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GIFT OF 
 
A GENERAL VIEW 
 
 OF 
 
 CHINESE CIVILIZATION 
 
 AND OF 
 
 THE EELATIONS OF THE WEST WITH CHINA. 
 
 FROM THE FRENCH OF 
 
 M. PIEEEE LAFFITTE, . 
 
 (DIRECTOR OF POSITIVISM). 
 
 TRANSLATED BY 
 
 JOHN CAREY HALL, M.A,, 
 
 ASSISTANT JAPANESE SECRETARY TO H. B. M.'s LEGATION, TOKYO. 
 
 Progress is the development of Order. 
 
 Auguste Comte. 
 
 LONDON : 
 TEUBNEE & Co., LUDGATE HILL. 
 
 YOKOHAMA, SHANGHAI & HONGKONG: 
 KELLY & WALSH (LIMITED). 
 
 TOKYO & YOKOHAMA: 
 Z. P. MARUYA & Co. (LIMITED). 
 
 1887. 
 
'ITASIJITj 
 
 . MEIKUEJOHN & CO., PRINTERS. NO. 26 WATER STREET, YOKOHAMA, JAPAN. 
 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 In 1859 and 1860 I delivered a course of free public lectures 
 on the General History of Humanity. 1 Three of the lectures 
 in that course were devoted to Confucius and Chinese Civiliza- 
 tion ; and these I now publish. 
 
 My main object in singling out this particular portion of a 
 vast body of doctrine for separate publication is to bring to the 
 notice of the higher minds and hearts amongst us the need 
 there is for setting on foot a reasonable and moral policy for 
 regulating the relations of the West with the rest of the World. 
 Those relations are coming more and more under the direction of 
 a commercialism of the baser sort, or of a narrow proselytism, 
 which is often, after all, very little better than a pretext for 
 furthering some political or mercantile object. I am in hopes, also, 
 that this sample of a political conception, based on a thorough 
 philosophic study of the situation which it is desired to modify, 
 will suffice to convince reflecting minds of the necessity of bring- 
 ing to the study of social phenomena at least the same degree 
 of attention and perseverance as is required for the study of the 
 simpler phenomena of life and of the world. Moreover, the 
 institution of a policy which embraces in its scope the whole 
 extent of our planet, is not only an object of high importance, 
 in itself, but is also connected, both directly and indirectly, 
 with the more pressing needs of the reorganization of the W T est : 
 
 1 The program of the course is published at the end of this volume, hy way 
 of giving a general idea of its scope. For fuller details, see the opening lecture, 
 published by Dunod, quai des Augustins 49, Paris, in 1 vol. 8vo, entitled Philo- 
 sophic Course on the General History of Humanity, by M. Pierre Laffitte. 
 
 46G966 
 
IV INTRODUCTION. 
 
 for the true doctrine, fit to usher in the normal state of Humanity, 
 should show itself able at the outset to construct a policy that 
 really embraces the whole sum of terrestrial affairs. This is 
 what Positivism actually does, as will be seen before very long 
 by those whose minds are capable of appreciating the value of 
 such a doctrine, destined, as it is, to form the bond of union of 
 the noble hearts of every land. 
 
 But before the group formed by the advanced populations 
 can adopt a proper policy towards the rest of the world, a change 
 must be brought about in its way of looking at itself. When 
 that change does take place, it will have the further effect of 
 producing a wholesome reaction on the internal politics of the 
 West. 
 
 This change consists in dropping the notion of Christendom, 
 ^ and adopting in place of it, the notion of Westerndom or The 
 West. Such a substitution, being nothing more than the 
 systematic expression of a fact, will be welcomed by all serious 
 and reflecting minds. Only a few fanatics will object to the 
 change. 
 
 By the term Westerndom, or the Western Commonwealth, 
 I mean to indicate the group of the five leading peoples, the 
 French in the centre, the Italian and Spanish to the South, the 
 British and the German to the North, who, as pointed out by 
 Auguste Cornte, have been united by the same interests and 
 responsibilities since the time of Charlemagne. 
 
 The West, is a more rational term than Christendom. 
 To begin with, it is more precise, for it eliminates from such a 
 group both Eussia and the Christian peoples of the East, who 
 cannot be seriously imagined to belong to it. Another 
 advantage it has is that it represents fully the whole set of 
 antecedents that have helped to mould this memorable group. 
 The word Christian points only to one of those antecedents, a 
 y noteworthy and important one no doubt, but, in reality, the 
 least decisive of them all. Westerndom owes its formation to 
 
INTRODUCTION. V 
 
 its conquest by the Romans more than to anything else ; and 
 the formative process was completed by the policy of Char- 
 lemagne, by the sway of the Catholic Church, by the incomparable 
 influence of Feudalism, and the revolutionary developments of 
 the last five centuries. This term has thus the advantage of 
 allowing their due to all our ancestors ; whereas the other 
 ignores the more important of them in favour of one alone. 
 
 But apart from its being the more sensible term, the 
 substitution of Westerndom for Christendom, must bring about a 
 great change in the views of statesmen, and, in the end, in the 
 views of peoples also, by placing them at a really civic point of 
 view. The civic standpoint, obscured since the days of Caesar 
 and Trajan beneath the stratum of Christianity, cropped out, 
 as it were, in the grand types of Henry the Fourth and Eichelieu ; 
 but it was only in Frederic the Second, the greatest statesman 
 the West can boast of since the time of Charlemagne, that it 
 came forth into full display. Not that the genius of a Frederic 
 is needed nowadays ; the situation is so clear that any real 
 statesman must take it in at a glance. If Frederic was able to 
 govern by placing himself at the purely civic standpoint of a 
 great dictator, what for such a man was then a possibility, is 
 now a necessity. That is to say, a statesman's duty in these 
 days is to govern without any theological bias whatsoever. 
 Theological considerations must henceforth be relegated ex- 
 clusively to the sphere of private life. Indeed, in France, that is 
 the actual state of the law, resulting from the proclamation of 
 freedom of worship. If, according to the correct saying of a 
 contemporary legist, Law is atheous, we may say with still 
 greater truth that in France the State has no religion. It is 
 for statesmen, therefore, and for peoples, to place their ideas 
 and their sentiments on a level with the situation. 
 
 This substitution of Westerndom for Christendom, so vital 
 for the internal state of the West as marking out the only 
 common ground on which all can agree, will have a no less 
 
VI INTRODUCTION. 
 
 efficacious influence on its external policy. Henceforward it 
 will be impossible for the West to aim at foisting upon the East 
 a synthesis that is in utter decay at home. The conception 
 capable of becoming the universal religion must be sought for 
 outside of all the provisional syntheses. This Christian point 
 of view, which so profoundly vitiates our appreciation of the 
 other peoples of the world, will then no longer form a barrier 
 to our understanding them aright. It will thenceforth be 
 possible to judge of them rationally, unbiassed by retrograde 
 or revolutionary prejudices. 
 
 These general views are such as can now be accepted in the 
 West by all superior minds ; by all those, in a word, who are fit 
 to deal with social questions. It is not too much to say that, 
 on this head, current opinions are beneath the requirements 
 of the situation, to a degree perhaps unparalleled in history. 
 
 I have endeavoured to bring out clearly the superiority of 
 the religious spirit, by contrasting the admirable mission 
 organized by the Jesuits with the oppression, sometimes hypo- 
 critical, sometimes violent, set on foot by an ignoble mer- 
 cantilism. 1 
 
 I venture to hope, indeed, that truly religious natures, 
 especially Catholics, will give their support to a rational and 
 moral policy which reprobates the employment of public force 
 in the service of private greed, and which comes forward, in the 
 name of Humanity, to claim a suitable respect for the civiliza- 
 tions that have arisen on the planet outside of the boundaries 
 of the West. Every religion worthy of the name, be its 
 dogmatic basis what it may, is bound to protest aloud against 
 the employment of force either as a prelude or as a support to 
 preaching. In this respect the noble mission of the Jesuits 
 in China should be taken as a pattern. 
 
 Finally, we may hope that some day the healthy public- 
 
 iThe allusion is, of course, to the opium trade. Tr. 
 
INTRODUCTION. Vll 
 
 opinion of the West "will bring about, under the name of the 
 Nary of the West, the establishment of a public force "which, 
 besides safeguarding a useful commerce, shall be specially 
 employed in protecting the backward populations against 
 attempts at oppression which are all the more certain to ensue 
 as the cupidity in which they originate will be less and less 
 under control. 
 
 In the work I now publish I have been inspired not only by 
 the leading principles of the Positive Philosophy but also by the 
 special view, as profound as it is luminous, put forward by 
 Auguste Comte on the subject of Chinese civilization : 
 
 " A special set of influences, mostly social, caused Chinese 
 "civilization to develop Fetishism to a far higher degree than 
 " was possible elsewhere. Better systematized than in any other 
 " case, it there prevailed over Theologism, and preserved a third 
 " of our species from the system of castes, in spite of the fact 
 "that callings were hereditary," etc. (Auguste Comte: Synthese 
 Subjective, Vol. 1, Introduction.) 
 
 Such is the inspiration under which, in my course of public 
 lectures on The General History of Humanity, I have considered 
 the civilization of China and its most eminent representative, 
 Confucius. 
 
 I venture to hope that such a work will help to disseminate 
 the conviction that the Demonstrated Eeligion alone can encom- 
 pass the sum of terrestrial affairs in a policy at once rational 
 and moral. 
 
 P. LAFFITTE, 
 10, rue Monsieur-le-Prince. 
 
 PABIS, 27th Saint Paul, 73 (15th June, 1861). 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE. 
 
 INTRODUCTION iii-vii 
 
 FIRST LECTURE. 1-33 
 
 ESSENTIAL BASES OF CHINESE CIVILIZATION AND THE ELEMENTS THAT HAVE 
 MODIFIED IT. 
 
 Importance of a systematic study of Chinese civilization 1-3 
 
 Preliminary remarks on the difference between Fetishism and Theologism. 3-12 
 
 The mental basis of Chinese civilization 12-17 
 
 The intellectual and moral consequences thereof 17-21 
 
 General character of the Family in China 22-24 
 
 General character of Chinese Society 24-28 
 
 THE ELEMENTS BY WHICH CHINESE CIVILIZATION HAS BEEN MODIFIED. 
 
 First modifying element : the philosophy of Lao-tsze 28-31 
 
 Second modifying element : Buddhism 32-33 
 
 Third modifying element : Catholicism 33 
 
 SECOND LECTURE. 34-77 
 
 THEORY OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF CHINESE CIVILIZATION. 
 
 The two forces which have directed the development of Chinese civiliza- 
 tion: The Emperors: The Literati 34-39 
 
 Analysis showing the essential phases through which the whole Chinese 
 
 evolution has passed 39-42 
 
 General estimate of the first phase of Chinese civilization (from the year 
 
 2500 B. C. to the year 200 B. C.) 42-47 
 
 General estimate of the second phase of Chinese civilization (from 200 
 
 B. C. to the present day) 48-61 
 
 The present state of Chinese civilization considered as the final outcome 
 
 of its long evolution 61-77 
 
X TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE. 
 
 THIRD LECTURE. 78-127 
 
 ABSTRACT ESTIMATE OF CONFUCIUS AND OF HIS INFLUENCE ON CHINESE CIVILIZATION. 
 
 Observations on the intellectual evolution of China and on the general 
 
 situation when Confucius appeared . . . . . . . . . . fVT. 7. .V . . . ''. .... 78-82 
 
 Estimate of Confucius's work and life 82-96 
 
 Observations on the Confucian school, or the Literati 97-104 
 
 OF THE BELATIONS OF THB WEST WITH CHINA. 
 
 Preliminary observations on the general state of the West, both in itself 
 
 and as regards its relations with the rest of the world 104-109 
 
 Summary review of the history and present state of Western relations 
 
 with China 109-117 
 
 Of the general principles whereby Western relations with China should 
 
 be regulated 117-127 
 
A GENERAL SURVET : " : 
 
 OF 
 
 CHINESE CIVILIZATION 
 
 AND OF 
 
 THE KELATIONS OF THE WEST WITH CHINA. 
 
 FIKST LECTURE. 
 
 (THE FOURTEENTH OF THE COURSE.) 
 
 FRIDAY, GTH HOMER, 72 SRD FEBRUARY, 1860. 
 
 ABSTRACT ESTIMATE OF THE ESSENTIAL BASES OF CHINESE 
 
 CIVILIZATION AND OF THE ELEMENTS THAT HAVE 
 
 MODIFIED IT. 
 
 GENTLEMEN, We are to enter to-day upon a survey of the whole 
 field of Chinese civilization. In view of the importance of such a 
 study, both in itself and in its bearings on the problems of the science 
 of society, we shall devote to it three lectures. 
 
 At the base of the farthest East is a noteworthy civilization, which, 
 say what we may about it, is in constant development and in full 
 activity, and is being brought day by day into closer contact with the 
 the West. This civilization, in so many respects so much misunderstood, 
 is that of China. In a philosophic point of view it will be of high 
 importance to make a study of it, on account of the strange appearance 
 it has presented to nearly all who have concerned themselves to observe 
 it, even when their materials were ample and their disposition towards 
 it all that could be desired. In another point of view the study will 
 be of great usefulness as furnishing to the West a foundation for a 
 truly rational policy. 
 A 
 
2 INADEQUACY OF PREVIOUS ESTIMATES 
 
 Since the time of the great mission of the Jesuits, Chinese civiliza- 
 tion has been the subject of many important works. Up till their time, 
 ' 'Ma'rcd Poio's stories had been set down as belonging to the fabulous. 
 For our first substantial knowledge of China we are indebted, after all, to 
 the Jesuits ; and since that period the investigation of the subject has 
 been pursued with much ardour and devotion, and, in most cases, with 
 a real sympathy with the % "civilization thus studied. Nevertheless, it may 
 be affirmed, in spite of some very ingenious views and some interesting 
 special observations, that a general and systematic estimate of that 
 civilization is a want which yet remains to be supplied. 
 
 This is not to be wondered it ; for such an estimate was impossible 
 until after the discovery, made by Auguste Comte, of the abstract laws 
 of intellectual evolution. Before that, it was not possible for an observer 
 to place himself at the truly relative point of view, and to completely 
 divest himself of prepossessions, in dealing with anterior stages of the 
 human mind. 
 
 The intellects of all who have heretofore attempted to study China 
 have been dominated either by theology, or by metaphysics, or by pure 
 science. Now, not one of these three frames of mind is fit to estimate, 
 clearly and completely, the civilization of China. 
 
 In the case of the theological spirit, this assertion is self-evident. 
 What we have here to deal with is a civilization the fundamental basis 
 of which is not theology ; a people who have had no spontaneous 
 theological development of their own ; to whom such a mode of thought 
 was an importation from abroad at a time when their civilization had 
 already received its definitive embodiment. Consequently, men like the 
 Jesuits, for instance, who took an ardent interest in Chinese civilization, 
 were unable to comprehend anything more than the details of it. They 
 never understood it as a whole, nor its essential character ; and they 
 consequently used to attribute to Chinese thinkers conceptions of a kind 
 which, to the minds of the latter, were totally unfamiliar. 
 
 As for the metaphysical spirit, its incompetency is still more mani- 
 fest. Metaphysics being nothing but a gradual and dissolving modifi- 
 cation of theology, how could minds dominated by such an influence 
 judge soundly, and as a whole, a civilization which is still more un- 
 familiar with metaphysics than with theology ? The thing is so utterly 
 
OF CHINESE CIVILIZATION. 8 
 
 impossible that we have the spectacle of so distinguished a man as Abel 
 Kemusat, (whose knowledge of China was so great), mistaking the 
 philosophy of Lao-tse for the representative of the primitive thought of 
 China, the starting point of its civilization. Now, this highly metaphy- 
 sical philosophy of Lao-tse is, as I shall show, merely a disturbing 
 element, or at any rate only a modifiying element, in Chinese civilization ; 
 and most certainly an importation from a foreign source. This is a 
 striking example of the power which the prevailing pursuits of the 
 time can exercise over distinguished intellects, even when adequately 
 stored with literary knowledge. At the time when M. Abel Kemusat 
 wrote, the philosophic stage was filled by a school of metaphysics which 
 shone with an ephemera"! brilliancy, nowadays burnt out. Involun- 
 tarily swayed by such a situation, M. Remusat thought to make more 
 attractive the China he had so deeply studied, by displaying there, in 
 their most distant cradle, the discursive flights of metaphysics with which 
 the literary men of Europe were then pre-occupied. 
 
 Science, properly so called, was no more fit than theology or 
 metaphysics to furnish a real explanation of this civilization. Yet there 
 are many points at which the scientific spirit and the spirit of this 
 civilization are in accord ; mainly in this direction, that both alike 
 acknowledge the spontaneous activity of matter. Still, science was 
 neither sufficiently freed from its metaphysical swaddling bands, nor 
 arrived at a point of view sufficiently general, for the handling of such 
 a problem ; and a further hindrance was, that the essentially abstract 
 character of Western science ill-prepared it for comprehending the solid 
 but concrete Chinese spirit. What was needed, therefore, as an indispen- 
 sable prerequisite for the systematic study of this great problem, was a 
 discovery of the laws which govern the human intelligence. That dis- 
 covery was made by Auguste Comte. The theory of Chinese civilization 
 furnishes a difficult and characteristic application of the principles of 
 the true philosophy of history. 
 
 Before directly entering upon this enquiry, I must first explain the 
 essential difference between Fetishism and Theologism, and show that 
 Theologism is nothing more than a transitional stage of evolution between 
 the primitive Fetishism and the definitive Positivism. 
 
 In the evolution of every society there are but two completely 
 
4 FETISHISM THE STARTING POINT. 
 
 normal states that can last and hold together, untroubled by that 
 instability which inseparably attaches to the theological state. These 
 are, on the one hand, the Fetishistic state, the fundamental starting 
 point of human reason and of all sociability whatever ; and, on the 
 other hand, the Positive state, which is their final goal. 
 
 After rapidly sketching the essential distinction between Fetishism 
 and Theologism, I shall dwell specially on this cardinal thesis, that 
 Theologism is a mere transition. 
 
 Intellectually, Fetishism consists in conceiving bodies as being not 
 \ only active, but alive ; in supposing the various modes of activity 
 manifested by objects to be due to feelings and desires animating them ; 
 in a word, it consists in assimilating the world to man. In such a 
 mode of thinking there is but one exaggeration committed, and that a 
 simple one, resting on the basis of an incontestable truth. It is a truth, 
 (which science is gradually adopting, and which Positivism has placed 
 beyond doubt), that matter is really active. But besides the activity 
 proper to matter in general, there is a special mode of activity which 
 belongs to certain bodies only ; namely, life. All bodies are active, but 
 all are not alive. The only mistake made by Fetishism, in this 
 connection, is that of attributing to all bodies a mode of activity which 
 belongs only to some. The error lies in conceiving all bodies as 
 endowed, not only with a spontaneous activity, which is an indisputable 
 fact ; but also as living, which is an exaggeration, necessary at 
 the outset. 
 
 It may be laid down, in fact, that the human mind actually needs 
 such a theory as its starting point. What is the fundamental law 
 according to which our intelligence acts ? It is that of assimilating the 
 phenomena with which we are least familiar to those which we know 
 best ; which amounts to saying that the essential tendency of our mind 
 is to form the most simple hypothesis, having regard to all the particulars 
 given. This capital law of the First Philosophy is but the systematic 
 recognition of a great general fact of our intelligence. Now, that of 
 which we have the most and best knowledge to commence with is man. 
 We are conscious of ourselves ; we are aware that our acts are brought 
 about by reason of a set of particular feelings, of distinct impulses, 
 anger, kindness, love, etc. Consequently, when men saw that external 
 
UNIVERSALITY AND SERVICES OF FETISHISM. 5 
 
 bodies act with an intensity very much greater than living bodies them- 
 selves ; when they saw rivers running and storms raging, and all those 
 grand meteorological phenomena which prove that there is in matter so 
 characteristic and so potent an activity, they must inevitably have sup- 
 posed that the bodies manifesting that activity will that activity and put 
 it forth in virtue of feelings and fancies similar to those which determine 
 the acts of man. Fetishism, therefore, is actually an inevitable stage of 
 human intelligence ; a necessary result of a fundamental tendency of our 
 mind and of the notions or knowledge we have to begin with. 
 
 The final term of the Fetishistic stage is astrolatry, properly so 
 called. When, under the influence of this spontaneous Fetishism, aided 
 by favourable cosmologlcal conditions, a society has reached the stage 
 of settled life, and when sufficient means have been provided to enable a 
 certain number of individuals to observe the heavenly bodies and to 
 devote themselves entirely to purely speculative work, then, on the top 
 of the spontaneous popular Fetishism, there is super-induced a more 
 Systematic Fetishism, which consists in ascribing to those distant beings 
 a directing power ; and attentive observation soon demonstrates that 
 they do really exercise an all- controlling influence. To sum up, then ; 
 Fetishism is the necessary starting-point of the human mind ; and the 
 final and most systematic element of the Fetishistic stage is the worship 
 of the heavenly bodies. 
 
 What are the services rendered to the human mind by Fetishism ? 
 Besides being inevitable, (since it is the only theory that could spon- 
 taneously arise out of the primitive conditions of our nature and our 
 situation), we owe to it the regular and developed institution of concrete 
 observation, or the observation of beings. In fact, Fetishism conceives 
 each phenomenon as produced by the very will of the being which pre- 
 sents it. This being has thus passions, sentiments and moral disposi- 
 tions which completely bring it into close relations with the observer. 
 Hence, the image of each of these beings appears with a force, a 
 clearness and an intensity which it cannot have for observers for whom 
 these bodies are quite inert, and devoid of any effective relation to them- 
 selves. It is very certain that this close relation of hate, good will, 
 anger, etc., between the being observed and the observer must necessarily 
 produce a more exact image and a more vivid representation. Fetishism, 
 
6 ABSTRACTION ORIGINATES THEOLOGISM. 
 
 then, institutes concrete observation, that is to say, the observation of 
 beings, with a power all its own, and thus furnishes the concrete images 
 which afterwards serve as the foundation for abstract contemplation, or 
 observation of phenomena. Fetishism thus accumulates the materials of 
 all our speculations of every sort ; and it plays this leading part in the 
 development of each individual as well as in that of the species. 
 
 Theologism, of which Polytheism is the most characteristic phase, 
 arises from abstract observation, through the necessary medium of a 
 priesthood. Let me briefly work out this important proposition. 
 
 When the human mind has reached the stage of ascertaining the 
 properties common to different bodies and considering them apart, the 
 necessity of representing those properties independently of the bodies to 
 which they belong, impels it, in virtue of the above explained primitive 
 propensity of assimilating all things to man, to invest a particular being 
 with the direction and production of each of those phenomena. Thus, 
 when we rise, for instance, from the notion of an individual tree to the 
 more abstract notion of a forest, we bring in a god of the forest ; that 
 is to say, a being who presides over the whole set of phenomena 
 common to all the various trees of the forest. 
 
 Polytheism, or the creation of beings distinct from bodies, yet 
 producing in bodies the various phenomena they manifest, arises from 
 abstract observation ; and when once the logical artifice of imagining 
 gods to represent phenomena, instead of attributing the phenomena to 
 beings, has been adopted, this artifice, susceptible as it is of immense 
 development, methodizes abstraction and allows of the process being 
 repeated without limit. 
 
 But this systematic introduction of abstraction, by the creation of 
 gods, is a highly difficult intellectual operation, such as could not 
 emanate spontaneously from the vulgar mind. It is always the work 
 of a distinct class devoted to speculation ; that is to say, to a 
 priesthood ; and, once begun, its very tendency is to promote the 
 development of the priestly class. 
 
 Thus, after Fetishism there comes, through the intermediary of a 
 priesthood, Polytheism or Theologism. Deriving its origin from 
 abstraction, Polytheism goes on to consolidate that mental process and 
 to extend it more and more. 
 
THEOLOGISM PRONE TO WANDER. 7 
 
 On considering attentively this second characteristic stage of human 
 reason, we are at once struck with the profound mental consistency of 
 Fetishism as compared with the inevitable instability of Polytheism. 
 
 Restricted as it is to observation of beings, Fetishism has no room 
 left it for wandering far astray. From what source, then, can it be 
 that the aberrations of the human mind proceed ? It is from the 
 institution of abstraction ; that is to say, from the consideration of 
 phenomena independently of the bodies by which the phenomena are 
 manifested. The result of that is, that it is possible to conceive the 
 phenomenon, whatever it may be, under an endless variety of conditions 
 different from those under which it is found actually existing. Thus, if 
 we study the phenomenon of locomotion, apart by itself, instead of 
 concentrating our attention upon real bodies in motion, we can soon get 
 so far as to imagine locomotion in an infinity of cases which concrete 
 observation has never made known to us ; we can conceive of locomotion 
 on water, or through the air, as an attribute of all existences animate or 
 inanimate ; we can conceive of it as possible without any reference to 
 time ; that is to say, with infinite quickness. In a word, the abstract 
 study of phenomena allows us to conceive an infinity of possible cases, 
 whereas concrete observation makes known to us only real cases. 
 
 The institution of abstraction, due to Polytheism, therefore places 
 the intelligence in an active but unstable situation, where it is always 
 liable to be led very far astray. Fetishism, on the other hand, 
 restricted to observation of beings, and taking account of real cases 
 only, regardless of the possible cases which abstraction makes imagin- 
 able, affords a mental stage marked by less activity, indeed, but by a 
 high degree of consistency, and of perfect correctness. 
 
 Fetishism is naturally synthetic, for it never looks at phenomena 
 as isolated, but always takes note of their mutual interdependences. 
 But it is not systematic. Systematization always implies previous 
 abstraction. The Fetishistic stage does not allow of the characteristic 
 development of the various essential aspects of our nature. It does not 
 allow, for instance, of the development of the greater science ; that is to 
 say, of abstract science, which aims at discovering the real laws, whether 
 of succession or similitude, of the various orders of phenomena. It is only 
 by separating phenomena and considering them, as it were, in isolation 
 
8 THEOLOGISM MERELY TRANSITIONAL 
 
 that we can hope to find out the laws which govern them. Real 
 scientific development, therefore, necessarily implies the previous estab- 
 lishment of abstraction. That is one of the great aspects of our nature 
 which cannot be developed during the Fetishistic stage. Therefore, 
 although Fetishism is a synthetic state, capable of lasting long, and self- 
 consistent, it does not promote the special culture of the several 
 elements of human nature, nor does it admit of their being truly 
 systematised. 
 
 Positivism alone satisfies these two conditions : it is synthetic ; 
 but while, on the one hand, profoundly abstract, it is systematic, and 
 co-ordinates the several special faculties of human nature, after they 
 have been developed by exercise. 
 
 It is, then, between primitive Fetishism and definitive Positivism, 
 synthetic and systematic, that Theologism finds its place, constituting a 
 needful stepping-stone for the 'development of the human forces ; for 
 Positivism cannot regulate those forces until after they have been 
 developed. We must therefore conceive it to be the function of theology 
 to preside over the special evolution of the several elementary powers 
 of human nature ; but, inasmuch as it cannot regulate them, it is neces- 
 sarily unstable. Theologism, therefore, is merely a transition, more or less 
 rapid, between the primitive state and the final state of the human mind. 
 
 This leading proposition has been proved by Auguste Comte in 
 respect of the three grand transitions, the Greek, the Roman and the 
 Feudal. The course of revolutionary change which, in the West, began 
 with the fourteenth century, ought rather to be called a crisis than a 
 transition, in view of the more and more anarchical character it manifests 
 in proportion as it draws nearer to its close. Each one of those transi- 
 tions has, in a special manner, presided over one of the great aspects of 
 our nature ; the Greek transition over intelligence, the Roman over 
 activity, the Feudal over feeling. 
 
 This conception must, it seems to me, be extended to theocracy 
 itself. Every stage of theologism should be regarded as a transition, 
 more or less stable. 
 
 We may say, in a general way, that theologism is more or less 
 revolutionary, and that it cannot be other than a passing phase ; for it 
 institutes, but cannot regulate, abstraction. 
 
AND ESSENTIALLY UNSTABLE. 9 
 
 In fact, it is the theological spirit which gives birth to abstract 
 ideas, representing them by gods, whose wills are, of course, more or 
 less arbitrary. There being no limit to the faculty of forming abstrac- 
 tions in this way, the result is an infinite variety of erratic mental 
 rambling, the only check upon which is that imposed by the necessities 
 of practical life. Theologism, then, is a mental state which is always 
 easily led astray, has never been sufficiently brought under regulation, 
 and has always caused disturbances in the body of institutions amongst 
 which it has arisen. Abstraction can be regulated only by the scientific 
 spirit, which regards all phenomena as subject to invariable laws of 
 succession and similitude. 
 
 Thus every theological stage, of what sort soever it may be, is, of 
 necessity, unstable. If, now, we direct our attention to theocracy, 
 properly so called the first phase of the theological stage we shall come 
 upon the direct proof of our proposition. 
 
 The characteristic of theocracy is the prevalence of caste, and the 
 co-ordination of the various castes amongst themselves by the pre- 
 ponderance of the priestly caste. The regime of castes does, without 
 doubt, effectively give rise to diversity of occupations, stereotyping 
 them as it were ; and, by thus consolidating the division of labour, it 
 affords scope for some important developments of our activity. But the 
 co-ordination of the various castes by the priesthood is not sufficiently 
 effective. Indeed we may say what is the exact contrary of the vulgar 
 prejudice on the point that theocracy does not institute a sufficient 
 government ; it is a regime which is not governed enough. In a real 
 theocracy, which must always rest upon Polytheism, there has never 
 been a single condensation of the priesthood, such as there was in the 
 Jewish regime and in the Papacy. There are distinct priestly families, 
 corresponding to the various divinities. That much, indeed, was indis- 
 pensable ; otherwise the oppressiveness of such a regime would have 
 been more intense than we can imagine. But, the various elements of 
 the priestly caste not being grouped round a single over-ruling priest, 
 the consequence is that the sacerdotal caste does not govern enough. It 
 establishes rules as to eating, clothing and so forth ; it consolidates the 
 division of labour ; it gives a religious consecration to the hereditary 
 transmission of property ; but it fails to organize a sufficient binding 
 
10 THEOCRACY INEFFICIENT. 
 
 together of the various castes. Hence the internal organization of such 
 a regime lacks stability. The common prejudice, which regards too 
 much government as its main defect, is therefore the exact opposite of the 
 truth. Again, as regards societies outside of it, the theocratic regime, 
 properly so called, is wanting in the power of resistance ; or, if this 
 resisting power be sufficiently developed by the rise of a warrior caste, 
 the theocratic regime itself is menaced. The soldiers get the upper 
 hand of the priests, far enough to keep them under control, but not far 
 enough to bring about the preponderance of the downright military 
 character, as happened in the case of the civilization of Home. The 
 result is, then, a hybrid regime, like that of ancient Persia, for instance, 
 which, in the ordinary superficial opinion, has been taken as the true 
 type of a theocracy, whereas it is merely a debased variety of that 
 regime. 
 
 In itself, then, and apart from the drawbacks incident to all forms 
 of theologism, the theocratic stage of society is found wanting in two 
 essential points. There is too little of government in it, and too little 
 power of energetic reaction against external disturbances. It cannot, 
 therefore, be otherwise than a transitional form, far too unsteady to 
 last. 
 
