If these are
the words of a madman, they are those of one whose
brain was turned by the study of alchemy. A large bottle
containing the elixir was found standing by the letter. If
this poor fellow was the last to offer himself as a sacri-
fice to the Moloch of alchemy, the last alchemist who
succeeded in victimizing the public was Count Cagliostro,
who, after vending his " elixir of immortal youth " in
most of the courts of Europe, closed his career in a papal
prison in 1795.!
* His melancholy history was given at length under the title
of " The Diamond-maker of Sacramento," some years ago, in the
Overland Monthly, a spirited magazine of San Francisco, suc-
cessfully edited by the poet Bret Harte, and the Hon. B. P.
Avery. late U. S. Minister at Peking. Against the possibility of
making large transparent crystals of pure carbon, modern chem-
istry has never undertaken to pronounce ; the ancient and unsuc-
cessful diamond makers, however, were not chemists but alche-
mists.
^Scientific American, March 31, 1877.
ALCHEMY IN CHINA 49
In China, the hermetic art still flourishes in full vigor.
The Abbe Hue, in his History of Christianity in China,
relates an amusing incident illustrating the ardor with
which these persevering Orientals still continue to pursue
the golden phantom. When the missionaries established
themselves in Chao Ch'ing, in Canton province, a com-
pany of educated natives possessed of considerable means
were busily engaged in seeking to solve the problem of
ages. A servant of the missionaries hinted to them that
those learned Europeans were already in possession of it.
Believing his assertion, they began to load him with
favors to induce him to obtain the secret, for their ad-
vantage. They gave him fine clothes, and furnished him
with money to hire handsome apartments and purchase a
beautiful wife; while he, on his part, was in no haste to
fulfil his engagement. He was only waiting for the
Western sphinxes to open their lips. But the patience of
his generous victims finally gave out; or, what is more
probable, they learned from the missionaries that they
had no such secret to communicate. To escape their
vengeance, the crafty rogue was compelled to fly to a
neighboring city, where he ended his days in a prison.
If the Chinese are the last to surrender this pleasing
delusion, there is good reason to believe that they deserve
the more honorable distinction of being the first to
originate the idea.
The origin of an idea so fruitful in results is a question
of great interest; and many writers have expended on it
the resources of their learning. Some find it in the my-
thology of the Greeks, maintaining (an interpretation
older than the Christian era) that the golden fleece sought
for by the Argonauts was merely a sheepskin on which
was inscribed the secret of making gold ;* and this fancy
* This construction of the legend comes from Dionysius of
Mitylene, who lived circa B. c. 50.
50 THE LORE OF CATHAY
derives, it must be confessed, a little support from the cir-
cumstance that Medea is represented as possessed of the
corresponding secret of perpetuating or restoring youth,
having cut to pieces and reconstructed her aged father-
in-law.
Some, again, discover the origin of the idea in Egypt,
the land of Thoth (Hermes Trismegistus), and allege, in
corroboration of their view, that the ancient Egyptians
possessed considerable skill in practical chemistry. But
the advocates of its Egyptian origin are not able to trace
it back further than the time of the Ptolemies, and stu-
dents of Hindu literature maintain that the Indians
possessed a knowledge of it long before that date, though
it must not be forgotten that there is nothing more uncer-
tain than the chronology of ancient India.*
Others adduce conclusive proof to show that modern
Europe received it from the Arabs. They have not, how-
ever, shown that the Arabs were its authors; and seem
scarcely to have entertained a suspicion that those wan-
dering sons of the desert, like birds and bees, were noth-
ing more than agents through whom a prolific germ was
conveyed from some portion of the remoter East. What
that portion is, the name of Avicenna, one of the most
eminent of the Arabian scholars, might have served to
suggest, if they had followed the leading of words as
carefully as a certain erudite Orientalist f who not only
finds in India the origin of the doctrines of Pythagoras,
but recognizes his name under the disguise of Budd-
* Some instructive disclosures on this subject may be found in
a lecture of the late Cardinal Wiseman entitled " Early History."
It has been asserted by those who claim to be well versed in the
history of India that in that country the earliest date that can
be considered historical is April, B. c. 327, the date of its inva-
sion by Alexander the Great.
fPococke, Greece in India.
ALCHEMY IN CHINA 51
haguru! For what is Avicenna but Ebn-Cinna? And
what is Ebn-Cinna or Ibn Sina, as it is sometimes written,
but a " Son of China?" a designation assumed by the
learned physician probably because he was born at
Bokhara, on the confines of the Chinese Empire!
If we were as ready to rest in etymologies as the above-
cited Orientalist, who triumphantly concludes a chapter
with that curious derivation of the name of Pythagoras,
we might consider our point as carried. Our etymology
is, to say the least, as good as his; but we let it go for
what it is worth, and rest our argument on better
evidence.*
* Nothing is more fallacious than the attempt to identify words
in different languages by means of a mere superficial resemblance.
Some years ago, in reading the Amour Medecin of Moliere, I
fancied I had detected a translation in a combined form of the
most familiar names for tan the Chinese elixir of life. The
word orvietan, which is made so conspicuous in one of the scenes,
describes a mysterious panacea, whose virtues the vender vaunts
in strains as pompous as those of the Chinese alchemist. It
struck me at once that, setting aside the accent, which goes for
nothing in etymology, it might be taken as expressing golden
elixir, and elixir o long life. Littre and the Dictionnaire de
V Academic decided against me, referring the word to the old city
of Orvieto (urbs vetus). But, whatever the source of the name,
so exactly to the thing itself answers Chinese tan, or elixir, that
I cannot forbear quoting a few lines descriptive of its qualities.
" Sganarelle. Monsieur, je vous prie de me donner une boite de
votre orvietan, que je m'en vais vous payer.
"-L'Operateur (chantant).
L'or de tous les climats qu'entoure 1'Ocean,
Peut-il jamais payer ce secret d'importance?
Mon remede guerit, par sa rare excellence,
Plus de maux qu'on n'en peut nombrer dans tout un an:
La gale, La rogne, La teigne, La fievre, La peste, La goutte,
Verole, Descente, Rougeole.
O grande puissance
De 1'orvietan ! "
52 THE LORE OF CATHAY
It is not improbable, as we shall attempt to show, that
the true cradle of alchemy was China a country in which
one of the oldest branches of the human family began
their career of experience ; a country in which we discover
so many of the seeds of our modern art; germs which,
dwarfed and stunted in their native climate, have only
been made to flourish by a change of soil. To establish
this would be an interesting contribution to the history
of science; and it might perhaps lead us to take an opti-
mistic view even of the sins and follies of mankind, to
discover that our modern chemistry, which is now
dropping its mature fruits into the hands of Western en-
terprise, had its root in the religion of Tao the most
extravagant of the superstitions of the East.
We shall briefly sketch the rise and development of
alchemy in China, and then conclude by comparinig
it with the leading phases of the same pursuit as exhibited
in Western countries.
Originating at the least six hundred years before the
Christian era,* the religion of Tao still exerts a powerful
influence over the mind of the Chinese. This is not the
place to discuss either its sober tenets or its wild fan-
tasies, but there is one of its doctrines that connects it
The reader may compare this with passages quoted in the
sequel from Taoist books.
N. B. Or, in the first line of the description, is an evident allu-
sion to the first syllable of the name, which the vendor takes to
mean " golden."
* It is indigenous to China ; and though we are unable to trace
it to an earlier date, there is good reason to believe that it is as
old as the Chinese race. The connection of alchemy with Tao-
ism did not escape the notice of the earlier Jesuit missionaries ;
but the Rev. Dr. Edkins, in a paper on Taoism published about
forty years ago, was the first, I believe, to suggest a Chinese
origin for the alchemy of Europe.
ALCHEMY IN CHINA 53
closely with our present subject. It looks on the soul as
only a more refined form of matter ; regards the soul and
body as identical in substance, and maintains the possi-
bility of preventing their dissolution by a course of phy-
sical discipline. This is the seed-thought of Chinese al-
chemy ; for this materialistic notion it was that first led the
disciples of Laotze to investigate the properties of
matter.
Its development is easy to trace. Man's first desire is
long life his second is to be rich. The Taoist com-
menced with the former, but was not long in finding his
way to the latter. As it was possible by physical disci-
pline to lengthen the period of life, he conceived that
the process might be carried far enough to result in cor-
poreal immortality, accompanied by a mastery of matter
and all its potencies. The success of the process, though,
like the quest of the Holy Grail, involving moral qualifi-
cations, depended mainly on diet and medicine; and in
quest of these he ransacked the forest, penetrated the
earth, and explored distant seas. The natural longing
for immortality was thus made, under the guidance of
Taoism, to impart a powerful impulse to the progress of
discovery in three departments of science botany, min-
eralogy, and geography. Nor did the other great object
of pursuit remain far in the rear. A few simple experi-
ments, such as the precipitation of copper from the oil of
vitriol by the application of iron, and the blanching of
metals by the fumes of mercury, suggested the possibility
of transforming the baser metals into gold.* This
* Science is not opposed to the abstract theory of transmuta-
tion. Indeed, the modern chemist has been led by the phe-
nomena of allotropy and isomerism, not to speak of other con-
siderations, almost to accept as a principle what he lately de-
nounced as a groundless assumption of his ancient forerunner
54 THE LORE OF CATHAY
brought on the stage another, and, if possible, a more
energetic, motive for investigation. The bare idea of
acquiring untold riches by such easy means inspired with
a kind of frenzy minds that were hardly capable of the
loftier conception of immortality. It had, moreover, the
effect of directing attention particularly to the study of
minerals, the most prolific field for chemical discovery.
Whether in the vegetable or the mineral kingdom, the
researches of the Chinese alchemists were guided by one
simple principle the analogy of man to material nature.
As in their view the soul was only a more refined species
of matter, and was endowed with such wondrous powers,
so every object in nature, they argued, must be possessed
of a soul, an essence or spirit, which controls its growth
and development a something not unlike the essentia
quinta of Western alchemy. This they believed to be the
case, not only with animals, which display some of the
viz., that a fundamental unity underlies many, if not all of, the
forms of matter. On this subject see two interesting papers in
the volume of Nature for 1879 (pp. 593, 625) on the question
"Are the Elements Elementary?" The writer speaks approv-
ingly of the hypothesis of original matter having a molecular or
atomic structure ; all the molecules being uniform in size and in
shape, but not all possessed of the same amount of motion the
difference of their motions giving rise to all the properties of the
various elements. The speculation which resolves matter into
force tends in the same direction. " I must confess," says Pro-
fessor Cook, " that I am rather drawn to that view of nature
which has favor with many of the most eminent physicists of the
present time, and which sees in the Cosmos, besides mind, only
two essentially distinct beings namely, matter and energy;
which regards all matter as one, and all energy as one ; and
which refers the qualities of substances to the affections of the
one substratum modified by the varying play of forces" (Lec-
tures on the New Chemistry, lecture iv., International Series).
ALCHEMY IN CHINA 55
attributes of mind, but with plants, which extract their
appropriate nourishment from the earth, and transform it
into fruits; and the same with minerals, which they re-
garded as generated in the womb of the earth. It was to
this half-spiritual, half-material theory that they had re-
course to account for the transformations that are per-
petually going on in every department of nature. As the
active principle in each object was so potent in effecting
the changes which we constantly observe, they imagined
that it might attain to a condition of higher development
and' greater efficiency. Such an upward tendency was,
in fact, perpetually at work; and all things were striving
to " purge off their baser fires " and enter on a higher
and purer state. Nor were they merely striving to clothe
themselves with material forms of a higher order. Matter
itself was constantly passing the limits of sense and
putting on the character of conscious spirit. This idea
threw over the face of nature a glow of poetry. It
awakened the torpid imagination and created an epoch
in literature. It kindled the fancy of Chuangtze, in-
spired the eloquence of Lu-tsu, and it figures in a thou-
sand shapes among the graceful tales of the Liao-chai.
It filled the earth with fairies and genii. An easy step
connected them with those mysterious points of light
which in all ages have excited so powerfully the hopes
and fears of the human race. Astrology became wedded
to alchemy, and the five principal planets bear in the
current language of the present day the names of the
elements over which they are regarded as presiding.
In China, as elsewhere, alchemy has always been an
occult science. Its students have been pledged to secrecy,
and their knowledge transmitted mainly by means of oral
tradition, each adept tracing his lineage back to Huang
56 THE LORE OF CATHAY
Ti (B. c. 2700) or Kuang Ch'engtze, as the Freemason
deduces his pedigree from Solomon or Hiram of Tyre.*
Their doctrines, like the delicate beauties of some
Eastern climes, were never allowed to go abroad without
being covered with a veil. They were wrapped in folds
of impenetrable mystery, and expressed, for the most
part, in the measured lines and metaphorical language of
poetry. Still, in spite of every precaution that pride or
jealousy was able to suggest, some of their secrets would
gradually ooze out, and many of the rules for working
metals now in common use bear in their very terms the
stamp of an alchemic parentage.
After this cursory survey, it may not be amiss to intro-
duce a few extracts from native authors, professors of
the mysterious lore, in order to ascertain how far they
corroborate the foregoing views, but especially to aid us
in deciding whether any real connection is to be traced
between the Chinese and European schools of alchemy.
I. FROM KAO SHANGTZE.
The Secret of Immortality. \
" The body is the dwelling-place of life ; the spirits are
the essence of life ; and the soul is the master of life.
* Huang Ti is at least semi-mythical. The earliest historical
sovereign who became a votary of alchemy was Ch'in Shih
Huang, the builder of the Great Wall, B. C. 220.
t These extracts are not arranged in the order of time. The
antiquity of the system will be considered in another place; and
I begin with two from writers whose age I am not able to fix
with precision. For the citations from both I am indebted to a
compilation, in twelve volumes, entitled The Elixir or Quintes-
sence of the Philosophers. Among the philosophers cited, those
who favored alchemy are in a very small minority.
ALCHEMY IN CHINA 57
When the spirits are exhausted, the body becomes sick;
when the soul is in repose, the spirits keep their place;
and when the spirits are concentrated, the soul becomes
indestructible. Those who seek the elixir must imitate
the Yin and Yang [the active and passive principles in
nature] and learn the harmony of numbers. They must
govern the soul and unite their spirit. If the soul is a
chariot, the spirits are its horses. When the soul and
spirits are properly yoked together, you are immortal."
II. FROM TANTZE.
The Power of Miracles.
" The clouds are a dragon, the wind a tiger. Mind is
the mother, and matter the child. When the mother
summons the child, will it dare to disobey? Those who
would expel the spirits of evil must (by the force of their
mind) summon the spirits of the five elements. Those
who would conquer serpents must obtain the influences
of the five planets. By this means the Yin and Yang,
the dual forces of nature, may be controlled; winds and
clouds collected ; mountains and hills torn up by the roots ;
and rivers and seas made to spring out of the ground.
Still the external manifestation of this power is not so
good as the consciousness of its possession within."
III. FROM THE SAME.
The Adept Superior to Hunger, Cold, and Sickness.
" He inhales the fine essence of matter, how can he be
hungry? He is warmed by the fire of his own soul,
how can he be cold? His five vitals are fed on the
essence of the five elements, how can he be sick ? "
58 THE LORE OF CATHAY
IV. FROM LU TSU, OF THE T*ANG DYNASTY.*
Patience Essential to Success.
"Would you seek the golden tan [the elixir], it is
not easy to obtain. The three powers [sun, moon, and
stars] must seven times repeat their footsteps; and the
four seasons nine times complete their circuit.
" You must wash it white and burn it red ; when one
draught will give you ten thousand ages, and you will
be wafted beyond the sphere of sublunary things."
V. FROM THE SAME.
The Necessity of a Living Teacher.
" Every one seeks long life, but the secret is not easy
to find. If you covet the precious things of heaven, you
must reject the treasures of earth. You must kindle the
fire that springs from water, f and evolve the Yin con-
* Lii-Tsu (or Lii-Yen) flourished in the latter half o the eighth
century. In early life respected as a scholar and a magistrate,
and in later years famed for the eloquence of his style and the
elevation of his character, he did much to revive the decaying
credit of the " school of the genii." His works are voluminous
and well known, but, like most o those ascribed to the great
masters of Taoism, probably comprehend much that is not genu-
ine.
fThis phrase reminds us of a quaint piece of doggerel from
the pen of George Ripley, a noted alchemist of England, who
died in 1490, notwithstanding the medicines recommended in his
two books on Alchymie and Aurum Potabile. The following
are a few of his incomprehensible verses :
" The well must brenne in water clear,
Take good heed, for this they fere,
The fire with water brent shall be,
The earth on fire shall be set
And water with fire shall be knit.
ALCHEMY IN CHINA 59
tained within the Yang. One word from a sapient master,
and you possess a draught of the golden water."
VI. FROM THE SAME.
The Chief Elements in Alchemy.
" All things originate from earth. If you can get at
the radical principle, the spirit of the green dragon is
mercury, and the water of the white tiger * is lead. The
knowing ones will bring mother and child together, when
earth will become heaven, and you will be extricated from
the power of matter."
VII. FROM THE SAME.
Description of the Philosopher's Stone: Self -culture Nec-
essary to Obtain it.
" I must diligently plant my own field. There is
within it a spiritual germ that may live a thousand years.
Its flower is like yellow gold. Its bud is not large, but
the seeds are round [globules of mercury?] and like to a
spotless gem. Its growth depends on the soil of the cen-
tral palace [the heart], but its irrigation must proceed
Of the white stone and the red
Lo, here is the true deed ! "
* Yin and Yang are the dual forces which control the elements
of nature. Though generally referred to the sexual system, their
chief symbols are the sun and moon, and the original signi-
fication of the terms is light and darkness. The " tiger " and
" dragon " are synonyms for the oft-repeated Yin and Yang.
Their use in this sense is comparatively ancient, as we may gather
from the title of a book still extant, by the historian Pan Ku, in
the first century of our era.
60 THE LORE OF CATHAY
from a higher fountain [the reason]. After nine years of
cultivation, root and branch may be transplanted to the
heaven of the greater genii."
VIII. FROM A BIOGRAPHER OF LU-TSU.
Speaking of the labors of his great master, he says,
" Among the eight stones, he made most use of cinnabar,
because from that he extracted mercury ; and among the
five metals, he made most use of lead, because from that
he obtained silver. The fire of the heart [blood] is red
as cinnabar; and the water of the kidneys [urine] is dark
as lead. To these must be added sulphur, that the com-
pound may be efficacious. Lead is the mother of silver,
mercury, the child of cinnabar. Lead represents the in-
fluence of the kidneys, mercury that of the heart."
We must here introduce a few extracts from the Wu
Chen Pien, a work which still holds the place of a text-
book among the followers of Laotze. They will serve
to indicate the spirit and aim of these operations, though
the processes are still carefully concealed. In fact, all
that is given to the public seems merely designed to in-
flame the imagination, and to induce readers to place
themselves under the instruction of a Taoist master.
1. The Great Motive. " However long this mortal life,
its events are all uncertain. He who yesterday bestrode
his horse so grandly at the head of the street, to-day is
a corpse in the coffin. His wife and his wealth are his
no longer. His sins must take their course, and self-
deception will do no good. If you do not seek the great
remedy, how will you find it? If you find out the method
and do not prepare it, how unwise are you ! "
2. A Vindication. " If the virtuous follow a false doc-
trine, they reclaim it; but if the vicious profess a true
doctrine, they pervert it. So it is with the golden elixir:
ALCHEMY IN CHINA 61
a deviation of an inch leads to the error of a mile. If
I succeed, then my fate is in my own hands, and my body
may last as long as the heavens. But the vulgar pervert
this doctrine to the gratification of low desires [such as
those for wealth and pleasure]."
3. Outline of Process. " In the gold-furnace you must
separate the mercury 'from the cinnabar, and in the gemmy
bath you must precipitate the silver from the water. To
wield the fires of this divine work is not the task of a
day. But out of the midst of the pool suddenly the sun
rises." *
No one at all acquainted with the operations of chem-
istry can fail to remark how much is implied in this
reference to the precipitation of silver. Nor can any
one familiar with the language of Western alchemists
avoid being struck by the similarity of the terms here
employed. As he reads of " separating mercury from
cinnabar," " precipitating silver," " wielding the fires of
the divine work," the " gemmy bath," and the " sun rising
out of the pool," does he not fancy himself perusing a
fragment from Lully or Albertus describing the balneum
marice and the production of gold?
We add three more to our series of illustrative ex-
tracts :
I. The Reason for Obscure and Figurative Phrase-
ology. " The holy sage was afraid of betraying the
secrets of heaven. He accordingly sets forth the true
Yin and Yang under the images of the white tiger and
* A few years ago I made the acquaintance of a Kiangsi man
by the name of Hsiung, who had published a book of some literary
merit, and was withal an ardent student of the occult science. A
manuscript volume of his own compilation, which he permitted
me to examine, contained, among other diagrams, one which rep-
resented the sun rising out of a smoking furnace showing that
the hermetic symbol for gold is the same in China as in Europe.
62 THE LORE OF CATHAY
the green dragon. And the harmony of the two chords
he represents under the symbols of the true lead and the
true mercury." *
2.. Nature of the Inward Harmony. " The two things
to be united are wuh and wo, the me and the not me.
When these combine, the passions are in harmony with
nature, and the elements are complete."
In other passages we have noticed the outcropping
of a moral idea. In this we find a materialistic doctrine
suddenly metamorphosed into the most subtle form of
pantheistic idealism.
3. Self -discipline the Best Elixir (from Tantze, not
in Wu Chen Pien) " Among the arts of the alchemist is
that of preparing an elixir which may be used as a sub-
stitute for food. This is certainly true; yet the ability
to enjoy abundance or endure hunger comes not from
the elixir, but from the fixed purpose of him who uses
it. When a man has arrived at such a stage of progress
that to have and not to have are the same; when life and
death are one ; when feeling is in harmony with nature,
and the inner and the outer worlds united then he can
escape the thraldom of matter, and leave sun, moon, and
stars behind his back. To him it will then be of no conse-
quence whether he eat a hundred times in a day, or only
once in a hundred days." We might fill volumes with
* It is curious to see how Western alchemists exhibit the same
phase of feeling. Howes, an old writer, quoted in Mr. Lowell's
New England of Two Centuries Ago, expresses himself thus in
a letter to Gov. Winthrop of Massachusetts : " Dear friend, I
desire with all my heart that I might write plainer to you ; but
in discovering the mystery, I may diminish its majesty, and give
occasion to the profane to abuse it, if it should fall into unworthy
hands." The mystery was the unity of matter. He adds, " As
there is all good to be found in unity, and all evil in duality and
multiplicity, phccnix ilia admiranda sola semper existit."
ALCHEMY IN CHINA 63
similar extracts without, we fear, adding much to the
information of our readers.
The composition of the elixir was a secret which the
alchemist did not care to divulge. If, therefore, we seek
for precise directions for its preparation in the writings
of a professed adept, we seek in vain.
There is, indeed, one oft-repeated formula, which ap-
pears to be absurdly simple. It is this : " Pb. 8 oz., Hg. l / 2
lb.; mix thoroughly, and the combination will result in a
mass of the golden elixir." But it ceases to be simple
when we learn that both metals and proportions are to be
taken in a mystical sense ; that, in fact, instead of indi-
cating the materials of the elixir, they only point to the
precise moment when the final touch is to be given to a
complicated process viz., one minute after the full of
the moon. If this resolves itself into " moonshine," an-
other, which has the air of being more in detail, is still
less luminous. " Plant the Yang and grow the Yin; cul-
tivate and cherish the precious seed. When it springs
up, it shows a yellow bud ; the bud produces mercury,
and the mercury crystallizes into granules like grains of
golden millet. One grain is to be taken at a dose, and
the doses repeated for a hundred days, when the body
will be transformed and the bones converted into gold.
Body and spirit will both be endowed with miraculous
properties, and their duration will have no end." These
recipes are both from standard text-books of the Taoist
school.
Ko Hung, of the fourth century, is one of the most
voluminous writers on the subject. He gives nine varie-
ties of the tan, but no clear account of the preparation of
any of them. The following extract from his work may
serve to show the kind of reasoning by which he and his
fellows suffered themselves to be deluded:
64 THE LORE OF CATHAY
" I formerly thought the Taoist mystery was intended
to delude simple folk, and that there was nothing in it
but empty words ; but when I saw the Emperor Wu sub-
ject Tso Tse and others to a fast of nearly a month
their complexion continuing fresh and their strength un-
abated I said there was no reason why they should not
extend the fast to fifty years.
" Another Taoist, Kan Shih, placed a number of fish
in boiling oil; some of them having first swallowed a
few drops of an elixir, swam about as if they were in the
water, the others were boiled so that they could be eaten.
" Silk-worms taking the same medicine lived for ten
months; chickens and young dogs taking it ceased to
grow ; and a white dog on taking it turned black ; all of
which shows that there are things in heaven and earth
surpassing our comprehension. Would that I could
break the fetters of sense and give my whole heart to the
pursuit of the elixir of life ! "
We find a more explicit account of the composition
of the elixir in the Ko Chih Ching Yuan, or Mirror of
Scientific Discovery; but here again we are not favored
with anything beyond a barren inventory of ingredients,
without any statement of proportion or manipulation.
" The elixir of the eight precious things," says this
author, " is so called because it contains cinnabar, orpi-
ment, realgar, sulphur, saltpetre, ammonia, empty green
[an ore of cobalt], and mother-of-clouds [a kind of
mica]."
This and the other passages above cited throw, we con-
fess, very little light on any question of practical science :
but they are not unimportant in relation to the history of
science, indicating as they do the spirit and aims of the
Chinese alchemists the most enthusiastic, and, as we
ALCHEMY IN CHINA 65
think, the earliest, explorers in a region which has proved
to be one of inexhaustible fertility.
The results of their labors in the way of chemical dis-
covery it may not be easy to determine ; though it is safe
to affirm that, for what they knew on that subject prior to
their recent intercourse with the West, the Chinese are
mainly indebted to those early devotees of the experi-
mental philosophy who passed their lives among the fumes
of the alembic. The skill which the Chinese exhibit in
metallurgy, their brilliant dye-stuffs and numerous pig-
ments ; their early knowledge of gunpowder, alcohol,
arsenic, Glauber's salt, calomel, and corrosive sublimate;
their pyrotechny ; their asphyxiating and anaesthetic com-
pounds all give evidence of no contemptible proficiency
in practical chemistry.*
In their books of curious receipts, we find instructions
for the manufacture of sympathetic inks, for removing
stains, compounding and alloying metals, counterfeiting
gold, whitening copper, overlaying the baser with the
precious metals, etc. In some of these recipes a caution
is added that neither " women, cats, nor chickens " be
allowed to approach during the process, obviously a
relic of alchemistic superstition.
The Hermes of China has no female disciples, though
Europe can boast the names of not a few. The alchemist
of China has generally been a celibate, and very fre-
quently a religious ascetic, to whom the life-giving elixir,
* See Davis's Chinese, ch. xviii., for a very interesting account
of the preparation of calomel (chloride of mercury) by a Chinese
chemist, and by a truly Chinese process. In the same chapter
the author sketches the fantastic physical theories of the Chinese,
and adds, " All this looks very much as if the philosophy of our
forefathers was derived intermediately from China."
66 THE LORE OF CATHAY
rather than the aurific stone, was the chief object of pur-
suit.
Lii-tsu, one of the most eminent, is said to have earned
immortality by rejecting the art of making gold.*
In the Chinese system there are two processes the
one inward and spiritual, the other outward and mate-
rial. To obtain the greater elixir, involving the attain-
ment of immortality, both must be combined ; but the
lesser elixir, which answers to the philosopher's stone, or
a magical control over the powers of nature, might be
procured with less pains. Both processes were pursued
in seclusion, commonly in the recesses of the mountains,
the term for adepts signifying " mountain men."
In a discourse on metals in one of the works above
cited, we are told that the seminal principle of gold first
assumes the form of quicksilver. Exposed to the -influ-
ence of the moon, it is liquid; but when subjected to the
action of the pure Yang, the sun or the male essence, it
solidifies and becomes yellow gold. Those who desire
to convert quicksilver into gold should carry on their
operations among the mountains, that the effluences from
the stones may assist the process.
Nothing seems to be required in addition to the inci-
dental proofs already adduced to establish the existence
* As the legend goes, shortly after commencing the study of
the art, he was met by one of the old genii, who offered to impart
to him the great secret of transmutation. " But," asked the
young man, " will not the artificial gold, relapse to its original
elements in the course of time?" "Yes," replied the genius,
" but that need not concern you, as it will not happen until after
ten thousand ages." " I decline it then," said Lii-tsu. " I would
rather live in poverty than bring a loss on my fellow-men, though
after ten thousand ages." The noble sense of right was more
meritorious than any number of sham charities ; and the youth
who had conscience enough to spurn the gilded bait was at once
admitted to the heaven of the genii.
ALCHEMY IN CHINA 67
of a connection between the alchemy of Europe and that
of China ; still, a few considerations in the way of com-
parison may serve to make the nature and extent of that
connection somewhat more apparent.
1. The study of alchemy did not make its appearance
in Europe until it had been in full vigor in China for at
least six centuries. Nor did it appear there, according
to the best authorities, until the fourth century, when
intercourse with the Far East had become somewhat fre-
quent. It entered Europe, moreover, by way of Byzan-
tium and Alexandria, the places in which that intercourse
was chiefly centred. At a later day it was revived in the
West by the irruption of the Saracens, who may be sup-
posed to have had better opportunities for becoming ac-
quainted with it in consequence of being nearer to its
original source. One of the most renowned seats of al-
chemic industry was Bagdad while it was the seat of the
caliphate. An extensive commerce was at that period
carried on between Arabia and China. In the eighth
century embassies were interchanged between the caliphs
and the emperors. Colonies of Arabs were established in
the seaports of the Empire ; and the grave of a cousin of
Mahomet remains at Canton as a monument of that early
intercourse.
2. The objects of pursuit were in both schools identi-
cal, and in either case twofold immortality and gold.
In Europe the former was the less prominent because
the people, being in possession of Christianity, had a suf-
ficiently vivid faith in a future life to satisfy their in-
stinctive longings without having recourse to question-
able arts.
3. In either school there were two elixirs, the greater
and the less, and the properties ascribed to them corre-
sponded very closely.
68 THE LORE OF CATHAY
4. The principles underlying both systems are identical
in the composite nature of the metals, and their vegetation
from a seminal germ. Indeed, the characters tsing, for
the germ, and tai, for the matrix, which constantly occur
in the writings of Chinese alchemists, might be taken for
the translation of terms in the vocabulary of the Western
school, did not their higher antiquity forbid the hypo-
thesis.
5. The ends in view being the same, the means by
which they were pursued were nearly identical ; mercury
and lead (to which sulphur was tertiary) being as con-
spicuous in the laboratories of the East as mercury and
sulphur were in those of the West. It is of less signifi-
cance to add that many other substances were common to
both schools than it is to note the remarkable coincidence
that in Chinese as in European alchemy the names of the
principal reagents are employed in a mystical sense.*
6. Both schools, or at least individuals in both, held
the strange doctrine of a cycle of changes, in the course
of which the precious metals revert to their original ele-
ments.
7. Both systems were closely interwoven with astrology.
8. Both led to the practice of magical arts and un-
bounded charlatanism.
9. Both dealt in language of equal extravagance ; and
the style of European alchemists, so unlike the sobriety
of thought characteristic of the Western mind, would, if
considered alone, furnish ground for a probable conjec-
* Robert Boyle (quoted in Nature, January, 1877) is unspar-
ing in his denunciation of " those sooty empirics, who have their
eyes darkened and their brains troubled with the smoke of their
furnaces ; and who are wont to evince their salt, sulphur, and
mercury (to which they give the canting title of hypostatical
principles) to be the true principle of things."
ALCHEMY IN CHINA 69
ture that their science must have had its origin in the
fervid fancy of an Oriental people.*
In conclusion, granting that the leading objects of al-
chemical pursuit are such as might have suggested them-
selves to the human mind in any country, as it felt its
way towards an acquaintance with the forces of nature,
yet the similarity of the circumstances with which they
are found associated in the West and the East forbids the
supposition of an independent origin. Setting aside as
untenable the claims of Europe and of Western Asia, we
regard alchemy as unquestionably a product of the re-
moter East. To the honor of being its birthplace, India
?nd China are rival claimants. The pretensions of the
former f we are not in a position to estimate by direct
investigation ; but they appear to us to be excluded by
the proposition, of which there is abundant proof, that
the alchemy of China is not an exotic, but a genuine pro-
duct of the soil of that country.
As before remarked, it springs from Taoism, an in-
* The whimsical idea of the homunculus, which was so promi-
nent in the works of the later alchemists o the West, and which
plays such a conspicuous role in the second part of Goethe's
Faust, is one of which I can find no vestige in the records of
Eastern alchemy. In the writings of the latter school, however,
the power of synthetic creation is asserted boldly enough, and
the idea of producing the homunculus, i. e. of creating a human
being by an artificial process, is, in fact, only a particular appli-
cation of the principle.
f That much-lamented sinologue, the late Mr. Mayers, favors
the claim of India, though, alas ! it is no longer possible to ques-
tion him as to the grounds of his opinion. In his essay on the
origin of gunpowder, he says, " It is at least allowable to sur-
mise that those Brahmin chemists who, it is almost proved, in-
augurated the search after the philosopher's stone and the elixir
vita may have been the first to discover what secret forces are
developed in the fiery union between sulphur and saltpetre."
70 THE LORE OF CATHAY
digenous religion ; and shows itself in clearly defined out-
lines, if not in full maturity, at a time when there was
little or no intercourse with India. Had it appeared some
centuries later simultaneously with the introduction of
Buddhism, there might have been more reason to look
on it as a foreign importation. In polar antagonism with
the idealistic philosophy of Buddha, its fundamental tenets
are not only found in the ancient manual of Laotze,*
they are distinctly traceable in the oldest of the Confucian
classics:
In the / Ching, the diagrams of which are referred to
Fu Hsi, B. c. 2800, while the text dates from Wen Wang,
B. c. 1150, and the commentary from Confucius, B. c.
500, we discover at length what appears to us the true
source 6f those prolific ideas which prepared the way for
our modern chemistry. Its name, The Book of Changes,
is suggestive; and we find throughout its contents the
vague idea of change replaced by the more definite one
of " transformation," the key-word of alchemy.
In the very first section, Wen Wang descants on the
" changes and transmutations of the creative principle ; "
and Confucius, in several chapters of his commentary,
grows eloquent over the same theme. " How great," he
exclaims, " is change ! How wonderful is change ! When
heaven and earth were formed, change was throned in
their midst ; and should change cease to take place, heaven
and earth would soon cease to exist." " The diagrams,"
he says again, " comprehend the profoundest secrets of
* The famous poet, Pailotien, in a well-known stanza, asserts
that the extravagances of alchemy are not to be found there.
Yet the thoughtful reader cannot fail to discover its latent princi-
ples, especially the effect of discipline in securing an ascendency
over matter, and the protean power of transmutation hidden in the
forces of nature. The alchemists all claim Laotze as a lineal
ancestor, though they derive their origin from a remoter source.
ALCHEMY IN CHINA 71
the universe; and the power of exciting the 'various mo-
tions of the universe depends on their explanation : the
power to effect transmutation depends on the understand-
ing of the diagrams of changes." Here, in a word, is
the leading idea of the / Ching; and, at the same time,
the general object of Chinese students of alchemy. In-
deed ; so thoroughly are their works pervaded by the
spirit of that venerable epitome of primitive science that
it is impossible to mistake the source from which they
derive their inspiration. The Taoists, without a dissent-
ing voice, recognize it as the first book in the canon of
their sect; and the Tyrant of Ch'in, a zealous votary of
alchemy, spared the / Ching from the flames to which
he consigned all the other writings of Confucius and his
disciples. We have therefore no hesitation in affirming
that alchemy is INDIGENOUS TO CHINA, AND COEVAL WITH
THE DAWN OF LETTERS.
BOOK II
Chinese Literature
IV
POETS AND POETRY IN CHINA
THAT the Chinese are capable of poetry may to
some be a revelation, so practical and prosaic are
the specimens of the race with whom they have
come in contact. Yet an educated Chinese is, of all men,
the most devoted to the cultivation of poetry. If he makes
a remarkable voyage, he is sure to give the wo?ld his
impressions in verse. He inscribes fresh couplets on his
door-posts every New Year's Day. Poetical scrolls, the
gifts of friends, adorn the walls of his shop or study. He
spends his leisure in tinkering sonnets; and, when he
escorts a guest as far as some pretty pavilion on a hill-
side, he never fails to extract from his boot-top the ready
pencil, and to indite in verse an adieu, which passes for
impromptu scrawling, at the same time, on wall or pillar
a record of the occasion.
All this is, no doubt, somewhat artificial, but it has its
root in national sentiment. For of China it is true to-day,
as of no other nation, that an apprenticeship in the art of
poetry forms a leading feature in her educational system.
Wales has her Eisteddfod, or annual assemblage of bards,
and the great schools of England have their prize poems ;
but in China no youth who aspires to civil office or literary
honors is exempted from composing verse in his trial
examination. To be a tax-collector, he is tested not hi
arithmetic but in prosody a usage that has been in force
for nearly a thousand years. Its origin, in fact, goes
back much further. For did not Confucius make poetry
75
76 THE LORE OF CATHAY
the front foot of his educational tripos ? " Let poetry,"
he says, "be the beginning, manners the middle, and
music the finish."
The sage who prescribed this course of study was a
musician ; but if he ever wrote verse, not a line of it has
come down to our day. He was, however, far from
prosaic. His sayings sparkle with gems of metaphor;
and that he keenly enjoyed poetry and appreciated its
refining influence is evident from the maxim just quoted.
A stronger proof of his taste for poetry is the fact that,
in one of the Five Classics, he took pains to collect and
preserve the most noteworthy poems that had appeared
prior to his day. In another, the Shu, or Book of History,
edited by him, he has also preserved sundry fragments
of primeval poetry. We have there the spectacle of
princes and their ministers improvising responsive verse,
a thousand years before the Trojan War.
In China, as in Greece, the birth of poetry preceded
that of philosophy. The Lyric Muse heralded the dawn
of culture; and, by the first light of history, her rosy
fingers are discerned busily engaged in weaving a robe of
many colors to cover the nakedness of new-born hu-
manity.
Epic poetry, so conspicuous in India, is wholly want-
ing in China, its place being supplied by historical ro-
mance, which exhibits all the features of poetry with the
exception of verse.
Dramatic poetry is abundant; but the drama, though
it emerged ten centuries ago, is, if compared with our
modern stage, still in a very primitive condition. It has
scarcely got beyond the age of Thespis. An actor changes
his dress, as he changes his role, in the sight of the audi-
ence, singing out as he dons the robes of majesty : " Now
I am your humble servant, the Emperor."
POETS AND POETRY IN CHINA 77
Didactic poems, in which verse serves simply as an
aid to the memory, are so common that official proclama-
tions are frequently thrown into that form. When, in
consequence of the triumph of British arms half a cen-
tury ago, five ports were opened to the residence of
foreigners, the Emperor caused a compend of the teach-
ings of the sages to be published in verse as an antidote
to their doctrines. Indeed, so highly esteemed is verse
as a vehicle for instruction that a popular encyclopaedia,
in forty volumes, is composed entirely in verse.
Passing over minor divisions, we shall devote special
attention to lyric poetry, of which the Chinese have pro-
duced an enormous quantity, and in which, in the face
of all competitors, they are able to vindicate a high posi-
tion.
Their lyric poetry falls, roughly, into three periods
ancient, mediaeval and modern. Their ancient lyrics con-
sist chiefly of a copious anthology, re-edited by Confucius,
but not compiled by him. This anthology contains three
hundred and six pieces songs, ballads, heroic odes and
sacrificial hymns. The songs and ballads are so selected
as to reflect the manners of the several states into which
the Empire was at that time divided. They exhibit a sim-
plicity in social arrangements which is in strong con-
trast with the artificial life of the present day.
Besides epithalamial verse, which is admitted to be
ethically correct, there are love songs and love stories
which shocked the formal moralists of later times. We,
with a less fettered judgment, find in them nothing to
object to, unless it be the vapid inanity of most of them.
As a whole, they stand in point of morality far above any
similar collection that has come down to us from pagan
antiquity. To secure this degree of purity, they under-
went a Bowdlerizing process at the hands of Confucius
7
or his predecessors. So confident was Confucius that all
traces of evil had been expunged that he declared that,
" of these three hundred odes, there is not one that de-
parts from the purity of thought."
We must not think of Confucius as always discoursing
wisdom, or as perpetually hampered by a stiff ceremonial.
He was one of the most human of sages a sort of
wiser, better Solomon, who, though he spoke more than
" three thousand proverbs," found time to edit, if he did
not compose, a great many charming canticles. As a
musician, he must have enjoyed their harmonies of rhyme
and rhythm attractions which those ancient poems have
entirely lost, through changes which the language has
undergone in the lapse of ages. Here is a fragment that
has a history:
" A speck upon your ivory fan
You soon may wipe away ;
But stains upon the heart or tongue
Remain, alas, for aye."
Hearing a young man repeat these lines from time to
time, Confucius chose him for his son-in-law. He showed
enough affection for his daughter to select an honest
man for her husband ; yet he admitted into his collection,
without note or comment, a ballad which has done much
to perpetuate among his people a barbarous contempt for
women:
" When a son is born in a lordly bed
Wrap him in raiment of purple and red ;
Jewels and gold for playthings bring
For the noble boy who shall serve the king.
" When a girl is born in coarse cloth wound,
With a tile for a toy, let her lie on the ground.
In her bread and her beer be her praise or her blame
And let her not sully her parents' good name."
POETS AND POETRY IN CHINA 79
Had the sage but bethought himself to attach to this
relic a little note of disapproval, how much cruelty he
might have averted by the stroke of a pen!
The following song for New Year's Eve is as true to
human sentiment to-day as it still is to the aspects of
nature. To make it suit the season, however, we must
remember that the date of New Year's Eve was prob-
ably a month earlier than at present, and the latitude
about thirty-five degrees that of Honan:
" The voice of the cricket is heard in the hall,
The leaves of the forest are withered and sere;
My sad spirits droop at those chirruping notes,
So thoughtlessly sounding the knell of the year.
" Yet why should we sigh at the change of a date,
When life's flowing on in a full, steady tide?
Come, let us be merry with those that we love;
For pleasure in measure there is no one to chide."
This is the oldest temperance ode in the world. It was
designed, as the Chinese say, to curb the excesses incident
to the season, by recommending " pleasure in measure.''
It probably antedates the founding of Rome.
Before dismissing these ancient odes, it should be said
that a characteristic of their structure is the refrain.
They generally start with a poetic image, such as the
plaintive cry of a deer, or the note of a water-fowl ; which
is repeated at the beginning or end of each stanza, albeit
without any very clear relation to the theme of the poem.
Burns's famous song, " Green grow the rashes, O ! " is
in this respect thoroughly Chinese. Tennyson's graver
melody, " Break, break, break, on thy cold gray stones,
O sea ! " is equally in keeping with the style of a Chinese
lyric. The whole piece is pervaded by the moaning of
the sea, suggesting more than words:
8o THE LORE OF CATHAY
" And I would that my tongue could utter
The thoughts that arise in me."
There is a book of elegies, of a somewhat later age,
which is held in much esteem. It is chiefly the work of
one man, Chu Yuan, who proved his genius, or at least
impressed it on posterity, by drowning himself.
Passing over this, we come to the beginning of China's
Middle Age, the dynasty of Han, under which the re-
vival of letters quickened every kind of intellectual ac-
tivity. The poetry of this period shows a notable advance
toward perfection of form ; though its high qualities may
not be discoverable in the specimens which I have to offer.
The first is by Chia I, a Minister of State who was
sent into banishment about 200 B. c. In spirit and inci-
dent, it reminds one of Poe's " Raven ; " but the task of
finding out how Poe got wind of his Chinese predecessor
must be left to others :
" In dismal, gloomy, crumbling halls,
Betwixt moss-covered, reeking walls,
An exiled poet lay
" On his bed of straw reclining,
Half despairing, half repining
When, athwart the window sill,
In flew a bird of omen ill,
And seemed inclined to stay.
" To my book of occult learning
Suddenly I thought of turning,
All the mystery to know
Of that shameless owl or crow,
That would not go away.
" ' Wherever such a bird shall enter
'Tis sure some power above has sent her,'
So said the mystic book, ' to show
The human dweller forth must go;'
But where, it did not say.
8i
" Then anxiously the bird addressing,
And my ignorance confessing,
' Gentle bird, in mercy deign
The will of Fate to me explain.
Where is my future way ? '
" It raised its head as if 'twere seeking
To answer me by simply speaking;
Then folded up its sable wing,
Nor did it utter anything;
But breathed a ' Well-a-day ! '
" More eloquent than any diction,
That simple sigh produced conviction;
Furnishing to me the key
Of the awful mystery
That on my spirit lay.
" ' Fortune's wheel is ever turning,
To human eye there's no discerning
Weal or woe in any state;
Wisdom is to bide your fate.'
That is what it seemed to say
By that simple ' Well-a-day.' "
A hundred years later, we have a touching ode ad-
dressed to his wife by Su Wu, when on the eve of a
perilous embassy to the Grand Khan of Tartary:
" Twin trees whose boughs together twine,
Two birds that guard one nest,
We'll soon be far asunder torn,
As sunrise from the West.
" Hearts knit in childhood's innocence,
Long bound in Hymen's ties,
One goes to distant battle-fields,
One sits at home and sighs.
82 THE LORE OF CATHAY
" Like carrier dove, though seas divide,
I'll seek my lonely mate ;
But if afar I find a grave
You'll mourn my hapless fate.
" To us the future's all unknown ;
In memory seek relief.
Come, touch the chords you know so well,
And let them soothe our grief."
It speaks well for the domestic affections of the Chinese
that the sentiment of this piece has so penetrated their
literature that it has had imitators in every age, even
down to our own days. The Commissioner Lin, whose
high-handed proceedings provoked the Opium War, on
going into banishment, addressed a similar adieu to his
wife.
Passing over another century, we come to Pan Chih
Yu, the Sappho of China, a gifted lady of the Court, B. c.
18. Though several of her compositions are extant, the
best known is an ode inscribed on a fan, and presented
to the Emperor:
" Of fresh, new silk, all snowy white,
And round as harvest moon ;
A pledge of purity and love,
A small but welcome boon.
" While Summer lasts, borne in the hand,
Or folded on the breast,
'Twill gently soothe thy burning brow,
And charm thee to thy rest.
" But, ah ! When Autumn frosts descend,
And Winter's winds blow cold,
No longer sought, no longer loved,
'Twill lie in dust and mold.
POETS AND POETRY IN CHINA 83
" This silken fan, then, deign accept,
Sad emblem of my lot
Caressed and fondled for an hour,
Then speedily forgot."
After an interval of two centuries, we come to the
period of the " Three Kingdoms."
A weak tyrant, who occupied one of the thrones, was
jealous of the talents of his younger brother, who had the
reputation of being the first poet of his day. Reproach-
ing the poet for thinking too highly of himself, he threat-
ened him with death, unless he should on the instant com-
pose a quatrain that would be accepted as a proof of
genius. The young man strode slowly across the hall, his
footsteps keeping time to the cadence of his verse, while
he pronounced these lines:
" Are there not beans in yon boiling pot,
And bean-stalks are burning below?
Now why, when they spring from one parent root,
Should they scorch each other so?"
The dynasty of Tang (618-905 A. D.) witnessed the
rise of the drama, and at the same time the culmination
of lyric poetry. Tu Fu and Li Po were the Dryden and
Pope of that age. The former, though for ten centuries
he has enjoyed an immense popularity, had for a long
time to struggle with poverty. " For thirty years I rode
an ass," is a pathetic confession, which I shall not mar
by the addition of another line from his voluminous
works.
His great rival was more fortunate. Welcomed at
court in his early prime, and praised by posterity as the
brightest star that ever shone in the poetical firmament of
China, Li Po is best known as a sort of Oriental Anac-
84 THE LORE OF CATHAY
reon, a prince of bacchanalian bards. We have not space
for more than two specimens of his verse an epistle
from a young wife to her husband in the army, evidently
inspired by the farewell sonnet of Su Wu, and an ode on
drinking alone by moonlight. The first is marked by the
simplicity of Wordsworth; the second by the humor of
Hood.
A SOLDIER'S WIFE TO HER HUSBAND.
" 'Twas many a year ago
How I recall the day !
When you, my own true love,
Came first with me to play.
" A little child was I,
My head a mass of curls;
I gathered daisies sweet,
Along with other girls.
"You rode a bamboo horse,
And deemed yourself a knight
With paper helm and shield
And wooden sword bedight.
" Thus we together grew,
And we together played
Yourself a giddy boy,
And I a thoughtless maid.
" At fourteen I was wed,
And if one called my name
As quick as lightning flash
The crimson blushes came.
"'Twas not till we had passed
A year of married life,
My heart was knit to yours
In joy to be your wife.
POETS AND POETRY IN CHINA 85
" Another year, alas !
And you had joined your chiei
While I was left at home
In solitary grief.
" When victory crowns your arms,
And I your triumph learn,
What bliss for me to fly
To welcome your return ! "
ON DRINKING ALONE BY MOONLIGHT.
" Here are flowers and here is wine ;
But there's no friend with me to join
Hand to hand and heart to heart,
In one full bowl before we part.
" Rather then, than drink alone,
I'll make bold to ask the Moon
To condescend to lend her face,
The moment and the scene to grace.
" Lo ! she answers and she brings
My shadow on her silver wings
That makes three, and we shall be,
I ween, a merry company.
" The modest Moon declines the cup,
My shadow promptly takes it up;
And when I dance, my shadow fleet
Keeps measure with my twinkling feet.
" Although the Moon declines to tipple,
She dances in yon shining ripple;
And when I sing, my festive song
The echoes of the Moon prolong.
" Say, when shall we next meet together ?
Surely not in cloudy weather,
For you, my boon companions dear,
Come only when the sky is clear."
86 THE LORE OF CATHAY
A text book used in Chinese schools is called " Selec-
tions from a Thousand Bards." The authors are of all
ages, but it would not be difficult to make a catalogue of
a thousand belonging to this dynasty.
Of the present dynasty,* the most distinguished poet,
if not the most gifted, is the Emperor Chien Lung, who
closed his reign of a full cycle almost exactly a hundred
years ago.
* Pao and Tung, late Ministers of State, were poets of no mean
order. Both presented me with their works, as did several bards
of less note. Not to enumerate other gifts of the kind, of which
I have been the recipient, two old men (one ninety years of age),
eminent as scholars and wearing the buttons of official rank,
called on me lately, as I was passing through Shanghai, each bend-
ing under a load of original poems, which he desired to present.
It was a great honor, but it was something of a burden also, for
I had to buy another trunk to carry their books to Peking. Then,
am I not expected to clothe them in English dress, and to make
them known beyond the seas? a thing which space forbids, at
present.
THE CONFUCIAN APOCRYPHA
ASTRONOMERS tell us that, though Venus is
so much nearer than Mars, it is impossible to
obtain a clear view of her surface, on account
of her dazzling brightness. Do we not experience a
similar difficulty in contemplating the great luminaries
of the human race ? In their case, an atmosphere of myth
always gathers round the nucleus of history, concealing
and distorting their features.
This was the case with Him to whom the Western
world owes its deliverance from the darkness of heathen-
ism. Outside of the authentic records left us by the Four
Evangelists, there was extant for a long time a floating
mass of fable which it cost no little labor to expose and
suppress. It was so with the wisest of the sages of
Greece. How different the aspect which Socrates pre^
sents in the simple narrative of Xenophon from that which
he is made to assume in the voluminous Dialogues of
Plato! In the latter, we know that we are not reading
history ; yet they do contain historic elements, Many of
the doctrines and much of the manner of propounding
them are derived from Socrates, even if the words in
which they are clothed belong wholly to his eloquent
disciple.
Such, is the case of Confucius. So great was the
ascendency to which he attained, within the five or six
centuries succeeding his death, that it became the fashion
to invoke his name for any document for which his fol-
87
88 THE LORE OF CATHAY
lowers desired to conciliate popular favor. Especially
was this the habit with that large class of writers, the
Po Tze, whom we may describe as the Sophists of China.
Take up a volume of Leitze or Chuangtze, and you
meet with anecdotes, apologues, and discourses, put forth
under the name of Confucius, all of which are so evi-
dently fictitious as to suggest a query whether they were
ever intended to be taken as historical. These writers
deal in a similar way, and some of them to a much greater
extent, with the name of Huang Ti, the Yellow Emperor,
a personage who belongs altogether to the realm of
myth.
The pains-taking and conscientious authors of the Lun
Yti, the Confucian Memorabilia, have made the world
familiar with the Sage, who always spoke with delibera-
tion, and acted with dignity ; who had such a weakness
for ginger that he was " never tired of eating it ; " and
who was so scrupulous as to petty proprieties that he
" never sat down if his mat was awry." T<5 these trifling
details, they add that, at home, he wore a tunic with one
sleeve shorter than the other, and slept in a night-gown
fifty per cent longer than his body; that, on going to
bed, he ceased to talk; and, not to cite other traits of
aspect and carriage, the conviction is forced upon us
that we have here glimpses of a real man.
But turn to the outline of biography, familiar to every
Chinese school-boy. Passing over the supernatural por-
tents connected with his birth and death, we find the
statement that Confucius was prime minister of Lu for
three months ; that, within that time, he effected such
a reformation that precious things might be dropped in
the street without risk of misappropriation ; that shepherds
refrained from watering their sheep before driving them
to market, lest they should draw more than their proper
SHRINE AND TEMPLE OF CONFUCIUS
THE CONFUCIAN APOCRYPHA 89
weight ; that prisons were empty, and tribunals idle ;
that men were honest, and women chaste; and that the
little state began to acquire such a preponderance that
its neighbors resorted to unworthy stratagems to under-
mine the influence of the great reformer. These and
other incidents, either wholly fictitious or greatly exag-
gerated, are found in the sober pages of Sze Ma Ch'ien,
the Herodotus of China.
THE SAGE TAUGHT BY A CHILD.
Many of these incidents have been taken up and further
expanded by later writers. For instance, the historian
records that " Confucius took lessons from Hsiang T'o."
Now, Hsiang T'o was a precocious child of seven years ;
and the record probably means nothing more than that
the Sage condescended to take a hint from the lad, or
to make use of him as an illustration in teaching, as a
Greater Teacher did, when, his disciples contending for
precedence, he set a little child before them as an object
lesson in the graces of faith and humility.
Here is a specimen of the stories that have grown out
of this obscure incident:
Confucius, it is said, seeing a little boy playing with
tiles in the street, called to him to make way for his
carriage. " Not so," said the boy ; " I am building a
city. A city wall does not give way for a cart, but a
cart goes round the wall." " You seem to be uncom-
monly clever for your years," said Confucius, surprised
at the self-possession of the lad. "How so?" said the
lad ; " a hare at the age of three days can scamper over
the fields, and should I not know a thing or two at the
age of seven years? If you will tell me how many stars
there are in heaven, I shall know more than I do now."
" Why do you inquire about things so far away ? " said
90 THE LORE OF CATHAY
the Sage ; " ask about something near at hand, and I
will answer you." " Then," said the boy, " please tell
me how many hairs you have in your eye-brows." The
Sage was non-plussed ; and, giving the lad a kindly smile,
he drove silently away.
Another story, derived from the same source, is found
in the works of Leitze.
Confucius met with two boys, who were discussing
the question whether the sun is more distant in the
morning or at noon. " It appears larger in the morning,"
said one; "and the nearer an object is, the larger it
appears." " But," replied the other, " is not the sun
hotter at noon than in the morning? And does not a
hot object give more heat when near, than when far
away ? " Unable to agree, they referred the matter to
the Sage; and he, with characteristic caution, left the
question undecided ; or, as one version has it, he was
unable to decide, and the boys formed a low opinion of
his intelligence.*
In treating of the apocryphal literature relating to
Confucius, it is important to distinguish that which
originated before the " burning of the books " from that
which belongs to a later date. Works that preceded that
catastrophe have, of course, the better chance of con-
taining genuine traditions, especially if, as in the case
* The German poet Claudius puts a similar dispute into the
mouth of two rustics :
Wie gross meinst du die Sonne sei?
So gross vielleicht wie ein futter Heu
etc., etc.
How big, asked Hans, is the sun, do you say?
As big, said Sep, as a load of hay.
No ! no ! cried Hans, not half so big,
About the size of an ostrich egg.
THE CONFUCIAN APOCRYPHA 91
of Leitze and Chuangtze, they belong to the Taoist
school, which was not proscribed, and therefore escaped
the conflagration. In the writers last named, the reck-
less use of imagination vitiates their authority. In
Chuangtze, there are more than fifty references to Con-
fucius and his disciples, not one of which possesses any
historical value.
In works of the later period, reminiscences of the
Sage are far more multiplied; but their genuineness is
not merely questionable on account of their remoteness
from the times of their subject. Is it not obvious that an
occurrence like the "fires of Ch'in," (240 B. c.) the
avowed aim of which was to extirpate the teachings of
Confucius, would open a wide field for the production
of supposititious literature? So well, indeed, did the
tyrant succeed in his purpose that only a few manuscripts
escaped ; and they, by being hidden for generations in
the walls of houses.
A PREMIUM ON FORGERY.
On the accession of the Han Dynasty, when the first
attempt was made to wake the lost books from their ashes,
the same edict, which caused old men to ransack their
brain for pages committed to memory in boyhood, en-
couraged others to exercise their inventive faculties to
produce a plausible substitute. The rewards offered for
discoveries of hidden Classics acted as a premium on
forgery.
All the circumstances of the time were adapted to
favor imposture. Under a new dynasty, letters blos-
somed afresh ; and the subject which appealed most
powerfully to the inventive faculties of the learned was
the huge void left by the missing books. Pecuniary re-
wards, imperial favor, and popular esteem, all conspired
92 THE LORE OF CATHAY
to incite them to effort ; and aut inveniam aut faciam be-
came a motto with thousands of zealous scholars.
Zeal for the Confucian school, which, for a time over-
shadowed by Taoism, now began to recover its lost
ground, supplied an additional motive; and scholars,
who wished to give currency to their own ideas, did not
scruple to publish them under the names of the apostles
of Confucianism, or even under that of the great Master
himself.
The Arabs of Egypt are not mo.re expert in manu-
facturing antique mummies than were the students of
Han in the construction of ancient classics. Not to speak
of spurious portions foisted into several of the canonical
books, two at least of the works now reckoned among the
Thirteen Classics are admitted to be of apocryphal origin.
These are the Li Chi, or Book of Rites, and Hsiao Ching,
or Manual of Filial Duty.
THE BOOK OF RITES.
This has had the good fortune to be included in the
five Ching, for what reason it is difficult to divine, unless
because it professes to record ritual observances which
were in vogue in the period covered by the other four.
It enjoys, therefore, a great authority from the eminence
to which it has been raised.
More than any other work, it has shaped the external
form of Chinese civilization, preserving its essential
unity under all vicissitudes, prescribing alike official
forms and private manners.
The rules of the Li Chi are not, indeed, held as obliga-
tory, any more than are the rituals of the Old Testa-
ment in the practice of Christendom; but, never having
been formally abrogated, a larger proportion of them has
entered into the life of the modern Chinese.
THE CONFUCIAN APOCRYPHA 93
The compilers of this work no doubt found much genu-
ine material drifting in a state of wreckage down the
stream of time, and they had no hesitation in supplying
from their own resources whatever might be required
for its reconstruction. Nor did they, in any case, take
pains to point out the boundary between the old and the
hew. What they discovered was at best a torso, and their
ambition was to present it as a complete statue.
On reading it one is struck by a great inequality of
style; parts are crabbed and obscure, while other parts
flow in a pellucid stream, characteristic ot an advanced
stage of literary art. Take, for example, the chapter en-
titled Ju Hsing, the " Character of a Scholar," and you
have an eloquent exposition of the conduct becoming a
man of letters. Again, in the Yileh Chi, you have a rhap-
sody on music, without a single indication which might
enable a student to reproduce the music of the ancients.
Both discourses are credited to Confucius, but the style
is too modern by at least four centuries.
In some parts of the collection, the Sage is made to
appear as interlocutor in a dialogue ; and occasionally an
incident is related as a basis for moral reflections. Such
an incident is that of a family who exposed themselves
to be devoured by wild beasts rather than submit to the
exactions of mandarins.
" Mark that, my children," said Confucius, turning to
his disciples ; " oppressive officers are dreaded more than
tigers."
The incident is sufficiently striking, and its moral is
worthy of a Sage. The story of the serpent-catcher, by
Liu Tsung Yuan, is based on it, and enforces the same
moral in the elegant diction of a later age, exerting a
restraining influence on the rapacity of officials, and pro-
moting a spirit of independence among the people.
94 THE LORE OF CATHAY
In itself, the tiger story is not incredible. In Oregon,
I was told of a woman who had lost three husbands by
grizzly bears. Perhaps one attraction to the soil of the
new territory was just this facility of divorce?
THE BOOK OF FILIAL DUTY.
Like the Li Chi, the Manual of Filial Duty dates from
the first century B. c. ; and, like that work, it is reputed
to have been discovered in the wall of a house belonging
to a descendant of Confucius. In form, it consists of a
series of discourses, addressed by the Sage to his disciple
Tsengtze, who served him as amanuensis, and who now
wears the proud title of Ch'uan Sheng, " Transmitter
of the Sage."
In style, the book bears the impress of the age of its
alleged discovery, being more modern by several cen-
turies than that of its reputed author. It is remarkable
for the fullness with which it expounds the working of
filial piety as a social regulator in all the relations of life.
Though the Christian finds in it no sufficient substitute
for the prompting and restraining influence of faith in
an omnipresent God, he must acknowledge that in China
filial piety might be made a useful auxiliary to the higher
sentiment. The decay of that higher sentiment (if it
ever existed in China) was no doubt owing to the rise
of polytheism ; and philosophers were fain to seek in
filial piety a force which should serve as the prop of
morality.
The state makes it the basis of its legislation ; and this
book, whose canonicity the state has good reasons for
upholding, is therefore a corner-stone in the social fabric.
The very phrase " to rule the empire by filial piety,"
so often seen in official documents is found in the
eighth Chapter; and so beautifully is the idea developed
THE CONFUCIAN APOCRYPHA 95
in the proem that I cannot forbear citing a few
lines :
" One day, when the Master was at leisure and Tseng-
tze in attendance, he said, ' The ancient Sages possessed
a perfect method for governing the empire, by which
the people were made to live in harmony without dis-
cord between high and low ; do you understand it ? '
Tsengtze rose and replied : ' I am dull of apprehen-
sion ; how should I understand it ? ' ' Sit down then,'
said the Master, ' and I will teach you. Filial piety is the
root of virtue, and the fountain of moral teaching. It
begins with due care for the body because received from
your parents ; it culminates in conduct which will make
your name immortal, and reflect glory on your father and
mother. Its beginning is the service of your parents ; its
middle, the service of the sovereign ; and its end, the for-
mation of character.' "
The eighteen short chapters which follow do nothing
more than amplify this text. They are so brief and pithy
that school children commit them to memory, and accept
them as rules of conduct for their subsequent life. The
effect of the doctrines, thus set forth, can hardly be over-
estimated; and, in general, they are consonant with the
teachings of the Sage as given in records of unquestioned
authenticity. The Hsiao' Ching, therefore, though apocry-
phal, does him no injustice, unless it be in one point, viz.,
in making conformity to the ordinances and even the
costume of the ancient Kings an obligation of filial piety.
It is known that Confucius was somewhat conservative;
but it may be affirmed that he never enjoined such unrea-
soning submission to antiquity. Does he not teach, in the
first section of the Ta Hsiieh, the Great Study, that the
chief duty of a Prince is to effect the renovation of his
people? How I have longed to see the rulers of China
96 THE LORE OF CATHAY
wake up to the fact that their Great Teacher never in-
tended them to be fast bound to the wheels of the ancient
kings.
THE FAMILY TRADITIONS.
The last of these apocryphal writings which we shall
notice at present is in some respects the most important
of all. It is the Chia Yu, or Family Traditions. It ap-
peared between two and three centuries later than the
Li Chi and Hsiao Ching; i. e., in the period of the Three
Kingdoms. Its fortune, though less brilliant than that of
those two most lucky forgeries, has been such as to sur-
pass the ambition of its so-called editor. For though not,
like them, set in the constellation of sacred classics, it is
held to be " deutero-canonical ; " and, as such, it stands
in the Imperial catalogues at the head of Ju Chia, or or-
thodox writers of the Confucian School. The editor,
Wang Su, frankly states the object he has in view in
giving these Traditions to the world. " Errors are ram-
pant," he says in his preface, " and the Confucian high-
way is overgrown with brambles. Why should not I
make an effort to clear it of obstructions. If no one,
then, chooses to follow it, it will not be my fault."
The zeal expressed in these words is not fitted to in-
spire confidence; and, when he informs us that he has
opportunely obtained these Traditions in manuscript from
a descendant of the Sage in the twenty-second generation,
are we not disposed to regard the discovery as rather too
opportune? Why should a member of the family of
K'ung, after the lapse of seven centuries, be more likely
to possess genuine traditions than any other of the " hun-
dred names?" That the work as a whole is spurious,
is admitted by native critics. That which secures for it
unrivalled popularity is:
THE CONFUCIAN APOCRYPHA 97
I. Its worthy aim; 2. Its pleasing style; 3. Some-
thing like an element of real tradition, derived from vari-
ous sources ; 4. Adroit insertion and skilful amplification
of authentic records.
Notwithstanding its multifarious contents, it is easy
to separate the few grains of golden sand carried down
by the stream of time from the bright clay in which the
author has wrapped them up, with a view to increasing
their bulk and weight.
A STRANGE MONITOR.
As a good example of his method, I may mention
the manner in which he deals with a brief notice which
he finds in Hsiintze, who lived three centuries before.
Confucius had seen a water-vessel, which, when empty,
hung obliquely; when half-full, hung vertically; but, on
being filled, turned over and spilled its contents. It was
said to have been placed on the right of the Prince's
throne as a warning against pride, or fullness, which
" precedes a fall."
Taking this for a text, Wang Su expands it into a
discourse of considerable length, a copy of which I ob-
tained in Japan, where it had evidently been used as an
inscription in a princely or imperial palace.
It is, however, in paraphrases on the Lun Yii that he
most frequently displays his peculiar skill. A few illustra-
tions may not be out of place.
THREE WISHES.
Borrowing a hint from a passage in which Confucius
calls on his disciples to describe the employ which each
would find to his taste, our author shows us the Master
with three of his disciples on a hill top. Enjoying the
98 THE LORE OF CATHAY
boundless prospect, he says to them : " Here our
thoughts fly unfettered in all directions. Here you may
give wing to fancy, and clothe your wildest dreams in
words. Now, let each of you name the situation, or
achievement, which would most completely fill the meas-
ure of his ambition."
Tze Lu declares for feats of prowess, choosing above
all things to be able with a small force to humble a
proud foe ; and with his own hand to capture the leader
of the opposing camp. Tze Kung, the finest talker of the
School, bent on proving the tongue mightier than the
sword, enlarging on his friend's picture of opposing
armies ready to join in bloody conflict, adds that it would
be his ambition to come between the hostile camps, to
disarm them both by mere force of argument, showing
each his true interest, and by skilful diplomacy to bring
about an adjustment of their differences. " I should
wish," he says, " no higher glory than that of such a
peaceful victory."
Confucius commends his eloquence, and then calls on
Yen Hui, his favorite disciple, the St. John of his School.
With unassuming modesty, Yen declines to engage in
competition with his arrogant companions ; but, when
urged by the Master, he says : " My desire would be to
find a good Prince, who would accept me for his Vizier.
I would teach his people justice, propriety, and benevo-
lence; and lead them no longer to build walls, or dig
moats, but to turn their weapons of war into instruments
of husbandry."
" Admirable," exclaimed Confucius ; " such is the
power of virtue."
In the Memorabilia, or Lun Yii, the Sage gives his
suffrage to a disciple, who draws a charming picture of
the pleasures of idleness. Wang Su has re-cast the en-
THE CONFUCIAN APOCRYPHA 99
tire scene, in order to give it a conclusion more worthy
of the nation's teacher, emphasizing the sentiment ex-
pressed by Longfellow:
Were half the force that keeps the world in terror,
Were half the wealth that's spent on camps and courts,
Given to redeem the human mind from error,
There were no need of arsenals and forts.
TO BE OR NOT TO BE.
The famous saying of the great Agnostic " We know
not life, how can we know death ? " supplies an equally
fine text for artful amplification. It is accordingly ex-
panded into the following dialogue :
" Do the dead retain a conscious existence ? " inquired
Tze Kung.
" If," replied Confucius, " I should say they do, I
fear the pious and filial would neglect their living parents
through devotion to the dead. If, on the other hand, I
should say they do not, I fear that the unfilial might
so far disregard their duties to the dead as to leave their
parents unburied."
With this ambiguous answer, he closed his lips, and
left his disciples on the horns of a torturing dilemma.
THE LESSON OF RUNNING WATER.
In the Lun Yii, we are told that the Sage, looking on
a running stream, exclaimed : " Behold an emblem of
time; it ceases not, day or night."
In the Traditions, Confucius was gazing intently on
the eastward flowing current of the Yellow River. A
disciple, inquiring why a superior man always loves to
look on the surface of a great stream, he replies : " Be-
cause its flow never ceases ; it nourishes all living things,
and yet without labor. Its water is like virtue; it seeks
ioo THE LORE OF CATHAY
a low place; yet cities and palaces follow its course. It
is like goodness, vast and inexhaustible; it is like truth,
gtoing straight forward without fear, even though a
plunge of a hundred fathoms may be before it. This
is why the superior man loves to look on the face of the
flowing waters."
FOOLISH QUESTIONS AND WISE ANSWERS.
In the Lun Yti, Ai Kung, Duke of Lu, asks one or two
questions. In the Traditions, he is made to ask a score
or more. Here are two, both frivolous; but they elicit
wise answers :
" Will you tell me," said the Duke, " what kind of
crown was worn by the Emperor Shun ? " After a pro-
longed silence, Confucius replied, but not until he was
urged to speak : " I was silent, because I do not know
what kind of garments Shun wore; but I do know the
principles on which he ruled his people. Why should not
Your Highness inquire about them?" On another oc-
casion, the Duke said to Confucius : " I have heard of a
man, who, on removing to a new house, forgot to take
, his wife. Was there ever a case of greater forgetful-
ness ? " " Yes," replied Confucius ; " it is that of the
man who forgets himself."
TWO VIEWS OF LIFE.
A fine story, which Wang Su borrows from Leitze,
is that of an old man of ninety, who, being asked why,
under the burdens of age, poverty, and toil, he was still
able to sing so merrily, replied : " I have many reasons
for feeling happy, but the principal are these, viz : That
I have come into life as a man; that I have reached a
good old age ; and that I am now soon to be released by
the hand of death."
THE CONFUCIAN APOCRYPHA 101
After relating this without acknowledgment, our au-
thor invents one in a similar style :
Passing near a river, Confucius heard the voice of
weeping. Overtaking an old man, from whom the voice
proceeded, he inquired the cause of his distress.
" They are three," replied the man ; " I have failed
in three things, which it is now too late to mend, and
nothing remains but unavailing remorse.
When young, I went wandering over the world in
quest of knowledge; and, when I returned home, my
parents were dead.
In mature years, I served the Prince of Ch'i; but the
Prince ruined himself by pride and debauchery, and I was
unable to check his downward course.
In my life-time, I have had many friends, but I failed
to attach them to me by a sincere and lasting affection ;
and now, in my old age, they have all forsaken me. Of
these three errors, the greatest was the neglect of my
parents."
Yielding to a fresh transport of grief, the old man
threw himself into the water and perished. " Mark
this," said Confucius, turning to his disciples; and that
very day thirteen of them went home to serve their
parents.
In general, stories and discourses which re-appear in
the Traditions, display a marked improvement on their
originals; at least, in literary finish, though in some
instances " expanded gold exchanges solid strength for
feeble splendor."
Thus far, we have looked on the finer side of the
tapestry. Let us now turn to its seamy side, as it is
necessary to do in order to complete the evidence of
patch-work.
102 THE LORE OF CATHAY
AN IMAGINARY NIAGARA.
On the road from Wei to Lu, Confucius comes to a
cataract, thirty fathoms in height, which creates a whirl-
pool ninety li (30 miles) in circumference, and so furious
is the current that neither fish nor tortoise can live in it ;
yet an intrepid swimmer, more lucky than Captain Webb
at Niagara, succeeds in crossing. This passage suggests
the wild fancy of Chuangtze ; and, on turning to the
older writer, we find it there, but less extravagant in its
terms. Wang Su uses it to point a vapid moral ; but
he has blundered in admitting it among authentic tra-
ditions.
WISE QUESTIONS AND FOOLISH ANSWERS.