 This proposition is of real historical importance, since it gives 
 greater exactitude to our estimates of the various states of society that 
 have arisen on our planet. It has, moreover, a high social value, since 
 it establishes a closer relation between the only two religions that have 
 been and can be universal, Fetishism and Positivism. 
 
 Fetishism is the only religion that has been spontaneously universal. 
 It is the mental state '.with which all intelligences have made their first 
 attempts, the starting point of all stages of social organization. Nay, 
 more, concrete or practical reason continued to be Fetishistic, even in 
 the civilizations that advanced to the stage of Monotheism. People 
 even who hold that there is only one God governing all things, explain, 
 in ordinary life, some kinds of phenomena as being caused by the will, 
 more or less distinct, of the beings under observation. This concrete 
 reason, persistently Fetishistic, is the general, universal reason which 
 sways all intelligence. Abstract reason, which systematises and co- 
 ordinates, has hitherto had a merely modificatory action. It may be 
 
POSITIVISM INCORPORATES FET1SHIS1I. 11 
 
 asserted, then, that the popular masses, during all the stages of social 
 development, have kept Fetishism as the foundation of their mental 
 state. 
 
 Fetishism, again, being, in all states of society, the really universal 
 religion, since it is the basis of concrete or practical reason, it was 
 highly important to show that stability is its essential characteristic : 
 whilst, on the contrary, instability is the inherent vice of Theologism, 
 which brings in abstraction without regulating it. This material proposi- 
 tion will give us a better understanding of what ought to be, and will 
 more and more come to be, the relation between Fetishism, the sponta- 
 neously universal religion, and Positivism, the systematically universal 
 religion. Moreover, Positivism alone, in its own characteristic way, 
 does justice to Fetishism ; it develops it, and finally incorporates it. It 
 was really worth our while, therefore, to take so much pains, in the 
 beginning of our survey, to put Theologism, as a whole, in its true 
 position, namely, that of a passing interlude between the two funda- 
 mental stages of the human reason. 
 
 Since the end^of last century, as Theologism has been gradually 
 losing its hold over the intellect, even cultivated minds are tending, of 
 their own accord, to turn back towards Fetishism. This tendency is 
 clearly shown by the development of Fetishistic poetry ; and even the 
 extravagant flights of pantheism are an indistinct but sure Vindication 
 of this spontaneous inclination of cultivated minds towards Fetishism ; 
 so that in doing justice to it, and giving it a suitable incorporation, 
 Positivism at once meets the requirements of the popular reason and 
 comes forward to systematise a general inclination of the cultivated 
 intellect. 
 
 We are now in a position to understand the importance of making 
 a study of Chinese civilization ; a civilization which is Fetishistic to the 
 core, and has developed itself in that course with a steadiness, power 
 and grandeur truly admirable. The study will, therefore, be highly 
 valuable from the historical point of view. And it will be of great 
 political and moral importance. For the relations of the West with 
 China, and indeed with all the other parts of the planet, are tainted 
 with an anarchical and mischief-making immorality. It is needful that 
 the Religion which is to establish the control of man's powers, the 
 
12 CHINESE CIVILIZATION FETISHISTIC. 
 
 supremacy of morals over politics, should make sucli a civilization under- 
 stood. In this way Positivism will show its fitness, its exclusive fitness, 
 for directing the affairs of our world. Such, I hope, will be the convic- 
 tion impressed upon your minds, Gentlemen, by the compendious enquiry 
 we are now to enter upon. 
 
 I shall begin with a general estimate of Chinese civilization as a 
 whole; first, in its essential elements; then, in its concrete develop- 
 ment. 
 
 Next, I shall examine the merits of the man who, from the intellectual 
 and moral point of view, was the loftiest type of that civilization, the 
 embodiment of its fundamental spirit, and whose name commands the 
 deep veneration of the people of its vast realm, Confucius. 
 
 In the third place, I shall enquire what have been, historically, the 
 relations of the West with China, and what they ought finally to be. 
 
 Fetishism, systematized by the worship of the sky, is the mental 
 basis of Chinese civilization : Such is the one chief proposition which 
 must be set forth in the clearest possible light before the true spirit of 
 that great civilization can be understood. We have shown that every 
 society whatsoever must needs begin with Fetishism. In China, that 
 stage received a real systematization, which gave it such an immense 
 consistency and power of growth that it became the basis of the social 
 evolution of that vast population. In other countries, Fetishism has left 
 many unmistakable traces : in China it has held its ground, lasted and 
 developed. 
 
 When we look, in fact, at the various temples and altars innumer- 
 able erected in that huge empire, we see that they are dedicated to 
 rivers, mountains, constellations, to the principal planets, to the Sky, to 
 the Earth. The worship of the spirits of the dead is there highly 
 developed ; familiar to every one, it has been organized by a people 
 who have no belief in a future life. Now what are the spirits of the dead 
 but fetishes, arising from our mortal remains, and which, according to \ 
 that point of view, keep on a sort of activity and vitality of their own ? 
 Death, in the sense in which Theology and Metaphysics conceive it, has 
 no existence for the Fetishist. To his eyes, it is merely one mode of 
 vitality substituted for another. Hence that contempt for death, which, 
 as Western believers in Theology themselves bear witness, is so markedly 
 
WORSHIP OF THE SKY. 18 
 
 displayed by a people who, on the other hand, have absolutely no con- 
 ception of what we mean by a future life. This apparent contradiction 
 Theology admits to be a fact, and yet is unable to explain. 
 
 In China, Fetishism has been reduced to system by the worship of 
 the Sky ; and this systernatizatioii dates back to the very origin of the 
 civilization of that empire. 
 
 The Sky is, in reality, the preponderant fetish ; it is the puissant 
 being whose action co-ordinates the activity of all the others. But its 
 control is only preponderant, not absolute; that is a point which it is 
 all-important to note. In Theologism, especially in its monotheistic 
 stage, the supernatural power is absolute, and has an arbitrary will ; 
 but it is not so in Fetishism. There the will is preponderant over, but 
 in contact with, and related to, other spontaneous wills, which have 
 their own law, a distinct sort of existence, as it were. In the present 
 case, the preponderating being whose activity co-ordinates and dominates 
 that of all the others, is the Sky. It is on this grand notion that the 
 philosophers and legislators of China have taken their stand, in order to 
 regulate the civilization they had to deal with. We can frame to our- 
 selves an idea of the train of thought by which the legislators reached 
 this systematic conception of the Sky. 
 
 The Sky is the common seat, visible and evident, of all the 
 heavenly bodies. These heavenly bodies have an intense and indubitable 
 activity. It is certain that human life, throughout its whole extent, is 
 regulated by the course of the most powerful of those bodies, the Sun . 
 so much so, indeed, that in a great many of the stages of society the 
 Sun became the preponderant fetish. But, if the heavenly bodies have 
 so great an activity, then surely the Sky, their common seat, must be 
 the most powerful of all beings. On this point, M. Remusat has 
 remarked : " It is not to be supposed that the philosophers, any more 
 than the people of China, worship the visible heaven we look upon." 1 
 Why not ? Is not that more rational than worshiping subjective beings 
 
 1 That is just what they do. In fact the Chinese philosophers, who designate 
 heaven or the sky, by the word Tien, designate the Christian god by the word 
 Tien chu ; showing clearly that the Christian conception differs from the Chinese 
 conception in this, that the Christians conceive of a being distinct from heaven, 
 \vho is outside of it and directs it. 
 
14 WORSHIP OF THE EARTH. 
 
 that Lave never been seen and never will be seen ? Has not this being 
 very great power over us as constituting the seat of the beings which have 
 most influence over our existence ? Is it surprising, then, that they should 
 worship it, that they should consider its activity as preponderant, when 
 direct observation shows that such is the fact ? It is the disposition 
 created in us by the theologico-metaphysical state, and bolstered up by 
 the supposed inertness of matter, that renders men, in so many other 
 respects of extraordinary intelligence, absolutely unable to comprehend 
 Fetishism ; which, after all, is much nearer to science than is Theologism ; 
 since its sole mistake is not distinguishing sufficiently life, properly so 
 called, from activity. 
 
 The second great fetish of China, subordinate to the first, is the 
 Earth. To this second systematic element of Chinese Fetishism is 
 allied the worship of rivers, and of mountains ; just as the worship of 
 the moon, of the planets and of the constellations is allied to that of 
 the Sky. 
 
 The Earth is a powerful and active being, which swa3 r s the activities 
 of the beings on its surface. It was natural, therefore, in primitive 
 times, to worship this being; in respect of which, at first, no distinction 
 was or could be drawn as to whether it was alive or merely active ; for 
 the only possible opinion men at that time could form was that, as in 
 their own case, activity was the effect of a set of particular propensities. 
 
 This worship of the Earth is found at the outset of all civilizations. 
 We see clear traces of it in the fragments that remain to us of Greek 
 theology : " This Earth, mother of all men, protectress of all beings, 
 " this common mother." 
 
 Language has retained a host of expressions which bring to mind 
 this primitive worship. There is too, a moral disposition, as real as it 
 is world- wide, essentially fetishistic, which is the result of this habit of 
 regarding the Earth as sacred ; and that is the love of one's native soil ; 
 that love which makes us fond of the very place we live in, and binds 
 us to it by a deep attachment. This is unquestionably a fetishistic 
 feeling, and it is well we should follow it ; for, under suitable direction, 
 it may became a source of high moral, and even of intellectual, power. 
 That fondness we feel for certain spots, for sites and remains ; our prone- 
 ness to invest them with fancies and feelings akin to our own ; these 
 
FETISHISM IN CHINA SYSTEMATIZED. 15 
 
 are fetishistic proclivities, and furnish very clear proof of our deep-seated 
 tendency to look upon the earth as not merely active for that it 
 very evidently is, in spite of the hallucination of metaphysicians to the 
 contrary but also as living, animated by sentiment and by will, in 
 moral relation with ourselves. Hence, the worship of the Earth amongst 
 the Chinese is bound up with a deep love of the native soil. I may add 
 that the fetishistic conception of the Sky has not been confined to the 
 Chinese. Like the adoration of the Earth, it has left its unmistakable 
 traces in the Western languages. 
 
 The proofs of this reduction to a system, in China, of fetishistic 
 worship, by the adoration of the Sky and of the Earth, are so abundant 
 that our only difficulty is in choosing which to quote. At Peking, for 
 instance, amongst nine great altars in the open air we find taking them 
 in the order of their importance altar of the Sky, altar of the Earth, 
 altar of prayer for obtaining the fruits of the Earth in abundance ; altar 
 of the rising Sun, altar of the Moon at night, etc. 
 
 In all parts of China we find altars dedicated to the Sky and to the 
 Earth. That is the foundation of the state cult, the official religion. 
 Other cults are tolerated ; but that is the officially established state 
 worship. There are, besides those, altars dedicated to the Planets, to the 
 Constellations, to the various modes of activity of the Earth, to rivers, 
 etc., etc. Fetishistic worship is, then, the official cult, regularly 
 organised by the State. At certain epochs of the year, fixed by the rites, 
 especially at the solstices and the equinoxes, the Emperor, the man- 
 darins, perform official acts of worship to the Sky, to the Earth, etc., etc., 
 in the places dedicated to such use. The grand sacrifice to the Sky is 
 made by the Emperor himself, in an extremely solemn manner, at the 
 epoch of the winter solstice. The agricultural labour performed by the 
 Emperor himself has for its special object the raising of the grain 
 necessary for the performance of the grand sacrifice. We read iii the 
 Li-Ki : " It is for the (sacrifice to the Sky) that the Emperor himself 
 " does labour in the Kiao of the South ; it is in order to offer the grains 
 " that they are gathered." Besides special temples, peculiar to each 
 locality, the Capitals or chief-towns of each province, each department 
 and each canton are officially required to have the following temples : 
 altar to the Earth ; altar dedicated to the winds ; to the clouds ; to thunder ; 
 
16 THE OFFICIAL CULT. 
 
 to rain ; to the mountains and to the rivers ; an altar dedicated to the 
 first tiller of the soil ; a temple dedicated to literature ; a temple to the 
 succession of Emperors who have governed China ; a temple to the con- 
 stellation of the Great-Bear ; a temple dedicated to the moats which 
 surround and defend the city ; a temple dedicated to the evil spirit who 
 causes sickness ; an honorary temple dedicated to celebrated statesmen 
 who have done good service to their country; an honorary temple 
 dedicated to country sages ; an honorary temple dedicated to men who 
 were models of fidelity, of sincerity, of righteousness and of filial piety ; 
 an honorary temple dedicated to maidens who were distinguished for 
 eminent chastity; to married women who were renowned for their 
 virtues and modesty. Such is the official religion. Nevertheless there 
 are, in China, besides temples sacred to the official cult, an immense 
 number of monasteries and religious edifices belonging to the Taoists 
 and Buddhists. It is evident, then, that Chinese civilization has, for its 
 mental basis, Fetishism, systematised by the worship of the Sky and 
 of the Earth. 
 
 As this proposition is of the first importance, and requires to be 
 set forth with all possible distinctness, a few indirect considerations which 
 throw light on it may here be stated. I have already told you how 
 highly developed amongst the Chinese is that essentially fetishistic 
 feeling love of the natal soil. But, more than that, they have a disposi- 
 tion not less characteristic in this respect, namely, a deep love of nature. 
 This habit of mind, contradictory as it is to the theological spirit in any 
 form, and more especially to monotheism, is highly developed amongst 
 the Chinese ; a fact entirely in keeping with the fundamental preponder- 
 ance which Fetishism has maintained amongst this population. On this 
 point there are proofs in abundance. I shall confine myself to quoting 
 a few lines from M. d'Hervey-Saint-Denys, who has most felicitously 
 and clearly brought out the fact : 
 
 " We,' : saysM. d'Hervey-Saint-Denys, " like flowers ; the Chinese 
 " fall in love with them. What pleases us in a garden is the variety of 
 " the view, the richness of the colours, the beauty or variety of the 
 " several kinds of flowers ; for the Chinese, each plant is the object of a 
 " veritable cult, of a sort of mystic love, which of itself largely inspires 
 " a great part of their poetic effusions. In their romances, in their 
 
CONSEQUENCES OF FETISHISM. 17 
 
 " histories, even in the tenor of their private life, we find instances 
 "of this simple and passionate love. Grave magistrates invite each 
 11 other to come and admire their peonies and chrysanthemums. It 
 " even goes so far, in the monuments of Chinese literature, as to seem a 
 " sort of ecstasy, which our ways do not allow of our being able to 
 " understand, and which consists in being carried away by the sight of 
 " the plants while trying to realize, by prolonged attention, the progress 
 " of their development." 
 
 This statement of M. d'Hervey-Saint-Denys is incontestable. In 
 an interesting moral romance, the translation of which we owe to M. 
 Abel Remusat, lu-kiao-li or The Two Cousins, this love of flowers, of 
 Dature, as a familiar trait of every day life, comes out in the most 
 unconscious way. There we see too, the happy and affectionate cast of 
 character which results from this keeping up of the fetishistic spirit. In 
 fact this attachment for the outer world, for flowers and so forth, 
 exercises a profoundly softening influence upon Chinese manners : of 
 that there is no doubt. This moral disposition is again quickening in 
 the West in proportion as Theologism declines : The theological spirit 
 hindered it, but could not destroy it. 
 
 Lastly, this preponderance of Fetishism, systematised by the wor- 
 ship of the Sky and the Earth, shows itself in another way in the habits 
 of Chinese life, by the well-known theory of lucky and unlucky days ; a 
 fetishistic theory of which numerous traces still exist amongst ourselves. 
 
 To sum up, then, this long demonstration, we may lay down this 
 leading proposition : 
 
 Chinese civilization has its mental foundation in Fetishism, syste- 
 matised by the worship of the Sky, whose will, preponderating and 
 steady, governs all other existences. 
 
 It now concerns us to study the consequences, intellectual and 
 moral, of the civilization that rests upon such a basis. 
 
 A necessary consequence of this predominance of Fetishism is that 
 concrete observation has been greatly developed. Hence comes extreme 
 acuteness, precision, and we may even say minute exactness, in the 
 observation of beings. These characteristics are shown in all their 
 scientific productions ; consisting, as those works always essentially do, 
 of descriptions, and not of abstract theories analogous to those of Western 
 B 
 
18 INTELLECTUAL CONSEQUENCES. 
 
 Europe. This spirit of observation, again, shows itself in their paint- 
 ings of plants and flowers, so remarkable for their extreme stamp of 
 reality. 
 
 A second characteristic, necessarily resulting from the general spirit 
 of this civilization, is the absence of myths in the systems of the Chinese 
 thinkers. In all the populations amongst whom Theologism prevails, we 
 find the legislators, and even[the philosophers, making more or less use 
 of supernatural interventions, and that not so much intentionally as 
 spontaneously, under the influence of the social environment which 
 sways them. There is nothing of that sort amongst the Chinese ; and the 
 fact is one which has struck the judicious observers who have studied 
 this civilization, though they were unable to trace the phenomenon to 
 its true source. Neither Confucius nor Mencius nor their successors had 
 recourse to those supernatural influences so common amongst the 
 theological populations. They take no account of such arbitrary influences 
 as gods and genii ; they observe beings, lay down the conditions of 
 their evolution, and explain them by the influence of other visible and 
 real beings. 
 
 But I must now call attention to the fact that this mental state, in 
 which abstraction has not been systematically instituted, has produced 
 in Chinese civilization a double defect; neither science, properly so 
 called, nor high art have been able to develop themselves within it. 
 
 Science is, of necessity, abstract. Science consists, virtually, in 
 discovering the laws of the various distinct phenomena, geometrical, 
 physical, chemical, biological, considered in themselves, apart from the 
 bodies which manifest them. Real science, that which alone admits of 
 the discovery of genuine laws, necessarily implies abstraction. 
 
 It is the same with art. High art is unknown to Chinese civiliza- 
 tion ; for, eminent, lofty art rests upon idealization. Now all idealization 
 implies abstraction, whereby we can leave out some of the circumstances, 
 and can exaggerate or minify the properties of beings, considered apart 
 and separately. Idealization can never result from concrete observation, 
 or the mere observation of beings ; for such observation never transcends 
 the narrow limits of reality. It is by abstraction but by real abstrac- 
 tion that we can conceive types which are truly ideal and yet possible. 
 Therefore, neither grand creations of science nor grand esthetic creations 
 
MORAL CONSEQUENCES. 19 
 
 could emanate from this civilization. Several observers bave been 
 struck by this singular phenomeon, but the explanation of the fact was 
 beyond them, for want of a general theory. 
 
 Hence, in China, reality is the striking characteristic of literary 
 works. There are romances of manners and theatrical pieces, remarkable 
 for their naive portrayal of real life. But grand ideal works, after the 
 manner of Homer and of Dante, have never existed amongst them. 
 
 Their scientific development is quite elementary. "What science 
 they have comes to them chiefly from the Hindoos, Mussulmans, and 
 Christians ; with the exception of that outline which always results from 
 a first spontaneous evolution of the positive spirit. 
 
 The deep-seated imperfection, then, which inevitably results from 
 the mental basis of Chinese civilization is the impossibility of a great 
 scientific and esthetic development. 
 
 From the moral point of view, the persistence of Fetishism in 
 China has developed the sentiment of fatality and of order, concur- 
 rently with a disposition to submission; not, indeed, absolute submission, 
 but relative; of a kind closely approximate to the spirit of scientific sub- 
 ordination. 
 
 Observation of beings, especially when, as in the case of the 
 heavenly bodies, it has advanced so far as to have ascertained their regular 
 courses, develops, of necessity, the sentiments of subordination and of 
 order ; theological abstraction, on the other hand, institutes the notion 
 of progress, but of a progress which is at first unregulated. Men 
 submit themselves to the external order represented by the regular 
 wills of the preponderant fetishes ; but this submission, the foundation 
 of all morality, is by no means absolute ; for the correlative beings have 
 only a limited power. This will be better understood if we compare, 
 upon this point, Fetishism with Theologism. 
 
 lu China, neither rulers nor subjects have experienced the influence, 
 in many respects demoralizing, of the type of a divine being with 
 absolute free-will. 
 
 What is, in fact, the type of Deity ? It is the freedom to do as 
 pleases himself. An all-powerful being can only have caprices. Genuine 
 devotedness, like wisdom, always implies a certain degree of submissive- 
 ness. 
 
20 MOKAL CONSEQUENCES. 
 
 " As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods, 
 " They kill us for their sport." 
 
 Shakespeare, " King Lear." 
 
 An all-powerful being may impose obligations ; but these obliga- 
 tions are, on his part, mere whims, founded on no reason beyond his 
 own will. Such a type as that must, in the long run, have exercised a 
 more or less demoralizing influence upon both rulers and subjects. 
 Upon [rulers, by inciting them to imitate this type of arbitrariness. 
 Supreme power consisting in the absence of limits upon the acts of will, 
 surely the supreme happiness of man must consist in the absence of 
 limits upon the fancies ? Have not attentive observers remarked the 
 profound selfishness developed by their all-powerful |position in those 
 rulers who, in theocracies, were regarded as consecrated beings ? 
 
 But this influence shows itself also in the subjects, acting in the 
 same way ; impelling them to aim, for their type of happiness, not at an 
 active and orderly submission, but at a situation which would allow the 
 the fullest working out of their fancies. In another direction, theologism 
 tends to develop in subjects obedience of a dull, sodden sort, simply because 
 it is absolute obedience, and consists in submitting to caprices merely 
 by reason of their emanating from a superior. This, on the other hand, 
 gives a profoundly anarchical tone to independence; which then assumes 
 the aspect of a revolt. It is the wisdom of the various theological 
 clergies that has redressed, as far as practicable, the drawbacks inherent 
 in their doctrines. 
 
 China has escaped the moral inconveniences of such a type precisely 
 because the beings which form the basis of her cult are not gods, but 
 fetishes ; that is to say, real beings, having a power that is very great, 
 but not absolute ; a power, too, that is regulated, as we see in the 
 habitual march of the heavenly bodies. The Lappy effects of this per- 
 sistence of Fetis*hism can be proven. Amongst the Chinese, submission, 
 really positive, leads neither to the cringing nor to the unruliness pro- 
 duced by Theologism. This is, perhaps, one of the most important, as it 
 is amongst the least noticed, of the influences of the Fetisbism that domi- 
 nates this civilization. 
 
 Most observers have regarded the Chinese as a people subjected to 
 an arbitrary despotism, likening their regime in this respect to the 
 
MORAL CONSEQUENCES. 21 
 
 government of Islam in its decrepitude. That is a serious error. A 
 profound subinissiveness is, with them, combined with a feeling of very 
 real independence. Chinese philosophers have always maintained that 
 the emperors governed by virtue of a mandate from the Sky ; a mandate 
 which could be recalled ; and the recall of which was clearly shown by 
 a prolonged continuance of bad government : and the whole history of 
 China, the succession of numerous dynasties, sufficiently shows that 
 this theory was no empty formula. 
 
 The king of Ts'i, enquiring of Mencius about events which had 
 happened at dates which even then were ancient, spoke to him of the 
 last prince of the first dynasty, dethroned by Ch'eng T'ang, and of the 
 last prince of the second Dynasty, put to death by Wu Wang, founder 
 of the third. 
 
 " Are these things true ?" asked he of Mencius. 
 
 " History assures us of them," was the reply. 
 
 " A subject to put his sovereign to death ! Is that possible ?" 
 replied the prince. 
 
 "The rebel," rejoined Mencius, "is he who outrages Humanity. 
 " The brigand is he who revolts against justice. The rebel, the brigand, 
 " is merely an individual. I have heard it said that punishment had, in 
 " the person of Chow, fallen upon an individual. I do not see that in 
 *' him a prince was made to perish." 
 
 The revolutionary spirit of the West is prone to confound 
 voluntary submission, emanating from real veneration, with absolute 
 submission. The type of human dignity does not consist, as those 
 teachers think it does, in not submitting to anything else than 
 force. 
 
 The Chinese, spontaneously, we may say, approximate to the type 
 of true wisdom ; for they feel and understand that true wisdom, active, 
 speculative or moral, is founded upon submission, as the preliminary 
 condition of a well regulated activit} r . Compare, in this respect, the 
 results of scientific evolution, whose only aim is to reproduce reality by 
 submitting to it, with the puerile rnetaphysic which aims at constructing 
 it a priori. Such are the unperceived moral effects which the persistence 
 of Fetishism has produced in this great population. 
 
 Having considered the influence, upon intelligence and upon feeling, 
 
22 THE FAMILY. 
 
 of the mental basis of Chinese civilization, we must now study its action 
 upon the Family, and lastly upon Society, always keeping, of course, 
 the most general point of view. 
 
 The Family, the essential element of all society, becomes established 
 and consolidated during the age of Fetishism. But our business now is 
 to see what effect the systematization and persistence of Fetishism in 
 China have had upon the constitution of the Family there, what special 
 characteristic have they impressed upon it. 
 
 We owe to Fetishism the institution of the tomb that admirable 
 prerogative of the human species, as Vico has finely called it and the 
 establishment of the worship of ghosts, of the worship of ancestors. 
 This worship of ancestors, so profoundly developed amongst a lettered 
 people who have no belief whatsoever in a future life, was a matter of 
 astonishment to the Jesuits; a sort of paradoxical phenomenon, of which 
 they were utterly unable to find the key. We must dwell for a while 
 on this important notion, so little understood by reason of the persistence* 
 even in the best minds, of the theologico-metaphysical spirit. 
 
 Fetishism spontaneously originates manes ; a leading notion which 
 lived on during the domination of theologism, especially during 
 polytheism, and which the social wisdom of Roman civilization knew 
 how worthily to uphold. 
 
 For the fetishist, all bodies are not merely spontaneously active, 
 but, more than that, endowed with will, passions and feelings. There- 
 fore, for him, death is not what it is for the theologist, the passage to 
 an inert state ; it is the passage from one mode of vitality to another 
 mode. The corpse of one whom we have loved is not, as it is for the 
 theologist, an object of horror, or at least of repulsion ; it is a living 
 being, but living in another way ; having still its inclinations and its 
 feelings, and still taking an interest in wordly affairs. This enables us 
 at once to understand that respect for the remains of the human body 
 is a necessary result of the fetishistic stage of thought. This corpse is 
 still the man you loved and venerated. He has not lost his life, as the 
 theological mind supposes ; he has only taken on another form of 
 vitality. You still owe to him those sentiments of affection you showed 
 him during his first form of existence. The Earth is conceived, by the 
 fetishist, in spite of its apparent immobility, as susceptible of being 
 
NON-BELIEF IN A FUTURE LIFE. 28 
 
 loved and adored ; why should it not be the same, and for a still 
 stronger reason, with that body you have seen acting in the same way 
 as yourself, and living with your own liveliness ? 
 
 The institution, therefore, of the tomb, and the establishment of the 
 worship of the dead result, as neccessary consequences, from the 
 fetishistic stage of human reason. 
 
 You see also, Gentlemen, how there follows from this primitive 
 theory the non-belief in a future life. For the fetishist, there is no 
 other world but this one. Upon this Earth alone are we susceptible of 
 two modes of existence ; one with, the other without, locomotion. In 
 both cases there is feeling, affection ; in both we interest ourselves in 
 real affairs. In the second case, we have the mode of vital existence 
 proper to the inorganic bodies which are around us ; only, we must 
 then have a more special affection for those whom we have already 
 loved. The worship of the dead is, then, in natural correlation with the 
 non-belief in a future life. What seemed paradoxical to theological 
 minds is, on the contrary, a thing perfectly natural. Moreover, we find, 
 in the West, that, in proportion as the belief in a future life fades, the 
 worship of the tomb nourishes ; the more a country is under the sway 
 of the theological spirit, the more is the cult of the tomb neglected ; the 
 greater is the repulsion inspired by the remains of mortality. On this 
 point Paris furnishes a proof not to be gainsaid. This Capital of the 
 Emancipation, is it not the city in which the cult of the tomb is most 
 rapidly gaining ground ? 
 
 Worship of the dead, then, has become a leading, essential 
 element in the Chinese Family. Its main characteristic is the worship 
 of ancestors. We always find in every house, when complete, a place 
 consecrated to the tablets of the ancestors. Every ordinary Chinese house 
 has its domestic temple ; a sacred spot, where offerings are periodically 
 made to the ancestors : who are there told of all the important events 
 that take place in the bosom of the family, deaths, marriages, etc. etc. 
 Hence, as a consequence of this grand and admirable institution, respect 
 for age, filial obedience and veneration have attained in China an 
 unusual development. This worship of ancestors, this respect for the 
 manes, deeply rooted in their ways of life, is accompanied by an extra- 
 ordinary degree of attention bestowed upon the coffin. A man gives 
 
24 ABSENCE OF CASTE. 
 
 himself as much concern about the making of his coffin as about any of 
 the most essential appurtenances of his existence : it is a matter of the 
 highest moment. As a consequence of this conception of the manes, we 
 may notice the horror the Chinese have of mutilation ; beheading is a 
 dreaded mode of execution, because it mutilates. There are curious 
 traces of this feeling in their novels. 
 
 The worship, then, of ancestors, respect for age, filial obedience and 
 veneration are thus the general characteristics which the mental basis of 
 Chinese civilization has developed in the family, in a way that should 
 win the respectful admiration of Occidentals instead of their stupid scorn. 
 
 We now proceed to enquire what has been the influence of the 
 fetishistic spirit upon Chinese Society in general. 
 
 The prominent feature of Chinese Society is the absence both of the 
 institution of castes and of the caste spirit. In China, there are not 
 only no castes, like those of India, but there is not even an hereditary 
 aristocracy. The imperial family is not a royal caste, in reality ; though 
 even if it were, that unique exception, justified by important social con- 
 siderations, would not at all affect the general scope of our proposition. 
 
 The imperial function is hereditary, but not in an absolute way. 
 The Emperor makes choice, in his own family, of the member of it who 
 is most worthy to succeed him ; and most frequently it is not the eldest 
 son who is chosen, a fact quite at variance with the caste spirit. The 
 necessarily hereditary character of the supreme function is thus reduced 
 to its simplest expression, and is in no way an outcome of the spirit of 
 caste. The Emperor is conceived as governing in virtue of a mandate 
 of the Sky, which makes him responsible not merely for social distur- 
 bances, but for cosmological disturbances also ; and the persistent 
 continuance of a state of disorder is regarded as the decisive token of the 
 necessity of transmitting the supreme function to another family. We 
 may say, then, that there never was a population to whom the sway 
 and the spirit of caste are so utterly foreign as they are to the people 
 of China. It is beyond doubt that Fetishism is not adapted to produce 
 the regime of caste. Fetishism, adoring real beings, cannot supply that 
 absolute consecration which emanates naturally from supernatural 
 beings. Theologism, on the contrary, spontaneously gives rise to castes, 
 by sanctioning, in an absolute way, the natural heredity of functions. 
 
ABSENCE OF CASTE. 25 
 
 During the polytheistic epoch, the regime of caste arises from the fact 
 that individuals of the higher classes can be deemed to be descendants 
 of the gods themselves. Of that condition of mind we have a good 
 illustration in Homer. Monotheism gives to this consecration of the 
 upper classes a still more absolute character, and a greater degree of 
 concentration, in keeping with its more systematic spirit. Hence arises 
 the type of rulers who are not responsible, except before God, and who 
 act because such is their will or good pleasure ; a type towards which, 
 under the influence of monotheism, the kingly dictatorship in the West 
 was tending ; but the tendency was happily combatted by the military 
 spirit on the one hand, and, on the other, by the gradual evolution of 
 industry and science. Cliste attains its complete organization whenever 
 a theological priesthood gains and maintains the upper hand in society ; 
 a fact which clearly shows the natural aptitude of the theological spirit 
 for engendering it. 
 