In the Lun Yii, it is said there were four things of
which Confucius never spoke, viz. : Fairy tales, feats of
strength, outrageous crimes, and the gods (or the super-
natural). A book exists, which takes these for its sub-
ject, and bears the title, Things of which Confucius did
not Speak. There are not a few pages in these alleged
Traditions that might be grouped under such a rubric.
One of the Princes asking him a question, Confucius
launches into a dissertation on giants and dwarfs, in
which he says the latter grow to three feet and the former
to thirty.
Prince Chao, of Ch'u, in crossing a river, picks up
a floating fruit resembling a cocoa-nut, and sends a
messenger to learn its nature from Confucius. Without
the least hesitation, the omniscient Sage gives the name
of the fruit, and adds that the Prince may eat it, as it
is a fruit of good omen, which only falls into the hands
of one destined to be a leader of the nations. When
a disciple asks him how he happens to know these facts
THE CONFUCIAN APOCRYPHA 103
so exactly, he replies that he once heard a nursery rhyme
to that effect: it was prophetic, and this he knew to
be its fulfilment.
In another passage, he explains the appearance of a
strange bird in the same way. It was called Shang Yang,
had only one leg, and, as he learned from a childish
ditty, its arrival portended a deluge of rain.
These instances, with many others of the same kind,
may be taken as completing the evidence that the so-
called Traditions are a transparent fiction. If I have
dwelt too long on this particular work, it is on account
of the influence it exerts in fixing the popular ideal of
the Sage, from the credit it enjoys of heading, as it does
in official catalogues, the entire body of philosophers.
There are other works which contain similar fictions;
but time fails to enumerate, not to say, examine them.
Taken as a whole, the volume of these apocryphal
writings far exceeds that of the authentic records; the
gaseous envelope surrounding the luminary is greater
than its solid nucleus. But it may be doubted whether
these fabrications, however well meant, have not de-
tracted from the essential greatness of China's model
wise man.
CONFUCIUS NO MYTH.
Let us conclude by briefly indicating a few points in
which the apocryphal Confucius differs from the real
founder of Chinese civilization; for, at this stage of our
discussion, I need hardly say that Confucius was no
myth. He is so far historical that he, and not Sze Ma,
is the Father of Chinese History. His words and acts
were minutely noted by contemporary pens, hundreds of
his pupils contributing to transmit his teachings and per-
petuate his memory. The attempt to make him a mythical
104 THE LORE OF CATHAY
personage, like Pan Ku or Nu Kua, may afford an agree-
able exercise for the leisure hours of an ingenious stu-
dent ; but it can no more unsettle the received convic-
tion than Archbishop Whately's Historic Doubts con-
cerning Napoleon could relegate the Corsican Conqueror
to the companionship of Hercules and Bacchus. But, in
the double personality that goes under that venerated
name, it is time to point out the features in which the
mythical Confucius differs from the historical. I limit
myself to five:
THE REAL AND THE MYTHICAL COMPARED.
I. The real Sage was noted for modesty; the fictitious
is a prig, who assumes to know everything. The myth-
makers, who have attempted to display the universality
of his knowledge, have succeeded in exposing their own
ignorance.
2. The real Confucius was a man of few words ; his
style, laconic and grave. The mythical is loquacious, and
often occupied with trifles.
3. The real Sage was reverential towards the Supreme
Power of the Universe, but agnostic in spirit and prac-
tice. The Confucius of these Apocryphal books is ex-
cessively superstitious, drawing omens of the future from
birds, beasts, and the nonsensical ditties of children.
4. The real Sage, when asked if it is right to repay
injury by injury, forbids revenge. The Apocryphal is
made to teach the vendetta in its most truculent form,
prescribing its measure for each degree of relationship,
the slayer of a father to be slain at sight, even in the
halls of an imperial palace.
5. The real Sage was humane, making humanity, or
love, the first of the cardinal virtues in his moral system.
The Apocryphal personage is cruel and unjust, putting
THE CONFUCIAN APOCRYPHA 105
Shao Cheng Mao to death for five reasons, not one of
which would justify anything more severe than dismissal
from office; and cutting off the hands and feet of a
mountebank, who sought to amuse two princes on the
occasion of a public meeting.
These Apocryphal writings contain, as I have said,
much that is good. They must be studied to get at the
sources of the later literature. But would it not be a
worthy undertaking for some enlightened scholar, native
or foreign, to sift these heterogeneous materials, and
clear the name of the Great Master from all connection
with the absurd, vain, and wicked things with which his
memory has been loaded ?
VI
CONFUCIUS AND PLATO A COINCIDENCE
THE coincidence relates to a moot point of filial
duty. In China, filial piety is recognized as
the basis of social order. By the orthodox,
it is even held to supply the place of religion; so that
" he who serves his parents at home has no need to go
far away to burn incense to the gods."
In the Hsiao Ching, a well-known manual for the in-
struction of youth, it is represented as affording an incen-
tive to the discharge of duty in all situations, giving force
and vitality to consciences which might otherwise remain
dormant. Thus, a soldier who runs away is unfilial ; an
officer who is unfaithful to his prince is unfilial; and, in
general, any conduct that entails disgrace is unfilial, be-
cause it must of necessity reflect discredit on the parents
of the offender. A whole system of morals is deduced
from this root; and casuistry finds scope in inventing
difficult situations and in reconciling conflicting obliga-
tions. Truth is a virtue not much insisted on in Chinese
books; and its comparative rarity brings into relief a
class of people who vaunt their frankness, and scorn to
palliate or extenuate in the interest of their dearest
friends. They are called chih jen, " straight men."
A disciple of Confucius, speaking of one of these, says
to the Master : " In my country, there was a man re-
nowned for truthfulness. When his father had stolen a
sheep, he went to the magistrate and informed against
him. Is his conduct to be commended ? "
1 06
CONFUCIUS AND PLATO 107
" In my country," the Sage replies, " the duty of truth-
fulness is understood differently, A son is required in
all cases to conceal the faults of his father, and a father
to conceal those of his son. The obligations of truth are
not violated by this practice."
A hundred years later, the question was not yet re-
garded as settled ; or, to speak more properly, as with all
moral questions, the old battles had to be fought over
again.
Mencius was the oracle of the age, and one of his dis-
ciples brought up the subject by stating a hypothetical
case. " Suppose," he said, " the father of the Emperor,
being a private man, should commit murder. Is it the
duty of the Criminal Judge to seize and condemn him ? "
" Without doubt," replied Mencius.
" But then, how could the Emperor endure to see his
father treated in that way ? When the wise Shun was on
the throne, if his villainous old father, Ku Sou, had com-
mitted murder, and was in danger of being condemned by
Kao Yao, what would Shun have done ? "
" Shun," replied the teacher, " would have taken his
father on his back and fled to the borders of the sea.
Dwelling there in obscurity, and rejoicing that he had
saved the life of his parent, he would have forgotten
that he ever filled a throne."
Mencius, who formulated the doctrines of his school,
goes in this passage a step beyond the teachings of his
Master. The latter confined the duty of a child toward
a parent, guilty of a crime, to the passive part of con-
cealment. The former gives it an active form, requir-
ing a son, on behalf of a parent, to do all in his power
to defeat the ends of justice. But when, in this dilemma,
he sets himself in opposition to the law, he is no longer
fit to be a prince ; he should abdicate the throne, to win
io8 THE LORE OF CATHAY
the crown of filial piety; for, according to Mencius, filial
duty primes all others.
A case, analogous to the first of these, forms the sub-
ject of Euthyphron, one of the Dialogues of Plato. Soc-
rates, going to the court of King's Bench, meets Eu-
thyphron, and learns with horror that he has come for the
express purpose of denouncing his own father as guilty
of a capital crime.
A hired laborer, having killed another in a drunken
brawl, the father of the accuser had him bound hand-
and-foot and thrown into a pit, where the next morning
he was found dead. Euthyphron saw in the hapless vic-
tim, not a chattel or a broken tool, but a fellow-man un-
justly slain ; while, in the murderer, he recognized, not
a parent, but a criminal.
There is something chivalrous and noble in his taking
up the cause of humanity, in opposition to the narrower
claims of family. But it detracts from his merit that he
is fully conscious of the beau role which he has assumed.
Socrates, who as usual expresses the sentiments of the
author, is not dazzled by this splendid instance of public
virtue triumphing over private feeling. After passing the
ideas and motives of the hero through the sieve of his
dialectic, he shows him that those instincts which he
despises are the voice of nature ; and that, in spite of his
assumption of superior knowledge, he neither knows what
he is to believe concerning the gods, nor what duty the
gods require of him.
" The victim," said Socrates, " must have been one of
your near relatives ; otherwise, you would not have been
able to overcome your natural repugnance to denouncing
your father."
" Nothing is more ridiculous," Euthyphron replied,
" than to suppose that it makes any difference whether
CONFUCIUS AND PLATO 109
the victim is a relative or a stranger. The whole question
is, whether the homicide was justifiable or not. If it was
not, then it was my duty to denounce the perpetrator, no
matter how closely connected with me ; for it would be
contamination to associate with such a person, instead of
clearing myself by denouncing him." " My relations,"
he adds, " view this proceeding as impious and unholy ;
not knowing the nature of the gods, nor the real distinc-
tion between things holy and unholy."
" But," asked Socrates, " are you sure that you under-
stand the nature of the gods, and the distinction of holy
and unholy? Tell me what you call holy and unholy."
" I," replied Euthyphron, " call that holy which I am
now doing: namely, the denouncing of a wrong-doer
who commits sacrilege, murder, or other grave offense,
no matter whether the offender be father, mother, or
other relative. It would be unholy to refrain from doing
so."
In support of this position, he appeals to the example
of Zeus, the " best and most just of the gods," who
chained and mutilated his father, as a punishment for
his monstrous cruelties.
Socrates repeats his demand for a definition ; and Eu-
thyphron answers that the holy is that which pleases the
gods, the unholy that which displeases them.
Soc. " But what rule shall poor mortals have to go
by when the gods are divided on these questions ? "
Euth. " They are never so much divided as not to be
unanimous in support of the principle that he who com-
mits an unjustifiable homicide ought to be punished."
Soc. " But what is to be done when they are not agreed
as to the quality of a crime, whether it was justifiable
or not ? "
As this is a frequent occurrence in human tribunals,
no THE LORE OF CATHAY
Euthyphron is forced to admit that it might also occur
in the councils of the gods; and he modifies his defini-
tion by inserting the word " all," so as to make an act
holy or unholy according as it is loved or hated by all
the gods. Here Socrates pushes him into deeper water
by asking whether such act is holy because it is loved by
the gods, or loved because it is holy ?
To this Euthyphron is unable to make any satisfac-
tory answer; and, after a brief skirmish on other points,
he drops the discussion.
Through all its mazes, Socrates had pursued him as
the Furies pursued Orestes, showing him that the dic-
tates of nature are the basis of our notions of right and
wrong; and that, to outrage our best instincts as he is
doing, is to fight against the gods. Like the Chinese
philosophers, he teaches that a son is not at liberty to
assume the attitude of public prosecutor as against a
parent.
The prolixity of the Socratic dialogue, of which I
have given only a brief outline, is in strong contrast with
the sententiousness of the Confucian school. But, not
only is the subject of discussion identical ; the name Eu-
thyphron " straight thinker," is singularly similar to the
chih jen, or " straight man," of the Chinese.
VII
CHINESE PROSE COMPOSITION
A PROFESSOR of Chinese in America is reported
to have said that " in the Chinese language there
is no such thing as a florid style or a beautiful
style. Style is not taken into consideration. It is in
writing the language that skill is displayed; and the
man that executes the characters with dexterity and in-
genuity is the one that understands the language."
Though somewhat unexpected as coming from the
chair of a professor, this opinion is not novel. It ex-
presses but too truly the estimate in which the literature
of China has been generally held by the learned world.
The value of Chinese records is fully conceded. The
great antiquity of the people ; their accurate system of
chronology; their habit of appealing to history as a tri-
bunal before which they can arraign their sovereigns;
and especially their practice of noting as a prodigy every
strange phenomenon that occurs in any department of
nature all conspire to render their annals an inexhausti-
ble mine of curious and useful information.
It is in these that our savants may find, extending back
in unbroken series for thousands of years, notices of
eclipses, comets, star-showers, aerolites, droughts, floods,
earthquakes, etc., as well as a comparatively faithful ac-
count of the rise and fortunes of the most numerous
branch of the human family.
But, while admitting that it is worth while to encounter
all the toil of a difficult language in order to gain access
in
H2 THE LORE OF CATHAY
to such a field of research, who ever dreams that the
Chinese language contains anything else to repay the
labor of acquisition ? Who ever imagines that in pursuing
his favorite game, instead of traversing deserts and
jungles, he will find himself walking among forests filled
with the songs of strange birds and perfumed with the
fragrance of unknown flowers, while ever and anon he is
ravished by the view of some landscape of surpassing
beauty ? As soon would the student of literary art expect
to find the graces of diction among the hieratic inscrip-
tions of Egypt, or the arrow-headed records of Assyria,
as to meet them on pages that bristle with the ideographic
symbols of China. It is with a view to correcting such
prevalent impressions that this paper is written. In at-
tempting this, however, I do not propose a disquisition on
the value of Chinese literature in general, nor commit
myself to the task of elucidating the principles of its
rhetoric and grammar; but limit myself rather to the
single topic of style, and more particularly the style of
its prose composition.
This is a subject, which, I am aware, it will not be
easy to discuss in such a manner as to render it intelligible
or interesting to those who are unacquainted with the
Chinese language. Style is a volatile quality, which
escapes in the process of transfusion ; and illustrations of
style, however carefully rendered, are at best but as dried
plants and stuffed animals compared with living nature.
Chinese, moreover, being from our idiom the most re-
mote of all languages, suffers most in the process of ren-
dering. I fear, therefore, that the best versions I may
be able to offer will only have the effect of confirming
the impressions which it is my object to combat. That
such impressions are erroneous ought to be apparent
from the mere consideration of the antiquity and extent
CHINESE PROSE COMPOSITION 113
of the Chinese literature. For, to suppose that a great
people have been engaged from a time anterior to the
rise of any other living language in building up a litera-
ture, unequalled in extent, which contains nothing to
gratify the taste or feed the imagination, is it not to sup-
pose its authors destitute of the attributes of our common
humanity? Are we to believe that the bees of China are
so different from those of other countries that they con-
struct their curious cells from a mere love of labor, with-
out ever depositing there the sweets on which they are
wont to feed?
It is not always true that external decoration implies
internal finish or furniture; still, we may assert that it
would be impossible that the taste which the Chinese dis-
play in the embellishment of their handwriting and letter-
press should not find its counterpart in the refinements of
style.
They literally worship their letters. When letters were
invented, they say, heaven rejoiced and hell trembled.
Not for any consideration will they tread on a piece of
lettered paper; and to foster this reverence, literary as-
sociations employ agents to go about the streets, collect
waste paper, and burn it on a kind of altar with the
solemnity of a sacrifice. They execute their characters
with the painter's brush, and rank writing as the very
highest of the fine arts. They decorate their dwellings
and the temples of their gods with ornamental inscrip-
tions ; and exercise their ingenuity in varying both chir-
ography and orthography in a hundred fantastic ways.
We may well excuse them for this almost idolatrous ad-
miration for the greatest gift of their ancestors, for there
is no other language on earth whose written characters
approach the Chinese in their adaptation to pictorial effect.
Yet all this exaggerated attention to the mechanical art
H4 THE LORE OF CATHAY
of writing is but an index of the ardor with which
Chinese scholars devote themselves to the graces of com-
position.
Their style is as varied as their chirography, and as
much more elaborate than that of other nations. If they
spend years in learning to write, where others give a few
weeks or months to the acquisition of that accomplish-
ment, it is equally true that, while in other countries the
student acquires a style of composition almost by acci-
dent, those of China make it the earnest study of half
a lifetime.
While, in the lower examinations, elegance of mechani-
cal execution, joined to a fair proportion of other merits,
is sure to achieve success, in competition for the higher
degrees the essays are copied by official clerks before they
meet the eye of the examiner; style is everything, and
handwriting nothing. Even the matter of the essay is of
little consequence in comparison with the form in which
it is presented. This is perceived and lamented by the
more intelligent among the Chinese themselves. They
often contrast the hollow glitter of the style of the present
day with the solid simplicity of the ancients ; and de-
nounce the art of producing the standard u'en chang, or
polished essay, as no less mechanical than that of orna-
mental penmanship. The writer has heard an eminent
mandarin who himself wielded an elegant pen, speak of
the stress which the literary tribunals lay on the super-
ficial amenities of style as a " clever contrivance adopted
by a former dynasty to prevent the literati from thinking
too much." *
Still, however sensible to its defects, Chinese scholars,
without exception, glory in the extent and high refine-
* The use of -wen chang as an official test is ascribed to Wang
An Shih of the Sung dynasty, about 1050.
CHINliSE PROSE COMPOSITION 115
mcnt of their national literature. " We yield to you the
palm of science," one of them once said to me, after a
discussion on their notions of nature and its forces ; but
he added, " You, of course, will not deny to us the meed
of letters."
The Chinese language is not so ill adapted to purposes
of rhetorical embellishment as might be inferred from
its primitive structure. Totally destitute of inflection its
substantives without declension, its adjectives without
comparison, and its verbs without conjugation it seems
at first view " sans everything " that ought to belong to
a cultivated tongue. Bound, moreover, to a strict order
of collocation, which its other deficiencies make a neces-
sity, it would seem to be a clumsy instrument for thought
and expression. Nor do I deny that it is so in com-
parison with the leading languages of the West; but it
is a marvel how fine a polish Chinese scholars have made
it receive, and what dexterity they acquire in the use of
it. It possesses, too, some compensating qualities. Its
monosyllabic form gives it the advantage of concentrated
energy; and if the value of its words must be fixed by
their position, like numerals in a column of figures, or
mandarins on an occasion of state ceremony, it makes
amends for this inconvenience by admitting each char-
acter to do duty in all the principal parts of speech. In
English, we find it to be an element of strength to be
able to convert many of our nouns into verbs. In Chinese,
the interchange is all but universal. It is easy to perceive
how much this circumstance must contribute to variety
and vigor of expression, as well as to economy of re-
sources.
The truculent advice which Han Yu gives as to the
treatment of the Buddhist priesthood is jen ch'i jen, lu ch'i
chu, huo ch'i shu; literally, man their men, house their
n6 THE LORE OF CATHAY
temples, fire their books an expression of which all but
the last clause is as unintelligible as the original Chinese.
To the Chinese reader it means " make laity of their
priests, make dwelling houses of their sacred places, and
burn their books." In its native form it is as elegant as
it is terse and forcible.
Before all things, a Chinese loves conciseness. This
taste he has inherited from his forefathers of forty cen-
turies ago, who, having but a scanty stock of rude em-
blems, were compelled to practise economy. The com-
plexity of the characters and the labor of writing con-
firmed the taste; so that though the pressure of poverty
is now removed, the scholar of the present day, in re-
gard to the expenditure of ink, continues to be as parsimo-
nious as his ancestors. While we construct our sentences
so as to guard against the possibility of mistake, he is
satisfied with giving the reader a clue to his meaning.
Our style is a ferry-boat that carries the reader over
without danger or effort on his part ; the Chinese is a
succession of stepping-stones which test the agility of the
passenger in leaping from one to another.
The Chinese writer is not ignorant of the Horatian
canon, that in " striving after brevity he becomes ob-
scure ; " but with him obscurity is a less fault than re-
dundancy. Accordingly, in Chinese, those latent ideas,
to which a French writer has lately drawn attention, play
an important part.* In return for a few hints, the reader
* To say that latent ideas form an essential, often a principal,
part of human speech is as much a paradox, and yet as true, as to
affirm that in reading we depend on the absence of light, and
that the printed letters do not impress the eye. In case of an in-
scription lit up by an electric current, the metallic letters, though
necessary to convey the fluid, remain invisible, and we see only
the illuminated intervals. The greater the interstices consistent
with the passage of the spark, the more brilliant the effects.
CHINESE PROSE COMPOSITION 117
himself supplies all the links that are necessary for the
continuity of thought. This intense brevity is better
adapted to a language which is addressed to the eye than
it. would be to one which is expected to be equally in-
telligible to the ear. Light is quicker than sound.
Segnius irritant animos demissa per aitrem.
Next to conciseness, or perhaps in preference to it, the
Chinese writer is bound to keep in view the law of
symmetry. He loves a kind of parallelism ; but it is not
that of the Hebrew poets, whose tautology he abhors. It
may consist of a simile; but more frequently it merely
amounts to the expression of correlated ideas in nicely
corresponding phrases. Every sentence is balanced with
the utmost precision ; every word has its proper counter-
poise, and the whole composition moves on with the
measured tread of a troop of soldiers.
Dr. Johnson's famous parallel between Pope and Dry-
den, and the studied antitheses of Lord Macaulay, are
quite in accordance with the taste of the Chinese. When
they meet with such a passage in a foreign book, they
usually exclaim, " This writer knows something of the
art of composition." And where, in addition to a super-
fluity of words, they find, as they often do, a neglect of
this cardinal principle, they do not fail to express their
disgust.
A difficulty in rendering the Christian Scriptures is
that the translator is not at liberty to measure off his
periods according to the canons of Chinese taste ; and he
not un frequently gives unnecessary offence by retaining
all the circumstances of gender, number, and tense where
the sense does not require them, and where the genius
of the Chinese language and the rules of Chinese rhetoric
alike reject them. In this respect, the earlier transla-
tions were particularly faulty. Of the more recent ver-
n8 THE LORE OF CATHAY
sions, one at least (that of the Delegates) is distinguished
for classical taste.
In such a task, the distinction between the Dolmetscher
and the Uebersetzer which Schleiermacher has so clearly
drawn should always be kept in view. For, difficult as is
the task of translating out of a foreign language, that
of translation into it is still more so ; and still more essen-
tial is it that the translator be thoroughly imbued with its
spirit. He must himself be in a manner naturalized, in
order that his literary offspring may enjoy the privileges
of citizenship.
The bane of Chinese style is a servile imitation of an-
tiquity. This not only confines the writer within a nar-
row circle of threadbare thoughts ; it has the effect of
disfiguring modern literature by spurious ornaments bor-
rowed from the ancients. The authors of the Thirteen
Classics are canonized. Infallible in letters as in doctrine,
every expression which they have employed becomes a
model, or rather, I should say, a portion of the current
vocabulary. But, like the waters of the Ching and Wei,
the diverse elements refuse to mingle, giving to the most
admired composition a heterogeneous aspect which mars
its beauty in our eyes as much as it enhances it in those
of the Chinese. A premium is thus placed on pedantry,
and fetters are imposed on the feet of genius. The pecu-
liar dialect which we sometimes hear from the pulpit,
made up of fragments of the sacred text skilfully incor-
porated with the language of every-day life, may serve
as an illustration of this singular compound.
In spite of this imitation of antiquity, they are, age
after age, insensibly drifting away from their standard.
A law of movement seems to be impressed on all things,
which even the Chinese are unable to resist. By conse-
quence, each century in their long history, or, more
CHINESE PROSE COMPOSITION 119
properly, each dynasty, has formed a style of its own.
The authors of the Chou, Han, T'ang, and Sung periods
are broadly discriminated.
China abounds in literary adventurers of the stamp of
Constantine Simonides, and the prevalent antiquity-wor-
ship affords them encouragement ; but happily she has
her critics too, as acute as Aristarchus of old.
The great schools of religious philosophy are also
strongly differentiated in their style of expression. The
Confucian, dealing with the things of common life, aims
at perspicuity. The Taoist, occupied with magic and
mystery, veils his thoughts in symbols and far-fetched
metaphors. The Buddhist, to the obscurity inseparable
from the imported metaphysics of India, adds an opaque
medium by the constant use of Sanscrit phrases which
are ill understood. Subdivisions of these great schools
have likewise their peculiarities of style. Of these, how-
ever, I shall not speak, but hasten to indicate certain
species of composition, each of which is characterized by
a style of its own.
In no country are private correspondence, official des-
patches, and didactic and narrative writings distinguished
by more marked peculiarities.
The style of epistolary intercourse, instead of approach-
ing, as with us, to that of familiar conversation, is singu-
larly stiff and affected. Whatever the subject, it is
ushered in by a formal parade of set phrases, and finished
off by a conclusion equally stereotyped and unmeaning.
Form dominates everything in China. It is seldom that
a letter flows freely from the heart and pen even of an
able writer; and as for the less educated, though quite
capable of expressing their own thoughts in their own
way, they never think of such a thing as throwing off
the constraint of prescribed forms. It is amusing to see
iio THE LORE OF CATHAY
how carefully one who hears of the death of a relative
culls from a letter-book a form exactly suited to the de-
gree of his affliction. If the Chinese wrote love-letters
(which they never do), they would all employ the same
honeyed phrases; or, like Falstaff in the Merry Wives,
address the same epistle to all the different objects of
their admiration.
By way of sample, here is a " note of congratulation on
the birthday of a friend."
" The Book of History lauds the five kinds of happi-
ness, and the Book of Odes makes use of the nine similes.
Both extol the honors of old age. Rejoicing at the anni-
versary of your advent, I utter the prayer of Hua Feng;
and, by way of recording my tally in the seaside cot-
tage, I lay my tribute (the customary gift) at your feet,
by retaining the whole of which you will shed lustre on
him who offers it."
In this short note we have four classic allusions, two
of which require a word of explanation. The prayer of
Hua Feng was for the Emperor Yao, that he might be
blessed with a happy old age and numerous posterity.
The " tally in the seaside cottage " refers to a legend in
which one of the immortals says that he does not reckon
time by years, but whenever sea and land change places,
he deposits a tally. Those tallies now fill ten cham-
bers.
The reply to the foregoing ran as follows :
" My trifling life has passed away in vanity, unmarked
by a single trait of excellence. On my birthday especially
this fills me with shame. How dare I, then, accept your
congratulatory offerings? I beg to decline them, and,
prostrate, pray for indulgence."
The official correspondence and state-papers of the
Chinese are, for the most part, dignified, clear, and free
CHINESE PROSE COMPOSITION 121
from those pedantic allusions with which they love to
adorn their other writings. Whoever has read, even in
the form of a translation, the memorials on the opium
trade laid before the Emperor Tao Kuang, or the papers
of Commissioner Lin on the same subject, cannot have
failed to be struck with their manifest ability. Some of
them are eloquent in style and masterly in argument.
Imperial edicts are generally well written ; but those of
the Emperor Yung Ching are of such conspicuous merit
that they are collected in a series of volumes and studied
as models of composition.
The didactic style, whether that of commentaries on
the classic texts or of treatises on science, morals, and
practical arts, is always formed in accordance with the
maxim of Confucius, Tze ta erhi, " Enough, if you
are clear." Such writings are as lucid as the nature of
the subject, the genius of the language, and the brain of
the author will admit. The commentaries on the classics
are admirable specimens of textual exposition.
The narrative style ranges from the gravity of history
to the description of scenery and humorous anecdote. Its
ideal is the combination of the graphic with simplicity.
Of the historical writings of the Chinese, so far as their
style is concerned, nothing more can be said than that
they are simple and perspicuous. Interesting they are
not ; for their bondage to the annal and journal form has
prevented their giving us comprehensive tableaux; while
the idea of a philosophy of history has never dawned on
their minds. In descriptions of scenery the Chinese excel.
They have an eye for the picturesque in nature; and
nature throws her varied charms over the pages of their
literature with a profusion unknown among the pagan
nations of the West. Chinese writers are particularly
fond of relating incidents that are susceptible of a prac-
122 THE LORE OF CATHAY
tical application. One such is the tiger apologue ascribed
to Confucius in the preceding chapter.
Liu Tsung Yuan, of the T'ang period, has a similar
narrative in which a poisonous reptile takes the place of
the tiger. A poor man was employed to capture the
spotted snake for medicinal purposes, and had his taxes
remitted on condition of supplying the Imperial college
of physicians with two every year. The author expressing
his sympathy for his perilous occupation, the man re-
plied, " ' My grandfather died in this way, my father
also, and I, during the twelve years in which I have been
so engaged, have more than once been near dying by the
bite of serpents.' As he uttered this with a very sorrow-
ful expression of countenance, ' Do you wish,' said I,
' that I should speak to the magistrates and have you
released from this hard service ? ' His look became more
sorrowful, and, bursting into tears, he exclaimed, ' If you
pity me, allow me, I pray you, to pursue my present
occupation; for be assured that my lot, hard as it is, is
by no means so pitiable as that of those who suffer the
exactions of tax-gatherers.' "
I add a specimen, in the same vein, from Liu Chi, a
writer of the Ming period, who flourished no more than
five hundred years ago. " I saw," he says, " oranges ex-
posed on a fruit-stand in midsummer, and sold at a
fabulous price. They looked fresh and tempting, and I
bought one. On breaking it open, a puff of something
like smoke filled my mouth and nose. Turning to the
seller, I demanded, ' Why do you sell such fruit ? It is
fit for nothing but to offer to the gods or to set before
strangers. What a sham ! What a disgraceful cheat ! '
' Well were it,' replied the fruit-seller, ' if my oranges
were the only shams.' And he went on to show how
we have sham soldiers in the field, sham statesmen in the
CHINESE PROSE COMPOSITION 123
cabinet, and shams everywhere. I walked away silently,
musing whether this fruit-seller might not be, after all,
a philosopher who had taken to selling rotten oranges
in order to have a text from which to preach on the
subject of shams."
The last two pieces, though separated from it by a
space of from twelve to sixteen hundred years, are evi-
dently modelled after the first. I have quoted them to
show that Chinese writers are not always servile in their
imitation, or timid in denouncing the corruptions of their
government.
Another kind of style is that of the wen chang, or
polished essay a brief treatise on any subject, constructed
according to fixed rules, and limited to seven hundred
words. In our own literature it answers to short papers
such as those of the Spectator and Rambler, which were
so much in vogue in the last century invariably ushered
in by a classic motto, and expected to be a model of fine
writing.
The production of these is the leading test of literary
ability. The schoolboy writes wen chang as soon as he
is able to construe the native classics ; and the gray-haired
competitor for the doctorate in the examinations at the
capital is still found writing wen chang. In all the world
there is no kind of literature produced in equal quantity
excepting, perhaps, sermons. Nor is their prodigious
quantity their only point of resemblance to the produc-
tions of the Western pulpit. They always have a text
from the sacred books, which they analyze in a most
artificial manner, and uniformly reduce to eight heads.
They aim at nothing beyond exposition, on the principle
that the moderns can do nothing more than unfold the
germs of ancient wisdom ; originality is renounced, and,
as already intimated, their chief adornment consists in
124 THE LORE OF CATHAY
the artful interweaving of sacred and modern phrase-
ology. Like the inlaid wares of the Japanese or ihe
mosaic pictures of the West, the more numerous and
minute their borrowed ornaments, the more are these
compositions admired. Of no practical utility except as a
mental gymnastic, the style of these essays exerts an in-
fluence through the whole range of literature. Indeed,
the term which is commonly employed to cover the whole
field of belles-lettres is no other than wen chang.
Here is an opening paragraph of an essay which took
the first honor in a recent examination for the doctorate :
Subject Good-faith and Dignity. " When we begin,
we should look to the end. Good-faith and dignity of
carriage should therefore be objects of our care. By
faith we mean that our acts should respond to our prom-
ise; by dignity, that our bearing should be such as to
repel any approach towards insolent familiarity. This
is only attained by cherishing a sense of right, cultivating
a regard for propriety, and at the same time maintaining
a sympathy for our fellow-men. In this earthly pilgrim-
age, what we most desire is to escape the blame of being
untrue. We choose our words with care, for fear we
should be untrue to our fellows. We choose our actions
with care, for fear we should be untrue to ourselves. We
choose our companions with care, lest we should prove
unfaithful to our friends or they should prove unfaithful
to us. By so doing we can fulfil our obligations, main-
tain our dignity of character, and yet preserve inviolate
our social attachments. Within, we shall have a heart
that feels its self-imposed engagements as much as if it
were bound by the stipulations of a solemn covenant;
while without we shall wear an aspect that will command
the respect of those who approach us."
" Enough of such platitudes," one will say, yet no trans-
CHINESE PROSE COMPOSITION 125
lation can ever do justice to the subtle qualities which
caused this performance to be crowned among seven
thousand competitors. The delicate sutures which blend
its various elements into an harmonious whole must, of
course, like the wavy lines of a Damascus blade, disap-
pear when cast into the crucible of the translator.
From what has been said of the style of schools, periods,
and different provinces in the empire of letters, it follows
that, notwithstanding their propensity for imitation,
Chinese writers must be as strongly individualized as
those of other countries. If gifted with original genius,
they form a style of their own; if not, they produce in
new and undesigned combinations the traits of earlier
authors by whom they have been most deeply impressed.
Confucius professed to be an imitator, but he was
eminently original. Direct, practical, and comprehensive,
his thoughts are expressed in language at once concise
and rhythmical resembling as much as anything else
those choice lines of Shakespeare which by their com-
bined felicity of idea and expression have become trans-
formed into popular proverbs. Whether, like the Hindoo
guru, he threw them into this form as the text for his
daily discourse, or whether they were reduced by his
disciples, it is not in all cases easy to determine. But
certain it is that, stripped of their attractive dress, what-
ever their intrinsic merit, they never could have attained
such universal currency. The teachings of Confucius
owe as much to style as those of Mahomet. The extent
to which style was studied in his time we may infer from
the account he gives us of the manner in which the ele-
gant state-papers of the principality of Cheng were pro-
duced. They were the work of four men with long,
strange names. One " drew out a rough draft," a second
"sifted the arguments," another "added rhetorical em-
126 THE LORE OF CATHAY
bellishments," and the fourth finished them by " polishing
off the periods."
Lao Tse, a senior contemporary of Confucius, left his
instructions to posterity in " five thousand words," cast
in a semi-poetical mould. Obscure and paradoxical like
Heraclitus of Ephesus, surnamed the Dark (a writer with
whom it would not be difficult to trace other points of
analogy besides their common partiality for enigma),
his dark pages are illumined by many a flash of far-reach-
ing light. Each of these great masters impressed his
style on the school which he founded.
Mencius is Confucius with less dogmatism and more
vehemence; while the wild fancy of Chuangtze repro-
duces the characteristics of Lao Tse in exaggerated pro-
portions. With both, the current of their diction flows
like a river, but in each case it wears the complexion of its
distant source.
As another example of a contrast in manner, I may
adduce two historians of the Chou period. Kung Yang
Kao and Tso Chiu Ming both confine themselves to the
role of expositors, taking the Confucian annals as their
text ; but the first often commences with a minute analysis
of the text, while the other proceeds at once to a narra-
tive of facts. The former, for instance, thus expounds
the heading of a chapter:
Text " First year, spring, royal first moon." " Why
the first year? Because it was the commencement of a
new reign. Why does he mention spring? Because the
year began at that season. Why, in speaking of the
month, does he prefix the word royal? To indicate that it
was fixed by the Imperial calendar. Why refer to the
Imperial calendar? To show that all the states are
united under one sovereign," etc.
From Tso Chiu Ming I cite a passage which, whether
CHINESE PROSE COMPOSITION 127
it do or do not exhibit any other peculiarity, will at least
show- the absence of interrogation marks.
Text " The Prince of Cheng conquers Tuan at Yen"
Premising that the belligerents were brothers ; that their
mother had abetted the rebellion of Tuan the younger;
and that the Prince, pronouncing against her a sentence
of banishment, had taken a solemn oath never to see her
again until they should both be under the ground, the
historian continues, " The Prince soon repented of his
hasty oath. The Governor of Ying Ku heard it, and came
with a present. The Prince detained him to dine. Ying
Ku put aside a portion of the meats. The Prince inquired
the reason. Said Ying Ku, ' They are for my mother,
who has never tasted such royal dainties.' ' You have a
mother, then,' said the Prince ; ' alas ! I have none.' He
then told him of his oath, at the same time informing him
of his repentance.
' Why need your Majesty be troubled on that ac-
count ? ' exclaimed Ying Ku. ' If you will only make a
subterranean chamber with two doors, and meet there,
who will say that you have not kept your oath ? '
" The Prince took the counsel, and, meeting his mother
beneath the ground, they became mother and son as be-
fore. How perfect the piety of Ying Ku, who devised
this plan ! "
The great masters of style are a thousand years later
than these last ; and then we find philosophers, poets, and
historians in such constellations as to make the dynasties
of T'ang and Sung a Golden Age for Chinese letters.
Then flourished such writers as Han Yu, surnamed the
Prince of Literature ; Li Pei, in whom the planet Venus
was believed to be incarnate; the three Su, father and
sons ; and a host of others whose light has not yet reached
our Western shores, and whose names it would be tedious
128 THE LORE OF CATHAY
to recount. Their names, musical enough in the tones
of their native land, are harsh to Occidental ears. What
a pity they have not all been clothed in graceful Latin,
like those of Confucius and Mencius! These sages, if
they owe to their style in a great degree their popularity
at home, are almost equally indebted for their fame
abroad to the classical terminations of their names.
Name is fame in more than one sense, and more than one
language in Chinese as in Hebrew; and it is obvious
that in the Western world no amount of merit would be
sufficient to confer celebrity on a man bearing the name
of K'oong Footze!
I refrain from further extracts. For reasons already
given, no translation can do justice to the style of a
Chinese writer; and a volume, instead of a brief essay,
would be required to give an approximate idea of the
other qualities of what the Chinese describe as their
elegant literature.
It is on their poetry that they especially pique them-
selves; but, as I think, with mistaken judgment. For
while their prose-writers, like those of France, are un-
surpassed in felicity of style, their poetry, like that of
France, is stiff and constrained. Like their own women,
their poetical muses have cramped feet and no wings.
For variety in prose composition, the nature of the lan-
guage affords a boundless scope. For, not to speak of
local dialects, the language of scholars, or the written
language, ranges in its choice of expressions from the
familiar patois up to the most archaic forms. In China
nothing becomes obsolete ; and a writer is thus enabled
to pitch his composition, at option, on a high or low key,
and to carry it through consistently. There are, for ex-
ample, three sets of personal pronouns that correspond
to as many grades of style; while there are other styles
CHINESE PROSE COMPOSITION 129
in which the personal pronoun is dispensed with, and
substantives employed instead.
Founded on pictorial representation, the language is, in
many of its features, highly poetical, the strange beauties
with which it charms the fancy at every step, suggesting
a ramble among the gardens of the sea-nymphs. Nor is
it a dead language, though in its written form no longer
generally spoken. It contains " thoughts that breathe,
and words that burn," writers whom the student will
gladly acknowledge as worthy compeers of the most ad-
mired authors of the ancient West. I say " ancient," for
China is essentially ancient. She is not yet modernized,
and finds fitter parallels in pagan antiquity than in modern
Christendom.
The time, I trust, is not far distant when her language
will find a place in all our principal seats of learning, and
when her classic writers will be known and appreciated.
VIII
CHINESE LETTER WRITING
IN no other language is the style of private corre-
spondence so widely separated from that of official
or public documents as in the Chinese. The latter,
simple and direct in expression, eschews ornament, and
aims chiefly at clearness and force; the former, artificial
to the last degree, teems with trite allusions which are
rather pedantic than elegant.
With us, in this as in so many other things, the reverse
is not far from the truth. It is the official despatch that
is cast in iron moulds ; and the familiar letter is left free
to take any shape the easy play of thought and feeling
may impress upon it. Western authors accordingly
sometimes choose to throw their compositions into the
convenient form of epistles when they wish to invest
them with the double charm of clearness and vivacity.
By employing the form of letters, Pascal imparted to
polemic discussion the grace and humor of the comic
drama ; while Swift and Junius availed themselves of the
same weapon in their terrible attacks on the government.
Not so the Chinese: though necessity leads to the dis-
cussion of grave topics in the form of letters, and though
the teachings of some of their ancient philosophers were
communicated in the way of correspondence, no modern
Chinese ever thinks of throwing his ideas into such a
shape, any more than he would treat a grave subject under
the form of the modern prize essay. Thoughtful men
denounce the regulation essay as utterly useless ; but they
130
CHINESE LETTER WRITING 131
never denounce the conventional style of letter-writing,
though both have a family likeness. The reason is that
the letter of friendship or business is a social necessity,
and the literary ornament with which it is tricked out is
deemed essential to save it from vulgarity.
In friendly correspondence the opening paragraphs are
always consecrated to the expression of high-flown senti-
ments, real or assumed, and not unfrequently the falsetto
pitch of the exordium is painfully sustained to the very-
close. Nothing is more offensive to our taste, or less cal-
culated to encourage the labor of acquisition. If a letter
contains any serious business, the foreign reader, if he
does not, as in most cases, rely on a native teacher for
explanation, finds that he can arrive at it by a process of
elimination, i. e. by leaving out of account all the unin-
telligible rhetoric. But this is not merely unscholarly ; it
limits the use of correspondence, and shuts out the stu-
dent (he does not deserve the name of student if willing
to be shut out) from a department of literature which
more than any other presents us with pictures of indi-
vidual character and social life.
The student who desires to enter this field will find
numerous private collections of more or less celebrity
soliciting his attention. If any of them were from the
pens of gifted women ; and if the canons of Chinese taste
(for the fault is not in the language) permitted them,
like their sisters of the West, to write as they talk, he
might, even in this department, verify the quaint old
maxim, " The sweetness of the lips increaseth knowl-
edge." But, alas ! there is no Sevigne, who, by her bril-
liant gossip, can shed the dews of immortality, over the
ephemeral intrigues of a court, and by her wit give a
value to things that are worthless, as amber does to the
insects which it embalms ; there is no Wortley, who chats
132 THE LORE OF CATHAY
with equal charm of literature and love; no Lady Duff
Gordon, who, by her genius and enterprise, puts us in
love with boat life and Bedouins.
The paths of epistolary literature, where the choicest
flowers are dropped from female hands, are in China
almost untrodden by female feet ; and a reason gravely
given for withholding from women the key of knowledge
is that men are afraid they will learn to write letters. It
is not nature, but man, that is ungenerous to the daughters
of the East.
" Knowledge to their eyes her ample page,
Rich with the spoils of time, did ne'er unroll ;
Chill jealousy repressed their noble rage,
And froze the genial current of the soul."
Nor, it must be confessed, is there any such indemnity in
store for our student as the epistles of a moralizing
Seneca ; or the correspondence of a malignant and intrigu-
ing Walpole, which lifts the veil from the mysteries
of contemporary politics, and from the writer's own
bosom, so that Macaulay ingeniously compares the flavor
of the letters of the great minister to that of pate s de foie
gras, because derived from a disease of the liver in the
animal that produced them. But as some of our most
eminent poets, such as Dryden, Gray, and Cowper, have
left behind them letters that are preserved as models of
elegance, in which fancy and feeling are no less happily
blended than in their poetical works, so we find that in
China the list of distinguished letter writers is headed by
the names of poets, showing that they enjoyed the favor
of the musa pedestris as well as of her winged sisters.
The earliest collection of letters, or at least the most
famous of those that are accepted as models of epistolary
style, came from the pens of two celebrated poets of the
CHINESE LETTER WRITING 133
Sung dynasty, Su Tung P'o, and Huang T'ing Chien.
Under the joint name of Su Huang Ch'ih Tu, though not
properly a Briefwechsel, or correspondence between the
two authors, it has ever since the battle of Hastings
given law to this species of composition.
The stream of time, like that which floated the bor-
rowed axe of the prophet, usually carries down the
weightier matters, and deposits the less important as sedi-
ment ; yet in this instance we have reason to regret that,
like natural rivers, it has only brought down to us the
lighter material on its surface. Both writers held high
offices, and one of them was especially honored at the
Imperial Court; but their letters have little to do with
State policy; and the selection has obviously been made
on the principle that if one of their merits is in the ele-
gance of their form, another ought to be in the absence of
facts. Still, even these shining husks, if carefully sifted,
will be found to yield some grains of valuable informa-
tion.
A book of letters of more modern date, and scarcely
inferior in reputation, is the Ch'ih Tu of Hsiao Ts'ang, or
Sui Yuan, as it is variously styled. The author, Yuan
Mei, a native of Che kiang, won a seat in the Imperial
Academy in the reign of Ch'ien Lung; and declining
office, passed his life at Nanking, chiefly engaged in
scholastic pursuits, boasting that for thirty years he never
appeared at court.
Known mainly as a professor of belles-lettres, with
pupils dispersed over several provinces, instead of col-
lected into one lecture room, and communicating by post
instead of viva voce, this worthy man has not merely left
models of composition, but set an example, both as scholar
and instructor, which is much admired though little fol-
lowed.
i 3 4 THE LORE OF CATHAY
A poet of refined taste, and not without talent, it is
interesting to know that he gave instruction in the art of
poetry to numerous ladies of high family and culture,
making, from time to time, the circuit of the cities where
they resided a fact the rarity of which rather supports
than invalidates the view above given of the deficiencies
of female education.
There are numerous works passing under the general
name of Ch'ih Tu, which were prepared expressly for
form-books, and will repay perusal for that purpose. Of
these I may mention the Yen chi mu tan, Hai shang hung
ni, and Liu ch'ing chi; but they have not the additional
recommendation of a history.
It is, however, with a view to drawing attention to a
more recent collection that this article is written.
The Tze Yuan Ch'ih Tu, published at Peking a few
years ago in four thin volumes, consists of a selection
from the letters of Liu Chia Chu.
This is a name which, being unknown, carries no
weight; and our author, like Hawthorne in one of his
earlier works, might speak of himself as enjoying the
distinction of being one of the obscurest men of letters
in all China. A native of Hunan, he passed many years
in the office of the Governor of Canton ; a representative
of that nameless but influential class who transact the
business while their superiors enjoy the honors of official
station.
During this period he wrote, he tells us, heaps of papers
higher than his head, among which one might play hide-
and-seek in more senses than one. Most of them were,
of course, sent forth in the name of others, and the writer
facetiously compares himself with a milliner who prepares
the clothing for a bride, or a go-between who arranges
for her nuptials. Of these he gives us none, unless, in-
CHINESE LETTER WRITING 135
deed, by surreptitiously changing their address and adapt-
ing them to his own use.
The most of his papers bear unmistakable marks of
having been culled from his private portfolio; affording
such incidental glimpses of life and manners that one is
compelled to accept them as a genuine record a portion
of the writer's autobiography. This gives the work an
element of interest of no mean order, and a value of its
own, as a mirror held up to the face of Chinese life by
the hand of a native. So frank, indeed, are its disclosures,
so little care is taken to draw a veil over things that are
deemed discreditable, that one might almost regard the
work as belonging to the category of " confessions "
originated by St. Augustine, and rendered popular by
Rousseau.
As to the literary merits of the performance, it is suf-
ficient to cite the names of the two sponsors under whose
patronage the author comes before the public Kuo
Sung Tao, Minister to England, and Wang K'ai Tai, the
late enlightened governor of the Province of Fukien
each of them having filled the post of Governor of Can-
ton, and employed Liu Chia Chu as a confidential secre-
tary.
Other great names are invoked in a long list of lauda-
tory notices ; and some that we meet With incidentally in
the course of the correspondence, such as Tseng Kuo
Fan, Chiang I Li, Li Hung Chang, and Liu Ch'ang Yu,
(viceroy of Yunnan and Kweichou), impart to it an air
of historical truth that is much in its favor.
Without pausing longer to discourse about the book,
let us open its pages and see what we shall find there.
To begin, we shall find a meteoric shower of allusions.
This is the most prominent characteristic of this species
of writing; and the primary object of the artifice is to
136 THE LORE OF CATHAY
hide the nakedness of commonplace. Employed in excess
or handled clumsily, it aggravates the evil by exposing the
poverty of the writer, or substitutes the graver faults of
pedantry and cant; used with skill and taste, it throws
over the page a glitter of iridescent hues, or, it may be,
contributes largely to the significance and force of lan-
guage.
These allusions are of various kinds. Some suggest
whole chapters of history ; others bring up the words or
actions of real or mythical personages ; while others still,
by a single word or phrase, cast a beam of light on some
poetical tableau, which brings its entire effect to bear on
the subject in hand. For instance, when Dry den says of
Thais that,
" Like another Helen, she fired another Troy,"
what a crowd of teeming associations he condenses into
the space of a single line! How much is expressed by
such brief phrases as " a Barmecide feast," " a Bellerophon
letter," " a Judas kiss ! "
The Chinese language abounds in such ; and no one
can be said to understand the language who is not in some
degree familiar with them. Then there are curt allusions
of a purely literary kind catch words which suggest any
one of the three hundred classic odes, or refer to thou-
sands of well-known passages in later literature. To these
we may add a vocabulary of metaphorical words and
phrases, the use of which is de rigeur in a certain style
which makes it a point of taste not to call things by their
right names. Thus the poet or the elegant letter-writer
never speaks of copper cash, but calls them " green
beetles ; " a sheet of paper he calls " a flowery scroll ; "
an epistle is " a wild goose." Husband and wife are
Ch'ang-sui, " tenor and treble ; " K'ang-li, " strength and
CHINESE LETTER WRITING 137
beauty ; " Yuan-yang, " duck and drake ; " and a hundred
other pretty things, at the poet's option. A man is a
prince and his wife a princess ; his house a palace and his
children a phoenix brood. To repay the kindness of par-
ents is to emulate the stork ; to return a borrowed article
is to restore the gem ; a man of genius employed in a work
of drudgery as Charles Lamb in the India Office is
" a race-horse in a salt-wagon."
These are but a few specimens of a sort of dialect that
has its own dictionaries without number or limit; and
of which every reader of Chinese is under the necessity
of knowing something, if he does not master it. Per-
haps the best key to it for any student, native or foreign,
is a collection of wen chang, or of well-written letters,
such as those of our obscure friend Liu Chia Chu. In dic-
tionaries and cyclopaedias, or in such a useful hand-book
as Mayers' Chinese Reader's Manual, he will find gems
arranged as in a mineralogical cabinet ; but in these com-
positions he meets them in their proper setting. The
object of such works is to aid, not to supersede, the
reading of difficult authors as a certain learned Dutch-
man proposed to supersede Homer by presenting the
Homeric archaeology in a tabulated form.
We now proceed to the substratum of facts underly-
ing the gold and tinsel of which we have been speaking.
Of little importance in themselves, and not by any means
thick-sown through these pages, they are still not devoid
of interest as illustrations of character, personal and na-
tional.
It was from the letters of Cicero that Mr. Middleton
drew the principal materials for his admirable life of the
great Roman statesman. But the letters of Chu Futze
or Su Tung P'o would furnish scanty materials for a
history of their lives; and meagre indeed are the out-
138 THE LORE OF CATHAY
lines of biography which we are able to extract from
the sentimental effusions of Liu Chia Chu.
Our author first drew his breath, and with it what
poetic inspiration he possessed, amidst the mountain
scenery of Southern Hunan, about the middle of the
reign of Chia Ching (circa 1810). Born in a rustic vil-
lage not far from the city of Hsin Hua, he came of a
family distinguished for scholarship -a. fact of which he
never ceases to remind the reader; and there can be no
doubt that he inherited talent, though his patrimony in-
cluded little else.
Boasting somewhat of his early precocity, he hints at
youthful dissipations as having proved fatal to his career
as a scholar, and planted the seeds of unending regrets.
He failed probably from a defective chirography, as
many a worthier man has done to win the first or lowest
degree in the civil-service examinations ; and about the
age of thirty he removed with his family to Can-
ton, forgetting, it seems, to liquidate certain debts of
honor.
Concerned in the conduct of a charity-school, Liu,
thinking that charity ought to begin at home, " borrowed "
a portion of the funds to meet his own necessities. Ar-
rived at Canton, he learned with much regret that the
slight liberty he had taken with its capital was likely to
occasion the dissolution of the school. Against this he
protests with much eloquence ; but has nothing more sub-
stantial to encourage the good work than " promises to
pay." In this connection his reference to himself, as a
good example of the benefits of education, is, to say the
least, a little naive.
After this, we are not surprised to find many epistles
filled with complaints of poverty. He has work enough,
but scant remuneration. Great men admire his genius,
CHINESE LETTER WRITING 139
and load him with compliments; but, like virtue, which
he does not much resemble in any other respect, laudatur
et alget.
From one friend he begs the loan of a " few hundred
pieces of gold," from another he borrows a suit of decent
apparel. Good models these letters for one who has
much to do in the line of begging or borrowing!
All this time Liu's family is increasing at a rather
alarming rate ; not that he has any children born, but from
time to time he takes a new beauty into his harem in
the hope that children will follow. One is presented to
him by a friend ; another, not unnaturally, runs away,
or, as he euphemistically terms it, " carries her guitar
to another door."
A correspondent of comparatively severe morals ex-
postulates with Liu on this seeming abandonment to a life
of sensuality. The latter replies by drawing an affecting
picture of an aged father who cannot die in peace with-
out the joy of embracing a grandson !
At length his hopes are awakened only to meet with
disappointment one of his wives presenting him with a
daughter. The little creature appears not to be alto-
gether unwelcome, and, in fact, makes for herself a
warm place in her father's heart; though he frequently
alludes to her in uncomplimentary terms borrowed from
the classic odes :
" A girl is born ; in coarse cloth wound,
With a tile for a toy, let her lie on the ground," etc.
The spell broken, another of his ladies crowns his desires
by giving him a son, whose advent is duly hailed by a
flourish of trumpets, and further quotations from the
Book of Odes :
i 4 o THE LORE OF CATHAY
" A son is born ; on an ivory bed,
Wrap him in raiment of purple and red ;
Gold and jewels for playthings bring
To the noble boy who shall serve the king."
In a few months this child of many hopes sickens and
dies. The disconsolate father mourns deeply, and fills
many sheets with melodious tristia.
About this time the doors of official preferment, be-
fore which he had been so long waiting (having failed
to find the key in his earlier youth), began slowly to open
before him. Appointed magistrate of a sub-district in the
country, called Lo Kang, he contrived to send some one
to act in his stead (subletting the profits of the position),
while he remained at the provincial capital in the midst
of the literary society which he loved so dearly.
Appointed to Kowloon, on the mainland opposite to
Hongkong, Liu again finds excuses for not repairing to
his post; and the governor, offended by his tardiness,
cancels the appointment. After due penance, he is re-
stored to favor and offered another post, such as Caesar
himself would have preferred to being the second man at
Rome. Taught by experience, he lost no time in installing
himself in his new yamen. Its roof leaks, its walls are
crumbling, and all its apartments filled with rubbish ; but,
to compensate for all this, it contains a throne, which, if
he had read Milton, he might have compared with that of
the " anarch old " who ruled the realms of chaos.
Here he finds a new order of talents called into requi-
sition: he has to deal with facts instead of words, and
is evidently proud of the success with which he per-
forms the functions of a judge favoring us with one
of his judgments as a model of its kind. It betrays, how-
ever, the fact that his right hand has not forgotten its
cunning; that he continues to be a rhetorician in spite
CHINESE LETTER WRITING 141
of himself, and is more at home in reading a lecture than
in pronouncing a sentence.
Unique among the rose-water productions of his epis-
tolary pen, his report of this lawsuit reminds us that
Liu has also given us a few specimens of another species
of composition. In the course of his career he is some-
times assistant examiner, and sometimes appears in the
character of a competitor; not, indeed, in the ordinary
examinations, but in those special trials which expectant
officers are required to pass at the provincial capital. On
one of these occasions Liu's essays were endorsed by
the high authorities in terms which placed them on a
level with the best productions of the classic ages.
These eulogies he not only repeats in many of his
letters, but favors his friends with copies of the fortunate
papers, that they may judge for themselves whether the
praise is merited ; pleasing himself with the reflection
that but for the injustice of the lower courts he might long
since have worn the highest honors of the literary arena.
Liu's literary ability is duly recognized by a host of
junior aspirants, who solicit copies of his essays, send
presents on his fete-days, and institute theatricals in his
honor. His moral character is more doubtful. A polyg-
amist on principle, he disclaims the virtues of an ascetic
philosopher in order to emulate the libertinism of certain
dissolute poets. Had he, indeed, done nothing worse than
fill his own cage with bright-winged songsters, he would
have been walking too closely in the footsteps of saints
and sages to attract attention. To vindicate for himself
the reputation of being a free spirit one that spurns
what he denominates the " minor morals " he mingles
occasionally with the " soiled doves."
For this, his best apology is that the silly occupants of
his own dove-cot are incapable of appreciating his genius ;
i 4 2 THE LORE OF CATHAY
while some of these unappropriated ones, like the hetaerae
of Greece, had their charms enhanced by the advantages
of education. He gives us a letter which he wrote to
one of this class, with hypocritical morality recommend-
ing her to take refuge in a house of religion.
In an epistle to another friend, he gives us reason to
suspect that even the vestals of Buddha were not sacred
in his eyes; and that with him sacrilege was necessary
to give the highest flavor to license. Freely unfolding his
inner life, and trenching often on forbidden ground, it is
something in his favor that he is always elegant and never
indecent.
After this account of his morals, it would be useless to
inquire for his religion. He says, indeed, very little on
the subject. He alludes to a " Creator " more than once,
but in language of studied levity, showing that to him
the author of nature is not a " living God."
As to outward observances, he conforms to popular
usage ; he believes in fate, and, impatient to know its de-
crees, applies to a professional fortune-teller; in all these
points only too true a type of the average literati of his
country.
The boundary-line between friendly and official corre-
spondence is not easy to trace. It is to the former that
we confine ourselves in the present communication ; but
it will not be amiss to remark that much of the best
writing in the Chinese language may be found on inter-
mediate ground between formal business documents and
friendly letters.
In this class of compositions, vaguely described as
official letters, the grace of the polished epistle is often
added to the directness and force of the despatch style
a happy combination, of which some of the best speci-
mens may be seen in the published correspondence of
CHINESE LETTER WRITING 143
Hu Lin-Yeh, canonized under the title of Hu Wen Cheng
Kung ; and in that of Ch'en Wen Chung Kung, who, hav-
ing won three times in succession the first literary honor
of his province and of the Empire, received from that
circumstance the sobriquet of Ch'en San Yuan, " Cn'en
the Triple First."
IX
CHINESE FABLES
THE student of Chinese inquires in vain for any
collection of native fables ; and he feels their
absence as a personal inconvenience when he
recalls his obligations to JEsop and Phaedrus, Lessing and
La Fontaine, for alleviating the toil of his earlier studies
in the classic languages of ancient and modern Europe.
This deficiency is the more disappointing, as the constant
occurrence of the words pi fang in our colloquial exercises
leads us to expect to find the fields of literature thick-
sown with every variety of similitude. Parables and alle-
gories are, indeed, not wanting, but their congener, the
fable, seems never to have existed, or in some mysterious
way to have become well-nigh extinct.
Nor is this last supposition a mere fancy. We turn
up from time to time what seem to be fossil fragments
enough to give it, to say the least, as good a foundation
as some scientific theories have to rest on. For what
are those numerous proverbial expressions drawn from
the habits of animals but the ghosts, or rather the skele-
tons, of vanished fables. But whether such originals
ever existed, certain it is that nothing is more easy or
natural than to expand these phrases into the full di-
mensions of the proper apologue.
Take, for instance, " the sheep in a tiger's skin," " when
the hare dies the fox weeps," " he who nurses a tiger's
cub will rue his kindness," etc. Do not these seem to
point back to ancient fables as their source; just as we
144
CHINESE FABLES 145
know " the fox and the grapes," " the ass in a lion's
skin," and other proverbial expressions current among us
were derived from fables?
But how did such originals, supposing them to have
existed, come to be lost? We reply, they were either
never reduced to writing, or not written in a style adapted
to the taste of the country. For ages past the Chinese
have affected an extreme sententiousness in the style of
their literary composition. This would naturally lead
them to extract the living spirit and to reject the cum-
brous form of such fables as might spring up in the
humbler walks of their folk-lore. Thus they may have
had their unknown Pilpays and their mute, inglorious
JEsops.
At all events, the defect of which we are speaking
was not occasioned, as some would have us infer, by a
want of imagination. For Chinese literature, while it
contains nothing that rises to the dignity of the epic
muse, yet teems with the productions of a fertile fancy
metamorphoses as numerous (if not as elegant) as those
of Ovid; fairy tales more monstrous than Grimm's; and
narratives of adventure (generally accepted as sober his-
tory) as strange as those of Sindbad or Gulliver. It is,
we repeat, a question of taste rather than talent ; and this,
we think, is borne out by the reception which the Chinese
gave to Mr. Thorn's excellent translation of ^sop, a
work which, instead of finding its way into every house-
hold, is rarely to be met with even in the stalls of a book-
seller. The mandarins suspected that wolves and bears
were masks for dangerous doctrines and biting satire ;
while neither prince nor peasant has cared enough about
the production to keep it alive.
As to talent, while we will not assert that the Chinese
could have excelled in this department of literature, there
146 THE LORE OF CATHAY
is proof, we think, that they are not wholly destitute of
a capacity for it. This will be found in the following
fables, derived from various sources, which we give by
way of specimen, hoping that readers of Chinese will add
to the number any that happen to come under their
notice:
1. The King of Chu inquiring with some surprise why
the people of the North were so frightened at the ap-
proach of Chou Hsi Hsu, one of his ministers replied as
follows : " A tiger who happened to be preceded by a
fox was greatly astonished to see all the animals running
away from the fox, little suspecting that their terror was
inspired by himself. It is not Chou, but your Majesty, of
whom the people of the North are in dread."
2. " I may go out and play without any danger now,"
said a little mouse to its mother. " The old cat has be-
come religious ; I see her with her eyes shut, engaged in
praying to Buddha."
Grimalkin's devotions, however, did not prevent her
seizing the silly little creature as soon as it ventured
near.
3. A tiger who had never seen an ass was terrified at
the sound of his voice, and was about to run away, when
the latter turned his heels and prepared to kick.
" If that is your mode of attack," said the tiger, " I
know how to deal with you."
4. A tiger having clapped his paw on an unlucky
monkey, the latter begged to be released on the score of
his insignificance, and promised to show the tiger where
he might find a more valuable prey. The tiger complied,
and the monkey conducted him to a hill-side where an
ass was feeding an animal which the tiger, till then,
had never seen.
" My good brother," said the ass to the monkey,
CHINESE FABLES 147
" hitherto you have always brought me two tigers, how
is it that you have only brought me one to-day ? "
Hearing these words, the tiger fled for his life. Thus
a ready wit may often ward off great dangers.
5. A tiger, finding a cat very prolific in devices for
catching game, placed himself under her instruction. At
length he was told there was nothing more to be learned.
" Have you, then, taught me all your tricks ? " he in-
quired. " Yes," replied the cat. " Then," said the tiger,
" you are of no further use, and so I shall eat you." The
cat, however, sprang lightly into the branches of a tree,
and smiled at his disappointment. She had not taught
him all her tricks.
The Chinese apply this to their foreign instructors
in the art of war, and evidently suspect that some master
secret is always held in reserve.
X
NATIVE TRACTS OF CHINA
THE word " tract," in its more general sense, signi-
fies a treatise on any subject. In the special
sense, which the activity of our Tract Societies
has brought into use, it means a small book in which the
sanctions of religion are brought forward in support of
morality. Its aim is to enlighten the human mind, and
to purify the widening stream of human life.
That the people of that ancient empire, who have an-
ticipated us in so many discoveries, and in every kind
of social experiment, should have gone before us in the
creation of a tract-literature, is not surprising. In China,
as in other countries, one of the earliest uses of written
speech was to extend the influence of good men, by
causing their words to reach a wider circle, beyond the
bounds of personal intercourse, which in space is limited
to a few miles, and in time to a few years.
For the same reasons, one of the first applications of
the art of printing, in which China was six hundred years
in advance of Europe, was to multiply tracts; and the
aggregate mass of its publications in this department
has, in the course of ten centuries, attained an enormous
development. To enumerate even the most popular of
them would necessitate the recitation of a long catalogue ;
and to offer an outline criticism of each would be an
endless task. They fall, however, into certain well-de-
fined categories, such as :
i. Those which inculcate morality in general.
148
NATIVE TRACTS OF CHINA 149
2. Those which persuade to the practice of particular
virtues.
3. Those which seek to deter from particular vices.
4. Those that are written in the interest of particular
religions or divinities.
One or two in each class, as types of the whole will be
sufficient to exhibit their character and scope.
In the first class, a leading place might properly be
assigned to the discourses of Confucius and Mencius,
and to numerous treatises of later philosophers; but, as
we are accustomed to make a distinction between scrip-
tures and tracts, these, or at least those first mentioned,
are to be regarded as the sacred scriptures of the Chinese.
With us, many tracts consist almost entirely of Scrip-
ture passages, selected and arranged. In the native
literature of the Chinese, similar tracts based on their
best books may be found in great numbers.
One such is called the Ming Hsin Pao Chien, Mirror
of the Heart. It contains a choice collection of the best
sayings of the best men that country has produced.
Those sayings are gems, neatly cut, highly polished, and
sparkling with the light of truth. In other tracts they
may be differently arranged; but everywhere they shine
with the mild radiance of wisdom and virtue.
A collection of this kind, called Ming Hsien Chi, Say-
ings of the Wise, is a great favorite in Peking. It differs
from the tract last named in drawing its wise saws chiefly
from modern sources. It opens with the noble maxim:
" Only practice good works, and ask no questions about
your future destiny." The first chapter ends with the
encouraging assurance : " Human desires can be broken
off; Heaven's laws can be observed."
ISO THE LORE OF CATHAY
Another maxim gives the general tenor of its teach-
ings : " All things bow to real worth ; happiness is stored
up by honesty." Every sentence is a proverb; and
though, like the Hebrew proverbs, there are many that
inculcate thrift and worldly wisdom, there are not a few
that rise to a higher level. Its religion is unhappily of a
very colorless description, contrasting strongly with
the doctrine of direct responsibility to a living God, which
pervades the proverbs of the Jews, making their religion
the most practical of their concerns. The idea of direct
responsibility is not indeed altogether wanting, though
in this class of tracts it is not sufficiently insisted on.
In this, and in nearly all similar collections, we find the
warning that
" The gods behold an evil thought,
As clearly as a flash of lightning ;
And whispers uttered in a secret place,
To them sound loud as thunder."
The Family Monitor of Chu Po Lu so well known, sets
forth an admirable system of precepts for the ordering of
a household, in which children are brought up with
judicious severity, and servants treated with considerate
tenderness, purity and honor being vital elements of the
domestic atmosphere.
The Ti Tze Kuei, or Guide to the Young, though less
known, is a book of a higher order. Composed almost
in our own times, in imitation of the far-famed Trimetri-
cal Classic, it surpasses its model, and shows, if we may
judge by words alone, that the line of sages is not yet ex-
tinct. In the second chapter, entitled Truth and Virtue,
we find a doctrine too rarely taught in Chinese books :
' In every word you utter,
Let truth be first ;
NATIVE TRACTS OF CHINA 151
Deceit and falsehood,
How can you endure!
Do not lightly speak
Of what you do not certainly know;
Things not right,
Do not lightly promise;
If you do promise,
Whether you go forward or go back,
You are equally in fault."
Here is a neat definition:
" To do wrong without intention
Is an error;
To do wrong with purpose
Is a crime."
The author adds:
" Your errors, if you correct them,
End in no error;
If you hide or cloak them,
You add one sin more."
The Sacred Edict, containing the maxims of Kang Hsi
amplified by Yung Cheng, is not too large to be classed
with tracts. Each chapter may, indeed, be regarded as a
tract on a special subject. Nothing gives a better view
of the kind of morals inculcated by the head of the gov-
ernment morals which harmonize in a wonderful man-
ner with some of the teachings of Christianity.
The tracts that I have mentioned emanate from the
school of pure Confucianism. They are not irreligious,
for they everywhere admit the supremacy of a vague
power called Heaven. They admit, further, that that
power, whatever it may be, is not indifferent to human
conduct.
i 5 2 THE LORE OF CATHAY
Does not the venerable Book of Changes, the most
ancient of the canonical writings, expressly declare that
" On those who store up righteousness,
Heaven sends down a hundred blessings;
And on those who store up ill-desert,
Heaven sends down a hundred woes."
This sentence re-appears in all these tracts ; and the
doctrine of a providential retribution, unfailing for the
good, unrelenting for the evil, is affirmed, amplified, and
illustrated, as a cardinal truth which no man can doubt.
By this school it is taught, as it was by the Sadducees of
Judea, without reference to hopes or fears connected with
a belief in a life to come. The certainty of prosperity in
this world as the reward of virtue, and of shame and
suffering as the penalty of vice, is the motive most con-
stantly appealed to, though it should not be forgotten
that, in a passage already quoted, a sublimer conception
is set forth : " Only do good, and ask no questions as to
your future destiny," assuring us that some among the
moralists of the pure Confucian school might unite with
us in the petition of Pope's Universal Prayer
" What conscience tells me should be done,
Or warns me not to do,
This, teach me more than hell to shun,
That, more than heaven pursue."
The experience of moralists in China coincides, how-
ever, with that of the West in showing that the theory of
virtue as its own reward is too refined for the mass of
mankind. One, here and there, who is moulded of
purer clay, may be seized with a kind of Platonic passion
for virtue, but the great majority are so constituted that
to them virtue has no charms aside from happiness. Nor
NATIVE TRACTS OF CHINA 153
is this of necessity an ignoble sentiment ; for, in this case,
what God has joined together it may not be possible for
man to put asunder, " Happiness (to quote a Chinese
saying), follows in the footsteps of virtue { as shadow
follows substance." Are we not told that even Moses had
" respect unto the recompense of the reward? "
When Buddhists imported from India a distinct notion
of a future life, their doctrine of transmigration was first
adopted by the Taoists, and afterwards accepted by many
who never ceased to call themselves disciples of Con-
fucius. All parties felt that an immense reinforcement
was added to the sanctions of morality. Instead of the
shadowy idea of a vicarious recompense, reserved for
one's posterity in some remote age, came the conviction
that each individual soul, sooner or later, inevitably reaps
the reward of its deeds ; a conviction which took so
strong a hold on the public mind as to become the foun-
dation for a mixed school of moral teaching.
In the tracts of this mixed school, Confucianism may
in some cases to be the leading element, Taoism or Bud-
dhism in others ; but the most powerful argument to incite
to good, and deter from evil, is always the certainty of
retribution in a future life.
The two most celebrated tracts in this department, if
not in the whole cycle of Chinese literature, are dis-
tinctly on the subject of retribution. They are the Kan
Ying P'ien, and the Yin Chi Wen. Each bears the name
of a Taoist divinity, one goes under the auspices of
Laotze, the other under those of Wen Ch'ang. One sets
out with the declaration that " Happiness and Misery
never enter a door until they are invited by the occupant
of the house." " They are the reward that follows good
and evil, as surely as a shadow follows a body." The
other begins with a statement that its beatified author
154 THE LORE OF CATHAY
practised virtue through no fewer than seventeen lives or
stages of existence before he attained to perfect felicity.
Starting from this point, each unfolds its text with ad-
mirable skill, building a rainbow arch of virtues, with
one foot resting on the earth, and the other lost in the
blue of heaven ; while the vices are depicted in fiery colors,
on a back-ground of utter darkness.
While on this branch of the subject, a very vulgar
tract ought to be noticed, which has perhaps a wider cur-
rency than either of the preceding. Like them, the Yu
Li Ch'ao Chuan, or String of Pearls, is devoted to the
doctrine of retribution. Instead, however, of insisting on
true morality, this treatise spends its force in clothing the
infernal world with imaginary horrors. They are drawn
in such colors that they are not Dantesque, but grotesque..
The letter press is accompanied by pictorial illustrations,
in which one sees a soul in the process of being sawn
in twain, or pounded in a mortar; a bridge from which
sinners are precipitated into a field of up-turned sword
points; a cauldron of boiling water in which they stew
and simmer for ages ; then a bed of ice on which they
freeze for an equal period ; together with other scenes
equally adapted to bring a wholesome doctrine into con-
tempt.
An idea, to which this gross view of retribution natur-
ally gives rise, is that of opening a debt and credit ac-
count with the chancery of Heaven. Such account books
form a distinct class of tracts. On one side are ranged
all conceivable bad actions, each stamped with its ex-
change value according to a fixed tariff. The Chinese
moralist has not, like Tetzel, gone so far as to convert this
numerical valuation into a sale of indulgences, but we
may be sure that the ingenuity of the reader does not
fail to find out a way
NATIVE TRACTS OF CHINA 155
" To atone for sins he has a mind to,
By doing things he's not inclined to."
The artifice of keeping with one's heart such an ac-
count current is one which, if properly conducted, might
end in the practice of virtue. Franklin tried something
of the kind with success, and he tells us that it enabled
him to make such proficiency in the grace of humility
that he grew proud of it. Among tracts of the second
category those that inculcate particular virtues I may
mention the Hsiao Ching, or Manual of Filial Duty, de-
scribed in a previous chapter. More ancient than any of
its class, it is also more venerated, being referred to Con-
fucius himself, whose discourses on the subject were
taken down by one of his- most eminent disciples. While
its origin is apocryphal, its fullness and perfection give
it the weight of a classic, while the simplicity and beauty
of its style make it specially attractive to the young, for
whose instruction it was composed.
The teachings of the book culminate in the grand idea
that filial piety, as the first of virtues, may be made a rule
and regulator for the entire conduct of life. Every act
has reference to our ancestors; good acts reflect honor,
and bad acts bring disgrace on the name of our pro-
genitors. The process of reasoning is somewhat similar
to that which makes the love of God the law of a Chris-
tian life ; but how feeble the sentiment that attaches itself
to the moss-covered monuments of dead ancestors, in
comparison with love to a living God, whom we are
privileged to call our Father in Heaven !
As in China all social, political, and even religious obli-
gations center in the duty of filial piety, that cardinal
virtue is, as might be expected, the theme of innumerable
hortatory compositions. Some of them are excellent
from every point of view ; but not a few are tinged with
156 THE LORE OF CATHAY
extravagance, extolling the merits of children who have
saved the lives of parents by mixing medicines with their
own blood, or giving them broth made of their own
flesh.*
There is one, and that the most popular of all, which
sinks to a depth of silliness quite beyond anything at-
tained by Mother Goose. I refer to the stories of the
Four-and-Twenty Filial Children.
One of those worthies is held in remembrance because,
when his parents had lapsed into second childhood, he, at
the age of threescore and ten, dressed himself in parti-
coloured vestments, and acted the clown to make them
laugh. Another, when a little boy, was seen lying on the
ice; and, when questioned as to his object, replied that
he " wished to melt it to catch a fish for his mother.''
One of them, hearing a physician commend the virtues of
milk freshly drawn from the teats of a wild deer, dis-
guised himself as a deer in order to procure the precious
beverage for his invalid mother. One of them, on the
occurrence of a thunder storm, always threw himself on
his mother's grave, saying " Mother, your boy is with
you, do not be afraid." The other stories are equally
foolish, and some of them positively wicked; yet Chi-
nese artists vie with each other in embellishing this
precious nonsense, and the greatest men of China make
a merit of writing out the text for engraving on
wood.
Is it not probable that these exaggerated views of filial
* For this purpose the flesh is commonly taken from the fatty
portions of the thigh ; but a morsel of the liver is more effica-
cious. How young girls (for it is always women who do it) can
perform on themselves an operation of such difficulty and sur-
vive is a mystery. Perhaps the best explanation is that such
statements are figures of speech.
NATIVE TRACTS OF CHINA 157
piety have had a tendency to dwarf other virtues, and to
distort the moral character of the Chinese people? The
duty of speaking the truth, for instance, so much insisted
on by us of the West, is seldom touched on by the moral
writers of China. While the foundation stone is neglected
by these builders, what masses of wood, hay, and stubble,
do they put in its place!
It would be easy to load a cart with separate treatises
on the duty of showing respect to written or printed
paper. Absurd as are the rhapsodies which Chinese
scholars indite on this subject, may they not teach a les-
son to our tract distributors, the lesson not to show dis-
respect to their own cargoes of printed paper, by selling
too cheaply, or giving too lavishly?
Then we have exhortations in equal quantity to com-
passion for brute animals. The radical sentiment is just
and praise-worthy, but the writers rush into extremes as
before; and, instead of nourishing a well-poised, active
humanity to man, they make a merit of emancipating
birds and fish, and of succoring ants that are struggling
in the water. Under the influence of this literature, a
society has been formed in Peking for the release of
captive sparrows ; but I have yet to hear that any society
has been organized for the suppression of the sale of
little children, a traffic which is openly carried on in all
the cities of China ! Our own Cowper wept over a dead
hare, and wrote the lines
" I would not count upon my list of friends,
A man who wantonly set foot upon a worm."
But his pity was not exhausted by such manifesta-
tions. He admitted man among the objects of his com-
passion, and sounded the note of anti-slavery long be-
fore the abolition of the trade in slaves :
158 THE LORE OF CATHAY
" Fleecy locks and black complexion
Cannot forfeit nature's claim :
Skins may differ, but affection
Dwells in white and black the same."
Against particular vices there are numerous tracts
which are earnest and powerful. In some, the enormities
of infanticide are set forth; some denounce the folly of
gambling-; others deal in scathing terms with licentious
practices of every description ; still others dissuade from
opium-smoking, drunkenness, and the like.
Tracts of a distinctly religious type are neither so
abundant, nor so highly esteemed, as those that aim to
mend the morals of mankind. Yet they are not want-
ing; one meets every day with little pamphlets com-
mending the worship of particular divinities. Here is
one that points out the way to obtain the favor of Chang
Hsien, the greatest of the Taoist genii, who rewards his
worshippers with the blessing of offspring. Here is an-
other which consists chiefly of prayers to Kuan Tin, the
goddess of mercy. The prayers are in Sanscrit, and
utterly unintelligible to those who use them.
Of polemics there are very few, indeed I have only
seen one or two of modern origin. The earlier ages
teemed with them ; and the literati, by inserting in every
collection of ancient essays, Han Yu's ferocious onslaught
on Buddhism, seek to keep alive a feeling of animosity
against the Indian creed. Time, however, is a great
peace-maker. The conflicting elements, that once threat-
ened to turn this celestial empire into primeval chaos,
have gradually subsided into a stable equilibrium.
Antagonistic and mutually destructive, their teachings
may be found mixed together in most of the tracts of
which we have been speaking. In one of them, in a
conspicuous place, at the head of a list of good actions,
NATIVE TRACTS OF CHINA 159
stands the injunction Kuang Hsing San Chiao, " Spread
far and wide the Three Religions."
A little treatise full of deep thought, which shows to
advantage the blending of the three creeds, is Ts'ai Ken
T'ien. Its author, Hung Ying Ming, was a moralist >f a
high order, but nothing is known of him except that he
lived about three centuries ago.
Philosophers tell us of a time, happily far in the future,
when earth shall no more be the scene of terrific storms,
when north wind and south wind shall cease to con-
tend for the mastery, because the atmosphere no longer
receives sufficient heat from the sun to disturb its re-
pose. It is the heat of conviction that engenders contro-
versy. Where that has ceased, is there not reason to
suspect that faith has lost its vitality, and that sincere
convictions no longer exist?
In ancient Rome, the gods of the conquered nations
came trooping into the capital; and all of them, in the
lapse of time, were seated in friendly conclave in the
pantheon of Agrippa. They were at peace, because they
were dead. Lucian, in his satirical dialogues, deals with
dead gods as well as with dead men; but those dead
gods were galvanized into life by the contact of Chris-
tianity. Christ came into their midst, and, at his touch,
their dry bones began to shake, and they rose up to do
battle against the Lord of Life. History repeats itself.
What we have seen in Rome, is now taking place in
China. The calm of ages is disturbed, and the heat of
controversy begins to show itself anew; but the only
polemics from the pagan camp are those in which the
adherents of the Three Religions combine in vituperative
attacks on that arrogant creed which claims for itself
the homage of the world.
Inert as are the creeds of paganism, in comparison with
160 THE LORE OF CATHAY
the undying energies of our Holy Faith, it would be
wrong to infer that they are either active for evil, or
powerless for good. To those who have not the sun,
star-light is oftentimes a precious guide.
In looking over a vast variety of native tracts, we are
struck by the fact that authors of all the schools agree
in seeking to fortify their moral teachings by the sanc-
tions of religion. Even the Confucianists ascribe to their
canonical books the authority of inspiration. Chu Fu-
tze, sceptical as he was on most subjects, admitted the
claim of the Confucian teachings to a superhuman origin.
Later writers naturally sought to invest their produc-
tions with the sanctity derived from an inspired source.
The two other creeds peopled the heavens with deified
mortals. With them it was easy to hold communication,
and from them oracular responses were obtained. If
the divinities deigned to give prescriptions for the cure
of measles or toothache, why not for the maladies of the
human mind? The medium of response was planchette,
an instrument known to the Chinese a thousand years
before it began to make a figure in Europe. I have my-
self seen effusions in faultless verse, fresh from the pens
of deified spirits.
In connecting religion with morals, these writers agree
with us ; for what a feeble thing would be a moral prop-
aganda unaided by the fervor of religious faith !
One of the literary lights of the English firmament
defines religion as " morality touched by emotion." The
definition is neither logical nor complete; but it hits in
happy phrase one feature of a union formed by two dis-
tinct things. Morality, to borrow the imagery of a
Hebrew poet, springs up out of the earth, and religion
looks down from Heaven. Morality is the body, cold
and beautiful until religion, which is its soul, enters into
NATIVE TRACTS OF CHINA 161
it and gives it life; or, in the words of Mr. Arnold,
" touches it with emotion."
The love of God is religion ; the love of man, morality.
The two must be combined, in order to give the highest
effect to an enterprise like that of our Tract Societies.
The assertion may sound strange, but it is true neverthe-
less, that morality is our supreme object. If men were
to persist in the debasing practices inseparable from hea-
thenism, would we deem it worth while to substitute the
names of Jehovah and Jesus for those of Kuan Ti and
Buddha?
We should not fail to recognize how much has been
done by the agency of native tracts to prepare the way
for the tractarian crusade, in which we are now em-
barked. It is owing to them that our efforts in this
direction meet with a respectful welcome. Let us, on our
part, cultivate a sympathy for all that is good in native
books and native methods, and endeavor to learn from
them something that may enable us more efficiently to
carry on our own enterprise.
That which we may study with most advantage is
their mode of communicating instruction on religious and
moral subjects. No missionary should undertake the
composition of a Christian tract, without having first made
himself acquainted with a wide range of native tracts.
Not only may he learn from them how to treat his sub-
ject in a style at once concise and lucid, respectable in
the eyes of the learned, yet not above the comprehension
of the vulgar, what is more, he may learn from them
the spiritual wants of the audience whom he proposes to
instruct and relieve.
A weakness of tfie native tract lies in the fact that,
for the most part, elegant as it may be, it contains noth-
ing but what everybody knows. We, in the preparation
162 THE LORE OF CATHAY
of our tracts, can draw on resources that lie beyond the
reach of native authors. In addition to the inestimable
treasures of Revealed Truth, we have Geography, His-
tory, Astronomy, Physics, to communicate, not to speak
of our improved systems of Mental and Moral Philosophy.
These sciences are not only powerful for the over-
throw of superstition, they are essential to the under-
standing of religious truth. Every new tract ought to
contain more or less on these subjects; and some tracts
should be entirely devoted to them, and to the religious
applications of which they are so readily susceptible.
Would it not be well for our Tract Societies to prepare
a series not of text-books, for that task has been under-
taken by another association but of primers, which,
along with religious truth, shall impart the elements of
science? By acting on this principle, our publications
will be made in the highest sense an educational agency.
They will command the respect of the better classes,
and not only win them away from grovelling supersti-
tions, but lead high and low away from their imperfect
lights to Him who is the Light of the World.
BOOK III
Religion and Philosophy of the
Chinese
XI
THE SAN CHIAO, OR THREE RELIGIONS OF CHINA
THE religious experience of the Chinese is worthy
of attentive study. Detached at an early period
from the parent stock, and for thousands of
years holding but little intercourse with other branches
of the human family, we are able to ascertain with a
good degree of precision those ideas which constituted
their original inheritance, and to trace in history the
development or corruption of their primitive beliefs.
Midway in their long career, they imported from India
an exotic system, completing the triad of their authorized
creeds.
In their experience each of the leading systems has been
fairly tested. The arena has been large enough, and the
duration of the experiment long enough, to admit of each
working out its full results. These experiments are of
the greater value, because they have been wrought out
in the midst of a highly organized society, and in connec-
tion with a high degree of intellectual culture.
In views and practices, the Chinese of to-day are poly-
theistic and idolatrous. The evidence of this strikes the
attention of the voyager on every hand. In the sanpan
that carries him to the shore, he discovers a small shrine
which contains an image of the river-god, the god of
wealth, or Kuan Yin (the goddess of mercy). His eye
is charmed by the picturesqueness of pagodas perched on
mountain-crags, and monasteries nestling in sequestered
dells ; and, on entering even a small town, he is surprised
at the extent, if not the magnificence, of temples erected
165
i66 THE LORE OF CATHAY
to Ch'eng Huang, the " city defender," and Wen Ch'ang,
the patron of letters. Heaps of gilt paper are consumed
in the streets, accompanied by volleys of fire-crackers.
Bonzes, modulating their voices by the sound of a wooden
rattle, fill the air with their melancholy chant; and pro-
cessions wind through narrow lanes, bearing on their
shoulders a silver effigy of the " dragon king," the god
of rain.
These temples, images, and symbols, he is informed,
all belong to San Chiao (three religions). All three are
equally idolatrous, and he inquires in vain for any in-
fluential native sect, which, more enlightened or philo-
sophical than the rest, raises a protest against the prevail-
ing superstition. Yet, on acquiring the language and
studying the popular superstitions in their myriad fan-
tastic shapes, he begins to discover traces of a religious
sentiment, deep and real, which is not connected with any
of the objects of popular worship a veneration for T'ien,
or Heaven, and a belief that in the visible heavens there
resides some vague power who provides for the wants of
men, and rewards them according to their deeds.
Personified as Lao T'ien Yeh not Heavenly Father, as
it expresses the Christian's conception of combined tender-
ness and majesty, but literally " Old Father Heaven,"
much as we say " Old Father Time " or designated by
a hundred other appellations, this august but unknown
Being, though universally acknowledged, is invoked or
worshipped only to a very limited extent. Some, at the
close of the year, present a thank-offering to the Great
Power who has controlled the course of its events ; others
burn a stick of incense every evening under the open sky ;
and in the marriage ceremony all classes bow down before
T'ien as the first of the five objects of veneration.*
* The other four are the earth, the prince, parents, and teachers.
THE TEMPLE OF HEAVEN
THE ALTAR OF HEAVEN
THREE RELIGIONS OF CHINA 167
When taxed with ingratitude in neglecting to honor
that Being on whom they depend for existence, the
Chinese uniformly reply, " It is not ingratitude, but rev-
erence, that prevents our worship. He is too great for us
to worship. None but the Emperor is worthy to lay an
offering on the altar of Heaven." In conformity with
this sentiment, the Emperor, as the high priest and medi-
ator of his people, celebrates in Peking the worship of
Heaven with imposing ceremonies.
Within the gates of the southern division of the capi-
tal, and surrounded by a sacred grove so extensive that
the silence of its deep shades is never broken by the
noises of the busy world, stands the Temple of Heaven.
It consists of a single tower, whose tiling of resplendent
azure is intended to represent the form and color of the
aerial vault. It contains no image, and the solemn rites
are not performed within the tower; but, on a marble
altar which stands before it, a bullock is offered once a
year as a burnt-sacrifice, while the master of the Empire
prostrates himself in adoration of the Spirit of the Uni-
verse.*
This is the high-place of Chinese devotion ; and the
thoughtful visitor feels that he ought to tread its courts
with unsandalled feet.f For no vulgar idolatry has en-
tered here : this mountain-top still stands above the waves
of corruption, and on this solitary altar there still rests
* Another tower of similar structure but larger dimensions
stands in a separate enclosure as a kind of vestibule to the more
sacred place, and here it is that the Emperor prays for " fruitful
seasons."
t Dr. Legge, the distinguished translator of the Chinese clas-
sics, visiting Peking some years after this was written, actually
" put his shoes from off his feet " before ascending the steps of
the great altar. Yet in 1900 this sacred spot was converted into
a barracks for British troops !
1 68 THE LORE OF CATHAY
a faint ray of the primeval faith. The tablet which rep-
resents the invisible Deity is inscribed with the name of
Shang Ti, the Supreme Ruler ; and as we contemplate the
Majesty of the Empire prostrate before it, while the
smoke ascends from his burning sacrifice, our thoughts
are irresistibly carried back to the time when the
King of Salem officiated as " Priest of the Most High
God."
The writings and the institutions of the Chinese are
not, like those of the Hindus and the Hebrews, pervaded
with the idea of God. It is, nevertheless, expressed in
their ancient books with so much clearness as to make
us wonder and lament that it has left so faint an impres-
sion on the national mind.
In their books of History it is recorded that music was
invented for the praise of Shang Ti. Rival claimants for
the throne appeal to the judgment of Shang Ti. He is the
arbiter of nations, and, while actuated by benevolence, is
yet capable of being provoked to wrath by the iniquities of
men. In the Book of Changes he is represented as restor-
ing life to torpid nature on the return of spring. In the
Book of Rites it is said that the ancients " prayed for grain
to Shang Ti," and presented in offering a bullock, which
must be without blemish, and stall-fed for three months
before the day of sacrifice. In the Book of Odes, mostly
composed from eight hundred to a thousand years before
the Christian era, and containing fragments of still
higher antiquity, Shang Ti is represented as seated on a
lofty throne, while the spirits of the good " walk up and
down on his right and left."
In none of these writings is Shang Ti clothed in the
human form or debased by human passion like the Zeus
of the Greek. There is in them even less of anthropo-
morphism than we find in the representations of Jehovah
THREE RELIGIONS OF CHINA 169
in the Hebrew Scriptures. The nearest approach to ex-
hibiting him in the human form is the ascription to
Shang Ti of a " huge footprint," probably an impression
on some mass of rock. Educated Chinese, on embracing
Christianity, assert that the Shang Ti of their fathers was
identical with the T'ien Chu, the Lord of Heaven, whom
they are taught to worship. Paul Hsiu, a member of the
Hanlin Academy, and cabinet minister under the Ming
dynasty, makes this assertion in an eloquent apology ad-
dressed to the throne in behalf of his new faith and its
teachers.
There is no need of an extended argument, to establish
the fact that the early Chinese were by no means desti-
tute of the knowledge of God. They did not, indeed,
know him as the Creator, but they recognized him as su-
preme in providence, and without beginning or end.
Whence came this conception? Was it the mature re-
sult of ages of speculation, or was it brought down from
remote antiquity on the stream of patriarchal tradition?
The latter, we think, is the only probable hypothesis.
In the earlier books of the Chinese there is no trace of
speculative inquiry. They raise no question as to the na-
ture of Shang Ti, or the grounds of their faith in such a
being, but in their first pages allude to him as already
well known, and speak of burnt-offerings made to him
on mountain-tops as an established rite. Indeed, the idea
of Shang Ti, when it first meets us, is not in the process
of development, but already in the first stages of decay.
The beginnings of that idolatry by which it was subse-
quently almost obliterated are distinctly traceable. The
heavenly bodies, the spirits of the hills and rivers, and
even the spirits of deceased men, were admitted to a
share in the divine honors of Shang Ti. The religious
sentiment was frittered away by being directed to a mul-
i ;o THE LORE OF CATHAY
tiplicity of objects, and the popular mind seemed to take
refuge among the creatures of its own fancy, as Adam
did amidst the trees of the Garden, from the terrible idea
of a holy God.
The worship of the Supreme Ruler, grand as it is, is
in the present day like a ray of the sun falling upon an
iceberg, so far as its influence on the public mind is con-
cerned. It is limited to the emperor and to a few re-
markable and august manifestations of public ritual ; but
you do not find it in the household. You do not find it
on the lips of the people. You do not find that God in
that form has taken up his abode with men. He is still
far remote, on the summit of an icy Olympus, as it were,
although to a certain extent dimly perceived by the mind
of the Chinese nation.
In order to understand the mutual relations of these
three systems in other words, to understand the relig-
ious aspects of China at the present day it will be neces-
sary to give separate attention to the rise and progress
of each. We begin with Confucianism.
The Confucian system did not originate with Con-
fucius. He took the records of remote antiquity and
sifted them, in such wise, however, as to exert in a most
effective manner the influence of an editor, giving to the
readers of all succeeding ages only that which he wished
to produce its effect on the national mind. We conse-
quently date Confucianism from the beginning of his
records, from the time of Yao and Shun, his favorite
models of virtue, twenty-two centuries before the
Christian era.
There are two classes of great men who leave their
mark on the condition of their species those who change
the course of history without any far-reaching purpose,
much as a falling cliff changes the direction of a stream ;
THREE RELIGIONS OF CHINA 171
and those, again, who, like skilful engineers, excavate a
channel for the thought of future generations. Pre-
eminent among the latter stands the name of Confucius.
Honored during his lifetime to such a degree that the
princes of several states lamented his decease like that of
a father, his influence has deepened with time and ex-
tended with the swelling multitudes of his people. Bud-
dhism and Taoism have both fallen into a state of irre-
trievable decay, but the influence and the memory of Con-
fucius continue as green as the cypresses that shade his
tomb. After the lapse of three and twenty centuries, he
has a temple in every city, and an effigy in every school-
room. He is venerated as the fountain of wisdom by all
the votaries of letters, and worshipped by the mandarins
of the realm as the author of their civil polity. The es-
timation in which his teachings continue to be held is well
exhibited in the reply which the people of Shantung, his
native province, gave to a missionary who, some fifty
years ago, offered them Christian books : " We have
seen your books," said they, " and neither desire nor ap-
prove them. The instructions of our Sage are sufficient
for us, and they are superior to any foreign doctrines that
you can bring us." *
Born B. c. 551, and endowed with uncommon talents,
Confucius was far from relying on the fertility of his
own genius. " Reading without thought is fruitless, and
thought without reading dangerous," is a maxim which
he taught his disciples, and one which he had doubtless
followed in the formation of his own mind. China al-
ready possessed accumulated treasures of literature and
history. With these materials he stored his memory, and
* Since that date a change has come over the people of Shan-
tung. Ip no other province has Christianity met with so ready a
reception.
1 72 THE LORE OF CATHAY
by the aid of reflection digested them into a system for
the use of posterity.
Filled with enthusiasm by the study of the ancients, and
mourning over the degeneracy of his own times, he en-
tered at an early age on the vocation of reformer. He
at first sought to effect his objects by obtaining civil office
and setting an example of good government, as well as
by giving instruction to those who became his disciples.
At the age of fifty-five he was advanced to the premier-
ship of his native State ; and in a few months the improve-
ment in the public morals was manifest. Valuables
might be exposed in the street without being stolen, and
shepherds abandoned the practice of filling their sheep
with water before leading them to market.
A singular circumstance led him to renounce political
life. The little kingdom of Lu grew apace in wealth and
prosperity ; and the prince of a rival State, in order to
prevent its acquiring an ascendency in the politics of the
Empire, felt it necessary to counteract the influence of
the wise legislator. Resorting to a stratagem similar to
that which Louis XIV. employed with Charles II., he
sent instead of brave generals or astute statesmen, a band
of beautiful girls who were skilled in music and dancing.
The prince of Lu, young and amorous, was caught in the
snare, and, giving the rein to pleasure, abandoned all the
schemes of reform with which he had been inspired by
the counsels of the Sage. Disappointed and disgusted,
Confucius retired into private life.
Thwarted, as he had often been, by royal pride and
official jealousy, he henceforth endeavored to attain his
ends by a less direct but more certain method. He de-
voted himself more than ever to the instruction of youth,
and to the collection of those monuments of ancient wis-
dom, which form the basis of his teaching. His fame
THREE RELIGIONS OF CHINA 173
attracted young men of promise from all the surrounding
principalities. No fewer than three thousand received
his instructions, among whom five hundred became dis-
tinguished mandarins, and seventy-two of them are en-
rolled on the list of the sages of the Empire. Through
these and the books which he edited subsequently to this
period, there can be no doubt that he exerted a greater
influence on the destinies of the Empire than he could
have done had he been seated on the Imperial throne.
He won for himself the title of Su Wang, " the un-
sceptred monarch," whose intellectual sway is acknowl-
edged by all ages.*
Confucius understood the power of proverbs, and, in-
corporating into his system such as met his approval, he
cast his own teachings in the same mould. His speeches
are laconic and oracular, and he has transmitted to pos-
terity a body of political ethics expressed in formulae so
brief and comprehensive that it may easily^ be retained in
the weakest memory. Thus, chiin ch'en, fu tze, fu fu,
hsiung ti, p'eng yu are ten syllables which every boy in
China has at his tongue's end. They contain the entire
framework of the social fabric the " five relations " of
sovereign and subject, parent and child, husband and
wife, brother and brother, friend and friend, which, ac-
cording to the Chinese, comprehend the whole duty of
man as a social being. The five cardinal virtues benevo-
lence, justice, order, prudence, and fidelity so essen-
tial to the well-being of society, Confucius inculcated in
the five syllables jen, i, li, chih, hsin.
The following sentences, taken from his miscellaneous
discourses, may serve as illustrations of both the style
and the matter of his teaching :
* For an account of his family see Note II. at the end of this
chapter.
i 7 4 THE LORE OF CATHAY
" Good government consists in making the prince a
prince, the subject a subject, the parent a parent, and the
child a child."
" Beware of doing to another what you would not that
others should do to you."
" He that is not offended at being misunderstood is a
superior man."
" Have no friend who is inferior to yourself in virtue."
" Be not afraid to correct a fault. He that knows the
right and fears to do it is not a brave man."
" If you guide the people by laws, and enforce the laws
by punishment, they will lose the sense of shame and seek
to evade them; but if you guide them by a virtuous ex-
ample, and diffuse among them a love of order, they will
be ashamed to transgress."
" To know what we know, and what we do not know,
is knowledge."
" We know not life, how can we know death? "
" The filial son is one who gives his parents no anxiety
but for his health."
Filial piety, Confucius taught, is not merely a domestic
virtue, but diffuses its influence through all the actions
of life. A son who disgraces his parents in any way is
unfilial ; one who maltreats a brother or a relative, forget-
ful of the bonds of a common parentage, is unfilial. This
powerful motive is thus rendered expansive in its applica-
tion, like piety to God in the Christian system, for which,
indeed, it serves as a partial substitute. It is beautifully
elaborated in the Hsiao Ching, the most popular of the
Thirteen Classics.
Virtue, Confucius taught with Aristotle, is the mean
between two vices, and this theory is developed by his
grandson in the Chung Yung, the sublimest of the sacred
books.
THREE RELIGIONS OF CHINA 175
The secret of good government, he taught, consists in
the cultivation of personal virtue on the part of rulers;
and the connection between private morals and national
politics is well set forth in the Ta Hsueh, or Great Study.
This brief tractate is the only formal composition, with
the exception of an outline of history, which the Great
Sage put forth as the product of his own pen. " I am
an editor, and not an author," is the modest account
which he gives of himself, and it is mainly to his labors
in this department that China is indebted for her knowl-
edge of antecedent antiquity.
The spirit in which he discharged this double duty to
the past and future may be inferred from the impressive
ceremony with which he concluded his great task. As-
sembling his disciples, he led them to the summit of a
neighboring hill, where sacrifices were usually offered.
Here he erected an altar, and placing on it an edition of
the sacred books which he had just completed, the gray-
haired philosopher, now seventy years of age, fell on his
knees, devoutly returned thanks for having had life and
strength granted him to accomplish that laborious under-
taking, at the same time imploring that the benefit his
countrymen would receive from it might not be small.
" Chinese pictures," says Pauthier, " represent the Sage
in the attitude of supplication, and a beam of light or a
rainbow descending on the sacred volumes, while his
disciples stand around him in admiring wonder." *
Thales expired about the time Confucius drew his in-
fant breath, and Pythagoras was his contemporary; but
the only names among the Greeks which admit of com-
parison with that of Confucius are Socrates and Aristotle,
the former of whom revolutionized the philosophy of
* Since reading this passage in Pauthier, I have myself seen
this picture in a native pictorial biography of Confucius.
176 THE LORE OF CATHAY
Greece, and the latter ruled the dialectics of mediaeval
Europe. Without the discursive eloquence of the one or
the logical acumen of the other, Confucius surpassed
them both in practical wisdom, and exceeds them im-
measurably in the depth, extent, and permanence of his
influence.
It is not surprising that when missionaries attempt to
direct their attention to the Saviour, the Chinese point to
Confucius and challenge comparison ; nor that they
should sometimes fail to be satisfied with the arguments
employed to establish the superiority of Jesus Christ. But
the thoughtful Christian who has studied the canonical
books of China can hardly return to the perusal of the
New Testament without a deeper conviction of its divine
authority. In the Confucian classics he detects none of
that impurity which defiles the pages of Greek and Roman
authors, and none of that monstrous mythology which
constitutes so large a portion of the sacred books of the
Hindoos, but he discovers defects enough to make him
turn with gratitude to the revelations of a " Greater
Teacher."
Disgusted at the superstitions of the vulgar, and de-
sirous of guarding his followers against similar excesses,
Confucius led them into the opposite extreme of scepti-
cism. He ignored, if he did not deny, those cardinal doc-
trines of all religion, the immortality of the soul, and the
personal existence of God, both of which were currently
received in his day. In place of Shang Ti (Supreme
Ruler), the name under which the God of Nature had
been worshipped in earlier ages, he made use of the vague
appellation Tien (Heaven) ; thus opening the way, on
the one hand, for that atheism with which their modern
philosophy is so deeply infected, and, on the other, for
that idolatry which nothing but the doctrine of a personal
THREE RELIGIONS OF CHINA 177
God can effectually counteract. When his pupils pro-
posed inquiries respecting a future state, he either dis-
couraged them or answered ambiguously, and thus de-
prived his own precepts of the support they might have
derived from the sanctions of a coming retribution. Thus
in a remarkable discourse reported in the Chia Yu a col-
lection the authority of which is not, however, above sus-
picion he says, " If I should say the soul survives the
body, I fear the filial would neglect their living parents
in their zeal to serve their deceased ancestors. If, on the
contrary, I should say the soul does not survive, I fear
lest the unfilial should throw away the bodies of their
parents and leave them unburied."
We may add that, while his writings abound in the
praises of virtue, not a line can be found inculcating the
pursuit of truth. Expediency, not truth, is the goal of
his system. Contrast with this the Gospel of Christ,
which pronounces him the only freeman whom the " truth
makes free," and promises to his followers " the Spirit
of Truth " as his richest legacy.
The style of Confucius was an ipse-dixit dogmatism,
and it has left its impress on the unreasoning habit of the
Chinese mind. Jesus Christ appealed to evidence and
challenged inquiry, and this characteristic of our religion
has shown itself in the mental development of Christian
nations. Nor is the contrast less striking in another point.
Illius dicta, hujus facta laudantur, to borrow the words
of Cicero, in comparing Cato with Socrates. Confucius
selected disciples who should be the depositaries of his
teachings ; Christ chose apostles who should be witnesses
of his actions. Confucius died lamenting that the edifice
he had labored so long to erect was crumbling to ruin.
Christ's death was the crowning act of his life; and his
last words, " It is finished."
178 THE LORE OF CATHAY
It was a philosophy, not a religion, that Confucius
aimed to propagate. " Our Master," say his disciples,
" spake little concerning the gods." He preferred to con-
fine his teachings to the more tangible realities of human
life; but so far from setting himself to reform the vulgar
superstition, he conformed to its silly ceremonies and en-
joined the same course on his disciples. " Treat the gods
with respect," he said to them, but he added, in terms
which leave no ambiguity in the meaning of the precept,
" keep them at a distance," or, rather, " keep out of their
way." A cold sneer was not sufficient to wither or eradi-
cate the existing idolatry, and the teachings of Confucius
gave authority and prevalence to many idolatrous usages
which were only partially current before his day.
Confucianism now stands forth as the leading religion
of the Empire. Its objects of worship are of three classes
the powers of nature, ancestors, and heroes. Originally
recognizing the existence of a Supreme personal Deity,
it has degenerated into a pantheistic medley, and renders
worship to an impersonal anima mundi under the leading
forms of visible nature. Besides the concrete universe,
separate honors are paid to the sun, moon,, and stars,
mountains, rivers, and lakes.
Of all their religious observances, tKe worship of an-
cestors is that which the Chinese regard as the most
sacred. As vEneas obtained the name of " Pious " in
honor of his filial devotion, so the Chinese idea of piety
rises no higher. The Emperor, according to the Confu-
cian school, may worship the Spirit of the Universe, but
for his subjects it is sufficient that each present offerings
to the spirits of his own ancestors. These rites are per-
formed either at the family tombs or in the family temple,
where wooden tablets, inscribed with their names, are
preserved as sacred to the memory of the deceased, and
THREE RELIGIONS OF CHINA 179
worshipped precisely in the same manner as are the
popular ido's.
The class of deified heroes comprehends illustrious
sages, eminent sovereigns, faithful statesmen, valiant
warriors, filial sons, and public benefactors Confucius
himself occupying the first place, and constituting, as the
Chinese say, " one of a trinity with Heaven and Earth."
Like Confucianism, Taoism is indfgenous to China,
and, coeval with the former in its origin, it was also co-
heir to the mixed inheritance of good and evil contained
in the more ancient creeds. The Taoists derive their
name from tao, reason, and call themselves Rationalists;
but, with a marvelous show of profundity, nothing can
be more irrational than their doctrine and practice. Their
founder, Li Erh, appears to have possessed a great mind,
and to have caught glimpses of several sublime truths ;
but he has been sadly misrepresented by his degenerate
followers. He lived in the sixth century B. c., and was
contemporary with, but older than, Confucius. So great
was the fame of his wisdom that the latter philosopher
sought his instructions ; but, differing from him in mental
mould as widely as Aristotle did from Plato, he could not
relish the boldness of his speculations or the vague ob-
scurity of his style. He never repeated his visit, though
he always spoke of him with respect and even with ad-
miration.
Laotze, the " old Master," is the appellation by which
the great Taoist is commonly known, and it was probably
given him during his lifetime to distinguish him from his
younger rival. The rendering of " old child " is no more
to be received than the fiction of eighty years' gestation
invented to account for it.
Laotze bequeathed his doctrines to posterity in " five
thousand words," which compose the Tao Te Ching, the
i8o THE LORE OF CATHAY
Rule of Reason and Virtue. In expression, this work is
extremely sententious ; and in the form of its composition,
semi-poetical. It abounds in acute apothegms, and some
of its passages rise to the character of sublimity; but so
incoherent are its contents that it is impossible for any
literal interpretation to form them into a system. Its
inconsistencies, however, readily yield to that universal
solvent the hypothesis of a mystical meaning under-
lying the letter of the text. The following passage ap-
pears to embody some obscure but lofty conceptions of
the True God :
" That which is invisible is called yi.
That which is inaudible is called hsi.
That which is impalpable is called wci.
These three are inscrutable, and blended in one.
The first is not the brighter ; nor the last the darker.
It is interminable, ineffable, and existed when there
was nothing.
A shape without shape, a form without form.
A confounding mystery!
Go back, you cannot discover its beginning.
Go forward, you cannot find its end.
Take the ancient Reason to govern the present,
And you will know the origin of old.
This is the first principle of Tao."
Some European scholars discover here a notion of the
Trinity, and, combining the syllables yi, hsi, and wci for
which process, however, they are unable to assign any
very good reason they obtain yihsiwei, which they ac-
cept as a distorted representation of the name Jehovah.
Laotze is said to have travelled in countries to the west
of China, where it is supposed he may have met with
Jews, and learned from them the name and nature of the
Supreme Being. It is an interesting fact that native
THREE RELIGIONS OF CHINA 181
commentators, though knowing nothing of these conjec-
tures, recognize in the passage a description of Shang Ti,
the God of the Chinese patriarchs ; and the three syllables
of which the acrostic is composed are admitted to have
no assignable meaning in the Chinese language.
Here we find a connection between the degenerate
philosophy of after-ages and the pure fountain of prime-
val truth. In fact, this very Shang Ti, though they have
debased the name by bestowing it on a whole class of
their dii superiores, is still enthroned on the summit of
the Taoist Olympus, with ascriptions more expressive of
his absolute divinity than any to be met with in the
canonical books of the Confucian school. At the head
of their Theogony stands the triad of the San Ching, the
" Three Pure " ones ; the first of whom is styled " The
mysterious sovereign who has no superior ; " " The self-
existent source and beginning ; " " The honored one of
Heaven."
He is said to have created the " three worlds ; " to have
produced men and gods ; to have set the stars in motion,
and caused the planets to revolve. But, alas! this cata-
logue of sublime titles and divine attributes is the epitaph
of a buried faith. The Taoists persuaded themselves that
this August Being, wrapped in the solitude of his own
perfections, had delegated the government of the universe
to a subordinate, whom they style Yii Huang Shang Ti.
The former has dwindled into an inoperative idea, the
latter is recognized as the actual God ; and this deity, who
plays mayor of the palace to a roi faineant, is regarded
as the apotheosis of a mortal by the name of Chang, an
ancestor of the present hierarch of the Taoist religion.
It is not unusual, after discoursing to them of the at-
tributes of the True God, to hear the people exclaim,
" That is our Yu Huang Shang Ti."
1 82 THE LORE OF CATHAY
In its philosophy, this school is radically and thoroughly
materialistic. The soul itself they regard as a material
substance, though of a more refined quality than the body
it inhabits. Liable to dissolution, together with the body,
it may be rendered capable of surviving the wreck by
undergoing a previous discipline. Even the body is ca-
pable of becoming invulnerable by the stroke of death,
so that the etherealized form will, instead of being laid in
the grave, be wafted away to the abodes of the genii.
It is scarcely possible to represent the extent to which
this idea fired the minds of the Chinese for ages after
its promulgation, or to estimate the magnitude of its con-
sequences. The prospect of a corporeal immortality to
be conquered by a laborious discipline; an immortality
which was not the heritage of the many, but might be-
come the prize of a few, had for them attractions far
stronger than a shadowy existence in the land of spirits ;
and they sought it with an eagerness amounting to frenzy.
The elixir of life became a grand object of pursuit
witness these lines which I render from a well-known
Chinese poem, which illustrates at once its spirit and
method :
" A prince the draught immortal went to seek
And finding it, he soared above the spheres.
In mountain caverns he had dwelt a week,
Of human time, it was a thousand years."
Alchemy, with its foolish failures and grand achieve-
ments, sprang directly from the religion of Tao.*
The leading principle of Taoism, of which their dogma
concerning the human soul is only a particular applica-
tion, is that every species of matter possesses a soul
a subtile essence that may become endowed with in-
* See chapter on Alchemy in this volume.
THREE RELIGIONS OF CHINA 183
dividual conscious life. Freed from their grosser ele-
ments, these become the genii that preside over the vari-
ous departments of nature. Some wander at will through
the realms of space, endowed with a protean facility of
transformation ; others, more pure and ethereal, rise to
the regions of the stars, and take their places in the
firmament. Thus the five principal planets are called by
the names of the five terrestrial elements from which they
are believed to have originated, and over which they are
regarded as presiding. They are not worlds, but divini-
ties, and their motions control the destinies of men and
things a notion which has done much to inspire the zeal
of the Chinese for recording the phenomena of the
heavens.
A theogony like this is rich in the elements of poetry ;
and most of the machinery in Chinese works of imagina-
tion is, in fact, derived from this source. The Liao Chai,
for example, a collection of marvelous tales which, in
their general character, may be compared with the Meta-
morphoses of Ovid, is largely founded on the Taoist
mythology.
In accordance with the materialistic character of the
Taoist sect, nearly all the gods whom the Chinese regard
as presiding over their material interests originated with
this school. The god of rain, the god of fire, the god of
medicine, the god of agriculture, and the lares, or kitchen
gods, are among the principal of this class.
A system which supplies deities answering to the lead-
ing wants and desires of mankind cannot be uninfluential ;
but, in addition to the strong motives that attract wor-
shippers to their temples, the Taoist priesthood possess
two independent sources of influence. They hold the
monopoly of geomancy, a superstitious art which pro-
fesses to select on scientific principles those localities that
184 THE LORE OF CATHAY
are most propitious for building and burial; and they
have succeeded in persuading the people that they alone
are able to secure them from annoyance by evil spirits.
The philosophy of Tao has thus not only given birth to a
religion, but degenerated into a system of magical impos-
ture, presided over by an arch-magician who lives in al-
most imperial state,* and sways the sceptre over the
spirits of the invisible world as the Emperor does over
the living population of the Empire.
As a religion, Buddhism seems to enjoy more of the
popular favor than Taoism ; though the former professes
to draw men away from the world and its vanities, while
the latter proffers the blessings of health, wealth, and
long life.
It is rare that we find a Buddhist temple of any con-
siderable reputation that is not situated in a locality dis-
tinguished for some feature of its natural scenery. One
situated in the midst of a dusty plain, not far from the
gates of Tientsin, seemed to us, when we first visited it,
to present an exception to the general rule. Subsequently,
however, a brilliant mirage, which we frequently saw as
we approached the temple, furnished us at once with the
explanation of its location and its name. It is called the
temple of the " Sea of Light ; " and its founders, no doubt,
placed it there in order that the deceptive mirage, which
is always visible in bright sunny weather, might serve its
contemplative inmates as a memento of the chief tenet of
their philosophy that all things are unreal, and human
life itself a shifting phantasmagoria of empty shadows.
Sequestered valleys enclosed by mountain-peaks, and
elevated far above the world which they profess to de-
* This is not quite true of the present High-priest, who is so
reduced in circumstances that he sometimes leaves his residence
in the Lung Hu mountains to raise money in wealthier regions.
THREE RELIGIONS OF CHINA 185
spise, are favorite seats for the monastic communities of
Buddhism. But it is no yearning after God that leads
them to court retirement; nor is it the adoration of na-
ture's Author that prompts them to place their shrines in
the midst of His sublimest works. To them the universe
is a vacuum, and emptiness the highest object of con-
templation.
They are a strange paradox religious atheists! Ac-
knowledging no First Cause or Conscious Ruling Power,
they hold that the human soul revolves perpetually in the
urn of fate, liable to endless ills, and enjoying no real
good. As it cannot cease to be, its only resource against
this state of interminable misery is the extinction of con-
sciousness a remedy which lies within itself, and which
they endeavour to attain by ascetic exercises.
Their daily prayers consist of endless repetitions, which
are not expected to be heard by the unconscious deity to
whom they are addressed, but are confessedly designed
merely to exert a reflex influence on the worshipper i. e.,
to occupy the mind with empty sounds and withdraw it
from thought and feeling. Ta Ma, one of their saints, is
said thus to have sat motionless for nine years with his
face to the wall ; not engaged, as a German would con-
jecture, in " thinking the wall," but occupied with the
more difficult task of thinking nothing at all.
Those in whom the discipline is complete are believed
to have entered the Nirvana not an Elysium of con-
scious enjoyment, but a negative state of exemption from
pain. Such is the condition of all the Buddhas, who,
though the name is taken to signify supreme intelligence,
are reduced to an empty abstraction in a state which is
described as pu sheng pu mich " neither life nor death ; "
and such is the aspiration of all their votaries. Melan-
choly spectacle! Men of acute minds, bewildered in the
1 86 THE LORE OF CATHAY
maze of their own speculations, and seeking to attain
perfection by stripping themselves of the highest attri-
butes of humanity!
As a philosophy, Buddhism resembles Stoicism in de-
riving its leading motive from the fear of evil. But
while the latter encased itself in panoply, and, standing
in martial attitude, defied the world to spoil the treasures
laid up in its bosom, the former seeks security by empty-
ing the soul of its susceptibilities and leaving nothing that
is capable of being harmed or lost i. e., treating the soul
as Epictetus is said to have done his dwelling-house, in
order that he might not be annoyed by the visits of
thieves. It dries up fhe sources of life, wraps the soul
in the cerements of the grave, and aims to convert a
living being into a spiritual mummy which shall survive
all changes without being affected by them.
This is the spirit and these the principles of esoteric
Buddhism as enunciated by those members of the inner
circle whose wan cheeks and sunken, rayless eyes indicate
that they are far advanced in the process of self-annihila-
tion. In their external manifestations they vary with
different schools and countries, the lamas of Tartary and
the sarmanas of Ceylon appearing to have little in
common.
To adapt itself to the comprehension of the masses,
Buddhism has personified its abstract conceptions and
converted them into divinities; while, to pave the way
for its easier introduction, it readily embraces the gods
and heroes of each country in its comprehensive pantheon.
In China the Nirvana was found to be too subtle an
idea for popular contemplation, and, in order to furnish
the people with a more attractive object of worship than
an unconscious deity, the Buddhists brought forward a
Goddess of Mercy, whose special merit was that, having
THREE RELIGIONS OF CHINA 187
reached the verge of Nirvana, she declined to enter, pre-
ferring to remain where she could hear the cries and suc-
cor the calamities of those who were struggling with the
manifold evils of a world of change. From this circum-
stance she is called the Ts'e Pei Kuan Yin, the " Merciful
Hearer of Prayers " of men.
This winning attribute meets a want of humanity, and
makes her a favorite among the votaries of the faith.
While the Three Buddhas hold a more prominent posi-
tion in the temple, she occupies the first place in the
hearts of their worshippers. Temples of a secondary
class are often devoted especially to her; and in the
greater ones she almost always finds a shrine or corner
where she is represented with a thousand hands ready to
succor human suffering, or holding in her arms a beauti-
ful infant, ready to confer the blessing of offspring on her
faithful worshippers in this last attribute resembling
the favorite object of popular worship in papal countries.
From which, indeed, there is reason, to believe she was
derived.
In the Sea-light Monastery above referred to, she ap-
pears in a large side hall, habited in a cloak, her head en-
circled by an inscription in gilded characters which pro-
claims her as the " Goddess whose favor protects the
second birth." This language seems to express a Chris-
tian thought; but in reality nothing could be more in-
tensely pagan. It relates to the transmigration of souls,
which is the fundamental doctrine of the system ; and in-
forms the visitor that this is the divinity to whom he is
to look for protection in passing through the successive
changes of his future existence.
Within the mazes of that mighty labyrinth, there is
room for every condition of life on earth, and for purga-
tories and paradises innumerable besides. Beyond these
1 88 THE LORE OF CATHAY
the common Buddhist never looks. To earn by works
of merit which play an important part in the modified
system the reversion of a comfortable mandarinate, or
a place in the " Paradise of the Western Sky," bounds
his aspirations. And to escape from having their souls
pounded in a spiritual mortar, or ground between spiritual
millstones in Hades; or avoid the doom of dwelling in
the body of a brute on earth, constitutes with the ignor-
ant the strongest motive to deter them from vice those
and a -thousand other penalties being set forth by pictures
and rude casts to impress the minds of such as are unable
to read.
Buddhism was little known in China prior to A. D., 66.
During an eclipse of Confucianism that lasted two cen-
turies caused by its proscription, on political grounds,
the Emperor Ming Ti sent an embassy to invite priests
from India, and the triad of religions was completed.
He is said to have been prompted to this by a remarkable
dream. He had seen, he said to his courtiers, a man of
gold, holding in his hand a bow and two arrows. They,
recognizing in these objects the elements of Fo the
name of Buddha as it is written in the Chinese language
expounded the dream as an intimation that the Bud-
dhist religion ought to be introduced. The story of the
dream is evidently of later growth, but it is interesting
to speculate as to what the condition of China might
have been if the ambassadors, instead of stopping in In-
dia, had proceeded to Palestine. As it is, the success of
Buddhism demonstrates the possibility of a foreign faith
taking root in the soil of China.
The San Chiao, or Three Religions, have now passed in
revision. We have viewed them, however, owing to the
limits of our space, only in outline, neither allowing our-
THREE RELIGIONS OF CHINA 189
selves, on the one hand, to follow up those superstitious
practices which attach themselves to the several schools
like the moss and ivy that festoon the boughs of aged
trees, nor, on the other, to enter into a minute investiga-
tion of those systems of philosophy in which they have
their root. The fact that each takes its rise in a school
of philosophy is significant of the tendencies of human
thought.
The Confucian philosophy in its prominent character-
istics was ethical, occupying itself mainly with social re-
lations and civil duties, shunning studiously all questions
that enter into ontological subtleties or partake of the
marvelous and the supernatural.
The philosophy of Tao as developed by the followers
of Laotze, if not in the form in which it was left by
their master, may be characterized as physical. For the
individual it prescribed a physical discipline; and, with-
out any conception of true science, it was filled with the
idea of inexhaustible resources, hidden in the elements
of material nature.
The Buddhist philosophy was pre-eminently metaphy-
sical. Originating with a people who, far more than the
Chinese, are addicted to abstruse speculations, it occu-
pied itself with subtle inquiries into the nature and facul-
ties of the human mind, the veracity of its perceptions,
and the grounds of our delusive faith in the independent
existence of an external world.
These three philosophies, differing thus widely in their
essential character one being thoroughly material, an-
other purely ideal, and the third repudiating all such
questions and holding itself neutral and indifferent yet
exhibit some remarkable points of agreement. They
agree in the original omission or negation of religious
igo THE LORE OF CATHAY
ideas; and they coincide no less remarkably in evolving
each, from its negative basis, a system of religion ; and
in contributing each its quota to the popular idolatry.
Confucius " seldom spoke of the divinities/' and
taught his disciples to " keep them at a distance ; " and
yet the forms of respect which he enjoined for deceased
ancestors led to their virtual deification, and promoted,
if it did not originate, the national hero-worship. Like
Comte the modern apostle of positivism, who professed
to occupy himself wholly with positive ideas, he was
unable to satisfy the cravings of his spiritual nature with-
out having recourse to a religion of humanity.
The Buddhist creed denies alike the reality of the ma-
terial world and the existence of an overruling mind ; yet
it has peopled an ideal universe with a race of ideal gods,
all of whom are entities in the belief- of the vulgar.
The Taoist creed acknowledges no such category as
that of spirit in contradistinction from matter ; yet it
swarms heaven and earth with tutelar spirits whom the
people regard as divine.
We see here a process directly the reverse of that which
certain writers of modern Europe assert to be the natural
progress of the human mind. According to them, men
set out with the belief of many gods, whom they at length
reduce to unity, and finally supersede by recognizing the
laws of nature as independent of a personal administrator.
The worship of one God is the oldest recorded form of
Chinese religion, and idolatry is an innovation. Even
now new idols are constantly taking their place in the
national pantheon ; and so strong is the tendency in this
direction that in every case where philosophy has laid the
foundation, idolatry has come in to complete the structure.
It is incorrect to assert that any one of the San Chiao
is a State religion to the exclusion of the others, though
THREE RELIGIONS OF CHINA 191
the Confucian is sometimes so regarded on account of its
greater influence with the ruling classes and its marked
prominence in connection with State ceremonials. Not
only are they all recognized and tolerated, but they all
share the Imperial patronage. The shrines of each of the
Three Religions are often erected by Imperial munificence,
and their priests and sacred rites provided for at the Im-
perial expense with impartial liberality.
Not only do they co-exist without conflict in the Em-
pire, but they exercise a joint sway over almost every
mind in its immense population. It is impossible to ap-
portion the people among these several creeds. They are
all Confucians, all Buddhists, all Taoists. They all rever-
ence Confucius and worship their ancestors all partici-
pate in the " feast of hungry ghosts," and employ the
Buddhist burial-service ; and all resort to the magical
devices of the Taoists to protect themselves against the
assaults of evil spirits, or secure " good luck " in busi-
ness. They celebrate their marriages according to the
Confucian rites; in building their houses, they ask the
advice of a Taoist ; -and in cases of alarming illness em-
ploy him to exorcise evil spirits. At death they commit
their souls to the keeping of the Buddhists. The people
assert, and with truth, that these religions, originally
three, have become one ; and they are accustomed to sym-
bolize this unity by erecting San Chiao T'ang, Temples of
the Three Religions, in which Confucius and Laotze ap-
pear on the right and left of Buddha, as forming a triad of
sages. This arrangement, however, gives great offense
to some of the more zealous disciples of Confucius ; and
a few years ago a memorial was presented to the Em-
peror, praying him to demolish the San Chiao T'ang,
which stood near the tomb of their great teacher, who has
" no equal but Heaven."
I9 2 THE LORE OF CATHAY
The effects of this coalition may be traced in their litera-
ture as well as in the manners and customs of the people.
Of this, one example will suffice, though we might go on,
if space permitted, to show how freely the later works of
each school appropriate the phraseology of the others,
and to point out the extent to which the general language
of the country has been enriched by a vocabulary of relig-
ious terms, chiefly of Buddhist origin, all of which are
incorporated in the Imperial Dictionary and pass as cur-
rent coin in the halls of the literary tribunal.
In the Liao Chai, a collection of tales, there is a story
which owes its humor to the bizarre intermixture of ele-
ments from each of the Three Religions.
A young nobleman, riding out, hawk in hand, is thrown
from his horse and taken up for dead. On being con-
veyed to his house, he opens his eyes and gradually re-
covers his bodily strength ; but, to the grief of his family,
he is hopelessly insane. He fancies himself a Buddhist
priest, repels the caresses of the ladies of his harem, and
insists on being conveyed to a distant province, where he
affirms he has passed his life in a monastery. On arriv-
ing he proves himself to be the abbot; and the mystery
of his transfiguration is at once solved.
He had led a dissolute life, and his flimsy soul, unable
to sustain the shock of death, was at once dissipated. The
soul of a priest who had just expired happened to be float-
ing by, and, led by that desire to inhabit a body which
some say impelled the devils to enter the herd of swine,
it took possession of the still warm corpse.
The young nobleman was a Confucian of the modern
type. The idea of the soul changing its earthly tenement
is Buddhistic. And that which rendered the metamor-
phosis possible, without waiting for another birth, was
the Taoist doctrine that the soul is dissolved with the
THREE RELIGIONS OF CHINA 193
body, unless it be purified and concentrated by vigorous
discipline.
It is curious to inquire on what principles this recon-
ciliation has been effected. Have the three creeds
mingled together like the three gases in the atmosphere,
each contributing some ingredient to the composition of a
vital fluid ; or blended like the three primary colors of the
spectrum, imparting their own hues in varying propor-
tions ; but all present at every point ? It is not a healthy
atmosphere that supplies the breath of the new-born soul
in China ; not a pure and steady light that meets its open-
ing eyes. Yet each of these systems meets a want; and
the whole, taken together, supplies the cravings of nature
as well perhaps as any creed not derived from a divine
revelation.
The Three Religions are not, as the natives thought-
lessly assume, identical in signification and differing only
in their mode of expression. As we have already seen, it
is hardly possible to conceive of three creeds more totally
distinct or radically antagonistic; and yet, to a certain
extent, they are supplementary. And to this it is that they
owe their union and their permanence.
Confucius gave his people an elaborate theory of their
social organization and civil polity ; but when they looked
abroad on nature with its unsolved problems, they were
unable to confine their thoughts within the limits of his
cautious positivism. They were fascinated by mystery,
and felt that in nature there were elements of the super-
natural which they could not ignore, even if they did not
understand them. Hence the rise of Taoism, captivating
the imagination by its hierarchy of spirits and personified
powers, and meeting, in some degree, the longing for a
future life by maintaining, though under hard conditions,
the possible achievement of a corporeal immortality.
194 THE LORE OF CATHAY
With the momentous question of existence suspended on
this bare possibility, Buddhism came to them like an evan-
gel of hope, assuring every man of an inalienable interest
in a life to come. It gave them a better psychology of the
human mind than they had before possessed; afforded a
plausible explanation of the inequalities in the condition
of men ; and, by the theory of metempsychosis, seemed to
reveal the link that connects man with the lower animals,
on the one hand, and with the gods, on the other. No
wonder it excited the popular mind to a pitch of enthusi-
asm, and provoked the adherents of the other creeds to
virulent opposition.
Taoism, as opposed to it, became more decidedly mate-
rial, and Confucianism more positively atheistic. The dis-
ciples of the latter especially assailed it with acrimonious
controversy denying, though they had hitherto been
silent on such questions, the personality of God and the
future life of the human soul.
Now, however, the effervescence of passion has died
away the antagonistic elements have long since neutra-
lized each other, and the three creeds have subsided into a
stable equilibrium, or rather become compacted into a firm
conglomerate. The ethical, the physical, and the meta-
physical live together in harmony. The school that denies
the existence of matter, that which occupies itself wholly
with the properties of matter, and that, again, which de-
nounces the subtleties of both and builds on ethics, have
ceased their controversies. One deriving its motive from
the fear of death, another actuated by a dread of the evils
attendant on human life, and the third absorbed in the
present and indifferent alike to hope or fear, all are ac-
cepted with equal faith by an unreasoning populace.
Without perceiving their points of discrepancy, or under-
standing the manner in which they supplement each other,
THREE RELIGIONS OF CHINA 195
they accept each as answering to certain cravings of their
inward nature, and blend them all in a huge heterogene-
ous and incongruous creed. It may help to reconcile ap-
parently contradictory statements to remember that each
of the three systems appears under a twofold aspect first
as an esoteric philosophy, afterwards as a popular religion.
Thus a chief object of the Buddhist discipline was the
extinction of consciousness. Yet the Chinese embraced it
as their best assurance of a future life. What the philoso-
pher was anxious to cast away, the populace were eager
to possess.
It would be interesting to inquire, had we sufficient
space, what have been the intellectual and moral influ-
ences of these several systems, separate and combined.
They have, it is true", given rise to various forms of de-
grading superstition, and, supporting instead of destroy-
ing each other, they bind the mind of the nation in three-
fold fetters ; still, we are inclined to think that each has
served a useful purpose in the long education of the
Chinese people, and that each represents a distinct stage
in the progress of religious thought. Buddhism vastly en-
larged their religious conceptions. Their ideas, to borrow
a mathematical illustration, were limited, prior to the in-
troduction of Buddhism, to two dimensions, to some-
thing that may be described as a " flat-land," with length
and breadth, but no height. Buddhism gave it height,
soaring up to the heavens and developing a view of the
universe, the grandeur of which, perhaps, nothing can
exceed. Is it possible that, after this universe of three
dimensions, we shall have one of four dimensions ? There
is, in my view, room for the fourth dimension, or (to
drop the figure) there is room for a fourth stage in the
progression, one which China is waiting for. Christi-
anity alone can supply the defects of all the systems, and
196 THE LORE OF CATHAY
present one harmonious unity. They are now offered a
better faith one which is consistent with itself and ade-
quate to satisfy all their spiritual necessities. Will they
receive it? The habit of receiving such contradictory
systems has rendered their minds almost incapable of
weighing evidence; and they never ask concerning a re-
ligion " is it true? " but " is it good? " Christianity, how-
ever, with its exclusive and peremptory claims, has already
begun to arouse their attention ; and when the spirit of
inquiry is once thoroughly awakened, the San Chiao, or
Three Creeds, will not long sustain the ordeal.
NOTE I
THE EMPEROR AT THE ALTAR OF HEAVEN
THE Roman Emperors always associated with their
other titles that of Pontifex Maximus ; and the
Sovereigns of China have from time immemorial
acted as High Priests of the empire.
It was in that capacity that His Majesty Kuang Hsu
officiated at the Temple of Heaven on the 22nd December,
1887, for the first time, on the occasion of the solstitial
sacrifices. On the previous day, he proceeded to the
Temple with great pomp, accompanied by the grandees of
the Court, three elephants harnessed to as many chariots
appearing in the procession. Having prepared himself
by a night spent in fasting and meditation to approach
the presence of the King of Kings, he prostrated himself
nine times before a tablet inscribed with the name of
Shang Ti, and offered an ox, the bones of the victim being
consumed in a furnace.
As to the herd of common gods, the Emperor can make
THREE RELIGIONS OF CHINA 197
and unmake them at will. He even assumes to decide
whether a living Buddha shall or shall not have the privi-
lege of re-appearing in another body ; but in the presence
of Shang Ti, the master of China's millions abases him-
self in the dust, and confesses himself a subject of law.
When the Taiping rebellion was at its height in 1853,
the Emperor Hsien Feng repaired to the Altar of Heaven,
confessed his sins, and implored on behalf of his suffering
people the compassion of the Sovereign of the Universe.
By this act, he acknowledged that he ruled by delegated
authority, and that he was answerable for its proper use.
The same idea is impressively set forth by a row of
iron censers, ranged around the foot of the altar. In
these, it is not strips of mimic gold that are consumed,
nor sticks of incense, but long lists of the names of crim-
inals condemned to death, the smoke and flame rising up
to Heaven, appealing for ratification or redress to the
Supreme Court of the Universe.
The Emperor is a monotheist, because there is only one
God sufficiently exalted to be to him an object of worship
in the highest sense; for, though he does worship at the
shrines of other divinities, to none but Shang Ti does
he employ the humble style of a servant, and he, if not the
only worshipper of Shang Ti, is the only one who is per-
mitted to make use of the prescribed ritual. For any one
else to presume to imitate that ritual would be an act of
high treason, as it could have but one meaning, that of
an intention to usurp the prerogatives and to seize the
throne of the sovereign. The only instance of this which
we have on record except in cases of overt rebellion
is that of the Prince of Ch'in erecting an altar to Shang
Ti, some 2,500 years ago. The act betokened a disposi-
tion on his part to seize the falling crown of the Chous,
which one of his descendants actually accomplished. The
198 THE LORE OF CATHAY
Chou Emperor in the meantime tolerated the abuse, be-
cause he lacked the power to punish so great a vassal.
The antiquity of this Imperial rite is not the least in-
teresting of its features. It goes back to the first of the
Three Dynasties, to a date when Melchisedek combined
with his kingly office that of " Priest of the Most High
God." In that day, there was no Buddhism, no Taoism ;
but, whether that primitive worship connects itself with a
purer form of partriarchal faith, or whether, as Emerson
expresses it
" Up from the heart of nature came,
Like the volcano's tongue of flame "
I shall not undertake to determine.
The idea of the offerings on this occasion is that of a
banquet, in which the spirit of the Supreme condescends
to accept entertainment at the hand of a mortal. He is
accompanied by eight imperial guests, the ancestors of
the officiating sovereign, who, like Wen Wang in the
Book of Odes, are regarded as favored guests in the
Court of Heaven.
The august pageant is withheld from eyes profane ; and
of course all foreigners in Peking are officially invited to
be absent.
I do not, accordingly, profess to give you the observa-
tions of an eye-witness ; though I have perhaps as good a
right to do so as certain war correspondents have had,
to depict a battle-scene, when they have viewed the smoke
at a distance. I have seen the altar; and I have at this
moment the ritual of the day before my eyes. But it
would not add much to the interest of my readers to have
a libretto of the nine pieces of sacred music, or an in-
ventory of the subordinate offerings which accompany
the Fan Niu, or ox of burnt sacrifice.
THREE RELIGIONS OF CHINA 199
NOTE II
THE DUKE OF K'UNG SUCCESSOR OF CONFUCIUS
THE Peking Gazette contains the following obituary
announcement, in the usual form of an Imperial
decree : " The Duke K'ung Hsiang K'o, lineal
successor of the Holy Sage, has departed this life. Let
the proper Board report as to the marks of Imperial favor
to be accorded in connection with the funeral rites."
The Duke was about twenty-six years of age, and a
descendant of Confucius at a remove of more than sev-
enty generations. The last on the family record published
in the last century was the seventy-first. Of his personal
character we know nothing, save that he once admitted a
company of foreigners, the Rev. Dr. Williamson and
others, into his presence, and treated them with great
urbanity. What interests us more, and furnishes the sole
reason for chronicling his death, whether in these lines
or in the still briefer notice in the Peking Gazette, is his
representative character. K'ung Hsiang K'o was head of
the Confucian clan, and as such he enjoyed the dignities
and emoluments of a noble of the first class.
Hereditary rank makes so small a figure in the ad-
ministration of the Chinese government that we some-
times hear it asserted that there is no such thing in China.
Now, those who hazard this assertion, not only leave out
of view the feudal organization of the Manchu and Mon-
gol races, but forget the sonorous titles prefixed to the
names of some of the leading Chinese statesmen of the
present day. We can scarcely take up. a number of the
Peking Gazette without being reminded that Li Hung
Chang is an earl, of the first grade ; and a few years ago
2OO
the title of marquis, was made equally prominent in con-
nection with the name of the late eminent Tseng Kuo Fan
and his equally distinguished son. In a word, all the
five degrees of hereditary nobility which were in use three
thousand years ago are to be found (by searching) among
the Chinese of to-day ; but with this important difference,
that they no longer imply the possession of landed estates
or territorial jurisdiction. Leaving the secular peerage
of China proper, as well as that of the dominant race, to
be treated by some one who has leisure and inclination for
the subject, we propose to devote a few paragraphs to
what we venture to denominate the sacred heraldry of the
Empire.
Many years ago, in the course of an overland journey
from Peking to Shanghai, the writer turned aside to visit
the tomb of Confucius. It was an impressive spectacle to
see the heads of the various branches into which the clan
is divided performing their semi-monthly devotions be-
fore the tablet of their illustrious ancestor. Many of these
discharge official duties, and constitute a kind of priest-
hood in the temple of the Sage; their appointments,
whether hereditary or otherwise, are duly recorded in the
Red Book, or official register. The chief of the tribe is
known as Yen Sheng K'ung, the Duke of the Holy Suc-
cession a succession which is older in generations than
most aged men are in the reckoning of years. There
are Jewish families who can boast a longer pedigree
running back, perhaps, to the return from captivity, B. c.
536; but where, out of China, shall we look for a family
whose nobility has a history of twenty centuries?
The first hereditary distinction was conferred on the
senior member of the house of K'ung by the founder of
the Han dynasty, B. c. 202. The title was at first the
THREE RELIGIONS OF CHINA 201
vague designation of chun, prince, and coupled with the
charge of the ancestral temple. This was exchanged for
the more distinguishing title of hou, marquis, by order
of Wu Ti, of the same dynasty. The later Chou, A. D.
550, substituted the title of K'ung, duke ; but in the next
dynasty, that of Sui, it reverted to marquis, and so con-
tinued through the three centuries of the T'angs. At the
accession of the Sung, the heir of Confucius was again
raised to the dignity of duke a rank which he has re-
tained without material variation for more than eight
centuries.
In the topographical and genealogical histories we are
favored with biographical sketches of the individual links
in this long chain; but through them all there runs a
thread of dreary monotony. In earlier ages, the house
of K'ung did indeed produce a few men of exceptional
eminence in letters and in politics. They are not, how-
ever, always found in the line of primogeniture, and, in
the rare instances in which titled heads have distinguished
themselves, we have to recognize the stimulating influence
of court life, from which they were not yet excluded.
Under the existing regime, the succession presents us
no name of note; a result more due to want of oppor-
tunity than to any deterioration of race, for, according
to some observers, the blood of Confucius continues to
assert itself in the superior development of his posterity.
But what are we to expect when a family is rooted to
the soil of a cemetery but that it should become as barren
as the cypress that overhangs it?
The Dukes of K'ung are strictly relegated to the vicinity
of their sacerdotal charge, and are not at liberty to visit
the capital without express permission from the throne.
We recall the late Duke's application for leave to pros-
202 THE LORE OF CATHAY
trate himself before the sarcophagus of the Emperor
Tung Chili, certainly the last and probably the only oc-
casion on which he ever entered the walls of Peking.
The family estate, it must be confessed, is large enough
to gratify the ambition and employ the energies of an
ordinary mortal, amounting (for it is not all in one
place) to an area of not less than 165,000 acres.
And as for honors, the country nobleman has much
to console him for the privations of provincial life ; the
Governor of. the province, it is said, being required to
approach him with the same forms of homage which he
renders to the Son of Heaven. Numerous offices of in-
ferior dignity are conferred on other members of the
clan, constituting it a kind of Levitical order; but it is
pleasing to remark that these tokens of a nation's undy-
ing gratitude are not limited to the lineage of Confucius.
Around the grand luminary there moved a cluster of
satellites, which drank in his beams and propagated his
light.
The chief of these Yen, Tseng, Sze, Meng, as the
Chinese concisely call them, and a few others, continued
to be honored in the same way, though not to the same
degree, as the Sage himself. Inseparable attendants of
the Sage, in all his temples, at least one of which exists
in every district of the Empire, each of them enjoys the
honor of a separate shrine, and some of his posterity de-
rive their subsistence from the charge of it. In the city
of Chii Fu, a conspicuous inscription points out the spot
where Yen Hui, in the midst of poverty, presented a
face ever radiant with joy, because his soul was filled
with divine philosophy. Hard by stands a magnificent
mausoleum to the man who never wrote a book and never
performed any great exploit ; but who embodied in his
own practice more perfectly than any other the precepts
THREE RELIGIONS OF CHINA 203
of his Master. In the adjoining district of Tsou Hsien
stands a temple to Mencius, the St. Paul of Confucianism,
who, though he entered the world too late to enjoy the
personal teachings of the Great Sage, did more than any
other to give them shape and currency. Not far away,
in the same city, stands a somewhat dilapidated temple of
T'ze Sze, the master of Mencius, and the grandson of
Confucius. Though in the direct line, the Chinese have
not been willing to merge his name and fame in those
of his ancestor; but have taken effectual measures for
testifying to all generations their reverence for the author
of the Chung Yung, or " Golden Mean."
The whole region surrounding the temple of Confucius
is dotted over by the tombs of ancient worthies ; and it is
touching to see with what sacred care their descendants
cherish the fire on their altars. Under various designa-
tions they have discharged these offices for more than
seventy, and in one instance for nearly a hundred, genera-
tions ; but their present titles date from the Ming dynasty.
The founder of the Mings, an unlettered warrior, who
never read the Four Books until he was seated on the
throne and had Liu Chi for a teacher, conferred certain
honors on the descendants of Yen Hui and Mencius.
His successors ordered that representatives of fifteen of
the disciples of Confucius should be enrolled in the Hanlin
College, and invested with the office of professors and
curators of the Five Classics.
Nor is it only the Great Sage and his disciples who
enjoy the distinction of a memorial temple, a State ritual,
and an hereditary priesthood ; all these are accorded to the
Duke of Chou, whom Confucius revered as a master and
imitated as a model. Chou Kung died more than five
hundred years before the birth of Confucius; but the
later Sage not only professed to have caught his inspira-
204 THE LORE OF CATHAY
tion from the earlier, but in one of his most touching
speeches he gave it as a mark of decaying nature that
he had " ceased to dream of Chou Kung."
It is not surprising, therefore, that the family of the
virtuous Regent of China's typical dynasty should have
some small part in the cloud of incense which China offers
to the pioneers of her civilization. Their claim to it was
eloquently advocated by one of his descendants when the
Emperor Kang Hsi visited the " sacred soil of Lu," and
promptly recognized by that enlightened monarch. None
of these venerated shades is regarded as exercising a
tutelar guardianship over the Empire, or over any part
of it. Their temples, though vulgar superstitions have
gathered round them, are essentially memorial, and the
worship wholly commemorative. It is thus that China
has sought to mould her children into one family and to
secure the stability of society by binding it to the tradi-
tions of the past.
The representatives of these families, as we have said,
are a priesthood rather than a nobility ; but so closely are
the two ideas associated in the Chinese mind that a writer
of these family histories finds in ancestral worship the
origin of feudal dignities. His philosophy is at fault;
but it is gratifying to observe that, while the feudal lords
of China have gone under in the struggle for existence,
the only vestiges of the ancient nobility (the secular are
all new) are those which cluster round the memories of
the wise and good.
XII
THE ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF THE CHINESE
WIDELY as the Chinese have departed from the
meagre outline of a religious system left them
by Confucius, they have generally adhered to
his moral teachings. Developed by his followers, re-
ceived by the suffrages of the whole people, and enforced
by the sanctions of the Three Religions, the principles
which he inculcated may be said to have moulded the
social life of nearly one-third of the human family. These
are nowhere to be found digested into a scientific form,
but diffused through the mingled masses of physics and
metaphysics which compose the Hsing Li Ta Chiian, En-
cyclopaedia of Philosophy, or sparkling in the detached
apothegms of " The Sages." Happily for our convenience
we have them brought to a focus in the chart, a translation
of which is given below.
We shall confine ourselves to the task of explaining this
important document, as the best method of exhibiting
the system in its practical influence ; though an independ-
ent view might afford freer scope for discussing its prin-
ciples.
This chart is anonymous ; but the want of a name de-
tracts nothing from its value. The author has no merit
beyond the idea of presenting the subject in a tabular
view, and the pictorial taste with which he has executed
the design. Of the ethical system so exhibited he origi-
nated nothing; and the popularity of his work is due
205
2o6 THE LORE OF CATHAY
mainly to the fact that it is regarded as a faithful synopsis
of the Confucian morals.
The half-illuminated sphere prefixed to the chart is a
mere embellishment having scarcely more connection with
its subject-matter than the royal coat-of-arms stamped
on the title-page of some editions has with the contents
of King James's Bible. It represents the mundane egg,
or mass of chaotic matter, containing Yin and Yang, the
seminal principles from whose action and reaction all
things were evolved.
Part I. is an epitome of the Ta Hsileh, the first of the
four chief canonical books of the Chinese, and the most
admired production of their great philosopher.