 Such is the reason why the grand civilization of China has remained 
 a stranger to caste. In this respect a parallel may be instituted between 
 what China has been and what the West is on the high road to become. 
 
 The West is tending more and more to get rid of caste, under the 
 double impulsion of the scientific spirit, and of industrial activity. 
 Hitherto, indeed, the revolutionary spirit has been the sole systematic 
 organ of this general tendency ; and the consequence is that it has 
 been forced to assume too absolute a form, leading to anarchy. Caste 
 consists in an absolute -consecration of the natural tendency of the 
 social functions, private or public, to become hereditary. This tendency 
 receiving an absolute, instead of a relative, consecration, the result, as 
 regards theory, is that merit does not receive its rightful recognition. 
 But, although Western civilization is gradually eliminating this absolute 
 consecration, or spirit of caste, we should not go so far as to take no 
 notice of the real and important bias on which it is founded. Only the 
 Positive spirit can substitute a relative for an absolute consecration, by 
 giving its due share to a natural tendency. Be that as it may, the 
 Western movement toward the gradual elimination of the spirit of caste 
 is spontaneously bringing us closer to the civilization of China, in which 
 caste never appeared. 
 
 The absence of caste amongst the Chinese has given them a strong 
 
26 GOVERNMENTAL TYPE. 
 
 feeling of independence, and, as ajconsequence, great personal activity and 
 enterprise. Hence, amongst this people, an intense, unheard of industrial 
 activity : insomuch that Auguste Comte regarded them as, pre-eminently, 
 the active race of mankind. Hence, also, amongst them, a perfect 
 respect for private property, which forms one of the foundations upon 
 which their civilization rests. The theoretic notion that the soil belongs 
 to the supreme authority finds no favour there. Their philosophers 
 have had a profound feeling that private property is an all-important 
 basis of moralization. " That is why an enlightened prince, in suitably 
 dealing with the private property of the people, obtains, for necessary 
 " result, that, in the first place, children have wherewith to serve their 
 " father and mother; that in the second place, fathers have wherewith 
 " to support their wives and children * * * . In such straits, the 
 " people think only of escaping death ; or, fearing to be in want of the 
 " necessaries of life, how would they have time to trouble themselves 
 " about moral doctrines, about behaving according to the principles of 
 " equality and liberty?" (Mencius). 
 
 No doubt, there have been there, as in every other social organism, 
 inevitable disturbances ; but we may assert that individual property, the 
 freedom of transmission, has been respected ; and that is an assured 
 consequence of the absence of castes, and of the independence natural to 
 minds accustomed to submit only to powers which were capable of being 
 discussed, at least in principle. 
 
 Let us now see what is the governmental type of this society. 
 Government, the absolutely essential condition of all society, receives a 
 special character from the theory which consecrates it ; although no 
 theory hitherto has been able, owing to inevitable deficiencies, to 
 represent all the elements that enter into the constitution of the directing 
 powers which have arisen in the various human societies. In China, the 
 governmental type is borrowed from the Family. Not only is the Family 
 the essential basis of that society, as indeed it is of all others, but the 
 Government is constructed on the type of the Family. It is not 
 necessary to believe that this is a necessary incident of every civilization. 
 It only belongs to fetishistic populations to take, as in the patriarchal 
 stage, for the type of Government, a generalization of the type of the 
 Family. What, in fact, is the Emperor, according to Chinese thinkers ? 
 
POLITICAL RESULTS. 27 
 
 He is the father and the mother of all his subjects. The paternal 
 character is his essential character. The governmental type of 
 theological societies has not been borrowed from the Family, but from 
 the Godhead. The Chinese type has an incontestable moral superiority - 
 over the theological type. According to the theological conception, 
 Government has an authority which, in some respects, is outside the 
 pale of discussion : that authority is conceived as, in its essence, more 
 or less capricious and arbitrary. The Deity may subject it to particular 
 conditions of exercise ; but these conditions always seem, at bottom, to- 
 be caprices. In real fact, this seeming absolutism is, of necessity, 
 limited by the corresponding sociological environment. When the 
 kings of France assigned their own good pleasure as the final source of 
 their decisions, it was none the less a fact that there were limits which 
 they could not safely have overstepped, and which, indeed, they would 
 never have so much as dreamt of infringing. Nevertheless, their 
 power being conceived as absolute, it was erratically employed, and 
 diverted to acts of arbitrariness such as would never be thought of by 
 one who regarded himself as the father of a great social family, towards 
 whom it was his duty to behave as a father towards his children. This 
 notion has had a profound influence for good on the civilization of 
 China throughout the whole course of its development. Many of the 
 Emperors, in fact, were admirable and touching exemplars of paternal 
 devotedness and firmness of character. 
 
 From this conception there results a general disposition of the 
 happiest kind a disposition on the part of the government, whatever 
 may have been its origin, even were it military to push on the 
 development of industrial life ; a tendency otherwise quite in keeping 
 with the spirit of this civilization, but which, in this case, the action of 
 the governmental power consolidates instead of thwarting. It does so 
 by reason of its paternal character. The tendency of the government 
 in China to promote the pacific and industrial bent of the population 
 is thus accounted for. 
 
 To sum up ; it follows, from the foregoing difficult abstract estimate, 
 that Chinese civilization has for its mental base Fetishism systematized 
 by the worship of the Sky. Hence results, as the essential element of 
 the society, the family, constituted by filial respect, the paternal power 
 
28 TAOISM. 
 
 and the worship of ancestors. Hence, also, comes a fundamental tendency 
 towards a purely pacific regime, and a population free from caste, whose 
 conception of governmental power is moulded upon the type of paternal 
 authority. 
 
 OF THE ELEMENTS WHICH HAVE MODIFIED THE CIVILIZATION OF CHINA. 
 
 (Philosophy of Lao-tsze. Buddhism. Catholicism.) 
 
 Having formed an estimate of the general spirit of Chinese civiliza- 
 tion, and traced the leading consequences arising therefrom, we have now 
 to study, in a summary way, the elements which have tended to modify it. 
 
 Chinese society has, in fact, been in contact, during the course of 
 its development, with other societies which were more or less advanced 
 in the military and theological stage ; and it could not but happen that 
 such contact should react upon and, to some extent, modify it. The 
 Chinese are by no means animated by that feeling of hatred towards 
 foreigners commonly attributed to them. They are on their guard 
 always against Westerns ; and therein they are quite right. One cannot 
 but commend their wisdom in that respect ; for hitherto they have had 
 no occasion to regard them as anything more than veritable barbarians, 
 pursuing gold and profit by any and every possible means. But the 
 Chinese have been in contact with peoples of far greater benefit to them 
 than Westerns ; and from such contact have resulted the two elements 
 which have exercised the most important modifying influence upon their 
 civilization, namely, the philosophy of Lao-tsze and Buddhism. Westerns, 
 however, have, in a secondary degree, through Catholicism, and especially 
 through the great mission of the Jesuits, introduced a third modifying 
 element, in all respects the least important of the three. 
 
 Broadly speaking, this influence of modifying elements drawn from 
 outside theological sources has been more troublesome than useful to 
 the Chinese. One result, useful in a secondary sort of way, there has 
 been, no doubt, in the introduction of scientific notions borrowed from 
 Buddhism and Catholicism ; but these notions have wrought very little 
 change in the fundamental spirit of Chinese civilization ; and, on the 
 other hand, they have been accompanied by such serious moral and 
 intellectual ravages that, to use the energetic language of a Chinese 
 philosopher on this topic, it would have been better for the country if it 
 
TAOISM. 29 
 
 had never been visited with such a pestilence as the impudent theological 
 spirit which gave rise to them. Be that as it may, what we have now 
 to do is to ascertain, historically, the existence of these three modifying 
 elements, and to form an approximate estimate of what their influence 
 has been. 
 
 The first modifying element of Chinese civilization is the philosophy 
 of Lao-tsze, whose followers, widely spread over China, have taken the 
 name of Tao-shi, or followers of Reason. 
 
 Lao-tsze was born 604 B. C. (54 ^ years frefore flonffleigs), in the 
 kingdom of Tsu, (now the provinces of Hu-peh and Hu-nan), near the 
 Blue river. It is between the Blue river and the Yellow river, and North 
 of the Yellow river, that 'the grand central germ of Chinese civilization 
 was formed. 
 
 Let us first see in what the philosoply of Lao-tsze consists. 
 
 It consists in a metaphysical system having for its object to deduce 
 everything from one supreme principle, Reason, and to explain every- 
 thing by abstract properties ; so that, like all metaphysics, it ends by 
 presenting mere verbal combinations as if they were real scientific 
 explanations. Such notions have no more genuine value than those of 
 the Neo-Platonists, for example ; and I merely mention them for the 
 sake of historical completeness and to show of what sort they were. 
 
 " Before the chaos which preceded the birth of heaven and earth," 
 says Lao-tsze, " a single being existed, immense and silent ; immov- 
 " able and always acting but never altering. It may be regarded as the 
 " mother of the universe. I know not its name, but I designate it by 
 " the term Reason (Tao). Reason is the inmost essence of all things. It 
 " has neither beginning nor end. The universe has an end, but this 
 " Reason has not. Unchangeable before the birth of the universe, it was 
 " nameless, and ever-existing. Reason is the only name the holy man 
 " can give it ; he also calls it spirit, because there is no place in which it 
 " is, and no place in which it is not ; he calls it truth, because there is 
 " nothing false in it ; principle, by way of contrast to what is produced or 
 " secondary. This being is truly one. It sustains heaven and earth ; 
 " and in itself has no qualities cognizable by the senses. It is pure as 
 " regards its substance ; it is reason in respect of the order which it has 
 " established ; it is nature in relation to the force which it has given to 
 
30 TAOISM. 
 
 41 man and which is in him ; it is spirit as to its mode of action without 
 " bound, without end, etc., etc." (Abel Remusat, Posthumous Miscellanies 
 on Oriental history and literature) 1 . 
 
 There we find ourselves in the presence of a full-blown metaphysical 
 system ; that is to say, of a general explanation by means of in- 
 determinate and arbitrary abstractions. Metaphysics, properly so 
 called, always starts with the theological type of thought, rendering it 
 gradually more and more abstract, so that at last it retains, for its basis 
 of all explanation, only a general notion of force, one and indeterminate. 
 It is an essentially diseased stage of human reason, showing the abuse 
 of abstraction, when abstraction is thus wholly severed from a scientific 
 basis. It is a mental state as destitute of intellectual as of social 
 usefulness. 
 
 The leading feature of this philosophy of Lao-tsze is its contempt for 
 the past, for antecedents ; a feature profoundly opposed to the very 
 spirit of Chinese civilization. Co ntrary to the practice of Confucius, he 
 never quotes the ancients. 
 
 The second characteristic of this philosophy is that it is metaphysical 
 and abstract, contrary to the concrete spirit of Chinese civilization. 
 
 Whence comes Lao-tsze ? Evidently his origin is foreign. Probably 
 his philosophy is a Hindoo importation ; though we have no direct docu- 
 mentary proofs of such a filiation. M. Abel Bemusat at first upheld the 
 opinion that Lao-tsze's philosophy was of foreign origin. He abandoned 
 that view, however, and latterly maintained that such a philosophy was 
 the primitive base, the starting point, of Chinese civilization. This notion, 
 profoundly irrational, betrays a misunderstanding of the elementary laws 
 of the working of the intellect. It is a sheer impossiblity for the intelli- 
 gence to start with such metaphysical abstractions. But the irrationality 
 of the notion is shown still more clearly by a direct analysis of Lao-tsze's 
 philosophy itself. So little Chinese is it, in fact, that it fails to recognize 
 what are precisely the two main characteristics of that civilization, 
 namely, its respect for the past, for antecedents, and the preponderance 
 
 *For further details about this metaphysical school, see Abel Eemusat, 
 Melanges posthumes ; G. Pauthier, Chine Aloderne ; Stanislaus Julien, translation 
 of the Taoteh King. 
 
TAOISM. 81 
 
 of the concrete spirit. Again, so little was this doctrine in accord with 
 its surrounding circumstances that its followers very soon completely 
 degenerated, becoming mere jugglers, magicians, vending the elixir of 
 life. This significant contrast would certainly have engaged the attention 
 of so sagacious and sober a mind as that of M. Abel Remusat were it 
 not that he had undergone a sort of metaphysical bewitchment. At the 
 time when that eminent sinologue was writing, a metaphysic, nowadays 
 discredited, was shining with an ephemeral brilliancy. M. Abel 
 Remusat involuntarily allowed himself to be drawn into representing as 
 the basis of Chinese civilization a doctrine altogether analogous to that 
 which was being upheld in France by the doctors in insoluble questions , 
 amidst the plaudits of tire literary men of the West. In the main, Lao- 
 tsze, under the impulsion of contact with Hindooism, made an attempt, 
 honorable in itself, to introduce abstraction and abstract theories into 
 China. This attempt was bound to fail, being of a purely metaphysical 
 character, with no corresponding scientific development to rest upon ; 
 consequently those abstractions rapidly degenerated into arbitrary 
 wanderings, similar to those we have presented to us in the shameful 
 mental spectacle of the Alexandrian school of thought. Lao-tsze's disciples 
 pursued these abstract ramblings in the midst of an uncongenial environ- 
 ment, and soon degenerated into a sect of magicians and jugglers who 
 now, by means of a theology as worthless from the social as from the 
 mental point of view, make their appeal to the lowest sides of human 
 nature. Hence the followers of Reason, the Taoists, are numerous, 
 often consulted, and nevertheless despised; Often the same spectacle 
 meets us in the West, when unworthy charlatans momentarily seduce 
 public opinion by working upon the fear of death. The Taoists are 
 widely spread over China ; though less so than the Buddhists. They 
 have, however, a great number of monasteries. 
 
 It remains to be noted that this doctrine was protected by the 
 revolutionary Ts'in She-hwang-ti, of whom more presently. Such a 
 conjunction was the necessary consequence of that contempt for the 
 past, for antecedents, which characterizes the followers of Lao-tsze. 
 
 Such is the first of the modificatory elements of Chinese civilization ; 
 one which introduced subordinate theological ingredients amongst a 
 population profoundly fetishistic. 
 
82 BUDDHISM. 
 
 The second element which has modified the civilization of China 
 is Buddhism : superior, perhaps, to the doctrine of the followers of 
 Lao-tsze, it has nevertheless exercised an essentially perturbing influence. 
 
 I Buddhism was introduced into China under the Han dynasty, 65 
 years before Christ. It is very widely spread all over China. It was 
 fostered by a good many Emperors. All the Chinese are, after a fashion^ 
 influenced by it, but in a purely secondary way. Buddhism is in 
 general despised by the literati, the class which represents the true 
 tendencies of Chinese civilization. The Buddhists have organized a 
 cult altogether analogous to the Catholic cult. Analogy of doctrine has 
 produced analogous effects, for there has certainly been no reciprocal 
 communication between the two systems. They have a monastic life 
 completely organized, litanies, relics, etc., etc. 
 
 Buddhism has brought serious disadvantages in its train by 
 introducing into China the spirit of theologism, with all the misguided 
 speculative tendencies inherent therein ; and these aberrations have been all 
 the more extreme in that Buddhism, properly so called, has no interior 
 hierarchic coordination, like that of Catholicism ; a coordination which 
 has so often served to remedy the disadvantages inherent in its doctrine. 
 
 Nevertheless, this element of disturbance has not been productive of 
 such far-reaching deviations as might have been anticipated. Fetishism 
 had been so deeply interfused in Chinese society, this Fetishism had 
 so thoroughly attached the population to the worship of ancestors, 
 of the Sky, of the Earth, at the time when Buddhism made its 
 appearance, that the latter could do no more than merely modify this 
 wide foundation of the civilization in question. A mandarin, though a 
 Buddhist, will nevertheless perform the rites of the official worship ; 
 he will by no means give up the family worship. Thus, the 
 illustrious Emperor Kang-hi, so deservedly praised by the Jesuits, was a 
 Buddhist ; but that fact by no means interfered with his performance of 
 the ceremonies of the state cult. Very correct estimates of Buddhism 
 were formed by literati and Emperors who placed themselves at the 
 true stand-point of Chinese civilization. Thus, the Emperor Wu-Tsung, 
 of the Tang dynasty, (died 846 A.D.), wrote, respecting the necessity of 
 restraining the development of Buddhism, the following lines : (Abbe 
 Grosier, vol. 5, p. 51.) 
 
BUDDHISM AND CATHOLICISM. 83 
 
 " Under our three famous dynasties there was never any mention 
 " of Buddha ; it was not till the Han and Wei dynasties that this sect 
 " commenced to spread in China and introduced images. In the two 
 " courts, in all the towns, in the mountains, nothing now but bonzes of 
 " both sexes, artizans ill employed in making images for them. The 
 " ancients held it as a maxim that if there was a man who did not work, 
 " or a woman who did not busy herself at her silks, somebody in the 
 " state would have to suffer for it. What, then, must be the consequence 
 " nowadays, when an infinite number of bonzes, men and women, live 
 " and dress by the sweat of others, and occupy an infinity of workmen 
 " in building here and there and everywhere and ornamenting, at great 
 " expense, superb edifices ? " 
 
 It could not have been better said. That was the preamble of a 
 decree for the suppression of a great number of Buddhist monasteries 
 and convents. 
 
 Buddhism, however, introduced into China some knowledge of 
 astronomy and mathematics ; and that is more than could be said for 
 the followers of Lao-tsze. This slight advantage was more than counter- 
 balanced by the immense inconveniences of an arbitrary theological 
 spirit, prone to stray away from reality, and impelling to a monastic 
 life completely devoid of active occupation. 
 
 As for Catholicism, the last modifying element of Chinese civiliza- 
 tion, it has not had more than a very secondary influence in China. 
 Nevertheless, it introduced, at the period of the great Jesuit mission, 
 some scientific notions which have been of use. But, I repeat, its 
 influence was of a very slight and altogether secondary sort ; and I 
 merely mention this third modifying influence by way of bringing it to 
 memory. 
 
 We have now finished the abstract consideration of Chinese civiliza- 
 tion ; and the really difficult survey thus obtained will serve as the 
 foundation for our concrete study of it. We shall devote next meeting 
 to the theory of the concrete development of Chinese society, from its 
 origin to our own day. 
 
SECOND LECTURE. 
 
 (THE FIFTEENTH OF THE COURSE.) 
 FRIDAY, 13 HOMER, 7210 FEBRUARY, 1860. 
 
 THEORY OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF CHINESE CIVILIZATION. 
 
 GENTLEMEN, 
 
 In our last lecture we were engaged in forming an abstract estimate 
 of Chinese civilization ; that is to say, we ascertained what its main 
 features were ; features common alike to all classes of the nation, and to 
 all epochs of its long evolutionary history. 
 
 We saw that the mental base of this civilization was Fetishism 
 systematized by the worship of the sky ; and we then showed by what 
 elements this civilization had been modified ; elements derived from the 
 reaction upon China of other societies outside. 
 
 From this fundamental basis we then deduced the leading features 
 of the Family and of the Society. 
 
 We showed how the Family, founded upon filial respect and the 
 worship of ancestors, was the basis upon which this society, as indeed 
 all other societies for that matter, was consolidated ; but in China, to 
 the extent that the government itself was conceived as moulded upon 
 the type of the family, and not upon the type of deity ; an all-important 
 distinction with which the leading peculiarities of government in China 
 are bound up. We saw how utterly non-existent in such a society was 
 the regime of caste ; indeed, there was not even a royal caste, in spite 
 of the necessary hereditariness of the supreme function : the result being 
 an admirable combination of independence and submissiveness, the 
 obedience being of a filial kind to a rule largely paternal, in place of the 
 absolute obedience and arbitrary rule which it is the tendency of the 
 theological conception of sovereignty to engender. 
 
 Such, in very short compass, is the net result of the abstract 
 appreciation of this civilization we accomplished in last lecture ; we are 
 now to enter upon the theory of its concrete evolution. 
 
TWO ELEMENTARY SOCIAL FORCES. 85 
 
 For this society, the essential bases of which we have defined in 
 the abstract, has been developed in actual fact, and that, too, in the 
 midst of certain particular circumstances. It is the principal phases of 
 this concrete evolution that we are now going to study, and we shall 
 deduce from them, as our final result, a systematic conception of China 
 as she is to-day. 
 
 But, before I enter upon the theory of this evolution, I must make 
 a short analysis of the two distinct elementary forces, the mutual 
 combination and interaction of which have had most to do with the 
 course of social development to which I am to-day to direct your 
 attention. 
 
 These two elementary forces are : first, an Imperial family, repre- 
 sented by a single individual who is its head ; secondly, a particular 
 class, I may call it the Learned class which was not fully constituted 
 until after the time of Confucius, but the beginnings of which were in 
 existence long before. These two forces have had the directing of the 
 gradual development of this civilization, and have themselves been 
 developed along with it. 
 
 Let us proceed to consider the first elementary force of Chinese 
 civilization, that which constitutes its means of unity, to wit, a single 
 personage, the Emperor, in whom is centered the general direction of the 
 society. The Emperor always belongs to one particular family ; so that 
 heredity is the foundation for this supreme function of the social 
 organism; an exception too well justified by considerations of expediency 
 to require much explanation here. But the heredity differs in kind 
 from the absolute heredity of theocracies. The Emperor has the choice 
 of his successor not merely amongst the children of the Empress proper, 
 but also amongst the sons of the legitimate concubines permitted him 
 by Chinese law, so that the supreme succession may fall, in a famity 
 habitually numerous, to the one who is really most worthy of it. 
 Theocratic heredity, on the contrary, is of the absolute sort ; the eldest 
 son succeeds, of necessity, to his father ; whereas here the heredity 
 adapts itself to the claims of public order, in such sort as to combine, so 
 far as the circumstances may admit, the natural advantages of heredity 
 with those of choice. The presence of this first elementary force is an 
 unquestionable fact in the whole course of Chinese history ; and from 
 
36 THE EMPEROR. 
 
 the epoch of the earliest legends to our own days we see a single 
 personage, belonging to one particular family, governing China and 
 choosing his successor amongst his sons. 
 
 Amongst the impulses which sway every Emperor of China there 
 are two of the highest importance, corresponding to two distinct orders 
 of functions : the military element or impulse on the one hand, and the 
 pacific, industrial, administrative, in a word the paternal element or 
 impulse, on the other. These two sorts of impulses are found at work 
 deep down in every Chinese Emperor, be his origin or his situation what 
 it may. Let us look first at the military element. Exist it needs must : 
 any sort of civilization developing itself in contact with other civiliza- 
 tions must have power to defend itself ; and, in another way, this 
 military element is developed by the necessity of repressing struggles 
 and intestine disturbances ; by the requirements, in fact, of public order. 
 It is clear that for this purpose, more than for any other, power must 
 be, and is, effectively concentrated in the Emperor's hands. Therefore 
 the Emperor of China has always maintained, in a greater or less degree, 
 a military character. This element is, as we see, essential to the con- 
 stitution of the monocratic power by which China has ever been directed. 
 
 But side by side with this military character, necessitated by the 
 requirements of the situation, we always find a pacific, industrial, 
 superintending disposition, which emanates from the very nature of the 
 civilization itself. I have already explained how the type of Chinese 
 government was borrowed from the family, not from the type of a god 
 who does as he pleases. Hence, as a Chinese expression indicates, the 
 Emperor has always been conceived as the father and mother of his 
 people ; as representing, in fact, all the aspirations and all the duties 
 of the heads of a household, the firmness of the one and the tenderness of 
 the other ; a fact due, as we showed before, to the persistence of the 
 civilization in its Fetishistic stage of development. 
 
 The parts played by these two elements of the inward constitution 
 of the monocratic power have not always been of the same importance. 
 Sometimes the military element has had the lead, at other times the 
 pacific, industrial, administrative element. Nevertheless the general ten- 
 dency of Chinese civilization has been, in the main, to give preponderance 
 more and more to the industrial and pacific character. 
 
WORKING OF THE IMPERIAL POWER. 87 
 
 But whence came the first family of the uninterrupted series of the 
 imperial families of China ? The co-ordination of families into a society 
 is evidently always the work of an influential individual, or, more 
 correctly speaking, of an influential family. Social problems are the out- 
 come of situations, that is, of conditions of affairs in general ; but the 
 solution of the problems, let vague humanitarian thinkers say what they 
 will, belongs always to an individual organ. Some one individual must 
 have united the primitive hundred families from whom the population of 
 China claims descent, 1 and to unite them he must have imported into 
 their spontaneous Fetishism a certain primary degree of astrolatric 
 systematization. The individual who founded the first group of this 
 civilization by uniting the hundred families must of necessity have been 
 the founder of the first imperial family, by giving his own family the 
 foremost position in the social structure ; and thus the first type of the 
 series was furnished. 
 
 The origin and composition of the imperial power being thus ac- 
 counted for, we have next to enquire how it has worked. 
 
 In the first place, the imperial power has been an indispensable 
 element of unity, of stability and of order. It was by this concentration 
 and this hereditary transmission that union and order have been suc- 
 cessfully maintained. By these means alone could the society have been 
 really founded, all aspirations converging towards a single centre which 
 represented them and kept them together. In the second place, the 
 imperial power, being of a military stamp, became at once the engine of 
 extension and of defence for the whole society. Upon it naturally de- 
 volved the duty of warding off attacks from outside, and of gathering in, by 
 a combination offeree and of civilizing action, the populations round about ; 
 thus giving to Chinese civilization at once its extension and its durability. 
 
 Finally, it must be added, the imperial power -has also been a help 
 to internal progress. The eminent emperors of China have always 
 sanctioned and consolidated progress prepared by the labours of prede- 
 cessors. It was by them that the successive steps of progress have been 
 acknowledged and definitively incorporated. 
 
 1 The Chinese call their own population " the hundred families" (Peh-Sing) 
 probably following a tradition which fixed at that number the families whose 
 union formed the nucleus of the nation. 
 
38 THE LITERATI. 
 
 Thus the imperial power has been, in China, the necessary element 
 of unity, of consolidation, of extension, and even of progress for the 
 correlative civilization. 
 
 Let us now consider the second of the elementary forces which 
 have had most to do with the destinies of this civilization, the class 
 of the Learned men, or Literati. 
 
 We have shown, and the fact is all-important, that the institution 
 of caste was repugnant to the nature of Chinese civilization. But this 
 civilization, of necessity, gave rise to an enlightened, administrative, 
 lettered, cultivated class, upon whom, under the supremacy of the 
 Emperor, the direction of the social functions naturally devolved. The 
 accumulation of capital, by affording the means and leisure for direct 
 intellectual culture, renders the rise of a distinct class inevitable. This 
 class, owing to the absence in China of the theological spirit, was not 
 constituted into a caste. It remained simply an enlightened class, 
 possessed, of course, of influence ; and upon it the administration of 
 China naturally devolved. 
 
 This class, in existence from the outset of Chinese civilization, 
 grew with the growth of a population ever more and more industrious ; 
 but it was only under the impulsion of Confucius and his school that it 
 became the Literate or Learned class, and received, as such, its systematic 
 constitution. 1 
 
 Before his time we find ministers, administrators, generals, etc., 
 etc., emerging, not from separate castes, but from the more cultivated 
 part of the population ; but they have no fixed rules, no co-ordinated 
 doctrine to serve as a flag to rally round. It was in Confucius that this 
 class found its doctor, its organizer. I shall accordingly devote a part 
 of our next lecture to a systematic appreciation of the great school of 
 which this eminent philosopher is the founder. What part has the 
 Learned class played in the sum of Chinese civilization ? 
 
 This class has been the regular organ of progress, because it was 
 
 1 We have, in the Chow Li, or ritual of the Chow dynasty, a complete picture 
 of the administrative organization of China between the twelfth and eighth 
 centuries before our era ; and this work, apart from what we learn more directly 
 but briefly from the Shu King, supplies decisive evidence of the existence of a 
 leading class with the general characteristics I have indicated. 
 
CHINESE CIVILIZATION PROGRESSIVE. 39 
 
 able to follow up a course of activity industrial, scientific, social, free 
 from the restrictions and rigid limits which it would have been the 
 tendency of a regime of caste to impose on it. Enduring whilst Chinese 
 dynasties disappeared one after another, it was, at the same time, the 
 organ of true social continuity. Again, it served as a counterpoise to 
 the power of the Emperors, spontaneously limiting that power, 
 diminishing the military element in it, and tending to develop the 
 pacific and industrial element. The Literate class developed in the 
 Emperor the paternal characteristics ; it constructed the theoretical type 
 of the paternal ruler, and, in a slow but unremitting way, pushed 
 towards the realization of such a type. Such was the impulsion under 
 which by degrees was shaped an admirable system of general 
 administration. Lastly, this class is the regular organ of public opinion 
 against inevitable occasional excesses on the part of the sovereign power, 
 and thus constitutes a force that modifies the dominant element. 
 
 Such, then, are the two forces the Emperor and the lettered class 
 that have played the leading part in the evolution of Chinese civilization. 
 
 Having thus finished our abstract estimate of the basis of this 
 civilization, and then ascertained the forces by which it has been directed, 
 we now hold in our hands the clue which is to guide us into the 
 theory of this grand sociological phenomenon, so ill understood hitherto 
 in its totality, notwithstanding the many interesting works that have 
 been written dealing with its details. 
 
 I must begin by dispelling a very wide-spread error respecting the 
 supposed immobility of Chinese civilization. According to a view of the 
 matter which Western ignorance has almost stereotyped, the Chinese 
 people attained a certain degree of civilization in the most ancient times, 
 and have never got beyond it since. This conception constitute a real 
 mystery ; for which those who hold it can not even have recourse to a 
 revelation. For they admit, without any revelation whatever, the sponta" 
 neous advent of a wide-spread civilization an idea evidently absurd. 
 They cannot, in fact, explain by what mysterious means so highly 
 developed a social state should all of a sudden have made its appearance 
 two thousand years before Jesus Christ and have then remained 
 prefectly stationary since. Some erudite writers, of considerable 
 eminence too, in their anxiety to give as remote a date as possible to this 
 
40 ITS DEVELOPMENT ORDERLY 
 
 civilization, have countenanced the conception. They have accepted 
 as literally true the dream of a primary golden age believed in by the 
 Chinese literati. These Chinese men of letters, necessarily looking from 
 an absolute point of view, could not but carry back into the past the 
 ideal type of their civilization ; for them every new step of progress was 
 a return towards a sort of primitive age of gold. This was the process 
 of the absolute spirit for sanctioning necessary innovations without 
 rupturing continuity ; a logical process which we meet with everywhere, 
 and which the scientific spirit alone can replace, by virtue of its relative 
 character. This dream of an age of gold placed at the outset of Chinese 
 civilization, taken too seriously by respectable writers, has given con- 
 sistence to the absurd prejudices of Western ignorance. But this 
 opinion is altogether irrational. Chinese civilization began, as others 
 did, with a stage of extreme coarseness. Their primitive traditions 
 represent their first folks as barely having huts to dwell in, living on 
 herbs and nuts, etc., etc., in short, the state we find at the origiu of 
 other societies. Chinese civilization, then, like all the others, started 
 from a stage altogether lower, and attained, by a long, gradual develop- 
 ment, an immense extension, social as well as territorial. 
 