Voluminous as an editor, piously embalming the relics
of antiquity, Confucius occupies but a small space as an
author; a slender compend of history and this little tract
of a few hundred words being the only original works
which emanated from his own pen. The latter, the title
of which signifies the " Great Study," is prized so highly
for the elegance of its style and the depth of its wisdom
that it may often be seen inscribed in letters of gold, and
suspended as an ornamental tableau in the mansions of
the rich. It treats of the Practice of Virtue and the Art
of Government; and in the following table these two
subjects are arranged in parallel columns. In the first
we have the lineaments of a perfect character superscribed
by the word Sheng, a " Holy Sage," the name which the
Chinese give to their ideal. In the other we have a cata-
logue of the social virtues as they spread in widening
circles through the family, the neighborhood, the State,
and the world. These are ranged under Wang, the " Em-
peror," whose duty it is to cherish them in his subjects,
the force of example being his chief instrument, and the
cultivation of personal virtue his first obligation. The
ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF CHINESE
207
I
THE LORE OF CATHAY
ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF CHINESE 209
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THE LORE OF CATHAY
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ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF CHINESE 211
passage which is here analyzed, and which constitutes the
foundation of the whole treatise, is the following:
" Those ancient princes who desired to promote the
practice of virtue throughout the world first took care to
govern their own states. In order to govern their states,
they first regulated their own families. In order to regu-
late their families, they first practiced virtue in their own
persons. In order to the practice of personal virtue, they
first cultivated right feeling. In order to insure right
feeling, they first had sincerity of purpose. In order to
secure sincerity of purpose, they extended their knowl-
edge. Knowledge is enlarged by inquiring into the na-
ture of things."
This converging series is beautiful. However widely
the branches may extend, the quality of their fruit is de-
termined by the common root. Virtue in the State depends
on virtue in the family, that of the family on that of
the individual ; and individual virtue depends not only on
right feelings and proper motives, but, as a last condi-
tion, on right knowledge. Nor is there anything in which
Confucius more strikingly exhibits the clearness of his
perceptions than in indicating the direction in which this
indispensable intelligence is to be sought viz., in the
nature of things; in understanding the relations which
the individual sustains to society and the universe. The
knowledge of these is truth, conformity to them is virtue ;
and moral obligations, Confucius appears, with Dr.
Samuel Clarke, to have derived from a perception of these
relations, and a sense of inherent fitness in the nature of
things. Just at this point we have a notable hiatus. The
editor tells us the chapter on the " Study of Nature " is
wanting; and Chinese scholars have never ceased to de-
plore its loss.
But whatever of value to the student of virtue it may
212 THE LORE OF CATHAY
have contained, it certainly did not contain the " begin-
ning of wisdom." For skilfully as Confucius had woven
the chain of human relationships, he failed to connect the
last link with Heaven to point out the highest class of
our relations. Not only, therefore, is one grand division
of our duties a blank in his system, but it is destitute
of that higher light and those stronger motives which
are necessary to stimulate to the performance of the most
familiar offices.
A young mandarin who once said to me, in answer to
a question as to his object in life, that " he was desirous of
performing all his duties to God and man," was not
speaking in the language of the Confucian school. He
had been taught in a mission school and discovered a new
world in our moral relations which was unknown to the
ancient philosopher.
The principal relations of the individual to society are
copiously illustrated in this and the other classics. They
are five the governmental, parental, conjugal, fraternal,
and that of friendship. The first is the comprehensive
subject of the treatise; and in the second column of the
chart all the others are placed subordinate to it. The
last comprehends the principles which regulate general
intercourse. Conjugal fidelity, in the sense of chastity,
is made obligatory only on the female. Fraternal duty
requires a rigid subordination, according to the gradation
of age, which is aided by a peculiarity of language ; each
elder brother being called hsiung, and each younger ti; no
common designation, like that of " brother," placing them
on equal footing. This arrangement in the family Con-
fucius pronounces a discipline, in which respect is taught
for superiors in civil life ; and filial piety, he adds, is a
sentiment which a son who has imbibed it at home will
carry into the service of his prince.
ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF CHINESE 213
Nothing, in fact, is more characteristic of Chinese so-
ciety than the scope given to filial piety. Intensified into
a religious sentiment by the worship which he renders to
his ancestors, it leads the dutiful son to live and act in all
situations with reference to his parents. He seeks repu-
tation for the sake of reflecting honor upon them, and
dreads disgrace chiefly through fear of bringing reproach
on their name. An unkindness to a relative is a sin
against them, in forgetting the ties of a common ancestry ;
and even a violation of the law derives its turpitude
from exposing the parents of the offender to suffer with
him, in person or in reputation. It is thus analogous in
the universality of its application to the incentive which
the Christian derives from his relation to the " Father
of spirits;" and if inferior in its efficacy, it is yet lar
more efficacious than any which a pagan religion is
capable of supplying. Its various bearings are beautifully
traced by Confucius in a discourse which constitutes one
of the favorite text-books in the schools of China.
It is not the book, but the art of governing thus founded
on the practice of virtue, that is emphatically denomi-
nated the " Great Study ; " and this designation, express-
ing, as it does, the judgment of one from whose authority
there is no appeal, has contributed to give ethics a de-
cided preponderance among the studies of the Chinese.
Other sciences, in their estimation, may- be interesting as
sources of intellectual diversion or useful in a subordinate
degree, as promotive of material prosperity; but this is
the science, whose knowledge is wisdom, whose practice
is virtue, whose result is happiness. In the literary ex-
aminations, the grand object of which is the selection of
men who are qualified for the service of the government,
an acquaintance with subjects of this kind contributes
more to official promotion than all other intellectual ac-
214 THE LORE OF CATHAY
quirements ; and when the aspirant for honors has reached
the summit of the scale, and become a member of the
Privy Council or Premier of the Empire, he receives no
higher appellation than that of Ta Hsueh Shih a Doctor
of the Great Study, an adept in the art of Government.
The Chinese Empire has never realized the Utopia of
Confucius; but his maxims have influenced its policy to
such an extent that in the arrangements of the govern-
ment a marked preference is given to moral over material
interests. Indeed, it would be hard to overestimate the
influence which has been exerted by this little schedule of
political ethics, occupying, as it has, so prominent a place
in the Chinese mind for four-and-twenty centuries
teaching the people to regard the Empire as a vast family,
and the Emperor to rule by moral influence, making the
goal of his ambition not the wealth, but the virtue, of his
subjects. It is certain that the doctrines which it em-
bodies have been largely efficient in rendering China what
she is, the most ancient and the most populous of exist-
ing nations.
Part II. is chiefly interesting for the views it presents
of the condition of human nature. It is not, as its title
would seem to indicate, a map of the moral faculties ; but
simply a delineation of the two ways which invite the
footsteps of every human pilgrim. On the one hand
are traced the virtues that conduct to happiness ; on the
other the vices that lead to misery. Over the former is
written Tao Hsin, " Wisdom Heart," and over the latter,
Jen Hsin, " Human Heart," as descriptive of the disposi-
tions from which they respectively proceed.
These terms, with the two sentences of the chart in
which they occur, originated in the Shu King, one of the
oldest of the sacred books, and are there ascribed to the
Emperor Shun, who filled the throne about B. c. 2100.
ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF CHINESE 215
Quaint and ill-defined, they have been retained in use
through this long period as a simple expression for an
obvious truth, recording as the result of a nation's ex-
perience that " to err is human." They contain no nice
distinction as to the extent to which our nature is infected
with evil ; but intimate that its general condition is such
that the word human may fairly be placed in antithesis
to wisdom and virtue.
Yet the prevailing view of human nature maintained by
Chinese ethical writers is that of its radical goodness.
Though less ancient than the other, this latter is by no
means a modern opinion ; and it is not a little remarkable
that some of those questions which agitated the Christian
Church in the fifth century were discussed in China nearly
a thousand years before. They were not broached by
Confucius. His genius was not inquisitive ; he was rather
an architect seeking to construct a noble edifice, than a
chemist testing his materials by minute analysis. And if
norie are philosophers but those who follow the clew of
truth through the mazes of psychological and metaphysical
speculation, then he has no right to the title; but if one
who loves wisdom, perceiving it by intuition and recom-
mending it with authority, be a philosopher, there are
few on the roll of time who deserve a higher position.
He was, as Sir J. Mackintosh says of Socrates, " much
more a teacher of virtue, than even a searcher after
truth." .
The next age, however, was characterized by a spirit of
investigation which was due to his influence only as the
intellectual impulse which he communicated set it to think-
ing. The moral quality of human nature became a prin-
cipal subject of discussion ; and every position admitted
by the subject was successively occupied by some leading
mind. Tz'e Sze, the grandson of the Sage, advanced a
2i6 THE LORE OF CATHAY
theory which implied the goodness of human nature ; but
Mencius, his disciple (B. c. 317), was the first who dis-
tinctly enunciated the doctrine. Kaotze, one of his
contemporaries, maintained that nature is destitute of an>
moral tendency, and wholly passive under the plastic hand
of education. A discussion arose between them, a frag-
ment of which, preserved in the works of Mencius, will
serve to exhibit their mode of disputation, as well as the
position of the parties.
" Nature," said Kaotze, " is a stick of timber, and good-
ness is the vessel that is carved out of it."
" The wooden bowl," replied Mencius, " is not a natural
product of the timber; but the tree requires to be de-
stroyed in order to produce it. Is it necessary to destroy
man's nature in order to make him good? "
" Then," said Kaotze, varying his illustration, " human
nature may be compared with a stream of water. Open
a sluice to the east, and it flows to the east; open one
to the west, it flows to the westward. Equally indifferent
is human nature with regard to good and evil."
" Water," rejoined Mencius, " is indifferent as to the
east or the west ; but has it no choice between up and
down? Now human nature inclines to good, as water
does to run downward. The evil it does is the effect of
interference, just as water may be forced to run up hill.
Man," he repeats, with rhetoric slightly at variance with
his philosophy, " inclines to virtue, as water does to
flow downward, or as the wild beast does to seek the
forest."
A few years later, Hsiintze, an acute and powerful
writer, took the ground that human nature is evil. The
influence of education he extolled in even higher terms
than Kaotze, maintaining that whatever good it pro-
duces, it achieves by a triumph over nature, which is
217
taught to yield obedience to the dictates of prudence.
Virtue is the slow result of teaching, and vice the spon-
taneous fruit of neglected nature.
Yangtze, about the commencement of the Christian
era, endeavored to combine these opposite views; each
contained important truth, but neither of them the whole
truth. While human nature possessed benevolent affec-
tions and a conscience approving of good, it had also
perverse desires and a will that chose the evil. It was
therefore both bad and good ; and the character of each
individual took its complexion, as virtuous or vicious, ac-
cording to the class of qualities most cultivated.
In the great controversy, Mencius gained the day. The
two authors last named were placed on the Index Expur-
gatorius of the literary tribunal ; and the advocate of hu-
man nature was promoted to the second place among the
oracles of the Empire for having added a new doctrine
or developed a latent one in the Confucian system. This
tenet is expressed in the first line of the San Tze Ching, an
elementary book, which is committed to memory by every
schoolboy in China Jen chih ch'u hsin pen shan " Man
commences life with a virtuous nature." But notwith-
standing this addition to the national creed, the ancient
aphorism of Shun is still held in esteem ; and a genuine
Confucian, in drawing a genealogical tree of the vices,
still places the root of evil in the human heart.
To remove this contradiction, Chu Hsi, the authorized
expositor of the classics, devised a theory somewhat simi-
lar to Plato's account of the origin of evil. It evidently
partakes of the three principal systems above referred to ;
professing, according to the first, to vindicate the original
goodness of human nature, yet admitting, with another,
that it contains some elements of evil and thus virtually
symbolizing with the third, which represents it as of a
218 THE LORE OF CATHAY
mixed character. " The bright principle of virtue," he
says in his notes on the Ta Hsiich, " man derives from his
heavenly origin ; his pure spirit, when undarkened, com-
prehends all truth, and is adequate to every occasion.
But it is obstructed by the physical constitution and be-
clouded by the animal (lit. jcn yil the human) desires,
so that it becomes obscure."
The source of virtue, as indicated in the chart, is t'ai ho
" primordial harmony ; " and vice is ascribed to the
influence of um hslng " gross matter." The moral char-
acter is determined by the prevailing influence, and man-
kind are accordingly divided into three classes, which
are thus described in a popular formula : Men of the
first class are good without teaching ; those of the second
may be made good by teaching ; and the last will continue
bad in spite of teaching.
The received doctrine in relation to human nature does
not oppose such a serious obstacle as might at first be
imagined to the reception of Christianity, though there
is reason to fear that it may tinge the complexion of
Christian theology. The candid and thoughtful will rec-
ognize in the Bible a complete view of a subject which
their various theories had only presented in detached
fragments. In the state of primitive purity, it gives them
a heaven-imparted nature in its original perfection ; in
the supremacy of conscience, it admits a fact on which
they rely as the main support of their doctrine; in the
corruption of natuje, introduced by sin, it gives them a
class of facts to which their consciousness abundantly
testifies ; and in its plan for the restoration of the moral
ruin, it excites hope and satisfies reason.
The doctrine of human goodness, though supported by
a partial view of facts, seems rather to have been sug-
gested by views of expediency. Mencius denounced the
ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF CHINESE 219
tenets of Kaotze as pernicious to the cause of morality,
and he no doubt considered that to convince men that
they are endowed with a virtuous nature is the most
effectual method of encouraging them to the practice of
virtue. In the absence of revelation, there is nothing
better. But while faith in ourselves is a strong motive,
faith in God is a stronger one; and while the view that
man is endowed with a noble nature, which he only
needs to develop according to its own generous instincts,
is sublime, there is yet one which is more sublime viz.,
that while fallen man is striving for the recovery of his
divine original, he must work with fear and trembling,
because it is God that worketh in him.
Part III., the Chart of Moral Excellence as I have called
it (or, more literally, of that which is to be striven after
and held to), presents us with goodness in all its forms
known to the Chinese. It is chiefly remarkable for its
grouping, the entire domain being divided into five fami-
lies, each ranged under a parent virtue. The Greeks and
Romans reckoned four cardinal virtues; but a difference
in the mode of division implies no incompleteness in the
treatment of the subject. The Chinese do not, because
they count only twelve hours in the day instead of twenty-
four, pretermit any portion of time; neither, when they
number twenty-eight signs in the zodiac, instead of
twelve, do they assign an undue length to the starry
girdle of the heavens. The classification is arbitrary;
and Cicero makes four virtues cover the whole ground
which the Chinese moralist refers to five.
But while, in a formal treatise, definition and explana-
tion may supply the defects of nomenclature or arrange-
ment, the terms employed for the cardinal virtues, are
not without effect on the popular mind. In this respect
the Chinese have the advantage. Theirs are Jen, I, Li,
220 THE LORE OF CATHAY
Chih, Hsin Benevolence, Justice, Order,* Wisdom, Good
Faith. Those of Plato and Tully are Justice, Pru-
dence, Fortitude, and Temperance. In comparing these,
Prudence and Wisdom may be taken as identical, though
the former appears to be rather more circumscribed in its
sphere and tinged with the idea of self-interest. Tem-
perance and Order, as explained in the respective systems,
are also identical the Latin term contemplating man as
an individual, and the Chinese regarding him as a mem-
ber of society. The former, Cicero defines as TO irpen-ov,
and a sense of propriety or love of order is precisely the
meaning which the Chinese give to the latter. In the
European code, the prominence given to Fortitude is
characteristic of a martial people, among whom, at an
earlier period, under the name of ap^, it usurped the
entire realm of virtue. In the progress of society, it was
compelled to yield the throne to Justice and accept the
place of a vassal, both Greek and Latin moralists assert-
ing that no degree of courage which is not exerted in a
righteous cause is worthy of a better appellation than
audacity. They erred, therefore, in giving it the posi-
tion of a cardinal virtue, and the Chinese have exhibited
more discrimination by placing it in the retinue of Justice.
They describe it by two words, Chih and Yung. Con-
nected with the former, and explaining its idea, we read
the precept, " When you fail, seek help in yourself ; stand
firm to your post, and let no vague desires draw you from
it." Appended to the latter we have the injunction,
" When you see the right, do it ; when you know a fault,
* Though politeness is the common acceptation of the term as
expressing a regard for propriety in social intercourse, in Chinese
ethics it has a wider and higher signification. It is precisely
what Malebranche makes the basis of his moral system and
denominates " the love of universal order."
ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF CHINESE 221
correct it. Neither yield to excess, if rich, nor swerve
from right, if poor." What a noble conception of moral
courage, of true fortitude !
Benevolence and good faith which are quite subordinate
in the heathen systems of the West, in that of China
are each promoted to the leadership of a grand division.
In fact, the whole tone of the Chinese morals, as exhibited
in the names and order of their cardinal virtues, is con-
sonant with the spirit of Christianity.* Benevolence leads
the way in prompting to positive efforts for the good of
others; justice follows, to regulate its exercise; wisdom
sheds her light over both ; good faith imparts the stability
necessary to success; order, or a sense of propriety, by
bringing the whole conduct into harmony with the fit-
ness of things, completes the radiant circle ; and he whose
character is 'adorned with all these qualities may be safely
pronounced totus teres atque rotundus.
The theory of moral sentiments early engaged the at-
tention of Chinese philosophers, and particularly the in-
quiry as to the origin and nature of our benevolent affec-
tions. Some, like Locke and Paley, regarded them as
* Cicero thus argues that there could be no occasion for the
exercise of any virtue in a state of perfect blessedness, taking up
the cardinal virtues seriatim: " Si nobis, cum ex hac vita migra-
remus, in beatorum insulis, ut fabulae ferunt, immortale aevum
degere liceret, quid opus esset eloquentia, cum judicia nulla
fierent? aut ipsis etiam virtutibis? Nee enim fortitudine indi-
geremus,*nullo proposito aut labore aut periculo ; nee justitia, cum
esset nihil quod appeteretur alieni ; nee temperantia, quse regeret
eas quae nullae essent libidines ; ne prudcntia quidem egeremus,
nullo proposito delectu bonorum et malorum. Una igitur essemus
beati cognitione rerum et scientia." He has failed to conceive,
as Sir J. Mackintosh well suggests, that there would still be room
for the exercise of love of benevolence. A Chinese, educated to
regard benevolence as the prime virtue of life, would naturally
give it the first place in his ideal of the future state.
222 THE LORE OF CATHAY
wholly artificial the work of education. Others, like
Hobbes and Mandeville, represented them as spontaneous
and natural, but still no more than varied phases of that
one ubiquitous Proteus self-love. Mencius, with Bishop
Butler, views them as disinterested and original. To
establish this, he resorts to his favorite mode of reasoning,
and supposes the case of a spectator moved by the mis-
fortune of a child falling into a well. Hobbes would have
described the pity of the beholder as the fruit of self-love
acting through the imagination the " fiction of future
calamity to himself." Mencius says his efforts to rescue
the child would be incited, not by a desire to secure the
friendship of its parents or the praise of his neighbors,
nor even to relieve himself from the pain occasioned by
the cries of the child, but by a spontaneous feeling which
pities distress and seeks to alleviate it.
The man who thus vindicates our nature from the
charge of selfishness in its best affections sometimes ex-
patiates on their social utility. He does so, however, only
to repress utilitarianism of a more sordid type. When
the Prince of Liang inquired what he had brought to
enrich his kingdom, " Nothing," he replied, " but benevo-
lence and justice; " and he then proceeded to show, with
eloquent earnestness, how the pursuit of wealth would
tend to anarchy, while that of virtue would insure happi-
ness and peace. An earlier writer, Meitze, made the
principle of benevolence the root of all the virtues ; and
in advocating the duty of equal and universal love, he
seems to have anticipated the fundamental maxim of
Jonathan Edwards that virtue consists in love to being
as such, and in proportion to the amount of being. This
led him to utter the rioble sentiment that he would " sub-
mit his body to be ground to powder if by so doing he
could benefit mankind."
ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF CHINESE 223
The doctrine of Meitze is rejected by the moralists
of the established school as heretical, on the ground of its
inconsistency with the exercise in due degree of the rela-
tive affections, such as filial piety, fraternal love, etc.
They adopted a more cautious criterion of virtue that
of the moderate exercise of all the natural faculties.
/ 'irtus cst medium vitiorum et utrinque reductum is with
them a familiar principle. One of the Four Books, the
Cluing Yung, is founded on it. But instead of treating
the subject with the analytic accuracy with which it is
elaborated by Aristotle in his Nicomachean Ethics, the
author kindles with the idea of absolute perfection, and
indites a sublime rhapsody on the character of him who
holds on his way, undeviating and unimpeded, between
a twofold phalanx of opposing vices.
Part IV. is the counterpart of the preceding, and is in-
teresting mainly on account of the use for which it is
designed. The whole chart is practical, and is intended,
the author tells us, to be suspended in the chamber of the
student as a constant monitor. The terms in which he
states this contain an allusion to a sentiment engraved
by one of the ancient emperors on his wash-basin : " Let
my heart be daily cleansed and renewed, let it be kept
clean and new forever." This part of his work has for
its special object to aid the^ reader in detecting the moral
impurities that may have attached themselves to his char-
acter, and carrying forward a process of daily and con-
stant improvement.
To some it may be a matter of surprise to find this
exercise at all in vogue in a country where a divine re-
ligion has not imparted the highest degree of' earnest-
ness in the pursuit of virtue. The number who practise
it is not large : but even in pagan China, the thorny path
of self-knowledge exhibits " here and there a traveller."
224 THE LORE OF CATHAY
Tseng Futze, an eminent disciple of Confucius, and
the Xenophon of his Memorabilia, thus describes his own
practice : " I every day examine myself on three points.
In exertjons on behalf of others, have I been unfaithful?
In intercourse with others, have I been untrue? The
instruction I have heard, have I made my own ? "
An example so revered could not remain without imi-
tators. Whether any of them has surpassed the model
is doubtful ; but his " three points " they have multiplied
into the bristling array displayed in the chart, which they
daily press in to their bosoms, as some papal ascetics
were wont to do their jagged belts. Some of them, in
order to secure greater fidelity in this unpleasant duty,
are accustomed to perform it in the family temple, where
they imagine their hearts laid bare to the view of their
ancestors, and derive encouragement from their supposed
approval. The practice is a beautiful one, but it indicates
a want. It shows that human virtue is conscious of her
weakness ; and in climbing the roughest steeps feels com-
pelled to lean on the arm of religion.
In a few cases this impressive form of domestic piety
may prove efficacious ; but the benefit is due to a figment
of the imagination similar to that which Epictetus recom-
mends when he suggests that the student of virtue shall
conceive himself to be living in the presence of Socrates.
If fancy is thus operative, how much more effectual must
faith be that faith which rises into knowledge and makes
one realize that he is acting under the eye of ever-present
Deity !
It is one of the glories of Christianity that by diffusing
this sentiment she has made virtue not an occasional visitor
to our planet, but brought her down to dwell familiarly
with men. What otherwise would have been only the
severe discipline of a few philosophers, she has made the
ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF CHINESE 225
daily habit of myriads.* How many persons in how
many lands now close each day of life by comparing every
item of their conduct with a far more perfect " chart for
self-examination " than our author has furnished ? f
Next to the knowledge of right and wrong Confucius
placed " sincerity of purpose " in pursuing the right, as
an essential in the practice of virtue ; but as he expressed
only the vaguest notions of a Supreme Being, and en-
joined for popular observance no higher form of religion
than the worship of the ancestral manes, a sense of re-
sponsibility, and, by consequence, " sincerity of purpose,"
are sadly deficient among his disciples. Some of the
more earnest, on meeting with a religion which reveals
to them a heart-searching God, a sin-atoning Saviour, a
soul-sanctifying Spirit, and an immortality of bliss, have
joyfully embraced it, confessing that they find therein
motives and supports of which their own system is wholly
destitute.
GENERAL INFERENCES.
On this sheet (the chart above translated) we have a
projection of the national mind. It indicates the high
grade in the scale of civilization attained by the people
among whom it originated, exhibiting all the elements of
an elaborate morality. Political ethics are skilfully con-
nected with private morals ; and the virtues and vices are
* " Religion," says Sir James Mackintosh, speaking of Plato,
" had not then, besides her own discoveries, brought down the
most awful and the most beautiful forms of moral truth to the
humblest station in human society."
t There are many evening hymns in which the review of the
day is beautifully and touchingly expressed, but in none perhaps
better than in that of Gellert commencing "Bin tag ist wiedcr
hin."
226 THE LORE OF CATHAY
marshalled in a vast array, which required an advanced
state of society for their development.
The accuracy with which these various traits of char-
acter are noted implies the same thing; and the correct-
ness of the moral judgments here recorded infers some-
thing more than culture it discloses a grand fact of our
nature, that, whatever may be thought of innate ideas,
it contains inherent principles which produce the same
fruits in all climates.
These tables indicate, at the same time, that the Chinese
have made less proficiency in the study of mind than in
that of morals. This is evident from some confusion
(more observable in the original than in the translation)
of faculties, sentiments, and actions. The system is, on
the whole, pretty well arranged ; but there are errors and
omissions enough to show that their ethics, like their
physics, are merely the records of phenomena which
they observe ab extra without investigating their causes
and relations. While they expatiate on the virtues, they
make but little inquiry into the nature of virtue ; while
insisting on various duties, they never discuss the ground
of obligation ; and while duties are copiously expounded,
not a word is said on the subject of rights.
The combined influence of an idolatrous religion and a
despotic government, under which there can be no such
motto as Dicu ct mon droit, may account for this latter
deficiency. But similar lacunae are traceable in so many
directions that we are compelled to seek their explana-
tion in a subjective cause in some peculiarity of the
Chinese mind.
They have, for instance, no system of psychology,
and the only rude attempt at the formation of one con-
sists in an enumeration of the organs of perception. These
they express as tvu kuan, the " five senses." But what
ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF CHINESE 227
are they ? The eyes, ears, nose, mouth ; and not the skin
or nerves, but the heart. The sense of touch, which alone
possesses the power of waking us from the Brahma dream
of a universe floating in our own brain, and convincing
us of the objective reality of an external world, is
utterly ignored ; to say nothing of the absurdity of class-
ing the "heart" the intellect (for so they intend the
word) with those passive media of intelligence. This
elementary effort dates from the celebrated Mencius;
and, perhaps for that very reason, the mind of the mod-
erns has not advanced beyond it, as one of their pious
emperors abdicated the throne rather than be guilty of
reigning longer than his grandfather.
Another instance of philosophical classification equally
ancient, equally authoritative, and equally absurd, is that
of the five elements. They were given as chin, mu, shui,
Into, t'u i. e., metal, wood, water, fire, and earth. Now
not to force this into a disparaging contrast with the re-
sults of our recent science, which recognizes nothing as
an element but an ultimate form of matter, we may
fairly compare it with the popular division of " four ele-
ments." The principle of classification being the enumera-
tion of the leading forms of inorganic matter which enter
into the composition of organic bodies, the Chinese have
violated it by introducing wood into the category ; and
they evince an obtuseness of observation utterly incon-
sistent with the possession of philosophic talent in not
perceiving the important part which atmospheric air per-
forms in the formation of other bodies. The extent to
which they adhere to the quintal enumeration or classi-
fication, by " fives " illustrates, in a rather ludicrous man-
ner, the same want of discrimination. Thus, while in
mind they have the five senses, and in matter the five
elements, in morals they reckon five virtues, in society
228 THE LORE OF CATHAY
five relations, in astronomy five planets, in ethnology five
races, in optics five colors, in music five notes, in the
culinary art five tastes ; and, not to extend the catalogue,
they divide the horizon into five quarters.
These instances evince a want of analytical power ; and
the deficiency is still further displayed by the absence of
any analysis of the sounds of their language until they
were made acquainted with the alphabetical Sanskrit;
the non-existence, to the present day, of any inquiry into
the forms of speech which might be called a grammar,
or of any investigation of the processes of reasoning cor-
responding with our logic. While they have soared into
the attenuated atmosphere of ontological speculation,
they have left all the regions of physical and abstract
science almost as trackless as the arctic snows.
It would be superfluous to vindicate the Chinese from
the charge of mental inferiority in the presence of that
immense social and political organization which has held
together so many millions of people for so many thousands
of years, and especially of numerous arts, now dropping
their golden fruits into the lap of our own civilization,
whose roots can be traced to the soil of that ancient
empire. But a strange defect must be admitted in the
national mind. We think, however, that it is more in its
development than in its constitution, and may be ac-
counted for by the influence of education.
If we include in that term all the influences that affect
the mind, the first place is due to language ; and a language
whose primary idea is the representation of the objects
of sense, and which is' so imperfect a vehicle of abstract
thought that it is incapable of expressing by single words
such ideas as space, quality, relation, etc., must have
seriously obstructed the exercise of the intellect in that
direction. A servile reverence for antiquity which makes
ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF CHINESE 229
it sacrilege to alter the crude systems of the ancients
increased the difficulty; and the government brought it
to the last degree of aggravation by admitting, in the
public-service examinations, a very limited number of
authors, with their expositors, to whose opinions con-
formity is encouraged by honors, and from whom dissent
is punished by disgrace.
These fetters can only be stricken off by the hand of
Christianity ; and we are not extravagant in predicting
that a stupendous intellectual revolution will attend its
progress. Revealing an omnipresent God as Lord of the
Conscience it will add a new hemisphere to the world of
morals; stimulating inquiry in the spirit of the precept
" Prove all things, hold fast that which is good," it will
subvert the blind principle of deference; and perhaps its
grandest achievement in the work of mental emancipa-
tion may be- the superseding of the ancient ideographic
language by providing a medium better adapted to the
purposes of a Christian civilization. It would only be
a repetition of historic triumphs if some of the vernacular
dialects, raised from the depths where they now lie in
neglect, and shaped by the forces which heave them to
the surface, should be made, under the influence of a new
sunshine, to teem with the rich productions of a new
literature, philosophy, and science.
230
THE LORE OF CATHAY
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CHINESE IDEAS OF INSPIRATION
XIII
CHINESE IDEAS OF INSPIRATION
THE word " inspiration," as applied to the notions
of the Chinese, must be taken with considerable
latitude, as expressing their conceptions of a
superhuman authority, which pervades and lies behind
their Sacred Books, as the source and basis of their teach-
ings.
As their Sacred Books belong to three leading schools
of religious thought, not to speak of numberless alloys,
it is not to be supposed that the views of these schools
on the subject of inspiration coincide more closely than
on other matters in regard to which they are in fact
widely divergent. It is hardly possible that the material-
ism of the Taoist, the idealism of the Buddhist, and the
ethical Sadduceeism of the Confucianist, should hold
much in common on the subject of inspiration. We shall
accordingly point out the peculiar form which the idea
of inspiration assumes in connection with each of them.
While the high social development of the Chinese, their
vast numbers, and their long history, give value to any
elements of their fundamental beliefs, in order to be of
interest to us, these must be taken at a date prior to
their contact with Christianity.
To begin with Taoism : Indigenous to China, its root
idea is the belief in the possibility of acquiring a mastery
234
CHINESE IDEAS OF INSPIRATION 235
over matter, so as to change its forms at will, and thus
protect ourselves against decay and death.
Those who have attained immortality constitute a
pantheon, ruling over the material world and presiding
over the destinies of man. Material in its origin, this
school gradually evolved a system of belief strikingly
analogous to the so-called " spiritualism," which not long
ago attracted so much attention in our Western World.
Instead, however, of holding that all spirits are indis-
criminately ferried over to the farther shore, it considers
that those of the profane multitude, not being sufficiently
concentrated to resist the inroads of decay, vanish into
air and cease to be ; while a favored few, by dint of per-
severing effort, subdue their animal nature, and weave
its fibres into a compact unity that defies destruction. A
favorite analogy to illustrate this process is their theory
of the evolution of gold, which, as they believe, originally
a base metal, passes upward through a succession of
forms, all liable to tarnish or corrode, until it reaches a
state in which its perfected essence remains forever un-
changeable. The diamond, a gem of " purest ray
serene," smiling at the sharpest steel, and mocking the
hottest fire, is another symbol frequently used ; and it
might have .done much to confirm their faith in this theory,
had their science gone far enough to connect the gem
that shines in immortal splendor with the fossilized car-
bon that lies hidden in the bosom of the earth, or with
those evanescent forms of vitalized carbon that beautify
its surface.
The happy few, as precious as gold and as rare as the
diamond, who attain to immortality, do not leave their
bodies behind them, like cast-off clothing; nor would
their bodies cause the boat of Charon to draw a deeper
draught, for the body itself is transformed and becomes
236 THE LORE OF CATHAY
a " spiritual body," with changed qualities and new
powers. Its qualities are such in general as we ascribe to
spirit ; its powers are limited only by the stage of its
progress, a progress that rises from sphere to sphere
without a bound.
Among the acquired powers of these immortals, one
which occupies a leading place is that of spiritual mani-
festation. These hsien jcn, or genii, as they are called, are
of various grades ; and all of them are capable of renew-
ing their intercourse with human beings, among whom
they walk invisible. It is seldom that they re-appear in
their primitive shape; but they frequently make their
presence felt through the intervention of suitable media.
A favorite medium is the human body, in a hypnotic
condition ; and through such, when properly invoked, the
genii are wont to speak to mortals, as Apollo spoke
through the Delphic Priestess. Their oracles in such
cases relate, in general, to the cure of disease, or the
conduct of family affairs. In early times, they aspired
to the direction of affairs of state; but the detection of
numerous impostures brought them into discredit, and
their influence is now restrained to a humbler sphere,
though it is still real, and by no means to be despised.
Another medium is the fu Inn, an instrument which we
may describe as a magic pen. It consists of a vertical
stick, suspended like a pendulum from a cross-bar. The
bar is supported at each end by a votary of the genii, care
being taken that it shall rest on the hand as freely as an
oscillating engine does on its bearings. A table is
sprinkled with meal ; and, after being properly invoked,
the spirit manifests his presence by slight irregular mo-
tions of the pen or pendulum, which leaves its trace in
the meal. These marks are deciphered by competent
CHINESE IDEAS OF INSPIRATION 237
authorities, who make known the response from the spirit
world.
This will be recognized as an early form of planchette.
In the Far East, it has been in vogue for more than a
thousand years ; and there is as yet no sign that it " has
had its day." Not merely Taoists by profession, but
scholars, who call themselves Confucian, believe in it with
a more or less confiding faith. When they resort to it
with a serious purpose, they usually get an answer which
they accept bond fide, whether it meet their wishes or
oppose them. Often, however, they call in the magic pen
to supply diversion for the late hours of a convivial party ;
and in such cases, they tell me, they are sometimes sur-
prised by the result, an invisible person evidently join-
ing the festive circle, and solving or creating mysteries.
Skeptical as are the Chinese literati, no one that I have
seen doubts the genuineness of some of the communica-
tions so obtained. I have had such sent to me from a
distant place, with the assurance that they were obtained
through the magic pen at the altars of the gods; and,
whatever I may have thought on the subject, I could not
doubt that the sender believed in them.
Where such credulity renders the public mind as sus-
ceptible to impressions as the meal does a writing-table,
it is obvious that revelations for the purpose of religious
instruction are to be expected. The fact is that the magic
pen is one of the most prolific sources of religious litera-
ture. Mahomet claimed that the Koran, was brought
leaf by leaf from Paradise by the angel Gabriel. The
hierophants of China impose on the credulity of their
countrymen, by ascribing their own teachings to revela-
tions made by planchette.
Some of these so-called revelations are deservedly
238 THE LORE OF CATHAY
popular, on account of the beauty of their style and the
excellence of their subject matter; and they are held in
special reverence, as worthy expressions of the mind of
deified Sages.
To this category belong :
i. The Kan Ying P'ien, a treatise on retribution, de-
rived by this method from no less a personage than
Laotze, the great founder of the Taoist sect.
2. The Chilch Shih Ching, or world-waking appeal of
Kuan Ti, tutelar god of the reigning dynasty.
3. The Yin Chi Wen, or Book of Rewards and Punish-
ments, referred to Wen Ch'ang, the god of letters.
Others might be added, but I forbear to cite them,
because they " attain not to the first three."
The last cited is ascribed to Wen Ch'ang, the god of
letters, a Taoist deity much in favor with scholars of the
Confucian School; for, wide apart as they are in funda-
mental principles, the dividing lines of the three sects are
now well-nigh obliterated. Each borrows deities from
the other, and priests of one are found in charge of tem-
ples that belong to the other ; a result, not so much due
to rapprochement in their authorized teachings, as to a
chronic confusion in the popular mind.
II
Buddhism, as the stronger faith, has " drawn the cover
to its own side," adopting many Taoist usages, and,
among them, the practice of procuring spiritualistic reve-
lations. In vain do the orthodox denounce it, as tending
to corrupt the canon, and as derogatory to the dignity of
the deities invoked ; the practice continues to flourish.
Of the extent to which it is carried, you may judge
from the following indignant protest, which I translate
CHINESE IDEAS OF INSPIRATION 239
from the Hsiu Chih Yao Yen, a practical guide for the
Buddhist priesthood :
" In these latter days, men's minds are superficial and
false. There is nothing that they do not counterfeit.
Even in the dissemination of good books, they resort to
falsehood to aid their circulation. Their own rude lan-
guage, which has no meaning more than skin-deep, they
palm off as revealed through the magic pen, thus im-
posing on the ignorant.
" They mostly father their effusions on Wen Ch'ang
and Lii Tsu ; less frequently, on Kuan Ti. Only think of
it: In case of ordinary books or pictures, to falsify the
authorship is held as an odious crime. How much more
hateful the crime of adulterating the teachings of gods
and sages ! When book-shelves are loaded with fabrica-
tions, the circulation of the genuine article is impeded.
Instances of this kind of outrage on Holy Names are too
frequent to enumerate.
" Recently some cases of a truly extraordinary char-
acter have come to light. Shameless forgeries are put
forth as books of Buddha! Buddha himself is some-
times invoked to indite a commentary, and even Taoist
genii are called on to reveal an exposition of Buddhist
classics. Then we have lists of Buddha's titles, purport-
ing to emanate from spirit revelations. The blunders of
these books go without castigation, and falsehood gains
strength day by day. Formerly moral tracts were aids
to virtue ; to-day they are used to mislead mankind."
Here follows a list of spurious books, ending with the
remark that " names of men and places, though formed
on Sanskrit models, are so clumsily constructed that their
rough angles pierce through the thin disguise ; and the
more extended a discourse, the more thoroughly does the
fabricator succeed in exposing his imposture."
240 THE LORE OF CATHAY
To note the adoption of this Taoist practice by a sec-
tion of Buddhism is not foreign to our subject, because
it. is Chinese in origin ; but, to ascend the stream and
treat of inspiration from the stand-point of orthodox
Buddhism would lead us away from China. It would
carry us into the world of Hindu mysticism, where
Sakyamuni laid the foundation of his conquering
creed.
Suffice it to say that, to the Buddhist, there is no form
of existence higher than Buddha, no authority above
that of Buddha. He does not look beyond Buddha to an
all-pervading spirit, as Christians look through Christ up
to the Father of Spirits. For him, Buddha is ultimate;
and, as the name signifies supreme intelligence, so all
believers accept the utterances of Buddha as truth not
to be called in question. With them, the only possible
question is that touching the authenticity of those utter-
ances, in other words, respecting the proper contents of
the Buddhistic canon. How much of that canon fell from
the lips of Gautama, and how far the teachings of his fol-
lowers are deducible from his original revelations, are
questions of serious import ; or rather they would become
such, if once the spirit of critical inquiry were fairly
aroused. If, among the heterogeneous materials com-
posing the canon as acknowledged by one or other of the
schools, the spurious utterances ascribed to Buddha were
sifted from the genuine, there would remain but a very
small residuum. Among his subordinates, the degree of
authority conceded to each is decided according to their
grade of intelligence or rank in the canonical hierarchy;
but no spiritual influence emanating from a higher source
is admitted. This is true of primitive or atheistic Bud-
dhism ; but in Buddhism, as modified by time, and by
contact with other creeds, we find a superintending and
CHINESE IDEAS OF INSPIRATION 241
enlightening influence from the spirit of Buddha freely
acknowledged.
Ill
The ideas of Confucianists in regard to inspiration
differ widely from those of both the preceding schools.
They are the ideas, not of a sect, but of the bulk of the
Chinese people.
When the three schools are named in series, the Ju, or
Confucian, stands at the head; but when the Confucian (
is spoken of by itself, it is generally described as ta chiao,
the great, universal, or catholic school. Its tenets form
the bed-rock of Chinese civilization, whatever may be the
complexion of the over-lying soil. The yellow of Bud-
dhism and the black of Taoism may be everywhere de-
tected, but they form only a superficial tinge on the
original background. Every Buddhist or Taoist (outside
of the priesthood) is, first of all, a Confucianist ; but the
converse is by no means true, the more educated Chinese
in general reject both the other sects, and speak disre-
spectfully of their claims, though not exempt from their
influence. Hence a common error in estimating the num-
ber of Buddhists on the globe; for, unlike Burmah and
Siam, where Buddhism is established by law, the intel-
lectual culture of China flows apart from Buddhism ;
and, in China, the priesthood of Buddha, with but few
redeeming exceptions, have sunk to the condition of an
ignorant and despised caste.
The canon of Confucianism is, therefore, pre-eminently
the canon of China; and, to find what views the Chinese
hold as to its inspiration, we have in the first place to
turn to the canon itself.
242 THE LORE OF CATHAY
The canon consists, if we reject the enumeration of
thirteen books as too wide, and accept that of nine as
more exact, of two classes of works: the pre-Confu-
cian, and the post-Confucian. The Li Chi, or " Book of
Rites," is classed with the former, though compiled under
the dynasty of Han, because it professes to preserve the
traditions of an earlier age. Held in high esteem, it is
nevertheless deemed somewhat apocryphal. The other
four pre-Confucian books were all edited by the great
Sage, and issued with his imprimatur.
They contain such fragments of antiquity, historical,
poetical, and philosophical, as he thought worth while
to preserve. Among them there is not much of unity to
be discerned "in member, joint, or limb;" and, as a
whole, they are not regarded as emanating from a super-
natural source.
There are, however, in this collection, two sketches of
a rudimentary philosophy, for which a supernatural origin
is distinctly asserted. One of these is a table of mystic
symbols, from which diagrams of the " Book of Changes "
were subsequently evolved.
In the reign of Fu Hsi, 2800 B. c., this was brought up
from the waters of the Yellow River on the back of a
beast, which was " half horse and half alligator; " signify-
ing, if we admit a grain of truth in the legend, that the
first eight diagrams, which form the basis of the sixty-
four in the " Book of Changes," were suggested by the
mysterious markings on the carapace of a tortoise. That
the figures on the shell of a tortoise were employed in
divination is attested by history. Princes kept sacred
shells in temples erected for the purpose, and the shell
only ceased to be consulted, when the ampler book be-
came known and accepted as a treasury of divine oracles.
The other fragment of direct revelation is an outline
CHINESE IDEAS OF INSPIRATION 243
of natural and political philosophy called the Hung Fan,
or " Great Plan." It is said to have been brought to the
Emperor Yu, from the waters of the river Lo, by a
monster somewhat similar to that which figures in the
preceding legend.
Both stories were indorsed by Confucius, if the Ap-
pendix to the " Book of Changes " be his work ; and the
highest scholars of China continue to receive them as
true beyond a question.
Leaving the barbarous age in which tortoise and dragon
are messengers of the gods, we come to a more rational
period, when man becomes the medium through which
the Will of Heaven is revealed. This view is first enunci-
ated in the " Book of Odes " (circa 1000 B. c.), in a pas-
sage which remains in use as a popular formula:
" Heaven, having given life to men, raised up princes to
rule them and teachers to instruct them," a statement
which, with all the light of our developed Christianity, it
is not easy to improve upon.
The general conception, of teachers providentially
raised up, became at length restricted to that of certain
eminent men who were looked on as infallible guides.
They were called sheng jen, a phrase commonly rendered
" holy men," but one which expresses wisdom rather than
holiness. They were numerous in remote antiquity, in-
ventors of arts sharing the honor along with the founders
of human society. Thus Fu Hsi, who instituted marriage,
was a sheng jen; Hwang Ti/who invented medicine, was
a sheng jen; Tsang Chieh, the inventor of letters, and Ta
Nao, the author of the most ancient calendar, are also
venerated as sheng jen. In later ages, such paragons of
wisdom were few, and their advent always heralded by
presages of an unmistakable character.
The sage of sages is Confucius. He makes no direct
244 THE LORE OF CATHAY
claim to inspiration, and always speaks of himself with
becoming modesty. According to himself, there are vir-
tues to which he has not attained, and there is knowledge
that lies beyond his range. Yet he evinces at times a
sublime consciousness of a peculiar mission. When in
peril, he exclaims : " If it be the will of Heaven to pre-
serve my doctrine for the benefit of mankind, what power
can my enemies have over me ? " At other times, confi-
dent of the truth of his teachings, he appeals, not to the
people of his own day, but to the judgment of sages that
are to appear in distant ages.
His teaching was from Heaven, but it was not imparted
to him in a supernatural way. " How," he exclaims,
" does Heaven speak, what is the language it addresses
to men? The seasons follow their course, and all things
spring into life, this is the language of Heaven." In
his view, it was the province of the sage to interpret Na-
ture, not merely as she lives in the forms of matter, but
as she breathes in the soul of man.
This conception of the sheng jen, or sage, had begun
to take shape in the dawn of Chinese civilization. Con-
fucius, who did more than any other to fix the forms of
that civilization by a wise selection of the best traditions,
seized on the idea as one of essential importance, and
gave it precision, without arrogating the character.
His grandson, K'ung Chieh, half a century later, gave
the world a theory of ethics, based, like that of Aristotle,
on the assumption that good is a middle term between two
evils. Unlike the Stagyrite, he gives free scope to a
fervid imagination, and draws a glowing picture of con-
crete good in the character of the sheng jen, or perfect
man. The passage is an eloquent apotheosis of wisdom
and virtue, for which his great ancestor confessedly
served as a human model.
CHINESE IDEAS OF INSPIRATION 245
Not only has posterity permitted Confucius to remain
on that exalted pedestal, but each generation has con-
tributed to raise him higher.
A few extracts from this treatise will serve to exhibit
the Sage as expounder of the Will of Heaven :
" None but the most sincere is able to exhaust the capa-
bilities of his own nature. By so doing, he aids the work
of heaven and earth, and takes his place as third among
the powers of the universe."
" He who possesses this perfect sincerity attains to
prophetic foresight. This quality, therefore, partakes of
the divine."
" Great is the Holy Sage (or sheng jen) ; all the books
of all the rites wait for him to fulfill them."
" He can appeal to the gods above, because he knows
Heaven ; and to the wise of coming times, because he
knows men."
" He speaks, and none hesitates to believe ; he acts, and
none fails to approve."
" His fame overflows the boundaries of China, and
extends to barbarous peoples. Wherever ship or chariot
can go, wherever sun and moon give light, wherever
frosts and dews descend, there is no one who has blood
and breath, who does not honor and love such a man.
Therefore, he is said to be the equal of Heaven."
This description of the ideally perfect man, drawn as
it was from the teaching and example of Confucius,
caused him to be accepted in that character. Mencius,
the St. Paul of Confucianism, its last and greatest apostle,
confirmed the judgment of the author of " The Mean."
His words are : " From the time that human life ap-
peared on earth down to this day, the world has seen no
man like Confucius." His estimate of China's greatest
teacher has been ratified by succeeding ages.
246 THE LORE OF CATHAY
In process of time, speculative thought attained a
higher development; and, in the theory of the universe
which it produced, the shcng jcn holds a definite place.
Heaven, earth, and man, form a triad of agents, as hinted
already in the " Doctrine of the Mean " ; the first repre-
senting self-acting spirit ; the second, plastic or passive
matter ; the third, man ; a child born of their union, a
microcosm or epitome of the universe, his soul reflecting
the pure spirit of Heaven, his body composed of the gross
elements of earth. For the Sage it is reserved to connect
the two in a perfect union. Accordingly we see, in all
the temples of Confucius, a central inscription just over
the shrine of the spirit tablet : Yii t'icn ti wei ts'an,
" He forms a triad with heaven and earth."
The conception is obviously pantheistic. In the person
of the Sage, the dual powers find their harmony com-
pleted. He receives no spoken communication ; asks no
illuminating influence; but, embodying in its highest de-
gree the spiritual essence of both, he becomes thereby an
infallible expositor of the universe, a law-giver to the
human race. It is said of him, " He speaks, and his
word is law to the world ; he acts, and his conduct is an
unerring example."
It is in this light that the Chinese, without exception,
are accustomed to look on the last of their Sages. He is
not a god, but a perfect man ; not a prophet who utters
occasional oracles, but, in word and deed, a constant
manifestation of ideal excellence. He does not speak in
the name of a higher power; but, if that power were con-
ceived as speaking, it could add nothing to the authority
of the Sage.
How near this conception approaches to the Hindu
view of Buddha, as the perfect embodiment of intelli-
gence and virtue, needs not to be pointed out. In. the
CHINESE IDEAS OF INSPIRATION 247
Confucian system, however, there is a vague personality
called Heaven, above the Sage; while, in the Buddhist,
there is none.
It follows that everything that bears the seal of such
an authority is sacred in the highest degree. The verbal
text of his books is not to be altered, no matter what
faults may be detected by rational criticism. Thus, in-
complete and pleonastic expressions, the errors of an-
cient copyists, are faithfully reproduced, much as our
Hebrew Bibles reproduce the " ayin suspensum," and
other errors of transcription. This superstitious rever-
ence for the letter of the canon symbolizes and fosters
that unprogressive conservatism which has become the
unenviable distinction of the Chinese race.
Confucius, it ought to be said, and his great disciple
Mencius, lend no countenance to such unreasoning wor-
ship of antiquity. The latter says boldly, " It were
better to have no books than to be bound to believe all
that our books" contain," referring, it is thought, to the
Shu, the canonical book of ancient history. And Con-
fucius lays it down, as the first duty of a ruler, to aim
at the " renovation of his people."
In conclusion, it would hardly be pertinent to raise the
question whether the views of inspiration, which we have
been considering, are favorable or adverse to the adop-
tion of Christianity. The great Sage, so far from arro-
gating definitive completeness for his own system, leads
his disciples to expect the appearance of shcng jen in
coming ages. Nor is the advent of such Heaven-sent
teachers limited to China. There is, therefore, nothing to
prevent a sound Confucian accepting Christ as the Light
of the World, without abandoning his faith in Confucius
as a special teacher for the Chinese people. " Confucius
plus Christ " is a formula to which he has no insuper-
248 THE LORE OF CATHAY
able objection ; but the man, who approaches him with
such an alternative as " Christ or Confucius," is not likely
to meet with a patient hearing.
As a matter of fact, native Christians continue to be-
lieve in the mission of Confucius, much as converted
Jews do in that of Moses.
XIV
BUDDHISM A PREPARATION FOR CHRISTIANITY
THE religion which above all others has a right to
claim serious study, in comparison with Chris-
tianity, is Buddhism. It has been brought for-
ward of late as a rival to Christianity, not merely by its
traditional votaries, but by poets and philosophers,*
educated in the schools of Christendom. The poet pur-
loined the ornaments of the daughters of Zion to deck
an Eastern beauty, f and the philosopher has endeavored
to persuade Western thinkers that their highest wisdom
is to sit at the feet of the gymnosophists of India.
One scarcely knows whether the gospel would be more
discredited by being set forth as plagiarizing in part from
the traditions of India, or by being proven to be a less
effectual remedy for human woe than the pessimism of
Sakyamuni.
There is a lawsuit now pending in the courts of Eng-
land, in which a claimant seeks to oust the present occu-
pant of a great estate by proving that he belongs to an
older branch of the family, and that his title ante-dates
the other by more than a century.
In the forum of the world, the contest for priority of
title to the traditions referred to is of infinitely higher
* Notably Arnold and Schoppenhaur.
f Since this was first published Sir Edwin Arnold has given us
a noble Palinodia in his " Light of the World."
249
250 THE LORE OF CATHAY
moment. After the learned investigations of Dr. Kel-
logg, it can scarcely be said of it adhuc sub judice Us est;
and yet it is one of those cases in which defeat is never
acknowledged, in which, in fact, we may expect to see
the old pretensions advanced again and again with as
much confidence as if they had never been refuted.
It is not my intention to go into this question at length,
on the present occasion ; but I may say, in passing, that a
new and weighty authority has come forward to refute
the claims of Buddhism. In a paper in the " Nineteenth
Century" (July, 1888), the Bishop of Colombo says:
" We must distinguish," in reference to Buddhism,
" two very different sources of information, only one of
which I shall speak of as historical. The one source is
the Tripitaka, or threefold collection of sacred books,
which forms the canon of Southern Buddhism ; these I
call the books of 250 B. c.
" The other source is the * Biographies of Buddha ' and
the Lalita Vistara, which are of uncertain date, between
the first and sixth centuries (A. D.). These last are the
sources of Arnold's ' Light of Asia.'
" We have been led to the only source of history, the
Pitakas. The resultant biography of Gautama* shows
nothing supernatural; and nothing which, in those days,
was strange. The life of Gautama contains nothing
more strange than does the life of Shakespeare."
The Bishop shows conclusively the unhistorical charac-
ter of much of that material which Sir Edwin Arnold
has woven into his beautiful poem. As a poet, he had
an unquestionable right to employ it ; but it behooves all
serious thinkers to beware how they accept poetry in place
of history.f
* The name for Buddha, in general use in Ceylon and Burmah.
t Three Lectures on Buddhism.
A PREPARATION FOR CHRISTIANITY 251
Dr. E. T. Eitel, who has made a special study of Bud-
dhism, summarizes his conclusions in these words :
" There is not a single Buddhist manuscript that can
vie in antiquity and authority with the oldest codices of
the Gospels. The most ancient Buddhist classics contain
but few details of Buddha's life, and none whatever of
those above-mentioned peculiarly Christian characteris-
tics. Nearly all the above-given legends, that refer to
events that happened many centuries before Christ, can-
not be proved to have been in circulation earlier than the
fifth or sixth century after Christ."
Dr. Eitel points to early Nestorian Missions as what
he calls " the precise source " of these " apparently Chris-
tian elements."
That Buddhism borrowed much in subsequent ages
is incontestable, and that Christianity borrowed some-
thing is highly probable. Professor Max Miiller has
shown that Buddha himself has .been canonized as a
Christian Saint, ordered to be worshipped on the 27th
of November, under the title of St. Josaphat.*
The fact is that the resemblances between the two
great religions of the East and West lie far deeper than
the external habiliment of poetical tradition, or the super-
ficial analogies of religious orders and religious ritual.
They are traceable in the general development and prac-
tical doctrines of both.
Both are found to pursue a course exactly the reverse
of that mapped out in a celebrated dictum of Auguste
Comte; their initial stage was not far removed from
positivism, and yet both evolve a spiritual universe; one
burst the bonds of Hindu caste, the other broke down the
walls of Jewish isolation, and each stretched forth its
hand to the nations with the offer of a new evangel.
* " Contemporary Review " for July, 1870.
252 THE LORE OF CATHAY
Beginning as wide apart in spirit as in geographical situa-
tion, they have gradually approached each other, so that
they have come, in the course of ages, to occupy the same
ground in both senses, and each to lend a tinge to the
other.
For the objects of our present inquiry, it matters little
how inconsistent the Buddhism of one country or of one
age may be with that of another; what we have to do
is to estimate its 1 effects. No religion has ever shown
itself so plastic as that of Buddha, not only chameleon-
like, taking its hue from its surroundings, but promul-
gating at different times doctrines contradictory and self-
destructive. Beginning as a philosophy of self-discipline,
it developed into a religious cult. At the outset profess-
ing atheism pure and simple, in the end it brought forth
a pantheon of gods ; and, most wonderful of all, raised a
denier of God's existence to the throne of the Supreme.
After such changes in doctrine, it is hardly surprising
that a system, which preferred poverty to riches, and
deserts to cities, should in later times seize the revenue
of States and place its mendicant friars on the throne
of kings. The controversialist, who has to confront Bud-
dhism as an opposing force, may make the most of its
contradictions and errors ; but for ourselves, on the pres-
ent occasion, we have only to inquire whether or not Bud-
dhism, under any or all of its phases, as seen in China,
has done good or evil.
At the present it may be an obstruction, but that does
not prove that its past influence has been otherwise than
beneficent. The Western farmer, when he first breaks
up his prairie lands, finds his plough impeded at every
step by the stfong roots of wild grasses ; but he knows
that it was those grasses, growing up year after year
A PREPARATION FOR CHRISTIANITY 253
through centuries, that accumulated the rich loam in
which he plants his corn.
The mental soil of China is composed of three leading
elements, which have been commingled and brought into
interaction in such a way as to present to the superficial
observer a homogeneous aspect. These are the three re-
ligions, Confucian, Taoist, and Buddhist.
Let us find what elements Buddhism has contributed,
to make it ready for the higher cultivation of our Chris-
tian epoch.
The fundamental requisites of all religious teaching are
two, viz.:
i. A belief in God; i. e., in some effective method
of divine government.
2.. A belief in the immortality of the soul ; i. e., in a
future state of being, whose condition is determined by
our conduct in the present life.
These cardinal doctrines we find accepted everywhere
in China. There are, it is true, those who deny them;
but such are Confucianists, not Buddhists ; and I do not
hesitate to affirm that, for the general prevalence of both,
China is mainly indebted to the agency of Buddhism.
When, in the first century of our era,' its missionaries
arrived from India, they found a Supreme God recog-
nized in the books, but practically withdrawn from the
homage of the masses, because he was considered as too
exalted to be approached by anyone except the lord of
the empire. The people took refuge in the worship of
natural objects and of human heroes; not one of all their
deities taking any strong hold on their affections, or enter-
ing deeply into their spiritual life.
In regard to the hope of a future existence, the state
of things was not better. The worship of ancestors main-
254 THE LORE OF CATHAY
tained a shadowy faith in something like ghosts, but it
seldom amounted to a potent conviction. The absence
of such a conviction showed itself in the eagerness with
which men laid hold on the faint hope held out by Taoist
alchemy, that some medicine might be discovered which
would vanquish death. The few enthusiasts seen on
mountain tops, seeking for the elixir vitae, and stretching
their hands and eyes towards heaven, were they not
rather touching proofs of a universal want, than evi-
dences of any well-grounded faith ?
It ivas in fact the deep consciousness of a want in both
respects that rendered the introduction of Buddhism so
easy. It found an " aching void " in the human heart,
and it filled it with such materials as it possessed.
Instead of their materialistic conceptions, it raised the
Chinese to a belief in the powers of a spiritual universe
infinitely more grand than this visible world. In that
universe, Buddhas and divinities of the next grade,
called Bodisatwas, held sway, not limited to any hill or
city, but extending to all places where their devout wor-
shippers called for succor. Buddha, though in theory
already passed into the blessedness of an unconscious
Nirvana, was popularly held to be the actual lord of the
universe. Bodisatwas were believed to have the forces
of nature at command, and to be actively engaged in the
work of blessing mankind.
The superiority of these Buddhist divinities over those
which they displaced, consists chiefly in the fact that they
possess a moral character. By virtue, they have risen in
the scale of being in a progression, bounded only by that
sublime height on which Buddha sits wrapped in solitary
contemplation. Their human kindness rendered them at-
tractive, and the most popular of all is the Goddess of
Mercy. She holds in her arms an infant child, and
A PREPARATION FOR CHRISTIANITY 255
stretches a thousand hands to help the needy ; what won-
der that she is the favorite object of Chinese devotion.
She is called briefly P'u Sa, and, in most parts of the
empire, that term is employed to express the idea of a
vigilant and merciful Providence. Providence is also
commonly ascribed to Buddha. The " blessing " and
" protection " of Buddha are phrases in familiar use.
In a set of verses, to which I shall have occasion to refer
again, the abbot of a monastery in the Western Hills
ascribes the fruits of the earth to the goodness of
Buddha.*
The verses read:
" The production of a grain of rice is as great a work as the crea-
tion of a mountain.
Had it not been for the power of Buddha, where should we
have found our food?
If we sincerely remember how near to us is Buddha, then we
may dare to accept the nourishment that heaven and earth
afford."
Our present inquiry relates to Buddhism in China ; but
it may not be out of place to indicate that a similar trans-
formation of the original conception of Buddha has taken
place in other countries, especially in those that belong to
the Northern School. In Japan, Amitaba is endowed
with the attributes of Preserver and Redeemer. In Mon-
golia, the same is true of Borhan (a name which I take
to be derived from Buddha and Arhan) ; and missionary
translators have not hesitated to accept it as a - fitting ex-
pression for God, in the rendering of our Holy Scrip-
* The volume from which I copied these and other stanzas is in
manuscript. It was lent me by the author.
256 THE LORE OF CATHAY
tures. In Nepaul, Adi-Buddha is adored as the supreme
and living god. A hymn, which I translate from the
French* (which in turn is taken from an English trans-
lation of Hodgson), describes him thus:
I. " In the beginning there was nothing ; all was emptiness,
and the five elements had no existence.
Then Adi-Buddha revealed himself under the form of
a flame of light.
2. He is the great Buddha who exists of himself.
3. All things that exist in the three worlds have their cause in
him; he it is who sustains their being. From him, and
out of his profound meditation, the universe has sprung
into life.
4. He is the combination of all perfections ; the infinite one,
who has neither bodily members nor passions !
All things are his image, yet he has no image.
5. The delight of Adi-Buddha is to make happy all sentient
creatures.
He tenderly loves those who serve him ;
His majesty fills the heart with terror;
He is the consoler of those who suffer."
Who will deny that this is a noble psalm of praise;
that the sublime ascriptions which it contains are worthy
to be laid as an offering at the feet of Jehovah ?
May we not say that a people who have derived these
ideas from the teachings of Buddhism appear to be in a
state of comparative readiness for the message of an
apostle of the true faith, proclaiming " Whom, there-
fore, ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you "?
Let us see if the same kind of preparation is to be dis-
covered in the notions entertained in regard to the soul.
In China, prior to the arrival of Buddhism, there ex-
isted on this subject, as we have said, a painful sense of
deficiency.
* Tour du Monde, Voyage au Nepal, 1888.
A PREPARATION FOR CHRISTIANITY 257
Buddhism came as an evangel of hope, teaching that
immortality is man's inalienable inheritance, and not the
inheritance of man only, but of every sentient creature;
that all are connected by the links of an endless chain,
moving onward in unceasing procession, either on an
ascending or descending scale ; that the reality of the next
stage of being is more certain than the existence of the
material objects by which we are surrounded; that the
soul is an immaterial essence, which the transformations
of matter have no power to destroy ; and finally, that the
weal or woe of the future life depends on the conduct
of each individual during this present state of probation.
How thoroughly this teaching has permeated the
Chinese mind may be seen in the following passage from
Liu Yen Tsa Tze, one of the most popular text-books em-
ployed in the schools of Peking. " The glory and happi-
ness of the present life are fruits that spring from seeds
planted in a former state. If the present life is hungry,
cold, and bitter, the fountain of evil is to be traced to the
sins of a former state of existence."
The materializing views of Taoism are condemned (to
quote only one example) in the following verses from
another book.*
" Ye who study the doctrine of Tao,
And strive to prepare the elixir of immortality,
Do you not reflect that the elements of immortality are within
you?
Do you not know that the elixir of life is within you?
For soul and spirit, they are the root and fountain."
In the same book, there are verses which represent a
princess (who became the goddess) as announcing her
* Kuan Yin Ching, a metrical biography of the goddess of
mercy.
258 THE LORE OF CATHAY
resolution to adopt a religious life, and with many tears
exhorting her parents to do the same. She says:
" If a man live to a hundred years, his life is as a dream ;
Glory and wealth pass away like a flash of gunpowder.
I beg my father and mother to give themselves to works of
piety,
To worship Buddha, to read the holy books, and move the heart
of Heaven ;
To store up good works, to confirm your own virtues,
And escape from a sea of bitterness, a world of dust and
turmoil.
Owing to your good deeds in a former state, you now possess
the sovereignty of hills and rivers.
If, standing on your present height, you still strive upward,
Praying the gods to write your names on the roll of the purple
mansion,
You may come to enjoy the blessedness of Heaven, and rise
above the estate of men."
I do not, for my present purpose, go into the recondite
lore of great libraries, but rather draw my proofs from
manuals of the family and of the common school, in order
to show what doctrines are actually in possession of the
popular mind. That they teach the supreme importance
of a life to come, there is no denying. Their best views
are vitiated by mixture with the errors of metempsychosis.
But is not this so far a preparation for receiving a better
hope from Him who hath abolished death and " brought
life and immortality to light through the gospel?"
Let us next inquire into its influence in bringing about
those states of mind which are described as the Christian
graces. For want of time, I refrain from going into an
examination of the Buddhist decalogue, or in any other
way entering into a general comparison of Buddhist and
A PREPARATION FOR CHRISTIANITY 259
Christian ethics. The side of ethics, with which we have
to do at present, is that which looks heavenward ; i. e.,
religion in its practical aspect.
Our Christian ethics, in their religious bearings, are
beautifully summarized by " Faith, Hope, and Charity."
Has Buddhism anything answering to these? If it has,
it differs in that respect from all other pagan religions.
In the old religions of Greece and Rome, the things signi-
fied were so utterly unknown that the three words ac-
quired a new signification in passing into Christian use.
As for the early religions of China, they have nothing to
show under the rubrics of Faith, and Hope, though Char-
ity was emphasized by Confucius. Is it not, then, claim-
ing for Buddhism a great approximation to our divine
system to assert that it possesses all three ?
Faith keeps in view the realities of the unseen world,
and supplies the place of sight and of reason too, to no
small extent. The place assigned to it is, as with us, at
the head of the list. In a publication by a learned priest
of Ningpo, Faith is called " the mother of virtues."
Our abbot of the Western Hills gives it an equally ex-
alted position ; and, like St. James, he connects it with
" works," as proof of its genuineness. He says : " To
be a Buddhist, faith has always been considered the first
requisite ; but faith without works is vain."
Can anything show more clearly than this antithesis
that the word is employed in a sense identical with its
Christian usage?
From this peculiar prominence of the grace of faith,
it almost follows as a matter of course that the adherents
of the faith should be called " believers." We are not,
therefore, surprised to find the term hsin shih, " believers,"
in general use. Shan nan hsin nil " honest men and be-
260 THE LORE OF CATHAY
lieving women," is a frequent phrase, which tells its own
story as to the proportion of believers in the two sexes.
Hope is a grace which Buddhism makes prominent,
without having a word for it. Of the emphasis it lays
on the hope of immortality, I have already spoken in
treating of that cardinal doctrine. The constant endeav-
our of a devout Buddhist, is to secure the rewards of the
life to come by working and suffering in this present
world? In Chinese Buddhism, that which kindles hope
and quickens effort in the highest degree, is the prospect
of entrance into the " happy land ; " the " pure or sinless
land; " the " paradise of the West? " This is the Bud-
dhist's hope of heaven.
On the place of charity in the Buddhist scheme, I need
not dilate. Love to being, in the broadest sense, is en-
joined by precept; it was exemplified in the life of the
founder, and it finds expression in every phase of Bud-
dhist religious life. Compassion is the form which it
chiefly takes. The loftier form of adoring love for divine
perfection, as in our Christian system, is less frequent,
but not wholly wanting. Is it not charity to men that our
abbot expresses, when he says " My desire is to pluck
every creature that is endowed with feeling out of this
sea of misery ? " Is it not something very like love to
God, when he says " In your walks, meditate on
Buddha ; call to mind his refulgent person ; at every step,
pronounce his name, and beware that you deceive not
your own heart ? "
It follows, from what we have seen, that Buddhism
must have made an immense addition to the religious vo-
cabulary of the Chinese people. For the jargon of its
Sanskrit prayers, and for a multitude of theological terms,
imported bodily from India, I have no word of praise or
A PREPARATION FOR CHRISTIANITY 261
apology; but, within the domain of pure Chinese, it is
safe to affirm that Buddhism has enriched the language,
as it has enlarged the sphere of popular thought.
It has given the Chinese such ideas as they possess of
heaven and hell ; and of spiritual beings, rising in a hier-
archy above man, or sinking in moral turpitude below
man. It has given them all their familiar terms relating
to sin, to good works, to faith, to repentance; and, most
important of all, to a righteous retribution, which includes
the awards of a future life.
Not one of these words or phrases conveys to the Chi-
nese the exact idea required by the teachings of Christian-
ity ; yet the first teachers of Christianity, on coming to
China, seized on these terms as so much material made
ready to their hand, sprinkled them with holy water, and
consecrated them to a new use. Matteo Ricci soon re-
nounced the Buddhist garb ; but no missionary, Papal or
Protestant, has ever abandoned the Buddhist terminology.
Half the churches in Rome are built of stones taken
from the temples of Paganism ; arid some of them, such
as the Pantheon and the Ara Cceli, continue to be known
by their old names. So half the doctrines of Christianity
are introduced to the Chinese in a dress borrowed from
Buddhism. It could not be otherwise ; and this fact,
taken alone, appears almost decisive in favor of the affirm-
ative side of the question under discussion.
If the eloquent Saurin is right in asserting that God's
purpose in bringing Judea under the domination of
Greece was, by the introduction of the Greek language,
to provide a more perfect vehicle for the revelations of
the new dispensation, is it going too far to suggest that
Buddhism has had a similar mission? Has it not, pre-
pared a language for the communication of divine truth?
262 THE LORE OF CATHAY
Has it not also prepared the mind of the people to receive
it, by importing a stock of spiritual ideas, and by culti-
vating their spiritual sense?
But, however sympathetic may be our mental attitude
in regard to it, we must admit that its mission is finished,
and that, for the future, the highest service it can render
will be to supply a native stock on which to graft the
vine of Christ. By giving the Chinese an example of a
foreign creed winning its way and holding its ground in
spite of opposition, it has prepared them to expect a repe-
tition of the phenomenon. As Buddhists (and though
professing to be Confucians, they are nearly all more or
less tinged with Buddhism) they are taught to believe
that their present form of faith is not final, and to look
for a fuller manifestation in an age of higher light. "Will
not this prepare them, when the tide sets in that direction,
to accept Christianity as the fulfilment of their expec-
tation ? *
Sir Monier Williams states the negative features of the
Buddhist creed in terms not less forcible and explicit.
" Buddhism," he says, " has no creator, no creation, no
original germ of all things, no soul of the world, no per-
sonal, no impersonal, no supermundane, no antemundane
principle."
Of original and classic Buddhism, this is strictly true ;
and the defects of the root affect more or less all the
branches. Still it is very instructive to remark how, in
the Northern Buddhism with which I am dealing, man's
* Professor Rhys David in Buddhism and Christianity makes
the following statement:
" In Buddhism, we have an ethical system, but no law-giver; a
world without a creator, a salvation without eternal life, and a
sense of evil, but no conception of pardon, atonement, reconcilia-
tion, or redemption."
A PREPARATION FOR CHRISTIANITY 263
religious instincts triumph over the obstacles created by
an atheistic philosophy, so that Buddhism has become
pre-eminently the religious discipline of Eastern Asia.*
* The assumption by Buddhism of a distinctly religious charac-
ter is primarily due to the school of Mahayana, which Eitel de-
scribes as " a later form of the dogma, one of the three phases
of its development, characterized by an excess of transcendental
speculation, and not known to Southern Buddhism."
The Buddhists of Japan are beginning to agitate the question
whether the Mahayana rests in any degree on the authority of
Sakyamuni.
How near the Reformed Buddhism of Japan approaches to
Christianity will be apparent from, the following printed state-
ment given me by a priest, by whom it was drawn up :
" Our sect called Shinshiu ' True Doctrine ' teaches the doc-
trine of help from another.
" Now what is this help from another? It is the great power
of Amita Buddha. Amita means ' boundless.' Therefore Amita
is the chief of the Buddhas. Our sect pays no attention to the
other Buddhas, but putting faith in Amita expects to escape from
this miserable world and to enter Paradise in the next life. From
the time of putting faith in Buddha, we do not need any power
of self-help but need only to keep his mercy in heart, and invoke
his name in order to remember him.
" We make no difference between priest and layman as concerns
the way of salvation. The priest is allowed to marry and to eat
flesh and fish which is prohibited to the members of the other
Buddhist sects."
XV
THE WORSHIP OF ANCESTORS IN CHINA
r those early days when Moses was going to school
to the priests of Memphis, and when Cecrops had
not yet landed on the shores of Attica, the civiliza-
tion of China was crystallized into permanent shape, and
the national religion consisted of three elements: i. The
worship of Shang Ti, the Supreme Ruler ; 2. The worship
of powers supposed to preside over the principal depart-
ments of material nature ; and 3. The worship of deceased
ancestors.
The earliest recorded instance of the latter dates back
to a period anterior to the calling of Abraham ; when
Shun, the son of a blind peasant, was adopted into the
family of the Emperor Yao and acknowledged as heir to
the throne, 2300 B. c.
Of the ceremonial employed on this occasion, we have
no details ; the statement that the " concluding rites " were
performed in the temple of Wen Tsu, the ancestor of
Yao, is all that the historian has vouchsafed to communi-
cate. Yet, how much is implied in this laconic record?
It implies, on the part of Yao, an announcement to the
spirits of his forefathers of his purpose to effect a change
in the line of succession. On the part of Shun, it implies
a reverential acceptance of Yao's ancestors in place of his
own, and the assumption in their presence of vows of
fidelity in the discharge of his high functions.
264
THE WORSHIP OF ANCESTORS 265
When the Emperor now on the throne, was adopted by
an Empress Regent as the son of his uncle Hsien Feng, a
similar ceremony was performed by proxy in the temple
of the deceased sovereign. On that occasion, a fanatical
censor, Wu K'o Tu, protested against the affiliation to
Hsien Feng; contended that it was doing dishonor to the
last Emperor T'ung Chih, to leave him without a son;
and, in order to give emphasis to his remonstrance, he
sealed it with his blood, sacrificing his life before the
tomb of the latter sovereign.
This occurrence, illustrating as it does what took place
4000 years ago, is of itself sufficient to prove that in the
China of to-day the worship of ancestors is not a dead
form, but a living faith.
Not only is the adoption of an heir to the throne thus
formally announced to the ancestors of the reigning house ;
every case of regular succession is solemnly notified by a
similar ceremonial.
In the 1 2th century before our era, Wu Wang over-
turned the house of Shang, and founded the dynasty of
Chou. In the indictment which, to justify his rebellion,
he brings against the degenerate occupant of the throne,
he begins by charging him with neglecting the service of
Shang Ti and subordinate deities, and even forgetting
to sacrifice at the altars of his own ancestors.
In a second manifesto, he refers to his deceased father
Wen Wang, and adds " If I gain the victory, it will not
be through my own prowess, but through the merits of
my father. If I am beaten, it will not be from any fault
in my father, but solely from the want of virtue in me."
He warns his soldiers that " if they are brave, they
will be rewarded publicly in the temple of his ancestors ;
but if cowardly, they will be slain at the altars of the
earth-gods."
266 THE LORE OF CATHAY
Such was the place held by the worship of ancestors
at the dawn of history, along with that of Shang Ti and
a host of inferior divinities. At the present day, no one
can visit the magnificent monuments of the Ming Em-
perors, or witness the vast sums expended on the mausolea
of the reigning House, without a profound conviction that
the cult of ancestors has lost nothing of its ancient sanc-
tity.
In 1889 the reigning Emperor and the Dowager Em-
press made a solemn pilgrimage to the tombs of their
fathers ; the former to report in person his marriage and
full accession to imperial power, the latter to give account
of her exercise of delegated authority during her long
regency. What stronger proof could be required of the
important position which the worship of ancestors still
occupies in the religion of the State?
It is not, however, restricted to the ruling classes. It
forms the leading element in the religion of the people.
It is, in fact, the only form of religion which the gov-
ernment takes the trouble to propagate among its sub-
jects.
Every household has somewhere within its doors a
small shrine, in which are deposited the tablets of ances-
tors, and of all deceased members of the family who have
passed the age of infancy.
Each clan has its ancestral temple, which forms a rally-
ing point for all who belong to the common stock. In
such temples, as in the smaller shrines of the household,
the objects of reverence are not images, but tablets, slips
of wood inscribed with the name of the deceased, to-
gether with the dates of birth and death. In these tablets,
according to popular belief, dwell the spirits of the dead.
Before them ascends the smoke of daily incense; and,
THE WORSHIP OF ANCESTORS 267
twice in the month, offerings of fruits and other eatables
are presented, accompanied by solemn prostrations.
In some cases, particularly during a period of mourn-
ing, the members of the family salute the dead, morning
and evening, as they do the living; and on special occa-
sions, such as a marriage or a funeral, there are religious
services of a more elaborate character, accompanied some-
times by feasts and theatrical shows.
Besides worship in presence of the representative tablet,
periodical rites are performed at the family cemetery.
In spring and autumn, when the mildness of the air is
such as to invite excursions, city families are wont to
choose a day for visiting the resting places of their dead.
Clearing away the grass, and covering the tombs with a
layer of fresh earth, they present offerings and perform
acts of worship. This done, they pass the rest of the
day in enjoying the scenery of the country.
Such, in outline, is the system of ancestral worship. It
constitutes the very heart of the religion of China. The
Supreme Ruler is too august to be approached by ordi-
nary mortals. As to other divinities, their worship is in-
cumbent only on priests or magistrates ; but the worship
of ancestors is obligatory on all. They are the penates
of every household. To honor them is religion ; to neg-
lect them the highest impiety.
Usages of this kind spring as naturally as the grass
from the graves of the deceased; and in ancient times
the funeral rites of the Chinese differed little from those
of other nations. That by which they are justly dis-
tinguished is that, instead of suffering them to be over-
268 THE LORE OF CATHAY
shadowed by polytheism, they alone have shaped their
offices for the dead into an all-pervading and potent cult
which moulds the social and spiritual life of every indi-
vidual in the Empire.
Spontaneous in its origin, in its developed form it is
the slow growth of thirty centuries. It was practised in
the Golden Age of Chinese history, two thousand years
before the Christian era; and in the rites of Chou, a thou-
sand years later, we find it reduced to a precise and com-
plicated code; but it was not so stereotyped as to be
incapable of further alteration. It was disfigured by
grotesque ceremonies, the reproduction of which at
the present day would be regarded as hardly less
shocking than the restoration of human sacrifices
I allude particularly to that curious arrangement
by which a solemn act of religion was converted
into a ridiculous masquerade young children being
made to personate their ancestors, and, habited in ghostly
costume, receiving the homage of their own parents. Nor
was it then clothed with the imperious authority which it
now exercises. In the life of Confucius we find recorded
the remarkable fact that when arrived at manhood he was
ignorant of the burial-place of his father, who had died
when he was an infant, and it was not until the death of
his mother that he took pains to ascertain it. This indi-
cates a degree of laxity which would not be possible at
the present day, when semi-annual offerings are required
to be made at the tombs of ancestors.
Yet it is to Confucius more than to any other man that
China is indebted for the strictness with which the rites
of this worship are now universally observed. Making
filial piety the corner-stone of his ethical system, and
only vaguely recognizing the personality of the supreme
power, whom he styles Tien, or Heaven, he was led to
THE WORSHIP OF ANCESTORS 269
seek in the worship of ancestors for the religious sanctions
required to confirm it. " If," said he, " funeral rites are
performed with scrupulous care, and remote ancestors
duly recognized, the virtues of the people will be strength-
ened." This is a maxim which lies at the foundation of
the religious polity of the Chinese Empire.
The more objectionable features in ancestral worship
are not due to Confucius, and derive no sanction from his
authority ; I mean the transformation of the deceased
into tutelar divinities; and the absurd doctrine that the
destinies of the family are determined by the location of
the family tombs.
The first of these springs so readily from the human
heart that it is unnecessary to look for its origin in the
teachings of any particular school. It is touching to read
on a tombstone that a mourning family, having laid an
aged parent in his last resting-place, beseech his spirit to
hover over them as a protecting power. But the Chinese
are not so taught by Confucius, who, when interrogated
as to the survival of the soul, refused to assert that it pos-
sesses any conscious existence after the death of the body ;
and, while exhorting to sincerity in sacrifices, went no
further than to say, " Sacrifice to the spirits as if they
were present."
The other tenet is derived from feng-shui, or geomancy,
the debasing offshoot of a degenerate Taoism. This false
science, which bears to geology a relation similar to that
which astrology bears to astronomy, assumes the existence
of certain influences connected with the configuration of
the surface which affect the destinies of the inhabitants
of any given locality. These must be taken account of
in selecting the site of a dwelling-house, a school, a shop,
or even a stable, and especially a burial-place. So strong
is the conviction on this last point that families who are
270 THE LORE OF CATHAY
overtaken by a series of misfortunes are often persuaded
to exhume the bones of their forefathers, and shift them,
perhaps more than once, to a new location, in hopes of
hitting on the focus of auspicious influences. This super-
stition is even carried into the domain of politics ; so that
the government, on suppressing a rebellious entente, has
been known to order the destruction of the family tombs
of the rebel chief, in order to strike at what is supposed
to be the fountain-head of the disturbing influence.
Buddhism has exerted a profound influence on the
worship of ancestors, strengthening, as it has done, the
instinctive faith in a future state, and introducing an
elaborate liturgy for the repose of the departed.
RELATION TO SOCIAL ORDER.
" In China filial piety is the bond of social order."
The Imperial house sets the example in what it regards
as the highest form of filial duty. Not only are separate
shrines erected for the ancestors of the reigning family ;
the Emperor, according to immemorial usage, associates
them with Shang Ti the Supreme Ruler, in the sacrifices
which, as high-priest of the Empire, he makes at the
Temple of Heaven.
The visitor who is fortunate enough to gain access to
an azure-colored pagoda on the north of the principal
altar may see there a tablet inscribed with the name of
Shang Ti occupying the central place of honor, while the
tablets of ten generations of the reigning family are
ranged on the right and left. Three of these never set
foot in China, nor in any proper sense can they be said to
have occupied the Imperial throne.
Two of them reigned in Liaotung, over a single prov-
ince, and one was the chief of a roving tribe in the wilds
THE WORSHIP OF ANCESTORS 271
of Manchuria; yet on the occupation of China by their
descendants, they were all canonized or raised by Im-
perial decree to the dignity of Emperor.
This tendency of the stream of honor to flow upwards
is peculiar to China. There alone is it possible for a
distinguished son to lift his deceased parents out of ob-
scurity, and to confer on their names the reflected lustre
of his own rank.
It is not easy for us to estimate the force of the mo-
tive which is thus brought to bear on a generous mind
nurtured under the influence of such traditions. Knang
tsung yu tsu, " Be careful to reflect glory on your fore-
fathers," is a hortatory formula, addressed alike to the
soldier on the battle-field and the student in the halls
of learning.
If, as President Hayes asserted in a speech at San
Francisco, " those who show the greatest respect for their
ancestors are most likely to be distinguished by their re-
gard for posterity," the Chinese ought to excel all men
in that sentiment, so essential to the well-being of a
State ; certain it is that their worship of ancestors fosters
the sentiment in a most effectual manner.
The man who worships his forefathers, and believes in
their conscious existence, naturally desires to leave off-
spring who shall keep the fires burning on the family
altar, and regale his own spirit with periodical oblations.
Mencius accordingly lays it down as a maxim that " of
the three offences against filial piety, the greatest is to be
childless " a dictum which has contributed not a little
to promote the practice of early marriage, and the con-
sequent enormous expansion of the population of China.
Viewed in this latter aspect, the reflex influence of ances-
tral worship may be considered as a doubtful boon ; but as
to the underlying sentiment, were it wisely directed to
272 THE LORE OF CATHAY
providing for the welfare of coming generations as well as
to bringing them into existence, its beneficial effects
would be of inestimable value.
The worship of ancestors strengthens the ties of kin-
ship, and binds together those family and tribal groups
on which the government so much relies for the control
of its individual subjects. The family temple serves for a
church, theatre, school-house, council-room, indeed for
all the varied objects required by the exigencies of a vil-
lage community. Domains attached to it for the main-
tenance of the sacrifices are held as common property ;
and glebe-lands are often appended which are devoted to
the support of needy members of the widely extended
connection. I have seen a town of twenty-five thousand
people, all belonging to the same clan, and bearing the
same family name. A conspicuous edifice near the centre
bore the name of Shih Tsu Miao, i. e. temple of our first
ancestor. Here the divergent branches of the family tree
met in a common root; and all the citizens, under the
cloud of incense arising from a common sacrifice, were
led to feel the oneness of their origin ; though separated,
it might be, by half a millennium. Such a village resem-
bles the growth of a banyan-tree the most distant column
in the living arcade, though resting on a root of its own,
still maintains a vital connection with the parent stock.
The following are some of the occasions on which
formal addresses are made to the spirits of ancestors.
When a youth dons the cap of manhood, he is taken to
the ancestral temple, where his father invokes for him
the guardian care of his forefathers, " that he may be a
complete man, and not fall below their standard of ex-
cellence." The rite is extremely impressive, and it would
lose nothing of its solemnity, if, in lieu of the invocation
of the dead, the blessing of the living God were invoked.
THE WORSHIP OF ANCESTORS 273
When a son or daughter is betrothed, the parents simply
notify their ancestors, much as they do their living
kindred, but without asking for tutelar care. When a
youth goes to fetch home his bride, the father " reveren-
tially announces the fact to his ancestors, with offerings
of fruits and wine." The same is done in case of a bride
departing for her new home.
In the marriage ceremony, the bridegroom presents his
wife to his ancestors as a new member of the family, and
invokes for her their " paternal blessing."
In none of the forms connected with funerals is there
any petition for blessing or protection. The language is
that of a simple announcement, accompanied by an ex-
pression of profound sorrow. But in the periodical serv-
ices at the family cemetery, this objectionable element
shows itself, the worshipper says " We have come to
sweep your tombs to show our gratitude for your pro-
tecting care, and now we beseech you to accept our offer-
ings and make our posterity prosperous and happy." With
the alteration of a few words, these so-called prayers
might be reduced to mere expressions of natural affection.
He who would object to them after such retrenchment,
would condemn Cowper's pathetic address to his mother's
picture ?
" My mother, when I knew that thou wast dead,
Say, wast thou conscious of the tears I shed ?
Hovered thy spirit o'er thy sorrowing son,
Wretch even then, life's journey just begun ? "
In Hernani, that noble tragedy of Victor Hugo, one of
the most impressive scenes is an act of worship at the
tomb of an ancestor.
Don Carlos, afterwards Charles V., on the eve of elec-
274 THE LORE OF CATHAY
tion to the throne of the German Empire, enters the mau-
soleum of Charlemagne at Aix la Chapelle, and, throwing
himself on his knees before the tomb of the great mon-
arch, he pours out this prayer:
" Pour into my heart something of thy own sublime
spirit ; speak, for thy son is waiting to hear. Thou dwell-
est in light; oh, send some rays upon his pathway."
This, it may be said, is poetry, not religion; while the
worship of the Chinese is religion, with very little poetry.
Aside from its social and economic relations, this form
of worship exerts a religious and moral influence beyond
any other system of doctrines hitherto known to the Chi-
nese Empire. In a sceptical world, and through ages not
favored with that revelation which has " brought life and
immortality to light," it has kept alive the faith in a future
life. The orthodox son of Han regards himself as living
and acting in the sight of his ancestors. He refers his
conduct to their supposed judgment, and the comfort of
his dying hour is largely determined by the view he takes
of the kind of welcome he is likely to receive when he
meets the shades of his forefathers.
" How could I look my ancestors in the face if I should
consent to such a proposition ? " is a reply which many
an officer has given to a temptation to betray his trust.
A motive which has such power to deter from baseness
may also be potent as a stimulus to good ; indeed, in re-
spect to moral efficacy it would appear to be only second
to that of faith in the presence of an all-seeing Deity.
How effective it must be may be inferred from the fact
that a Chinese, bent on wounding his adversary in the
keenest point, curses, not the obnoxious individual, but his
ancestors ; because respect for them is the deepest of all
his religious sentiments.
THE WORSHIP OF ANCESTORS 275
RELATION TO CHRISTIANITY.
In conclusion, the spectacle of a great nation with its
whole population gathered round the altars of their an-
cestors, tracing their lineage up to the hundredth genera-
tion, and recognizing the ties of kindred to the hundredth
degree, is one that partakes of the sublime. It suggests,
moreover, two questions of no little interest: I. May there
not be some feature in the Chinese system which we might
with advantage engraft on our Western civilization? 2.
In propagating Christianity in China, what attitude ought
missionaries to assume towards that venerable institution ?
If it be objected that a sufficient answer to both is
found in the tendency of ancestral worship to fetter prog-
ress by pledging men to the imitation of the past, we
reply that such an effect is by no means necessary; that
Chinese conservatism is due to other causes, and that men
of the present generation may gratefully acknowledge
their obligations to the past, while conscious that they
themselves constitute the highest stage in the skyward col-
umn of our growing humanity. The Vrilya, we are told
in the instructive romance of Lord Lytton " the Coming
Race ", with all their advanced ideas, still preserved with
reverence the portraits of their early ancestors who had
not yet attained the human shape.
The question of adopting such an institution is quite
distinct from that of uprooting it from a soil in which it
has been prolific of blessings. Is it merely one of the
many phases of pagan religion, which, however they may
have subserved the cause of morality in a twilight age,
must be regarded as purely obstructive in the light of
Christian day, or may we not recognize in it some ele-
ment of permanent good, worthy to survive all changes
276 THE LORE OF CATHAY
in the national faith? As a matter of fact, all mission-
ary bodies have taken the former view except those
Jesuits who first introduced Christianity to the Chinese
people. Perceiving unmistakable evidence that filial rev-
erence had grown into idolatrous devotion, and memorial
tablets become converted into objects of idolatrous hom-
age, they have declared war against the entire system.
It is, I confess, a suspicious circumstance to find the
Jesuits tolerating the traditional rites, while Dominican
and Franciscan, Greek and Protestant, have all concurred
in rejecting them. Yet I cannot bring myself to feel that
the latter have been wholly right, or the former altogether
wrong. Had the policy of the Jesuits been sanctioned by
the Popes, the adherents of the Church of Rome might
have been spared a century of persecution, and it is prob-
able that the religion of India might have been supplanted
by that of Europe; for nothing has ever aroused such
active opposition to Christianity as the discovery that it
stands in irreconcilable antagonism to the worship of an-
cestors. The decision of the Sovereign Pontiff commit-
ting his Church to this position reminds us by its effects
of the unfortunate reply of a Saxon missionary to Radbod,
the King of Friesland. The King, with one foot in the
baptismal font, as a last question, asked the missionary
whether he must think of his ancestors as in heaven or
in hell. " In hell," was the reply. " Then I shall go with
my fathers," exclaimed the King, as he drew back and
refused the Christian rite. Thousands of Chinese on the
brink of a Christian profession have been held back by a
similar motive.
The question, I admit, is not altogether one of expedi-
ency. Yet, in view of all our obligations to truth and
righteousness, there appears to me to be no necessity for
placing them in this cruel dilemma. The idolatrous ele-
THE WORSHIP OF ANCESTORS 277
ments involved in ancestral worship are, as we have seen,
excrescences, not of the essence of the system. Why not
prune them off and retain all that is good and beautiful
in the institution? A tablet inscribed with a name and
a date is in itself a simple memorial not more dangerous
than the urns of ashes which cremationists are supposed
to preserve in their dwellings, and not half so much so as
pictures and statues; why should the native convert be
required to surrender or destroy it? The semi-annual
visit to the family cemetery is a becoming act of respect
to the dead : why should that be forbidden ? As to offer-
ings of meats and drinks, why should they or why should
they not be replaced by bouquets of flowers, or the peri-
odical planting of flower-seeds and flowering shrubs?
Even the act of prostration before the tomb or tablet can
hardly be regarded as objectionable in a country where
children are required to kneel before their living parents.
Two things excite my poignant grief when I look back to
the mistakes of the past one, the exclusion of a church
member for complying with the ordinary marriage cere-
mony and kneeling before a strip of paper inscribed with
the five objects of veneration, the other insisting on
the surrender of ancestral tablets as a proof of sincerity
on the part of an applicant for baptism. I had no right
to impose such a test in either case.
That which is really objectionable is geomancy and the
invocation of departed spirits. The simplest ideas of
science are sufficient to dispel the one form of supersti-
tion, and a very small amount of religious knowledge sup-
plies an effectual antidote to the other. The worship of
ancestors would thus be restored to the state in which
Confucius left it, or rather to that in which he himself
practised it as merely a system of commemorative rites.
Whatever party takes this position will have an im-
278 THE LORE OF CATHAY
mense advantage in the competition for converts. Mis-
sionaries may never accept it. But the native Church
cannot be expected to follow servilely in the footsteps of
its foreign leaders. When the higher classes come to
embrace Christianity in great numbers, they will readily
leave behind them their Buddhism and their Taoism ; but
the worship of ancestors they will never consent to
abandon, though they may submit to some such modifi-
cations as those which I have endeavored to indicate.
BOOK IV
Education in China
XV*
SCHOOL AND FAMILY TRAINING
I. Influence on national character
THE interest of the inquiry on which we are about
to enter is based on the assumption that differ-
ences of national character are mainly due to
the influence of education. This we conceive to be true,
except in extreme cases, such as those of the inhabitants
of torrid or frigid regions, where everything succumbs
to the tyranny of physical forces. In such situations
climate shapes education, as, according to Montesquieu,
it determines morals and dictates laws. But in milder
latitudes the difference of physical surroundings is an
* This chapter was first published in 1877 as a pamphlet, by
the United States Bureau of Education. The following letter
of the late Mr. Avery, United States Minister to China, may
serve to explain its origin:
" To the Commissioner of Education:
" SIR, Before my departure for China, I received from you
a request to secure for use by your Bureau an accurate and full
statement of the methods of education in China, and ' the rela-
tion of the methods to the failure of their civilization.'
" On my arrival at Peking, bearing your request in mind, I
was confirmed in the opinion entertained before, that to no one
else could I apply for the information desired with so much
propriety as to Dr. W. A. P. Martin, our fellow-countryman,
president of the Imperial College for Western Science at Pe-
king, whose long residence in China, scholarly knowledge of
281
282 THE LORE OF CATHAY
almost inappreciable element in the formation of charac-
ter in comparison with influences of an intellectual and
moral kind. Much, for example, is said about the in-
spiration of mountain scenery an inspiration felt most
sensibly, if not most effectively, by those who see the
mountains least frequently; but, as John Foster remarks,
the character of a lad brought up at the foot of the Alps
is a thousandfold more affected by the companions with
whom he associates than by the mountains that rear their
heads above his dwelling.
The peculiar character of the Chinese for they have
a character which is one and distinct is not to be ac-
counted for by their residence in great plains, for half
the empire is mountainous. Neither is it to be ascribed
to their rice diet, as rice is a luxury in which few of the
northern population are able to indulge. Still less is it
to be referred to the influence of climate, for they spread
over a broad belt in their own country, emigrate in all
directions, and flourish in every zone. It is not even ex-
plained by the unity and persistency of an original type,
for in their earlier career they absorbed and assimilated
several other races, while history shows that at different
epochs their own character has undergone remarkable
Chinese literature, and familiar acquaintance with native methods
of education must be well known to you.
" Dr. Martin, at my solicitation, agreed to furnish a paper on
the subject you indicated, which I have just received from his
hands, and now forward to you through the courtesy o the
State Department. I scarcely need add that you will find it
alike interesting and valuable.
" I am, sir,
" Your obedient servant,
" BENJ. P. AVERY.
" Hon. JOHN EATON,
" Commissioner of Education."
SCHOOL AND FAMILY TRAINING 283
changes. The true secret of this phenomenon is the
presence of an agency which, under our own eyes, has
shown itself sufficiently powerful to transform the turbu-
lent nomadic Manchu into the most Chinese of the in-
habitants of the Middle Kingdom. The general name
for that agency, which includes a thousand elements, is
education. It is education that has imparted a uniform
stamp to the Chinese under every variety of physical
condition ; just as the successive sheets of paper applied
to an engraving bring away, substantially, the same im-
pression, notwithstanding differences in the quality of
the material.
In this wide sense we shall not attempt to treat the
subject, though it may not be out of place to remark that
the Chinese themselves employ a word which answers to
education with a similar latitude. They say, for instance,
that the education of a child begins before its birth. The
women of ancient times, say they, in every movement had
regard to its effect on the character of their offspring.
This they denominate chiao, reminding us of what Goe-
the tells us in his autobiography of certain antecedents
which had their effect in imparting to him
" That concord of harmonious powers
Which forms the soul of happiness."
All this, whatever its value, belongs to physical discipline.
We shall not go so far back in the history of our typical
Chinese, but, confining ourselves strictly to the depart-
ment of intellectual influences, take him at the time when
the young idea first begins to shoot, and trace him
through the several stages of his development until he
emerges a full-fledged Academician.*
* For an account of the Imperial Hanlin Academy, see
chapter III.
284 THE LORE OF CATHAY
//. Home education
With us the family is the first school. Not only is it
here that we make the most important of our linguistic
acquirements, but with parents who are themselves culti-
vated there is generally a persistent effort to stimulate
the mental growth of their offspring, to develop reason,
form taste, and invigorate the memory.
In many instances parental vanity applies a spur where
the curb ought to be employed, and a sickly precocity is
the result; but in general a judicious stimulus addressed
to the mind is no detriment to the body, and it is doubt-
less to the difference of domestic training rather than to
race that we are to ascribe the early awaking of the men-
tal powers of European children as compared with those
of China. The Chinese have, it is true, their stories of
infant precocity their Barretiers and Chattertons. They
tell of Li Mu, who, at the age of seven, was thought
worthy of the degree of Chin Shih, or the literary
doctorate, and of Hsie Chin, the " divine child,"
who, at the age of ten, composed a volume of poems,
still in use as a juvenile text-book. But these are not
merely exceptions; they are exceptions of rarer occur-
rence than among us.
Chinese children do not get their hands and feet as
soon as ours, because, in the first months of their exist-
ence, they are tightly swathed and afterwards overloaded
with cumbrous garments. The reason for their tardier
mental development is quite analogous. European chil-
dren exhibit more thought at five than Chinese children
at twice that age. This is not a partial judgment, nor is
the fact to be accounted for by a difference of race ; for
in mental capacity the Chinese are, in my opinion, not
inferior to the " most favored nation." Deprive our
nurseries of those speaking pictures that say so much to
SCHOOL AND FAMILY TRAINING 285
the infant eye; of infant poems, such as those of Watts
and Barbauld; of the sweet music that impresses those
poems on the infant mind ; more than all, take away those
Bible stories and scraps of history which excite a thirst
for the books that contain them, and what a check upon
mental growth, what a deduction from the happiness of
childhood ! With us the dawn of knowledge precedes the
use of books, as the rays of morning, refracted by the
atmosphere and glowing with rosy hues, anticipate the
rising of the sun. In China there is no such accommo-
dating medium, no such blushing aurora. The language
of the fireside is not the language of the books.
Mothers and nurses are not taught to read ; nor are
fathers less inclined than with us to leave the work of
instruction to be begun by the professional teacher. This
they are the more disposed to do, as an ancient usage *
prohibits a parent being the instructor of his own chil-
dren; still some fathers, yielding to better instincts, do
take a pride in teaching their infant sons ; and some
mothers, whose exceptional culture makes them shine
like stars in the night of female ignorance, have imparted
to their children the first impulse in a literary career.
How many of those who have obtained seats on the
literary Olympus were favored with such early advan-
tages it is impossible to ascertain. That the number is
considerable, we cannot doubt. We remember hearing of
two scholars in Chekiang who were not only taught the
mechanical art of writing, but the higher art of compo-
sition, by an educated mother, both of them winning the
honors of the Academy.
As another instance of the same kind, the Memoirs of
the Academy embalm the memory of such a noble mother
along with the name of her illustrious son ; and the
* " They exchanged their sons for education," says an old book.
286 THE LORE OF CATHAY
Emperor Ch'ien Lung, with vermilion pencil, celebrates
the talents of the one and the virtues of the other.
The Emperor says of Chien Chen Chen, " He drew his
learning from a hidden source, a virtuous mother impart-
ing to him her classic lore." In the prose obituary pre-
fixed to the verses, his Majesty says, " Chien's mother,
Lady Chen, was skilled in ornamental writing. In his
boyhood it was she who inspired and directed his studies.
He had a painting which represented his mother holding
a distaff and at the same time explaining to him the
classic page. I admired it, and inscribed on it a com-
plimentary verse " A graceful tribute from an exalted
hand, worth more, in the estimation of the Chinese, than
all the marble or granite that might be heaped upon her
sepulchre.
///. Commencement of school life
In general, however, a Chinese home is not a hot-bed
for the development of mind. Nature is left to take her
own time, and the child vegetates until he completes
his seventh or eighth year. The almanac is then con-
sulted, and a lucky day chosen for inducting the lad into
a life of study. Clad in festal robe, with tasselled cap,
and looking a mandarin in small, he sets out for the
village school, his face beaming with the happy assur-
ance that all the stars are shedding kindly influence,
and his friends predicting that he will end his career
in the Imperial Academy. On entering the room, he per-
forms two acts of worship: the first is to prostrate him-
self before a picture of the Great Sage, who is venerated
as the fountain of wisdom, but is not supposed to exercise
over his votaries anything like a tutelar supervision. The
second is to salute with the same forms, and almost equal
SCHOOL AND FAMILY TRAINING 287
reverence, the teacher who is to guide his inexperienced
feet in the pathway to knowledge. In no country is the
office of teacher more revered. Not only is the living
instructor saluted with forms of profoundest respect,
but the very name of teacher, taken in the abstract, is an
object of almost idolatrous homage. On certain occa-
sions it is inscribed on a tablet in connection with the
characters for heaven, earth, prince, and parents, as one
of the five chief objects of veneration, and worshipped
with solemn rites. This is a relic of the primitive period,
when books were few and the student dependent for
everything on the oral teaching of his sapient master.
In those days, in Eastern as well as Western Asia and
Greece, schools were peripatetic, or (as Jeremy Taylor
says of the Church in his time) ambulatory. Disciples
were wont to attend their master by day and night, and
follow him on his peregrinations from State to State, in
order to catch and treasure up his most casual discourses.
As to the pursuit of knowledge, they were at a great
disadvantage compared with modern students, whose
libraries contain books by the thousand, while their living
teachers are counted by the score Yet the student life
of those days was not without its compensating circum-
stances. Practical morality, the formation of character,
was the great object, intellectual discipline being deemed
subordinate; and in such a state of society physical cul-
ture was, of course, not neglected. The personal char-
acter of the teacher made a profound impression on his
pupils, inspiring them with ardor in the pursuit of virtue ;
while the necessity of learning by question and answer
excited a spirit of inquiry and favored originality of
thought. But now all this is changed, and the names and
forms continue without the reality.
A man who never had a dozen thoughts in all his life
288 THE LORE OF CATHAY
sits in the seat of the philosophers and receives with
solemn ceremony the homage of his disciples. And why
not? For every step in the process of teaching is fixed
by unalterable usage. So much is this the case that in
describing one school I describe all, and in tracing the
steps of one student 1 point out the course of all; for
in China there are no new methods or short roads.
In other countries, a teacher, even in the primary
course, finds room for tact and originality. In those
who dislike study a love of it is to be inspired by making
" knowledge pleasant to the taste," and the dull appre-
hension is to be awakened by striking and apt illustra-
tions ; while, to the eager and industrious, " steps to
Parnassus " are, if not -made easy, at least to be pointed
out so clearly that they shall waste no strength in climb-
ing by wrong paths. In China there is nothing of the
kind. The land of uniformity, all processes in arts and
letters are as much fixed by universal custom as is the cut
of their garments or the mode of wearing their hair.
The pupils all tread the path trodden by their ancestors
of a thousand years ago, nor has it grown smoother
by the attrition of so many feet.
IV. Stages of study
The undergraduate course may be divided into three
stages, in each of which there are two leading studies :
In the first, the occupations of the student are com-
mitting to memory (not reading) the canonical books
and writing an infinitude of diversely formed characters
as a manual exercise.
In the second, they are the translation of his text-
books (i. e. reading), and lessons in composition.
SCHOOL AND FAMILY TRAINING 289
In the third, they are belles-lettres and the composition
of essays.
Nothing could be more dreary than the labors of the
first stage. The pupil comes to school, as one of his
books tells him, " a rough gem, that requires grind-
ing ; " but the process is slow and painful. His books
are in a dead language, for in every part of the Empire
the style of literary composition is so far removed from
that of the vernacular speech that books, when read
aloud, are unintelligible even to the ear of the educated,
and the sounds of their characters convey absolutely no
meaning to the mind of a beginner. Nor, as a general
thing, is any effort made to give them life by imparting
glimpses of their signification. The whole of this first
stage is a dead lift of memory, unalleviated by the
exercise of any other faculty. It is something like
what we should have in our Western schools if our youth
were restricted to the study of Latin as their sole occu-
pation, and required to stow away in their memory the
contents of the principal classics before learning a word
of their meaning.
The whole of the Four Books and the greater part of
the Five Classics are usually gone through in this
manner, four or five years being allotted to the cheerless
task. During all this time the mind has not been enriched
by a single idea. To get words at the tongue's end and
characters at the pencil's point is the sole object of this
initial discipline. It would seem, indeed, as if the wise
ancients who devised it had dreaded nothing so much as
early development, and, like prudent horticulturists, re-
sorted to this method for the purpose of heaping snow
and ice around the roots of the young plant to guard
against its premature blossoming. All the arrangements
2 9 o THE LORE OF CATHAY
of the system are admirably adapted to form a safeguard
against precocity. Even the stimulus of companionship
in study is usually denied, the advantages resulting from
the formation of classes being as little appreciated as
those of other labor-saving machinery. Each pupil reads
and writes alone, the penalty for failure being so many
blows with the ferule or kneeling for so many minutes
on the rough brick pavement which serves for a floor.
At this period fear is the strongest motive addressed to
the mind of the scholar ; nor is it easy to say how large a
share this stern discipline has in giving him his first
lesson in political duty viz., that of unquestioning sub-
mission and in rendering him cringing and pliant to-
wards official superiors. Those sallies of innocent humor
and venial mischief so common in Western schools are
rarely witnessed in China.
A practical joke in which the scholars indulged at the
expense of their teacher I have seen represented in a
picture, but never in real life. This picture, the most
graphic I ever saw from a Chinese pencil, adorns the
walls of a monastery at the Western Hills, near Peking.
It represents a village school, the master asleep in his
chair and the pupils playing various pranks, the least of
which, if the tyrant should happen to awake, would
bring down his terrible baton. But, notwithstanding the
danger to which they expose themselves, two of the
young unterrified stand behind the throne, threatening
to awake the sleeper by tickling his ear with the tail of a
scorpion.
So foreign, indeed, is this scene to the habits of
Chinese schoolboys that I feel compelled to take it in a
mystic rather than a literal signification. The master
is reason, the boys are the passions, and the scorpion con-
science. If passion gets at the ear of the soul while
SCHOOL AND FAMILY TRAINING 291
reason sleeps, the stings of conscience are sure to follow
those
" Pangs that pay joy's spendthrift thrill
With bitter usury."
Thus understood, it conveys a moral alike worthy of
Christian or Buddhist ethics.
Severity is accounted the first virtue in a pedagogue ;
and its opposite is not kindness, but negligence. In
family schools, where the teacher is well watched, he is
reasonably diligent and sufficiently severe to satisfy the
most exacting of his patrons. In others, and particularly
in charity-schools, the portrait of Squeers in Nicholas
Nickleby would be no caricature. With modifications
and improvements in the curriculum, a teacher has noth-
ing to do. His business is to keep the mill going, and
the time-honored argument a posteriori is the only per-
suasion he cares to appeal to.
This arctic winter of monotonous toil once passed, a
more auspicious season dawns on the youthful under-
standing. The key of the Cabala which he has been so
long and so blindly acquiring is put into his hands. He
is initiated in the translation and exposition of those
sacred books which he had previously stored away in his
memory, as if apprehensive lest another tyrant of Chin
might attempt their destruction. The light, however,
is let in but sparingly, as it were, through chinks and
rifts in the long dark passage. A simple character here
and there is explained, and then, it may be after the lapse
of a year or two, the teacher proceeds to the explication
of entire sentences. Now for the first time the mind of
the student begins to take in the thoughts of those he
has been taught to regard as the oracles of wisdom. His
dormant faculties wake into sudden life, and, as it would
292 THE LORE OF CATHAY
seem, unfold the more rapidly in consequence of their
protracted hibernation. To him it is like
" The glorious hour when spring goes forth
O'er the bleak mountains of the shadowy north,
And with one radiant glance, one magic breath,
Wakes all things lovely from the sleep of death."
The value of this exercise can hardly be overestimated.
When judiciously employed, it does for the Chinese what
translation into and out of the dead languages of the
West does for us. It calls into play memory, judgment,
taste, and gives him a command of his own vernacular
which, it is safe to assert, he would never acquire in any
other way. Yet even here I am not able to bestow un-
qualified commendation. This portion of the course
is rendered too easy ; as much too easy as the preceding is
too difficult. Instead of requiring a lad, dictionary in
hand, to quarry out the meaning of his author, the teacher
reads the lesson for him, and demands of him nothing
more than a faithful reproduction of that which he has
received ; memory again, sheer memory ! Desirable as
this method might be for beginners, when continued, as
the Chinese do, through the whole course, it has the
inevitable effect of impairing independence of judgment
and fertility of invention qualities for which Chinese
scholars are by no means remarkable, and for the de-
ficiency of which they are, no doubt, indebted to this error
of schoolroom discipline.
Simultaneously with a translation the student is initi-
ated in the art of composition an art which, in any lan-
guage, yields to nothing but practice. In Chinese it is be-
set with difficulties of a peculiar kind. In the majority of
cultivated languages the syntax is governed by rules,
while inflections, like mortise and tenon, facilitate the
structure of the sentence.
SCHOOL AND FAMILY TRAINING 293
Not so in this most primitive form of human speech.
Verbs and nouns are undistinguished by any difference
of form, the verb having- no voice, mood, or tense, and
the noun neither gender, number, nor case. Collo-
cation is everything; it creates the parts of speech and
determines the signification of characters. The very
simplicity of the linguistic structure thus proves a source
of difficulty, preventing the formation of any such sys-
tems of grammatical rules as abound in most inflected
languages, and throwing the burden of acquisition on
the imitative faculty ; the problem being, not the erection
of a fabric from parts which are adjusted and marked,
but the building of an arch with cobble-stones.
If these uniform, unclassified atoms were indifferent
to position, the labor of arrangement would be nothing,
and style impossible. But most of them appear to be
endowed with a kind of mysterious polarity which con-
trols their collocation, and renders them incapable of com-
panionship except with certain characters, the choice of
which would seem to be altogether arbitrary. The origin
of this peculiarity is not difficult to discover. In this, as
in other things among the Chinese, usage has become
law. Combinations which were accidental or optional
with the model writers of antiquity, and even their errors,
have, to their imitative posterity, become the jus et norma
loquendi. Free to move upon each other when the lan-
guage was young and in a fluid state, its elements have
now become crystallized into invariable forms. To
master this pre-established harmony without the aid of
rules is the fruit of practice and the labor of years.
The first step in composition is the yoking together
of double characters. The second is the reduplication of
these binary compounds and the construction of parallels
an idea which runs so completely through the whole of
294 THE LORE OF CATHAY
Chinese literature that the mind of the student requires
to be imbued with it at the very outset. This is the way
he begins : The teacher writes " Wind blows," the pupil
adds " Rain falls ; " the teacher writes " Rivers are long,"
the pupil adds " Seas are deep " or " Mountains are
high," etc.
From the simple subject and predicate, which in their
rude grammar they describe as " dead " and " living "
characters, the teacher conducts his pupil to more com-
plex forms, in which qualifying words and phrases are
introduced. He gives as a model some such phrase as
" The Emperor's grace is vast as heaven and earth," and
the lad matches it by " The sovereign's favor is profound
as lake and sea." These couplets often contain two prop-
ositions in each member, accompanied by all the usual
modifying terms ; and so exact is the symmetry required
by the rules of the art that not only must noun, verb,
adjective, and particle respond to each other with scrupu-
lous exactness, but the very tones of the characters are
adjusted to each other with the precision of music.
Begun with the first, strokes of his untaught pencil,
the student, whatever his proficiency, never gets beyond
the construction of parallels. When he becomes a mem-
ber of the Institute or a minister of the Imperial Cabinet,
at classic festivals and social entertainments, the composi-
tion of impromptu couplets, formed on the old model,
constitutes a favorite pastime. Reflecting a poetic image
from every syllable, or concealing the keen point of a
cutting epigram, they afford a fine vehicle for sallies of
wit; and poetical contests such as that of Melibceus and
Menalcas are in China matters of daily occurrence. If
a present is to be given, on the occasion of a marriage,
a birthday, or any other remarkable occasion, nothing
SCHOOL AND FAMILY TRAINING 295
is deemed so elegant or acceptable as a pair of scrolls
inscribed with a complimentary distich.
When the novice is sufficiently exercised in the
" parallels " for the idea of symmetry to have become an
instinct, he is permitted to advance to other species of
composition which afford freer scope for his faculties.
Such are the shou t'ieh in which a single thought is ex-
panded in simple language ; the lun, the formal dis-
cussion of a subject more or less extended, and epistles
addressed to imaginary persons and adapted to all con-
ceivable circumstances. In these last, the forms of the
" complete letter-writer " are copied with too much ser-
vility; but in the other two, substance being deemed of
more consequence than form, the new-fledged thought is
permitted to essay its powers and to expatiate with but
little restraint.
In the third stage, composition is the leading object,
reading being wholly subsidiary. It takes, for the most
part, the artificial form of verse, and of a kind of prose
called wen chang, which is, if possible, still more arti-
ficial. The reading required embraces mainly rhetorical
models and sundry anthologies. History is studied, but
only that of China, and that only in compends; not for
its lessons of wisdom, but for the sake of the allusions
with which it enables a writer to embellish classic essays.
The same may be said of other studies; knowledge and
mental discipline are at a discount, and style at a pre-
mium. The goal of the long course, the flower and fruit
of the whole system, is the wen chang; for this alone
can insure success in the public examinations for the civil
service, in which students begin to adventure soon after
entering on the third stage of their preparatory course.
These examinations we reserve for subsequent consid-
296 THE LORE OF CATHAY
eration, and in that connection we shall notice the wen
chang more at length. We may, however, remark in
passing that to propose such an end as the permanent
object of pursuit must of necessity have the effect of
rendering education superficial. In our own universities
surface is aimed at rather than depth ; but what, we may
ask, besides an empty glitter, would remain if none of
our students aspired to anything better than to become
popular newspaper-writers? Yet successful essayists
and penny-a-liners require as a preparation for their
functions a substratum of solid information. They have
to exert themselves to keep abreast of an age in which
great facts and great thoughts vibrate instantaneously
throughout a hemisphere. But the idea of progressive
knowledge is alien to the nature of the wen chang. A
juster parallel for the intense and fruitless concentra-
tion of energy on this species of composition is the
passion for Latin verse which was dominant in our halls
of learning until dethroned by the rise of modern science.
V. Grade of schools
The division of the undergraduate course into the
three stages which we have described gives rise to three
classes of schools ; the primary, in which little is at-
tended to beyond memoriter recitation and imitative
chirography; the middle, in which the canonical books
are expounded; and the classical, in which composition
is the leading exercise. Not unfrequently all three de-
partments are embraced in one and the same school ; and
still more frequently the single department professed
is so neglected as to render it utterly abortive for any
useful purpose. This, as we have elsewhere intimated, is
particularly the case with what are called public schools.
SCHOOL AND FAMILY TRAINING 297
National schools there are none, with the exception of
those at the capital for the education of the Bannermen,
originally established on a liberal scale, but now so
neglected that they can scarcely be reckoned among
existing institutions.
A further exception may be made in favor of schools
opened in various places by provincial officers for special
purposes; but it is still true that China has nothing
approaching to a system of common schools designed to
diffuse among the masses the blessings of a popular edu-
cation. Indeed, education is systematically left to
private enterprise and public charity; the government
contenting itself with gathering the choicest fruits and
encouraging production by suitable rewards. A govern-
ment that does this cannot be accused of neglecting the
interests of education, though the beneficial influence of
such patronage seldom penetrates to the lower strata of
society.
Even higher institutions, those that bear the name of
colleges, are, for the most part, left to shift for them-
selves on the same principle. Such colleges differ little
from schools of the middle and higher class, except in
the number of professors and students. The professors,
however numerous, teach nothing but the Chinese lan-
guage, and the students, however long they may remain
in the institution, study nothing but the Chinese lan-
guage. Colleges in the modern sense, as institutions in
which the several sciences are taught by men who are
specially expert, are, as yet, almost unknown. But there
is reason to believe that the government will soon per-
ceive the necessity of supplying its people with the means
of a higher, broader culture than they can derive from
the grammar and rhetoric of their own language.
In establishing and contributing to the support of
298 THE LORE OF CATHAY
schools, the gentry are exceedingly liberal ; but they are
not always careful to see that their schools are conducted
in an efficient manner. In China nothing flourishes
without the stimulus of private interest. Accordingly,
all who can afford to do so, endeavour to employ private
instructors for their own families ; and where' a single
family is unable to meet the expense, two or three of
the same clan or family name are accustomed to club
together for that object.
Efforts for the promotion of education are specially
encouraged by enlightened magistrates. Recently, over
three hundred new schools were reported as opened in
one department of the Province of Canton as the result
of official influence, but not at government expense.
The Emperor, too, has a way of bringing his influence to
bear on this object without drawing a farthing from
his exchequer. I shall mention three instances by way of
illustration.
Last year, in Shantung, a man of literary standing
contributed four acres of ground for the establishment
of a village school. The governor recommended him
to the notice of the Emperor, and his Majesty conferred
on him the titular rank of professor in the Kuo Tze Chien,
or Confucian College.
Three or four years ago, in the Province of Hupei, a
retired officer of the grade of Taotai, or Intendant of Cir-
cuit, contributed twenty thousand taels for the endow-
ment of a college at Wu Chang. The Viceroy Li Han
Chang reporting to the throne this act of munificence,
the Chinese Peabody was rewarded by the privilege of
wearing a red button instead of a blue one, and inscribing
on his card the title of Provincial Judge.
The third instance is that of a college in Kei Lin Fu,
the capital of Kuangsi. Falling into decay and ruin
SCHOOL AND FAMILY TRAINING 299
during the long years of the Taiping rebellion, the gentry,
on the return of peace, raised contributions, repaired the
building, and started it again in successful operation. The
governor solicits on behalf of these public-spirited citi-
zens some marks of the Imperial approbation; and his
Majesty sends them a laudatory inscription written by
the elegant pencils of the Hanlin.
But private effort, however stimulated, is utterly inade-
quate to the wants of the public. In Western countries
the enormous exertions of religious societies, prompted
as they are by pious zeal enhanced by sectarian rivalry,
have always fallen short of the educational necessities of
the masses. It is well understood that no system of
schools can ever succeed in reaching all classes of the
people unless it has its roots in the national revenue. .
In China, what with the unavoidable limitation of
private effort and the deplorable inefficiency of charity-
schools, but a small fraction of the youth have the ad-
vantages of the most elementary education brought
within their reach.
I do not here speak of the almost total absence of
schools for girls, for against these, Chinese are prin-
cipled. The government, having no demand for the
services of women in official posts, makes no provision for
their education ;and popular opinion regards reading and
writing as dangerous arts in female hands. If a woman,
however, by chance, emerging from the shaded hemi-
sphere to which social prejudices have consigned her
(si qua fata aspera rumpat), vindicates for herself a po-
sition among historians, poets, or scholars, she never fails
to be greeted with even more than her proper share of
public admiration. Such instances induce indulgent
fathers now and then to cultivate the talents of a clever
daughter, and occasionally neighborhood schools for the
300 THE LORE OF CATHAY
benefit of girls are to be met with ; but the Chinese people
have yet to learn that the best provision they could make
for the primary education of their sons would be to edu-
cate the mothers, and that the education of the mothers
could not fail to improve the intellectual character of
their offspring. But even for the more favored sex the
facilities for obtaining an education are sadly deficient;
only a small percentage of the youth attend school, and,
owing to the absurd method which we have described,
few of them advance far enough to be initiated into the
mysteries of ideography.
On this subject a false impression has gone abroad.
We hear it asserted that " education is universal in
China ; even coolies are taught to read and write." In one
sense this is true, but not as we understand the terms
" reading and writing." In the alphabetical vernaculars
of the West the ability to read and write implies the
ability to express one's thoughts by the pen, and to grasp
the thoughts of others when so expressed. In Chinese,
and especially in the classical or book language, it im-
plies nothing of the sort. A shopkeeper may be able to
write the numbers and keep accounts without being able
to write anything else ; and a lad who has attended school
for several years will pronounce the characters of an
ordinary book with faultless precision, yet not com-
prehend the meaning of a single sentence. Of those
who can read understandingly (and nothing else ought
to be called reading), the proportion is greater in towns
than in rural districts. But striking an average, it does
not, according to my observation, exceed one in twenty
for the male sex and one in ten thousand for the female
rather a humiliating exhibit for a country which has
maintained for centuries such a magnificent institution
as the Hanlin Academy.
SCHOOL AND FAMILY TRAINING 301
With all due allowance for the want of statistical ac-
curacy where no statistics are obtainable, compare this
with the educational statistics of the United States as
given in the census of 1870. Taking the country as a
whole, the ratio of illiteracy among persons over ten
years of age is I in 6; taking the Northern States alone,
the ratio is 57 to 1,000, or about I in 18.*
VI. Government agency
To some it may be a matter of surprise that popular
education is left to take care of itself in a country where
letters are held sacred and their inventor enrolled among
the gods; to others it may appear equally strange that
mental cultivation is so extensively diffused, considering
the cumbrous vehicle employed for the transmission of
thought and the enormous difficulty of getting com-
mand of it. Both phenomena find their solution in the
fact that the government does not value education for its
own sake, but regards it as means to an end. The great
end is the repose of the State; the instruments for se-
curing it are able officers, and education is the means for
preparing them for the discharge of their duties. This
done, an adequate supply of disciplined agents once se-
cured, the education of the people ceases to be an object.
The repose of the State, one of the ancient philosophers
tells us, might be assured by the opposite process : " Fill
the people's bellies and empty their minds ; cause that
they neither know nor desire anything, and you have the
secret of a tranquil government." Such is the advice of
Laotze, which I am inclined to take as an utterance of
Socratic irony rather than Machiavelian. malice. So far
from subscribing to this sentiment in its literal import,
the Chinese government holds its officers responsible for
* Report of the Commissioner of Education, 1871.
302 THE LORE OF CATHAY
the instruction of its subjects in all matters of duty ; and
in Chinese society the idea of instruction as the one thing
needful has so wrought itself into the forms of speech
as to become a wearisome cant. The red card that in-
vites you to an entertainment solicits " instruction."
When a friend meets you he apologizes for having so
long absented himself from your " instructions ; " and in
familiar conversation, simple statements and opinions
are often received as " precious instruction " by those
who do not by any means accept them. It is more to the
point to add that one of the classical books denounces
it as the greatest of parental faults to bring up a child
without instruction. This relates to the moral rather
than to the intellectual side of education. The Chinese
government does, nevertheless, encourage purely intel-
lectual culture; and it does so in a most decided and
effectual manner viz., by testing attainments and re-
warding exertion. In the magnificence of the scale on
which it does this, it is unapproached by any other
nation of the earth.
Lord Mahon, in his History of England, speaking of
the patronage extended to learning in the period preced-
ing Walpole, observes that " though the sovereign was
never an Augustus, the minister was always a Maecenas.
Newton became Master of the Mint; Locke was Com-
missioner of Appeals ; Steele was Commissioner of
Stamps; Stepney, Prior, and Gray were employed in lu-
crative and important embassies; Addison was Secretary
of State; Tickell, Secretary in Ireland. Several rich
sinecures were bestowed on Congreve and Rowe, on
Hughes and Ambrose Philips." And he goes on to show
how the illiberality of succeeding reigns was atoned for
by popular favor, the diffusion of knowledge enabling the
people to become the patron of genius and learning.
SCHOOL AND FAMILY TRAINING 303
The Chinese practise none of these three methods.
The Emperor, less arbitrary than monarchs of the West,
does not feel at liberty to reward an author by official
appointments, and his minister has no power to do so.
The inefficiency of popular patronage is less to their
credit; authors reap much honor and little emolument
from their works. It is something to be able to add that
all three are merged in a regulated State patronage, ac-
cording to which the reward of literary merit is a law of
the Empire and a right of the people. This brings us to
speak of the examination system.*
Though not unknown to the Occidental public, these
examinations are not properly understood, for the opinion
has been gaining ground that their value has been over-
rated, and that they are to be held responsible for all the
shortcomings of Chinese intellectual culture. The truth
is just the reverse. These shortcomings (I have not at-
tempted to disguise them) are referable to other causes,
while for nearly a thousand years this system of literary
competition has operated as a stimulating and conserva-
tive agency, to which are due not only the merits of the
national education, such as it is, but its very existence.
Coming down from the past, with the accretions of
many centuries, it has expanded into a vast branch of the
administration, and its machinery has become as com-
plex as its proportions are enormous. Its ramifications
extend to every district of the Empire ; and it commands
the services of district magistrates, prefects, and other
civil functionaries up to governors and viceroys. These
are all auxiliary to the regular officers of the literary
corporation.
In each district there are two resident examiners with
*The subject is here touched on incidentally. For a fuller
treatment of it see the next two chapters.
304 THE LORE OF CATHAY
the title of professor, whose duty it is to keep a register
of all competing students, and fo exercise them from
time to time in order to stimulate their efforts and keep
them in preparation for the higher examinations in which
degrees are conferred. In each province there is one
chancellor or superintendent of instruction, who holds
office for three years, and is required to visit every district
and hold the customary examinations within that time,
conferring the first degree on a certain percentage of the
candidates. There are, moreover, two special examiners
for each province, generally members of the Hanlin,
deputed from the capital to conduct the great triennial
examinations and confer the second degree.
The regular degrees are three :
First, Hsiu-ts'ai, or " Flower of talent."
Second, Chii-jen, or " Promoted scholar."
Third, Chin-shih, or " Fit for office."
To which may be added as a fourth degree the Han-lin,
or member of the " Forest of Pencils." The first of these
is sometimes compared to the degree of B.A., conferred by
colleges and universities ; the second to M.A. ; the third to
D.C.L. or LL.D. The last is accurately described by
membership in the Imperial Academy ; always bearing
in mind how much a Chinese Academy must differ from
a similar institution in the West. But so faint is the
analogy which the other degrees bear to the literary de-
grees of Western lands that the interchange of terms is
sure to lead to misconceptions. Chinese degrees rep-
resent talent, not knowledge; they are conferred by the
State, without the intervention of school or college ; they
carry with them the privileges of official rank ; and they
are bestowed on no more than a very small percentage
of those who engage in competition. With us, on the con-
trary, they give no official standing; they attest, where
SCHOOL AND FAMILY TRAINING 305
they mean anything, acquirements rather than ability;
and the number of those who are " plucked " is usually
small in comparison with those who are allowed to
" pass." But, after all, the new-fledged bachelor of an
Occidental college, his head crammed with the outlines
of universal knowledge, answers quite as nearly to the
sprightly hsiu-ts'ai,
" Whose soul proud science never taught to stray
Far as the solar walk or Milky Way,"
as does a Western general to the chief of an undisciplined
horde of so-called soldiers.
The following report of Pan Sze Lien, Chancellor of
the Province of Shantung, though somewhat vague, will
give us an idea of the official duties of the chief examiner
and the spirit in which he professes to discharge them :
" Your Majesty's servant," says the chancellor, " has
guarded the seal of office with the utmost vigilance. In
every instance where frauds were detected, he has handed
the offender over to the proper authorities for punish-
ment. In re-examining the successful, whenever their
handwriting disagreed with that of their previous per-
formances, he has at once expelled them from the hall,
without granting a particle of indulgence. He every-
where exhorted the students to aim at the cultivation of a
high moral character. In judging of the merit of com-
positions, he followed reason and the established rules.
At the close of each examination he addressed the stu-
dents face to face, exhorting them not to walk in ways of
vanity, nor to concern themselves with things foreign
to their vocation, but to uphold the credit of scholarship
and to seek to maintain or retrieve the literary reputation
of their several districts. Besides these occupations,
306 THE LORE OF CATHAY
your servant, in passing from place to place, observed
that the snow has everywhere exercised a reviving influ-
ence ; the young wheat is beginning to shoot up ; the
people are perfectly quiet and well disposed ; the price of.
provisions is moderate ; and those who suffered from the
recent floods are gradually returning to their forsaken
homes. For literary culture, Hsin Chou stands pre-emi-
nent, while Tsao Chou is equally so in military matters."
This is the whole report, with the exception of certain
stereotyped phrases, employed to open and conclude such
documents, and a barren catalogue of places and dates.
It contains no statistical facts, no statement of the number
of candidates, nor the proportion passed; indeed, no in-
formation of any kind, except that conveyed in a chance
allusion in the closing sentence.
From this we learn that the chancellor is held respon-
sible for examinations in the military art ; and it might be
inferred that he reviews the troops and gauges the attain-
ments of the cadets in military history, engineering,
tactics, etc. ; but nothing of the kind : he sees them draw
the bow, hurl the discus, and go through various manoeu-
vres with spear and shield, which have no longer a place
in civilized warfare.
The first degree only is conferred by the provincial
Chancellor, and the happy recipients, fifteen or twenty in
each department, or one pef cent, of the candidates, are
decorated with the insignia of rank and admitted to the
ground-floor of the nine-storied pagoda. The trial for the
second degree is held in the capital of each province, by
special commissioners, once in three years. It consists
of three sessions of three days each, making nine days
of almost continuous exertion a strain to the mental and
physical powers to which the infirm and aged frequently
succumb.
SCHOOL AND FAMILY TRAINING 307
In addition to composition in prose and verse, the can-
didate is required to show his acquaintance with history
(the history of China), philosophy, criticism, and various
branches of archaeology. Again one per cent, are decor-
ated; but it is not until the more fortunate among them
succeed in passing the metropolitan triennial that the
meed of civil office is certainly bestowed. They are not,
however, assigned to their respective offices until they
have gone through two special examinations within the
palace and in the presence of the Emperor. On this
occasion the highest on the list is honored with the title
of chuang-yuan, or " laureate " a distinction so great
that our Western curriculum has nothing to compare
with it. In the late reign it was not thought unbefitting
for the daughter of a chuang-yuan to be consort of the
Son of Heaven.
A score of the best admitted to membership in the
Academy, two or three score are attached to it as pupils
or probationers, and the rest drafted off to official posts
in the capital or in the provinces, the humblest of which
is supposed to compensate the occupant for a life of
penury and toil.
In conclusion, the civil-service competitive system ap-
pears destined to play a conspicuous part in carrying for-
ward an intellectual movement the incipient stages of
which are already visible. It has cherished the national
education, such as it is ; and if it has compelled the mind
of China for ages past to grind in the mill of blind imita-
tion, that is not the fault of the system, but its abuse.
When the growing influence of Western science ani-
mates it with a new spirit, as it must ere long, we shall see
a million or more of patient students applying them-
selves to scientific studies with all the ardor that now
characterizes their literary competition.
XVII
CIVIL SERVICE EXAMINATIONS
THE reform proposed in the organization of our
civil service, which contemplates the introduc-
tion of a system of competitive examinations,
makes an inquiry into the experience of other nations
timely. England, France, and Prussia have each made
use of competitive examinations in some branches
of their public service. In all these States the result
has been uniform a conviction that such a system,
so far as it can be employed, affords the best
method of ascertaining the qualifications of candidates
for government employment. But in these countries the
experiment is of recent date and of limited application.
We must look farther East if we would see the system
working on a scale sufficiently large and through a period
sufficiently extended to afford us a full exhibition of its
advantages and defects.
It is in China that its merits have been tested in the
most satisfactory manner; and if in this instance we
should profit by their experience, it would not be the
first lesson we have learned from the Chinese, nor the
last they are capable of giving us. It is to them that we
are indebted, among other obligations, for the mariner's
compass, for gunpowder, and probably also for a remote
suggestion of the art of printing. These arts have
been of the first importance in their bearing on the ad-
vancement of society one of them having effected a
308
CIVIL SERVICE EXAMINATIONS 309
complete revolution in the character of modern warfare,
while the others have imparted a mighty impulse to in-
tellectual culture and commercial enterprise. Nor is it
too much to affirm that, if we should adopt the Chinese
method of testing the ability of candidates, and of select-
ing the best men for the service of the State, the change
it would effect in our civil administration would be not
less beneficial than those that have been brought about
by the discoveries in the arts to which I have referred.
The bare suggestion may perhaps provoke a smile; but
are not the long duration of the Chinese government, and
the vast population to which it has served to secure a fair
measure of prosperity, phenomena that challenge ad-
miration? Why should it be considered derogatory to
our civilization to copy an institution which is confessedly
the masterpiece in that skilful mechanism the balance-
wheel that regulates the working of that wonderful
machinery ?
In the arts which we have borrowed from the Chinese
we have not been servile imitators. In every case we
have made improvements that astonish the original in-
ventors. We employ movable type, apply steam and
electricity to printing, use the needle as a guide over
seas which no junk would have ventured to traverse, and
construct artillery such as the inventors of gunpowder
never dreamed of. Would it be otherwise with a trans-
planted competitive system? Should we not be able to
purge it of certain defects which adhere to it in China, and
so render it productive of better results than it yields in
its native climate? I think, therefore, that I shall serve
a better purpose than the simple gratification of curiosity
if I devote a brief space to the consideration of the most
admirable institution of the Chinese Empire.
Its primary object was to provide men of ability for
310 THE LORE OF CATHAY
the service of the State, and, whatever else it may have
failed to accomplish, it is impossible to deny that it has
fulfilled its specific end in a remarkable degree. The
mandarins of China are almost without exception the
choicest specimens of the educated classes. Alike in the
capital and in the provinces, it is the mandarins that
take the lead in every kind of literary enterprise. It
is to them the Emperor looks to instruct as well as to
govern his people ; and it is to them that the publishers
look for additions to the literature of the nation nine-
tenths of the new books being written by mandarins.
In their social meetings, their conversation abounds in
classical allusions ; and instead of after-dinner speeches,
they are accustomed to amuse themselves with the com-
position of impromptu verses, which they throw off
with incredible facility. It is their duty to encourage the
efforts of students, to preside at the public examinations,
and to visit the public schools to promote, in short, by
example as well as precept, the interests of education.
Scarcely anything is deemed a deeper disgrace than for a
magistrate to be found incompetent for this department
of his official duties. So identified, indeed, are the
mandarins with all that constitutes the intellectual life of
the Chinese people that foreigners have come to regard
them as a favored caste, like the Brahmins of India, or as
a distinct order enjoying a monopoly of learning, like the
priesthood in Egypt.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Those stately
officials, for whom the people make way with such awe-
struck deference, as they pass along the street with em-
broidered robes and imposing retinue, are not possessors
of hereditary rank, neither do they owe their elevation
to the favor of their sovereign, nor yet to the suffrages
of their fellow-subjects. They are self-elected, and the
CIVIL SERVICE EXAMINATIONS 311
people regard them with the deeper respect, because they
know that they have earned their position by intellectual
effort. What can be more truly democratic than (in the
words of Anson Burlingame) to offer to all "the inspir-
ation of fair opportunity ? " In this genuine democracy
China stands unapproached among the nations of the
earth ; for, whatever imperfections may attach to her
social organization or to her political system, it must
be acknowledged that she has devised the most effectual
method for encouraging effort and rewarding merit.
Here at least is one country where wealth is not allowed
to raise its possessor to the seat of power ; where the will
even of an emperor cannot bestow its offices on unedu-
cated favorites; and where the caprice of the multitude
is not permitted to confer the honors of the State on
incompetent demagogues.
The institution that accomplishes these results is not
an innovation on the traditional policy of the Empire. It
runs back in its essential features to the earliest period of
recorded history. The adherence of the Chinese to it
through so many ages well illustrates the conservative
element in the national character ; while the important
changes it has undergone prove that this people is not
by any means so fettered by tradition as to be incapable of
welcoming improvements.
The germ from which it sprang was a maxim of the
ancient sages, expressed in four syllables Chil hsien jcn
neng " Employ the able and promote the worthy ; " and
examinations were resorted to as affording the best
test of ability and worth. Of the Great Shun, that model
emperor of remote antiquity, who lived about B.C. 2200,
it is recorded that he examined his officers every third
year, and after these examinations either gave them pro-
motion or dismissed them from the service. On what
312 THE LORE OF CATHAY
subjects he examined them at a time when letters were
but newly invented, and when books had as yet no exist-
ence, we are not told; neither are we informed whether
he subjected candidates to any test previous to appoint-
ment ; yet the mere fact of such a periodical examination
established a precedent which has continued to be ob-
served to the present day. Every third year the govern-
ment holds a great examination for the trial of candi-
dates, and every fifth year makes a formal inquisition
into the record of its civil functionaries. The latter is a
poor substitute for the ordeal of public criticism to which
officials are exposed in a country enjoying a free press;
but the former, as we shall have occasion to show, is
thorough of its kind, and severely impartial.
More than a thousand years after the above date, at
the commencement of the Chou dynasty, B. c. 1115, the
government was accustomed to examine candidates as
well as officers ; and this time we are not left in doubt as
to the nature of the examination. The Chinese had be-
come a cultivated people, and we are informed that all
candidates for office were required to give proof of
their acquaintance with the five arts music, archery,
horsemanship, writing, and arithmetic ; and to be thor-
oughly versed in the rites and ceremonies of public and
social life an accomplishment that ranked as a sixth
art. These " six arts," expressed in the concise formula
li, yileh, she, yii, shu, su, comprehended the sum total of
a liberal education at the period, and remind us of the
tritium and quadrivinm of the mediaeval schools.
Under the dynasty of Han, after the lapse of another
thousand years, we find the range of subjects for the civil-
service examinations largely extended. The Confucian
Ethics had become current, and a moral standard was re-
garded in the selection of the competitors District mag-
CIVIL SERVICE EXAMINATIONS 313
istrates were required to send up to the capital such
men as had acquired a reputation for hsiao and lien
" filial piety " and " integrity " the Chinese rightly con-
sidering that the faithful performance of domestic and
social duties is the best guarantee for fidelity in public
life. These hsiao-lien, " filial sons and honest subjects,"
whose moral character had been sufficiently attested,
were now subjected to trial in respect to their intellectual
qualifications. The trial was twofold first, as to their
skill in the " six arts " already mentioned ; secondly, as
to their familiarity with one or more of the following
subjects: the civil law, military affairs, agriculture, the
administration of the revenue, and the geography of the
Empire with special reference to the state of the water
communications. This was an immense advance on the
meagre requirements of the more ancient dynasties.
Passing over another thousand years, we come to the
era of the Tangs and the Sungs, when we find the stand-
ard of literary attainment greatly elevated, the graduates
arranged in three classes, and officials in nine a classi-
fication which is still retained.
Arriving at the close of the fourth millennium, under
the sway of the Mings and of the Ch'ings of the present
day, we find the simple trials instituted by Shun ex-
panded into a colossal system, which may well claim to
be the growth of four thousand years. It still exhibits
the features that were prominent in its earlier stages
the "six arts," the "five studies," and the "three de-
grees " remaining as records of its progressive develop-
ment. But the " six arts " are not what they once were ;
and the admirers of antiquity complain that examinations
are sadly superficial as compared with those of the olden
time, when competitors were required to ride a race, to
shoot at a target, and to sing songs of their own com-
THE LORE OF CATHAY
position to the accompaniment of their own guitars.
In these degenerate days examiners are satisfied with
odes in praise of music, and essays on the archery and
horsemanship of the ancients.
Scholarship is a very different thing now from what
it was in those ruder ages, when books were few, and
the harp, the bow, and the saddle divided the student's
time with the oral instructions of some famous master.
Each century has added to the weight of his burden ;
and to the " heir of all the ages " each passing generation
has bequeathed a legacy of toil. Doomed to live among
the deposits of a buried world, and contending with mil-
lions of competitors, he can hardly hope for success
without devoting himself to a life of unremitting study.
True, he is not called upon to extend his researches be-
yond the limits of his own national literature ; but that is
all but infinite. It costs him at the outset years of labor
to get possession of the key that unlocks it; for the
learned language is totally distinct from his vernacular
dialect, and justly regarded as the most difficult of the
languages of man. Then he must commit to memory
the whole circle of the recognized classics, and make
himself familiar with the best writers of every age of a
country which is no less prolific in books than in men.
No doubt his course of study is too purely literary and too
exclusively Chinese, but it is not superficial. In a popu-
lar " Student's Guide " we lately met with a course
of reading drawn up for thirty years! We proposed
putting it into the hands of a young American residing
in China, who had asked advice as to what he should
read. " Send it," he replied, " but don't tell my mother."
But it is time to take a closer view of these exami-
nations as they are actually conducted. The candidates
THE WATCH TOWER IN EXAMINATION GROUNDS
FURNACE FOR BURNING PAPER IN EXAMINATION GROUNDS
CIVIL SERVICE EXAMINATIONS 315
for office those who are acknowledged as such in con-
sequence of sustaining the initial trial are divided into
the three grades of hsiu-ts'ai, chii-jen, and chin-shih
" flowers of talent," " promoted scholars," and those who
are " ready for office." The trials for the first are held
in the chief city of each district or hsien, a territorial
division which corresponds to our county or to an Eng-
lish shire. They are conducted by a chancellor, whose
jurisdiction extends over an entire province containing, it
may be, sixty or seventy such districts, each of which he is
required to visit once a year, and each of which is pro-
vided with a resident sub-chancellor, whose duty it is to
examine the scholars in the interval, and to have them
in readiness on the chancellor's arrival.
About two thousand competitors enter the lists, ranging
in age from the precocious youth just entering his teens
up to the venerable grandsire of seventy winters. Shut
up for a night and a day, each in his narrow cell, they
produce each a poem and one or two essays on themes
assigned by the chancellor, and then return to their
homes to await the bulletin announcing their place in
the scale of merit. The chancellor, assisted by his clerks,
occupies several days in sifting the heap of manuscripts,
from which he picks out some twenty or more that are
distinguished by beauty of penmanship and grace of
diction. The authors of these are honored with the
degree of " Flower of Talent," and are entitled to wear
the decorations of the lowest grade in the corporation of
mandarins.
The successful student wins no purse of gold and ob-
tains no office, but he has gained a prize which he deems
a sufficient compensation for years of patient toil. He is
the best of a hundred scholars, exempted from liability
316 THE LORE OF CATHAY
to corporal punishment, and raised above the vulgar
herd. The social consideration to which he is now enti-
tled makes it a grand day for him and his family.
Once in three years these " Flowers of Talent," these
picked men of the districts, repair to the provincial
capital to engage in competition for the second degree
that of Chii Jen, or " Promoted Scholar." The number
of competitors amounts to ten thousand, more or less,
and of these only one in every hundred can be admitted
to the coveted degree. The trial is conducted by special
examiners sent down from Peking; and this examination
takes a wider range than the preceding. No fewer than
three sessions of nearly three days each are occupied,
instead of the single day for the first degree. Com-
positions in prose and verse are required, and themes are
assigned with a special view to testing the extent of
reading and depth of scholarship of the candidates. Pen-
manship is left out of the account each production,
marked with a cipher, being copied by an official scribe,
that the examiners may have no clew to its author and no
temptation to render a biassed judgment.
The victor still receives neither office nor emolument;
but the honor he achieves is scarcely less than that which
was won by the victors in the Olympic games. Again,
he is one of a hundred, each of whom was a picked man ;
and as a result of this second victory he goes forth an
acknowledged superior among ten thousand contending
scholars. He adorns his cap with the gilded button of
a higher grade, erects a pair of lofty flag-staves before
the gate of his family residence, and places a tablet over
his door to inform those who pass by that this is the abode
of a literary prize-man. But our " Promoted Scholar "
is not yet a mandarin in the proper sense of the term.
The distinction already attained only stimulates his de-
CIVIL SERVICE EXAMINATIONS 317
sire for higher honors honors which bring at last the
solid recompense of an income travelling at the expense
of the state.
In the spring of the following year he proceeds to
Peking to seek the next higher degree, attainment of
which will prove a passport to office. The contest is still
with his peers ; that is, with other " Promoted Scholars,"
who, like himself, have come up from all the provinces
of the empire. But the chances are this time more in
his favor, as the number of prizes is now tripled ; and if
the gods are propitious his fortune is made.
Though ordinarily not very devout, he now shows him-
self peculiarly solicitous to secure the favor of the divini-
ties. He burns incense and gives alms. If he sees a
fish floundering on the hook, he pays its price and restores
it to its native element. He picks struggling ants out of
the rivulet made by a recent shower, distributes moral
tracts, or, better still, rescues chance bits of printed
paper from being trodden in the mire of the streets.* If
his name appears among the favored few, he not only
wins himself a place in the front ranks of the lettered,
but he plants his foot securely on the rounds of the
official ladder by which, without the prestige of birth or
the support of friends, it is possible to rise to a seat in
the Grand Council of State or a place in the Imperial
Cabinet. All this advancement presents itself in the dis-
tant prospect, while the office upon which he immediately
enters is one of respectability, and it may be of profit.
It is generally that of mayor or sub-mayor of a district
city, or sub-chancellor in the district examinations the
vacant posts being distributed by lot, and therefore impar-
* The bearing of good works of this kind on the result of the
competition is copiously illustrated by collections of anecdotes
which are widely circulated.
3 i8 THE LORE OF CATHAY
tially, among those who have proved themselves to be
" ready for office."
Before the drawing of lots, however, for the post of a
magistrate among the people, our ambitious student has
a chance of winning the more distinguished honor of a
place in the Imperial Academy. With this view, the two
or three hundred survivors of so many contests appear
in the palace, where themes are assigned them by the
Emperor himself, and the highest honor is paid to the
pursuit of letters by the exercises being presided over
by his Majesty in person. Penmanship reappears as an
element in determining the result, and a score or more
of those whose style is the most finished, whose scholar-
ship the ripest, and whose handwriting the most elegant,
are drafted into the college of Hanlin, the " forest of
pencils," a kind of Imperial Institute the members of
which are recognized as standing at the head of the
literary profession. These are constituted poets and
historians to the Celestial Court, or deputed to act as
chancellors and examiners in the several provinces.*
But the diminishing series in this ascending scale has
not yet reached its final term. The long succession of
contests culminates in the designation by the Emperor
of some individual whom he regards as the Chuang Yuan,
or Model Scholar of the Empire the bright consum-
mate flower of the season. This is not a common annual
like the senior wranglership of Cambridge, nor the pro-
duct of a private garden like the valedictory orator of our
American colleges. It blooms but once in three years,
and the whole Empire yields but a single blossom a
blossom that is culled by the hand of Majesty and
esteemed among the brightest ornaments of his dominion.