 There is, nevertheless, in this civilization taken as a whole, one 
 grand characteristic which may have given a certain plausibility to the 
 absurd opinion I have just refuted. It is this. The evolution of 
 Chinese civilization has consisted simply in the development of the 
 germs of its primitive organization. But this grand feature, which I 
 shall bring out with all distinctness, is"an admirable title to the respect 
 of every true philosopher, not a sign of inferiority, as Western anarchy 
 supposes. 
 
 A noble spectacle truly, which only the normal state will be able to 
 realize for all societies, is this of the prolonged development of a civiliza- 
 tion keeping always the same character throughout, instead of the 
 changes, more or less sudden and more or less heterogeneous, which the 
 successive phases of Western civilization present to us. What we see 
 in the West, starting from the theocratic stage, is that succession of 
 unlike though inter-connected social states which constituted the Greek, 
 the Roman, and the Catholic-feudal evolutions : not one of which could 
 be decently fair to the one that preceded it, and habitually, indeed, could 
 
AND ORGANIC. 41 
 
 only curse it. The revolutionary development that began in the four- 
 teenth century has, in many respects, made this bad mental state worse. 
 A series of sudden changes succeeded one another ; that we see : the 
 real link by which they were actually bound together has not been 
 seen at all. Western men of letters have generalized such a view 
 of things ; they have taken the type of disease for the type of health ; 
 and they have adopted this strange conception as their standard for 
 all other civilizations. In China, as a matter of fact, we find nothing at 
 all like these changes of the West. It is always the same civilization, 
 an astrolatric civilization, taking on a continuous increase, but keeping 
 always the same character ; a civilization in which contemporaries bless 
 their ancestors instead of stupidly making it their greatness to curse 
 them and misunderstand them. That is the consoling spectacle which 
 China affords us ; we see there a truly organic development, in which 
 unceasing progress never ignores continuity, the supreme characteristic 
 of all sociability. 
 
 If, in China, we observe a continuous succession in evolution, that 
 does not mean that there have been no revolutions, if, by revolution, we 
 mean only a change of dynasty, not a change in the character of the 
 civilization itself. In the long history of China there have, in fact, been 
 many internal commotions. But to what were they due ? They arose 
 from the necessity of changing, from time to time, the family who 
 occupied the throne, the directing element, the central force of the 
 society. The loftiness of the station of imperial power, had notwith- 
 standing the bounds naturally placed on it by opinion and the corpora- 
 tion of the literati, a strong tendency to unsettle, at the end of 
 a certain time, the understanding and the morality of the natures not 
 sufficiently eminent upon whom the supreme function of state oc- 
 casionally devolved. Hence, internal disturbances were the result of 
 dynastic changes that had become necessary. Now such changes are 
 no light matter. The problem is, in fact, to replace the fundamental 
 organ ; that which maintains the unity of the whole of the population, 
 and is most intimately bound up with all their ways. Such changes are 
 therefore attended by rude shocks ; but these shocks in no way alter the 
 fundamental character of the civilization. It is a matter of eliminating 
 an organ which has fulfilled its function in the social structure. An 
 
42 THE TWO PERIODS. 
 
 analogous process normally takes place in individual organisms, with the 
 accompaniment of a pathological disturbance which soon passes away. 
 Such revolutions do not ignore social continuity. The prevalent concep- 
 tion of progress in the West is as absurd as it is immoral. The state 
 of disease, so far from being deplored, is hallowed : development with- 
 out rule or limit is regarded as a truly normal state. This sad 
 pathological disposition explains how it came to pass that the organic 
 and normal development of a great civilization has been taken as a sign 
 of inferiority by intelligences blunted by the anarchic spirit ; a spirit 
 which exercises its spell even over those who think themselves most 
 conservative. 
 
 If we look at Chinese civilization as a whole we find, in a suf- 
 ficiently authentic way, that it extends from the year 2500 before Christ 
 to our own day. Too much importance need not be given to the 
 number 2500 ; but it is always logically useful, especially in sociological 
 enquiries, and when dealing with primitive epochs, to employ figures. 
 They tend to restrain the propensity to rambling vagueness. But their 
 scientific importance for primordial epochs is not so great as for epochs 
 nearer to our own, considering how slow social evolution is at its 
 beginnings. This great civilization, then, has had a period of develop- 
 ment extending over more than 4000 years. 
 
 The history of the Chinese evolution is divided into two distinct 
 periods. The first extends from about 2500 B. C. till 200 B. C., the 
 time of Ts'iii She Hwang-ti. This is the period of foundation. It is 
 separated from the second period by the remarkable reign of Ts'iir She 
 Hwaug-ti, who was a statesman of puissant energy and strongly marked 
 individuality. He it was who founded the Chinese empire, properly 
 so called. 
 
 The second period extends from the year 200 B. C. to our own 
 day. This is the period of development. The Chinese empire, finally 
 constituted, thenceforth presents to us a continuous evolution, the 
 systematic study of which will at length leads us to an estimate of 
 the present condition of that great country. 
 
 The first phase is that of the establishing of Chinese civilization, 
 from the beginning till Confucius' time. 
 
 This civilization commences with all the attributes by which we 
 
PERIOD OF FOUNDATION. 43 
 
 have seeu it to be distinguished : Fetishism systematized by worship 
 of the sky ; the absence of castes ; the existence of an upper class r 
 admiuisteriug and governing under the direction of a single head ; lastly, 
 the family founded on the worship of ancestors and filial respect. 
 Confucius, about 500 B. C., constructs the philosophy which systematizes 
 such a civilization, and thus lays the foundations of a regular organiza- 
 tion of the lettered class. This phase is terminated by the energetic 
 military action of Ts'in She Hwaug-ti, who at length constitutes China 
 an empire. From this point Chinese civilization, definitively founded, 
 develops itself in a gradual and continuous course. 
 
 Chinese philosophers and historians, swayed by a laudable feeling 
 of continuity, have sought to impart to the history of their society a 
 unity which is not possible in the nature of things. They have 
 imagined that the whole of their later civilization existed in the highest 
 antiquity. These are but dreams of a golden age ; what of truth there 
 is in them amounts to no more than this, that the germs of this civiliza- 
 tion unquestionably date back to a very ancient time ; but they were 
 merely germs, which only the course of ages could develop. 
 
 Tradition places the cradle of Chinese civilization on the banks of 
 the Hwang Ho, or Yellow river, towards the Northern part of its course T 
 that is to say, towards the provinces of Shen-si and Shan-si. At this 
 spot was formed the group which was to become, by a gradual extension, 
 the Chinese empire. 
 
 Chinese civilization next descends that great river, extends itself 
 over both banks, radiates North and South, and at last ends by attaining 
 its present immense extension. Tradition represents the first group as 
 occupying very narrow limits ; the current belief being that it was 
 formed of one hundred families, from whom the whole Chinese population 
 claims descent. But apart from that belief, the tradition is compatible 
 with the known laws of formation of all societies. Moreover, this 
 nucleus is described as being at first in a state of downright savagery. 
 But, once formed, bound together by an astrolatric cult, by the systematic 
 worship of the sky introduced by some one influential family, this 
 nucleus, I say, began to act upon the surrounding population in two 
 different ways ; by conquest, and by the natural action of a more advanced 
 civilization upon peoples not yet politically organized, and therefore 
 
44 CONFUCIUS'S WORK. 
 
 little capable of withstanding such ail influence. We then see this 
 society acquiring a firmer constitution and still further extending its 
 action. But the bent of its primitive energy not being military, the 
 conquests were not stable; and instead of forming a single empire, formed 
 around the predominant people a number of groups or distinct kingdoms, 
 which submitted to the influence of its civilization, but owned no 
 real political subordination. Chinese historians, wishing to make out a 
 perfect unity in the development of their civilization, have represented 
 this state of things as being a sort of breaking up into fragments of a 
 single empire. Up till the time of Confucius, then, the main phenomenon 
 that meets us is this : the development of an astrolatric civilization of 
 the character before described ; the' formation of a great number of small 
 states imbued with that civilization. 
 
 We must now enquire what, in such a situation, was the special 
 role of Confucius. Further on, I shall have to discuss this question more 
 exhaustively ; but it is needful here, in order to mark distinctly the steps 
 of this long evolution, to state now succinctly what his work was. 
 
 The task performed by Confucius was that of constructing for the 
 enlightened, administrative class, themselves the most notable product 
 of Chinese civilization, a philosophic doctrine in which the very nature 
 of that civilization itself received its systematic expression. 
 
 It was a stupendous task ; and never, perhaps, has there been a 
 man who exercised a greater, more profound, more regular action in the 
 development of any society. The doctrine of Confucius, as we shall see 
 further on, established the ideal type of the civilization in view. This 
 systematic doctrine, giving shape to the type to be aimed at, furnished 
 the ideal around which the theoricians, the administrators, all those, in 
 a word, who formed part of the enlightened class, were enabled and 
 impelled to rally. It was the doctrine, in fact, that gave to the class a 
 constitution, a real unity ; it finally founded the class of literati : it is 
 from Confucius that that class dates its embodiment. From this point 
 onwards, Chinese civilization develops with the highest intensity and 
 regularity, because it has acquired, for the first time, a co-ordination of its 
 second directing element. The first fundamental force, the element of 
 unity, of consolidation, that is to say, the imperial power, must have 
 been established from the beginning ; but the modifying element, though 
 
TS'lN SHE HWANG- Tl's 45 
 
 perceptible from the beginning of tbe society and necessarily part of it, 
 did not attain its co-ordination until after Confucius. Tbe reason is not 
 far to seek. It was of tbe very essence of tbe first element tbat it 
 should be concentrated ; it was bound to be systematic, more or less, 
 from tbe beginning ; but tbe second or modifying element, in its nature 
 dispersive, could only at a later stage attain to tbe acquisition of tbe 
 doctrine wbicb gave it co-ordination and enabled it to exercise its charac- 
 teristic action more effectively. 
 
 From Confucius to Ts'iii She Hwang-ti (550 B.C. to 221 B.C.) 
 what state of affairs do we see ? 
 
 Tbe political situation of China, disunited as it was, remains the 
 same ; but the civilizaiiou gradually progresses. The literate class 
 acquires, in each of the petty governments, a daily increasing importance. 
 We see tbe literates going and coming to and fro, taking from kingdom 
 to kingdom their counsels and knowledge of affairs. A philosopher of 
 the sect of Confucius, born in one kingdom, becomes arnandarin, a minister 
 in another. Thus relations more and more regular are established by 
 tbe literate class between kingdoms politically distinct ; in so much that 
 the way becomes gradually prepared for the political unity achieved by 
 Ts'in She Hwang-ti. Similarity of manners and customs is promoted by 
 the influence of tbe literate class, who are no less active in encouraging 
 the industrial and pacific development of the several peoples amongst 
 whom they move. We thus come to Ts'in She Hwang-ti (221 209 
 B.C.). Let us note the part played by this great man, and the surpass- 
 ing importance of his impulsion, notwithstanding the serious mistakes 
 he made. 
 
 He belonged by origin to the dynasty of the Ts'in, whose seat 
 was in the North of China, in what is now tbe province of Shen-si ; and 
 he was head of one of the eight dynasties under which the population of 
 China was at that time distributed. He succeeded in conquering all the 
 other kingdoms, uniting the several states under one rule ; and thus 
 became tbe real founder of the Chinese empire. His own kingdom 
 being near neighbour to the Tartars, it was natural that military power 
 should be more carefully cultivated there than in the kingdoms near 
 the mouth of the Yellow river, where a pacific activity prevailed. It is 
 therefore no matter for surprise that the work of conquest fell to his 
 
46 UNIFICATION OF THE EMPIRE. 
 
 dynasty. His achievement consisted in reducing under one political 
 sway kingdoms which were already allied to one another by a nearly 
 identical civilization. The Chinese empire once really consituted, the 
 conqueror extended his power beyond the Yaug-tse-Kiaug or Blue 
 river, as far as Tonquin, in the region which is now southern China. 
 He thus gathered into the empire populations which were not really 
 Chinese ; amongst whom the civilization before described had not been 
 known. But after their conquest by the arms of the Ts'in monarch 
 these populations were again further subjugated by the civilization of 
 Ohiua. At times these two parts of China have seemed to be in antag- 
 onism ; but in the sequel there has always been a return to political 
 unity. Therefore this warrior's conquest was, after all that can be said, 
 decisive as regards the consolidation and extension of the Chinese empire. 
 She Hwang-ti also drove back the Tartars and held them in check. 
 There was an unceasing struggle waged between Chinese civilization, 
 constantly developing and ever enlarging its area, and the nomads 
 who hung upon its borders to the north and west. Ts'in She Hwang-ti 
 defeated them and was fairly successful in keeping them off. He it was 
 who built the famous wall intended to defend China against the Tartars. 
 But this vast structure was rather a monument of vain glory than an 
 efficacious means of defence. In spite of the famous wall, China has been 
 twice conquered by the Mongols and the Manchus. But their conquest 
 amounted, as has been well observed, to little more than the right 
 of mounting guard within the interior of the vast territory. She 
 Hwaug-ti largely strengthered the military element in the Chinese 
 Government ; hence the strong opposition he encountered from the 
 literati. This military movement, however, was of use, in that it 
 largely aided the firm settlement of the empire of China ; but the 
 literati class was too strongly cemented together, and had its roots 
 too deep in the foundations of this civilization for this step of 
 She Hwaug-ti's to be anything more than a military dictatorship, 
 temporarily useful toward the laying of a sufficiently firm basis for so 
 large an empire. This mighty task, it must be said, She Hwang-ti 
 accomplished in an extremely violent way. It has often been attempted 
 to justify such violent methods by the pretext of necessity. Such 
 .attempts are but an example of that exaggeration to which the 
 
DESTRUCTION OF THE LITERATURE. 47 
 
 absolute spirit is prone. Violence of that sort is ever the outcome 
 of moral inferiority in natures in many other respects eminent. The 
 literati, imbued with the feeling of continuity, anxious for the ad- 
 ministration, for the paternal character which it was their aim ta 
 maintain in the government of China, wholly failed to understand how 
 useful, how necessary She Hwaug-ti's policy was for really laying the 
 foundations of Chinese empire and giving it a sufficient reserve of 
 stability against attacks from without. They could not sufficiently free 
 their minds from the ancient type ; and they confronted the monarch 
 and his minister Li-sze with a keen and persistent opposition. Their 
 resistance then prompted him to a measure of extreme and brutal 
 violence. He ordered all* books to be destroyed, especially the ancient 
 books, most venerated by the people ; and forbade, under pain of death, 
 any one to keep a copy of them. This barbarous order was carried out 
 with the utmost cruelty. Though its complete success was, in the nature 
 of things, impossible, it called forth admirable displays of devotedness 
 on the part of the literati. They showed a noble courage in defending 
 those books in which the wisdom of preceding ages was condensed. 
 Such was the extreme, the unjustifiable measure of the new ruler, 
 who thus, with unpardonable violence, broke down an opposition very 
 natural in itself, and which, in so far as it was unreasonable, he might 
 easily have overcome without recourse to such savage expedients. Be 
 it noted, however, that Ts'in She Hwang-ti, so bitterly hostile to the 
 literate class, the followers of Confucius, was, on the other hand, a 
 declared partizan of the followers of reason, the Taoists. And the 
 reason is plain. The Taoists, like all metaphysicians whatever, had 
 more or less, a contempt for the past; they were sure to be in sympathy 
 with a revolutionary like the Ts'iu conqueror. Coufucius's followers, on 
 the contrary, true representatives that they were of Chinese civilization, 
 had the profouudest respect for antiquity. Indeed, it is worth noticing, 
 that when favour is accorded by Chinese emperors to Taoists or 
 Buddhists, it is generally a sign of retrogression ; a fact easily under- 
 stood when we consider the inferiority of those two systems of doctrine, 
 with their proclivity to vague mental aberrance. 
 
 Such is the summary analysis of this first phase of Chinese 
 civilization. 
 
48 PERIOD OF DEVELOPMENT. 
 
 That civilization Las, in all its essentials, been founded ; the 
 Chinese empire has at length been established. It may experience 
 shocks, struggles, dismemberments ; but the different elements will 
 always draw together again by virtue of their previous association and 
 by the influence of the literate class more and more systematically 
 organized. We shall now turn to the second phase in the continuous 
 development of this civilization, henceforth firmly set upon its foundations. 
 
 From 200 B. C. to our own day the history of China shows us a 
 great number of dynasties, some of which reigned simultaneously, 
 during periods of anarchy. But as our concern here is not with a 
 detailed, concrete history of China, but with a systematic survey of the 
 general march of its civilization, we shall notice, in this long period, 
 only six great dynasties the Han, the Tang, the Sung, the Yuen or 
 Mongols, the Ming, and the Ta Tsing or dynasty of the Manchus. These 
 dynasties are separated by intervals of anarchy, or even of political 
 decomposition ; but it is worthy of note that these intervals of anarchy go 
 on diminishing in duration and intensity in proportion as the civilization 
 consolidates and spreads. The dates of the six principal dynasties are 
 as follows : 
 
 First the Han, from 202 before Christ till 263 after Christ ; then 
 follows the Tang, from 618 till 905 ; the Sung, from 960 till 1119 ; the 
 Yuen or Mongols, from 1295 till 1341 ; the Ming, from 1368 till 1573 ; 
 the Manchns, or Ta Tsing (great pure) dynasty from 1618 to the 
 present day. 
 
 This brief list gives us great chronological landmarks, of which we 
 shall take advantage to set forth, in intervals of time not arbitrarily 
 chosen, the successive steps of progress made by the society we are 
 studying : between the Han and the Tang we see a real political break- 
 up of China ; as likewise between the Tang and the Yuen. Nevertheless, 
 during the time of the dynasties that then reigned simultaneously, the 
 progress of Chinese civilization was not stopped ; it only moved more 
 slowly ; the stamp of unity deeply imprinted by Ts'in She Hwang-ti, 
 and the fundamental similarity of manners and beliefs, systematically 
 represented by the literati class, availed, after the lapse of a certain 
 time, to restore to political unity a civilization ever more and more 
 homogeneous. 
 
THE HAN DYNASTY. 49 
 
 Two kinds of progress went on during this long period ; the 
 internal development of Chinese society, and secondly, its territorial 
 extension. Consequently, its resistance against the surrounding popula- 
 tions (Tartars, Thibetans,) became more efficacious than ever, and 
 ended by bringing them under control ; so that China had all needful 
 stability before she came into contact with the West. This double 
 movement of inward action and outward reaction DOW claims our 
 attention. 
 
 We notice that an important industrial discovery, indispensable to 
 the development of the literati class, was made in the time of the Ts'in 
 despot and improved upon subsequently ; namely, the invention of 
 paper and ink. The improvement of the pencil, or writing brush, is attri- 
 buted to Meng Tien, the most eminent of She Hwang-ti's generals. It 
 is not at all uncommon, in China, for important industrial improvements 
 to be made by military men. So writing with the brush and ink upon 
 paper superseded graving upon bamboo slips, which was the usual mode 
 of propagating documents previously, though on rare occasions in- 
 scriptions were engraved on stone. Graving upon slips of bamboo was 
 a tedious and troublesome process, suited only to an early stage of 
 development of the theoretic and administrative class. As soon as that 
 class began to enlarge along with the expansion of an increasingly 
 industrial society, there was a natural straining after some better means 
 of transcribing speech. The invention of paper and ink was therefore 
 brought about iii a natural way by the wants of the time. This step of 
 progress, once achieved, was of immense help to the development of the 
 learned administrative class, by facilitating the propagation and acquisition 
 of information ; and by thus augmenting the number of well-informed 
 people it of course still further aided the progress of the civilization 
 they moved in. The invention steadily spread, from the time of Ts'in 
 She Hwaug-ti and the great Han dynasty; and the manufacture of paper 
 became one of the important industries of China. 
 
 The second emperor of the Han dynasty, Hwei Ti, (the Benevolent 
 Emperor, 194 to 187 B.C.), revoked Ts'in She Hwang-ti's decree against 
 the ancient books, thus remedying the element of oppression and violence 
 with which that innovator had carried out his reforms. The Han 
 dynasty thus aimed at the work of repair ; it walked in the approved 
 D 
 
50 THE HAN DYNASTY. 
 
 way of Chinese civilization and developed it, while preserving what was 
 essential in Ts'in She Hwang-ti's work, the political unity and a better 
 administrative centralization. One of the best types of the Han dynasty 
 was Wen Ti (179 to 156 B.C.). He encouraged letters, promoted the 
 improvement of agriculture, and in a truly paternal spirit governed with 
 firmness and energy. He realized that noble moral type of the highest 
 function which Confucius and his school had sketched. 
 
 Thus, with reference to an eclipse, a phenomenon of high importance 
 in China, owing to the astrolatric basis of the national worship, Wen 
 Ti published a truly characteristic declaration : 
 
 "I have always heard that Heaven gives to the people it produces 
 41 superiors to nourish and govern them. When these superiors, masters 
 41 of other men, are without virtue and govern badly, Heaven, to make them 
 " enter the path of duty, sends, or threatens them with, calamities. In 
 44 this eleventh month there has been an eclipse of the sun. What a 
 4< a warning that is to me 1 On high, the stars lose their light; below, our 
 41 people are in misery. I recognize in all this my deficiency of virtue. 
 44 Immediately on the publication of this declaration, let there be an inves- 
 41 tigation with all possible attention throughout the whole empire as to 
 41 what my faults are, in order that I may be warned of them. To this end 
 "let the most enlightened, righteous and firm persons be sought for and 
 4i presented to me; on my part, I recommend all those who are in charge 
 44 to apply themselves more closely than ever to fulfilling their duties, and 
 41 in particular, to retrench all useless expenditure, that the people may 
 44 profit thereby." 
 
 Here we see arising, under the initiative of Wen Ti, the regular 
 right of memorializing the emperor, a capital step of progress in this 
 monocratic government. This right of presenting memorials, openly 
 proclaimed by Wen Ti and ever since maintained, was afterwards 
 developed and co-ordinated by the institution of a Council of Censors, 
 whose duty is to warn the emperor. This function, the exercise of which 
 has often been dangerous, has afforded scope for instances of admirable 
 devotedness on the part of the literati, and put a check upon the 
 arbitrariness which supreme power tends to beget. We see in this 
 institution of the Censorate a characteristic example of the continuous 
 effort made by the literate class to exercise a moderating action upon the 
 
THE HAN DYNASTY. 61 
 
 imperial power, by the regular impact of public opinion. For the 
 observations of the Censors, published in the Imperial Gazette, are repro- 
 duced by the gazettes of the provinces. 
 
 In like manner, Wen Ti repealed, by an express declaration, the 
 law of T'sin She Hwang-ti which forbade criticism of the government : 
 
 " To-day We find amongst our laws one which makes it a crime to 
 " speak evil of the government ; the effect of this is not only to deprive 
 44 us of the lights which We might receive from the wisdom of those who 
 " are far away from us, but also to shut the mouths of the officers of our 
 "Court. How, then, is the Prince henceforth to be informed of his 
 "faults and shortcomings? This law, moreover, leads to another 
 "mischief; under pretext that the people have made solemn public 
 " profession of fidelity, submission and respect towards the Prince, if 
 11 any one seems in the smallest matter to fail to make good his profes- 
 " sion, he is accused of rebellion. The most indifferent remarks are set 
 " down, when it pleases the magistrates, as seditious murmurs against 
 41 the government. Thus the people, simple and ignorant, find, without 
 " thinking of it, that they are accused of a capital offence. No; We 
 " cannot endure it ; let that law be repealed." 
 
 On this edict the Emperor Kaug Hi made the following remarkable 
 comment: " Ts'in She Hwang-ti had made many such laws. Most of 
 " them were repealed by the founder of the Han dynasty. This par- 
 41 ticnlar law was not repealed till the time of his successor Wen Ti. 
 " That was too long to wait." 
 
 One of the successors of Wen Ti was Wu Ti, (the Warrior Emperor, 
 140 to 86 B.C.), who not only promoted the internal development of 
 China, but exerted a vigorous and successful reaction upon the surround- 
 ing barbarous populations ; thus making an initial step in that process 
 of extension which, terminating in the eighteenth century, was destined 
 to add Tartary and Thibet, as subordinate constituents, to the great 
 oriental empire. Under Wen Ti the study of history in China was 
 strenuously cultivated. It was in this reign that Sze-ma Ts'ieu (the 
 Herodotus of China) compiled his great work the "Historical Records," 
 "which is in fact a cyclopedia. (See M. Abel Rernusat's notice of it in 
 his New Asiatic Miscellanies, Vol. II). 
 
 It was under this dynasty that Buddhism, officially introduced into 
 
52 THE TANG DYNASTY. 
 
 China, acquired there an importance which has since too often been 
 baleful ; though under the present dynasty it has proved a useful political 
 instrument for dealing with the peoples of Tartary and Thibet, who are 
 under the sway of the Buddhistic creed. 
 
 Between the dynasty of the Han and that of the Tang (from 268 
 to 618 B. C.) a long period intervened, marked often by anarchy, and 
 throughout by political dispersion, the consequence of the convulsions 
 attendant on the necessary displacement of the Han dynasty. 
 
 The Tang dynasty, extending over the period from 618 to 905 
 A. D., is one of the most noteworthy in Chinese history. It is the literary 
 dynasty. It witnessed the appearance of a vast number of literary 
 productions, romances and dramas. Under this dynasty one grand step 
 of progress was accomplished, the establishment of the system of 
 examinations for office. 
 
 This was an event of no slight importance ; for it was the means 
 by which the literati class were put in the way of attaining that organiza- 
 tion which they still preserve. The learned class had developed 
 enormously. From it were taken the ministers of state, the administrators, 
 the judges, all those in short whose calling it was to direct that 
 industrious population. The need of having guarantees in choosing 
 men for administrative posts, so as to render their action as a class 
 uniform, must have made itself felt. It was, then, the essential needs of 
 such a state of affairs that brought about the establishment of the system 
 of examinations. Once established, this system profoundly consolidated 
 the class in question, by giving it more of unity, and therefore more force. 
 Thenceforward it was no longer a vague and ill-defined class, from which 
 the emperor might choose or he might not. It was a really co-ordinated 
 class, wherein the examinations undergone were the legal stepping 
 stone whereby gradual promotion to the highest functions of state was 
 to be attained. This step of progress, giving to the literati greater 
 consistence as a class, had the result of improving its action upon the 
 whole mass of the civilization. The evolution of the society was thereby 
 continued on the same general lines as before. Under this dynasty, too, 
 public schools, colleges, education generally, and the Confucian cult were 
 more and more extended. 
 
 One of the most eminent types of the Tang was Tai Tsung (627 to 
 
THE TANG DYNASTY. 53 
 
 649 after Christ). In him we recognize that ideal of an emperor which 
 was outlined by Confucius and elaborated by his school. " He ordained 
 " that from that time forth Chinese Emperors, before confirming sentence 
 " of death passed upon criminals, should fast for three days." The 
 punishment of death is sanctioned only by the Emperor, except in cases 
 of necessary immediate repression. This definitive confirmation of 
 sentences of death takes place at a fixed period of the year ; and we see 
 with what noble moral precautions the Emperor Tai Tsung surrounded 
 the solemn act by which the necessary elimination of a member of 
 society is authorized. "We are here evidently far away from that mere 
 arbitrariness of a theocracy which has been so lightly attributed to 
 such a government as that of China. 
 
 Tai Tsuug forwarded the development of filial piety, the basis of 
 the family and ultimately of society. He organized a vast system of 
 public works ; also assistance for the aged and infirm ; and his 
 successors continued that aid. The establishment also of foundling 
 hospitals shows how absurd are the tirades upon which Western 
 ignorance is fed as regards the alleged regular organization of infanticide. 
 He wrote a work on the art of reigning. 
 
 " After I have given," says he, " each day the necessary time to 
 " transacting affairs of state, I make it my pleasure to project my view 
 " and thoughts over the histories of the past ; I examine what were 
 " the manners of each dynasty, the good and bad examples of all the 
 " princes, the revolutions and their causes. I always do so with 
 " advantage ; and I have done it so much that I can talk upon the 
 " subject." 
 
 His recommendations to his children are admirable. 
 
 " My son, be just, but be good ; reign over yourself, have absolute 
 " sway over your passions and you shall reign without difficulty over 
 " the hearts of your subjects. Your good example, far more than your 
 " most rigorous orders, will make them fulfil all their duties with 
 " exactitude. Punish seldom and with moderation ; but scatter benefits 
 41 with full hands : never put off till the morrow a favour which you can 
 " confer the same day ; postpone, on the other hand, chastisement 
 " until you have assured yourself that it is deserved." 
 
 It is under this dynasty that the famous Chinese Academy, the 
 
64 THE ART OF PRINTING. 
 
 Han-lin, was established ; a body composed of the most intelligent and 
 cultivated minds, and which has an important share in the literary, 
 political, and moral direction of China. 
 
 This puissant dynasty made its power felt over the Turks and 
 Tartars as far as the Caspian sea. 
 
 It was about the year 931, under the later Tang emperors, that the 
 art of printing was invented in China by the Minister Fung Tao. 
 Movable types are not used ; merely graving on wood. The whole 
 book is engraved on wooden blocks, and then printed, for the most 
 part in a very economical style. Such an invention was strongly called 
 for by the nature and the requirements of the civilization ; and there 
 is room for surprise that it should have had to wait such a long interval 
 after the invention of paper and ink, its indispensable preliminaries. 
 The need of plentifully multiplying copies in a country where the literate 
 class was largely increasing, must have pushed forward the discovery 
 of some way of printing that would admit of copies of the various works 
 being easily and rapidly produced. The situation called for the 
 invention ; and it is not surprising that such an invention should at 
 length have been made amongst so highly industrious a people. The 
 printing is not our mode of printing with movable types ; it consists 
 of wooden blocks or plates, on which are carved in relief the characters 
 forming the work to be reproduced. In the eleventh century of our 
 era the Chinese did, indeed, advance to the invention of movable 
 types; but they make little use of them, preferring the impressions 
 from engraved plates ; not out of the spirit of mere adherence to routine, 
 as Western fatuity supposes, but for very sound reasons. 
 
 There are two reasons why the Chinese have made very little use 
 of movable types for printing, one of them being a social reason, 
 consequent on the conditions of their civilization, the other consequent 
 on the nature of their system of writing. 
 
 The social reason is that the Chinese are much given to reprinting 
 the same books. In the revolutionary West the abuse prevails of 
 producing mediocre, inferior books garbled from excellent original works. 
 China, to be sure, produces commentaries in plenty ; but the respect for 
 social continuity leads to the reprinting of the same texts over and over 
 again. The wooden blocks are therefore worth keeping, all the more so 
 
THE ART OF PRINTING. 55 
 
 as they can be easily and cheaply touched up when they have got worn. 
 It deserves to be noted that publishing can be done in China much more 
 cheaply than in the West. The printing is done on only one side of the 
 sheet, and very rapidly. A workman can strike off two thousand sheets 
 a day. 
 
 But there is also another very good reason for the preference of the 
 Chinese for their own mode of printing ; and that is the nature of 
 their script. With us elementary sounds are represented by letters, few 
 in number, by combinations of which all words can be reproduced. Hence 
 our use of movable letter types. Not so in China. Their writing is 
 not phonetic ; or rather, more accurately speaking, their characters do 
 not represent the elementary sounds, few in number, of which all words 
 whatsoever are made up. When a Chinese written sign or character is 
 used in a phonetic way, it expresses a whole word, not a single articulation 
 merely ; and this phonetic sign is rarely employed alone ; it is usually 
 joined to an ideographic sign, in combination with it. Hence their 
 characters are extremely numerous, and are susceptible of being increased 
 idefinitely, so as to keep pace with the progress of their civilization. 
 The number of these characters may be placed as high as thirty 
 thousand at least. From that it may be seen what an immense number 
 of them it would be necessary to make. The Chinese therefore felt no 
 want of movable type for printing ; and when the art was discovered, 
 they naturally preferred printing from engraved plates, as really the more 
 convenient and economical method of the two. 1 
 
 In the wake of the invention of printing came the institution of 
 Gazettes ; at first the Imperial Gazette, and ultimately provincial 
 Gazettes, by means of which communication is easily and rapidly 
 established between the government and the people. Besides these, the 
 practice of posting up placards, so useful for making appeal to public 
 opinion, is employed both by the government and the public. 
 
 Under the Sung dynasty (960 to 1126 B.C.), the system of examina- 
 
 1 Nevertheless, the adoption by the Chinese of movable type printing is merely 
 a question of time. The practical difficulties, thanks to Christian missionary 
 zeal, have been largely overcome. Block printing has, in Japan, been almost 
 entirely superseded already by movable types. Tr. 
 
56 THE MONGOL DYNASTY. 
 
 tioiis, already in operation for the civil service, was extended to army 
 appointments, much in the same way as examinations have to be 
 undergone in France for admission to the Military, Naval, and Polythechnic 
 schools. The only point that seems to call for remark on this subject 
 is the continual tendency towards the elimination of the arbitrary 
 element in the monocratic power that presides over the destinies of this 
 great people. The attainment of public office is thus not left wholly to 
 the caprice of a master, but is determined by a regular series of proofs 
 of fitness given. 
 
 The great Yuen or Mongol dynasty governed China for 88 years, 
 from 1280 to 1368, after its establishment by a conquest which the 
 Chinese were unable to avert, owing to the political anarchy which the 
 deposition of a dynasty, when necessary, always entails. 
 
 The establishment of the Mongol dynasty supplies us with a 
 capital illustration of the part played by the corporation of the literati 
 as the systematic depositaries of the leading intellectual and moral 
 results of this civilization, and consequently of the character of continuity 
 which they have stamped upon it, thereby keeping its development 
 homogeneous. 
 
 Tims Yehlii Ts'uts'ai, prime minister of Ogdai, (son and successor 
 in 1229, of Genghis Khan), though a Tartar, was an eminent literate, 
 versed at once in all the learning of China and in the profoundest 
 astronomical knowledge of the Mussulmans. Besides introducing that 
 knowledge into China, he led his master to understand how important, 
 how necessary it was to employ the literati as judges and administra- 
 tors. He thereby began, with great tact and devotedness, the work of 
 incorporating the conquerors into the Chinese civilization, so as to 
 ensure its continuity and its progress. " Tartar by origin, and become 
 " a Chinese by the culture of his mind, he was the natural inter- 
 '* mediary between the oppressed race and their oppressors. Placed in 
 " high office near the person of Genghis Khan and his successor, he 
 " found himself a sort of protecting providence of the conquered people ; 
 " and his whole life was spent in pleading before the triumphant 
 " barbarism the cause of the laws, of good order, of civilization and 
 "humanity. He substituted the sway of reason for the yoke of force, 
 " the power of institutions for that of the sword, a system of regular 
 
THE MING DYNASTY. 57 
 
 " imposts for pillage, the slow but irresistible influence of the literati of 
 " China for tbe coarse authority of the conquering Tartars." (Abel 
 Remusat, new Asiatic Miscellanies.) 
 
 The real founder of the Yuen or Mongol dynasty, Kublai Khan (in 
 Chinese Hu-pi-lieh), grandson of Genghis, continued the same policy, 
 and on a grander scale. He became a Chinese himself, and did his 
 utmost to extend his adopted civilization ; and this line of conquerors 
 may be accounted as amongst those which have contributed to the great- 
 ness of China. It was Kublai who made Peking the capital of the 
 Empire. It was in Kublai's reign, too, that the Mongols introduced 
 Lamaism, a form of Buddhism peculiar to Thibet, and marked by an 
 organization of the clergy such as that religion seldom elsewhere exhibits. 
 Kublai died in 1294 ; not before he had added several finishing touches 
 to the system of Chinese administration, and a much needed stiffening 
 to the army. 
 
 In short, the Mongol dynasty maintained the greatness of the 
 empire, and bore a part in promoting its internal development. When 
 the royal house deteriorated, and increasing incapacity rendered its 
 complete elimination necessary, the Chinese expelled it, and drove out 
 its Mongol followers at the same time ; and thus to the Yuen dynasty 
 succeeded the native dynasty of the Ming (1368-1616). 
 
 The T'ai Tsu (great ancestor, 1327-1398) or first sovereign of the 
 line, chose the dynastic style Ming, which means light. Apart from their 
 dynastic style, it is the custom of Chinese Emperors to give to the years 
 of their reign a name indicative of the qualities by which they desire 
 them to be signalized, and it is this name of the reign-years that 
 Europeans habitually mistake for the name of the Emperor himself. Thus 
 K'aug Hi means tranquil prosperity ; but it passes amongst us as being 
 the name of the Emperor who chose this phrase as the designation for the 
 years of his reign. The reign-name of the founder of the Ming dynasty 
 was Hung Wu, (wide warfare), and it is by this name that European 
 writers designate that sovereign himself. He was born in 1327 at 
 Sze-chow, a town in the province of Kiang-nau. The sou of a labourer, 
 he became a Buddhist monk. In the midst of the struggles which 
 marked the decline of the Mongol dynasty he forsook the cloister, and 
 before long gathered round him a vast number of followers, by whose 
 
58 THE MANCHU DYNASTY. 
 
 prowess he succeeded in expelling the Mongols, and even made some of 
 their tribes his vassals. In home affairs he made use of the lettered 
 class to re-establish order ; and he consolidated, by his expeditions 
 against the Tartars, the results of the measures which the cooperation of 
 the literati enabled him to achieve for the further development of the 
 national civilization. This great man's policy was continued by his im- 
 mediate successors. Hung Wu, following the Chinese usage a usage 
 of high social utility published his last will ; in which he set forth the 
 reasons for his choice of a successor, and at the same time gave such 
 instructions as befitted that solemn announcement. This combination 
 of a choice freely made within the circle of the imperial family, and of a 
 public announcement of the choice and of the reasons for it, is a social 
 institution which, in the coming normal state, human societies will 
 adopt and practise on a much wider scale. Hung Wu perfected the 
 internal administration of his empire, promoted useful public works, 
 founded plans of relief for the aged and infirm, extended the practice 
 of the worship of ancestors, of Confucius and of eminent men ; and 
 in a word, actively displayed during a long career all those genuinely 
 social traits which characterize the true type of a Chinese emperor. 
 
 After shining with great lustre and rendering weighty services 
 this dynasty of the Mings gradually changed its character, under the 
 intoxicating influences of supreme power. In the midst of the struggles 
 which necessarily followed in the wake of such a degeneration, the 
 Manchu dynasty, now reigning, came upon the scene as conquerors. 
 The conquest was only effected after the utmost resistance had been 
 offered ; but China was in a state of such utter anarchy at the time that 
 opposition was unavailing. 
 
 The present dynasty dates, officially, from 1616. It has contributed 
 to the development of China in the most efficacious way; on the one 
 hand forwarding, with as much activity as wisdom, its internal develop- 
 ment ; and, on the other, finally reducing Tartary and Thibet to 
 tributary subjection ; thus giving all needful stability to this great 
 civilization before the disturbing occasion of its contact with the West. 
 
 Previous to its contacts with the West, what, in point of fact, was 
 the element that caused disturbance to Chinese civilization ? Evidently 
 it was the Tartars ; that is to say, it was a population, or rather a group 
 
K'ANG HI. 59" 
 
 of populations, nomadic or only half settled in their mode of life, neces- 
 sarily in continual struggle with this industrial, wealthy and peaceful 
 society. Various have been the issues of these struggles ; the Tartars 
 often beaten back, and at times vanquished ; at other times, victorious ; 
 but in the latter case commingling and incorporating themselves in the 
 civilization of China, and, after a period of more or less violent oscillation, 
 helping on its development. The conversion of the Tartars to Buddhism 
 after Genghis evidently paved the way for the definitive subjugation 
 effected by the present Manchu dynasty. K'ang Hi and K'ien Lung, the 
 two leading representatives of this dynasty, at last rendered the Tartars 
 and Thibetans tributary ; thereby giving to Chinese civilization all the 
 consolidation that was either possible or required. 
 
 The best known in Europe of the Emperors of China was K'ang 
 Hi, contemporary of Louis XIV, (reigned from 1662 till 1723). He 
 accorded to the great mission of the Jesuits a sage and enlightened 
 protection. He sagaciously perceived the utility of incorporating with 
 Chinese civilization the scientific knowledge that had been amassed by 
 the peoples of the West. He placed a Jesuit at the head of the Board of 
 Astronomers, after he had, by a judicious experiment, satisfied himself 
 of the superiority of Western over Chinese astronomy. The experiment 
 he devised was this : he ordered both parties to calculate, what, on a 
 given day, would be the length of the shadow cast by a gnomon of a 
 certain size ; a problem which involved a knowledge of the declination of 
 of the sun on that day, and of the solution of a right-angled triangle. The 
 forecasts of the Jesuits were confirmed by experience when the day 
 came, whilst those of the Chinese astronomers were not ; a fact which 
 clearly shows that their astronomy was in a state of infancy. After 
 having completely re-established order in the interior of his empire and 
 having, abroad, by a sage combination of policy and war, prevented the 
 formation of a new Tartar power similar to that of Genghis Khan, 
 K'ang Hi devoted his long career to promoting the internal well-being 
 of his vast dominions. Himself a distinguished scholar, he actively 
 encouraged the spread of letters throughout his realm. 
 
 His grandson Kao Tsuug Shun, called in Europe by the name of the 
 years of his reign K'ien Lung, (enduring prosperity), reigned from 1736 
 to 1796. He completed the subjugation of Tartary, and definitively 
 
'60 KIEN LUNG. 
 
 secured the submission of Thibet. In Thibet it is apparently the Dalai 
 Lama who governs, but he is really under control of the Chinese manda- 
 rins. Under this great and magnificent Emperor internal changes were 
 effected in keeping with the importance of his expeditious abroad. He 
 largely promoted works of public utility, especially certain great opera- 
 tions for preventing the overflowings of the Yellow river. I borrow 
 from M. Abel Remusat a few sentences in which he characterises the 
 iioble nature of this prince, and that sense of responsibility which led 
 him to regard the supreme power as a social function imposing 
 imperative duties; a conception completely in accordance with the 
 philosophy of Confucius, and one which so many worthy Emperors, 
 under the pressure and with the aid of the body of literati, have 
 succeeded in practically realizing. 
 
 " In proportion as the Emperor advanced in age he became more 
 " punctilious in his performance of the ceremonies which form part of 
 " the duties of the sovereign ; and when the infirmities under which he 
 "suffered obliged him to relax somewhat his exactitude, he justified 
 " himself by public declarations of the reasons of his inability. He 
 " was thus all the more diligent in his application to affairs of state ; 
 " and at the age of ninety he used to rise in the middle of the night in 
 " the severest season of the year, to give audiences or transact business 
 " with his ministers. 
 
 " He was gifted with a firm character, a penetrating mind, a rare 
 " activity and a high sense of right. He loved his people as a Chinese 
 11 sovereign ought to love them ; that is to say, he was careful to govern 
 " them with firmness, and at all costs to maintain peace and plenty 
 "amongst his subjects. Six times in the course of his reign he visited 
 " the Southern provinces, and each time it was for the purpose of issuing 
 " useful orders ; causing dykes to be constructed along the margin of 
 " the sea, or punishing the malversations of the great officials, towards 
 " whom he showed himself inflexible." 
 
 K'ieu Lung actively fostered the development of literature, and the 
 general diffusion of instruction : he was himself a distinguished scholar. 
 The missionaries had, therefore, good grounds for putting at the head of 
 the last of their series of memoires, those published by Pere Amiot, the 
 following verse : 
 
PRESENT CONDITION OK CHINA. Gl 
 
 Though ever busied with the cares 
 That link with rule of vast domains, 
 The mightiest potentate earth bears 
 Is scholar best his realm contains. 
 
 We have now, Gentlemen, finished our survey, a cursory one, it 
 is true, but sufficient for our purpose of the concrete development of 
 this civilization. We have witnessed, as it were, the gradual unfolding 
 of a double phenomenon ; the internal development of an industrial and 
 pacific society, under the combined direction of a monocratic power and 
 of an administrative class recruited by a regular system of examinations 
 from all ranks of the population ; and on the other hand, in the midst of 
 continual struggles, the steady enlargement and expansion of that 
 society, which finally subordinates to itself the outside populations by 
 which it had been frequently disturbed. 
 
 Having thus brought our general survey to its close, we must sum 
 up by showing what has been the final outcome of it all ; in other 
 words, we must attempt a summary sketch of the present condition of 
 this great civilization. 
 
 The long evolution, Gentlemen, of which I have established the 
 abstract theory and then given a concrete summary, resulted finally in 
 the formation, in the farthest East, of an immense society, the product 
 of a long and unbroken elaboration of four thousand years. It is this 
 final result that we have now briefly to examine and judge of in its 
 entirety. The view of this great society, at once stable and progressive, 
 which has obtained, far better than any other that has ever yet existed, 
 the so much needed conciliation between order and progress, will suffice 
 to convince you of the superficiality of the foolish prejudices which, in 
 the West, give cover to the ignoble sentiments so prevalent upon this 
 subject. 
 
 The Chinese empire is composed of China proper and of the coun- 
 tries tributary to it, which are : Thibet, Eastern Turkistau, Zungaria,. 
 Mongolia, the country of the Manchus, and Corea, besides a great num- 
 ber of islands off the Eastern shores of China, amongst them Formosa. 
 The subjugation of these tributary countries at the close of the eighteenth 
 century, after struggles that date back to the very infancy of China, and 
 constitute the history of its outward activity, gives to this civilization its 
 
-62 
 
 EXTENT AND POPULATION. 
 
 essential stability; to say nothing of the service rendered to humanity by 
 its civilizing action upon backward populations whose formidable excur- 
 sions in times of yore gave so much trouble even to Western Europe. 
 
 China proper is comprised between the degrees 20 and 42 of North 
 latitude and of 97 and 122 East longitude ; which makes an extent of 
 1,500 miles from North to South, and of about 1,200 Iniles from East 
 to West, or a superficies of over one and a half million square miles. 
 I do not reckon as being in China proper three provinces in the 
 country of Liao-tung and of the Mauchus, which were annexed by K'ien 
 Lung, and placed under a different mode of government from that of the 
 tributary states. China proper is divided into eighteen provinces. 
 
 Here is a table of the population of these eighteen provinces, as 
 obtained from the returns of the official census of 1852 and that of 
 1812. 
 
 OFFICIAL CENSUS OF 1852 AND 1812. 
 
 PROVINCES. 
 
 CAPITALS. 
 
 POPULATION 
 IN 1812. 
 
 POPULATION 
 IN 1852. 
 
 1. Chihli 
 
 Pao-tincr Fu 
 
 27 990 871 
 
 40 000 000 
 
 2. Shantung 
 
 Tsinan 
 
 28,958 764 
 
 41 700 621 
 
 8 Shansi .. .. 
 
 Taiyuen 
 
 14 004 210 
 
 20 166 972 
 
 4 Houan 
 
 Kaifuug 
 
 23 037 171 
 
 33 173 526 
 
 
 Kian^ning 
 
 37 843 501 
 
 54 494 641 
 
 6. Ngunhwui 
 
 NfiDfifkrnfl 
 
 34 168 059 
 
 49 201 992 
 
 
 Nanchantf 
 
 23 046,999 
 
 43 814 866 
 
 8. Fuhkien 
 
 Fuhchow 
 
 14 777 410 
 
 22 699 460 
 
 9 Chehkiang 
 
 Hangchow 
 
 26 256 784 
 
 37 809 765 
 
 10. Hupeli 
 
 Wuchantf 
 
 27 370 098 
 
 39 412 940 
 
 11. Hunan 
 
 Changsha 
 
 18 652 207 
 
 26 859 608 
 
 12. Shensi 
 
 Sin^an 
 
 10 207 256 
 
 14 698 499 
 
 13. Kansuh 
 
 Lanchow 
 
 15 193 125 
 
 21 878 190 
 
 14 Szech'wau 
 
 Chingtu 
 
 21 435 678 
 
 30 867 875 
 
 15. Kwangtung 
 
 Kwun w chow 
 
 19 174 030 
 
 27 610 128 
 
 16. Kwangsi 
 
 Kweilin 
 
 7 313 895 
 
 10 584 429 
 
 17. Yunnan 
 
 Yunnan 
 
 5 561 430 
 
 8 008 300 
 
 18. Kweichow 
 
 Kweiyaug 
 
 5 288 219 
 
 7 615,025 
 
 
 
 
 
 Totals 
 
 
 360.279.597 
 
 536.909.300 
 
ACTYITY PACIFIC AND INDUSTRIAL. 68 
 
 We may say that China proper has a population of at least 
 400,000,000 of inhabitants subject to a uniform system of government ; 
 a fact which is surely, in itself, the most striking result of a social evolu- 
 tion of unparalleled duration and continuity. 
 
 Let us first of all see what is the general kind of activity mainly 
 and chiefly manifested by this immense population. A grand spectacle 
 we have there before us, Gentlemen ; a population of fully four hundred 
 millions given up to an activity that is essentially pacific and industrial, 
 and amongst whom, thanks to the subjugation of Tartary by the 
 dynasty now ruling, the army is reduced to the normal function of 
 mere police, that of maintaining order against internal disturbance, 
 whether occasioned by individuals or by mobs. 
 
 Private property is perfectly respected, alike in the acquisition, the 
 employment and the transmission of it ; and this is as true in the case 
 of movable property as in the holding of land. Security, in this respect 
 the essential basis of all activity, as of all civilization, is as great in 
 China as it is in the best governed countries of Western Europe. 1 
 The land is very much parcelled out ; the system of small properties has 
 there been carried to a high degree of development. The class of small 
 cultivators, the farmers, are held in such respect that they rank next 
 after the literati. Even where large farming exists it is the exception, 
 not the rule. Large farming is essentially modern, and peculiar to the 
 
 1 " The great wealth of the empire, the cheerful and indefatigable industry of 
 the people, and their unconquerable attachment to their country, are all of them 
 circumstances which prove, that, if the government is jealous in guarding its 
 rights, it is not altogether ignorant or unmindful of its duties. We are no 
 unqualified admirers of the Chinese system, but would willingly explain, if 
 possible, some of the causes which tend to the production of results whose 
 existence nobody pretends to deny. In practice there is of course a great deal of 
 inevitable abuse ; but upon the whole, and with relation to ultimate effects, the 
 machine works well : and we repeat that the surest proofs of this are apparent on 
 the very face of the most cheerfully industrious and orderly, and the most wealthy, 
 nation of Asia. It may be observed that we make great account of the circum- 
 stance of cheerful industry; because this characteristic, wliich is the first to strike 
 all visitors of China, is the best proof in the world that-tbe people possess their 
 full share of the results of their own labour. Men do not toil either willingly or 
 effectively for hard masters." The Chinese : by John Francis Davis. 
 
64 AGRICULTURE. 
 
 West. It is a consequence of the development of the abstractive faculty 
 amongst the people of the extreme West. In the future, large farming 
 will be, to a far greater extent than it is at present, the condition and 
 the basis upon which agricultural industry will be systematized. Cattle- 
 grazing, the forerunner of large farming, can hardly be said to exist in 
 China, especially in the South. The culture of cereals, and, above all, 
 of rice, is the great object of Chinese agriculture. The absence of 
 grazing farms, and the consequent scarcity of manure, in spite of the 
 indescribable trouble the Chinese take to utilize everything in that way, 
 is inevitably a cause of exhaustion of the soil. But these undeniable 
 inconveniences, inherent, indeed, in the nature of such a civilization,, 
 are far more than compensated by the existence of the immense class 
 of small cultivators ; a class free, energetic and independent ; traits 
 which necessarily result from the hard- working, sober life of a population 
 whose personal property is respected as it should be. 
 
 The culture of pot herbs, of flowers, gardening, has been highly 
 developed in China, and has attained an unrivalled degree of 
 perfection. The culture of trees, as the bamboo, the tea shrub, etc., is 
 one of the great branches of husbandry. The staple of Chinese food 
 is essentially vegetable. Of animal food, pigs and fowls are the main 
 items. In the Northern provinces of China, supplies of beef, mutton and 
 venison are got from Tartary. The implements of husbandry are of 
 the simplest kind. The skill and vigour of the husbandman makes up 
 for the inevitable imperfection of his implements, in keeping, as they 
 are, with the small properties they are used upon. For the rest, 
 Chinese agriculture enjoys the benefit of a vast system of irrigation 
 works. We may therefore readily understand the tremendous im- 
 portance the Chinese people attach to irregularities in the weather, 
 fraught as these may easily be with such serious consequences for the 
 food supply of so vast a population. Hence the immense development 
 of public granaries, of which we shall make mention again. And this 
 extreme concern about the phenomena of the weather has been greatly 
 accentuated by the fetishism in which the whole civilization is rooted. 
 
 Agriculture is the main end of the activity of this pacific population. 
 Public opinion in China has always sanctioned the pre-eminence* 
 accorded to this essential basis of all industrial activity. 
 
INDUSTRIES. 65 
 
 Let us uow take a look at their manufactures and commerce, that 
 is to say, the work of appropriating raw materials aiid the establishment 
 of means for facilitating exchange of commodities. 
 
 Their industrial processes are essentially empirical, and show little 
 or nothing of that employment of machinery which comes of the practi- 
 cal applications of the abstract sciences ; but the Chinese display, in 
 their industries, a remarkable activeness and sagacity, combined with 
 indomitable patience and great sobriety. We should note, what indeed 
 may be readily conceived, that Chinese industry is, above all, petty 
 industry ; that is, on a small scale, just as their husbandry is petty 
 husbandry. This is a consequence of the insufficient concentra- 
 tion of capital, and of "their inferiority in the employment of large 
 machines. 
 
 The silk industry has, in China, and has had from the highest 
 antiquity, a noteworthy importance and dimensions. In the single city 
 of Hang-chow more than 60,000 workers in silk were counted, and more 
 than 100,000 in the villages adjoining it. The cotton industry in China 
 has a like, but somewhat lesser importance than that of silk. As for the 
 porcelain industry, its perfection and the immense amount of its produc- 
 tions are too well known to require description. But, to convey an 
 idea of the industrial activeness of this population, making use of every- 
 thing with unflagging perseverance, I may cite the following words, 
 written by a missionary of the seventeenth century (New Account of 
 China, written by Father Gabriel de Magaillans, of the Society of 
 Jesus) : 
 
 " For, as iu this kingdom there is not a useless foot of land, so 
 " neither is there a man nor woman, young, old, halt, maimed, deaf or 
 " blind, who is without the means of making his living, without an art 
 " or occupation of some sort. The Chinese have a common saying, * In 
 ' the kingdom of China nothing is thrown away.' However worthless 
 " or useless a thing may appear, a use is found for it, a profit of some 
 " sort made out of it. For instance, in the city of Peking alone there are 
 " more than a thousand families whose sole means of livelihood consists 
 " in selling matches or sulphur tipped touch-wood for kindling fires : 
 " there are at least as many more who live by raking up, in the streets 
 " and amongst sweepings, rags of silk stuffs, rags of cotton and hemp 
 E 
 
66 BAMBOO CULTURE. 
 
 " fabrics, bits of paper and other such like things ; which they wash and 
 " clean up and then sell to others, who put the fragments to use in a 
 " variety of ways by which they make a profit." 
 
 By way of conveying a notion of the industrial sagacity of the 
 Chinese people I may point out the various services they contrive to get 
 by cultivating the bamboo. 
 
 The Chinese have, by systematic cultivation, attained such skill as 
 to be able to produce an immense variety of kinds of bamboo : varieties 
 in size and height, in the distance of the knots, in the colour of the wood, 
 in the superficies of the stem, in the substance and thickness of the 
 wood, in the branches, in the leaves ; in short, they produce fixed 
 peculiarities in the bamboo, and these peculiar features are perpetuated ; 
 such, for instance, as the formation of shoots or fleshy excrescences, 
 good to eat. The bamboo, thus improved by skilful cultivation, is em- 
 ployed for a host of purposes. 
 
 11 The young sprouts of bamboo, when they begin to come forth 
 " from the earth, are as tender and as delicate as asparagus. They are 
 " cut, and form a wholesome and agreeable article of food. The con- 
 " sumption of this comestible is immense, and gives rise to a consider- 
 " able trade. What is not required for local consumption is carried 
 " elsewhere, even to the furthest ends of the empire. To prevent the 
 " young sprouts from rotting, they are cut in quarters, then steamed for 
 "a certain time aud dried. Thus prepared, they keep for a long time, 
 11 and can bear transport to great distances. The bamboo, though 
 " hollow, is very strong, and, used as a pole, can bear very heavy loads ; 
 11 and is occasionally used in place of wood in carpentry. The trunk is 
 " very hard to cut across, but can be split lengthwise with the greatest 
 " ease. Sometimes mats are made of the thin threads into which it can 
 "be divided; aud a host of pretty things, such as boxes with com- 
 " partmeiits, combs, etc., are made from bamboo slips. Being naturally 
 " hollowed pipes, the bamboo stems are used as conduits for water both 
 " under and above ground. The stems, when broken fine and macerated 
 " inwater, form a pulp or paste of which different kinds of paper are made. 
 " The wood of the bamboo, smooth, close and easily polished, admits of 
 " every kind of ornamental carving, and can be gilt or silvered or era- 
 " bossed with ivory. Boiled in cabbage water and subjected to pressure, 
 
LARGE INTERNAL COMMERCE. 67 
 
 "it will receive, and keep permanently, impressions all over its surface. 
 " According to Father Cibot, it is no exaggeration to say tLat the mines 
 " of this great empire are of less value to it than its bamboos ; and that 
 "next to rice and silk, it possesses no greater source of revenue." 
 (L'Albe Grosier, China, vol. II. p. 381.) 
 
 The real commerce of China is its internal commerce, which is 
 developed on an enormous scale. The amount of this home trade may 
 be easily imagined when we take into account the immense extent of the 
 empire and the density of its population. The trade is mainly carried 
 on by water. China is one vast net work of rivers and canals ; its inland 
 navigation is tremendous. The government carefully looks after these 
 channels of inter-commnnication between the various provinces. China 
 is a world apart, self-sufficing : it does, in fact, itself supply its own 
 needs in no inadequate way. 
 
 " I navigated," says Father Magaillans, " by order of the Emperor, 
 " in the year 1656, the whole of the grand canal and other rivers from 
 " Pekiug to Macao, more than 1500 miles, without going by land more 
 " than one day's journey, and that was to cross a mountain which 
 " separates the province of Kiangsi from that of Kwangtung. On the 
 " 4th of May, 1642, I set out from the town of Hangchow, capital of 
 " the province of Chehkiang, and on the 28th of August of the same 
 " year I arrived at the city of Chiugtu, the capital of Sz'ch'uen. In 
 " those four months I travelled, always by water, more than 1000 
 "miles, counting the windings of the rivers ; one month of the time I 
 " navigated two different rivers, but for the other three months I was 
 " always on the great river Kiang, the child of the ocean, as it is called. 
 " Throughout that long voyage I daily met such a number of trains or 
 " rafts of wood of all sorts that if they were all joined together they 
 " would have made a bridge which it would have taken several days to 
 " walk over. I sailed by some of them that were moored to the bank by 
 " the hour at a time, and sometimes for half a day." 
 
 This vast home trade has been largely developed since the time 
 when Father Magaillaus wrote. Indeed, the foreign trade of China is 
 quite insignificant for such a population, in spite of the great impulse 
 given to it in the present century. Foreign trade has done China more 
 harm than good, by communicating to her mainly our vices, to say 
 
68 SMALL FOREIGN TRADE. 
 
 nothing of the special dangers attendant upon contact with people 
 who acknowledge no duties of any sort towards Oriental populations. 1 
 
 Again, trade with the West (that with Russia excepted) is not, so 
 far as China is concerned, an exchange of useful commodities ; China 
 is paid in money. Two thousand years ago an Emperor of China, 
 placing himself worthily at the social point of view, formed a very 
 judicious estimate of the worth of trade of that sort : 
 
 " Money that comes into a country by trade only enriches it in so 
 " far as it again goes out of it by trade. There is no trade that is 
 " beneficial in the long run but that which consists in necessary or 
 " useful exchanges. Trade in objects of display, of finery or of fancy, 
 " whether it be made by way of barter or purchase, implies luxury. Now 
 " luxury, which means superfluous abundance on the part of certain 
 " citizens, implies the want of necessaries on the part of many others. 
 " The more horses rich people harness to their chariots, the more people 
 " there are who have to go on foot. The more vast and magnificent 
 " their houses are, the smaller and more miserable are the houses of 
 " the poor ; the more their tables are covered with viands, the more 
 " people there are who have to live upon rice. The best that we in 
 " society can do by force of industry, of work and economy, is to secure 
 " that all have the necessaries and some the comforts of life." 
 
 Such, then, Gentlemen, is the general activity of this industrious 
 population. We have now to study its constitution, estimating first, 
 the family, and then the society properly so called. 
 
 The foundation of the family in China, and indeed, as I have already 
 shown, of all society, is filial piety, the feeling of respect for father and 
 mother and ancestors. The family as thus constituted upon its essential 
 basis, the power of the father, the reverence for ancestors, have been 
 constant subjects of concern with Chinese legislators and philosophers. 
 
 The cult of ancestors and of the tomb, a consequence of the fetish- 
 istic spirit, has been reduced to system in China in such a way as to 
 constitute a private worship which has strongly consolidated the family ; 
 regular visits to the tomb, carefully keeping it in order, are essential duties 
 
 1 These strictures were more just a quarter of a century ago than they 
 are now. Tr. 
 
THE WORSHIP OF ANCESTORS. 69 
 
 of every Chinese, whatever be the doctrines, theological, Buddhistic or 
 other, which may have been superadded to the fetishistic substratum of 
 his mental state. Every family, however numerous its branches, has a 
 common hall of ancestors, in which regular commemoration ceremonies 
 are performed, and in these the place of honour is always assigned to 
 age, independent of social station. Again in each branch family a room 
 is set apart for direct ancestors, in which are placed the tablets which 
 represent them, and there the head of the house always goes to inform 
 them of all events of any importance which take place in the family. 
 