* For details concerning the Hanlin Yuan, see the next
chapter.
CIVIL SERVICE EXAMINATION 319
Talk of academic honors such as are bestowed by West-
ern nations in comparison with those which this Oriental
Empire heaps on her scholar laureate! Provinces con-
tend for the shining prize, and the town that gives the
victor birth becomes noted forever. Swift heralds bear
the tidings of his triumph, and the hearts of the people
leap at their approach. We have seen them enter a
humble cottage, and amidst the flaunting of banners and
the blare of trumpets announce to its startled inmates
that one of their relations had been crowned by the Em-
peror as the laureate of the year. So high was the esti-
mation in which the people held the success of their
fellow-townsman that his wife was requested to visit
the six gates of the city, and to scatter before each a
handful of rice, that the whole population might share
in the good-fortune of her household. A popular tale,
represents a goddess as descending from heaven, that she
might give birth to the scholar laureate of the Empire.
So exalted is this dignity that in 1872 the daughter of a
Chuang Yuan was deemed sufficiently noble to be chosen
for Empress Consort.
All this has, we confess, an air of Oriental display and
exaggeration. It suggests rather the dust and sweat of
the great national games of antiquity than the mental
toil and intellectual triumphs of the modern world. But
it is obvious that a competition which excites so pro-
foundly the interest of a whole nation must be productive
of very decided results. That it leads to the selection of
the best talent for the service of the public we have
already seen; but beyond this its primary object it
exercises a profound influence upon the education of the
people and the stability of the government. It is all, in
fact, that China has to show in the way of an educational
system. She has few colleges and no universities in our
320 THE LORE OF CATHAY
Western sense,* and no national system of common-
schools; yet it may be confidently asserted that China
gives to learning a more effective patronage than she
could have done if each of her emperors had been an
Augustus and every premier a Maecenas. She says to all
her sons, " Prosecute your studies by such means as you
may be able to command, whether in public or in private ;
and, when you are prepared, present yourselves in the
examination-hall. The government will judge of your
proficiency and reward your attainments."
Nothing can exceed the ardor which this standing
offer infuses into the minds of all who have the re-
motest prospect of sharing in the prizes. They study
not merely while they have teachers to incite them to
diligence, but continue their studies with unabated zeal
long after they have left the schools ; they study in soli-
tude and poverty ; they study amidst the cares of a
family and the turmoil of business ; and the shining
goal is kept steadily in view until the eye grows dim
with age. Some of the aspirants impose on themselves
the task of writing a fresh essay every day ; and they do
not hesitate to enter the lists as often as the public ex-
aminations recur, resolved, if they fail, to continue trying,
believing that perseverance has power to command suc-
cess, and encouraged by the legend of the man who,
needing a sewing needle, made one by grinding a crow-
bar on a piece of granite.
We have met an old mandarin who related with evi-
dent pride how, on gaining the second degree, he had re-
moved with his whole family to Peking, from the dis-
tant province of Yunnan, to compete for the third ; and
* This was written prior to the opening of the New Univer-
sity at Peking ; and the North University at Tientsin both
closed suddenly, but not hopelessly, by the Boxer uprising.
CIVIL SERVICE EXAMINATIONS 321
how at each triennial 'contest he had failed, until, after
more than twenty years of patient waiting, at the seventh
trial, and at the mature age of threescore he bore off
the coveted prize. He had worn his honors for seven
years, and was then mayor of the city of Tientsin. In a
list now on our table of ninety-nine successful com-
petitors for the second degree, sixteen are over forty
years of age, one sixty-two, and one eighty-three. The
average age of the whole number is above thirty ; and for
the third degree the average is of course proportionally
higher.
So powerful are the motives addressed to them that
the whole body of scholars who once enter the examina-
tion-hall are devoted to study as a life-long occupation.
We thus have a class of men, numbering in the aggregate
some two or three millions, who keep their faculties
bright by constant exercise, and whom it would be diffi-
cult to parallel in any Western country for readiness
with the pen and retentiveness of memory. If these men
are not highly educated, it is the fault not of the com-
petitive system, which proves its power to stimulate them
to such prodigious exertions, but of the false standard of
intellectual merit established in China. In that country
letters are everything and science nothing. Men occupy
themselves with words rather than with things; and the
powers of acquisition are more cultivated than those of
invention.
The type of Chinese education is not that of our
modern schools; but when compared with the old cur-
riculum of languages and philosophy it appears by no
means contemptible. A single paper, intended for the last
day of the examination for the second degree, may serve
as a specimen. It covers five subjects criticism, history,
agriculture, military affairs, and finance. There are
322 THE LORE OF CATHAY
about twenty questions on each subject, and while they
certainly do not deal with it in a scientific manner, it is
something in their favor to say that they are such as
cannot be answered without an extensive course of read-
ing in Chinese literature. One question under each of
the five heads is all that our space will allow us to
introduce.
1. "How do the rival schools of Wang and Ching
differ in respect to the exposition of the meaning and
the criticism of the text of the ' Book of Changes ' ? "
2. " The great historian Sze Ma Ch'ien prides himself
on having gathered up much material that was neglected
by other writers. What are the sources from which he
derived his information? "
3. " From the earliest times great attention has been
given to the improvement of agriculture. Will you in-
dicate the arrangements adopted for that purpose by the
several dynasties ? "
4. " The art of war arose under Huang Ti, forty-
four hundred years ago. Different dynasties have since
that time adopted different regulations in regard to the
use of militia or standing armies, the mode of rais-
ing supplies for the army, etc. Can you state these
briefly?"
5. " Give an account of the circulating medium under
different dynasties, and state how the currency of the
Sung dynasty corresponded with our use of paper money
at the present day."
In another paper, issued on a similar occasion, as-
tronomy takes the place of agriculture ; but the questions
are confined to such allusions to the subject as are to
be met with in the circle of their classical literature, and
afford but little scope for the display of scientific attain-
ments. Still, the fact that a place is found for this
CIVIL SERVICE EXAMINATIONS 323
class of subjects is full of hope. It indicates that the
door, if not fully open, is at least sufficiently ajar to
admit the introduction of our Western sciences with
all their progeny of arts, a band powerful enough to
lift the Chinese out of the mists of their mediaeval
scholasticism, and to bring them into the full light of
modern knowledge. If the examiners were scientific
men, and if scientific subjects were made sufficiently
prominent in these higher examinations, millions of
aspiring students would soon become as earnest in the
pursuit of modern science as they now are in the study
of their ancient classics.* Thus reformed and renovated
by the injection of fresh blood into the old arteries,
this noble institution would be worthy of its dignity as
a great national university a university, not like those of
Oxford and Cambridge, which train their own gradu-
ates, but to compare great things with small like the
University of London, promoting the cause of learning
by examining candidates and conferring degrees. The
University of London admits to its initial examination
annually about fourteen hundred candidates, and passes
one half. The government examinations of China admit
* As a sample of the practical bearing which it is possible to
give to these examination exercises, we take a few questions
from another paper:
" Fire-arms began with the use of rockets in the Chou dynasty
(B.C. 1122-256); in what book do we first meet with the word
for cannon? What is the difference in the two classes of en-
gines to which it is applied (applied also to the catap'tlt) ? Is
the defence of K'ai Feng Fu its first rec. rded use; Kublai
Khan, it is said, obtained cannon of a new kind ; from whom
did he obtain them? The Sungs had several varieties of small
cannon, what were their advantages? When the Mings, in the
reign of Yung Lo, invaded Cochin-China, they obtained a kind
of cannon called the ' weapons of the gods ; ' can you give an
account of their origin ? "
324 THE LORE OF CATHAY
about two million candidates every year, and pass only
two or three per cent.
The political bearings of this competitive system are
too important to be passed over, and yet too numerous
to be treated in detail. Its incidental advantages may be
comprehended under three heads.
1. It serves the State as a safety-valve, providing a
career for those ambitious spirits who might otherwise
foment disturbances or excite revolutions. While in
democratic countries the ambitious flatter the people, and
in monarchies fawn on the great, in China, instead of
resorting to dishonorable arts or to political agitation,
they betake themselves to quiet study. They know that
their mental calibre will be fairly gauged, and that if they
are born to rule, the competitive examinations will open
to them a career. The competitive system has not, indeed,
proved sufficient to employ all the forces that tend to
produce intestine commotion ; but it is easy to perceive
that without it the shocks must have been more frequent
and serious.
2. It operates as a counterpoise to the power of an
absolute monarch. Without it the great offices would be
filled by hereditary nobles, and the minor offices be
farmed out by thousands to imperial favorites* With it
a man of talent may raise himself from the humblest ranks
to the dignity of viceroy or premier. Chiang hsiang pen
wu chung " The general and the prime-minister are not
born in office " is a line that every schoolboy is taught
to repeat. Rising from the people, the mandarins under-
stand the feelings and wants of the people, though it
must be confessed that they are usually avaricious and
oppressive in proportion to the length of time it has
* The Manchus in order to maintain their power have re-
served to themselves an undue proportion of official posts.
CIVIL SERVICE EXAMINATIONS 325
taken them to reach their elevation. Still, they have
the support and sympathy of the people to a greater
extent than they could have if they were creatures of
arbitrary power. The system, therefore, introduces a
popular element into the government that acts as a
check on the prerogative of the Emperor as to the ap-
pointment of officers, and serves as a kind of constitution
to his subjects, prescribing the conditions on which they
shall obtain a share in the administration of the power of
the State.
3. It gives the government a hold on the educated
gentry, and binds them to the support of existing insti-
tutions. It renders the educated classes eminently con-
servative, because they know that in the event of a
revolution civil office would be bestowed, not as the
reward of learning, but for political or military services.
The literati, the most influential portion of the popula-
tion, are for this reason also the most loyal. It is their
support that has upheld the reigning house, though of a
foreign race, through these long years of civil commo-
tion, while to the " rebels " it has been a ground of re-
proach and a source of weakness that they have had but
few literary men in their ranks.
In districts where the people have distinguished them-
selves by zeal in the Imperial cause, the only recom-
pense they crave is a slight addition to the numbers on
the competitive prize-list. Such additions the govern-
ment has made very frequently of late years, in consider-
ation of money supplies. It has also, to relieve its ex-
hausted exchequer, put up for sale the decorations of the
literary orders, and issued patents admitting contributors
to the higher examinations without passing through the
lower grades. But though the government thus debases
the coin, it guards itself jealously against the issue of a
326 THE LORE OF CATHAY
spurious currency. Some years ago Pei Ching, first
president of the Examining Board at Peking, was put to
death for having fraudulently conferred two or three de-
grees. The fraud was limited in extent, but the damage
it threatened was incalculable. It tended to shake the
confidence of the people in the administration of that
branch of the government which constituted their only
avenue to honors and office. Even the Emperor cannot
tamper with it without peril. He may lower its demands,
in accordance with the wishes of a majority, but he
could not set it aside without producing a revolution, for
it is the ballot box of the people, the grand charter of their
rights.
Such is the Chinese competitive system, and such are
some of its advantages and defects. May it not be
feasible to graft something of a similar character on
our own republican institutions? More congenial to the
spirit of our free government, it might be expected to
yield better fruits in this country than in China. In
British India it works admirably. In Great Britain, too,
the diplomatic and consular services have been placed on
a competitive basis ; and something of the kind must
be done for our own foreign service if we wish our influ-
ence abroad to be at all commensurate with our great-
ness and prosperity at home. When will our government
learn that a good consul is worth more than a man-of-
war, and that an able minister is of more value than a
whole fleet of iron-clads? To secure good consuls and
able ministers we must choose them from a body of men
who have been picked and trained.
In effecting these reforms, the bill of Mr. Jencke,
of Rhode Island,* might serve as an entering wedge.
* This was read before the American Oriental Society in 1868,
and published in the North American Review in July, 1870.
ROW OF CELLS IN EXAMINATION GROUNDS
CIVIL SERVICE EXAMINATIONS 327
It would secure the acknowledgment of the principle
certainly not alarmingly revolutionary that places should
go by merit. But it does not go far enough. " It does
not," he says, " touch places which are to be filled with
the advice and consent of the Senate. It would not in the
least interfere with the scramble for office which is
going on at the other end of the Avenue, or which fills
with anxious crowds the corridors of the other wing of
the Capitol. This measure, it should be remembered,
deals only with the inferior officers, whose appointment is
made by the President alone, or by the heads of
departments."
But what danger is there of infringing on the rights of
the Senate ? Is there anything that would aid the Senate
so much in giving their " advice and consent " as the
knowledge that the applicants for confirmation had
proved their competence before a Board of Examiners?
And would not the knowledge of the same fact lighten
the burdens of the President, and relieve him of much of
the difficulty which he now experiences in the selection of
qualified men. Such an arrangement would not take
away the power of executive appointment, but regulate its
exercise. Nor would it, if applied to elective offices, in-
terfere with the people's freedom of choice further than
to insure that the candidates should be men of suitable
qualifications. It may not be easy to prescribe rules for
that popular sovereignty which follows only its own
sweet will, but it is humiliating to reflect that our " man-
Since that date the Civil Service Reform has taken so strong a
hold on the public mind that no political party dares to disavow
it. It is applied as yet on a very limited scale, but its scope has
been greatly extended during the present year (1896), and there
is reason to anticipate that competitive examinations may
eventually become as important a factor in our political system
as they have been in that of China.
328 THE LORE OF CATHAY
darins " are far from being the most intellectual class
of the community.*
* The following example of our American methods is literally
true excepting the names of the competitors :
Two men met at Terra Haute, in Indiana (my native State)
to discuss the questions of the day before a large assembly, and
to ask their fellow citizens for a seat in the State Legislature.
Tompkins, who spoke first, was well known to my parents, as
a young man of boundless ambition and no education not even
that of a common school. Jacobs, a graduate of Yale College,
did not fail in his reply to expose the ignorance of his rival.
The latter, in his closing speech, confessed that he had never
" rubbed his back against a college wall." " I am a self-made
man, and I glory in it. Franklin was a self-made man, so are
many of you, my fellow citizens. Are we for that reason to be
sneered at by a college prig? Let him bring out his books and
I will read with him page for page of Latin and Greek, and
you shall be our judges." Jacobs declining the contest as out
of place coram non judice the populace raised a " hurrah for
the self-made man " and sent him to the Legislature. Now
which is the more civilized mode of making " mandarins," this,
or that of the Chinese?
XVIII
THE IMPERIAL ACADEMY
NEAR the foot of a bridge that spans the Imperial
Canal a few rods to the north of the British
Legation, the visitor to Peking may have noticed
the entrance to a small yamen. Here are the headquarters
of the Hanlin Academy, one of the pivots of the Empire,
and the very centre of its literary activity.
On entering the enclosure, nothing meets the eye of
one who is unable to read the inscriptions that would
awaken the faintest suspicion of the importance of the
place. A succession of open courts with broken pave-
ments, and covered with rubbish ; five low, shed-like
structures, one story in height, that have the appearance
of an empty barn ; these flanked by a double series of
humbler buildings, quite inferior to the stables of a well-
conducted farmstead some of the latter in ruins; and
dust and decay everywhere Such is the aspect presented
by the chief seat of an institution which is justly regarded
as among the glories of the Empire. A glance, however,
at the inscriptions on the walls some of them in Imperial
autograph warns the visitor that he is not treading on
common ground.
This impression is confirmed when, arriving at the
last of the transverse buildings, it is found to be locked,
and all efforts to obtain an entrance fruitless. Its yellow
tiling is suggestive; and the janitor, proof against per-
suasion, announces, with a mysterious air, that this is a
329
330 THE LORE OF CATHAY
pavilion sacred to the use of the Emperor. There, con-
cealed from vulgar eyes, stands a throne, on which his
Majesty sits in state whenever he deigns to honor the
Academy with his presence.
Sundry inscriptions in gilded characters record the
dates and circumstances of these Imperial visits, which
are by no means so frequent as to be commonplace occur-
rences. A native guide-book to the " lions " of the
capital, devoting eighteen pages to the Hanlin Yuan,
dwells with special emphasis on the imposing ceremonial
connected with a visit of Ch'ien Lung the Magnificent in
the first year of the cycle which occurred after the com-
mencement of his reign.
From this authority we learn that the rooms of the
Academy, having fallen into a state of decay, were re-
built by order of the Emperor, and rededicated, with
solemn rites, to the service of letters. His Majesty ap-
peared in person to do honor to the occasion, and con-
ferred on the two presidents the favor of an entertain-
ment in the Imperial pavilion. Of the members of the
Academy not fewer than one hundred and sixty-five were
present. " Among the proudest recollections of the Hall
of Gems" (the Hanlin), says the chronicler, "for a
thousand years there was no day like that."
The Emperor further signalized the occasion by two
conspicuous gifts.
The first was a present to the library * of a complete
set of the wonderful encyclopaedia called the T'u Shu Chi
Ch'eng. Printed in the reign of K'ang Hsi on movable
copper types, and comprehending a choice selection pf
the most valuable works, it extends to six thousand
* This library, and the buildings containing it were set on
fire by Imperial soldiers in June 1900, in the hope of burning
the British Legation.
THE IMPERIAL ACADEMY 331
volumes, and constitutes of itself a library of no
contemptible magnitude.
The other gift, less bulky, but more precious, was an
original ode from the Imperial pencil. Written as an im-
promptu effusion in the presence of the assembled
Academicians, it bears so many marks of premeditation
that no one could have been imposed on by the artifice
of Imperial vanity. It is engraved after the original au-
tograph on a pair of marble slabs, from which we have
taken a copy.
In their native dress these verses are worthy of their
august author, who was a poet of no mean ability; but
in the process of translation they lose as much as a
Chinese does in exchanging his flowing silks for the
parsimonious costume of the West. At the risk of pro-
ducing a travesty instead of a translation, we venture to
offer a prose version.
ODE
COMPOSED BY THE EMPEROR CH IEN LUNG ON VISITING THE HANLIN
YUAN IN 1744.
On this auspicious morning the recipients of celestial favor,
Rank after rank, unite in singing the hymn of rededication.
Thus the birds renew their plumage, and the eagle, soaring
heavenward, symbolizes the rise of great men.
Those here who chant poems and expound the Book of Changes
are all worthies of distinguished merit.
Their light concentres on the embroidered throne, and my pen
distils its flowery characters,
While incense in spiral wreaths rises from the burning censer.
Before me is the pure, bright, pearly Hall ;
Compared with this, who vaunts the genii on the islands of the
blest?
A hundred years of aesthetic culture culminate in the jubilee of
this day.
332 THE LORE OF CATHAY
To maintain a state of prosperity, we must cherish fear, and
rejoice with trembling.
In your new poems, therefore, be slow to extol the vastness of
the Empire ;
Rather by faithful advice uphold the throne.
I need not seek that ministers like Fu Yiieh shall be revealed
to me in dreams ;
For at this moment I am startled to find myself singing the
song of Yao (in the midst of my future ministers).
In my heart I rejoice that ye hundreds of officers all know my
mind,
And will not fan my pride with lofty flattery.
Happy am I to enter this garden of letters,
In the soft radiance of Indian summer ;
To consecrate the day to the honor of genius,
And to gather around my table the gems of learning ;
But I blush at my unworthiness to entertain the successors of
Fang and Tu.
Why should Ma and Ch'iu be accounted solitary examples?
Here we have a new edition of the ancient Shih Chii (library
of the Hans).
We behold anew the glorious light of a literary constellation.
But the shadow on the flowery tiles has reached the number
eight ;
Drink till you are drunk ; three times pass round the bowl.
When morning sunlight fell on the pictured screen,
We opened the Hanlin with a feast,
The members assembling in official robes.
We took a glance at the library enough to load five carts and
fill four storehouses.
We visited in order the well of Liu and the pavilion of Ko.
We watch the pencil trace the gemmy page,
While the waters of Ying Chao (the Pierian Spring) rise to the
brim ; and in flowery cups we dispense the fragrant tea.
Anciently ministers were compared to boats which crossed rivers ;
With you for my ministers I would dare to encounter the waves
of the sea.
From this effusion of Imperial genius we turn again
to the august body in whose honor it was written, and in-
THE IMPERIAL ACADEMY 333
quire, Where are the apartments in which those learned
scribes labor on their elegant tasks ? Where is the hall in
which they assemble for the transaction of business?
Where the library supplied by Imperial munificence for
the choicest scholars of the Empire? These questions
are soon answered, but not in a way to meet the expec-
tations of the visitor. The composing-rooms are those
ranges of low narrow chambers on either hand of the
entrance, some of them bearing labels which indicate
that it is there the Imperial will puts on its stately robes ;
but they are empty, and neither swept nor garnished.
Those of the members who have special functions are
employed within the precincts of the palace, while the
large class known as probationers prosecute their studies
in a separate college called the Shu Ch'ang Kuan. Com-
mon hall, or assembly-room, there is none. The society
holds no business meetings. Its organization is despotic ;
the work of the members being mapped out by the di-
rectory, which consists of the presidents and vice-presi-
dents. In an out-of-the-way corner, you are shown a
suite of small rooms, which serves as a vestry for these
magnates, where they drink tea, change their robes,
and post up their records. For this purpose they come
together nine times a month, and remain in session about
two hours.
As for the other members, they convene only on feast-
days as marked in the rubrics of the State, and then it
is merely for the performance of religious rites or civil
ceremonies. The ritual for both (or rather the calendar)
is conspicuously posted on the pillars of the front court,
suggesting that the sap and juice of the Academy have
dried up, and that these husks of ceremony are the
residuum.
So far as this locality is concerned, this is true; for
334 THE LORE OF CATHAY
though the Academy exists, as we shall see, in undimin-
ished vigor, the work intended to be done here is trans-
ferred to other places; and but for occasions of cere-
mony these halls would be as little trodden as those of
the academies of Nineveh or Babylon. Of the cere-
monies here performed, the most serious is the worship
of Confucius, before whose shrine the company of dis-
ciples arranged in files, near or remote, according to
their rank, kneel three times in the open court, and nine
times bow their heads to the earth. A more modern
sage, Han Wen Kung, whose chief merit was an elo-
quent denunciation of Buddhism, is revered as the cham-
pion of orthodoxy, and honored with one-third this
number of prostrations.
Besides the temples to these lights of literature, there
is another shrine in which incense is perpetually burning
before the tablets of certain Taoist divinities, among them
the god of the North Star.
The juxtaposition of these altars illustrates the curious
jumble of religious ideas which prevails even among the
educated classes. If Confucianism, pure and simple, calm
and philosophic, were to be found anywhere, where
should we expect to meet with it if not in the halls of
the Hanlin Yuan?
As to the library, it must have been at least respectable
in the palmy days of Ch'ien Lung that Emperor having
replenished it, as we have seen, by a gift of six thousand
volumes. Copies of a still larger collection of works,
the Sse K'u Ch'ilan Shu, printed in the earlier part of the
same reign, were deposited there, as also a manuscript
copy of the immense collection known as Yung Lo Ta
Tien. But in China, libraries are poorly preserved;
books have no proper binding, the leaves are loosely
stitched, the paper flimsy and adapted to the taste of
THE IMPERIAL ACADEMY 335
a variety of insects, while their official guardians often
commit depredations under the influence of an appetite
not altogether literary.
Through these combined influences, the Hanlin library
has dwindled almost to a vanishing-point. Two of the
book-rooms being within the sacred enclosure of the
Imperial pavilion, the writer was not permitted to see
them. The greater part of the books have been trans-
ferred elsewhere; and the condition of those that re-
main may be inferred from that of the only book-room
that was accessible. Its furniture consisted of half a
dozen cases, some locked, some open the latter empty;
the floor was strewn with fragments of paper, and the
absence of footprints in the thick deposit of dust suffi-
ciently indicated that the pathway to this fountain of
knowledge is no longer frequented.
But things in China are not to be estimated by or-
dinary rules. Here the decay of a building is no indi-
cation of the decadence of the institution which it rep-
resents. The public buildings of the Chinese are, for
the most part, mean and contemptible in comparison with
those of Western nations ; but it would not be less erro-
neous for us to judge their civilization by the state of
their architecture than for them, as they are prone to do,
to measure ours by the tape-line of our tailor. With
them architecture is not a fine art ; public edifices of every
class are constructed on a uniform model; and even in
private dwellings there is no such thing as novelty or
variety of design. The original idea of both is incapable
of much development; the wooden frame and limited
height giving them an air of meanness; while the
windowless wall, which caution or custom requires to
be drawn around every considerable building, excludes
it from the public view, and consequently diminishes, if
336 THE LORE OF CATHAY
it does not destroy, the desire for aesthetic effect. Ma-
terialistic as the people are in their habits of thought,
their government, based on ancient maxims, has sought
to repress rather than encourage the tendency to luxury
in this direction. The genius of China does not affect
excellence in material arts. With more propriety than
ancient Rome she might apply to herself the lines oi
the Roman poet:
" Excudent alii spirantia mollius aera
. . . regere imperio populos . . .
Hae tibi erunt artes; pacisque imponere morem."
For not only is the Chinese notoriously backward in
all those accomplishments in which the Roman excelled,
but, without being warlike, he has equalled the Roman
in the extent of his conquests, and surpassed him in the
permanence of his possessions. With him the art of
government is the " great study ; " and all else science,
literature, religion merely subsidiary.
For six hundred years, with the exception of a brief
interval, the Hanlin has had its home within the walls
of Peking, witnessing from this position the rise of
three Imperial dynasties and the overthrow of two.
Under the Mongols it stood, not on its present site, but a
little to the west of the present drum-tower. Kublai and
his successors testified their sense of its importance by
installing it in an old palace of the Ch'in Tartars. Ao
Yang Ch'u, a discontented scholar of a later age, alluding
to the contrast presented by the quarters it then occupied,
laments in verse
" The splendid abode of the old Hanlin,
The glittering palace of the Prince of Ch'in."
THE IMPERIAL ACADEMY 337
The Ming emperors removed it to its present position,
appropriating for its use the site of an old granary. The
Ch'ing emperors had a palace to bestow on the Mongolian
lamas, but allowed the Hanlin to remain in its contracted
quarters, erecting at the same time, in immediate con-
tiguity, a palace for one of their princes. This is now
occupied by the British Legation, whose lofty chimneys
overlook the grounds of the Academy, and so menace the
feng-shui (good luck) of the entire literary corporation.
If this were the whole of its history, the Hanlin would
still enjoy the distinction of being more than twice as
ancient as any similar institution now extant in the
Western world; but this last period one of few vicissi-
tudes covers no more than half its career. Its annals
run back to twice six hundred years, and during that
long period it has shared the fortunes and followed the
footsteps of the several dynasties which have contended
for the mastery of the Empire. From its nature and
constitution attached to the court, it has migrated with
the court, now north, now south, until the capital became
fixed in its present position. At the beginning of the
fifteenth century, the Academy was for a few years at.
Nanking, where Hung Wu made his capital. During
the period of the Crusades it accompanied the court of the
Southern Sungs as they retired before the invading
Tartars, and fixed at Hangchou the seat of their semi-
empire. For two centuries previous it had shed its
lustre on Pien Liang (Kai Feng) the capital of the
Northern Sungs.
During the five short dynasties (907-960) it disap-
pears amidst the confusion of perpetual war, though even
then each aspirant for " The Yellow " surrounded him-
self with some semblance of the Hanlin, as a circum-
338 THE LORE OF CATHAY
stance essential to Imperial state; but its earliest,
brightest and longest period of repose was the reign of
the Tangs, from 627 to 904, or from the rise of Mahomet
till the death of Alfred. For China this is not an ancient
date; but it was scarcely possible that such a body,
with such objects, should come into existence at any
earlier epoch. Under the more ancient dynasties the
range of literature was limited, and the style of com-
position rude. It is not till the long reign of the house of
Han that the language obtains its full maturity; but
even then taste was little cultivated the writers of that
day being, as the native critics say, more studious of
matter than of manner. During the short-lived dynasties
that followed the Han and Ch'in, the struggle for power
allowed no breathing-time for the revival of letters ; but
when the Empire, so long drenched in blood, was at
length united under the sway of the T'angs, the begin-
ning of the new era of peace and prosperity was marked
by an outburst of literary splendor.
For twenty years Kao Tsu, the founder, had been in-
volved in sanguinary conflicts. In such circumstances
valor was virtue, and military skill comprised all that
was valued in learning. In the work of domestic con-
quest, his most efficient aid was his second son, Shih Min.
Destined to complete what his father had begun, but
with a genius more comprehensive and a taste more re-
fined, this young prince was to Kao Tsu what Alexander
was to Philip, or Frederick the Great to the rough Fred-
erick William. Studying the poets and philosophers by
the light of his camp-fires, he no sooner found himself
in undisputed possession of the throne than he addressed
himself to the promotion of learning. In this he was
only reverting to the traditions of an empire which from
the earliest times had always been a worshipper of letters.
THE IMPERIAL ACADEMY 339
But Tai Tsung (the name by which he is called in
history) did not confine himself to the beaten path of tra-
dition; he issued a decree that men of ability should be
sought out and brought to court from their retired
homes and secret hiding-places. His predecessors had
done the same ; but Tai Tsung formed them into a body
under the name of Wen Hsueh Kuan, and installed them
in a portion of his palace, where, the historian tells us,
he was accustomed, in the intervals of business and late
in the hours of the night, to converse with these learned
doctors. The number of these eminent scholars was
eighteen, in allusion possibly (though a Confucian would
.repudiate the idea) to the number of Arhans or disciples
who composed the inner circle of the family of Buddha
Buddhism being at that time in high repute. Among
these the most prominent were Fang Yuan Ling and
Tu Ju Hui, who were afterwards advanced to the rank
of ministers of State. We have already seen their names
in the Ode of Ch'ien Lung, where they are alluded to
as the typical ancestors of the literary brotherhood. This
was the germ of the Hanlin Yuan.
Under previous reigns letters had been valued solely as
an aid to politics, and scholarship as a proof of qualifica-
tion for civil employment. But from this time letters
began to assume the position of a final cause, and civil
employment was made use of as an incentive to en-
courage their cultivation. Previously to this the single
exercise of answering in writing a series of questions
intended to gauge the erudition and test the acumen of
the candidate was all that was required in examinations
for the civil service; but from this epoch taste presided
in the literary arena, and compositions, both in prose and
verse, in which elegance of style is the chief aim, be-
came thenceforth a leading feature in the curriculum.
340 THE LORE OF CATHAY
That wonderful net which catches the big fish for the
service of the Emperor, and allows the smaller ones to
slip through, was during this dynasty so far perfected
that in the lapse of a thousand years it has undergone
no very important change. As might have been expected,
the epoch of the T'angs became distinguished above all
preceding dynasties as the age of poets. Li Tai Pei
whose brilliant genius was believed to be an incarnation of
the golden light of the planet Venus Tu Fu, Han Yu,
and others shed lustre on its opening reigns. Their works
have become the acknowledged model of poetic composi-
tion, from which no modern writer dares to depart ; and,
under the collective title of the poetry of T'ang, they have
added to the Imperial crown an amaranthine wreath such
as no other dynasty has ever worn. Li Tai Pei was
admitted to the Academy by Ming Huang or Hun
Tsung ; the Emperor on that occasion giving him a feast
and, as native authors say, condescending to stir the
poet's soup with the hand that bore the sceptre.
It is not a little remarkable that the art of printing
made its appearance almost simultaneously with the
formation of the Academy and the reorganization of the
examination system. Originating in a common impulse,
all three interacted on each other, and worked together
as powerful agencies in carrying forward the common
movement. The method of stamping characters on silk
or paper had no doubt been discovered long before;
but it was under this dynasty that it was first employed
for the reproduction of books on a large scale. It was
not, however, so employed in the reign of Tai Tsung.
That monarch, resolving to found a library that should
surpass in extent and magnificence anything that had been
known in the past, was unable to imagine a more expe-
ditious, or, at least, a more satisfactory, method of pro-
THE IMPERIAL ACADEMY 341
ducing books than the slow process of transcription.
For this purpose a host of pencils would be required ; and
Tai Tsung, in the interest of his library, made a fresh
levy of learned men who were elegant scribes as well
as able scholars. To these, Hun Tsung, one of his suc-
cessors, added another body of scholars, and combining
the three classes into one society called it by the name
of Hanlin, or the " Forest of Pencils " about A. D. 740
a designation that was now more appropriate than it
would have been when the number of its members fell
short of a score.
When the printing-press was introduced as an auxiliary
in the manufacture of books, it relieved the Imperial
scribes of a portion of their labors, but it did not super-
sede them. Released from the drudgery of copying,
they were free to devote their leisure to composition ;
and in China in the eighth century, as in Europe in the
fifteenth, the art of printing imparted a powerful stimu-
lus to the intellectual activity of the age.
Rising, as we have seen, in the halcyon days of Tai
Tsung, the Hanlin Yuan was not' long in attaining its
full development. In the reign of Hun Tsung it re-
ceived the name by which it is now known, and through
twelve centuries, from that day to this, it has under-
gone no essential modification, either in its objects, mem-
bership, or mode of operation ; if we except, perhaps, the
changes required to adapt it to the duplicate official sys-
tem of the present dynasty. Its constitution and func-
tions, as laid down in the Ta Ch'ing Hui Tien, or Insti-
tutes of the Empire, are as follows :
i. There shall be two presidents one Manchu and
one Chinese. They shall superintend the composition
of dynastic histories, charts, books, Imperial decrees, and
literary matters in general.
342 THE LORE OF CATHAY
2. The vice-presidents shall be of two classes ; namely,
the readers, and the expositors to his Majesty the Em-
peror. In each class there shall be three Manchus and
three Chinese.
3. Besides these, the regular members shall consist of
three classes namely, Hsiu Chuan, Pien Hsiu, and Ch'ien
Tao in all of which the number is not limited. These,
together with the vice-presidents, shall be charged with
the composition and compilation of books, and with
daily attendance at stated times on the classic studies of
his Majesty.
4. There shall be a class of candidates on proba-
tion, termed Shu Ch'i Shih, "lucky scholars," the num-
ber not fixed. These shall not be charged with any
specific duty, but shall prosecute their studies in the
schools attached to the Academy. They shall study both
Manchu and Chinese. Their studies shall be directed by
two professors one Manchu and one Chinese assisted
by other members below the grade of readers and exposi-
tors, who shall act as divisional tutors. At the expiration
of three years they shall be tested as to their ability in
poetical composition, the Emperor in person deciding
their grades, after which they shall be admitted to an
audience; those of the first three grades being received
into full membership, and those of the fourth grade,
which comprises the remainder, being assigned to posts
in the civil service, or retained for another three years to
study and be examined with the next class.
5. There shall be two recorders one Manchu and one
Chinese. These shall be charged with the sending and
receiving of documents.
6. There shall be two librarians one Manchu and
one Chinese. These shall be charged with the care of the
books and charts.
THE IMPERIAL ACADEMY 343
7. There shall be four proof-readers two Manchus
and two Chinese. These shall attend to the revision and
collection of histories, memorials, and other literary
compositions.
8. There shall be forty-four clerks forty Manchus
and four from the Chinese Banners. These shall be
employed in copying and translation.
9. The expositors at the classic table (of the Em-
peror) shall be sixteen in number eight Manchus and
eight Chinese. The Manchus must be officers who have
risen from the third rank or higher. The Chinese also
must be of the third rank or higher, having risen from
the Academy. These shall be appointed by the Emperor
on the recommendation of the Academy. The classic
feasts shall take place twice a year namely, in the second
and the eighth month; at which time one Manchu and
one Chinese shall expound the Book of History, and one
Manchu and one Chinese shall expound the other classics,
to be selected from a list prepared by the Academy.
The subject and sense of the passages to be treated on
these occasions shall in all cases be arranged by consul-
tation with the presidents of the Academy, and laid before
the Emperor for his approval. When the Emperor
visits the " Palace of Literary Glory," these expositors,
together with the other officers, shall perform their pros-
trations at the foot of the steps, after which their going
in and out shall be according to the form prescribed in
the Code of Rites. When they shall have finished their
expositions, they shall respectfully listen to the discourses
of the Emperor.
10. The daily expositors shall be twenty-eight Man-
chus and twelve Chinese. They shall be above the grade
of Ch'ien Tao and below that of President, and may dis-
charge this duty without resigning their original offices.
344 THE LORE OF CATHAY
n. Prayers and sacrificial addresses for several occa-
sions shall be drawn up by the Hanlin and submitted to
the Emperor for his approval. These occasions are the
following, namely : at the Altar of Heaven ; the Ancestral
Temple ; the Imperial Cemeteries ; the Altar of Agri-
culture; sacrifices to mountains, seas, and lakes, and to
the ancient sage Confucius.
12. The Hanlin shall respectfully prepare honorary
titles for the dowager empresses : they shall also draw up
patents of dignity for the chief concubines of the late
emperor ; forms of investiture for new empresses and the
chief concubines of new emperors ; patents of nobility for
princes, dukes, generals, and for feudal states ; together
with inscriptions on State seals all of which shall first
be submitted for the Imperial approbation.
13. The Hanlin shall respectfully propose posthu-
mous titles for deceased emperors, together with monu-
mental inscriptions and sacrificial addresses for those
who are accorded the honor of a posthumous title all
of which shall be submitted to the Emperor for approval.
14. The presidents of the Hanlin shall be ex officio
vice-presidents of the Bureau of Contemporary History,
in which the Hanlin of subordinate grades shall assist as
compilers and composers, reverentially recording the
sacred instructions (of the Emperor).
15. Prescribes the order of attendance for the Hanlin
when the Emperor appears in public court.
16. Prescribes the number and quality of those of the
Hanlin who shall attend his Majesty during his sojourn
at the Yuan Ming Yuan (Summer Palace).
17. Provides that those members of the Hanlin whose
duty it is to accompany his Majesty on his various
journeys beyond the capital shall be recommended by the
presidents of the Academy.
THE IMPERIAL ACADEMY 345
18. Provides that, when the Emperor sends a deputy
to sacrifice to Confucius, certain senior members of the
Academy shall make offerings to the twelve chief
disciples of the Sage.
19. The Hanlin, in conjunction with the Board of
Rites, shall copy out and publish the best specimens
of the essays produced in the provincial and metropolitan
examinations.
20. Prescribes the form to be used in reporting or
recommending members for promotion, and provides that
when an examination is held for the selection of Im-
perial censors, the Pien Hsiu and Ch'ien Tao, on recom-
mendation, may be admitted as candidates.
21. Regulates examinations for the admission of pro-
bationary members.
22. Admits probationers, after three years of study,
to an examination for places in the Academy or official
posts elsewhere.
23. Provides for examinations of regular members
in presence of the Emperor, at uncertain times, in order
to prevent their relapse into idleness.
24. Provides for the promotion of members who are
employed as instructors or probationers.
Such is the official account of the Hanlin as at present
constituted ; but what information does it convey ? After
all we have done in the way of explanation, in connec-
tion with a rather free translation, it still remains a con-
fused mass of titles and ceremonies, utterly devoid of
any principle of order ; and, without the help of collateral
information, much of it would be altogether unintelligi-
ble. Interrogate it as to the number of members, the
qualifications required for membership, the duration of
membership, the manner of obtaining their seats (a term
which must be used metaphorically of an association in
346 THE LORE OF CATHAY
which all but a few are expected to stand), and it is
silent as the Sphinx. Should one, with a view to satis-
fying curiosity on the first point, attempt to reckon up the
number of classes or divisions, to say nothing of indi-
viduals, the number being in some cases purposely in-
definite, he would certainly fail of success. Some who
are enumerated in those divisions are official employes
of the society, but not members ; and yet there is nothing
in the text to indicate the fact: e. g., the proof-readers
are Hanlins, the copyists and translators are not ; the
librarians are Hanlin, the recorders are not. We shall
endeavor briefly to elucidate these several points.
Unlike the academies of Europe, which are voluntary
associations for the advancement of learning under royal
or imperial patronage, the Hanlin is a body of civil func-
tionaries, a government organ, an integral part of the
machinery of the State; its mainspring, as that of every
other portion, is in the throne. Its members do not seek
admission from love of learning, but for the distinction
it confers, and especially as a passport to lucrative em-
ployment. They are consequently in a state of perpetual
transition, spending from six to ten years in attendance
at the Academy, and then going into the provinces as
triennial examiners, as superintendents of education, or
even in civil or military employments which have no
special relation to letters. In all these situations they
proudly retain the title of members of the Imperial
Academy ; and, in their memorials to the throne, one may
sometimes see it placed above that of provincial treasurer
or judge.
There are, moreover, several yamcns in the capital that
are manned almost exclusively from the members of the
Hanlin. Of these the principal are the Chan Shih Fu and
the Ch'i Chii Ch'u; both of which are, in fact, nothing
THE IMPERIAL ACADEMY 347
more than appendages of the Academy. The former, the
name of which affords no hint of its functions, appears to
bear some such relation to the heir-apparent as the
Hanlin does to the Emperor. The beggarly building in
which its official meetings are held may be seen on the
banks of the canal opposite to the British Legation.*
It is, nevertheless, regarded as a highly aristocratic body,
and gives employment to a score or so of Academicians.
The other, which may be described as the Bureau of
Daily Record, employs some twenty more of the Hanlins
in the capacity of Boswells to the reigning Emperor, their
duty being to preserve a minute record of all his words
and actions.
Among the Imperial censors, who form a distinct
tribunal, a majority perhaps are taken from the ranks of
the Hanlin, but they are not exclusively so; while the
higher members of the Hanlin, without being connected
with the censorate, are ex officio counsellors to his
Majesty. Of those whose names are on the rolls as active
members of the Academy in regular attendance on its
meetings, the number does not exceed three or four
score; though on great occasions, such as the advent
of an emperor, the ex-members who are within reach are
called in and swell the number to twice or thrice that
figure. Besides these are the probationers or candidates,
to the number of a hundred or more, who pursue their
studies for three years under the auspices of the Acad-
emy, and then stand examination for membership. If
successful, they take their places with the rank and file
of the Imperial scribes ; otherwise, they are assigned
posts in the civil service, such as those of sub-prefect,
district magistrate, etc., carrying with them in every
position the distinction of having been connected, for
* Used as a refuge for native Christians in the summer of 1900.
348 THE LORE OF CATHAY
however brief a time, with the Imperial Academy. With-
out counting those rejected candidates, whose claim to
the title is more than doubtful, the actual and passed
members probably do not fall short of five hundred.
The qualifications for membership are two natural
talent and rare acquisitions in all the departments of
Chinese scholarship; but of these we shall treat more at
length hereafter. The new members are not admitted
by vote of the association, nor appointed by the will of
their Imperial master. The seats in this Olympus are put
up to competition, and, as in the Hindu mythology, the
gifted aspirant, though without name or influence, and
in spite of opposition, may win the immortal amreet.
None enter as the result of capricious favor, and no one
is excluded in consequence of unfounded prejudice.
The Hanlin Yuan has not, therefore, like the Institute
of France, a long list of illustrious names who acquire
additional distinction from having been rejected or over-
looked ; neither does it suffer from lampoons such as
that which a disappointed poet fixed on his own tomb-
stone at the expense of the French Academy
" Ci-glt Piron, qui ne fut rien,
Pas meme academician."
In the Chinese Academy the newly initiated has the proud
consciousness that he owes everything to himself, and
nothing to the complaisance of his associates or the
patronage of his superiors.
Of the duties of the Hanlin. these official regulations
afford us a better idea indicating each line of intel-
lectual activity, from the selection of fancy names for
people in high position up to the conducting of pro-
vincial examinations and the writing of national histories ;
THE IMPERIAL ACADEMY 349
but the advancement of science is not among them. They
do nothing to extend the boundaries of human knowl-
edge, simply because they are not aware that after the
achievements of Confucius and the ancient sages any
new world remains to be conquered. The former Em-
peror, by special decree, referred to the Academy the
responsibility of proposing honorific titles for the em-
presses regent. The result was the pair of euphonious
pendants, K'ang I and Kang Ching, with which the
Imperial ladies were decorated on retiring from the
regency ; and we are left to imagine the anxious deliber-
ations, the laborious search for precedents, the minute
comparison of the historical and poetical allusions in-
volved in each title, before the learned body were able to
arrive at a decision. Since that date the surviving
Dowager has been honored by twelve syllables additional.
The composition of prayers to be used by his Majesty
or his deputies on sundry occasions, and the writing of
inscriptions for the temples of various divinities, in ac-
knowledgment of services, are among the lighter tasks of
the Hanlin. They are not, however, like that above
referred to, of rare occurrence. Ambitious of anything
that can confer distinction on their respective localities,
the people of numerous districts petition the throne to
honor the temple where they worship by the gift of an
Imperial inscription. They ascertain that some time
within the past twenty years the divinity there worshipped
has interfered to prevent a swollen river from bursting
its banks ; to avert a plague of locusts, or arrest a pro-
tracted drought; or, by a nocturnal display of spectral
armies, to drive away a horde of rebels. They report the
facts in the case to their magistrates, who verify them,
and forward the application to the Emperor, who in turn
directs the members of the Hanlin to write the desired
350 THE LORE OF CATHAY
inscription. Cases of this kind abound in the Peking
Gazette ; one of those best known to foreigners being that
of Sze T'ai Wang at Tientsin, whose merit in checking,
under the avatar of a serpent, the disastrous floods of
1871 obtained from the Emperor the honor of a com-
memorative tablet written by the doctors of the Hanlin.
If to these we add the scrolls and tablets written by
Imperial decree for schools and charitable institutions
throughout the Empire, we must confess that the Hanlin
Yuan might earn for itself the title of Academy of
Inscriptions in a sense somewhat different from that in
which the term is employed in the Western World. In-
deed, so disproportionate is the space allotted in the con-
stitution to these petty details, that the reader, judging
from that document alone, would be liable to infer that
the Academicians were seldom burdened with any more
serious employment. But let him go into one of the
great libraries connected with the court (unhappily not
yet accessible to the foreign student), or even to the
great book-stores of the Chinese city, and he will learn
at a glance that the Hanlin is not a mere piece of Oriental
pageantry. Let him ask for the " Book of Odes ; " the
salesman hands him an Imperial edition in twenty vol-
umes, with notes and illustrations by the doctors of the
Hanlin. If he inquire for the " Book of Rites," or any
of tbe thirteen canonical books, the work is shown him
in the same elegant type, equally voluminous in extent,
and executed by the hands of the same inexhaustible
editors. Then there are histories without number; next
to the classics in dignity, and far exceeding them in
extent.
In addition to work of this kind, which is constant as
the stream of time, the Hanlin supplies writers and editors
for all the literary enterprises of the Emperor. Some of
THE IMPERIAL ACADEMY 351
these are so vast that it is safe to say no people would
undertake them but those who erected the Great Wall
and excavated the Grand Canal; nor would China have
had the courage to face them had she not kept on foot
as a permanent institution a standing army of learned
writers.
Two of these colossal enterprises distinguish the bril-
liant prime of the present dynasty ; while a third, of pro-
portions still more huge, dates back to the second reign
of the Mings. This last is the Yung Lo Ta Tien, a cyclo-
paedic digest of the Imperial library, which at that time
contained 300,000 volumes. There were employed in the
task 2169 clerks and copyists, under the direction of a
commission consisting of three presidents, five vice-presi-
dents, and twenty sub-directors. The work, when com-
pleted, contained 22,937 books, or about half that number
of volumes. It was never printed as a whole, and two
of the three .manuscript copies, together with about a
tenth part of the third, were destroyed by fire in the con-
vulsions that attended the overthrow of the Mings.*
In the reign of K'ang Hsi (latter part of the seven-
teenth century) a similar compilation was executed, num-
bering 6000 volumes and beautifully printed on movable
copper types, with the title of T'u Shu Chi Ch'eng.
About a century later, under Ch'ien Lung, a still larger
collection, intended to supplement the former, and pre-
serve all that was most valuable in the extant literature,
was printed on movable wooden types with the title of
Sse K'u Ch'iian Shu. These two collections reproduce a
great part of the preceding ; nevertheless great pains have
been taken to copy out and preserve the original work.
A commission of members of the Hanlin was appointed
* This third copy was almost totally destroyed with the rest of
the library, June, 1900.
352 THE LORE OF CATHAY
for this purpose by Ch'ien Lung, and a copy of the work,
it is said, now forms a part of the Hanlin library. In this
connection we may mention two other great works exe-
cuted under the Mings, which have been reproduced by
the present dynasty in an abridged or modified form.
While the codification of the laws found in Yung Lo a
Chinese Justinian, it found its Tribonians among the doc-
tors of the Academy. The " Encyclopaedia of Philoso-
phy," compiled by the Hanlin under Yung Lo, the second
of the Mings, was abridged by the Hanlin, under K'ang
Hsi, the second of the Ch'ings. A still more important
labor of the Hanlin, performed by order of the last-
named illustrious ruler, was the dictionary which bears his
name a labor more in keeping with its character as a
literary corporation.
Thiers speaks of the French Academy as having la
mission a regler la marche de la langue. It did this by
publishing its famous dictionary ; and about the same time
the members of the Hanlin were performing a similar
task for the language of China, by preparation of the great
dictionary of K'ang Hsi a work which stands much
higher as an authority than does the Dictionnaire de V
Academic Fran^aise. A small work, not unworthy of
mention in connection with these grave labors, is the
Sacred Edict, which goes under the name of K'ang Hsi.
It is not, however, the composition of either K'ang Hsi or
Yung Cheng, but purely a production of Hanlin pencils.
In the Memoirs of the Academy we find a decree assign-
ing the task and prescribing the mode of performance :
" ' Taking,' says the Emperor, ' the sixteen edicts (or
maxims of seven words each) of our sacred ancestor sur-
named the Benevolent for a basis, we desire to expand
and illustrate their meaning, for the instruction of our
soldiers and people. Let the members of the Hanlin
THE IMPERIAL ACADEMY 353
compose an essay, of between five and six hundred char-
acters, on each text, in a plain and lucid style, shunning
alike the errors of excessive polish and rusticity. Let
the same text be given to eight or nine persons, each of
whom will prepare a discourse, and hand it in in a
sealed envelope.' ''
From this it appears that the sixteen elegant discourses
which compose the body of that work are selections
from over a hundred the picked performances of picked
men.
In the early part of the Manchu dynasty, the Hanlin
were much engaged in superintending the translation of
Chinese works into Manchu, a language now so little
understood by the Tartars of Peking that those volumi-
nous versions have almost ceased to be of any practical
value. Under the present reign the learned doctors have
been working somewhat in a different direction, showing
that the Chinese are not so incapable of innovation as is
usually supposed. A minority reign naturally suggested
the want of a royal road to the acquisition of knowledge ;
our Hanlin doctors were accordingly directed to supply
his Majesty with copies of History made easy and the
Classics made easy. The mode of making easy was a
careful rendering into the Mandarin or court dialect a
style which these admirable doctors disdain as much as
the mediaeval scholars of Europe did the vernacular of
their day. May we not hope that these works, after edu-
cating the Emperor, will, like those prepared by the
Jesuits (for the Dauphin), be brought to the light for
the instruction of his people?
As it is intended here to indicate the variety rather
than the extent of the literary labors of the Hanlin, these
remarks would be incomplete if they did not refer to their
poetry. They are all poets ; each a laureate, devoting his
354 THE LORE OF CATHAY
talents to the glorification of his Imperial patron. Swift
said of an English laureate,
" Young must torture his invention
To flatter knaves, or lose a pension."
In China the office is not held on such a condition.
Sage emperors have been known to strike out with their
own pen the finest compliments offered them by their
official bards. Ch'ien Lung, as we have seen, felt it
necessary to warn the Hanlin against the prevailing vice
of poets and pensioners. In China poetry is put to a
better purpose; Imperial decrees and official proclama-
tions are often expressed in verse, for the same reason
that induced Solon to borrow the aid of verse in the pro-
mulgation of his laws. Didactic compositions in verse are
without number, and for the most part as dry as
Homer's catalogue of the fleet. A popular cyclopaedia
for instance, in over a score of volumes, treats of all
imaginable subjects in a kind of irregular verse called fu.
Employed as scribes and editors, it would be too much
to expect that the Hanlin should distinguish themselves
for originality. It is a rare thing for an original work
to spring from the brain of an Academician. In imita-
tion of Confucius, they might inscribe over their door,
" We edit, but we do not compose."
" On entering this hall," said M. Thiers, on taking his
seat in the French Academy, " I feel the proudest recollec-
tions of our national history awakening within me. Here
it is that Corneille, Bossuet, Voltaire, and Montesquieu,
one after another, came and took their seats; and here
more recently have sat Laplace and Cuvier. . . .
Three great men, Laplace, Lagrange, and Cuvier, opened
the century ; a numerous band of young and ardent intel-
THE IMPERIAL ACADEMY 355
lects have followed in their wake. Some study the prime-
val history of our planet, thereby to illustrate the history
of its inhabitants; others, impelled by the love of hu-
manity, strive to subjugate the elements in order to
ameliorate the condition of man; still others study all
ages and traverse all countries, in hopes of adding
something to the treasures of intellectual and moral
philosophy. . . . Standing in the midst of you, the
faithful and constant friends of science, permit me to
exclaim, happy are those that take part in the noble labors
of this age ! "
In this passage we have a true portraiture of the spirit
that animates the peerage of the Western intellect; they
lead the age in every path of improvement, and include in
their number those whom a viceroy of Egypt felicitously
described, not as peers, but as les tetes couronnees de la
science. How different from the drowsy routine which
prevails in the chief tribunal of Chinese learning. Of all
this the Chinese Academician has no conception ; he is
an anachronism, his country is an anachronism, as far in
the rear of the world's great march as were the people
of a secluded valley, mentioned in Chinese literature, who,
finding there an asylum from trouble and danger, declined
intercourse with the rest of mankind, and after the lapse
of many centuries imagined that the dynasty of Han was
still upon the throne.
It is doing our Hanlin a species of injustice to compare
him with the Academicians, or even with the commonalty
of the -West, in a scientific point of view ; for science is
just the thing which he does not profess, and that gen-
eral information which is regarded as indispensable by
the average intelligence of Christendom is to the Hanlin
a foreign currency, which has no recognized value in the
market of his country ; nevertheless, we shall proceed to
356 THE LORE OF CATHAY
interrogate him as to his information on a few points,
merely for the sake of bringing to view the actual con-
dition of the educated mind of China.
In history he can recite with familiar ease the dynastic
records of his own country for thousands of years; but
he never heard of Alexander or Caesar or the first
Napoleon. Of the third Napoleon he may have learned
something from a faint echo of the catastrophe at Sedan,
certainly not from the missions of Burlingame or Ch'ung
Hao events that are as yet too recent to have reached
the ears of these students of antiquity, who, whatever
their faults, are not chargeable with being rerum novarum
avidi.
In geography he is not at home even among the prov-
inces of China proper, and becomes quite bewildered when
he goes to the north of the Great Wall. Of Columbus
and the New World he is profoundly ignorant, not know-
ing in what part of the globe lies the America of which
he may have heard as one among the Treaty Powers.
With the names of England and France he is better
acquainted, as they have left their record in open ports
and ruined palaces. Russia he thinks of as a semi-bar-
barous state, somewhere among the Mongolian tribes,
which formerly brought tribute, and was vanquished in
conflict her people being led in triumph by the prowess
of K'ang Hsi.*
In astronomy he maintains the dignity of our native
globe as the centre of the universe, as his own country is
the middle of the habitable earth a conviction in which
he is confirmed by .the authority of those learned Jesuits
who persisted in teaching the Ptolemaic system three
centuries after the time of Copernicus. Of longitude
* The Siberian garrison of Albazin were brought to Peking,
where their descendants still reside.
THE IMPERIAL ACADEMY 357
and latitude he has no conception ; and refuses even to
admit the spherical form of the earth, because an ancient
tradition asserts that " heaven is round and the earth
square." To him the stars are shining characters on the
book of fate, and eclipses portents of approaching calam-
ity.
In zoology he believes that tigers plunging into the sea
are transformed into sharks, and that sparrows by under-
going the same baptism are converted into oysters ; for the
latter metamorphosis is gravely asserted in canonical
books, and the former is a popular notion which he cares
not to question. Arithmetic he scorns as belonging to
shopkeepers ; and mechanics he disdains on account of
its relation to machinery and implied connection with
handicraft.
Of general physics he nevertheless holds an ill-defined
theory, which has for its basis the dual forces that gen-
erated the universe, and the five elements which profess
to comprehend the components of all material forms, but
omit the atmosphere. Of the nature of these elements
his text-book gives the following luminous exposition :
namely, that " the nature of water is to run downward ;
the nature of fire is to flame upward ; the nature of wood
is to be either crooked or straight ; the nature of metals
is to be pliable, and subject to change; the nature of
earth is to serve the purposes of agriculture." *
So weighty is the information contained in these sen-
tences that he accepts them as a special revelation, the
bed-rock of human knowledge, beneath which it would
be useless, if not profane, to attempt to penetrate. It
never occurs to our philosopher to inquire why water
flows downward, and why fire ascends; to his mind both
are ultimate facts. On this foundation human sagacity
* From the Hung Fan in the Shu Ching.
358 THE LORE OF CATHAY
has erected the pantheon of universal science. This it
has done by connecting the five elements with the five
planets, the five senses, the five musical tones, the five
colors, and the five great mountain ranges of the earth ;
the quintal classification originating in the remarkable
observation that man has five fingers on his hand, and
setting forth the harmony of nature as a connected whole
with a beautiful simplicity that one seeks for in vain in
the Kosmos of Humboldt.
This system, which our Hanlin accepts, though he does
not claim the merit of having originated it, is not a mere
fanciful speculation ; it is a practical doctrine skilfully
adapted to the uses of human life. In medicine it enables
him to adapt his remedies to the nature of the disease.
When he has contracted a fever on shipboard or in a
dwelling that has a wooden floor, he perceives at once the
origin of his malady, or his physician informs him that
" wood produces fire ; " earth is wanted to restore the
balance, i. e. life on shore, or outdoor exercise.
In the conduct of affairs it enables him to get the lucky
stars in his favor, and, through the learned labors of the
Board of Astronomy,' it places in his hands a guide-book
which informs him when he should commence or termi-
nate an enterprise, when he may safely venture abroad,
and when it would be prudent to remain at home. It en-
ables him to calculate futurity, and obtain the advantages
of a kind of scicntia media, or conditional foreknowledge ;
to know how to arrange a marriage so as to secure felicity
according to the horoscope of the parties ; and ascertain
where to locate the dwellings of the living or the resting-
places of the dead, in order to insure to their families the
largest amount of prosperity.
These occult sciences the Hanlin believes implicitly,
but he does not profess to understand them contented
THE IMPERIAL ACADEMY 359
in such matters to be guided by the opinion of profes-
sional experts. A Sadducee in creed and an epicure in
practice, the comforts of the present life constitute his
highest idea of happiness ; yet he never thinks of devising
any new expedient for promoting the physical well-being
of his people. Like some of the philosophers of our
Western antiquity, he would feel degraded by occupa-
tion with anything lower than politics and ethics, or less
refined than poetry and rhetoric. " Seneca," says Lord
Macaulay, " labors to clear Democritus from the dis-
graceful imputation of having made the first arch; and
Anacharsis from the charge of having contrived the pot-
ter's wheel." No such apologist is required for our doc-
tors of the Hanlin, inasmuch as no such impropriety was
ever laid to their charge.
The noble motto of the French Institute, Invenit et per-
fecit, is utterly alien from the spirit and aims of the
Academicians of China. With them the Golden Age is in
the remote past; everything for the good of human
society has been anticipated by the wisdom of the ancients.
" Omnia jam ferine mortalibus esse parata."
Nothing remains for them to do but to walk in the foot-
steps of their remote ancestors.
Having thus subjected our Academician to an exami-
nation in the elements of a modern education, we must
again caution our readers against taking its result as a
gauge of mental power or actual culture. In knowledge,
according to our standard, he is a child; in intellectual
force, a giant. A veteran athlete, the victor of a hundred
conflicts, his memory is prodigious, his apprehension
quick, and his taste in literary matters exquisite.
" It is a dangerous error," says an erudite editor of
360 THE LORE OF CATHAY
Sir W. Hamilton, " to regard the cultivation of our fac-
ulties as subordinate to the acquisition of knowledge, in-
stead of knowledge being subordinate to the cultivation
of our faculties. In consequence of this error, those sci-
ences which afford a greater number of more certain facts
have been deemed superior in utility to those which be-
stow a higher cultivation on the higher faculties of the
mind."
The peculiar discipline under which the Hanlin is edu-
cated, with its advantages and defects, we shall indicate
in another place. Before quitting this branch of the sub-
ject, we may remark, however, that its result as wit-
nessed in the Hanlin is not, as generally supposed, a
feeble, superficial polish which unfits its recipient for the
duties of practical life; on the contrary, membership in
the Hanlin is avowedly a preparation for the discharge of
political functions, a stepping-stone to the highest offices
in the State. The Academician is not restricted to func-
tions that partake of a literary character; he may be a
viceroy as well as a provincial examiner; a diplomatic
minister as well as a rhymester of the court.
In glancing over the long catalogue of the Academic
Legion of Honor, one is struck by the large proportion of
names that have become eminent in the history of their
country.
We have had occasion more than once in the preceding
pages to refer to the Memoirs of the Academy. These
records, unfortunately, extend back no further than the
accession of the present dynasty, in 1644; and they termi-
nate with 1 80 1, comprising only a little more than one and
a half of the twelve centuries of the society's existence.
Published under Imperial auspices in thirty-two thin vol-
umes, they are so divided that the books or sections
amount to the cabalistic number sixty-four, the square of
THE IMPERIAL ACADEMY 361
the number of the original diagrams which form the
basis of the / Ching, the national Book of Divination.
The first thing that strikes us on opening the pages
of that work is the spirit of imperialism with which they
appear to be saturated. The transactions of his Majesty
constitute the chief subject ; the performances of the mem-
bers are mentioned only incidentally ; and the whole asso-
ciation is exhibited in the character of an elaborate sys-
tem of belts and satellites purposely adjusted to reflect
the splendor of a central luminary. Cast your eye over
the table of contents and see with what relief this idea
stands out as a controlling principle in the arrangement
of the work.
The first two books are devoted to what are called
Sheng Yu, Holy Edicts, i. e. expressions of the Imperial
mind in regard to the affairs of the society in any man-
ner, however informal. Six books are given to T'ien
Chang, or Celestial Rhetoric, i. e. productions of the ver-
milion pencil in prose and verse. Eight books record
the imposing ceremonies connected with Imperial visits
to the halls of the Academy ; six books commemorate the
marks of Imperial favor bestowed on members of the
Academy ; sixteen of the remaining forty-two are occu-
pied with a catalogue of those members who have been
honored with appointments to serve in the Imperial pres-
ence, or with special commissions of other kinds. In the
residuary twenty-six we should expect to find specimens
of the proper work of the Academy, and so we do; for
no less than three books are taken up with ceremonial
tactics; forms to be observed in attendance on the Em-
peror on sundry occasions, the etiquette of official inter-
course, etc.; these things occupying a place. among the
serious business of the society. Fourteen are filled with
specimens of prose and verse from the pens of leading-
362 THE LORE OF CATHAY
members, and one is assigned to a high-flown description
of the magnificence of the academical buildings ; the rest
contain a meagre catalogue of official employments and
literary labors.
What a picture does this present a picture drawn by
themselves of the highest literary corporation in the
Empire! Yet, notwithstanding the enormous toadyism
with which they are inflated, we do not hesitate to say that
the twenty-two books especially devoted to the Emperors
are by far the most readable and instructive portion of
the Memoirs. They throw light on the personal character
of these monarchs, exhibit the nature of their intercourse
with their subjects, and illustrate the estimation in which
polite letters are held in the view of the government.
The first chapter opens with the following:
" Shun Chi, the founder of the Imperial family, in the
tenth year of his reign, visited the Inner Hall of the Acad-
emy, for the purpose of inspecting the translation of the
Five Classics. On this occasion, his Majesty said, ' The
virtues of Heaven and the true method of government
are all recorded in the Book of History ; its principles will
remain unalterable for ten thousand generations.' "
The translation referred to was into the Manchu lan-
guage ; it was made for the purpose of enabling the con-
quering race the more speedily to acquire the civilization
of the conquered.
The young sovereign, then only sixteen years of age,
shows by this brief speech how thoroughly he had become
imbued with the spirit of the Confucian books. The
record proceeds:
" In the fifth moon of the same year, his Majesty again
visiting the Inner Hall, inquired of the directors why the
writers had ceased from their work so early. The Chan-
THE IMPERIAL ACADEMY 363
cellor Fan replied, ' This is the summer solstice ; we
suspend our labors a little earlier on that account.'
" The Emperor, looking round on his attendant officers,
said, ' To take advantage of some peculiarity of the
season to make a holiday is natural; but if you wish to
enjoy repose, you must first learn to labor; you must aid
in settling the Empire on a secure basis, and then your
days of rest will not be disturbed. If you aim only at
pleasure without restraining your desires, placing self and
family first and the Empire second, your pleasure will be
of short duration. Behold, for example, our course of
conduct, how diligent we are in business, how anxiously
we strive to attain perfection. It is for this reason we
take pleasure in hearing the discourses of these learned
men ; men of the present day are good at talking, but
they are not so good at acting. Why so ? Because they
have no settled principles ; they act one way to-day and
another to-morrow. But who among mortals is free
from faults? If one correct his faults when he knows
them, he is a good man; if, on the contrary, he conceal
his faults and present the deceptive aspect of virtue, his
errors multiply and his guilt becomes heavier. If -we, and
you, our servants are diligent in managing the affairs of
state, so that the benefit shall reach the people, Heaven
will certainly vouchsafe its protection ; while on those
who do evil without inward examination or outward re-
form, Heaven will send down calamity. ... If your
actions were virtuous, would Heaven afflict you ? Ch'eng
T'ang was a virtuous ruler, yet he did not spare pains
in correcting his faults ; on the contrary, Cheng Te, of
the Ming dynasty, had his heart set on enjoyment, and
clung to his own vices, while he was perpetually finding
fault with the shortcomings of his ministers. When
364 THE LORE OF CATHAY
the prince himself refuses to reform, the reformation of
his people will be impossible, however virtuous his officers
may be.' "
This little sermon, excepting the preceding brief
encomium on the sacred books, is all that the Academy
has thought fit to preserve of the discourses of Shun Chi.
His son, the illustrious K'ang Hsi, fills a large space in the
Memoirs. Here are a few extracts, by way of specimens :
" The Emperor K'ang Hsi, in the ninth year of his reign
(the fifteenth of his age), said to the officers of the Board
of Rites, ' If one would learn the art of government, he
must explore the classic learning of the ancients. When-
ever we can find a day of leisure from affairs of state,
we spend it in the study of the classics. Reflecting that
what is called Classic Feast and Daily Exposition are
important usages, which ought to be revived, you are re-
quired to examine and report on the necessary
regulations.' "
In his twelfth year, his Majesty said to the Academician
Fu Ta Li, " To cherish an inquiring mind is the secret of
progress in learning. If a lesson be regarded as an empty
form, and when finished, be dismissed from the thoughts,
what benefit can there be to heart or life? As for us,
when our servants (the Hanlin) are through with their
discourses, we always reflect deeply on the subject-
matter, and talk over with others any new ideas we may
have obtained; our single aim being a luminous per-
ception of the truth. The intervals of business, whether
the weather be hot or cold, we occupy in reading and
writing."
So saying, his Majesty exhibited a specimen of his
penmanship, remarking that calligraphy was not the
study of a prince, but that he found amusement in it.
In the ninth moon of the same year, his Majesty said
THE IMPERIAL ACADEMY 365
to Hsiang Tze Lu, " The precept in the Ta Hsiieh,
on the study of things, is very comprehensive; it is not
to be limited to mathematical inquiries and mechanical
contrivances."
Again he said, " Heaven and earth, past and present,
are governed by one law. Our aim should be to give our
learning the widest possible range, and to condense it
into the smallest possible compass."
In the fourteenth year, his Majesty, on reading a paper
of the Hanlin, and finding himself compared to the
Three Kings and Two Emperors (of ancient times),
condemned the expression as a piece of empty flattery,
and ordered it to be changed.
In the sixteenth year, his Majesty said, " Learning
must be reduced to practice in order to be beneficial.
You are required to address me with more frankness, con-
cealing nothing, in order to aid me in carrying into prac-
tice the principles to which I have attended."
In the nineteenth year, the Emperor, in bestowing on
members of the Hanlin, specimens of his autograph, re-
marked that in ancient times sovereign and subject were
at liberty to criticise each other, and he desired them to
exercise that liberty in regard to his handwriting, which
he did not consider as a model.
In the twenty-first year, in criticising certain specimens
of ancient chirography, his Majesty pointed to one from
the pen of Lu Kung, remarking, " In the firmness and
severity of these strokes I perceive the heroic spirit with
which the writer battled with misfortune."
In the twenty-second year, his Majesty ordered that
the topics chosen for the letters of the Classic Feast
should not, as hitherto, be selected solely with reference
to the sovereign, but that they should be adapted to in-
struct and stimulate the officers as well.
366 THE LORE OF CATHAY
In the twenty-third year, his Majesty was on a journey,
when, the boat mooring for the night, he continued read-
ing until the third watch. His clerk a member of the
Hanlin had to beg his Majesty to allow himself a little
more time for repose; whereupon his Majesty gave a
detailed account of his habits of study, all the particulars
of which are here faithfully preserved.
In the forty-third year, his Majesty said to the High
Chancellor and members of the Academy, " From early
youth I have been fond of the ink-stone ; every day writ-
ing a thousand characters, and copying with care the
chirography of the famous scribes of antiquity. This
practice I have kept up for more than thirty years, be-
cause it was the bent of my nature. In the Manchu I also
acquired such facility that I never make a mistake. The
endorsements on memorials from viceroys and governors,
and Imperial placets, are all written with my own hand,
without the aid of a preliminary draft. Things of any
importance, though months and years may elapse, I never
forget, notwithstanding the endorsed documents are on
file in the respective offices, and not even a memorandum
left in my hands."
In the fiftieth year, his Majesty said to the High
Chancellors,
" In former generations I observe that, on occasion of
the Classic Feast, the sovereign was accustomed to listen
in respectful silence, without uttering a word. By that
means his ignorance was not exposed, though he might
not comprehend a word of the discourse. The usage was
thus a mere name without the substance.
" As for me, I have now reigned fifty years and spent
all my leisure hours in diligent study ; and whenever
the draft of a discourse was sent in, I never failed
THE IMPERIAL ACADEMY 367
to read it over. If by chance a word or sentence appeared
doubtful, I always discussed it with my literary aids; for
the Classic Feast is an important institution, and not by
any means to be viewed as an insignificant ceremony."
Of Yung Cheng, the son and successor of K'ang Hsi,
the Memoirs have preserved but a single discourse, and of
that only its opening sentence is worth quoting. His
Majesty said to the members of the Hanlin, " Literature
is your business, but we want such literature as will serve
to regulate the age and reflect glory on the nation. As
for sonnets to the moon and the clouds, the winds and the
dews of what use are they ? "
The next Emperor, Ch'ien Lung, far surpassed his pred-
ecessors in literary taste and attainments; and his reign
being long (sixty years), his communications to the
Hanlin are more than proportionally voluminous. Space,
however, compels us to make our extracts in the inverse
ratio. Many of the preceding and some which follow
have nothing to do with the Academy, save that they
were speeches uttered in the hearing of the Hanlin, and
by them recorded. This, however, is to the point.
In the second year his Majesty said to the general
directors, " Yesterday we examined the members of the
Academy, giving them for a theme the sentence ' It is
hard to be a sovereign, and to be a subject is not easy.'
Of course there is a difference in the force of the ex-
pression ' hard ' and ' not easy/ yet not one of them per-
ceived the distinction." Here follows an elaborate expo-
sition from the vermilion pencil, which I must forego, at
the risk of leaving my readers in perpetual darkness as to
the momentous distinction. It is, however, but just to
say that the Emperor intends the paper, not as a scholastic
exercise, but as a political lesson.
368 THE LORE OF CATHAY
In the fifth year, his Majesty says he has remarked
that the addresses of the Hanlin contain a large amount
of adulation, and a very small amount of instruction.
He accordingly recommends them to modify their style.
Two years later he complains that " the Hanlin often
make a test from the sacred books a stalking-horse for
irrelevant matters ; e. g. Chou Chang Fa, in lecturing on
the Book of Rites, took occasion to laud the magnificence
of our sacrifice at the Altar of Heaven as without a
parallel a thousand years." " Before the sacrifice," he
says,
" ' Heaven gave a good omen in a fall of snow, and
during its performance the sun shone down propitiously.'