 Such is the admirable institution of the cult of ancestors ; an 
 institution very closely allied to the ideal normal state of the human 
 family, of which the essential characteristic is continuity. To develop 
 this sentiment systematically is the best way to assure the true 
 progress of the family, by developing what is most organic in its 
 constitution. This respect for continuity, largely developed in the Family, 
 besides ensuring to the family its due stability, serves also to prepare 
 for Society natures truly organic, and free from that disrespect for the 
 past which, in the peoples of the West, stimulates all kinds of disturbances 
 in the present. We may therefore rest assured of the correctness of 
 the Chinese maxim that a bad son is ever a bad citizen. And, to com- 
 plete the matter, this fine constitution of the family has been perfected in 
 a characteristic way by the admirable social custom which makes the glory 
 acquired by descendants date back to the ancestors, instead of being 
 handed down to the successors, the plan followed in the theocratic 
 regime. So holy an institution will always merit the respect of every 
 true philosopher ; and in proportion as, under the impulsion of the 
 religion of Humanity, the West advances towards the normal state, it 
 will incorporate in suitable fashion this grand creation. In place of the 
 Western usage which, in most cases, especially in our times, only ensures 
 to the successor of an eminent man the possibility of an idle and useless 
 life, the Chinese institution, resting upon a fully developed sentiment 
 of filial piety, offers, as the principal recompense for noble efforts, the 
 possibility of bringing honour on one's ancestors, whilst at the same time 
 it encourages the desire of so training up successors that they may be 
 worthj T some day so to glorify one's name. 
 
 The relations between brothers, far from being left to an anarchical 
 
70 STABILITY OF THE FAMILY. 
 
 equality, as in the West, are morally regulated on the principle of the 
 younger being subordinate to the elder ; and this conduces not only to 
 the order and stability of the family, but also to the development of true 
 brotherly affection. In spite of the superficial prejudice of the revolu- 
 tionary spirit, it cannot be denied that a certain degree of recognized 
 subordination, creating as it does reciprocal duties, is far more favourable 
 to the engendering of real affection than an unregulated equality, which 
 only serves to foster strife between selfish rivalries and claims. 
 
 Finally, the very development of Chinese civilization itself, has, 
 silently and imperceptibly, reacted upon the Family in such a way as to 
 give it further strength and perfectness. Such reaction is due to the 
 influence necessarily exercised upon the Family by the very fact that the 
 Society has had a long course of evolution, of which the continuity has 
 never really been broken. However far back a Chinese may go iu 
 tracing the series of his ancestors, he always finds himself in natural 
 sympathy of opinion with them ; consequently the respect for ancestors 
 always derives additional strength from consideration of the past, instead 
 of being weakened by it. In the West, on the contrary, the continuity 
 of social evolution has been often broken. How, for example, can 
 respect for ancestors attain, in a Christian, any very deep consistence, 
 when, in tracing far enough back the series of the ages, he comes to 
 ancestors whom he is bound to hold as accursed ? A doctrine which 
 establishes itself by cursing its predecessors must exert a sad influence 
 upon the feeling of respect for ancestors. Hence the cult of ancestors and 
 of the tomb, which fetishism bequeathed to polytheism, has been disowned 
 and neglected by monotheism. In Corneille's great master-piece, 
 Pauline, as a pagan, respects her father's orders ; as a Christian, she 
 becomes, to follow her own expression, 
 
 " A holy rebel 'gainst the laws of birth." 
 
 The revolutionary movement, properly so called, has greatly aggra- 
 vated the profound moral mischief wrought by the rupture of social 
 continuity. How can filial respect flourish in a society where each 
 generation despises and curses the one which immediately preceded it ? 
 In the West, then, the inevitable reaction of the revolutionary state 
 shakes and destroys that sacred foundation of the family which the 
 continuous evolution of Chinese civilization strengthens and consolidates. 
 
THE CONJUGAL RELATION IMPERFECT. 71 
 
 In spite of the stupid conceit of revolutionary Christians, deists or 
 atheists, the Family is, in China, so far as regards the filial and fraternal 
 relations, much nearer the normal state than is the Family in the West, 
 and is therefore, in those points, deserving of imitation and respect. 
 
 It is in the conjugal relations that the relative inferiority of the 
 Chinese Family is manifested. The monogamic stage of social develop- 
 ment has been only imperfectly attained in China. The law only allows 
 one legitimate wife, but it sanctions a regular concubinage. It should 
 be noted, however, that this legal concubinage is, in point of fact, 
 confined to those who are rich, or really well off; and that even amongst 
 these it is far from being as extensively practised as the law would 
 allow. Whereas, in the- West, especially in the great centres of activity, 
 we only too often see an irregular concubinage, which binds to no legal 
 duty whatever, take the place of the regular concubinage for which 
 Chinese legislation makes provision. When, however, the W'est, 
 regenerated, shall be in a position to maintain with China intercourse of a 
 kind other than that growing out of an unbridled rapacity, it will most 
 assuredly be in the amelioration of the conjugal relations amongst the 
 well-to-do classes in China that it will be able to make its beneficent 
 action felt. It is on this point that the Western Family, especially if 
 regenerated by the Demonstrable Faith, shows its true superiority, whilst 
 it is undeniably inferior, in our own days more than ever, as regards the 
 filial and the fraternal relations. And, of a truth, the Chinese can do 
 more for the moral amelioration of the West, by the spectacle they 
 present to us of a regulated society, than we can do for their intellectual 
 and material amelioration by the dubious benefit of our industrial 
 improvements ; especially when these improvements are being pushed on 
 with a daily increasing disregard of the moral effects of the changes they 
 produce. This ignoring of the moral and social aspects of industrial 
 progress, has, however loudly an extravagant liberalism may protest, an 
 incontrovertible tendency to produce, as the type of civilized man, a 
 materially very powerful sort of brute. Indeed the consequences of this 
 shameless industrial licentiousness as seen in the labouring classes, for 
 it is there that the effects of the movement are felt in their fullest 
 intensity, are not in the least likely to attract the Chinese in the 
 direction of imitation. 
 
72 THE NATIONAL WORSHIP. 
 
 Let us now form an estimate of the Society, in the widest accepta- 
 tion of that term, and first of all, of its cult. 
 
 Fetishistic adoration systematized by astrolatry is, as I have shown, 
 the official cult of China. But with this official worship is coupled 
 that of great men, or rather the systematic worship of all those, men 
 or women, who have rendered to society any services whatever, intel- 
 lectual, industrial or moral. This worship of noble natures is headed by 
 that of Confucius. 
 
 After the Sky and Earth, Confucius comes next in importance as an 
 object of worship : he is, for China, pre-eminently The Philosopher, and 
 when we come to form a systematic estimate of that great sage we shall 
 find that he well deserves the worship paid to him. The cult, then, of 
 great and noble natures, completing a fetishistic Sky-worship such is 
 the official cult of China, faithfully representing the real spirit of that 
 great civilization and giving to that spirit, by means of its regular 
 exercises, a firmer consistency. It is clear that the regular cult of great 
 natures was sure to spring up amongst a people with whom the very 
 constitution of the family had led to the regular cult of ancestors. 
 The cult paid to the family's ancestors was extended to the ancestors 
 of the society. This systematic respect for the past, the mark of a 
 truly organic civilization, kept up and developed that respect for old 
 age which we derive from Fetishism, but which, in common with the 
 other foundations of all sociability, is being more and more compromised 
 by our Western anarchy. We have thus, in the official cult of China, a 
 homogeneous series, combining the adoration of the principal exterior 
 beings (heaven, earth, rivers) with the adoration or cult of the principal 
 representatives of society, from the greatest philosophers down to the 
 direct ancestors of each family. 
 
 Provinces remarkable for particular productions have special tem- 
 ples. Thus the province of Chekiang has a temple dedicated to the first 
 silk- worms, because sericulture has been developed in that province from 
 time immemorial. 
 
 The mandarins are the priests of the official cult ; the solemn 
 sacrifices to the Sky are celebrated by the Emperor in person. 
 
 But beside and along with the official cult a Chinaman will make 
 use of religious ceremonies borrowed from Taoism, or Buddhism, or 
 
THEOLOGICAL CREEDS DESPISED. 73 
 
 other belief more or less superstitious. Many even of the mandarins 
 do not remain exclusively faithful to the orthodox official cult, but 
 combine with it Buddhist or Taoist practices. But these practices 
 neither in any way alter nor enter into the official cult of China ; they 
 are, in fact, often despised by the very persons who yet make use of 
 them. And a respect for Buddha is a matter of necessity with a 
 government which numbers immense Buddhistic populations amongst 
 its tributaries. But the real statesmen of China have a clear and 
 judicious appreciation of the superiority of the official cult over the 
 theological cults which exist alongside of it. I will quote here a few 
 passages which are conclusive on that point. The Emperor Kang Hi 
 published, under the name of Sacred Edict, a number of moral maxims, 
 upon which a commentary was written by order of his successor Yung 
 Chiug. A mandarin, Superintendent of the Salt gabelle in Shensi, 
 named Wang Yu-po, wrote a paraphrase of the work which is current 
 throughout the empire ; and it contains some truly characteristic 
 observations on the topic we are now treating of. 
 
 One of the points which the royal commentator inculcates with the 
 greatest force is the aversion for false sects ; and that of Fo (Buddha) 
 which is of alien origin, is the object of his special disapproval. He 
 speaks with contempt of the dogmas on which it is founded, and pours 
 derision upon its practices. The Buddhists, like the followers of other 
 Indian sects, attach great importance to certain sacred words or sacred 
 syllables, which they perpetually repeat ; believing that by the mere 
 articulation of these holy syllables they purify themselves from all their 
 sins, and ensure their salvation by this easy devotion. The literate 
 treats this usage with amusing raillery. " Suppose," says he, " that you 
 44 had committed some violation of the law, and that you were being led 
 " into the judgment-hall to receive sentence ; if you were to take to 
 " crying out with all your might ' Your Worship ' some thousands of 
 " times, do you imagine that the magistrate would let you off for that ? " 
 (Abel Remusat, Asiatic Miscellanies.) 
 
 The literate then sums up, with great good sense, the demonstra- 
 tion of the inferiority inherent in any theological cult. 
 
 " If you neglect to burn paper in honour of Buddha, or to lay 
 4t offerings on his altars, he will be displeased with you, and will let his 
 
74 THEOLOGICAL CREEDS DESPISED. 
 
 "judgments fall upon your heads. Your god Buddha, then, is a mean 
 "fellow. Take for a pattern the magistrate of your district. Even if 
 " you never go near him to compliment him or pay court to him, so 
 " long as you are honest folk and attentive to your duty, he will be 
 " none the less ready to attend to you ; but if you transgress the law, 
 " if you commit violence, or trespass on the rights of others, it would be 
 " useless for you to try a thousand ways of flattering him : you wil^ 
 " always be subject to his displeasure." 
 
 The same literate, following up the views of the Emperor Yung 
 Ching, expresses the following judgment of the Catholic religion and the 
 part it had played in China : 
 
 " The sect of the Lord of the Sky too, (Catholicism"), that sect which 
 " is always discoursing about heaven and earth and about beings without 
 " shadow or substance, that religion is itself a corrupt and perverted one. 
 "But, because the Europeans who teach it know astronomy and mathe- 
 " matics, the government employs them to correct the calendar. That, 
 " however, does not signify that their religion is a good one ; and you are 
 " not in any way bound to believe what they tell you. " 
 
 Such is the point of view systematically taken by the true literati in 
 judging of all theological religions whatsoever. 
 
 Having gained an insight into the cult, we must now rapidly sketch 
 the organization of this vast empire. 
 
 The government is concentrated in the hands of the Emperor. He 
 has supreme sway ; but although, in the last resort, every decision 
 emanates from him, this sway is limited, like all power whatever, by 
 the mass of opinions and rules established from time immemorial, which 
 no dynasty could long violate with impunity. As an instance of such 
 checks, take the fact on which I have already dwelt at some length, that 
 the imperial type is borrowed from the family ; that the emperor is 
 regarded, and regards himself, as the father of his subjects, and therefore 
 bound by the duties of such a function ; not as a sort of divinity, acting 
 according to arbitrary caprices, after the manner of the theological type. 
 It is under the constant weight, therefore, of such a conception that the 
 sovereign sway is exercised and accepted. Besides that, a set of 
 practices and precepts, long ago created as the sequel of the social 
 antecedents, regulates the exercise of the sovereign power. 
 
GOVERNMENTAL SYSTEM. 75 
 
 The emperor chooses his successor amongst his children, keeping 
 clear, as much as possible, of those hereditary trammels which are imposed 
 under the regime of theocracies. 
 
 There is no hereditary aristocracy. The reason of this grand 
 sociological phenomenon I explained in my previous lecture. The 
 governing class recruits itself, by examinations duly graduated, from 
 amongst all classes of the population. There are three successive 
 examinations conferring degrees corresponding nearly to our Bachelor of 
 Arts, Master of Arts and Doctor. The degree of Bachelor, or Licentiate 
 is open to every one who passes the regular provincial examination. 
 The Masters, in turn, are chosen, by examinations, from amongst the 
 Bachelors ; and the Doctors, by the same method, of course, are taken 
 from amongst the Masters. Government employes, even for the highest 
 posts, are chosen out of the Masters and Doctors. So that China is 
 administered and governed by a class that is not hereditarj 7 , emanating 
 from the ranks of the people, through a regular system of tests which 
 give merit its due. In practice many abuses may be, and no doubt 
 are, committed in the obtaining of degrees ; but taken in the whole as 
 it stands, this organization governs and administers a population of 
 over four hundred millions of men in such a way as to secure for the 
 greatest number material and moral existence as well, certainly, as 
 those benefits are secured for any other population of the planet. 
 
 Such, then, Gentlemen, is the governing class ; so constituted and 
 so recruited throughout the empire. Let us now see how it regularly 
 distributes and shares the diverse special offices. 
 
 At the summit of the hierarchy are placed two Councils, one, the 
 Grand Council, or Council of State, the other the Grand Secretariat. It 
 is the duty of these Councils to look after the whole machinery of the 
 government. 
 
 Then come the Six Boards, sitting at Peking, which control, each 
 in its allotted department, the working of the state regulations. They 
 constitute, in fact, the central administration. They are : 
 
 1. The Board of Civil Office, charged with the choosing, appoint- 
 ments and promotion of the civil functionaries of all grades. 
 
 2. The Board of Revenue, having charge of all that relates to the 
 taxes, duties and revenue of the empire. 
 
76 GOVERNMENTAL SYSTEM. 
 
 3. The Board of Ceremonies, which has the superintendence of 
 everything connected with rites, the worship of the ancestors of the 
 reigning dynasty, and grand solemnities, civil or religious. 
 
 4. The Board of War. 
 
 5. The Board of Punishments. 
 
 6. The Board of Works. 
 
 Each of these Boards is directed by a council, with the President 
 at its head, who has less power than a Minister of State in Europe, as he 
 is under the necessity of consulting his colleagues. Under the present 
 dynasty each Board has two Presidents, respectively Manchu and 
 Chinese. 
 
 Each Board, again, is divided into sub-departments. The Board 
 of Revenue, for instance, has fourteen such subordinate branches ; 
 whilst the Board of Rites has only four. 
 
 Let us now see, Gentlemen, the territorial distribution of the 
 empire. China proper is divided into eighteen provinces. A Governor, 
 or sometimes a Governor General, is placed over each province, though a 
 Governor General has mostly two provinces for his jurisdiction. I have 
 already given the population of each of the provinces, as collated from 
 the census of 1812 and 1852. Some of them are each as populous as 
 France. They are each subdivided into Prefectures, Departments, 
 Districts and Townships, villages or communes. In addition to the 
 Prefects, the Governor of each province has, as subordinates, the 
 Provincial Treasurer, the Provincial Judge, the Salt Comptroller and 
 the Grain Intendaut. Under the Prefects, again, are Sub-prefects, 
 Department Magistrates, District Magistrates and smaller mandarins ; 
 and, finally, the communes are directed by headmen and municipal 
 councils elected by the people. 
 
 I cannot now enter into the full details of this vast system of ad- 
 ministration. I can only bestow a passing mention on the organization 
 of public works; on the regularly arranged system of public granaries for 
 remedying the calamities of famine years ; on the alms-houses for the 
 aged, and the foundling hospitals established and maintained by joint 
 contributions from the government and private individuals. The 
 existence of the last named institutions is in itself a sufficient 
 reply to the ignoble calumnies current about an alleged systematic 
 
SUMMARY. 7T 
 
 organization of infanticide ; calumnies that are made use of in 
 order to play upon the silly self-conceit of good people of the West. 
 
 To sum up, then, Gentlemen ; we see in the Far East an immense 
 population, essentially industrial and pacific ; governed, under the 
 preponderance of a monarch, by a class regularly emanating from the 
 ranks of the people through the medium of a well organized system of 
 examinations; and consequently without any hereditary aristocracy. This 
 class of learned men has gradually built up a vast system of administra- 
 tion, under the direction of which are living a population of four hundred 
 millions of men. And this society, after long efforts, has finally brought 
 into association with itself the less advanced populations around it, which 
 had been heretofore a perpetual source of trouble to it ; so that it has 
 at length been able to reduce its army to what is destined to be the 
 normal function of all armies, namely, that of a gendarmerie or police. 
 
 It is this immense society which the anarchical contacts of the 
 West are tending to trouble and oppress. But before laying down the 
 principles of a truly rational policy for the West to follow with respect 
 thereto, I must first attempt an estimate of Confucius, the most 
 systematic representative of this great civilization. 
 
THIED LECTUEE. 
 
 (THE SIXTEENTH OF THE COURSE.) 
 FRIDAY, 20 HOMER, 72 17 FEBRUARY, 1860. 
 
 ESTIMATE OF CONFUCIUS AND OF HIS INFLUENCE ON 
 CHINESE CIVILIZATION. 
 
 -GENTLEMEN, 
 
 In the last two lectures we briefly estimated, first, the fundamental 
 spirit of Chinese civilization, then the general history of its concrete 
 development, in such a way as to deduce from this double investigation 
 a clear and determinate knowledge of the existing condition of that great 
 empire. We saw the Chinese empire gradually shaping itself by an 
 evolutionary process, the main laws of which I endeavoured to expound. 
 In that philosophical theory of Chinese civilization I briefly referred to 
 the part played in it by its most eminent philosopher, the founder of 
 the essential basis upon which the modificatory element of that civiliza- 
 tion was built up. I showed, in fact, that two fundamental elements 
 have concurred in that evolution : an imperial family, exercising a, 
 monocratic government, but liable to be superseded in cases of imperious 
 necessity ; and an enlightened, learned class, by which the sovereign 
 power is at once modified and regulated. 
 
 The man who laid the foundation for the systematic co-ordination of 
 this great class was Confucius. It was needful, therefore, that a 
 special study should be made of that philosopher ; but the task will also 
 be useful in another way ; it will develop in us that just sentiment of 
 respect which will enable us to see in him the concrete embodiment of 
 the civilization of his race. That is why we are going to devote the 
 first part of this evening's lecture to a special estimate of Coufucius's 
 work. 
 
THE INTELLECTUAL SITUATION. 79 
 
 I must first deliueate the general situation in the midst of which 
 Confucius arose. We shall thus see under the weight of what antece- 
 dents he acted, and how he was the organ of the fundamental necessities 
 of a situation created hy the past ; we shall then better comprehend the 
 enormous power of his action when we see how suitably adapted it was 
 to the spirit of the civilization in and on which he worked. Confucius, 
 in fact, is one of the men who have most profoundly influenced their 
 social environment. 
 
 It has first to be explained how it came to pass that the 
 efforts of Confucius and his school had to be directed to morals, 
 especially practical morals, and to works of erudition, or of concrete 
 sociology. 
 
 Chinese civilization is, as we have shown, essentially fetishistic ; 
 and it is in that direction that it has been developed. A consequence of 
 of this has been that China has been deprived of the social institution of 
 abstraction. The institution of abstraction is one of the grandest 
 creations of Humanity ; and the mental evolution of the advanced 
 populations has been due to its influence. All the high intellects of the 
 West have worked under the impulsion of that great institution. They 
 felt its power without being able to give any account of it ; for it is to 
 Auguste Comte that we owe the discovery and the systematization of 
 this grand sociological phenomenon, by the dogmatic and historic 
 contrast which he established between the abstract and the concrete 
 sciences. For social influences, like cosmological, are felt long before 
 high intellects discover their laws. 
 
 Theologism brought in abstraction by the special representation of 
 the various distinct phenomena by means of corresponding gods. Now, 
 in China, theologisin not having spontaneously arisen, there could be 
 no deep and familiar working of the abstractive faculty. Now, abstrac- 
 tion is the necessary condition of all great scientific elaborations, as of 
 all high esthetic development. 
 
 The truth of this, as regards science, is manifest. There is no 
 real science but abstract science. It is only by studying the various 
 distinct phenomena that we can succeed in ascertaining their laws. It 
 was thus that mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, and finally by 
 Auguste Comte's grand creation sociology, were gradually developed 
 
80 THE SOCIAL SITUATION. 
 
 iu the West. China, consequently, wholly fetishistic as she was, could 
 sliow no great scientific movement akin to that of the West ; nothing 
 even analogous to the intellectual movement of India. 
 
 And it is the same as regards great esthetic creations : abstraction 
 is the essential basis of idealization. Idealization is the condition under 
 which alone really high art is possible. Now abstraction idealizes, on 
 the one hand, by the elimination of certain properties, and on the other 
 hand because, by allowing of the properties being considered separately 
 from the beings which manifest them, it then becomes possible to con- 
 ceive of extreme limits of variation, both more and less. China, rich in 
 artistic productions, of secondary merit as being too exact representa- 
 tions of reality, had to remain a stranger to high esthetic creations, 
 poetic or plastic. 
 
 Thus a stranger to theologism, and therefore to the institution of 
 abstraction, China presented an unfavourable medium for the elabora- 
 tions of pure science, as for the creations of high art. 
 
 Such is the explanation of the singular fact, often remarked upon, 
 of a great people having produced immense works of erudition and of 
 moral philosophy, whilst neither science properly so called nor really 
 high art have ever been able so much as to make an appearance amongst 
 them. 
 
 Such a general situation as that repels great intellects, of a theoretic 
 cast, from purely abstract speculations or from great artistic creations. 
 
 That is one primary general fact which dominates the whole mental 
 evolution of this civilization. 
 
 But the social situation, properly so called, tends in the same 
 direction as the intellectual situation by inclining, towards moral specula- 
 tions, and especially practical morals, the theorizing intellects which the 
 latter repels from works of pure science. 
 
 We have shown that one of the leading characteristics of Chinese 
 civilization is the absence of castes ; consequently, also, of a priestly, 
 or purely theoretic, caste ; which could not exist, to begin with, except 
 under a theological sanction. From this it results that the rich and 
 enlightened class applies its activity to administration, to the actual 
 government of society. In keeping with this social situation, minds of 
 a purely theoretic cast are driven to direct their mental activity towards 
 
THE SOCIAL SITUATION. 81 
 
 moral speculations directly connected -with the government of society. 
 Thus, under this two-fold influence, thinkers are wholly concerned 
 with moral philosophy. It should be noted, too, that the nature of 
 Morals or Ethic is perfectly suited for that. Ethic constitutes, for the 
 theoretic class, the passage between theory and practice, being at once 
 an art and a science. Its foundation touches on the highest theories, 
 for it necessarily rests upon the knowledge of human nature ; which 
 itself finally rests upon the whole range of real scientific conceptions' 
 by its culmination Ethic becomes directly practical, for it institutes the 
 government of human nature. Ethic, or moral science, is theoretical as 
 regards its foundation, practical as regards its immediate destination. 
 It is clear that, under alj aspects, strong intelligences found in such a 
 study wherewithal to satisfy their true mental aptitudes while aiming at 
 a real practical purpose, in conformity with the influence of their sur- 
 roundings. 
 
 The outcome, then, of all this was a fundamental situation which 
 prepared the way for and called forth the great work of Confucius ; a 
 work which has been an admirable success, in spite of the immense 
 disturbances occasioned by the spread of Taoism and Buddhism. His 
 constructive effort has been so grandly efficacious simply and solely 
 because it was in keeping with the true evolutionary tenor of the civiliza- 
 tion amidst which it was put forth ; for Confucius's co-ordination is a 
 moral and political co-ordination, and it was the kind of theory which 
 such a situation imposed upon true thinkers. 
 
 But, furthermore, the special condition of China at the time when 
 Confucius appeared gave a high immediate aim to his philosophic elabor- 
 ation. 
 
 At the point of time when Confucius came upon the scene, a civiliz- 
 ation, the leading features of which we have seen, was in existence 
 simultaneously in several petty kingdoms, situated mainly in the basin 
 of the Yellow River and a few adjacent districts like Shantung. 
 
 The common origin of the civilization prevalent in these several 
 petty states is evidenced by their acknowledgment of a sort of subordin- 
 ation, more apparent than real, to the dynasty of Chow, which perpetuated, 
 with some unavoidable changes, the family which inaugurated Chinese 
 civilization. Again, military contests, of no little severity, were of 
 F 
 
82 THE POLITICAL SITUATION. 
 
 frequent occurrence amongst these divers petty kingdoms. Here, then, 
 we have to notice a two-fold fact a real similitude of civilization co- 
 existing with a state of political decomposition, or in other words, one 
 and the same state of society co-existing in several neighboring countries, 
 more or less independent and continually in conflict one with another. 
 It is clear that such a situation must have impelled the nobler spirits to 
 endeavour to put an end to such disorder, and to bring back union and 
 order amongst peoples having like habits and ideas yet carried away by 
 constantly recurring outbreaks. This task might have been well or ill 
 performed ; that depended on the sort of organ who might arise to fulfil 
 the function ;_ but at all events here was a situation that called for some 
 such effort ; and it was to this great function that Confucius devoted 
 himself. He sought, in fact, to act upon the rulers, the ministers of 
 those several governments, in the name of a moral doctrine which should 
 be simply a systematization, more or less abstract, of the whole of the 
 antecedents of Chinese civilization. That was the great problem he wanted 
 to solve ; and he solved it. Then he sought, by active preaching of his 
 moral and political doctrine, to bring the rulers to put an end to the 
 permanent anarchy of their military struggles and to the disorders of 
 their inefficient internal administration. He thus aimed at giving an ever 
 increasing preponderance to a pacific and industrial civilization in keep- 
 ing with the common antecedents of the several peoples. 
 
 Having now pointed out, Gentlemen, what was the nature of this 
 great task, how the situation called for it, how the sum of the antecedents 
 formed a preparation for it ; in a word, having definitely indicated the 
 necessary scope of the work, we have next to see how it was accom- 
 plished by the organ whom the whole social destinies of his country 
 charged with such a function. 
 
 K'ung Fu-tsze (Confucius) was born 551 years before Christ, in the 
 little Kingdom of Lu, which was a part of the present province of Shan- 
 tung. He died in his native state 479 B.C., in the seventy- third year of 
 his age. His father was governor of Tsow, a town of the third rank, in 
 the district of Ch'ang-p'ing, in the province of Shantung. He lost his 
 father early, and was brought up under the intelligent and devoted 
 direction of his mother. Educated with great care, he displayed from 
 his boyhood's years that combination of intelligence, of veneration and 
 
LIFE OF CONFUCIUS. 83 
 
 devotedness which mark this noble character. At the age of seventeen, 
 he accepted, at his mother's desire, a petty official appointment, as 
 inspector of the grain and provision market. In this modest and useful 
 post he displayed great firmness and that constant concern for the public 
 interest which was the guiding principle of his life. He married when 
 he was nineteen, at his mother's desire ; and soon after, at the age of 
 twenty-one, he obtained a higher post in the public administration, 
 Inspector General of the fields and flocks, with full powers to make any 
 reforms in that department he might think advisable. At the age of 
 twenty-four, just as his official career was beginning to blossom, he lost 
 his mother. Thereupon, in conformity with the old customs, then too 
 much neglected, but which it was his aim to strengthen and develop, he 
 gave up all public employment, and devoted three years to a seclusion 
 which he knew how to nobly utilize. It was then that he definitively 
 conceived his great project of reform. In that fruitful three years of 
 retreat into privacy he sketched the plan of his work, and betook himself 
 to earnest study of Chinese antiquity, of divers moral and political ques- 
 tions, and to meditations that were indispensable to the accomplishment 
 of his grand mission. His period of mourning over, he put the finishing 
 touch to his long studies by journeys which he made into the divers 
 kingdoms of China situated along the course of the Yellow Kiver ; he 
 gained, by attentive observation, a thorough understanding of the 
 various countries which he wished to convert to his doctrine ; a doctrine 
 which, indeed, was nothing but a philosophic systematization of the 
 traditions and tendencies of Chinese civilization. "We then see him for 
 twenty years traversing these petty kingdoms, making disciples, being 
 consulted by kings and their ministers, and continually persuading them 
 to exercise a paternal, moral and pacific sway over the populations 
 subject to them. It can be shown that the action of Confucius was, as 
 Pere Amiot has observed, not extended beyond the limits of a portion of 
 the basin of the Yellow River, wherein Chinese civilization first arose 
 and whence it gradually spread. " On the North side the tract in ques- 
 " tion did not reach further than the frontier of Pechili ; it did not cross 
 " the Kiaug river on the South ; the province of Shantung was its limit 
 " on the Eastern side, and the province of Shensi was its remotest 
 " boundary on the West." (G. Pautluer, China.) 
 
84 LIFE OF CONFUCIUS. 
 
 Returning to bis native state he consented, on the invitation of the 
 Duke of Lu, to resume service in the administration ; and at the age of 
 fifty he was promoted to the high office of Minister of Civil and Criminal 
 Justice, thus exemplifying that comhination of political life with theoretic 
 studies of morals and history which was to become the characteristic of 
 bis school. Indeed this union of practice with theory is simply a neces- 
 sary mode of systematizing the modifying element of Chinese civilization. 
 In the exercise of his high functions he displayed from the outset that 
 energetic firmness without which modificatory action would be impos- 
 sible. He began, in fact, by demanding the death of the leading political 
 functionary of the preceding administration, so as to concentrate upon 
 the principal culprit an indispensable chastisement, and to prove at the 
 same time his irrevocable resolution to prevent any new betrayal of 
 trust. He brought to the discharge of his high duties that active 
 goodness and devotion to the general welfare which in him were always 
 conjoined with energy ; without which goodness is apt to miscarry. The 
 Chinese historians have carefully recorded the details of his adminis- 
 tration ; and, besides his own work, we find his disciples at the same time 
 attaining, in the various kingdoms, to important administrative and 
 political posts, whilst others continued their master's philosophical and 
 moral propaganda. On the death of his protector, the ruler of Lu, he 
 withdrew from public affairs, and again bidding farewell to his native 
 state, accompanied by some of his disciples, he continued his philo- 
 sophical and social excursions into the various other petty kingdoms of 
 China. At length, after fourteen years of absence, he returned to the 
 country of his birth and devoted the last years of his life entirely to the 
 definitive elaboration of his doctrine, and to the making of disciples who 
 should continue it after him. The number of his followers largely 
 increased, and they were scattered over the various principalities into 
 which China proper was then split up. About the age of sixty-six he 
 lost his wife ; soon after that his son also, and lastly his kinsman and 
 favourite disciple Yen Hwei, to whom his chief regard was given, because 
 he saw in him humanity, the greatest of all the virtues. Thus saddened 
 were the closing years of the great reformer's life. Some time before 
 his death he culled together his principal disciples and gave them his last 
 recommendations as regards the spirit of his doctrine and the conditions 
 
LIFE OF CONFUCIUS. 85 
 
 of its application. " The sapless herb," said he, " is now entirely 
 '* dried up, and I have no where to set me down to rest ; the sound 
 " doctrine had wholly disappeared, it had been utterly forgotten ; I have 
 " endeavoured to recall it and to re-establish its sway. I have not been 
 " successful. Will any one be found, after my death, willing to take 
 " upon himself this painful task ? " 
 
 His disciples performed his funeral rites with pious care ; and they 
 instituted the custom of an annual pilgrimage to the tomb of the great 
 reformer. 
 
 His school grew, his influence increased, and honours gradually 
 waxing were accorded to the memory of one of the most noble natures 
 of whom Humanity can boast ; of the man who has most strongly influ- 
 enced Chinese civilization ; influenced, that is to say, the destinies of 
 many hundreds of millions of men. The real worship of Confucius 
 began under the founder of the Han d}^nasty, which was a reparatory 
 and progressive dynasty. Soon temples were raised to Confucius in the 
 principal towns of China. It was under Chen Tsung, the third emperor 
 of the Sung dynasty (998 A. D.) that the cult of Confucius was defini- 
 tively constituted. " Under the Han dynasty he was named Kuny or 
 "Duke; the Tang dynasty named him the First Saint, and afterwards 
 " the Preacher Prince ; his statue likewise was clothed with a royal robe 
 " and a crown was placed upon its head. Under the Ming dynasty he 
 " was named the most holy, the ii'isest and the most virtuous of the founders 
 "of men." 
 
 And lastly, his direct descendants, by a unique exception from the 
 general rule, obtained the title of hereditary nobles, which they still enjoy. 
 
 Such are the main features in the life of this great man. We must 
 now form an estimate of what his work amounted to as a whole. 
 
 There are, strictly speaking, scarcely any works of Confucius ; 
 besides the compilation of the ancient literary monuments of China, a 
 compilation which constitutes the sacred books properly so called, we 
 have, from his own hand, an historical fragment of the annals of his 
 native state, and, under the name of Confucian books, certain works 
 edited by his immediate disciples, which contain not merely his theories, 
 but sometimes even his very words. 
 
 The four principal works denominated Confucian are the Hiao 
 
86 WORK OF CONFUCIUS. 
 
 King or classic of Filial Piety, the Ta Hio or Great Lore, the Chung 
 Yung or the Constant Mean, and the Lun Yii or Philosophic Discourses. 
 The two first works, the Hiao King and the Ta Hio, were drawn up by 
 Tseng Tsze, an immediate disciple of Confucius. Tseng Tsze, like his 
 master, was born in the state of Lu (modern province of Shantung), in 
 in the town of Wu south. He was forty- six years younger than 
 Confucius. He was born, consequently, 505 B.C. 
 
 The Chung Yung or Constancy in the Mean, was drawn up by 
 Tsze-sze, grandson of Confucius, through whom the family line of the sage 
 was continued. Tsze-sze was thirty-seven years of age when his grand- 
 father died. The Lun Yu or Philosophical Discourses were compiled by 
 some of Confucius's disciples. 
 
 I proceed to give some quotations from these several works, (the Ta 
 Hio, the Chung Yung and Lun Yu), in order that we may the better seize 
 the general spirit of the philosophical and moral systematization of 
 China's greatest sage. 
 
 The Ta Hio is made up of an argument, ascribed to Confucius, and 
 an explanation due to Tseng Tsze, one of his disciples. This short 
 work has been made the subject of numerous commentaries by the philo- 
 sophers of China. The most notable, which is also most frequently printed 
 along with the text, is that of Chu Hi, the celebrated schoolman of the 
 Sung dynasty, who lived in the latter part of the twelfth century. In 
 the Ta Hio the fundamental problem of moral perfectionment is neatly 
 stated by Confucius : 
 
 " The Great Lore treats of the way to make bright virtue brighter, 
 " to win the people's love, and to stay in the utmost goodness. From 
 " the Emperor down to the common folk there is one duty for all : 
 " to make the regulation of their conduct the first concern." 
 
 Here we have, in precise terms clearly stated, the supreme 
 problem ; the moral perfectionment of each individual, that is the end 
 to be aimed at. The task of moral philosophy is to shape and organize 
 this process of perfectionment. Confucius conceives, in a general way, 
 the mental conditions of the solution of the problem as follows : 
 
 " Things have their main points and minor points ; affairs have 
 " their issues and origins. To have a knowledge of what comes first 
 " and what afterwards is a near approach to the way in question." 
 
HIS TEACHING. 87 
 
 " The first thing is to know your aim, and then form a resolve ; 
 " your resolve being formed, then be steadfast in it ; being steadfast, 
 " you will have peace of mind ; having peace of mind, you can then 
 " meditate ; meditating, you can attain your aim." 
 
 Confucius, therefore, without concerning himself in any way 
 whatever about the supernatural, thus formulates, in distinct and precise 
 terms, a statement of the definitive problem of man's destiny : to attain, 
 by moral perfectionment, the state of full unity, employing intelligence 
 to discover the conditions and the means of attainment. The com- 
 mentary of his disciple Tseng Tsze is intended to work out these 
 fundamental ideas, and to connect them with the early history and most 
 venerable traditions of. China in such a way as to maintain and 
 consolidate the social continuity ; instead of breaking it, as other 
 reformers hitherto have done, in a revolutionary spirit and methods. 
 
 " How profound," says the commentary, " was King Wan's endea- 
 " vour, unwearied and ardent, to attain the highest goodness ! As a 
 " sovereign, his aim was to be beneficent ; as a subject, his aim was to 
 " be reverential ; as a son, his aim was to be filial ; as a father, his aim 
 " was loving kindness ; in his intercourse with statesmen his guiding 
 " aim was good faith." Here we see illustrated in what this moral 
 perfectionment, the supreme aim of existence, consists : to bring the 
 various natural relations under the controlling sway of humanity, 
 submissiveness, filial piety, tenderness and sincerity. 
 
 The precise conception of the state of perfection, as Confucius 
 understood it, is clearly and definitely set forth in the Chung Yung or 
 Constancy in the Mean, the work, as I have already stated, of his 
 grandson Tsze-sze. 
 
 In this work, the most systematic of all the Confucian books, Tsze- 
 sze works out the mental conditions and propounds the moral co-ordina- 
 tion from which results the type of perfection which ought, under all 
 vicissitudes, to be striven after, but the realization of which is only 
 attained in exceptional cases by men destined for the moral or political 
 government of societies. 
 
 Let us see, first of all, what is Confucius's conception of the type 
 of the Sage, or the man who has realized the ideal of perfection. I 
 quote literally from the Chung Yung. 
 
88 THE IDEAL SAGE. 
 
 "It is only the Sage of widest ken who can fully understand and 
 " develop his own nature ; being able to fully understand and develop his 
 " own nature, he can therefore fully understand and develop the nature of 
 " other men ; being able fully to understand and develop the nature of 
 " other men, he can therefore fully understand and develop the nature of 
 " things (animate and inanimate) ; being able fully to understand and 
 " develop the nature of things (animate and inanimate), he can therefore 
 " co-operate with Heaven and Earth in their transforming and sustaining 
 " operations ; being able to co-operate with Heaven and Earth in their 
 " transforming and sustaining operations, he can therefore constitute 
 " himself with Heaven and Earth, a trinity." 
 
 " Next to the perfect Sage conies he who by culture rectifies his 
 11 nature flawed by some ingrained bias." 
 
 The perfect man, then, is one who, swayed by moral propensities, 
 arrives, by knowledge of the natural laws of living and of inorganic 
 bodies, at the power of regularly modifying the natural order in such a 
 way as, by his systematic intervention, to make it more perfect. It was 
 thus that Confucius framed the noble ideal of that modifying power 
 which, according to his own fine expression, constitutes a third over- 
 ruling agency intermediate between Heaven and Earth. Herein we have, 
 as it were, a deep presentiment of the normal order ; of which, in fact, 
 a leading feature will be an active perfecting of the natural order, under 
 the impulsion of an all-absorbing social feeling. Confucius recognizes 
 the general laws of the activity of Heaven and Earth as the foundation 
 upon which rests all wise endeavour to modify the spontaneously existing 
 order of things. 
 
 We observe that Confucius, in perfecting the fetishistic and sky- 
 worshiping civilization from which he sprung, borrows, for his political 
 and moral systematization, from the laws of Heaven and Earth that type 
 of order and of regularity which he seeks to achieve in human life by the 
 habitual preponderance of the social over the selfish feelings ; such 
 preponderance being the sole means of realizing in the human order that 
 type of regularity furnished by observation of the external world. A 
 quotation from a characteristic passage will convincingly show that it 
 was indeed under the impulsion of fetishistic observation of the natural 
 laws of the world that Confucius constructed his type of order. 
 
MORAL ORDER BASED ON NATURAL. 89 
 
 " Confucius," says Tsze-sze, "possessed, as if by hereditary trans- 
 " mission, the virtues of Yaou and Shun, and modelled himself on Wan 
 " and Wu as his exemplars. Above, he kept in unison with the seasons 
 " of the sky ; below, he conformed to the water and the land. 
 
 " We may liken him unto the sky and earth in respect of the 
 " universality with which they uphold and sustain things, the univer- 
 " sality with which they overspread and enfold things. We may liken 
 " him unto the four seasons in respect of their varied march, unto 
 " the sun and moon in respect of their alternate shining. 
 
 " All things are kept in train together without their injuring one 
 " another ; their ways go on together without interfering one with an- 
 " other ; the smaller forces, in river streams, the greater forces, in ample 
 " transformations. It is this that makes the sky and earth so great." 
 
 Thus it is the external order which furnishes at once the type of all 
 regularity, and the starting point and necessary condition of all sus- 
 ceptibility of modification. But this modificatory action can and should 
 only be exerted under the guidance of a systematic moral plan. Let us 
 look somewhat more closely into the general features of that moral 
 systematization of which I mentioned merely the fundamental principle ; 
 the preponderance of sociality over selfishness. 
 
 " There are five universal ways, or lines of duty ; and three means 
 whereby to pursue them ; to wit : as between lord and vassal, as be- 
 tween father and son, as between husband and wife, as between elder 
 and younger brother, as associating with friends these five are the 
 " universal ways (or duties). Knowledge, humanity, courage ; these 
 " are the three universal virtues ; and it is by their unity that the duties 
 are carried into practice." 
 
 Chu Hi, (who flourished towards the close of the twelfth century 
 of the Christian era), in his commentary on the Chung Yung, regards 
 the cardinal thesis of that work to be that wisdom, humanity (or 
 universal benevolence) and force of character are the three virtues of 
 capital and universal importance ; the door, so to speak, through which 
 lies the entrance to that right path which all men ought to follow. We 
 may take it, then, as a Confucian tenet that the faculties necessary for 
 the attainment of that state of moral perfection which admits of 
 entire devotion of self to the service of all are wisdom, humanity and 
 
90 CONFUCIUS'S EDITORIAL LABOURS. 
 
 courage. In keeping with this conception is the ideal portrait which 
 Confucius draws of the statesman continuously devoted to the service 
 of society. 
 
 " All who have to govern the empire with its constituent and depen- 
 " dent states have nine canons of conduct : to cultivate self-control ; to 
 " exalt the worthy ; to keep on intimate terms with their relatives ; to 
 " accord to the great vassals due respect; to be in sympathy with the 
 " whole body of vassals ; to treat the villeins as children ; to attract all 
 " kinds of artificers ; to be indulgent to commorant strangers ; and to 
 " cherish the barons of the fiefs. 
 
 " Let but self-control be cultivated and the path of the social duties 
 "is established, etc." 
 
 Besides framing this moral system, Confucius still farther pro- 
 moted the great object of his life by editing the ancient literary monu- 
 ments of Chinese civilization. The result of his labours in this field are 
 the sacred books of China ; these are the Yih King, or Book of Changes ; 
 the Shu King, or Book of Historical Documents ; the Shih King, or Book 
 of Poetry ; and the Li Ki, or Record of Rites. To these a fifth was 
 added, from Confucius's own pen, the Chun Chu, or Spring and Autumn, 
 containing the annals of his native state of Lu. 
 
 The Shih King, or Book of Poetry, is a collection of over three 
 hundred ancient poems or songs, a few of which date so far back as the 
 Shang dynasty (B. C. 1766 1123), but the others range from the foun- 
 dation of the Chow dynasty in the twelfth century B. C. till within a 
 generation or two of Coufucius's own day. 
 
 The Li Ki, or Record of Rites, contains a vast collection of rules re- 
 lating to the constitution of the governing body and the duties pertaining 
 to each office, as well as maxims and regulations as to the behaviour 
 of the officials on the occasions of the various social and civil cere- 
 monies. Although containing many documents of high antiquity, this 
 work received its present shape, some centuries after Confucius, at the 
 hands of scholars of the Han dynasty. 
 
 The Yih King, or Book of Changes, is one of the most ancient monu- 
 ments of Chinese civilization. The framework of it is as follows. First 
 come the eight trigrams of Fuh-Hi, to whom tradition ascribes the 
 foundation of the nation ; and these sets of whole and bisected lines are,. 
 
THE SACRED BOOKS. 91 
 
 by duplication and combination with one another, expanded into sixty- 
 four hexagrams. Then comes a short explanatory text to each hexagram, 
 appended, as it is said, by Wen Wang, founder of the Chow dynasty, 
 who probably followed some ancient tradition, the purport of which has 
 not otherwise been transmitted to us. Chow Kung, son of Wen Wang, 
 added some further observations : and upon this triple textual foundation 
 Confucius made a commentary still more extensive. Thus built up, 
 the Yih King has been the subject of an uninterrupted series of com- 
 mentaries down to our own day. Many a mind in China, attracted by 
 the spell of primitive obscurity of meaning, has been exercised over the 
 interpreting of this book. One thing that is plainly to be seen in the 
 Yih King is the employment of number as a means of explaining and 
 regulating the affairs of life ; a tendency we meet with in all early 
 civilizations. Numeration, established during the prevalence of Fetishism, 
 constitutes the first scientific institution of Humanity ; and there is a 
 sort of natural tendency to reduce to these first positive notions all our 
 notions of other kinds. Hence arises that philosophic theory of the 
 influence of numbers which we so often meet with ; and which, in spite 
 of the exaggerations incident to the applications made of it, contains a 
 greater amount of truth and a higher social and mental importance than 
 is nowadays commonly supposed. 
 
 The most important of the four sacred books collated by Confucius 
 is the Shu King, or Book of History, containing information of the 
 greatest historical interest respecting the ancient dynasties of China. The 
 period covered by this work extends from the Emperors Yao and Shun 
 (2357 B. C.) to the year 790 B. C. The authentic history of China, say 
 the critics, does not go further back than the twenty-fourth century 
 before Christ. Beyond that date we are landed in the mythical or 
 semi-mythical ages. So Confucius, in addition to his direct task of 
 systematizing the morals of his nation, edited, if he did not collect, its 
 fundamental historical traditions. And rightly did he regard himself as 
 the perpetuator of those traditions ; for in effect his moral teaching 
 transmitted them in a more perfect form, instead of condemning and 
 rejecting them. 
 
 We can now sum up shortly the work accomplished by Confucius, 
 and our estimate of his character and place in history. 
 
92 SUMMARY OF CONFUCIUS S WORK. 
 
 We see, to begin with, a great philosopher, intent upon producing 
 a vast moral and social development, taking his stand, fast and firm, 
 upon the whole aggregate of antecedents and traditions. It is not here 
 a question of arbitrary hypotheses like those by means of which Chris- 
 tianity constructed for itself an artificial tradition, in default of the ability 
 to faithfully represent, by a sound scientific theory, the antecedents out 
 of which it actually arose. Here it is a philosopher taking his stand, 
 frankly and fully, upon the whole series of the antecedents of Chinese 
 civilization and aiming to promote thereby its sj^stematic development. 
 This is an example of the proper, the normal philosophic type, in closest 
 conformity to the true scientific spirit, which always rests its present 
 constructions upon the constructions that have preceded. Under the 
 Christian and revolutionary impulsion, Westerns, in their moral and 
 social speculations have, on the contrary, manifested a decided tendency, 
 as unreasonable as it is immoral, to take no account whatever of social 
 continuity. 
 
 Confucius finds his starting point in sky-worshiping Fetishism, the 
 basis of Chinese civilization. Fully accepting this astrolatric Fetishism, 
 and deeply respecting the cult founded thereupon, he commences to 
 operate in this Fetishism a transformation which will be fully realised 
 amongst the most distinguished of his successors. He begins to work 
 out, in fact, the distinction between activity and life. Fetishism con- 
 siders all beings not only as active, (therein it is scientifically correct), 
 but also as alive, which is true only in respect of a certain limited 
 number of them. 
 
 Confucius is evidently far more concerned about the ways or laws 
 of the Sky and Earth than about the wilh of those two overruling 
 beings. Hence, although the commandment is conceived as a mandate 
 of the Sky, this mandate comes to mean not so much the celestial will 
 as the fatality which result from regular laws. And this conception of 
 Confucius's is all the more important in that he gives to it the widest 
 generality by regarding all the phenomena of society as regulated by the 
 laws of celestial phenomena. To a certain degree, undoubtedly, they are 
 so. Astronomical conditions have an influence upon social conditions, 
 but not of that exact kind that must at first have been supposed. We 
 thus find, afterwards, eminent minds of the Confucian School tending 
 
HIS SYSTEM OF NATURAL MORALS. 93 
 
 spontaneously towards the scientific stage of thought, owing to their 
 belief that all bodies are active, but not all alive ; a point of view more 
 reasonable than that of theologians and metaphysicians who regard 
 matter as inert. 
 
 On the basis furnished by the worship of the Sky Confucius con- 
 structed his moral system, borrowing from the fetishistic worship of the 
 Sky those notions of order and submission which celestial phenomena 
 are so well fitted to suggest. Thereon he rested his coordination of 
 morals, fully conscious of the grand political and social destination of 
 his work. His aim was a practical, working system of morals, in which 
 the duties proper to the various relations of human life should be clearly 
 defined ; always keeping in view the chief end of man, that state of full 
 spiritual unity in which social feelings have preponderance over the 
 selfish. And the means by which he solved the problem was by giving 
 the position of pre-eminent importance to the institution of the Family, 
 based as it is upon submission on the part of the children and devoted- 
 ness on the part of the parents. 
 
 Such, stated in the most general terms, is the plan of his moral 
 system. It is, as you see, completely untrammelled by any concern 
 for the supernatural. I have already explained, in my first lecture, 
 how that is due to the absence of the theological spirit, and to the 
 persistence with which the regime of fetishistic sky-worship held its 
 ground. 
 
 Referring to this complete absence of supernatural beliefs, a very 
 distinguished man, M. Abel Remusat, has stated that the moral system 
 of Confucius is wanting as regards a sanction. It is an astonishing 
 circumstance that so able a thinker should have so far allowed himself to 
 be led away by theologico-nietaphysical prejudices as not to see that this 
 pretended lack of sanction is just what gives the stamp of reality and 
 nobleness to Coufucius's moral system. For the absence of a super- 
 natural sanction, which is always of the selfish kind, only brings out all 
 the more prominently the formal admission, by Confucius, of the sponta- 
 neous existence of benevolent sentiments in human nature. Confucius 
 acknowledges that human nature is spontaneously moral. The sanction 
 is just the happiness of doing what is good because it is good ; it is the 
 attainment of that state of full unity which the truly wise man pursues 
 
94 CONFUCIUS'S PLACE IN HISTORY. 
 
 as his ideal, under the impulse of ardent regard for others, enlightened 
 by high thought. On this point theologico-naetaphysical conceptions 
 have helped to debase the true notion of human nature ; especially since 
 the practical wisdom of the clergy has ceased to remedy the defects 
 inherent in their doctrine. 
 
 Lastty, in a political point of view, the gradual development of the 
 Confucian reformation has had, for its results, the giving of a solid 
 constitution to the class by which Chinese civilization is modified, the 
 assuring and perfecting of the action of that class, and the enduring and 
 ever increasing efficacy of its influence. 
 
 Such, in short outline, is the sum of what was effected by that noble 
 life, systematically and actively devoted to the working out of a great 
 social reform. 
 
 No doubt Western civilization has superior types to show us, 
 whether as regards intelligence or activity, to that of the philosopher of 
 China. Aristotle and Archimedes were intellects of a higher order ; 
 Caesar was a statesman of incomparably greater force. But we may 
 affirm that the West furnishes no type that realized, to the same degree 
 as Confucius, the combination of sound judgment and morality with 
 activity long and unweariedly devoted to the general amelioration of 
 society. Here was a philosopher who, without taking advantage of 
 any superstitious dogma to prop up his system, proclaiming moral 
 perfectionrnent as the supreme aim, and making it consist in continuous 
 devotedness to society, of which he tried to improve the foundations, 
 nevertheless in no way broke with the traditions of the civilization upon 
 which he sought to act, and gave as the sanction for such a life of effort, 
 the deep sense of duty done. 
 
 Assuredly it will be an instructive lesson to Occidentals to 
 contemplate such a type. They can learn from it something very 
 different from what, in their unreasonable ingratitude, Christians and 
 revolutionary thinkers are wont to believe. They can learn, that is to 
 say, the feasibility of pursuing social progress without breaking with 
 predecessors, and that all the more worthily do we modify a society 
 when we skilfully lean for support upon those who have been in the 
 field before us and do full justice to their work. 
 
 Then the West, enlightened and regenerated, will be more and 
 
DEFECT OF CONFUCIUS'S SYSTEM. 95 
 
 more inclined to assign a place amongst the objects of its profound 
 veneration to the illustrious philosopher whom an immense and ancient 
 empire proclaims as the foremost of its reformers. 
 
 Let us now examine Confucius's system, on its own merits, and 
 in its relation to the definitive co-ordination of human knowledge. 
 
 Confucius's theory is, in its essence, an empirical co-ordination 
 of morals, having for its immediate aim the directing of human nature 
 aright. Now the immense defect of such a co-ordination is just the 
 defect of Chinese civilization itself; that is to say, the absence of such a 
 sufficient development of abstract science as should form the systematic 
 foundation for morals, and furnish an adequate power of modificatory 
 action over the external world and over man himself. For the ability 
 to modify rests entirely upon the knowledge of abstract laws. It is 
 only when the abstract laws of the various phenomena have been 
 clearly ascertained that it becomes possible to institute a course of 
 modificatory action over them of a powerful and regular kind. 
 
 By way of showing more distinctly what a tremendous gap the 
 co-ordination of Confucius presents, I shall contrast it with that encyclo- 
 pedic series into which Auguste Comte has condensed the whole body 
 of abstract science. In that hierarchical arrangement the abstract 
 sciences are placed in the following order : 
 
 Mathematics, Astronomy, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Sociology, 
 Morals. Moral Science, the crowning achievement of this mental 
 evolution, is composed of two distinct parts ; first, Theoretic Morals, 
 which is concerned with the knowledge of human nature ; secondly, 
 Practical Morals, which is concerned with the government of human 
 nature. It is by means of this second part that the passage from theory 
 to practice is effected ; and indeed it would be correct to say that, in the 
 long run, there are no mere theoricians, but only practicians, of whom 
 some work upon things and the others upon men. But the necessarily 
 systematic character of action of the latter sort has had the effect of 
 giving to those who are concerned with it the designation of theoretic class. 
 
 This contrast will be sufficient to show the profound lacuna which, 
 owing to the very nature of Chinese civilization, exists in the sys- 
 tematization of Confucius. It wants that long abstract elaboration, 
 beginning with mathematics and ascending to morals, without which it 
 
96 HOW THE DEFECT WILL BE REMEDIED. 
 
 is impossible to establish a true and sufficiently profound theory of 
 human nature. But this theoretic defect is, as regards the government 
 of human nature, a source of serious insufficiency ; for man, social being 
 that he is, cannot be sufficiently directed without a well-grounded 
 knowledge of the abstract laws of the various phenomena which exercise 
 sway over him, from mathematical phenomena up to social. Now the 
 ulterior evolution of China has not succeeded in filling up this gap ; the 
 very nature of Chinese civilization being antipathetic to the spontaneous 
 institution of abstraction ; and therefore quite unfit for the scientific 
 elaborations required. The philosophic work done by the school of 
 Confucius amounts to nothing more than the development of certain 
 points and the production of commentaries. 
 
 The analysis we have thus made shows the profound mental and 
 social insufficiency of the great empirical systematization of Confucius ; 
 but it shows at the same time in what way the West will be able to 
 act, through its most eminent organs, upon such a civilization. 
 Western science, accepting, as Confucius did, the supremacy of morals, 
 will soon succeed in making clear to the directing minds of that civiliza- 
 tion, the necessity of supplying, for its consolidation and support, a 
 foundation which will allow of its at last instituting an adequate 
 government of human nature. And besides this common platform of the 
 supremacy of morals, the constantly increasing contacts of the West 
 and China will bring the philosophic minds of that great empire to 
 perceive the need of a science of society, capable of justly estimating 
 social states so different as those of China and the West ; the felt want 
 of sociology will then gradually lead on to the recognition of the need 
 of biological knowledge, and so on along the successive links of that 
 indivisible chain formed by the interconnections of the several distinct 
 orders of phenomena, chemical, physical, astronomical, mathematical. 
 The result of ail this, in short, will be, that Chinese philosophers will 
 have to study, systematically, the grand hierarchy of the abstract 
 sciences, the essential basis of the definitive mental state of the human 
 species. Positivism, holding in respect the spontaneous evolution of 
 China, will thus bring about a complete renovation of its mental state ; 
 and it will do this all the better in that, incorporating Fetishism into its 
 own system, it will adopt, in its essence, the Chinese official cult. 
 
WORKS OF THE CONFUCIAN SCHOOL. 97 
 
 We must now briefly advert to the principal works that have 
 emanated from the school of Confucius, or rather to the general spirit 
 by which those works are characterized. Our concern is not with a 
 detailed history of Chinese philosophy and science ; that would be an 
 immense subject, of but small interest to us here ; the important thing 
 for us is to see what is their essential character. A thorough study of 
 Chinese historians might furnish us with new details ; but extensive 
 works have already been published on this subject, amply sufficient to 
 allow of our constructing, in accordance with the general laws of the 
 philosophy of history, a sound scientific theory of this mental evolution. 
 Three kinds of works emanate from the school of Confucius, deeply 
 stamped with the traits of Chinese civilization, such as we have depicted 
 it. First, moral works, developing the doctrines of Confucius ; secondly, 
 works of a natural philosophy, which transforms the astrolatric 
 Fetishism by separating the idea of activity from that of life, and in so 
 doing builds upon the foundation which Confucius himself laid ; lastly, 
 immense works of erudition, statistics, etc., etc., in a word, works of 
 concrete sociology. For these works of erudition are, in substance, 
 collections of observations which form material on which genuine scientific 
 works on sociology may be based. For Chinese civilization, true to its 
 peculiar concrete spirit, has not advanced beyond works of this 
 preparatory kind. 
 
 Let us glance, first, at the works of moral philosophy. 
 
 These works are nothing more, in fact, than commentaries, 
 numerous and ponderous, on Confucius. They explain and develop the 
 formulae of the empiric systernatization of that great reformer ; but they 
 in no way change its fundamental spirit and features. The system of 
 public examinations is based on the study of the Confucian books of 
 morals, and this fact has naturally given a stimulus to the production of 
 this immense literature of commentators. The principal philosopher 
 who advanced along the path opened up by Confucius was Meng-tsze 
 (Mencius). Mencius was born about the beginning of the fourth century 
 B. C. in what is now the province of Shantung ; he died at a great age, 
 814 B. C. In the estimation of the Chinese he ranks, justly, 
 immediately after Confucius. Public honours are rendered to him 
 similar to those given to Confucius himself; with whom, indeed, he is 
 G 
 
98 MENCIUS. 
 
 always associated in the people's veneration. There is one peculiar 
 trait in Mencius which constitutes a distinct improvement upon the 
 system of Confucius, though it existed there in germ. He has formulated, 
 more explicitly than Confucius did, the conditions under which the 
 elimination of the imperial family, the central element of union, becomes 
 a matter of necessity. He lays it down that, when the ruling house no 
 longer fulfils its fundamental function in a tolerable way, it must then 
 be got rid of; when the head of that family ceases to discharge the 
 moral and social duties attaching to his position, he thereupon ceases 
 to be the sovereign, the son of the Sky. The mandate of the Sky, in 
 virtue whereof he governs, must be withdrawn from him. There is 
 thus, in Mencius, a spirit of direct antagonism to any encroachments or 
 irregularities on the part of the imperial power. All important though 
 it be, as the element of the unity, maintenance and spread of Chinese 
 civilization, it must, nevertheless, sometimes be necessary to change the 
 central organ of the society ; and it is this necessity which Mencius has 
 fully and directly dealt with. It is easy to see how far removed is 
 such a spirit from that absolute submission which pure theologism 
 engenders. 
 
 Amongst the numerous commentators on Confucius, special mention 
 should be made of Chu Hi, who lived in the latter part of the twelfth 
 century of the Christian era, under the dynasty of the Sung. Chu Hi 
 became the classical commentator ; and his work is generally printed 
 along with the text of the Confucian books. This commentary is full of 
 wisdom and good sense ; as, indeed, most of the Chinese commentators 
 are when their minds are not weakened by the theological fancies of the 
 Buddhist and Taoist systems. These works of moral philosophy, 
 consisting of commentaries on the fundamental Chinese books, continue 
 to be produced even to the present day, and several of the Emperors 
 even have deigned to add their contributions to the series. 
 
 Confucius had marked the distinction between activity and life. 
 That distinction forms the starting point whence arose a Natural 
 Philosophy intermediate between Fetishism and Science. Chu Hi thus 
 founded an atomistic philosophy, in which he demonstrates, for 
 cultivated minds, the separation, in bodies, of the idea of activity from 
 that of life, 'which Confucius had sketched. Phenomena are no longer, 
 
CHU HI'S ATOMIC PHILOSOPHY. 99 
 
 as in pure Fetishism, the result of the wills of the beings in "which they 
 are manifested ; they are merely a result of the variety of the modes of 
 activity of those beings. He thus admits that the special activity of 
 each of these beings produces the various phenomena ; the manifestation 
 of this special activity being rendered regular by the preponderant 
 activity of the Sky. This amounts to a positive transformation of the 
 primitive astrolatric Fetishism of China ; and the conception has this 
 advantage, that it properly assigns to astronomical phenomena a normal 
 preponderance over all others. He goes on to extend, though in an 
 exaggerated way, this preponderance to the field of social phenomena, 
 the evolutions of which he connects with the celestial movements. It 
 does not admit of dispute that animal, vegetable and social existence are 
 powerfully controlled by these, the most general of the laws of the world. 
 
 Thus, in such a philosophy, the notion of supernatural beings 
 exterior to the real beings and producing in them, at their caprice, the 
 several phenomena, is wholly absent ; everything is explained by the 
 spontaneous activity of the beings themselves. Such a conception 
 comes very close to that on which true science rests ; all that is wanting 
 in it is the institution of scientific abstraction. After all, in what does 
 real scientific systematization consist, but in accepting the spontaneous 
 activity of the various beings and in investigating the abstract laws of 
 their several modes of activity, in so far as they are shared by a great 
 number of different individuals ? 
 