Now these rites were not of my institution ; moreover, the
soft winds and gentle sunshine on the occasion were
purely accidental ; for at that very time the Province of
Chiangnan was suffering from disastrous floods and my
mind tormented with anxiety on that account. Let Chow
Chang Fa be severely reprimanded, and let the other
Hanlin take warning."
Among the remaining speeches of Ch'ien Lung, there
are three that do him credit as a vindicator of the truth
of history. In one of them he rebukes the historiogra-
phers for describing certain descendants of the Mings
as usurpers, observing that they came honestly by their
titles, though they were not able to maintain them. In
another he criticises the ignorance and wilful perversions
of facts exhibited by Chinese historians in their account
of the three preceding Tartar dynasties namely, the
Liao, Ch'in, and Yuan. And in the last he reproves his
own writers of history for omitting the name of a meri-
torious individual who had fallen into disgrace.
Among the communications of the next Emperor Chia
Ching (the Memoirs close with the fourth year of his
THE IMPERIAL ACADEMY 369
reign), I find nothing of sufficient interest to be worth the
space it would occupy.
Thus far the Emperors ; what the Hanlin say to them
in conversation or formal discourse is not recorded. But
we know that they are so situated as to exert a more
direct influence on the mind of their master than subjects
of any other class. They are the instructors of his youth,
and the counsellors of his maturer years; and this, the
fixing of the views and moulding of the character of the
autocrat of the Empire, we may fairly regard as their
most exalted function.
But if they influence the Emperor, we see in the pre-
ceding paragraphs how easy it is for the Emperor to
influence them. Herein is our hope for the rehabilitation
of the Academy. Far from being decayed or effete, it
contains as many and as active minds as at any previous
period. At present they spend much of their time in
making " sonnets to the moon ; " but if the Emperor
were so disposed, he could change all that in a moment.
He could employ the Hanlin in translating out of Eng-
lish as well as into Manchu in studying science as well
as letters.
Nor are indications wanting that this change in the
direction of their mental activity is likely to take place.
Some years ago Prince Kung proposed that the junior
members of the Hanlin should be required to attend the
Tung Wen College, for the purpose of acquiring the lan-
guages and sciences of Europe. Wo Jen, a president of
the Hanlin and teacher of the Emperor, presented a
counter-memorial, and the measure failed. But such is
the march of events that the same measure, possibly in
some modified form, is sure to be revived, and destined to
be finally successful.
When that time arrives, the example of the Academy
370 THE LORE OF CATHAY
will have great weight in promoting a radical revolution
in the character of the national education.*
* After the war with Japan, the younger academicians organized
a Reform Club, and began to talk about the need o a parliament.
The club was suppressed by decree, but most of its members
were still active in the cause of educational reform. On the
opening of the New University some entered as students of
foreign languages.
XIX
AN OLD UNIVERSITY IN CHINA
IT is not, perhaps, generally known that Peking con-
tains an ancient university; for, though certain
buildings connected with it have been frequently
described, the institution itself has been but little noticed.
It gives, indeed, so few signs of life that it is not surpris-
ing it should be overlooked. And yet few of the insti-
tutions of this hoary Empire are invested with a deeper
interest, as venerable relics of the past, and, at the same
time, as mournful illustrations of the degenerate present.
If a local situation be deemed an essential element of
identity, this old university must yield the palm of age
to many in Europe, for in its present site it dates, at most,
only from the Yuan, or Mongol dynasty, in the beginning
of the fourteenth century. But as an imperial institution,
having a fixed organization and definite objects, it carries
its history, or at least its pedigree, back to a period far
anterior to the founding of the Great Wall.
Among the Regulations of the House of Chou, which
flourished a thousand years before the Christian era, we
meet with it already in full-blown vigor, and under the
identical name which it now bears, that of Kuo Tze Chien,
or " School for the Sons of the Empire." It was in its
glory before the light of science dawned on Greece, and
when Pythagoras and Plato were pumping their secrets
from the priests of Heliopolis. It still exists, but it is
only an embodiment of " life in death : " its halls are
tombs, and its officers living mummies.
372 THE LORE OF CATHAY J
In the 1 3th Book of Chou Li we find the functions of
the heads of the Kuo Tze Chien laid down with a good
deal of minuteness.
The presidents were to admonish the Emperor of that
which is good and just, and to instruct the Sons of the
State in the " five constant virtues " and the " three prac-
tical duties " in other words, to give a course of lectures
on moral philisophy. The vice-presidents were to reprove
the Emperor for his faults (i. e. to perform the duty of
official censors) and to discipline the Sons of the State in
sciences and arts viz., in arithmetic, writing, music,
archery, horsemanship, and ritual ceremonies. The titles
and offices of the subordinate instructors are not given in
detail, but we are able to infer them with a good degree
of certainty from what we know of the organization as it
now exists.
The old curriculum is religiously adhered to, but greater
latitude is given, as we shall have occasion to observe, to
the term " Sons of the State." In the days of Chou, this
meant the heir-apparent, princes of the blood, and chil-
dren of the nobility. Under the Ta Ch'ing dynasty it
signifies men of defective scholarship throughout the
provinces, who purchase literary degrees, and more
specifically certain indigent students of Peking, who are
aided by the imperial bounty.
The Kuo Tze Chien is located in the northeastern angle
of the Tartar city, with a temple of Confucius attached,
which is one of the finest in the Empire. The main edifice
(that of the temple) consists of a single story of im-
posing height, with a porcelain roof of tent-like curvature.
It shelters no object of veneration beyond simple tablets
of wood inscribed with the name of the sage and those
of his most illustrious disciples. It contains no seats, as
all comers are expected to stand or kneel in presence
THE IMPERIAL LECTURE ROOM, OLD UNIVERSITY BUILDING
PROSPECT HILL WHERE THE LAST OF THE MINGS HANGED HIMSELF
AN OLD UNIVERSITY 373
of the Great Teacher. Neither does it boast anything in
the way of artistic decoration, nor exhibit any trace of
that neatness and taste which we look for in a sacred
place. Perhaps its vast area is designedly left to dust
and emptiness, in order that nothing may intervene to
disturb the mind in the contemplation of a great name
which receives the homage of a nation.
Gilded tablets, erected by various emperors the only
ornamental objects that meet the eye record the praises
of Confucius ; one pronounces him the " culmination of
the sages," another describes him as forming a " trinity
with Heaven and Earth," and a third declares that " his
holy soul was sent down from heaven." A grove of
cedars, the -chosen emblem of a fame that never fades,
occupies a space in front of the temple, and some of the
trees are huge with the growth of centuries.
In an adjacent block or square stands a pavilion known
as the " Imperial Lecture-room," because it is incumbent
on each occupant of the Dragon throne to go there at
least once in his -lifetime to hear a discourse on the
nature and responsibilities of his office thus conform-
ing to the letter of the Chou Li, which makes it the duty
of the officers of the university to administer reproof
and exhortation to their sovereign,* and doing homage
to the university by going in person to receive its
instruction.
A canal spanned by marble bridges encircles the
pavilion, and arches of glittering- porcelain, in excellent
repair, adorn the grounds. But neither these nor the
pavilion itself constitutes the chief attraction of the place.
' Under a long corridor which encloses the entire space
may be seen as many as one hundred and eighty-two
* They still discharge these functions in writing, their me-
morials frequently appearing in the pages of the Peking Gazette.
374 THE LORE OF CATHAY
columns of massive granite, each inscribed with a portion
of the canonical books. These are the " Stone Classics "
the entire " Thirteen," which form the staple of a
Chinese education, being here enshrined in a material
supposed to be imperishable. Among all the universities
in the world, the Kuo Tze Chien is unique in the
possession of such a library.
This is not, indeed, the only stone library extant
another of equal extent is found at Hsi An,* the ancient
capital of the T'angs. But that, too, was the property of
the Kuo Tze Chien ten centuries ago, when Hsi An was
the seat of empire. The " School for the Sons of- the Em-
pire " must needs follow the migrations of the court ; and
that library, costly as it was, being too heavy for trans-
portation, it was thought best to supply its place by the
new edition which we have been describing.
The use of this heavy literature is a matter for specu-
lation, a question almost as difficult of solution as the
design of the pyramids. Was it intended to supply the
world with a standard text a safe channel through
which the streams of wisdom might be transmitted pure
and undefiled? Or were their sacred books engraved
on stone to secure them from any modern madman, who
might take it into his head to emulate the Tyrant of Ch'in,
the burner of the books and builder of the Great Wall?
If the former was the object, it was useless, as paper
editions, well executed and carefully preserved, would
have answered the purpose equally well. If the latter,
it was absurd, as granite though fire-proof, is not in-
destructible ; and long before these columns were erected,
the discovery of the art of printing had forever placed
the depositories of wisdom beyond the reach of the bar-
* The city to which the Empress Dowager and her court retired
when the Allied troops captured Pekin in 1900.
AN OLD UNIVERSITY 375
barian's torch. It is characteristic of the Chinese to ask
for no better reason than ancient custom. Their fore-
fathers engraved these classics on stone, and they must
do the same. But whatever may have been the original
design, the true light in which to regard these curious
books is that of an impressive tribute to the sources of
Chinese civilization.
I may mention here that the Rev. Dr. Williamson, on
a visit to Hsi An saw many persons engaged in taking
" rubbings " from the stone classics of that city ; and he
informs us that complete copies were sold at a very high
rate. The popularity of the Hsi An tablets is accounted
for by the flavor of antiquity which they possess, and
especially by the style of the engraving, which is much
admired or, more properly, the calligraphy which it
reproduces. Those of Peking are not at all patronized
by the printers, and yet if textual accuracy were the
object, they ought, as a later edition, to be more highly
prized than the others. A native cicerone whom I once
questioned as to the object of these stones replied, with a
naivete quite refreshing, that they were " set up for the
amusement of visitors" an answer which 1 should have
set to the credit of his ready wit, if he had not proceeded
to inform me that neither students nor editors ever come
to consult the text, and that " rubbings " are never taken.
In front of the temple stands a forest of columns of
scarcely inferior interest. They are three hundred and
twenty in number, and contain the university roll of
honor, a complete list of all who since the founding of
the institution have attained to the dignity of the doc-
torate. Allow to each an average of two hundred names,
and we have an army of doctors sixty thousand strong!
(By the doctorate I mean the third or highest degree.)
All these received their investiture at the Kuo Tze Chien
376 THE LORE OF CATHAY
and, throwing themselves at the feet of its president,
enrolled themselves among the " Sons of the Empire."
They were not, however at least the most of them were
not in any proper sense alumni of the Kuo Tze Chien,
having pursued their studies in private, and won their
honors by public competition in the halls of the Civil-
service Examining Board.
This granite register goes back for six hundred years ;
but while intended to stimulate ambition and gratify
pride, it reads to the new graduate a lesson of humility
showing him how remorselessly time consigns all human
honors to oblivion. The columns are quite exposed, and
those that are more than a century old are so defaced by
the weather as to be no longer legible.
If in the matter of conferring degrees the Kuo Tze
Chien " beats the world," it must be remembered that it
enjoys the monopoly of the Empire so far as the
doctorate is concerned.
Besides these departments, intended mainly to com-
memorate the past, there is an immense area occupied by
lecture-rooms, examination-halls, and lodging-apart-
ments. But the visitor is liable to imagine that these, too,
are consecrated to a monumental use so rarely is a stu-
dent or a professor to be seen among them. Ordinarily
they are as desolate as the halls of Baalbec or Palmyra.
In fact, this great school for the " Sons of the Empire "
has long ceased to be a seat of instruction, and degener-
ated into a mere appendage of the civil-service competi-
tive examinations, on which it hangs as a dead weight,
corrupting and debasing instead of advancing the stand-
ard of national education.
By an old law, made for the purpose of enhancing the
importance of this institution, the possession of a scholar-
ship carries with it the privilege of wearing decorations
AN OLD UNIVERSITY 377
which belong to the first degree, and of entering the lists
to compete for the second. This naturally caused such
scholarships to be eagerly sought for, and eventually had
the effect of bringing them into market as available stock
on which to raise funds for government use. A price
was placed on them, and like the papal indulgences, they
were vended throughout the Empire.
Never so high as to be beyond the reach of aspiring
poverty, their price has now descended to such a figure
as to convert these honors into objects of contempt. In
Peking it is twenty-three taels (about thirty silver dol-
lars), but in the provinces they can be had for half that
sum. Not long ago one of the censors expostulated
with his Majesty on the subject of these sales. He ex-
pressed in strong language his disgust at the idea of clod-
hoppers and muleteers appearing with the insignia of
literary rank, and denounced in no measured terms the
cheap sale of ranks and offices generally. Still and the
fact is not a little curious it was not the principle of
selling which he condemned, but that reckless degrada-
tion of prices which had the effect of spoiling the market.
It is not our purpose to take up the lamentation of this
patriotic censor, or to show how the opening of title and
office brokeries lowers the credit and saps the influence
of the government. Yet this traffic has a close relation
to the subject in hand; for, whatever rank or title may be
the object of purchase, a university scholarship must of
necessity be purchased along with it, as the root on
which it is grafted. Accordingly the flood-gates of
this fountain of honors are kept wide open, and a very
deluge of diplomas issues from them. A year or two ago
a hundred thousand were sent into the provinces at one
time!
The scholars of this old institution accordingly out-
378 THE LORE OF CATHAY
number those of Oxford or Paris in their palmiest days.
But there are thousands of her adopted children who
have never seen the walls of Peking, and thousands more
within the precincts of the capital who have never entered
her gates.
Those who are too impatient to wait the slow results of
competition in their native districts are accustomed to
seek at the university the requisite qualifications for
competing for the higher degrees. These qualifications
are not difficult of attainment the payment of a trifling
fee and submission to a formal examination being all that
is required.
For a few weeks previous to the great triennial ex-
aminations, the lodging-houses of the university are filled
with students who are " cramming " for the occasion. At
other times they present the aspect of a deserted village.
After the accession of the Manchu Tartars in 1644, eight
schools or colleges were established for the benefit of the
eight tribes or banners into which the Tartars of Peking
are divided. They were projected on a liberal scale, and
affiliated to the university, their special object being to
promote among the rude invaders a knowledge of Chi-
nese letters and civilization. Each was provided with a
staff of five professors, and had an attendance of one
hundred and five pupils, who were encouraged by a
monthly stipend and regarded as in training for the pub-
lic service. The central luminary and its satellites pre-
sented -at that time a brilliant and imposing spectacle.
At present, however, the system is practically aban-
doned, the college buildings have fallen to ruin, and not
one of them is open for the instruction of youth. Nothing
remains as a reminiscence of the past but a sham exami-
nation, which is held from time to time to enable the
professors and students to draw their pay. Some years
AN OLD UNIVERSITY 379
ago an effort was made to resuscitate these government
schools by requiring attendance once in three days, but
such an outcry was raised against it that it soon fell
through. Those who cared to learn could learn better at
home, and those who did not care for learning would
choose to dispense with their* pensions rather than take
the trouble of attending so frequently. So the students
remain at home, and the professors enjoy their sine-
cures, having no serious duty to perform, excepting the
worship of Confucius. The presidents of the university
are even designated by a title which signifies libation-
pourers, indicating that this empty ceremony is regarded
as their highest function. Twice a month (viz., at the
new and full moon) all the professors are required to
assemble in official robes, and perform nine prostrations
on the flag-stones, at a respectful distance, in front of the
temple.
Even this duty a pliable conscience enables them to alle-
viate by performing it by proxy. One member of each
college appears for the rest, and after the ceremony
inscribes the names of his colleagues in a ledger called
the " Record of Diligence," in evidence that they were all
present.
Negligent and perfunctory as they are, they are not-
much to be blamed; they do as much as they are paid
for. Two taels per month ($1.50), together with two
suits of clothes and two bushels of rice per annum, and
a fur jacket once in three years these are their emolu-
ments as fixed by law. Scant as the money allowance
originally was, it is still further reduced by being paid
in depreciated currency, and actually amounts to less than
one dollar per month. The requisition for government
rice is disposed of at a similar discount, the hungry pro-
fessor being obliged to sell it to a broker instead of
380 THE LORE OF CATHAY
drawing directly from the imperial storehouses. As for
the clothing, there is room to suspect that it has warmed
other shoulders before coming into his possession.*
Professorships, however, possess a value independent
of salary. The empty title carries with it a social dis-
tinction ; and the completion of a three years' term of
nominal service renders a professor eligible to the post
of district magistrate. These places, therefore, do not
go a-begging, though their incumbents sometimes do.
In order to form a just idea of the Kuo Tze Chien, we
must study its constitution. This will acquaint us with
the design of its founders, and show us what it was in
its prime, at the beginning of the present dynasty, or,
for that matter, at the beginning of any other dynasty
that has ruled China for the last three thousand years.
We find it in the Ta Ch'ing Hui Tien, the collected stat-
utes of the reigning dynasty; and it looks so well on
paper that we cannot refrain from admiring the wisdom
and liberality of the ancient worthies who planned it, how-
ever poorly its present state answers to their original con-
ception. We find our respect for the Chinese increasing
as we recede from the present ; and in China, among the
dust and decay of her antiquated and effete institutions,
one may be excused for catching the common infection,
and becoming a worshipper of antiquity.
Its officers, according to this authority, consist of a
rector, who is selected from among the chief ministers of
the State ; two presidents and three vice-presidents, who
have the grade and title of ta jen, or " great man," and,
together with the rector, constitute the governing body;
two po shih, or directors of instruction ; two proctors ; two
* These details were obtained from one of the professors, who
added to his income by serving me as a scribe.
AN OLD UNIVERSITY 381
secretaries ; and one librarian ; these are general officers.
Then come the officers of the several colleges.
There are six colleges for Chinese students, bearing the
names of " Hall for the Pursuit of Wisdom," " Hall of
the Sincere Heart," " Hall of True Virtue," " Hall of
Noble Aspirations," " Hall of Broad Acquirements," and
" Hall for the Guidance of Nature." Each of these has
two regular professors, and I know not how many assist-
ants. There are eight colleges for the Manchu Tartars,
as above mentioned, each with five professors. Lastly,
there is a school for the Russian language, and a school
for mathematics and astronomy, each with one professor.
To these we add six clerks and translators, and we have
a total of seventy-one persons, constituting what we may
call the corporation of the university.
As to the curriculum of studies, its literature was never
expected to go beyond the thirteen classics engraved on
the stones which adorn its halls; while its arts and sci-
ences were all comprehended in the familiar " Six," which
from the days of Chou, if not from those of Yao and
Shun, have formed the trivium and quadrivium of the
Chinese people.
It would be doing injustice to the ancients to accuse
them of limiting the scientfic studies of the Kuo Tze
Chien by their narrow formulae. The truth is, that, little
as the ancients accomplished in this line, their modern
disciples have not attempted to emulate or overtake them.
In the University of Grand Cairo, it is said, no science that
is more recent than the twelfth century is allowed to be
taught. In that of China, the " School for the Sons of
the Empire," no science whatever is taught.
This is not, however, owing to any restriction in the
constitution or charter, as its terms afford sufficient scope
382 THE LORE OF CATHAY
for expansion if the officers of the university had pos-
sessed the disposition or the capacity to avail themselves
of such liberty. It is there said, for example, " As to
practical arts, such as the art of war, astronomy, en-
graving, music, law, and the like, let the professors lead
their students to the original sources and point out the
defects and the merits of each author."
Is there any ground for hope that this ancient school,
once an ornament to the Empire, may be renovated, re-
modelled and adapted to the altered circumstances of the
age? The prospect, we think, is not encouraging'. A
traveller, on entering the city of Peking, is struck by the
vast extent and skilful masonry of its sewers; but he is
not less astonished at their present dilapidated condition,
reeking with filth and breeding pestilence, instead of min-
istering to the health of the city. When these cloaca are
restored, and lively streams of mountain water are made
to course through all their veins and arteries, then, and
not till then, may this old university be reconstructed and
perform a part in the renovation of the Empire.
Creation is sometimes easier than reformation. It was
a conviction of this fact that led the more enlightened
among the Chinese ministers some years ago to favor
the establishment of a new institution for the cultivation
of foreign science, rather than attempt to introduce it
through any of the existing channels, such as the Kuo
Tze Chien, Astronomical College, or Board of Works.
Their undertaking met with strenuous opposition from
a party of bigoted conservatives, headed by Wo Jen, a
member of the privy council, and tutor to his Majesty.
Through his influence, mainly, the educated classes were
induced to stand aloof, professing that they would be
better employed in teaching the Western barbarians than
in learning from them. Wo Jen scouted the idea that in
AN OLD UNIVERSITY 383
so vast an Empire there could be any want of natives
qualified to give instruction in all the branches proposed
to be studied.
The Emperor took him at his word, and told him to
come forward with his men; and he might have carte-
blanche for the establishment of a rival school. He
declined the trial, and by way of compromise he was
appointed rector of the Kuo Tze Chien the " School for
the Sons of the Empire."
After my return to Peking in 1897, Huang, one of the
Presidents, exchanged visits with me and expressed an
earnest desire that something might be done to place the
education of China on a new footing, but he held out no
hope for the renovation of the " Old University." The
creation of a New University in the following year was
the realization of a widefelt and long-cherished desire.
BOOK V
History
XX
THE STUDY OF CHINESE HISTORY
AMONG the various departments into which the
literature of the Chinese is divided, that which
in my opinion will best repay the attention of
European scholars is their History. Yet like their ven-
erated classic, the Book of Changes, of which they affirm
that it can never be transported beyond the seas, there
is reason to fear that their history is not very well
adapted for exportation.
In its native form, it may find translators ; but they
will not find readers. Its form requires to be trans-
formed ; and its very substance to undergo a transubstan-
tiation, in order to adapt it to the taste of our Western
public. Beyond a substratum of facts, there is absolutely
no part of it capable of surviving a transfer to the West-
ern world.
In the West, the Father of History, or some of his
editors, prefixed the names of the Muses to the several
portions of his immortal work indicating that the idea
of beauty presided over its composition, and consecrating
the " art preservative of arts " to the patronage of all the
Sacred Nine.
In China, the conception of history is that of a simple
record ; not that of a work of art.
In one of the Taoist legends, an old man, who has
tasted the elixir of immortality, is asked to tell his age.
" I count it not," he replies, " by years, but by terrestrial
387
388 THE LORE OF CATHAY
cataclysms. As often as a continent sinks into the
bosom of the sea, or a new world emerges from the ocean,
I drop a little pebble to commemorate the occurrence.
The accumulation of pebbles is now so great that they
fill eleven chambers of my dwelling." Here we have an
embodiment of the genius of Chinese History not a
Muse stamping on it the impress of divine beauty, but
'shrivelled age like that of Tithonus, or the wandering
Jew, preserving a monotonous record of the changes that
occur in the course of an endless life.
The accumulation of counters set forth in this legend
is an expressive emblem of the vastness of China's his-
toric treasure. In this respect, as Hegel has remarked
in his Philosophic der Geschichte, there is a striking con-
trast between the two great empires of Asia the Chinese
having a historical literature more voluminous than that
of any other nation on earth, and the Hindus none at all.
The explanation of this phenomenon, if we seek for one,
will be found in the fact that history is the expression of
national life a tissue resembling that of a living organ-
ism knitting the past and present into a substantial unity.
Their historical literature, accordingly, more than any-
thing else, unless it be their educational system, affords an
index of the greatness of the Chinese people. With them
the worship of ancestors is an expression of their sense of
solidarity ; and history a testament, by which they convey
to posterity the legacy of the past.
The precautions which they take to secure and to
transmit the record betoken a proud consciousness that
the current of their national life is too strong to be swal-
lowed up by the shifting sands of time. That record,
though it extends to the people, starts from the throne as
its centre, and no less than four bureaus or colleges, each
presided over by learned members of the Hanlin, are
THE STUDY OF CHINESE HISTORY 389
charged with collecting and elaborating materials for the
history of each reign and its nearest predecessors. They
are the Bureau of Daily Record, the Bureau of Contem-
porary History; the Bureau of Dynastic History; the
Bureau of Military History. This last, as its name im-
plies, occupies itself with wars foreign or domestic.
The Bureau of Daily Record has its representatives al-
ways at the side of His Imperial Majesty. Whether in
his palace or on a journey, or in so-called retirement,
he can no more escape the eye of these official spies than
Horace's trooper could outrun the tormentor that mounted
behind him.
Here is a paragraph from the instructions to the officers
of this bureau. In respect to laborious minuteness it may
be taken as a sample of the working of all these colleges :
' They (the scribes) are to take note of the down-
sitting and up-rising of His Majesty ; and to keep a record
of every word or action. They are to attend His Majesty
when he holds court and gives audience ; when he visits
the Altar of Heaven, the Temple of Ancestors ; when he
holds a Feast of the Classics, or plows the Sacred Field;
when he inspects the schools, or reviews the troops;
when he bestows entertainments, celebrates a military
triumph, or decides the fate of criminals. They must
follow the Emperor in his hunting excursions ; and during
his sojourn at his country palace. They will hear the
Imperial voice with reverence and note its utterances with
care ; appending to every entry the date and the name of
the writer. At the end of every month these records
shall be sealed up and deposited in a desk; and at the
close of the year they shall be transferred to the custody
of the Privy Council.
The Emperor's public acts and public documents con-
stitute the province of the Shih Lu Ktian, the Bureau
390 THE LORE OF CATHAY
of Contemporary History. The Kuo Shih Kuan, or
Bureau of Dynastic History, occupies itself with the
archives of the ruling house, and the biographies of
those who are supposed to have shed lustre on its reign.
These tribunals form an essential part of the machinery
of government, supplying a check on the extravagance of
irresponsible power where no other would be available
the dread of being held up to the execration of posterity
operating quite as effectually as the remonstrances of a
board of censors. The censors are still called by a title
" Yu Shih " which means official historian ; and, though
no longer employed in the production of history, they are
wont to draw their weightiest arguments from the history
of the past, and to make their most solemn appeals to
the history of the future.
In the palmy days of Chou, when the institutions of the
empire were in their infancy, a prince proposed to make
an excursion which had for its object nothing better nor
worse than his own amusement. One of the censors,
after vainly employing other arguments to dissuade him
from his undertaking, solemnly admonished him that all
his movements were matters of history. The poor prince,
startled at the thought that to him there could be nothing
trivial that his every act was exposed to the " fierce
light that beats upon a throne " heaved a sigh of regret,
and desisted from his innocent purpose, that of fishing
on a neighboring lake.
In those days the historian was as stern and inflexible
as the Roman Censor morum. In the sixth century be-
fore our era, there lived in Shantung a General, or Maire
du Palais, named Ts'ui Wu Tze. Herod-like, he took
possession of the wife of another; his sovereign in turn
deprived him of the fascinating beauty. The General in
revenge killed the Prince ; and, when the Court Chronicler
THE STUDY OF CHINESE HISTORY 391
put on record this chapter of infamies, the General put
him to death, and tore the leaf from the Archives of
State. A brother of the historian renewed the record,
and suffered death for doing so. A leaf was again torn
out, and a third brother presented himself, pen in hand,
to repeat the tale and seal it with his blood. The tyrant,
touched by his martyr-like boldness, spared his life, and
submitted to the stigma. The incident is handed down as
a proof of the unflinching fidelity of ancient historians,
and by consequence of the trustworthiness of their
narratives.
In later times, the chroniclers were not so fearless.
One, Ch'en Lin, a man of talent, being reproached by
Ts'ao Ts'ao for drawing his portrait in rather sombre
colors, replied, while he trembled for his life " Your
Highness will forgive me. I was then detained in the
camp of your enemy, where I had no more freedom of
choice than the arrow shot from his cross-bow."
Thackeray says of his pen :
" It never writ a flattery,
Nor signed the page that registered a lie."
With Chinese historians, fear and flattery are influences
which, more than any others, are liable to deflect their
needle from the pole. To guard against these two
sources of error, the notes of every day are dropped into
an iron chest, which is not to be opened until after the
death of the reigning prince. Yet this provision is not
always effectual ; flattery which, addressed to the living,
would be deemed gross and disgusting, falls like music
on the ears of their mourning relatives. Hence it was
that Octavia paid Virgil so magnificently for his lines on
the dead Marcellus ; hence too, at the close of the last
reign, the Empress mother welcomed with delight a pane-
392 THE LORE OF CATHAY
gyric on the late Emperor, which made a debauched weak-
ling appear as a star of the first magnitude. Was not
the Roman Senate accustomed, by solemn vote, to raise
deceased emperors to the skies, whenever their relations
succeeded to the throne? The writers of China are
neither more nor less truthful than the Romans ; and now
and then we meet among them with an instance of fidelity
worthy of Rome's best days : e. g., Wu K'o Tu, a Censor
(his Chinese title means historian), some years ago pro-
tested against the affiliation of the present Emperor to
Hsien F'eng as an arrangement that leaves his predecessor
without the solace of a son to sacrifice to his manes. In
order to give more weight to his remonstrance he com-
mitted suicide at the tomb of the sovereign whose cause
he was seeking to serve. Does not this modern instance
almost suffice to render credible the story of the martyr
Chroniclers of whom we have spoken ?
Incedis per ignes
Suppositos cineri doloso;
said Horace to Pollio, when the latter was proposing to
write the history of the then recent revolution. Nobody
knows better than the Chinese the treacherous thinness
of the crust that overlies the lava of a dynastic eruption.
With a view to guarding against the perverting influence
of fear and favour, they accordingly wait until the last
scion of an imperial house has ceased to reign before
compiling, or rather before publishing, the history of a
dynasty. The history of the Mings was not published
until after the accession of the Manchus ; and the com-
mission charged with its preparation, devoted no less
than forty-six years to the task. Official histories are
always corrected by collation with private memoirs,
which only wait the sunset of a dynasty to come forth in
THE STUDY OF CHINESE HISTORY 393
countless numbers and shed their glow-worm light on the
events of the period.
In addition to these ordinary arrangements, there exists
an extraordinary provision for purifying the stream of
history. It consists in the appearance, at long intervals,
of sages with a divine commission to revise the annals of
preceding centuries, and to post up the doom's-day book
of the empire. Four have appeared already, viz.:
Confucius, in the 6th century, B. c. ;
Sze Ma Ch'ien, in the 2nd century, B. c. ;
Sze Ma Kuang, in the nth century, A. D. ;
Chu Futze, a century later.
For the advent of the fifth, the world is now on tiptoe.
Each revision reduces, of course, the quantity of ma-
terial ; but, after all their sifting, there still remains an
enormous irreducible mass, in which the dead past 'is
buried rather than illustrated.
The historical works of the first of these great editors,
as expounded by his disciples, extend to 60 books, or
about 20 volumes. Those of the second, to 130 books.
Those of the third reach the portentous figure of 360.
And those of the last, though professing to be an abridg-
ment, amount to 55 books.
The twenty-four dynastic histories, taken together,
foot up the tremendous total of 3,266 books, or 1,633
separate volumes.
This is sufficiently appalling, but what shall we say of
the mountains of undigested ores that have not been sub-
jected to the fires of the smelting furnace? It may help
us to form an idea of the extent of these crude treasures
to mention that the history of the last short reign of only
thirteen years is spread over no fewer than one hundred
and fifty volumes. Then there are collateral histories for
that period, which are also official, such as that of the
394 THE LORE OF CATHAY
Taiping rebellion in 211 volumes; that of the Nienfei
rebellion in 160 volumes; and those of the three several
Mohammedan rebellions of Kashgar, Kansu, and Yunnan,
not yet finished, but certainly far more voluminous. If
the preceding reigns were only half as prolific in histori-
cal writings, the productions of the present dynasty would
alone more than suffice to fill the library of the sea-side
genius, to say nothing of the twenty-four preceding
dynasties.
Nor is this all. To complete the Catalogue, we have
still to add topographical histories without number. Each
of the nineteen old Provinces has its official history com-
piled by a commission presided over by officers of the
Hanlin. Each department or prefecture has likewise its
proper history ; and this gives us 200 more not volumes,
but works; while, descending to cities of the third order,
we must reckon a history of from ten to twenty volumes
for each of nearly two thousand districts. The sum total
makes a quantity so vast that the mind can no more grasp
it than it can conceive the distances to the fixed stars.
We seek in vain for a unit of measure. If the manu-
scripts of the Alexandrian library kept the fires of the
Caliph Omar blazing for three months, how long might
the histories of China supply them with fuel ! Tamer-
lane was in the habit of building pyramids of the skulls of
his enemies. How high a pyramid, we may ask, might
be constructed out of these dry bones of past ages?
In the presence of these enormous accumulations, the
question arises what estimate are we to form of their
value ?
Of their value to the Chinese there is no question.
Their existence is proof of the esteem in which they are
held ; and the manner in which every species of com-
position bristles with historical allusions bears witness to
THE STUDY OF CHINESE HISTORY 395
the influence they have exerted on the mind of the Chi-
nese. But are these venerable remains of any value to
us? If so, in what way may they be made to contribute
to the literary wealth of the Western world?
In forming an estimate, we must not forget that our
standard of value in the criticism of such works differs
as widely from that of the Chinese as a golden sovereign
does from the cheap productions of the native mint. Ours
was coined and stamped for us by no meaner hand than
that of Lord Bacon, who defines history as " Philosophy
teaching by example." It is philosophy, not science, for
its data are too indefinite to be made a basis for scientific
deductions. Philosophy lays no claim to absolute cer-
tainty, though her very name proclaims her a searcher
after truth. Her first object is to learn; her second to
teach ; and if, in the domain of history, she is able to draw
lessons from the past, it is because she has first learned
the meaning of those great movements which she pro-
fesses to expound.
Judged by this standard, the Chinese have chroniclers,
but not historians. Their chronicles are composed with
studied elegance and abound in acute criticism of char-
acter and events; but the whole range of their literature
contains nothing that can be called a Philosophy of
History. They have no Hegel, who, after reconstructing
the universe, applies his principles to explain the laws
of human progress; no Gibbon or Montesquieu to trace
the decay of an old civilization; no Guizot or Lecky to
sketch the rise of a new one. They have not even a
Thucidides or a Tacitus, who can follow effects up to
causes, and paint the panorama of an epoch.
The reason is obvious. Without resorting to the sup-
position that they are by nature deficient in the philo-
sophic faculty, we find a sufficient explanation of the
396 THE LORE OF CATHAY
phenomenon in the faulty model set for them by the
greatest of their sages.
With them Confucius, not Sze Ma Ch'ien, is the Father
of History. His famous Spring and Autumn is not even
a book of Annals. It is a diary in which all events, great
and small, are strung like beads on a calendar of days.
This method, not to speak of the extreme conciseness of
his style, makes it difficult for his reader to perceive the
connection of events. Three disciples of his school have
come to his aid with commentaries ; but all of them follow
the order of the text, chapter and verse. His continu-
ators have done the same ; and so have all his successors
down to our historiographers of the Hanlin, who keep
their daily journals and imagine they are writing history.
To have so many pens laboriously employed in taking
notes is a good way to collect materials; but those ma-
terials require a different kind of elaboration from any
they have ever received at the hands of a native author
before they become History, in our acceptation of the
term.
That their History has remained in the rudimentary
condition in which it began its career is one more instance,
in addition to many others, of noble arts which the Chi-
nese originated in ancient times; and which remained
ever after in a state of arrested development.
There are men, says Sir Lyon Playfair, who "cannot
see a forest for the trees of which it is composed."
So the Chinese chronicler, bent on classifying all oc-
currences in the order of time, fails to perceive the trend
of colossal movements that sweep over whole nations and
long centuries. His work in keeping the minutes of the
day is History only in the sense in which the daily noting
of the stars is Astronomy. Thousands of diligent ob-
servers had recorded their observations with apparently
THE STUDY OF CHINESE HISTORY 397
fruitless toil, when the eye of Kepler, sweeping over the
mass of facts, deduced from them the ellipticity of the
planetary orbits. May we not hope that some master
mind will yet arise, who shall be capable of pointing
out the reign of law in this limbo of undigested facts?
The historian, who shall do this for China, will be a
native; but, in addition to the culture of the Hanlin, he
must possess the training of a Western university. The
students of history, trained in the native schools, are
all near-sighted. They analyze, with more than micro-
scopic penetration, particular events and personal char-
acter; but they are utterly incapable of broad synthetic
combinations.
In proof of this, I may point to three immense move-
ments, each of which is as indispensable to the under-
standing of the present condition of China as are Kepler's
three laws to the explanation of the solar system. Yet
no native writer appears to have grasped the significance,
or even formed a conception, of any one of them. They
are:
I. The conquest of China by the Chinese;
2. The conquest of China by the Tartars;
3. The struggle between the centripetal and centrifu-
gal forces of the empire.
To the mind of a native, the assertion that China has
been conquered by the Chinese would be tantamount to
that venerable item of political news that " the Dutch
have taken Holland." To him, they have always been in
possession, and, so far as he knows, they sprang directly
from the soil. But the eye of a foreign scholar, trained to
trace the origin of nations, perceives at a glance that the
Chinese were a foreign race, who, clothed with the power
of a higher civilization, undertook the conquest of the
398 THE LORE OF CATHAY
water-shed of eastern Asia, about the time the Aryan
Hindus undertook that of the southern Peninsula. He
notes the first seats of their power along the banks of
the Yellow River, indicating that they came from the
North-west, and followed its course down into the cen-
tral plain. Whence they came, he may not be able to
affirm with certainty; but he finds two-thirds of the em-
pire, even in the classic age of Chou, still in possession
of savage tribes, who must be regarded as the true
autochthones.
He sees these gradually absorbed and assimilated by
the superior race, until the remnants of the aborigines are
driven into mountain fastnesses, where they still main-
tain their independence, and where the conflict of ages is
still going on. The first chapter in the history of this
conflict is found in the brief account which the Shu Ching
gives us of the subjugation of the San Miao, " The three
aboriginal tribes," by the Emperor Shun.
The last is not yet written ; but a page still wet with
blood records the subjection of the Miao Tze of Kuei
Chou, and the extension of Japanese sway in the island of
Formosa. What a theme for the pen of a native scholar,
if he could only enlarge the range of his mental vision
so as to take in a movement of such magnitude !
The second of the three great movements is, in its
origin, almost co-eval with the first, and runs parallel
with it through all the ages down to the present day. To
the mind of a native, the Tartar conquest suggests only
the successful invasion of the Manchus, the now domi-
nant race. To the wider survey of a western thinker,
it signifies a persistent attempt, extending through thou-
sands of years, made by barbarians of whatever name on
the North of China, to gain possession of a country made
rich by the industry of its civilized inhabitants.
THE STUDY OF CHINESE HISTORY 399
Its first stage was an advance into the interior, in 771
B. c., far enough to destroy the western capital, near the
site of the present Hsi An Fu. The Emperor and his
consort perishing in the ruins, the successor of the un-
fortunate monarch removed his court eastward, to a
safer situation, in the heart of the Empire. At a later
period, Lo Yang, the eastern capital, was also sacked by
Tartars. Still later (not to follow the fluctuations of the
conflict), when the northern half of the Empire was
over-run, the court retired from the banks of the Huang
Ho to those of the Yang Tze Chiang ; whence it removed
still further south,* in the vain hope of escaping the
Tartars, who, under the leadership of Kublai, effected for
the first time the conquest of the whole Empire.
After a brief tenure, they lost their grand prize, but
it was reconquered by the Manchus ; and for two cen-
turies and a half it has remained in their possession.
The Great Wall, stretching from the sea to the desert
of Kansu, is a monument of this undying struggle, which,
from its first inception, has been essentially one long war,
with only here and there a fitful truce.
The successive sackings of Rome by Gaul and Vandal ;
the conquest of Italy by Barbarians from the North ; and
the removal of -the capital to the East, are parallels that
offer themselves to a European student, and suggest a
law in the tide of nations, viz, that the hungry hordes of
the North manifest, in all ages, a tendency to encroach on
opulent regions more favored by the sun.
In all ages, the Tartar invaders have yielded to the
influence of a higher civilization; but, on the other
hand, they have made a deep impression, ethnologically
as well as politically, on the state of China.
The Chinese have treated this subject only in a frag-
* To Hang Chou.
400 THE LORE OF CATHAY
mentary way; but, taken as a whole, in its philosophy
and its poetry, the conquest of China by the Tartars
would supply the Muse of History with another of her
noblest themes.
The two great movements, which I have now so hastily
sketched, were conflicts of races ; the third was a conflict
of principles. The contending forces were those of feudal
autonomy and centralization. At the dawn of the Chou
dynasty, not to go further back in the history, an able
monarch succeeded in holding the vassal Princes in check ;
while, under his weak successors, they threw off all but
the semblance of subjection. This struggle for power
went on for eight centuries, until both combatants were
overwhelmed by a new foe, who had grown strong in
conflict with the Tartars of the North '
In this signal event, Chinese historians discern noth-
ing but the triumph of vulgar ambition; and they paint
its author in the darkest colors, as an impious tyrant who
burned the books of Confucius, and slaughtered his dis-
ciples. For such unheard-of cruelty, they find no better
explanation than a partiality of Taoism, coupled with
a desire to destroy the records of the past, in order that
he might appear to posterity as the author of a new era.
Not one of them has understood the significance of Shih
Huang Ti, the august title by which he proclaimed him-
self the " first " of a new order of " autocratic sovereigns."
Not one of them has perceived that his motive for burn-
ing the books of Confucius was to obliterate the feudal
system from the memory of China; and that he cut the
throats of the Literati to make sure that those books and
their political doctrines should never re-appear.
The books did re-appear; but the feudal system, once
buried in the sepulchre of the slaughtered scholars, has
had no resurrection. It had been to China the fruitful
THE STUDY OF CHINESE HISTORY 401
mother of ages of anarchy. Since then she has gone
through many revolutions; but, thanks to the genius of
Shih Huang Ti, she has witnessed no repetition of the
sad spectacle of a family of States waging perpetual war.
His system of centralized power remains the bond of
the Empire; and the title of Huang Ti, which he was the
"first" to assume, still survives as its permanent
expression.
This conflict, between the centripetal and centrifugal
forces, forms the third great subject,* which the old
historians have not comprehended, and which waits the
advent of a writer of deeper insight and more com-
prehensive grasp. May not some future Hallam show
the world that Feudalism, which formed such a con-
spicuous stage in the development of modern Europe,
has played an equally prominent part in the History of
China?
Is it objected that, unhappily for the study of Chinese
history, its theatre is too remote to awaken public interest
in any high degree? Egypt and Babylon are remote in
one sense, but they are not altogether alien. They are
only higher up on the stream that expands into the broad
current of our western civilization. Ancient India is
remote ; but it forms a part of the same ethnic system with
ourselves, and, on that account, appeals powerfully to the
imagination of the European. Chinese history forms a
stream apart, which has not, it is said, in any way affected
the state of the western world.
But is it true that the two streams have flowed down
through the tracts of time in complete independence of
each other? Are they not like those ocean currents
which bear life and beauty respectively to the Eastern
shores of the Atlantic, and to those of the Pacific ? The
* The following chapters throw light on two of them.
402 THE LORE OF CATHAY
Gulf -stream and the Kurosiwo, though flowing through
opposite hemispheres, are not indifferent to each other.
They are connected by the pulsations of a common tide.
So the civilizations of China and Eur6pe, however widely
separated, have each derived from the other influences as
real, though occult, as those that throb in the bosom of
the ocean. To discover their points of contact, and to
exhibit the proofs of mutual reaction, are among the
most interesting problems offered to the student of
Chinese history.
That the mutual influence of the two civilizations will
in the future be far greater than it has ever been in the
past, it is easy to foresee. When China, developing the
resources of her magnificent domain, and clothing her-
self with the panoply of modern science, becomes, as she
must in the lapse of a century or two, one of the three or
four great powers that divide the dominion of the globe,
think you that the world will continue to be indifferent
to the past of her history ? Not merely will some knowl-
edge of her history be deemed indispensable to a liberal
education ; while I am in the spirit of prophecy, I may
as well go on to predict that her language and literature
will be studied in all our Universities.
But why should the degree of our interest in any field
of intellectual investigation be measured by the extent
of our commercial intercourse? If the Chinese, instead
of living on a globe, the dominion of which they are
certain to dispute with our posterity, were looking
serenely down upon us from the surface of the moon,
would that be any reason why we should feel no concern
for their fortunes ? If, by means of some kind of seleno-
graph yet to be invented, the moon could convey to us the
lessons of experience evolved by such a people in the
THE STUDY OF CHINESE HISTORY 403
course of their existence, would she not be giving us
something more substantial than moon-shine?
Of history it may be said, as of fame
" All that we know of it, begins and ends
In the small circle of our foes and friends."
To men of science, however, a well authenticated sta-
tistical history ought to be welcome, even if it came
from the remotest limb of the Universe. The archives
of China do not indeed supply us with tabular statements,
such as would satisfy the demands of Buckle and Quatre-
fages, but they give us the nearest approach to these that
it is possible to obtain from distant periods of time.
In our modern observatories, the sun is made to take
his daily photograph ! If we possessed an unbroken
series of such pictures, extending back for some thou-
sands of years, what an invaluable aid it would afford
towards ascertaining the laws that prevail in that far-off
world ! Now, to the Chinese chronicler, the emperor is
the sun, and he has no other object in writing than to give
us his master's daily picture. Happily, other subjects are
brought in as accessories that are of more interest to us
than the person of the sovereign. The territory is de-
scribed as his hereditary or acquired estate; the people
come into view as his praedial slaves ; the signs of heaven,
sun-spots, star-showers, and eclipses, all so precious to
the man of science, are recorded as shadows on the dial
of imperial destiny. Casting a hasty glance back over the
long concatenation, we are struck by the fact that Chi-
nese society is far from presenting an aspect of change-
less uniformity. Nor have its changes been as monoto-
nous as those registered by our sea-side watcher. The
404 THE LORE OF CATHAY
men have not always worn the bald badge of subjec-
tion to a foreign yoke; nor have the women, from time
immemorial, hobbled about on crippled feet. Time was
when the gods, that greet us at every corner, had not
yet made their advent ; when books, ink, and paper, were
unknown (but our historians were even then taking notes,
for it is they that tell us) ; and when China was confined
to a small angle of the present empire, the rest being
occupied by savage races. In those primitive days, even
the face of nature was different, The hills were covered
with forest, the plains with jungle, and the lowlands
with reedy marshes abounding in ferocious beasts.
Numerous as have been the changes through which
the Chinese people have passed, they have not been
always treading in a vicious circle. History shows them
to have made a general, if not a regular, advance in all
that constitutes the greatness of a people ; so that, in
the 76th cycle of their chronology, their domain is more
extended, their numbers greater, and their intelligence
higher, than at any preceding epoch in the forty centuries
of their national existence.
We shall find too that their progress through the ages
has been, amid all their fluctuations, confined within the
lines of a fixed and well-defined social organization. In
the state, a jure divino monarchy has, in all ages, formed
the nucleus of the government; and the supremacy of
letters has been secured by making learning the passport
to office. In the family, the kindred principles of un-
limited subjection to living parents, and of devout worship
to dead ancestors, appear of equal antiquity. These four
are the corner-stones on which the social fabric reposes at
the present day.
To those who have the language and the leisure to
enable them to explore its original sources, I would com-
THR STUDY OF CHINESE HISTORY 405
mend the study of Chinese History as alike attractive
and profitable. With these two conditions, we have ac-
cess to masses of historic lore, which we may compare,
not with virgin mines, but with those heaps of silver slag
left by the old Greeks at the mines of Laurium, from
which the Germans are now extracting quantities of the
precious metal that escaped the cruder methods of the
ancients. Or, to vary the figure, we may liken them to
the walls of the Colisseum, out of which the mediaeval
pontiffs quarried stones to build the churches of Rome
But a history worthy of the grandeur of the subject can-
not be produced otherwise than by the combined labors
of many scholars.
NOTE
A BRIEF CHRONOLOGY OF THE LEADING DYNASTIES Will
help to elucidate the references in this and the following
chapters. A sketch of history may be found in Cycle of
Cathay, pp. 251-264.
1. Period of the Five Rulers, B. c. 2852-2205. Society
emerges from barbarism. Letters are invented, followed
by arithmetic and chronology.
The last two rulers, Yao and Shun, are models of every
princely virtue. Dominated by love of the people, each
rejects his own son as unworthy to reign, and adopts a
capable successor. This is the golden age, when the
interests of the people rose above those of the reigning
house. The events of this period are largely legendary.
2. The Hsia dynasty, B. c. 2205-1766. A calendar of
days and rites has come down from this epoch which
shows that social and political institutions were becoming
crystallized into permanent forms. The whole of China
had previously been occupied by savage tribes; but the
406 THE LORE OF CATHAY
northern half was now brought under the sway of the
Chinese rule. Hsia signifies summer; and China is still
called the " summer land."
3. The dynasty of Shang, B. c. 1766-1122. Shang sig-
nifies merchant. It perhaps indicates that with growing
refinement of manners, commerce became a conspicuous
factor in social life. The empire was subdivided among
vassal States; and the feudal system of government took
definite shape.
4. The Chou (round, or complete) dynasty, B. c.
1122-255. Literature rose and sages appeared. Con-
fucius was born B. c. 551, and Laotze, founder of the
Taoist school, a little earlier. Civilization, as the Chinese
think, then attained its acme, and to this day they remain
under the domination of the rules and ideals of that
period.
5. The Ch'in dynasty, B. c. 255-206. The Ch'ins swept
away the vassal States, unified the empire and gave it
the name of China. The Great Wall is their enduring
monument; but they earned the execration of all ages
by burning the books of Confucius and slaughtering his
followers.
6. The Han dynasty, B. c. 2O6-A. D. 220. Marked by
resurrection of Confucian books and revival of letters;
introduction of Buddhism and completion of the triad of
religions ; also by extension of the Empire to the bounds
of China Proper. In honor of these brilliant achieve-
ments, the people call themselves the " Sons of Han."
7. Numerous partial or short-lived dynasties, A. D. 220-
618. A time of division, war and anarchy; these four
centuries are not distinguished by any conspicuous step
in the march of progress. During the greater part the
tendency was to relapse into barbarism. The wars of
THE STUDY OF CHINESE HISTORY 407
the Three Kingdoms, with which the period opens, were
fertile in heroes. One was K'uang Fu, the God of War.
It was preeminently the heroic age.
8. The dynasty of T'ang, A. D. 618-905. In letters, the
age of poetry; noted for the rise of the drama and the
formation of the Hanlin Academy, this period is still
more celebrated for the invention of printing, and the
diffusion of knowledge. The unsteady hold on the South-
ern provinces was now confirmed so that the people of
that region call themselves to this day the " Men of
T'ang."
9. The Wu Tai or " Five Dynasties," A. D. 907-960.
10. The Sung Dynasty, A. D. 960-1278. Noted for the
rise of speculative philosophy ; and the fixing of the inter-
pretation of the Confucian classics. A school of acute
thinkers, beginning with Chao and Chang, culminates
after more than a century in Chu Futze, who is also the
Coryphaeus of Chinese Commentators. They show signs
of having felt the stimulus of Indian thought, but decline
to adopt anything foreign. They have become the stand-
ard of orthodoxy in both their philosophy and their her-
meneutics. A third thing was added to complete the
yoke of authority, viz.: the reorganization of the civil
service examination system on its present basis.
11. The Yuan or Mongol dynasty, A. D. 1260-1368.
The Tartars, who from time to time had seized portions of
China, now established their sway over the whole empire
under the famous Kublai Khan. Under his reign the
Venetian, Marco Polo, lived in China and gave the
earliest detailed description of the country, calling it
Cathay, as the Mongols do.
12. The Ming dynasty, A. D. 1368-1644. This period is
not remarkable for any intellectual movement except the
4o8 THE LORE OF CATHAY
steady growth of an already enormous literature, the
compilation of encyclopaedias and the codification of the
Laws.
13. The Ta Ch'ing or Great Pure Dynasty, A. D. 1644 to
the present time. The Manchu Tartars, a small tribe in
Liaotung, gradually got possession of that outlying col-
ony, and with it acquired the civilization of China. The
Mings having succumbed to internal revolt, they were
invited to aid in restoring order, and did so by seating
their own princes on the throne.
Rivalling the house of Kublai in the extent of their
dominions, they have surpassed all preceding dynasties
in the ability and merit of the rulers they have given the
celestial empire. Theirs has been, on the whole, the
wisest government that China has ever enjoyed. How
much longer their lease of power has to run must depend
on the degree to which they assimilate the principles, arts
and methods of Western Christendom. Under the
Manchus, Christianity has acquired a firm foothold in
China, and science, which came with it, is a powerful
auxiliary in carrying forward the intellectual conquest.
XXI
THE TARTARS IN ANCIENT CHINA *
THE Great Wall, which forms the northern bound-
ary of China proper, tells of a conflict of races.
Extending for fifteen hundred miles along the
verge of the Mongolian plateau, it presents itself to the
mind as a geographical feature, boldly marked on the
surface of the globe. Winding like a huge serpent over
the crests of the mountains, it seems (to adapt the words
of Emerson) as if
" O'er China's Great Wall bent the sky
As on its friend with kindred eye,
And granted it an equal date
With Andes and with Ararat."
It divides two stages of civilization to-day, as it did two
thousand years ago. On one side are vast plains un-
broken by the plough, and occupied only by tribes of
wandering nomads ; on the other are fields and gardens,
rich with the products of agricultural industry. Between
the two, a state of perpetual hostility is inevitable, unless
restrained by the power of some overshadowing govern-
ment. This natural antagonism has never failed to show
itself at every point of contact, the world over. Schiller
* The name Tartar is incapable of precise definition. It is
applied in a general sense to all the wandering tribes of the
North and West.
409
4 io THE LORE OF CATHAY
hints not in his poems, but in a course of historical
lectures that this endless strife of shepherd and culti-
vator was foreshadowed in the conflict of Cain and Abel.
History, unhappily, supplies us with an abundance of
illustrations. Egypt fell a prey to the shepherd kings;
and in Asia, as in Europe, the inhospitable North has
always been ready to disgorge its predatory hordes on
lands more favored by the sun.
The Chinese of the border provinces were in the
earlier ages compelled to divide their time between war
and work, under pain of losing the fruits of their labors.
Like the pioneers of the Western continent, they never
allowed themselves to be parted from their defensive
weapons, and enjoyed life itself only at the price of per-
petual vigilance. Experience proved that a line of mili-
tary posts, no matter how closely they might be linked
together, afforded no adequate security against the
incursions of homeless wanderers. The Great Wall was
built, not as a substitute for such posts, but as a supple-
ment to them. That it served its end, there can be no
reasonable doubt. So effectually indeed did it protect
the peaceful tillers of the soil, that an ancient saying
describes it as the ruin of one generation and the salva-
tion of thousands.
From time to time, however, the spirit of rapine, swell-
ing into the lust of conquest, has swept over the huge
barrier, as an earthquake wave sweeps over the artificial
defenses of a seaport or found means to open its gates.
Twice has the whole of China succumbed to a flood of
extra-mural invaders : The Mongols, under Genghis
Khan, were aided in passing the Great Wall in the prov-
ince of Shansi by the treachery of Alakush, a Tartar
chief, whose duty it was to defend it ; and the Manchus,
who are now in possession of the throne, entered at its
THE TARTARS IN ANCIENT CHINA 411
eastern extremity, on the invitation of Wu San Kuei, a
Chinese general, who sought their aid against a rebel who
had subverted the throne of the Mings.
Besides the three and a half centuries of Tartar
domination under these two great dynasties, we find, prior
to the first of them, three periods of partial conquest.
From 907 to 1234 A. D., a large portion of the northern
belt of provinces passed successively under the sway of
the Ch'i Tan and Nu Chen* Tartar; from 386 to 532,
an extensive region was subjected to the Tartar hordes
of Topa, under the dynastic title of Pei Wei. How or
where these invaders passed the barrier, it is not worth
while to inquire. The foregoing examples show that, in a
time of anarchy, some friend or ally can always be found
to open the gates. Chung chih ctieng ch'eng, says a
Chinese proverb, " Union of hearts is the best bulwark."
Without exaggerating the strength of the Great Wall,
which, through a large part of its extent, is far from
being the imposing structure which we see in the vicinity
of Peking, we may still affirm, in the light of history,
that, had it been backed by forces untainted by treason
and unweakened by faction, it might have proved suffi-
cient to shield the country from conquest. Wanting
these conditions, the wall was powerless for defense ; and,
notwithstanding its watch towers and garrisons, we have
before us the astounding fact that the Chinese of the
northern provinces have passed seven, out of the last
fifteen centuries, under the yoke of Tartar conquerors.
Ascending the stream of history to the dynasty of
Han, which ruled China from 202 B. c. to 220 A. D., i. e.,
for more than four centuries, we find ourselves in pres-
* No Chen or Ju Chih also called Chin Tartars. The Man-
chus claim them as their ancestors, the reigning house having
Aischin (gold) for its family name.
4 i2 THE LORE OF CATHAY
ence of the same conflict. The names of the opposing
parties are changed ; but the parties remain, and the war
goes on. The empire is not conquered by the foreign foe ;
but it is kept in a state of perpetual terror, by an assem-
blage of powerful tribes who bear the collective name of
Hsiang Nu. I'.retschneider <,ays they were Mongols
nomine mutato; Howorth, in his learned History of the
Mongols, pronounces them Turks, or more properly Tur-
comans, the ancestors of the present occupants of Khiva,
Bokhara, and Constantinople. From the resemblance of
this name to Hunni, they were formerly supposed to be
the progenitors of the Magyars. So strong indeed was
this conviction that, a good many years ago, a follower of
Louis Kossuth went to China in search of his " kindred
according to the flesh;" actuated apparently by the hope
of inducing them to repeat the invasion of Europe, and
deliver their brethren from the yoke of the Hapsburgs !
The numerous tribes occupying the vast region ex-
tending from Lake Balkash to the mouth of the Amur
diverse in language, but similar in nomadic habits w
in the 7 Ian "period combined under the hegemony of the
Hsiang Nu, forming a confederation, or an empire, rather
than a single state. The chief was styled in his own lan-
guage Shan Yu, a word which the Chinese historians ex-
plain as equivalent to Huang Ti; and there can be no
doubt that the haughty emperors of the family of Han
were compelled to accord the sacred title to their barbar-
ous rivals. 7n recent times, their successors (more prop
erly successors of the Shan Yu) have hesitated to concede
it to the sovereign of at least one Knropean empire.
During the negotiation of the Attttro-Huflgarian treaty,
the Chinese Ministers objected so strenuously to the as-
sumption of Huang Ti, that the heir to a long line of
Kaisers had to content himself with the first syllable of
THE TARTARS IN ANCIENT CHINA 413
the title, on the principle that "half a loaf is better than
no bread." Hail his minister been well versed in Chinese
history what an advantage he might have gained! For,
in China, a precedent is good for more than two thousand
veats, and the supposed connection of the linns and
llsiang Nu, though not admitted by ethnology, is, OF was,
MiUicienth reliable for the purposes of diplonuv\
I "hit-hit; the I Ian and succeeding dynasties, the llsiaiu:
Nn were held in check mostly by foicc of arms; but
the weaker emperors, like those of Rome, \\ere accns
tomed to send their sisters ami daughters across the
ftontier, instead of geiieials; llatlcring the vaml\ of the
barbarians, and replacing military armaments by the
sentimentalities of familv alliance. The incidents con
nected with these transactions have supplied rich ma-
teiials for poetry and romance. A popular tragedy is
founded on the fortunes of Chao Ch'iin, one of the mam
fan ladies who \\ere otYered as victims to preserve the
peace of the borders. The Khan of Tartary, hearing of
her beantv, demanded her in marriage. The Knipeiot
refused to surrender the chief jewel of his harem; so the
Khan invaded I lima with an overwhelming force, but
he ictired to his own dominions when the l.idv was sent
to his camp. Ainved at the banks of the Amur, she
thiew herself into its dark waters, rather than endure
a hie of i-\iK- al a baibanan court. The wars of those
times would furnish materials for a thrilling histoi\
The battle ground was sometimes on the south of the
tit cat Wall, but generally in the steppes and descits
beyond.
As illustrations of the vai \ mi; foi tunes attending the
\\ais of tin- Hans and the llsiang Nu, we mav mention
the names of 1 i Kuan;;, 1 .i 1 .ing, S/e Ma t'h'ien, and Sn
\\'u. The first of these Ird thr ai lines of his sovereign
4H THE LORE OF CATHAY
against the Hsiang Nu for many years, in the latter part
of the second century B. c. He had, it is said, come off
victorious in seventy battles, when, in a final conflict,
disappointed in his expectation of capturing the Khan,
he committed suicide on the field of battle, though, if we
may believe the record, that battle was also a victory.
This gives us a glimpse of the style of Hsiang Nu war-
fare. They were like the Parthians, " most to be dreaded
when in flight." That a General, contending with such
a foe, should destroy himself from chagrin at the results
of his seventy-first victory, affords us a fair criterion for
estimating the value of the other seventy.
Li Ling, the son (or grandson) of the ill-fated Li
Kuang, appears to have been born under still less
auspicious stars. Appointed to succeed his father, he
suffered himself to pursue the flying enemy too hotly,
when, falling into an ambuscade, his vanguard, consisting
of a division of five thousand men, was cut to pieces
before the main body could come to the rescue. Li Ling,
with a few survivors, surrendered at discretion. His
life was spared ; but, to take his own description, it was
little better than a living death. In addition to the priva-
tions incident to a state of captivity among savage foes,
he had the bitter reflection that, on account of his sup-
posed treachery, his nearer relations had all been put to
death ; and that a noble friend, who had guaranteed
his fidelity, had been subjected to an ignominious
punishment.
That noble friend was no other than the great historian,
Sze Ma Ch'ien. Required by a cruel decree to pay the
forfeit of Li Ling's alleged treachery, the historian chose
to submit to a disgraceful mutilation,* rather than lose
his life; not, as he himself says, that he held life dear
* He had, however, become a father prior to this disgrace.
THE TARTARS IN ANCIENT CHINA 415
or feared death, but solely to gain a few years for the
completion of his life task, a debt which he owed to
posterity. He lived to place the last stone on his own
imperishable monument ; and for twenty centuries he has
had among his countrymen a name " better than that of
sons and of daughters."
Su Wu, the last of the four unfortunates, was a diplo-
matic envoy. Having, while at the court of the Grand
Khan, attempted by undiplomatic means to compass the
destruction of an enemy, he was thrown into prison, and
detained in captivity for nineteen years. A tender poem
is extant, which he addressed to his wife on parting, at
the commencement of his perilous mission. Whether she
survived to welcome his return, we are not informed ; but,
in that case, she must have died with grief, to see him
accompanied by a Tartar wife.
We cannot pause longer among the romantic episodes
so thickly scattered through the literature of the Hans.
We must travel back another thousand years, to arrive at
the last and the principal division of our subject, the
Tartar Tribes in Ancient China.
We find ourselves at the rise of the third dynasty, the
famous dynasty of Chou, which occupied the throne for
over eight hundred years (1122 B. c. to 255 B. c.). We
are at the dawn of letters ; at the dividing line which sepa-
rates the legendary from the historical period. The Great
Wall has no existence, but the hostile tribes are there;
not Manchu or Mongol, not Hsiang Nu, Hui Ku, or T'u
Chiieh, but the ancestors of all of them, under different
names, hovering, like birds of prey, on the unprotected
frontiers of a rich and tempting country. At this epoch,
the Chinese people, who had originated somewhere in
Central Asia, were few in number, and occupied a terri-
tory of comparatively limited extent. They were dis-
416 THE LORE OF CATHAY
tinguished from their neighbors chiefly by a knowledge of
letters, and by the possession of a higher civilization.
This incipient culture gave them an immense advantage
over the barbarous tribes who surrounded them on every
side and opposed their progress. These tribes are
grouped under several comprehensive terms : those on
the east are called Yi ; those on the north, Ti ; those on the
west, Jung or Ch'iang; and those on the south, Man.
The original sense of these names as expressed in picture
writing, seems to be as follows : The Yi were famous
archers, and were so called from their " great bows." The
northerners used dogs in hunting and herding, and de-
pended on fire to temper the cold of their rigorous
winters ; " dog " and " fire " are therefore combined in
the ideograph by which the Ti are designated. The Jung
were armed with spears, and this their weapon furnished
the symbol for their ideograph. The ideograph Ch'iang
is made up of the head of a goat and the legs of a man,
and so denotes to the Chinese imagination hideous mon-
sters, the reverse of the Greek conception of Pan and the
Satyrs ; it means " goat-men," " goat-herds," or " shep-
herds," and identifies them essentially with the Ti, or
dog-using nomads of the north. The character for Man
combines those for " worm " and " silk," and implies
that the barbarians of the south, even at that early day,
were not ignorant of silk-culture.
These names and characters all became more or less
expressive of contempt, but were without doubt less
offensive in their original sense. Marco Polo, who fol-
lowed the Tartar usage, applies the word Man, in the
form Manzi (or Montsi) to the whole of the Chinese
people. They were so called as being " southrons " with
respect to the people of Mongolia, and at the same time
objects of contempt to their conquerors.
THE TARTARS IN ANCIENT CHINA 417
All the tribes of the south and the east, i. e. the Man
and the Yi, save certain aborigines called Miao, were con-
quered and gradually absorbed and assimilated by the
vigorous race whose progeny peoples modern China
proper. The Miao have been able to retain their inde-
pendence to the present day, by taking refuge in the inac-
cessible fastnesses of mountain chains.
The barbarous tribes of the north and west, the Ti and
the Ch'iang, were never permanently subdued. This was
simply because their lands never invited conquest. Their
storm-swept pastures offered the Chinese no adequate
compensation for the toil and danger involved in such an
undertaking. On the contrary, as we have seen, it was
the wealth and fertility of China that tempted constantly,
throughout the eight hundred years of the Chou dynasty,
the fierce and hungry tribes of the north and west to
make their predatory incursions. These are the quarters
from which conquering armies have once and again risen
up, like the sands of their deserts, to overwhelm parts or
the whole of the empire. To repel the aggressions of
these troublesome neighbors was the chief occupation of
the Chinese armies in the earliest times, as it has con-
tinued to be down through all the ages. The oldest
extant Chinese poetry, older than any history, shows us
the Chinese warrior, like the magic horseman of Granada,
with the head of his steed and the point of his lance
directed always towards the north as the source of dan-
ger. History shows that the princes who were employed
to hold these enemies in check generally held in their
hands the destinies of the empire. And in this way
the northern tribes exercised for centuries, throughout
the third or Chou dynasty, an indirect but important polit-
ical influence.
To give only two examples, both from the most ancient
4i 8 THE LORE OF CATHAY
period of authentic history: The house of Chou, the
most illustrious of the twenty-four dynasties, rose from
a small warlike principality in the mountains of the north-
west ; they were made strong by conflict with their savage
enemies, and their chief was regarded as the bulwark of
the nation. Hsi Po,* the Lord of the West, or Wen
Wang, as he is now called, excited by his growing power
the jealousy of his suzerain, the last emperor of the
second or Shang dynasty, and was thrown into prison by
the tyrant, who did not dare, however, to put him to
death. In the panic caused by a sudden irruption of the
north men, Wen Wang was set free, and invested with
even greater power than he had ever possessed before.
To the day of his death, he remained loyal; but his son,
Chou Fa, or Wu Wang, employed his trained forces, like
a double-edged sword, not only to protect the frontier
and drive back the invaders, but to overturn the throne
of his master, the last emperor of the Shang.
After the lapse of over eight hundred years, the house
of Chou was replaced by the house of Ch'in which had
been cradled among the same mountains and made strong
by conflict with the same enemies. During the Chou
period (1122 B. c. to 255 B. c.), the barbarians never
ceased to be a factor in the politics of the empire; not
merely making forays and retiring with their booty, but
driving the Chinese before them, occupying their lands,
and planting themselves in the shape of independent
or feudal States, as the Goths and Vandals did within the
bounds of the Roman empire. The analogy does not
stop here. Like the Roman empire, China had, in the
early part of the Chou period, two capitals, one in the
west near Hsi An Fu (about one hundred miles south-
* Mencius says that T'ai Wang, the grandfather of Hsi Po,
paid tribute to the Tartars.
THE TARTARS IN ANCIENT CHINA 419
west of the great bend of the Huang Ho), in Shensi ; and
another in the east, near the present K'ai Feng Fu, in
Honan. The former was sacked by the Tartars in 781
B. c, just as Rome was by the Goths in 410 A. D.
The story, as given by Chinese writers, is as follows :
The emperor Yu Wang had a young consort on whom he
doted. One day it came into his head to give a false
alarm to the armies surrounding the capital, merely to
afford her an amusing spectacle. Beacon fires, the signal
of imminent danger, were lighted on all the hills. The
nobles came rushing to the rescue, each at the head of
his retainers. Finding there was no real danger, they
dispersed in a state of high indignation. The young
empress had her laugh ; but they laugh best who laugh
last, as the proverb has it. Not long after this, the
Tartars made a sudden attack. The beacon fires were
again lighted, but the nobles, having once been deceived,
took care not to respond to the call, lest they should again
be making a woman's holiday. The city was taken, and
the silly sovereign and his fair enchantress both perished
in the flames. However much of the legendary there may
be in this narrative, the one stern fact that lies at the bot-
tom of it is the presence of a ferocious enemy whom we
call by the general name of Tartars.
After this calamity, the heir to the throne removed
his court to the eastern capital, leaving the tombs of
his fathers in the hands of the barbarians. In the heart
of the central plain, and surrounded by a cordon of
feudal States, the imperial throne was thought to be
secure. But the irrepressible foe was forcing his way to
the south and east, with a slow but resistless motion. A
hundred and thirty years later (about 650 B. c.), we have
the spectacle of a barbarian horde in actual possession of
the eastern capital, and the emperor a refugee, pleading
420 THE LORE OF CATHAY
for re-instatement at the hands of his vassals. As might
be expected, the blame of the catastrophe is again charged
on a woman. That woman was a barbarian, and the fact
throws a strong light on the position of the contending
parties.
Her tribe had established itself in the rich alluvial
region on the southern bend of the Yellow river. As
enemies, they were a standing menace to the capital ; as
friends, they might serve for its janizaries. In order to
win their favor and secure their fidelity, the emperor
took one of their princesses into his harem. Captivated
by her charms, he subsequently raised her to be the part-
ner of his throne. An ambitious kinsman, desirous of sup-
planting the emperor on the throne, began by supplanting
him in the affections of his barbarian wife. Her infi-
delity being discovered, she was sent back to her kindred,
where she was joined by her paramour, who stirred up
the powerful clan to avenge an insult done to them in
her person. The emperor was easily put to flight; but,
wanting the support of the nobles, the usurper's tenure
of the capital was of short duration.
Subsequently the barbarians menaced the capital fre-
quently, if not constantly; and the Son of Heaven was
more than once compelled to appeal to his vassals for
succor. On one occasion, his envoys even turned against
him, and went over to the enemy, apparently deeming it
better to serve a growing than a decaying power. About
forty years earlier than the flight of the emperor above
mentioned, another barbarian beauty, named Li Chi,
played a conspicuous and mischievous role at the court of
Ch'in Wen, the greatest chief of the vassal States. Taken
in battle, she captivated her princely captor, and main-
tained by her talents the ascendancy which she at first
owed to her personal attractions. She induced the prince
THE TARTARS IN ANCIENT CHINA 421
to change the order of succession in favor of her off-
spring, sowing the seeds of a family feud that brought
the princely house to the verge of destruction.
Of these immigrant Tartar tribes, no fewer than five
or six are mentioned in the Confucian Annals as having
succeeded in establishing themselves in the interior of
China. Two of them (called Red and White, probably,
like the Neri and Bianchi of Florence, from the color of
their clothing, or of their banners) were settled within the
bounds of the present province of Shansi ; one in Honan ;
one in Chihli ; and two in Shantung. How they effected
a settlement is not difficult to understand. In an age
of anarchy, when rival States were contending for the
hegemony, the great barons found it to their interest to
secure the aid of troops of hardy horsemen from the
northern plains, rewarding their service by grants of
land. The emperor sought in the same way to strengthen
himself against his unruly vassals. And so, at last, by too
great dependence on foreign auxiliaries, the empire be-
came unable to shake off its helpers.
How deeply seated was the antagonism between them
and the Chinese may be inferred from one or two ex-
amples. The emperor being about to despatch a body
of those hired auxiliaries to chastise a disobedient subject,
one of his ministers warned him against a measure which
would be sure to alienate his friends, and strengthen the
hands of the common enemy. " If," said the minister,
" the prince finds his moral influence insufficient to se-
cure order, his next resort is to make the most of the
ties of blood. But let him beware of throwing himself
into the arms of a foreign invader." This counsel re-
minds us of the remonstrance of Lord Chatham against
the employment of savages, in the conflict with the Ameri-
can colonies. We may add that India and China both
422 THE LORE OF CATHAY
came under the sway of their present rulers through
the mistaken policy of depending on foreign auxiliaries.
With the Chinese, it was a practical maxim that no
faith was to be kept with those invaders ; and a terrible
vengeance was sometimes taken for the insults and perfidy
to which they were subjected.
Another fact may be cited, which shows at once the
power of the barbarians and the horror in which they
were held. In the sixth century B. c., the rising civiliza-
tion of China was on the point" of being overwhelmed by
them, when a deliverer was raised up in the person of
Duke Huan, of Ch'i, who turned the tide at the critical
moment, as Theodoric did the onslaught of the Huns
under Attila. How imminent was the peril of the em-
pire, and how eminent the merit of the victor, is apparent
from a reply of Confucius to some one who supposed that
he had spoken disparagingly of Duke Huan. " How could
I disparage Duke Huan ? " he exclaimed ; " but for him
we should all have been buttoning our coats on the left
side," i. e., we should have been subject to the Tartars.
Thus far, we have occupied ourselves with what we
may call an outline of the political relations of the Chi-
nese with the northern tribes in war and in peace. The
ethnography of those tribes now claims our attention,
if only to show the impossibility of arriving at any satis-
factory conclusion. The doubts expressed by the best
authorities as to the ethnological relations of the Hsiang
Nu have already been referred to. Conspicuous as they
are in history for many centuries about the commencement
of the Christian era, it has been much disputed whetHer
they were Turks, Mongols, or Huns. How much greater
is the difficulty of identification as we travel back to a
period where the torch of history sheds but a feeble
ray, or disappears in the vague obscurity of legendary
tradition.
In those remote ages, the guiding clue of philology fails
us. While a few names that appear in the less ancient
literature, such as Hui Ku and T'u Chiieh,* suggest the
identity of the tribes that bore them with the Ouigours
and Turks, there is absolutely nothing to be made out
of the names that meet us most frequently in the earlier
records. The vague terms Jung and Ti, under which
were grouped peoples as diverse as the tribes of North
American Indians, are always accompanied by some mark
of contempt ; the character for dog is prefixed to one, and
incorporated with the other. Hsien Yuan, another name
of frequent occurrence, has the dog radical in both its
parts, and appears intended to confound the people who
bore it with a tribe of dog-like apes. It could hardly be
expected that writers, who deny their neighbors the
attributes of humanity, would take an interest in depicting
their manners or studying their language. Accordingly,
we search in vain in the earlier Chinese literature for
any such precious fragments of those northern tongues as
Plautus, in one of his plays, has preserved of the Cartha-
ginian. They themselves possessed no written speech;
and, had they possessed it, they have left us no such im-
perishable monuments or relics of handicraft as, at this
day, are throwing fresh light on the origin of the
Etruscans.
A vast amount of undigested information is to be found
in the pages of Ma Tuan Lin, relating to the border
*
* Hsiang Nu, Tu Chtteh, Hui Ku, Hsien Yuan, Hsttn Yu, Pei
Hu, Ta Ta (= Tartar) Hsien Pi, Su ShSn These are only
some of the names that are given in a way more or less vague
to the nomads o the North and West.
424 T HE LORE OF CATHAY
tribes of the middle ages. But outside the circle of the
classics, the only descriptive geography that has reached
us from the Chou period is the Shan Hai Ching, a kind
of Chinese Gulliver, which peoples the world with mon-
sters of every form and fashion. The older writers, in
confounding numerous tribes under one or a few terms,
were no doubt influenced by the fact that to them they
all appeared under one aspect, that of wandering hunt-
ers or shepherds, equally rude and equally ferocious.
No one who gives attention to such subjects can fail
to be struck with a twofold process that takes place in
the life of all nations, and most of all in that of nomadic
tribes. The first is what we may call the stage of dif-
ferentiation, through which they pass, when, small and
weak, they keep themselves isolated from their neigh-
bors : Even their languages diverge in a short time to
such a degree as to be mutually unintelligible. The
second is the stage of assimilation, when, brought into
the collisions of war or the intercourse of trade, each
gives and receives impressions that make them approxi-
mate to a common type. Thus the barbarians on the
north of China present in the earlier ages a vague variety,
which tends, with the lapse of time, to give place to uni-
formity of manners, and even of physical features.
Rolling over the plains, as the waves over the sea,
their blood has been commingled; and, though their
names have often changed, their physical type has prob-
ably remained unaltered. It is natural to raise the ques-
tion, What was that physical type? It has not been
handed down either in painting or sculpture, and yet I
think it is possible for us to recover it. It stands before
us to-day, stamped on their descendants of the hun-
dredth generation. As the Manchu and Mongol are to-
day, such were the Jung and the Ti, co-eval with Assyria
THE TARTARS IN ANCIENT CHINA 425
and Babylon. The beautiful Aleuta, the hapless consort
of the late emperor, was a Mongol. Her grandfather,
the Grand Secretary Sai Shang A, having failed to sup-
press the Tai-ping Rebellion, was thrown into prison
and condemned to death. His son, Ch'ung Ch'i, begged
to share his fate, and tenderly served him in his con-
finement, an act of filial piety which was subsequently
rewarded by his elevation to the dignity of Chuang Yuan,
or Scholar Laureate of the Empire. So eminent is this
grade that his daughter was deemed a fit consort for the
late Emperor Tung Chih. For two short years she en-
joyed her brilliant position, when, the Emperor dying,
she refused food and followed him into the world of
spirits.
More than two thousand years ago, other princes were
captivated by the beauty of the daughters of the desert.
The barbarians of those times were probably not inferior
to the Chinese in form, feature, or natural intelligence,
as their descendants are not inferior in any of these
respects. Indeed Chinese, Manchus, and Mongols, as we
see them in the city of Peking, are not distinguishable
except by some peculiarity of costume.
Were they originally of one mould, or have the lines
of distinction become gradually effaced by the intercourse
of ages? The latter is, we think, the correct hypothesis.
The primitive Chinese type, that imported by the immi-
grants who founded the civilization of China, is, we be-
lieve, no longer to be discerned. In the southern and
central region, it has everywhere been modified by com-
bination with the aboriginal inhabitants, leading to pro-
vincial characteristics, which the practiced eye can easily
recognize. It has undergone, we think, a similar modifi-
cation in the northern belt. It met here with tribes akin to
those of Mongolia, and gradually absorbed them, and
4 i6 THE LORE OF CATHAY
to this combination are probably due the height and
the stalwart physique of the Northern Chinese.
This process was going on in pre-historic times.
History, at its earliest dawn, shows us unassimilated frag-
ments of those tribes existing among the Northern Chi-
nese. It also discloses a vast southward movement of the
outside barbarians, checked for a time by the Great Wall,
only to be renewed on a more stupendous scale. We have
seen how small bodies infiltrated through every channel ;
we have also seen how, organized into great States, they
established in China a dominion enduring for centuries.
We are inclined to believe that they have stamped their
impress on the people of 'North China as thoroughly
as the Saxons have theirs on the people of England, or the
Vandals theirs on that part of Spain which still bears
their name in the form of Andalusia.
The former have made the language of the English
essentially Germanic ; and the language of northern China
has been profoundly modified by Tartar influence. Hence
we are told by Dr. Edkins that the ancient Chinese pro-
nunciation is only to be found in the Southern provinces,
where in fact we should look for it, in the region least
affected by the tide of invasion.
If you inquire for the influences to which the invaders
have in their turn been subjected, we answer that, in all
ages, they have exchanged barbarism for such civilization
as they found among the more cultivated race.
XXII
INTERNATIONAL LAW IN ANCIENT CHINA
THE treaties, by which China has been brought into
closer relations with the nations of the West, and
especially the establishment of intercourse by
means of permanent embassies, have led Chinese states-
men to turn their attention to the subject of International
Law.*
For them, it is a new study, involving conceptions
which it would hardly have been possible for their pred-
ecessors to form at any time in the course of the last
two thousand years ; though, as we shall endeavor to
show, they possessed something answering to it in their
earlier history.
Their modern history commences two centuries before
the Christian era ; and, for our purpose, it may be divided
into three periods. The first, extending from the epoch
of the Punic wars down to the discovery of the route to
the Indies by the Cape of Good Hope; the second, com-
prehending three centuries and a half of restricted com-
mercial intercourse; the third, commencing with the so-
called " opium war," in 1839, an d covering the sixty years
of treaty relations.
During the first, the Chinese were as little affected
by the convulsions that shook the western world as if
* The works of Wheaton, Woolsey, Bluntschli, and others, on
this subject, have been translated for their use by the author
of this book.
427
428 THE LORE OF CATHAY
they had belonged to another planet. During the second,
they became aware of the existence of the principal States
of modern Europe; but the light that reached them was
not yet sufficient to reveal the magnitude and importance
of those far-off powers. Within the last period the open-
ing of the Suez Canal and the construction of the Trans-
Siberian Railway have brought them into what they
regard as a dangerous proximity to formidable neighbors.
And the rude experiences of five wars, each increasing in
intensity until China was pitted against the world, have
made them acquainted with the military strength of Euro-
pean nations.
Such are the steps by which China has been led to
accept intercourse on a footing of equality with nations
which, for three centuries, she had been accustomed to
class with her own tributaries.
Her tributaries included all the petty States of Eastern
Asia. Attracted partly by community of letters and
religion, and partly by commercial interest, but more,
perhaps, by the moral effect of her national greatness,
they rendered a voluntary homage to the master of a
realm so vast that, like Rome of old, it has always called
itself by a title equivalent to orbis terrantm. These vassal
States had few relations with each other, and it was not
to be expected that China, acknowledging nothing like
reciprocity in her intercourse with them, should learn
from them the idea of a community of nations possessed
of equal rights.
For twenty centuries she had presented to her own
people, as well as to her dependent neighbors, the im-
posing spectacle of an empire unrivaled in extent, whose
unity had been broken only by rare intervals of revolution
or anarchy. During this long period, it was no more
possible that an international code should spring up in
INTERNATIONAL LAW 429
China than it would have been for such a thing to appear
in Europe, had the Roman empire remained undivided
until the present day. The requisite conditions were
wanting. Where they exist, a code based upon usage,
and more or less developed, comes into being by the
necessities of the human mind.
These conditions are:
1st. The existence of a group of independent States so situ-
ated as to require or favour the maintenance of
friendly intercourse;
2nd. That those States should be so related as to conduct
their intercourse on a basis of equality.
If these conditions were conspicuously absent under
the consolidated empire, they were no less obviously
present in the preceding period, accompanied by every
circumstance that could favor the development of an
international code.
The vast domain of China proper was at that epoch
divided between a number of independent principalities,
whose people were of one blood, possessors of a common
civilization already much advanced, and united by the
additional bond of a common language.
These conditions concurred in ancient Greece, and the
result was a rudimentary code, culminating in the Am-
phictyonic Council, a provision for settling international
disputes, which suggests comparison with the " concert "
of European powers.
In ancient China, the conditions are similar, but the
scale of operation is vastly more extended. There is,
moreover, another important difference. The Chinese
States were not, like those of Greece, a cluster of de-
tached tribes who had together emerged from barbarism,
without any well-defined political connection; they were
430 THE LORE OF CATHAY
the fragments of a disintegrated empire, inheriting its
laws and civilization, as the States of modern Europe
inherited those of Rome.
The period during which they rose and fell was the
latter half of the dynasty of Chou, pretty nearly cor-
responding to that extending from the birth of S'olon to
the close of the first century after the death of Alexander,
which in China, as in Greece, was an age of intense
political activity. The normal form of government for
the empire was the feudal, the archetype of that which
prevailed in Japan until it was swept away by the revo-
lution of 1868. The several States were created by the
voluntary subdivision of the national domain by the
founder of the dynasty, who, like Charlemagne, by this
arrangement planted within it the seeds of its destruction.
The throne of each State being hereditary, a feeling
of independence soon began to spring up. The emperors
were at first 'able to preserve order by force; and, even
when shorn of their power, their court, like that of the
Holy See in the Middle Ages, continued for a long time to
serve as a court of appeal for the adjustment of interna-
tional difficulties. At length, losing all respect for au-
thority, the feudal princes threw off the semblance of
subjection, and pursued without restraint the objects of
their private ambition. This age is called by the native
historians chan kuo, or that of the " warring States ; "
and that which preceded it, characterized by orderly and
pacific intercourse, is described as lieh kuo, or the family
of " co-ordinated States."
A family of States, with such an arena and such
antecedents, could hardly fail to develop, in the inter-
course of peace and war, a system of usages which might
be regarded as constituting for them a body of
international laws.
INTERNATIONAL LAW 431
Accordingly, if we turn to the history of the period,
in quest of such an indigenous system, we shall find, if
lot the system itself, at least the evidence of its existence.
A^e find, as we have said, a family of States, many of
them as extensive as the great States of western Europe,
united by the ties of race, literature, and^religion, carrying
on an active intercourse, commercial and political, which,
without some recognized Jus gentium, would have been
impracticable. We find the interchange of embassies,
vith forms of courtesy, indicative of an elaborate civiliza-
tion. We find treaties solemnly drawn up and deposited
f)r safe keeping in a sacred place called Meng Fu. We
fnd a balance of power studied and practised, leading to
combinations to check the aggressions of the strong and
to protect the rights of the weak. We find the rights of
neutrals to a certain extent recognized and respected.
Finally, we find a class of men devoted to diplomacy as a
profession,* though, to say the truth, their diplomacy was
not unlike that which was practised by the States of
Italy in the days of Machiavelli.
No formal text-book, containing the rules which for
S3 many centuries controlled this complicated intercourse,
has come down to our times. If such writings ever
existed, they probably perished in the " conflagration of
tie books," which sheds such a lurid light on the memory
cf the builder of the Great Wall. The membra disjecta
cf such an international code as we have supposed are,
however, to be found profusely scattered over the litera-
ture of those times, in the writings of Confucius and
Mencius ; in those of other philosophers of the last five
centuries B. c. ; in various historical records ; and par-
ticularly in the Chou Li, or Rites of the Chou dynasty.
The day may perhaps come when some Chinese Grotius
* See next chapter.
432 THE LORE OF CATHAY
will gather up these desultory hints as carefully as the
illustrious Hollander did the traces of international usages
in Greece and Italy. To make even a partial collection of
the passages in Chinese writers relating to this subject
would neither come within the scope nor the compass
of the present chapter. All that I propose to myself, h
addition to indicating, as I have done, the existence be-
tween the States of ancient China of a peculiar system of
consuetudinary law, is to make a few citations confirma-
tory of the views expressed, and throwing light on some
of the more interesting of the topics to which I have
adverted.
The clearest view of the public law which was ac-
knowledged by this group of States, after they became in-
dependent, is undoubtedly to be sought for in their rela-
tions to each other while subject to a common suzerain.
The greater States were twelve in number, and for ages
that distribution of territory was regarded as no less
permanent than the order of the heavenly bodies. It was
consecrated by the science of astronomy as it then existec,
and An ancient map of the heavens gives us a duodecimal
division, with the stars of each portion formally set apart
to preside over the destinies of a corresponding portion of
the empire.
The names of the twelve great States may also be seei
inscribed on the horizon of an azimuth instrument, mads
under the Mongol dynasty, circa 1320, and still preserved
in the Observatory of Peking. What can better illustrate
the depth of the sentiment connected with this territorial
division than the fact that such a souvenir, associating
it with the unchanging heavens, should be reproduced ir.
the construction of an astronomical instrument fifteen
centuries after the last of those States had ceased to
exist !
INTERNATIONAL LAW 433
Confucius appears to allude to this in a beautiful
passage in which he compares the emperor, or the wise
man for the words have a double sense to the polar
star, which sits unmoved on its central throne, while all
the constellations revolve around it. Could anything be
devised more effectual than this alliance of geography and
astrology, to place the territorial rights of the several
States under the safeguard of religion ? More picturesque
than the Roman method of placing the boundaries under
the care of a special divinity, it was probably more effi-
cacious, and contributed in no small degree to maintain
the equilibrium of a naturally unstable system, during a
period which, in the West witnessed the rise and fall of
the Babylonian, Persian, and Greek empires, entailing the
complete obliteration of most of their minor divisions.
These twelve States had a great number of lesser prin-
cipalities dependent on them, the whole constituting a
political organization as multifarious and complex as
that which existed in Germany under the sway of the
" Holy Roman Empire." As in mediaeval Europe, the
chiefs of these States were ranked with respect to nobility
in five orders, answering to duke, marquis, earl, viscount,
and baron, the inferior depending on the superior, but all
paying homage to the Son of Heaven, a title which was,
even at that early period, applied to the Emperor, who
had a right, for the common good, to command the serv-
ice of all. In the annals of Lu, we find the following
curious entry:
" In the ninth year of his reign, the Duke met in
conference at Kuei Chiu the Duke of Chou, the Marquis
of Chi, the Viscount of Sung, the Marquis of Wei, the
Earl of Cheng, the Baron of Hsu, and the Earl of Tsao."
We note here the presence of all the five orders. The
commentary of Tso, we may add, states the object of
434 THE LORE OF CATHAY
the meeting as " the formation of a league and the pro-
motion of friendly relations in accordance with authorised
usage"
The authorized usages here referred to constituted the
basis of the international law of the time. They were con-
tained in part in the Chou Li, or Rites of the Chou dynasty,
published by imperial authority about uoo B. c., and, in a
somewhat mutilated form, extant at the present day. This
Code defines the orders of nobility ; prescribes a sump-
tuary law for each, extending even to their rites of sepul-
ture ; regulates the part of each in the public sacrifices ;
and lays down a form of etiquette to be observed in all
their public meetings. It gives in detail the hierarchy
of officers, civil and military ; indicates their functions ;
fixes the weights and measures, the mode of collecting
the revenue, and the modes of punishment ; and all this
mixed up with an infinitude of ceremonial detail which to
us appears the reverse of business-like, but which was
no doubt as well adapted to the character of the ancient
Chinese as was the ritualistic legislation of Moses to that
of the Hebrews.
Primarily obligatory on the immediate subjects of the
imperial house, this Code was, secondarily, binding on
all the vassals of the empire, by all of whom it was
adopted in the minutest particulars, with the single ex-
ception of the State of Ch'in, in the extreme northwest, a
State which obstinately adhered to the ritual and etiquette
of the earlier dynasty of Shang, and, cherishing a spirit
of alienation, became the secret foe and ultimately the
destroyer of the imperial house.
With this exception, the laws and usages of the sev-
eral States were so uniform all being copied from a
common model that there was little occasion for the cul-
tivation of that branch of international jurisprudence,
INTERNATIONAL LAW 435
which in modern times has become so prominent under
the title of the " conflict of laws."
Ideas derived from the feudal system were so inter-
woven with every part of this complicated legislation that
its general acceptance formed the mainstay of the im-
perial throne. The great princes styled themselves
vassals, though as independent as some of China's mod-
ern vassals, and, like these latter, paying formal homage
only once in five or ten years.* They accordingly looked
up to the emperor as the fountain of honor, and the
supreme authority in all questions of ceremony, if not in
questions of right.
Of this moral ascendency, for which we can find no
parallel better than the veneration which, in the Middle
Ages nearly all Christian sovereigns were wont to show
to the Holy See, we have a remarkable example in the
Kuo Yu. The emperor, Hsiang Wang, 651 B. c., being
driven by a domestic revolt from his territories a small
district in the center of the empire, which may be com-
pared with the Pontifical States recently absorbed by the
kingdom of Italy was restored to his throne by the pow-
erful intervention of the Duke of Ch'in. In recompense
for such a signal service, the emperor offered him a slice
of land. The duke declined it,f and asked, instead, that
he might be permitted to construct his tomb after the
model of the imperial mausoleum. The emperor, viewing
this apparently modest request as a dangerous assump-
tion, promptly refused it, and the duke was compelled to
abide by the recognized Code of Rites.
The possession of this common Code, originating in
* A decennial tribute mission from Burmah is solemnly prom-
ised in a treaty with Great Britain.
t According to some of the histories, he finally accepted it,
when balked in his loftier aspirations.
436 THE LORE OF CATHAY
the will of a common suzerain, contributed to maintain
for nearly a thousand years among the States of China,
discordant and belligerent as they often were, a bond of
sympathy in strong contrast with the feelings they mani-
fested toward all nations not comprehended within the
pale of their own civilization. When, for instance, the
Tartars of the north-west presented themselves at the
court of Ch'in, requesting a treaty of peace and
amity, and humbly offered to submit to be treated as
vassals of the more enlightened power, " Amity," ex-
claimed the prince, " what do they know of amity ? The
barbarous savages ! Give them war as the portion due to
our natural enemies." Nor was it until his minister
had produced five solid reasons for a pacific policy that
the haughty prince consented to accept them as vassals.
In the history of those times, the curtain rises on a
scene of peaceful intercourse which, in many ways, im-
plies a basis of public law. Merchants are held in esteem,
one of the most . distinguished of the disciples of Con-
fucius belonging to that class ; and a rivalry subsists be-
tween the several princes in attracting them to their
States. Their wares are subjected to tolls and customs;
but the object is revenue, not protection.
The commerce of mind reveals relations of a still more
intimate character. The schools of one State are often
largely frequented by students from another; and those
who make the greatest proficiency are readily taken into
the service of foreign princes. Philosophers and political
reformers travel from court to court, in quest of patron-
age. Confucius himself wanders over half the empire,
and draws disciples from all the leading principalities.
A century later, Mencius, with the spirit of a Hebrew
prophet, proclaims in more than one capital his great
INTERNATIONAL LAW 437
message that " the only foundation of national prosperity
is justice and charity."
It was to this kind of intercourse that Ch'in, the rising
power of the North-west, was indebted for the ascend-
ency which it slowly acquired in the affairs of the empire,
and which eventually placed its princes in possession of
the imperial throne, its rulers having adopted the policy
of seeking the best talent of neighboring States for viziers
and generals.
The personal intercourse of sovereign princes forms a
striking feature in the history of those times. Their
frequent interchange of visits indicates a degree of mu-
tual confidence which speaks volumes for the public senti-
ment. Confidence was, indeed, sometimes abused, as it
has been in other countries ; but such intercourse was al-
ways characterized by courtesy, and mostly by good faith.
On one occasion, when a powerful prince came with a
great retinue to visit the Duke of Lu, Confucius, who
was Minister of Foreign Affairs, adopted such precau-
tions, and conducted the interviews with such adroitness,
that he not only averted what was believed to be a danger,
but induced the foreign prince to restore a territory which
he had unjustly appropriated.
A visit of the Duke of Ch'in to the Duke of Lu may
be mentioned, as illustrating the freedom and familiarity
which sometimes marked this princely intercourse. The
host accompanied his guest as far as the Yellow River.
The latter, learning during a parting entertainment that
the former had not yet received the Kuan li * a rite an-
* Kuan li literally the " cap ceremony " the formal assump-
tion by a youth of a kind of cap distinctive of mature age.
Now completely disused, this was formerly one of the " four
great rites," and the references to it in the ancient books remind
438 THE LORE OF CATHAY
swering in the case of nobles somewhat to the conferring
of knighthood offered, then and there, to confer it. It
was objected that the means were wanting for perform-
ing the ceremony with due solemnity ; and the capital
of Wei being nearer than his own, the Duke of Lu pro-
posed to proceed thither for the purpose. They did so,
and the rite was celebrated with suitable pomp in a temple
borrowed for the occasion.
General meetings of the princes for the purpose of
forming or renewing treaties of alliance were of frequent
occurrence. Embracing what were then regarded as
all the leading powers of the earth, these meetings present
a distant, but not faint, parallel to the great congresses
of European sovereigns.
The more usual form of friendly intercourse between
the States of China was, as elsewhere, by means of
envoys.
The person of an envoy was sacred ; but instances are
not wanting of their arrest and execution. In the latter
case, they were regarded as spies, and the punishment
inflicted on them was considered as a declaration or act
of war. In the former, the violence was sometimes de-
fended on the ground that the envoy had undertaken to
pass through the territory into a neighboring State with-
out having first obtained a passport, his visit being at
the same time held to have a hostile object. Ordinarily,
an envoy was treated with scrupulous courtesy, the cere-
monial varying according to his own rank, or that of his
sovereign. Questions of precedence, which often arose,
were decided according to settled principles ; but the rules
us of the pomp with which the toga virilis was assumed by
patrician youth at Rome. Still, as between nobles, I can think
of no better analogy than that given in the text.
INTERNATIONAL LAW 439
were by no means as clear and simple as those enacted by
the Congress of Vienna.
A dispute of this kind arising between the envoys of
two duchies at the court of Lu, one claimed precedence on
the ground that his State was more ancient than the
other. The minister of the latter replied that his sover-
eign was more nearly related to the imperial family. The
difficulty was happily terminated without bloodshed,
which was not always the case with such quarrels in
Europe prior to 1815. The master of ceremonies re-
minded the litigants that the placing of guests belongs to
the host, and gave preference to the kinsman of the
emperor.
Insults to envoys were not unfrequently avenged by
an appeal to arms. Of this, a notable instance was an
insult given by the Prince of Chi, at one and the same
time, to the representatives of four powers.
These envoys arriving simultaneously, it was observed
by some wag (the court fool, perhaps) that each was
marked by a blemish or deformity in his personal ap-
pearance. One was blind of an eye ; a second was bald ;
another was lame ; and the last was a dwarf. It was sug-
gested to the duke that a little innocent amusement might
be made out of this strange coincidence. The prince,
acting on the hint, appointed as attendant or introducteur
to each ambassador an officer who suffered from the
same defect. The court ladies, who, concealed by cur-
tains of thin gauze, witnessed the ceremony of introduc-
tion and the subsequent banquet, laughed aloud when
they saw the blind leading the blind, and the dwarfs, the
bald, and the lame, walking in pairs. The envoys, hear-
ing the merriment, became aware that they had been made
involuntary actors in a comedy. They retired, vowing
440 THE LORE OF CATHAY
vengeance, and the next year saw the capital of Chi be-
leaguered by the combined forces of the four powers,
which were only induced to withdraw by the most hu-
miliating concessions on the part of the young prince,
who, too late, repented his indecent levity.*
In the history of Tso, we find a rule for the sending- of
envoys, which has its parallel in the diplomatic usage of
modern nations. Speaking of a mission to a neighboring
State, he adds : " This was in accordance with usage. In
all cases where a new prince comes to the throne, envoys
are sent to .the neighboring States to confirm and extend
the friendly relations maintained by his predecessor."
The highest function of an envoy was the negotiation of
a treaty. Treaties of all kinds known to modern diplo-
macy were in use in ancient China. Signed with solemn
formalities, and confirmed by an oath, the parties ming-
ling their blood in a cup of wine, or laying their hands
on the head of an ox to be offered in sacrifice, such
documents were carefully treasured up in a sacred place
called Meng Fu, the " Palace of Treaties."
We are able to give, by way of specimen, the outlines
of a treaty between the Prince of Cheng and a coalition of
princes who invaded his territories in 544 B. c.
PREAMBLE : The parties to the present Treaty agree to the
following Articles:
Article I. The exportation of corn shall not be prohibited.
Article II. One party shall not monopolize trade to the dis-
advantage of others.
* This story is derived from a comparison of the three lead-
ing historians of the period, who differ only in unimportant de-
tails. In an amplified form, it is to be seen on the boards of
Chinese theaters at the present day. The Chinese theater, like
that of Greece, is, for an illiterate public, the chief teacher of
ancient history.
INTERNATIONAL LAW 441
Article III. No one shall give protection to conspiracies
directed against the others.
Article IV. Fugitives from justice shall be surrendered.
Article V. Mutual succor shall be given in case of famine.
Article VI. Mutual aid shall be given in case of insurrection.
Article VII. The contracting powers shall have the same
friends and the same enemies.
Article VIII. We all engage to support the Imperial House.
RATIFICATION OATH. We engage to maintain inviolate
the terms of the foregoing Agreement. May the gods of the hills
and rivers, the spirits of former emperors and dukes, and the an-
cestors of our seven tribes and twelve states, watch over its fulfil-
ment. If any one prove unfaithful, may the all-seeing gods smite
him, so that his people shall forsake him, his life be lost, and his
poster ity^be cut off.
The outline of a similar convention is given by
Mencius. On that occasion, the great barons were called
together by Hsiao Po, Prince of Ch'i, for the purpose of
effecting needful reforms in 651 B. c. Being a century
earlier than the other, it is instructive to compare the
two documents. While in that of later date the Imperial
authority is so far gone that the barons engage to uphold
the Imperial House, in the earlier compact the authority
of the Suzerain is fully recognized, each article of the
convention being styled an " Ordinance " of the
Emperor.
That his hold on his vassals was already much weak-
ened is, however, evident from the provisions that they
are not to exercise certain powers of sovereignty in the
way of rewards and punishments, without at least formal
reference to the " Son of Heaven."
The stipulations are partly in favor of good morals,
and partly to facilitate intercourse, and to raise the char-
acter of the official hierarchy.
442 THE LORE OF CATHAY
Article I. To punish the unfilial ; not to change the succes-
sion to the throne (of any state) ; and not to
raise a concubine to be a wife.
Article II. To respect the virtues and cherish talent.
Article III. To honor the aged and to be kind to the young,
and not to neglect strangers.
Article IV. Officers not to be hereditary ; proxies not to be
permitted. Suitable men to be sought and found.
Death not to be inflicted on nobles without refer-
ence to the Emperor.
Article V. Not to divert water-courses, nor obstruct the
transport of grain. Not to grant land in fief
without reference to the Emperor.
CONCLUSION. All we who are parties to this Covenant
agree to be at peace with each other.
" These five rules," adds the philosopher, " are openly
violated by the nobles of our day."
In addition to the rites of religion by which such en-
gagements were ratified, .they were usually secured by
sanctions of a less sentimental character. As in the
West, hostages or other material guarantees were given
in pledge ; sometimes also they were guaranteed by third
parties, who, directly or indirectly interested, engaged to
punish a breach of faith. We have, for instance, one
prince, demanding the mother of another as a hostage.
The case is instructive in more than one of its aspects.
The Prince of Ch'in, calling on the Prince of Chi to
recognize him as his chief, and to surrender his mother
as a pledge of submission, the latter replies that his
State was created the peer of the other by the will of the
former emperors, and that one who would despise the
patent of an emperor was not fit to be the head of a
League. As to the demand for his mother as a hostage,
that was a proposition so monstrous that, rather than
submit to it, he would meet the enemy under the walls
of his last fortress.
INTERNATIONAL LAW 443
At this point, the affair takes a turn which serves to
illustrate a procedure of frequent occurrence in the
history of those times. The princes of two neighboring
States come forward as mediators, and bring about an
accommodation on less oppressive conditions.
The more enlightened writers of Chinese antiquity
condemn the practice of exchanging hostages, as tending
to keep up a state of quasi hostility and mutual mistrust.
No writers of any nation have been more emphatic in
insisting on good faith as a cardinal virtue in all interna-
tional transactions. Says Confucius : " A man without
faith is like a wagon without a coupling-pole to connect
the wheels." Speaking of a State, he says : " Of the
three essentials, the greatest is good faith. Without a
revenue and without an army, a State may still exist ; but
it cannot exist without good faith."
It remains to speak of the intercourse of war. " Inter
hostes scrip >ta jura non valcre at valere non scripta "
is a principle that was as well understood in ancient
China as among the ancient nations of the Western
world; and war in China was, to say the least, not more
brutal than among the Greeks and Romans.
The command of Alexander to spare the house of the
poet Pindar, if it shows a degree of literary culture, indi-
cates, on the other hand, that moral barbarism which
asserts a right to the spoils of the conquered. In China,
we find the same state of things ; vac rictis is the sad
undertone in every narrative of military glory, relieved,
indeed, by brilliant instances of generosity and mercy.
We find an invading chief enjoining, under penalty of
death, respect for the very trees that overshadow the
tomb of a philosopher, and at the same time setting a
price on the head of a rival prince.
Every military leader proclaims, like Achilles, that
444 THE LORE OF CATHAY
" laws are not made for him ; " yet we do not despair of
being able to show that laws existed in war as well as in
peace, even though they were systematically trampled on.
With this view, we shall call attention to the following
facts :
First: In the conduct of war, the persons and prop-
erty of non-combatants were required to be respected.
This we infer from the praise bestowed on humane
leaders, and the reprobation meted out to the cruel. In
Chinese history, the example of those who have achieved
the easiest and most permanent conquests is always on
the side of humanity.
Second: In legitimate warfare, the rule was not to
attack an enemy without first sounding the drum, and
giving him time to prepare for defense.
The following instance goes beyond this require-
ment, and reminds us of the code of chivalry which made
it infamous to take advantage of an antagonist. The
Prince of Sung declined to engage a hostile force while
they were crossing a stream, and waited for them to
form in order of battle before giving the signal to ad-
vance. He was beaten, and, when reproached by his
officers, he justified himself by appealing to ancient usage.
" The true soldier," said he, " never strikes a wounded
foe, and always lets the gray-headed go free. In ancient
times it was forbidden to assail an enemy who was not in
a state to resist. I have come near losing my kingdom,
but I would scorn to command an attack without first
sounding the drum."
We are not surprised to learn that the captains of
that age " laughed at the simplicity of the unfortunate
prince."
After the battle of Agincourt the French commander
might have been laughed at on the same grounds. Not
INTERNATIONAL LAW 445
only did he allow the English to cross the Somme, he even
sent a message to the King asking him to name a day for
the engagement.
Third: A war was not to be undertaken without at
least a decent pretext.
These words, in fact, are almost a translation of an
oft-quoted maxim, Shih ch'u yu ming, " For war you
must have a cause that may be named." This indicates
that passion and cupidity were held in check by public
opinion pronouncing its judgment in conformity with an
acknowledged standard of right.
Another maxim, equally well known, makes the justice
of the cause a source of moral power which goes far to
compensate the inequality of physical force.
" Soldiers are weak in a bad cause, but strong in a
good one," said the ancient Chinese, assigning as high a
place to the moral element as our own poet, when he
says, " Thrice is he armed who hath his quarrel just."
Fourth: A cause always recognized as just was the
preservation of the balance of power.
This principle called to arms not merely the States
immediately threatened, but those also which by their
situation, appeared to be remote from danger.
Not to speak of combinations to resist the aggressions
of other disturbers of the public peace, we find, 320 B. c.,
six States brought into line to repress the ambition of
Ch'in. This powerful coalition, the fruit of twenty years'
toil on the part of one man, who is immortalized as the
type of the successful negotiator, was, we may add, after
all destined to fail of its object. The common enemy
succeeded in detaching the members of the league, and
in overcoming them one after another. The arch of
States which protected the throne of their suzerain be-
ing destroyed, the conqueror swept away the last vestige
446 THE LORE OF CATHAY
of the house of Chou, which for upwards of eight hun-
dred years had exercised a feudal supremacy over the
princes of China. Proclaiming himself under the title of
Shih Huang Ti, the " first of the autocratic sovereigns,"
he abolished the feudal constitution of the empire, at the
same time that he completed the Great Wall. His suc-
cessors to the present day are called Huang Ti, and the
system of centralized government which he inaugurated
is as firmly established as the Great Wall itself.
Fifth: The right of existence, prior to the revolution
just noticed, was, in general, held sacred for the greater
States which held in fief from the Imperial Throne.
This right is often appealed to, and proves effectual in
the direst extremity; e. g., the Prince of Ch'i, at the
head of a strong force, enters Lu, with an evidently
hostile intent. Chan Hsi, a minister of Lu, is sent to meet
him, in the hope of arresting his progress. " The people
of Lu appear to be very much alarmed at my approach,"
said the prince. " True," replied the minister, " the people
are alarmed, but the ruler is not." " Why is not the ruler
also," inquired the invader, " when his troops are in
disorder, and his magazines as empty as a bell ? On what
does he repose his confidence that he should affect to be
superior to fear? "
" He rests on the grant which his fathers received
from the ancient emperors," said the minister. He then
proceeded to vindicate the rights of his master, under
what was recognized as the traditional law of the em-
pire, with such force that the prince desisted from his
purpose, and withdrew without any further act of
violence.
A similar instance, it will be remembered, has been
cited already in another connection, the case in which
a prince, after urging in vain this same plea, the sacred-
INTERNATIONAL LAW 447
ness of the imperial grant, was saved from humiliation or
extinction by the mediation of neighboring powers, who
recognized and were determined to uphold the principle.
A third example of the kind is one in which the exist-
ence of the now feeble remnant of the imperial domain
was itself at stake. The Prince of Ch'u, after a victorious
campaign against other foes, crossed the Rubicon and
entered the territories of the house of Chou, with the
evident intention of seizing the imperial throne. The
emperor, unable to oppose armed resistance, dispatched
Wang Sun Man, one of his ministers, to convey a supply
of provisions to the invading army, and to ascertain the
designs of its leader. The latter veiled his purpose in
figurative language, asking to be informed as to the
" weight of the nine tripods," insinuating that, if not
too heavy, he intended to carry them away. The min-
ister, without answering directly, gave the history of
the tripods, relating how they had been cast in bronze
by Ta Yu, the founder of the first great dynasty, and
emblazoned with a chart of the empire in relief ; how for
fifteen centuries they had been preserved as emblems
of the imperial dignity; and, exposing in a masterly
manner the necessity of respect for that venerable power
to the order of the several States, he concluded by saying
" All this being true, why should Your Highness ask
the weight of the tripods? "
The chief, struck by the force of his arguments, which,
like the most effective on such occasions, were purely
historical, renounced his nefarious purpose, and retired
to his own dominions.
Sixth: Finally, the rights of neutrals were admitted,
and to a certain extent respected.
It has been remarked that, in the wars of Greece, there
were no neutrals. Those .who desired to be such, if they
448 THE LORE OF CATHAY
were so situated as to be of any weight in the conflict,
were always compelled to declare themselves on one side
or the other. This was not the case in China. The neu-
tral frequently rejected the overtures of both parties, and
his territories interposed an effectual barrier in the way
of the belligerents. We have numerous instances of pas-
sage being granted to troops without further participation
in the conflict, and one case in which a wise statesman
warns his master against the danger of such an impru-
dent concession. " In a former war," said he, " you
granted it to your detriment ; if you do so again, it will
be to your ruin." His chief failed to profit by the warn-
ing; and the prince thus unjustly favored, after destroy-
ing his antagonist, turned about and took possession of
the territory of his friend.
CONCLUSION.
It is, as we have intimated, quite possible that text-
books on the subject of international relations may have
existed in ancient China, without coming down to our
times, just as the Greeks had books on that subject, of
which nothing now survives but their titles. Whether
this conjecture be well founded or otherwise, enough re-
mains, as we have shown, to prove that the States of
ancient China had a Law written or unwritten, and more
or less developed, which they recognized in peace and
war. The Book of Rites and the Histories of the period
attest this.
Of these histories, one was acknowledged as constitu-
ting in itself a kind of international code. I allude to the
Annals of Lu edited by Confucius and extending over
two centuries and a half. Native authors affirm that the
awards of praise and blame expressed in that work, often
in a single word, were accepted as judgments from which
INTERNATIONAL LAW 449
there was no appeal, and exercised a restraining influ-
ence more potent than that of armies and navies.
Chinese statesmen have pointed out the analogy of their
own country at that epoch with the political divisions of
modern Europe. In their own records, they find usages,
words, and ideas, corresponding to the terms of our
modern international law ; and they are by that fact the
more disposed to accept the international code of Christen-
dom, which, it is no Utopian vision to believe, will one
day become a bond of peace and justice between all the
nations of the earth.
XXIII
DIPLOMACY IN ANCIENT CHINA
INTERNATIONAL diplomacy is an art new to the
Chinese, but one for which they evince a marvel-
lous aptitude. From the inquiry on which we are
about to enter, it will, we think, be made apparent that
with them it is rather the revival of a lost art, an art in
the creation of which they can claim the distinction of
precedence over all existing nations.
Under that famous dynasty of Chou when sages were
born, and when those books were produced which rule
the thought of the empire, diplomacy took its rise. Akin
to the spirit of war, it flourished most in that period when
the central power had lost its control, and vassal states
engaged in ceaseless struggles over the division of their
patrimony.*
Diplomacy may be defined as the art of conducting the
intercourse of nations. It supposes the existence of states
* There are three well known works that relate to this period,
viz:
The History of the Warring States, called Chan Kuo Ts'e.
A Romance founded on the preceding, called Lieh Kuo Chih,
an expanded history of the feudal ages.
The National History of See Ma, called Shth Chi.
As an authority, the Romance is of no value. The National
History derives its materials from the same source as the other
two works, but, as they have been passed through the sieve and
weighed in the balance of the great author, I have taken it for
my guide so far as facts are concerned, reserving to myself
always the right of interpretation.
450
DIPLOMACY IN ANCIENT CHINA 451
which carry on their intercourse on a footing of equality.
This makes it evident why it flourished in the period
referred to, and why it disappeared for two thousand
years, to reappear in our own day, like a river that, after
flowing for a time underground, rises to the surface with
an increase of volume. As etiquette is the outgrowth of
a society of individuals, so diplomacy springs from a
society of states. Robinson Crusoe, spending his life on a
lonely island, can hardly be supposed to occupy his
thoughts with the rules of good breeding, and, although
" Monarch of all he surveyed," he had no use for diplo-
macy.
The triumph of Ch'in, by which these numerous States
were swept from the arena, was the death-blow of
diplomacy. ,
The empire was thenceforth one and indivisible, from
the desert of Tartary to the borders of Yunnan, and from
the foot of the Himalayas to the shores of the eastern
sea. No rival, no equal, was known to exist on the face
of the globe. Envoys no longer sped on secret missions
from court to court. Alliances ceased to be formed, be-
cause there was none whose friendship could bring
strength, or whose opposition could occasion danger.
The outside world was synonymous with barbarism,, and
the " inner land " comprised, for the Chinese, the whole
of human civilization. Inferior states came with tribute,
and went home laden with patronizing gifts. Diplomacy
in any proper sense was impossible. All that the Chinese
of later ages could know of it was a legend of the past,
which connected itself with a few illustrious names.
The best way to treat the subject will be to take up
those " names," and evoke from them the busy actors in
a slow but momentous revolution.
The revolution, which some of them endeavoured "o
452 THE LORE OF CATHAY
further, while others strove in vain to arrest, was th?
rise in the north-west of an ambitious, aggressive, semi-
barbarous power, which eventually swallowed up its
rivals, and remained sole master of the field.
To trace the steps by which a petty principality, the
guardian of a remote frontier, advanced to such emi-
nence that all the older and more civilized states com-
bined to check its progress, forms one of the most in-
structive chapters of Chinese history. Of the early
stages of the unfolding drama, we can only remark that,
as in the later stage, the principal actors on the side of
the growing power appear to have been foreigners. The
princes of Ch'in, rude and uncultivated as they were,
displayed for the most part that element of greatness,
which consists in the choice of the fittest instruments.
The Duke Hsiao (368 B. c.), conscious of the backward
state of his people, made proclamation that if any man,
native or foreign, should devise a new method for pro-
moting the prosperity of his dominions, he would be re-
warded by a grant of land and a patent of nobility.
One instance out of many will suffice to illustrate the
effect of this policy. A young man by the name of
Shang Yang, who had devoted himself to the study of
political science, came to the court of Wei, his native
state, in quest of employment. The prince was struck
by his talents, but hesitated to take him into his service.
" Kill him then," said an old minister, " but by no means
allow him to give his great abilities to the service of a
rival state." The prince did neither, and Shang Yang
proceeded to the court of Ch'in, where he was invested
with high office, and reformed everything, from army
discipline to land tenure. It was largely through his
influence that his adopted country attained such power
as to threaten the independence of its neighbors.
DIPLOMACY IN ANCIENT CHINA 453
It was then that diplomacy came on the stage as a
leading factor in deciding the destiny of -states. In more
tranquil periods, it had occupied itself with matters of
ceremony, missions of compliment to express felicita-
tion or condolence ; or, if negotiation was engaged in, it
seldom rose higher than the arrangement of the terms of
a marriage. But now the diplomat became the most
conspicuous figure of the age, rising above the general,
because generals marched as he directed ; more influential
than princes, because the prince decided in accordance
with the far-sighted views of his diplomatic adviser.
Jove sat wrapped in his pavilion of clouds, and Mercury
engrossed the scene as he sped back and forth on winged
sandals.
If we follow some of these envoys, we shall not only
obtain an impression of the importance of their functions,
but get a clearer view of the history of the period than
any other stand-point can afford us.
The scene is that portion of China lying to the north
of the river Yangtze; the period of time, that in which
Alexander and his successors were extending their con-
quests in western Asia.
The first diplomats to challenge our attention are Su
Ch'in and Chang I. They are not, like Talthybius and
Eurybates,* mere heralds or post-boys, whose duty it is
to carry a message, and blow a trumpet. They are states-
men, full of self-acting energy; and each opposed to the
other in a conflict that ends only with life. As in Greece,
there was a school of statesmanship in which they ac-
quired their arts, and above all the art of persuasion.
The Academy to which they resorted was a wild gorge
in the mountains of Honan, and the master to whose in-
* Compare this latter name, meaning " one who walks abroad,"
with " walkers," ancient Chinese for " envoys."
454 THE LORE OF CATHAY
structions they listened is known to posterity by no other
name than that of Kuei Ku Tze, " Philosopher of the
Devil's Hollow."
I have read the books ascribed to his pen, but find in
them nothing that can account for the eminence of his
disciples; nothing even that could have afforded them
a suggestion of the career which they pursued with such
wonderful success. The fact is, this lover of solitude
was not a diplomatist, but an educator. Books were few
in those days, existing only in manuscript copies ; and
the knowledge of letters, very restricted. It follows that
the influence of the teacher was greater than it now is,
when books are cheap, and libraries accessible to all.
Emerging from seclusion with the full consciousness
of superior intelligence, Su Ch'in thought only of carry-
ing his wares to the most promising market. That
market was the court of the rude, rising power of the
northwest, whose princes welcomed all who had anything
to teach, and rewarded them with unexampled munifi-
cence. He was a native of the central state, born under
the immediate sway of the suzerain ; but he did not
scruple to point out, to a great vassal, the way in which
he might crush all lesser rivals, and possess himself of
the throne of his imperial master. " My wings," replied
the Prince, " are not sufficiently grown for so high a
flight ; " and so he dismissed the dusty traveller, who
sought prematurely to embroil him with his fellow
princes.
Mortified by ill success, Su turned homeward, vowing
that the Prince of Ch'in should repent the blunder of
suffering him to escape, after having rejected his advice.
Arriving in rags, his wife and his brothers' wives treated
him with ill-concealed disrespect. They looked on him
as stark mad when, instead of applying himself to some-
DIPLOMACY IN ANCIENT CHINA 455
thing profitable, he resumed his former studies with
fresh ardor.
Su not only took pains to improve his style of speak-
ing and writing, so that his argument would come with
force from tongue or pen ; he studied the history of each
of the feudal states, acquainted himself with the per-
sonnel of their courts, drew maps of the empire, made
estimates of the population and military strength of its
several parts, and sketched plans of hypothetical cam-
paigns.
After two years of intense application, he set off for
the court of Yen, with a mind better furnished than on
the occasion of his first abortive attempt. The capital
of Yen is represented by Peking, and there it was that
Su entered on a career of successful diplomacy, which
extended over more than twenty years, and made him for
all time the type of a Chinese diplomat. His patience,
with him a leading virtue, was still to be sorely tried.
Without money or influence, he found no ready way
to open the doors of the great ; and, for a whole year, he
danced attendance on numerous courtiers, before he could
induce anyone to procure him an interview with the
Prince.
That interview was decisive. Su was not the only one
who saw the danger to which the other states were ex-
posed by the aggressions of Ch'in, but he was the only
one who saw how it could be averted. In eloquent terms
he set forth the urgency of immediate action, and showed
that the only hope of successful resistance lay in the for-
mation of an alliance, which, diverting the forces of the
six states from the mad work of mutual destruction,
would turn their united strength against their common
foe.
The Prince was delighted. The .feasibility of the
456 THE LORE OF CATHAY
scheme was no longer doubtful ; and, by carrying it into
execution, he would secure the honor of taking the lead
in a patriotic movement of unparalleled importance. In-
vesting Su with the rank of ambassador, he despatched
him with general credentials to the courts of the other
five powers, a precedent which the Chinese ministers of
our day recalled when they sent Mr. Burlingame on a
mission to the great powers of the two worlds, a prece-
dent which they still follow in accrediting a single envoy
to half the courts of Europe.
Taking in order the courts of Chao, Han, and Wei, and
then moving eastward to the court of Ch'i, Su exposed
to each his plan of mutual defence, obtaining from each
a pledge conditioned on the adhesion of all the rest.
Further south, on the banks of the middle Yangtze,
which then formed the southern limit of the empire and of
civilization, was a power whose definite acceptance of the
plan was essential to its success. This was the kingdom
of Ch'u, occupying nearly the ground of the present
province of Hupei.
Flattered by the cunning envoy with the hope of be-
coming head of the league, the Prince of Ch'u entered
into it with great zeal, and sent Su on his return journey,
loaded with fresh honors. The last link was thus
added to a chain which he had been long and patiently
forging, a chain strong enough to keep an unscrupulous
aggressor within bounds, and to secure in a great meas-
ure the blessings of peace to a family of states hitherto
in perpetual conflict.
The achievement was one, the difficulty and grandeur
of which it is not easy to over-estimate. The man who
conceived the plan, and, with steady purpose, carried it
through, deserved all the honors that were heaped upon
him. Like Prince Bismarck, who, to the chancellorship
DIPLOMACY IN ANCIENT CHINA 4^7
of the empire, added that of the kingdom of Prussia, Su
held a duplicate, or rather a multiple office. His chief
dignity was that of President of the Sextuple Alliance;
and, in order that he might render it effective, each of
the six powers conferred on him the seal of a separate
Chancellorship.
Turning northward with a strong escort and immense
retinue, he came to the border of his native state, which,
years before, he had quitted in the guise of a palmer,
staff in hand. Here he was met by messengers from the
Emperor, who offered him a banquet, and gave him a
welcome on behalf of their master, who, says the his-
torian, " was alarmed at the power and magnificence of
his quondam subject." A better explanation would be a
generous acknowledgment of the success of Su Ch'in;
or better still, a desire to make use of Su's diplomatic
triumphs to restore the sinking prestige of the empire,
menaced by the growing power of Ch/in.
What wonder that the members of his own family,
who had treated him so shabbily, should now meet him
with demonstrations of respect ! " How comes it," he
said to his elder brother's wife, who was throwing her-
self at his feet, " that you treat me so differently to-day
from the time when I came home from the first journey? "
" Because," said she with naive candor, " you are now
a great officer and have plenty of money."
Su was kind to his poor relations, and, distributing
money with a lavish hand, proceeded to the Court of
Chao.
There it was that he fixed his headquarters; not that
the kingdom was great, or the prince influential, but
because its geographical situation was such as to make
it, to borrow a scientific phrase, the centre of political
pressure. "From this point," says the historian, "by
458 THE LORE OF CATHAY
the hand of a herald, he launched at the Prince of Ch'in
a copy of the six-fold League." Imagine the satisfac-
tion with which he submitted that document to the in-
spection of a potentate who had rejected his services,
and who was now to be confined by it, as with a chain,
within his proper bounds ! " For fifteen years," adds the
historian, " the armies of Ch'in did not dare to show
themselves beyond the mountain pass of Han Ku."
What proof of success could be more striking! What
doubt that, during this long period, Su had occasion to
repeat often and again his weary circuit, in order to
maintain his hold on the inharmonious elements which
he had brought under his control!
On the East coast of Africa, there are places in which,
we are told, it is impossible to induce three men to go
together on an errand, because each fears that the other
two may combine and sell him into slavery. So it was
with these " warring states," as they are called in Chinese
history. Each one regarded its nearest neighbors with
profound distrust and aversion.
To overcome their centrifugal tendencies, and hold
them together for so long a time, required a combination
of qualities rarely equaled, perhaps never surpassed.
The masterly arguments, by which Su had originally
conquered that ascendancy, are given in cxtenso in the
voluminous work of Sze Ma Ch'ien. They are clear and
eloquent, but they read more like genuine state papers
than like the speeches that Livy is wont to put into the
mouths of his heroes.
How skilfully he adapts his mode of address to the
disposition of each ruler ! In one he kindles ambition ; in
another he awakens jealousy, as his strongest passion,
and directs it against the mighty foe. He practices on
the fears of others, while flattering their pride; and one
DIPLOMACY IN ANCIENT CHINA 459
(the Prince of Han), who was on the point of attaching
himself to Ch'in, he deterred effectually by employing a
proverb which, from that fact, has acquired an undying
celebrity : " Better be a chicken's head than an ox's
tail," or, as Caesar puts it, " First in a village rather than
second at Rome."
Su's brother, Su Tai, was also an able diplomat, and
gave him effectual assistance in bringing about the union
of the powers. But I speak of him at present for the
sake of citing a famous apologue, of which he is the
author. History has not preserved any of his longer
speeches. He was perhaps wanting in that lofty elo-
quence for which the elder Su was so distinguished, but
he was endowed with a certain homely wit that carried
conviction. Discoursing with one of the princes on the
danger of disunion, he said : " As I walked on the bank
of the river, I saw a bird pecking at an oyster; the
oyster closed its shell, and held the bird as in a vice.
Just then, a fisherman came along, and captured both."
The application was clear; whoever might be represented
by the foolish fowl and the equally foolish shell-fish, there
could be no doubt as to who was the lucky fisherman.
In a concise form, this fable continues to be used as a
proverb.* It is one of those shining nuggets which, in
China, the departing stream of time has left so plentifully
scattered among its sands.
Of the elder Su, I have said enough to establish his
claim to transcendent talents. What was the League
itself but a creation of genius? And its maintenance for
fifteen years, was it not a marvelous manifestation of
power? Yet, like other great men, he had his weak-
nesses. Able in governing others, he was impotent to
control his own passions ; and to that cause, more than to
* When bird and fish quarrel, both fall a prey.
460 THE LORE OF CATHAY
any other, was due the final overthrow of the fabric
which he had spent his life in erecting.
Through jealousy and anger, he made an enemy of
Chang 1, who ever after sought to work his ruin. Yield-
ing to a more tender passion, he became involved in an
undiplomatic intrigue, flight and death being the dis-
astrous consequence.
Finding himself under the necessity of leaving the
court of Yen, to escape the consequences of a liaison
which he had formed with a princess, he begged the prince
to send him on a mission to the kingdom of Ch'i, alleging
that he could there promote his interests much better than
by remaining at home. Arriving there, he entered the
service of the foreign state; and subsequently, his in-
trigues against its welfare being detected, he was bound
between two chariots and torn to pieces, a melancholy
emblem of the empire of that day, rent asunder by the
opposing forces represented by the Leagues of the East
and West.
Su's conduct in the kingdom of Ch'i finds a pretty
close parallel in that of Chetardie at the court of Russia,
who narrowly escaped a like hideous fate.*
Chang I stands next, by common consent, on the list of
international statesmen of ancient times. In talent not
much inferior to Su Ch'in, his career is wanting in that
unity which imparts a kind of grandeur to the achieve-
ments of Su. His life was divided between internal ad-
ministration and external politics.
* In a note to the Guide Diplomatique of de Martens, Volume
I, page 83, we have a brief account of the incident alluded to.
I cite here one or two lines only :
" La Chetardie, ambassadeur de France, avait eu la principale
parta la revolution qui plapa Elisabeth sur la trone de Russie."
" La Chetardie s'etait immisce dans les intrigues de cour .
. . . . II ne tarda pas a s'en repentir."
DIPLOMACY IN ANCIENT CHINA 461
As administrator and military chief, he served by turns
three or four states, always giving a temporary pre-
ponderance to the one he served, unlike his rival who
served six at once, and promoted equally the interests of
all.
As a negotiator, he effected one or two powerful alli-
ances; but his chief claim to distinction is the skill he
showed in sowing discord among the members of the
eastern league, to avenge himself for an insult received
at the hand of a faithless friend.
That insult was received on the threshold of his career.
As Su had made an unsuccessful attempt in the north-
west, so Chang began by a fruitless journey to Ch'u, in
the south. In the meantime, his friend had risen to
eminence, and he sought to join him at the court of
Chao. Su, however, was as yet only forging the second
link of his diplomatic chain. Whether he dreaded the
disturbing influence of a mind too original to become a
tool, or whether he feared that the lustre of Chang Fs
talent would obscure the brightness of his own, he treated
him with disdain, and found means to send him away
from the scene of his own activity. In his eagerness to
rid himself of a possible rival, he even supplied him with
money and with attendants, to escort him as far as the
capital of the north-western kingdom.
Chang saw through the stratagem, and vowed that
Su should repent of it. Winning the confidence of the
Prince, he rose to the highest positions in the state, being
sometimes general, sometimes diplomatic envoy, and more
than once clothed with the dignity of prime minister.
As head of the administration, he developed the re-
sources of the state, and prepared the way for its ultimate
triumph. As a leader of troops he was uniformly suc-
cessful; but it was in a third character, that of diplo-
462 THE LORE OF CATHAY
matist, that he performed the most marvelous feats.
Labouring to undo the work of Su, he contrived to keep
him in a state of perpetual anxiety during his life-time ;
and ultimately to effect the dissolution of the confederacy
immediately on the death of its founder.
The most remarkable incidents in his career occurred
in the kingdom of Ch'u. On his first visit, which, as
we have said, was unsuccessful, he had the misfortune
to be set upon by his enemies and badly beaten. Taunted
by his wife for his damaged appearance, he opened his
mouth and asked her to see if his tongue was in its place.
On her answering in the affirmative, he added, " With
this I shall retrieve my fortunes," and he kept his word.
So great, indeed, were his powers of persuasion that he
often disarmed hostility, and sometimes raised himself
to power, where he had been menaced with destruction.
To cite only one instance : The Prince of Ch'in engaged
in war with Ch'u, stirred up perhaps by his minister's
hatred for the state where he had suffered his first great
humiliation. The army of Ch'u was defeated, and Ch'in
demanded, as the price of peace, the cession of a coveted
territory in exchange for another. The worsted Chief
replied with a grim joke : " Give me your chancellor,
and I will yield the territory, without asking a foot of
ground in exchange." The Prince of Ch'in repeated this
flattering proposal to his minister, but with no thought
of compliance.
To his surprise, Chang I replied : " 1 am ready ; send
me to the camp of the enemy."
On arrival he was thrown into prison, and menaced
with death ; but he had one acquaintance, whom he could
rely on as amicus in curia. Through this man, he con-
veyed to the reigning beauty a hint that the western
prince was about to send a beautiful woman as his ran-
DIPLOMACY IN ANCIENT CHINA 463
som. The lady took alarm, and procured his release with-
out waiting for the ransom.
Just at that moment, the news of Su's death came to
his ears, suggesting the possibility of turning his tempor-
ary captivity into a veritable victory. Seeking an inter-
view with the Prince, under guise of thanking him for
sparing his life, he sought to repay his debt of gratitude
by tendering the best advice he was able to offer; that
was that he should abandon the confederacy, and throw
in his fortunes with his powerful neighbor. The Prince
desired to hear the reasons for such a startling proposi-
tion; and Chang set them forth with clearness and force,
concluding a discourse, not inferior to Su's best speeches,
with a recommendation to cement the peace by accepting
his neighbor's son as a hostage, and giving his own in
exchange ; and further to consolidate the union, by asking
in marriage a princess of Ch'in. No translation can do
justice to his masterly argument, because it bristles all
over with allusions to places whose names are strange
to European ears, and facts of history which, out of China,
have no significance.
But the Prince, to whom it was addressed, understood
it. Every word took effect; how deep the effect may
be judged from the fact that his kinsman, Ch'ii Yuan,
the gifted poet, tried in vain to deter him from following
the counsel of Chang I.
His energetic remonstrance is not too long to give
in full. " Your Highness," said he, " has once and again
been the victim of Chang Fs deceptions. When your
enemy had come into your hands, I took it for granted
you would roast him alive. Now if you have relented
so far as to refrain from putting him to death, why should
you go a step further, and listen to his deceitful advice ? "
The prince persisted, and, to make a long story short,
464 THE LORE OF CATHAY
the poet, like Ahithophel, went away and destroyed him-
self, his hapless fate being commemorated by the annual
festival of dragon boats.
On his way home, Chang visited the court of Han,
and succeeded in detaching the prince of that country
also from the confederacy.
Arriving at the capital of Ch'in, picture to yourselves
the glory of his triumphal entry. He had gone forth
alone and unattended, a voluntary peace-offering, to be
sacrificed to the resentment of a hostile state. He re-
turned leading in his train the envoys of that state, and
those of another hereditary enemy.
The Prince of Ch'in was duly sensible of the value of
this service, and conferred on the hero the lordship of
five cities. So well had Chang I succeeded in his attempt
to detach Ch'u and Han, that he resolved not to desist
from his undertaking until the confederacy should be
utterly demolished. At his request, his master com-
missioned him to proceed successively to the capitals of
Chao, of Yen, and of Ch'i. The histories tell us what
he said to each prince; how he tempered menace with
flattery, so that, on reading each several discourse, we
are not surprised that the prince, to whom it was ad-
dressed, should feel impelled by ambition, as well as by
prudence, to follow the policy so powerfully advocated.
One by one, all of the states which Su had so labor-
iously arrayed against Ch'in, Chang I had the satisfaction
of seeing at the feet of his master, humbly acknowledg-
ing the hegemony of the north-western power. Recall
the long negotiations that were required to bring the
petty states of Greece to accept the hegemony of Sparta
or Athens, and you can appreciate the greatness of
Chang T's diplomatic triumph.
For three centuries, the leadership among the feudal
DIPLOMACY IN ANCIENT CHINA 465
states had been the great object of ambition. Four of
them had enjoyed it in succession, feeling satisfied with
that distinction without dreaming of attaining the im-
perial yellow.
Ch'in was the last to erect the standard of leadership,
and Chang Fs diplomacy was the proximate influence
that led the other states to rally round it. A century
was yet to elapse before Ch'in became bold enough to
usurp the imperial throne, an event which followed
naturally on the destruction of the most loyal of its
feudatories. But that is a history into which we have
no time to enter. Nor have we time to pursue the for-
tunes of this consummate master of diplomatic intrigue
further than to say that, losing power through the death
of his patron, he returned to his native state, where he
was invested with the honors of prime minister, and
died the following year.
After the death of Chang, the eastern states, one by
one, broke away from their allegiance to Ch'in. Kung
Sun Yen, who all along had opposed the policy of
Chang I, now that the latter was dead, exerted himself
to resuscitate the confederacy, and succeeded in doing so,
as Chang had succeeded in dissolving it, on the death
of Su. Through his efforts, five of them were formed
into a phalanx, with hostile spears pointing to the North-
west. Kung Sun, as successor to Su, received the grand
seal of chancellor of the union. This ephemeral success,
easier far than the untried enterprise of his predecessor,
causes him to be ranked among the noted diplomatists of
that troubled period. We dismiss him with this brief
notice, merely calling attention to him as chancellor of
the second Eastern league.
In this second league, the principality of Chao took a
leading part, as it had done in the first. In command of
4 66 THE LORE OF CATHAY
the gate of the west, its strategic position was imposing;
but it owed its influence in the league to its good fortune
in possessing the ablest general and the most gifted
statesman of the age. The general was Lien P'o, and
the statesman Lin Hsiang Ju, of whom we shall speak
only in his character of envoy and negotiator.
Two incidents in his history will serve to throw light
on the times in which he lived. His prince possessed a
gem of great value, like the koh-i-noor, unique, the envy
of neighboring potentates. The Prince of Ch'in sent an
embassy to offer fifteen cities in exchange for it. Its
owner was afraid to refuse, and equally afraid to comply,
lest the other party should not act in good faith. Lin,
then a young official in the household, said to his master :
" You need not fear the loss of the gem ; send me
with it, and, if the cities are not surrendered, I will be
answerable for its safe return."
Arriving at the court of Ch'in, and appearing in the
presence of the prince for the purpose of offering the
gem, he discovered that the prince was inclined to play
him false, by detaining the gem, and withholding at
least a part of the price. On perceiving this, Lin stealthily
slipped the gem into the bosom of a trusty servant, who,
following an unfrequented path, conveyed it safely home.
Lin, of course, remained at court, and, when the fact be-
came known, he offered to give his life, if required, in lieu
of the gem. The prince, appreciating his courage and
fidelity, let him go unharmed. On reaching home, he was
loaded with honours ; and one hopes the faithful domestic
was not forgotten. It is related of one of the crown
jewels of Russia that, in a time of trouble, it was once
given to a servant to convey to a place of safety. The
servant said as he departed: "If I should be slain by
the way, you will find the jewel in my body." He was
DIPLOMACY IN ANCIENT CHINA 467
slain, and his master, recovering his body, found the
jewel in his stomach.
The other incident in the life of Lin relates to a cere-
monious meeting of two princes. They met on the com-
mon frontier, each accompanied by his diplomatic adviser.
In a festive humor, the Prince of Ch'in asked his brother
prince to favor him with a specimen of the music in
which he was known to be a proficient. The request was
unsuspectingly complied with, but Lin saw in it a design
to treat his master with indignity. " Now," said he to
the Prince of Ch'in, " it is your turn ; please beat the
tabor after the manner of your country." The prince
hesitating, he added : " If you refuse, I shall spatter
my blood on your royal robes, as a protest against the
affront you have put upon my master." Hearing this,
the guards rushed upon him, and were about to cut him
down ; but his fearless bearing held them in check, and
the haughty prince, not wishing to bring the conference
to a tragic ending, gave a few beats on the tabor. The
princes parted on equal terms; and Lin was raised to
the highest rank in the state, for having saved the
honour of his master.
When Bismarck lighted his cigar in the diet at Frank-
fort, a privilege regarded as belonging exclusively to
the ambassador of Austria, all Germany was astounded
at his audacity. Not less were the states of China, at
the boldness of Lin, in compelling the mightiest prince
of the empire to keep time to his master's music. In
either case, a trivial act was clothed with a grave political
significance ; and it evinced diplomatic talent of the high-
est order to turn it to account.
The famous general Lien P'o, who, previous to this oc-
currence, had enjoyed the first rank in his state, felt
it as a personal outrage that a man, whom he looked
468 THE LORE OF CATHAY
on as an upstart, should suddenly be raised above him.
Forgetting that the statesman is above the soldier, and
that good diplomacy requires the highest kind of states-
manship; he let it be known that, wherever he should
meet his rival, he would insult him to his face. Lin,
hearing of this threat, took pains to avoid a meeting.
The general, remarking this, sent him a half contemptu-
ous message, asking an explanation of his strange and
undignified conduct, which he was not at liberty to im-
pute to fear, after the proofs he had seen of Lin's per-
sonal courage. Lin replied: " If I avoid an encounter,
it is because your life and mine are indispensable to the
safety of our country. If Ch'in refrains from attacking
Chao, it is on account of us two. The Prince of Ch'in
would be delighted to see us fall by each other's hands."
The general was so struck with this patriotic answer,
and particularly with Lin's moral courage in exposing
himself to a suspicion of cowardice rather than bring a
calamity on his country, that he frankly confessed him-
self in fault, in the ceremonious fashion then in vogue.
Coming to Lin's door with a rod in his hand, instead
of using it on Lin, he "begged that it might be applied to
his own back. The two rushed into each other's arms,
swore to be brothers, and sealed the covenant by drink-
ing a cup of wine, mingled with blood drawn from the
veins of both. Who, on hearing this, can fail to recall
the manner in which Aristides and Themistocles laid aside
their deadly feud, how, when Xerxes was threatening
the liberties of Greece, knowing that union is strength,
they dug a pit and formally buried their enmity, not to
be resurrected until the danger was past?
If I have followed the career of particular statesmen
with considerable detail, it is because I have thought
I might in that way present a more vivid picture of the
DIPLOMACY IN ANCIENT CHINA 469
diplomacy of the period. Viewed from a moral stand-
point, that diplomacy was not above criticism. It bears
little resemblance to the transparent candor and immac-
ulate integrity, which characterize the European diplo-
macy of our own day ! For has not diplomacy, like every-
thing else, risen above the level of former ages? Is it
not a recognized maxim, in our enlightened times, that
honesty is the best policy? Is it not equally a maxim
that the advantage of each is found in the prosperity of
all? What representative of a European power ever dis-
guises the truth, or thinks of taking advantage of the
ignorance or weakness of the power with which he is
called to negotiate? In fact, what is diplomacy, as we
understand it, but another name for philanthropy?
Chinese statesmen of the period under review had not
yet attained to this sublime conception ; "let every man
work for his own master," was the maxim they openly
professed, a maxim often quoted to excuse deviations
from rectitude.
Envoys went and came on all occasions calling for
felicitation or condolence, and I will not assert that they
were too high-minded to imp rove 'the opportunity to spy
out the nakedness of the land; or that custom forbade
them, while professing peace, to make preparation for
war.
There existed a code of recognized rules for the regu-
lation of intercourse by means of diplomatic envoys. I
have touched on these in a previous chapter. My object
in this, has been rather to show diplomacy in action, than
to set forth either rules or theories. The following facts
will prove interesting:
i. Among the privileges of ambassadors, as laid
down in the ancient books of China, we find no trace of
that convenient fiction known as extra-territoriality.
470 THE LORE OF CATHAY
The hospitable Spaniard, in Buenos Ayres, sends you
a card of invitation to come to " your own house," in
such and such a street. So, western peoples have agreed
that a diplomatic envoy, as guest of the nation, shall be
considered as living and moving on his own ground. It
is a little singular that the Chinese never thought of
expressing their sense of the inviolable sanctity of such
envoys in a similar manner, especially as their language
is not wanting in similar fictions, dictated by courtesy or
flattery.
As a principle, the sanctity of an ambassador's person
was fully admitted ; but in practice, it was frequently
violated. Nor is that to be wondered at, in a state of
society in which ambassadors regarded it as their main
business to mingle in court intrigues.
2. In the diplomacy of ancient China, there was no
such thing as a minister plenipotentiary.
The sovereign always held himself free to disavow the
acts of his representative, whenever it might suit his
policy so to do. When the Chinese were first confronted
with that term, in their negotiations with the west, they
expressed some surprise, and declined to accept it. " There
is only one plenipotentiary in the empire," they said;
" that is the Emperor." It required nothing less than the
storming of his forts to induce the Emperor to grant
the *itle.
3. In the diplomacy of ancient China, there was no
such thing as a resident minister; they were all envoy cs
extraordinaires.
But they found occasion to prolong their stay for
months or years; and, in many cases, they were kept
going back and forth so frequently as to accomplish all
the purposes of residence, together with the additional
advantage of frequent conference with their chiefs.
DIPLOMACY IN ANCIENT CHINA 471
As an example of the kind of reports they were ex-
pected to make, I may mention that Su Tai, the brother
of the more noted Su, of whom we have heard, was once
sent as ambassador to Ch'i. On returning, his master
desired him to report on the state of that country, and
the character of its prince, with particular reference to
the question whether he was aspiring to the hegemony,
or had any prospect of attaining it.
As an instance of frequent and prolonged missions, I
may cite the case of Ch'en Chen. Being often sent on
missions to Ch'u, he was accused by Chang I of enrich-
ing himself without benefitting his chief. Charged with
drawing emoluments from two states, and making himself
a persona grata at the foreign court without, in any way,
improving the state of foreign relations, he defended
himself successfully; and I only cite the case as an
illustration of the point in hand.
4. The political relations of the great states of ancient
China afford a remarkable analogy to those of the states
of modern Europe. In the former, the diplomacy of the
period turned on the question of furthering or checking
the progress of one power, which appeared to aim at
universal dominion. Who shall say that the situation in
Europe may not be described under the same formula?
Reversing the points of the compass, a political map
of the one might serve, mutatis mutandis, for that of the
other. And who shall blame the Chinese for reading the
wars and alliances of modern Europe in the light of their
own ancient history ? When they read how for centuries
the eyes of Russia have been fixed on the imperial city
of the Bosphorus; how the first Napoleon, on the eve of
his disastrous expedition, predicted the danger of Europe
becoming Cossack ; how, in 1854, the advance of Russia
was checked by another Napoleon, in concert with Eng-
472 THE LORE OF CATHAY
land; how, in 1878, she was compelled, by a conference
of the Powers, to relinquish her prey when fairly within
her grasp; and how in 1900 she absorbed Manchuria;
will they not believe that their great cycle has come round
again, and that their own old drama is being repeated on
a new and grander theater?
Though the aptitude of the Chinese for diplomacy is
freely admitted, it is not so generally known that their
collisions with foreign powers have mostly sprung from a
want of diplomatic tact. Their long isolation and the
immensity of the empire under one sovereign led them to
despise other nations, and in disputes with them to resort
to violence, instead of diplomacy.
In 1839, Lin brought on the opium war by depriving
the foreign community of liberty and threatening them
with death.
In 1857, Yeh provoked the ' Arrow ' war by summarily
executing for piracy a boat's crew sailing under the
British flag.
In 1797 and 1816, China demanded the kotow of vas-
salage from Great Britain ; and in 1859 she demanded it
from the United States, thus alienating those who might
have been her friends.
This spirit culminated in 1900 when a Tartar Dowager
attempted to slaughter the envoys of eleven nations.
China needs to learn in the school of adversity.
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