 The Chinese have also a considerable number of works of Natural 
 History ; that is to say, of collections of observations relating to the 
 various beings ; but these notices, very numerous and very detailed, are 
 essentially concrete, savouring too much of practical purposes ; and 
 they have not led up to any genuine biological law. Meteorological 
 observations, too, precise and abundant, have been collected and set 
 down. Their astronomy is of the same stamp ; observations many in 
 number and not wanting in precision, but purely concrete. Such 
 theories as it contains and they are very imperfectly developed come 
 from the Mussulman and Christian astronomers. 
 
 In brief, there is, in their cosmological and biological studies, 
 immense development of works of concrete observation, numerous and 
 valuable ; but of real abstract science there is none. 
 
100 HISTORICAL WORKS. 
 
 And this same feature, the inevitable consequence of the nature of 
 Chinese civilization itself, characterizes their studies relative to social 
 phenomena. We owe to the Chinese, in fact, admirable works of erudi- 
 tion ; that is to say, of concrete sociology. 
 
 Confucius had given attention to historical studies ; for, besides 
 editing the principal ancient books, he had himself compiled a history of 
 the Kingdom of Lu. The sentiment of continuity, too, so strong in China, 
 was an additional incentive to the cultivation of historic studies ; whilst 
 the virtually positive spirit, free from supernatural beliefs, accounts for 
 that exactitude and patient and critical correctness which characterizes 
 the principal works of erudition of the Chinese savants ; fables and 
 erratic flights, when they occur, are traceable to the disturbing influence 
 of the Buddhists or Taoists. 
 
 Writers of the Confucian school have followed along this path of 
 patient, exact historical studies ; and their works treat not only of China 
 proper, but also of all the surrounding peoples with whom the Chinese 
 have had commercial or political relations. It is in this rich mine of 
 Chinese historians that we must quarry in order to get positive and 
 trustworthy knowledge of the history and geography of the Tartar 
 peoples. I cannot and ought not to attempt here to give even a sum- 
 mary of the story of the immense works of erudition we owe to China ; 
 all I can do is to dwell upon two types, by way of sample, and in order 
 to give greater definiteness to the foregoing general remarks. 
 
 One of the most eminent of Chinese men of learning was Sze-ma 
 Ts'ien, who has been styled the Father of History, and also the Herodotus 
 of China. He was born at Lung-men, in the province of Honan, about 
 the year 163 B. C., under the dynasty of the Western Han that is to 
 say under that great restoring and re-establishing dynasty, which, whilst 
 availing itself of the results of the energetic action of Ts'in She Hwangti, 
 yet again took up, and carried forward the development of Chinese 
 civilization in the spirit of its antecedents. 
 
 His father, who was the chief of the court historians, intended his 
 son to be a writer of history, and educated him carefully with that view ; 
 and the latter from his earliest years showed himself worthy of such a 
 calling. 
 
 11 He was put in command of a military expedition, which took 
 
SZE-MA TS'lEN. 10i 
 
 "him to the regions now known as Yunnan and Szechuen. On the 
 " march, he learned that his father, Sze-ma T'an, was dangerously ill. 
 ' He lost not a moment in repairing to his side, but arrived only in time 
 41 to receive his dying wishes. 
 
 "Even on his death-bed, Sze-ma T'an's sense of duty did not forsake 
 " him ; and his son's journey was a subject of interest to him, both as a 
 " father, and as a historian. He asked for a detailed account of it, and 
 41 when he had heard it, he addressed his son in words which the latter 
 " has recorded at full length. ' The great historiographer,' said he, * took 
 "' my hands in his, and with tears in his eyes, spoke as follows : Our 
 " ' ancestors, since the time of the third dynasty, have always distinguished 
 41 ' themselves in the Academy of History. Is it to be my fate to see this 
 " * honorable succession come to an end ? Should you succeed me, my son, 
 " ' read the writings of our ancestors. The Emperor, who now gloriously 
 " * reigns over all China, has commanded me to take part in the solemn 
 " ' ceremonies which he is about to celebrate on the sacred Mount. I am 
 4 * ' unable to obey. Doubtless you will be ordered to discharge the duties. 
 41 ' Then remember my wishes. Filial piety is shown first in the perfor- 
 " * mance of duties towards parents, then in the rendering of service to 
 *' ' one's prince, and lastly, in care for one's own good fame. The crown 
 4 * ' of filial piety is to bring home to a father and a mother, the glory 
 4 " of a name become renowned.'" (Abel Remusat, New Asiatic Miscel- 
 lanies, Vol. II.) 
 
 Sze-ma Ts'ien fulfilled his father's behest. He became a historian, 
 was appointed Historiographer, and lastly a Censor. He had the double 
 duty of recording the past, and of counselling the present. He 
 discharged his censorial duties under very trying circumstances, and 
 with a heroism which did him honour. His historical work is of immense 
 extent, accurate, impartial, and marked by sober critical judgment. 
 It is a splendid monument of learning. The Sze Ki, or Historical 
 Record, as the work is entitled, is divided into 130 books, arranged in 
 five sections. The first, consisting of 12 books, contains, under the 
 heading "Imperial Records," all that relates to the Empire, considered 
 as a whole. The second, consisting of ten books, is made up of 
 historical lists, and synoptical tables, such as we have in plenty in the 
 West. The third, in eight books, is called Pa-shu (the eight branches 
 
102 
 
 MA TWAN-LIN. 
 
 of knowledge), namely, Rites, Music, Harmony, Chronology, Astrology, 
 Sacrificial Service, Water-courses, and Weights and Measures. Sze- 
 ma Ts'ien here treats, in as many separate dissertations, of all the changes 
 the above enumerated subjects have undergone, in the twenty-two 
 centuries of history which his work embraces. The fourth section, 
 forming thirty books, comprises the genealogical history of all the great 
 land-holding families, from the great vassals of the Chow dynasty, to 
 the plain ministers and generals of the Han. The fifth, and final 
 section, made up of seventy books, includes geographical memoirs on 
 foreign countries, and biographical notices, more or less detailed, of all 
 persons of eminence in literature or administration. (Abel Eemusat, 
 New Asiatic Miscellanies.) 
 
 The literati in China have written a great number of encyclo- 
 pedias, some general, others special. Some of them relate to the various 
 occupations, such as agriculture, sericulture, and ceramics, etc., etc. 
 Others relate to different branches of administration, the superinten- 
 dence of the public granaries, the planning and management of water- 
 courses, etc. One of the most eminent Chinese encyclopedists was Ma 
 Twan-lin. Ma Twan-lin was born in the province of Kwangsi, about the 
 middle of the thirteenth century. His master was the celebrated com- 
 mentator Chu Hi, of whom we have already spoken. 
 
 The fall of the Sung dynasty and the Mongul conquest led him to 
 decide to devote himself entirely to writing learned works, and give up 
 all thoughts of an official career. He gave twenty years to the com- 
 position of the great work, which, under the title of Antiquarian 
 Researches, constitutes his claim to fame. 
 
 This vast encyclopedia consists of twenty-four sections, divided 
 into 848 books. I proceed to give a list of them, taken from Abel 
 Remusat. 
 
 1. Of the division of lands, and their produce under different dynas- 
 
 ties, 7 books. 
 
 2. Of money, metallic, token, or paper, 2 books. 
 
 3. Of the population, and its fluctuations, 2 books. 
 
 4. Of Administration, 2 books. 
 
 5. Of tolls, customs, dues, and taxes in general, and octroi, etc., G 
 
 books. 
 
CYCLOPEDIAS. 103 
 
 6. Trade and barter, 2 books. 
 
 7. Of Land tax, 1 book. 
 
 8. Of State expenditure, 5 books. 
 
 9. Of Promotion and rank of magistrates, 12 books. 
 
 10. Of Studies and the State examinations, 7 books. 
 
 11. Of Duties of Magistrates, 21 books. 
 
 12. Of Sacrifices, 25 books. 
 
 13. Of Ancestral Temples, 15 books. 
 
 14. Of Court Ceremonial, 22 books. 
 
 15. Of Music, 15 books. 
 
 16. Of War, 1G books. 
 
 17. Of Punishment and Torture, 12 books. 
 
 18. Of Books Classical and other, 76 books. 
 
 This section is so extensive by reason of its comprising analyses of 
 a host of curious treatises on all sorts of subjects ; it is, in fact, a com- 
 pendium of the whole range of Chinese literature. 
 
 19. Chronology and genealogies of the successive dynasties, 18 books. 
 
 20. Of the tributary principalities and fiefs, under the several dynasties, 
 
 18 books. 
 
 21. Of Heavenly bodies, and what happens amongst them, as eclipses, 
 
 conjunctions, etc., 17 books. 
 
 22. On Portents, Calamities, as Floods, Earthquakes, ^Erolites, showers 
 
 of insects (vermin), 20 books. 
 
 23. Of the Geography of China, and its political divisions at different 
 
 epochs of the monarchy, 9 books. 
 
 24. Of the Geography of Foreign countries and of all the peoples known 
 
 to the Chinese, 25 books. 
 
 Supplements to this vast work have been written on the same plan, 
 continuing up to the present day. 
 
 The author of this huge undertaking was born about 1245 after 
 Christ, and died about 1325. 
 
 These two specimens will serve to fix more definitely in our minds 
 a clear idea of what Chinese science is, such as it has been developed, 
 mainly by the Confucian school. 
 
 Concrete, special, exact, accurate studies, but absence of science 
 properly so called ; for that always consists in the discovery of the 
 
104 WESTERN RELATIONS WITH CHINA. 
 
 abstract laws of phenomena. And this essential character, the outcome 
 of the very nature of Chinese civilization itself, has never been perceptibly 
 modified, either by the abstract metaphysical aberrations of the Taoists, 
 or even by the introduction of the various elements of abstract science, 
 by the Hindus, Mussulmans or Christians. It is only the demonstrated 
 religion, based on the dogmatic co-ordination of the several abstract 
 sciences from Mathematics up to Morals that can bring about a thorough 
 yet regular change. 
 
 THE RELATIONS OF THE WEST WITH CHINA. 
 
 We have thus brought to a close our estimate of Chinese civiliza- 
 tion, having regard first to its essential elements, then to its historical 
 development, and lastly to its principal philosophic types. The task was 
 a highly important one from a theoretic point of view. For China has 
 been hitherto a sort of historical mystery wholly inexplicable by all the 
 theological and metaphysical theories that have been attempted. 1 There 
 were no doubt plenty of documents, due to a deep and patient erudition : 
 some interesting and even at times profound views had been put forth ; 
 but there was no such thing as a genuine theory of Chinese civilization 
 considered as a whole. A striking proof of this is the fact that one 
 who had given so much thought to the subject as Abel Remusat made 
 such a mistake as to suppose that metaphysicians, imbued with what 
 was most likely a Hindoo philosophy, were the types of Chinese 
 civilization ; in fact, Abel Remusat, in spite of his ingenious and even 
 profound views, so far mistook the fundamental spirit of the people 
 whom he had so carefully studied, that he could never understand that 
 they actually worshiped the sky, although that worship underlies the 
 whole of their long mental evolution. 
 
 Thus then this great historical problem had not been solved, and 
 could not be, until the advent of the Positive Philosophy ; which was to 
 demonstrate by such a solution its profound reality and fruitfulness. 
 
 But however great the philosophic importance of this theory, it will 
 serve a still more useful purpose if we can derive from the consequences 
 
 l lt is the profound Positive conception of Fetishism as the spontaneous 
 starting-point of human reason that has furnished the clue to a really scientific 
 theory of the subject. 
 
ANARCHY AND ACTIVITY OF THE WEST. 105 
 
 that necessarily follow from it the foundations of a systematic policy 
 which shall direct the ever multiplying relations of the West with China 
 in such a way that those relations may be useful to both these great 
 social groups, instead of being, as they manifestly are now, a source of 
 demoralization to both alike. 
 
 It is, then, the principles of such a policy that I shall now proceed 
 to deduce from the two-fold study of the evolutions of the West and of 
 China : this will be the practical and social outcome of our long study. 
 
 Before entering on the explanation of this policy, I must briefly 
 consider what is the present condition of the West, both in itself and 
 as regards its relations with the rest of the world, and especially 
 with China. 
 
 One first incontestable fact is the revolutionary state of the West ; 
 that is to say, there is the absence of a guiding doctrine, disregard of 
 antecedents, straining after the future without respect to the past, an 
 ever increasing intellectual anarchy. Unity of opinion, the basis of all 
 lasting society, is rapidly disappearing. The West is thus placing 
 itself more and more every day in an utterly unstable position. 
 
 The second capital fact of the situation is the increase of industrial 
 activity, and of a spirit of daring enterprise, which aggravates, instead 
 of counteracting, the absence of doctrinal unity above noted. We must 
 ascertain the historical causes of these two main facts, before following 
 up their consequences, as affecting the relations of the West with the 
 rest of the world. 
 
 The middle ages, at the close of the 14th century, handed down to 
 the dawning modern era a social mass that was free, without caste and 
 necessarily pacific and industrial. The result was a state of affairs most 
 favourable to the development of scientific, artistic and industrial 
 activity. The situation which Auguste Comte has proved to have been 
 the source of the free evolution of Greek civilization, became, thanks to 
 the emancipation of the serfs effected by the middle ages, common 
 to the numerous populations of Western Europe. The necessarily 
 peaceful activity of the social body, the widespread ease and indepen- 
 dence which it created, the freedom that accompanies the decay of the 
 spirit of caste and of theocracy, became thenceforth the source of a 
 hitherto unheard of activity, of an unexampled hardihood of enterprise, 
 
106 ITS EXPLORATION AND ENTERPRISE. 
 
 which the acquired results only intensified, and which met with less and 
 less opposition from the gradually waning power of the theological 
 belief which had prevailed in the Middle ages. This movement, confined 
 exclusively to the peoples of the West, was the necessary outcome of 
 the series of their antecedents, Greek, Roman and Catholic-Feudal. 
 
 In was thus that the situation I have just described to you was 
 brought about : An immense population given up to an activity ever on 
 the increase and ever less and less under control. 1 
 
 Minds placed in such an environment were sure, perforce, to push 
 their enterprises in every direction. There were sure to arise, and there 
 did arise energetic individualities, putting forth the most powerful activity 
 in industry and in commerce. The glow thus kindled was certain, owing 
 to the combined impulsion of the scientific and industrial spirit, of 
 military habits, and in a minor degree of theological beliefs, to develop 
 active relations with the rest of the globe. The establishment of these 
 relations on the largest scale was as inevitable as it was indispensable. 
 
 The very situation which I have just analyzed, so favourable to 
 individual initiative, and to scientific and industrial development, explains 
 why it was that relations ever larger and more active were of necessity 
 developed between the West and the rest of the world, at the close of the 
 middle ages, and particularly from the 15th century. We see at that 
 epoch an unparalleled activity in voyaging hither and thither over the 
 earth. The planet was really discovered, and fully explored ; navigation 
 was improved ; and the geographical knowledge then acquired became 
 the incentive to new adventures. 
 
 1 This group, composed of the five great populations, viz., France in the centre, 
 Italy and Spain in the south, Great Britain and Germany in the north, is habitually 
 designated by the name of Christendom. It would be opportune to substitute the 
 names Westerndom and Western peoples for the unsuitable denominations of Chris- 
 tendom and Christian peoples. In the first place, these antiquated designations are 
 not sufficiently precise, as covering also Kussia and the Eastern Christians, who 
 do not properly belong to such a group. In the second place, those designations 
 indicate as unique in the establishment of Western civilization the influence of 
 Christianity ; whereas that assuredly was not even the leading influence. Lastly, 
 they tend to maintain a hateful dualism between the five advanced populations 
 and the rest of the globe. The substitution therefore of Westerndom for Chris- 
 tendom is both philosophically urgent and socially beneficial. 
 
PREPARATION FOR THE UNIVERSAL RELIGION. 107 
 
 Here we have an all-important fact ; we must accept it as the 
 inevitable result of all that had gone before it. Whether this were a 
 good thing or a bad, the fact could not have been otherwise, as I have 
 just explained. But if these relations were inevitable, they were also 
 indispensable, as well for the preparation as for the establishment of 
 the Universal Religion, which the regenerated West was to build 
 up. 
 
 The final aim of the more advanced portions of Humanity is the 
 foundation of a Universal Religion. A grand attempt in this direction 
 was made in the West, namely Catholicism ; and though it has been a 
 complete failure as regards its ultimate aim, it was none the less 
 necessary for the stating of the problem, and even for the furthering of 
 its solution. The mission of founding the Universal Religion belonged of 
 necessity to the West, for the requisite condition of such a mission was 
 a military civilization in the midst whereof abstract science could arise. 
 Abstract science, discovering the general and real laws of the various 
 distinct orders of phenomena, is the only thing that can serve as the 
 dogmatic basis of a doctrine capable of becoming truly universal ; for 
 such science reveals the fundamental order which dominates human 
 existence, both individual and collective. This complete development 
 of abstraction was, as Auguste Comte has shown, a special peculiarity 
 of the military populations of the West ; whilst again, this preponderant 
 military activity was needed to allow of the establishment of the 
 definitive religion ; for it alone could implant the needful habits of 
 initiative and personal independence. Thus, in short, the foundation of 
 the Universal Religion could only have emanated from the West, the 
 advance guard of Humanity, and it has indeed effectually emanated by 
 the great construction of Auguste Comte, the final outcome as it is of 
 all anterior evolutions. Thus, active relations of the West with the 
 rest of the planet were indispensable, first for the establishment, and 
 then for the diffusion of the Universal Religion. 
 
 Knowledge of the planet, not merely theoretical, such as 
 astronomy furnishes, but practical, such as active exploration yields, 
 was needed for the foundation of the definitive faith, to determine 
 the exact position of the various peoples whom it was to bind in 
 union. 
 
108 PREVIOUS DEVELOPMENT NECESSARY. 
 
 In this way we form the conception of a truly world-embracing 
 policy, avoiding the narrowness of the national standpoint, and the 
 arbitrary vagueness of theological notions. 
 
 The scientific faith has thenceforth for its precise and sufficiently 
 general object, to build up the unity of the world, by finally eliminating 
 all concern for the supernatural and all empirical restrictions ; its all- 
 embracing width of view never passing beyond the bounds of the real. 
 Thus, the practical knowledge of our planet, completing the knowledge 
 derived from astronomy, has furnished a foundation for the Universal 
 Religion, by determining the precise object over which it was to exert 
 its influence. 
 
 A real and thorough knowledge of the various civilizations on the 
 face of our planet was necessary in yet another way for the foundation 
 of the definitive faith ; for the spectacle of these manifold social evolu- 
 tions helped to free men's minds from the habit of looking at things 
 from an absolute standpoint, and to shew them how powerless theology 
 is to found a Universal Religion. For the two great monotheisms, Islamic 
 and Catholic, the only religions that lay claim to universality, were 
 never able, in their periods of full ascendancy, to reach more than a 
 minority of the human species. Lastly, the knowledge of these various 
 civilizations could alone supply decisive verification of sociological laws, 
 by allowing us to verify, in space, the laws of evolution discovered 
 chiefly by consideration of the homogeneous series, in time, of the phases 
 of Western civilization. 
 
 On all these various grounds then, it was necessary not only for 
 the foundation, but also for the final establishment of the definitive faith, 
 that there should be active relations between the West and the rest of 
 the planet. A knowledge of the different populations of the world was 
 needed as a preliminary to the conception of a general plan for propagat- 
 ing the doctrine elaborated by the group of Western peoples which are 
 the flower of the human species. The relations that have been 
 established between the West and the rest of the world, during the five 
 centuries of the revolutionary era, were therefore as indispensable as 
 they were inevitable. 
 
 But these relations could not but partake of the anarchical character 
 of the era which witnessed their rise and development. A blind 
 
HISTORY OF WESTERN RELATIONS. 109 
 
 empirical proselytism was eager to spread over the rest of the world 
 a faith which was gradually dying out in its own home. These 
 attempts, often prompted by honorable feelings, in spite of the intellectual 
 narrowness on which they were based, were accompanied by oppressive 
 and gain-seeking measures on the part of Western powers. This 
 oppression and pursuit of gain was only too much favoured by the 
 growing anarchy of the peoples, amongst whom the powerlessness of 
 the old doctrine and the absence of a new, left a clear field for the selfish 
 and aggressive propensities. 
 
 The first duty of the Positive Faith will be to regulate those 
 relations, which otherwise would be given over to the most ignoble 
 greed. 
 
 Before setting forth the principles of such a policy, especially as 
 regards China, I must first tell you, Gentlemen, very briefly, what 
 those relations were and are. 
 
 The ancient Greeks and Romans had only a very dim knowledge of 
 China, and their relations with her were never other than indirect ; and 
 this continued to be the case throughout the middle ages, when the Mus- 
 sulmans were the principal intermediaries between the West and the Far 
 East ; and these intermediaries had an interest in concealing from both sides 
 the means of intercommunication. Nevertheless some direct communica- 
 tion did take place ; and every one has heard of the celebrated travels of 
 Marco Polo. These travels were performed from 1271 to 1295, in the 
 reign of Kublai. Marco Polo himself has given us a very interesting 
 account of his journeys, highly instructive as regards the geography 
 of the middle ages. A great many translations were made of his work, 
 especially into Latin, the original having probably been written in the 
 Venetian dialect. Although his descriptions of the immense empire of 
 China were at first treated as fable, and brought the veracity of that 
 remarkable traveller into grave suspicion, they were nevertheless highly 
 important. The recollection of a great Empire in the furthest East 
 remained as an object for the active investigation of the W T est to 
 explore. From the 16th century onward the relations of the West with 
 China became much fuller and closer. Opened by the two great 
 enterprises of Vasco de Gama and Christopher Columbus, those relations, 
 favoured by circumstances, grew increasingly active. Westerns then 
 
110 THE JESUIT MISSION. 
 
 made their appearance in China in a passing and accidental way, but 
 their appearance was that of greedy bucanneers and daring filibusters. 
 This impression, long maintained, was only momentarily counterbalanced 
 by the admirable mission of the Jesuits, the real glory of that celebrated 
 society, and the most rational and moral attempt hitherto made to 
 establish relations between the West and the rest of the world. And not 
 only was the inception of this mission due to social motives, unlike the other 
 enterprises which sprung from purely selfish aims, but more than all, 
 its work was performed in a wisely relative spirit ; as far as perhaps 
 even further than the absolute spirit of Christian theology allowed. 
 
 The Jesuits thought, as many minds in Europe still think, that 
 Christianity is the highest expression of human civilization ; and that 
 consequently it is a duty to share it with all the other populations of 
 the earth. The various Christian missions were undertaken under the 
 promptings of this most honourable sentiment, though the hope that 
 they would succeed was altogether illusory. But the Jesuit mission 
 in China was carried out with an exceptional degree of wisdom, and a 
 fullness of devotion which will always command the respect of sensible 
 men. We shall now give a brief account of it. 
 
 This great mission was inaugurated by father Matteo Ricci, (born at 
 Macerata, in the marches of Ancona in 1552, died in China the llth 
 May, 1610) ; and it was marked from the outset by all the characteristics 
 which it preserved throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. 
 From the first he perceived the expediency of influencing specially 
 the leading men, and above all the Emperor himself. He gave up the 
 garb of a Buddhist monk, which he had at first assumed, and made the 
 members of his mission adopt that of a Confucian literate instead. By 
 many this conduct has been found fault with ; but it was in reality full 
 of wisdom, since his object was to bring the Jesuits into closer contact 
 with the class which really controls China, and to sever all connection 
 with the Buddhist priests, who were more or less looked down upon by 
 the better educated class of the Chinese. And this measure was 
 rendered all the more necessary, by reason of the great dogmatic 
 resemblance that exists between Catholicism and Buddhism. Ricci 
 instituted a system of wise toleration of the worship of ancestors and 
 of the sky, and even of the worship of Confucius, which constitute the 
 
THE JESUIT MISSION. Ill 
 
 fundamental basis of Chinese civilization ; lastly, be recommended 
 Western civilization to China by propagating the teaching of abstract 
 scientific knowledge ; the feeble development of which constitutes 
 in China the deep defect of its civilization. 
 
 This mission, then, was spontaneously established, as far as the 
 mental narrowness of Christian dogma permitted, with the characteristics 
 which are suitable to every wisely constituted mission ; namely, 
 appreciation and respect for the civilization which is to be modified, and 
 services rendered in filling up by devoted and pacific propaganda the 
 lacunas which exist in it. 
 
 The mission thus instituted by Matteo Ricci was carried on in the 
 same spirit and on a larger scale during the seventeenth and eighteenth 
 centuries. By the astronomical and geometrical knowledge of the 
 missionaries it rendered real services to Chinese civilization, without 
 being able to effect, however, any deep reaching modification. To do 
 that belongs to the Positive Religion alone. The Jesuits were always 
 appreciated in China, so far as regards the Western scientific knowledge 
 they introduced. The Emperor Kang Hi, by an ingenious experiment 
 which I have already mentioned, obtained a proof of the superiority 
 of Western over Chinese astronomy. Jesuits were thereupon placed at 
 the head of the Mathematical Board ; a fact which sufficiently demon- 
 strates that the Chinese are by no means absolutely opposed to the 
 dissemination of Western science, when proper respect is shown by its 
 progagaudists for the civilization of the Celestial Empire. 
 
 The mission of the Jesuits may be divided into two successive 
 periods the one extending over the seventeenth, the other over the 
 eighteenth century which may be conveniently termed, the former the 
 Italian, the latter the French period. The first witnessed the foundation 
 under the auspices of Ricci, the second was distinguished by the 
 production of great learned works, especially those of Father Gaubil, 
 who was its most eminent representative. 
 
 Besides these services to China, the Jesuits rendered to the West 
 the important service of at length making known the greatness and 
 civilization of China, by publishing immense works of learning ; works 
 which will always be for Western scholars the foundation for new 
 investigations in this field. 
 
112 THE JESUIT MISSION. 
 
 And the Jesuits bad the inestimable advantage of living their whole 
 lives amongst the people they were studying. They thus were saved from 
 forming those superficial estimates, often calumnious and always absurd, 
 so frequently indulged in by passing travellers who pretend to judge 
 of a civilization of which they can perceive nothing at first but the 
 drawbacks. 
 
 We are indebted to Father Gaubil for a History of Chinese astro- 
 nomy, which, owing to his profound astronomical knowledge and his 
 intimate acquaintance with Chinese, he alone perhaps could have 
 written. We also owe to him a translation of the Shu King, the 
 most ancient and most valuable of the sacred books of China, and 
 the study of which even to the Chinese themselves is beset with 
 difficulties. 
 
 " The style in which the Shu King is written," says Abel Remusat, 
 " savours of the period in which the book was composed ; its excessive 
 11 brevity of expression, the choice of words employed, the sort of meta- 
 " phors we find in it, make it beyond comparison the most difficult 
 " of all Chinese books to read ; and one might be able to read all 
 " other books, even those of Confucius, and yet be unable to read and 
 11 understand this. It is in some sort a distinct tongue ; differing 
 " more from modern Chinese than that differs from any other 
 "idiom." 
 
 Father Gaubil composed a great number of other works, all 
 distinguished by deep learning and sober judgment. Sent to China in 
 1723, he died there the 14th July, 1759. 
 
 Besides his learned works, and his special labours as a missionary, 
 Father Gaubil succeeded Father Parenin as Director of the College to 
 which the young Manchus repaired to study Latin, in order to be 
 afterwards employed in the conduct of affairs with the Russians. 
 He was, moreover, interpreter for the Latin and Tartar languages. 
 Many other Jesuit missionaries were able thus to combine the 
 duties of their special mission with learned labours and important 
 public functions, worthily fulfilled to the great advantage of the 
 populations they sought to convert. Thus worked and spread, 
 during two centuries, a mission alike useful to China and the 
 West. 
 
COMMERCIAL RELATIONS. 
 
 But however wise and praiseworthy in the main was this system of 
 toleration towards the cult of Confucius and ancestors, it was neverthe- 
 less incompatible with the dogmatic narrowness of Catholicism, which 
 the Jesuits had been able, by a noble politic instinct, to surmount. Abbe 
 Boileau, exclaiming, " My Christrian brain is turned," gives artless 
 expression to the incongruity of the relative spirit and of a judicious 
 toleration with the absolute dogmatism of Christian monotheism. The 
 Papacy, therefore, owing to the perpetual agitation of the Dominicans, 
 and faithful to the spirit of its dogma, at last condemned the system of 
 toleration introduced by the Jesuits, the only system which could have 
 allowed not indeed of the chimerical conversion of China to 
 Christianity but, at least, of the admission of that creed to a footing 
 of equality with Buddhism. None the less is it true that this great 
 mission constitutes the only serious and honorable attempt to modify 
 Chinese civilization. 
 
 The "West will yet certainly be able to surpass this mission a& 
 regards the mental point of view, by basing itself on a relative and 
 more real doctrine ; but never, I venture to say, will it surpass the probity, 
 the devotion, and the modesty of those worthy ministers of religion. 
 It is but a duty of acknowledgment to pay so deserved a tribute of 
 respect to this noble mission, the true title to glory of the Society from 
 whose ranks it was recruited. 
 
 From the eighteenth century the commercial relations of the West 
 with China became more extensive and important, but at the same time 
 the disposition grew among Westerns to regard China as a mine to be 
 worked to the utmost, without limits other than those interposed by 
 insurmountable necessity. This they carried so far as to regard them- 
 selves as free from any sort of moral obligation towards these people ; 
 the only appeal was to brute force, and the West vaunts itself over a 
 people who have virtually attained to the pacific and industrial stage, 
 principally on the grounds of the superiority of its weapons of destruc- 
 tion. This disposition was specially displayed in the shameful opium 
 war of 1842. In that expedition a powerful people was seen employing 
 violence to coerce a Government into allowing its subjects to be 
 poisoned ; a sight dishonorable not merely to the English aristocracy 
 and middle classes, who were the authors of it, but to the whole 
 H 
 
114 WRONG NOTION OF PROGRESS. 
 
 West, on which recoils the blame of not having protested with 
 sufficient firmness against so immoral an employment of brute force. 1 
 
 Thus Western commercial relations with China became more and 
 more subversive of order, mainly by reason of their protection by public 
 force. They may be improved, when governments come to understand 
 the need of correcting their abuses, instead of allowing them to take 
 their course at the pleasure of public opinion, only too much inclined to 
 favour such misdoings. For, under the guidance mainly of the so-called 
 progressive school, it has come to such a pass in the West, that oppres- 
 sion and the exploiting of the other peoples of the world has been reduced 
 to a system, under the specious pretext of spreading civilization. There 
 has grown up with respect to China, and Western relations with her, a 
 set of opinions which I must try to describe. These opinions are summed 
 up in a proud feeling of the mastery of Western civilization, and a blind 
 contempt for all other civilizations whatever. From this there results 
 the disposition to introduce everywhere, and especially by means of 
 force, under the empty name of progress, the mental anarchy and 
 unregulated industrialism which are becoming more and more prevalent 
 in the West. I may quote here two passages bearing on this subject, 
 which are all the more significant, as emanating from sober and 
 honorable minds. They will show to what a pitch of mischievous error 
 men may be led by this vague and heucefoward so dangerous a notion of 
 progress, which in fact is now nothing more than a systematic glorifi- 
 cation of an ill-ordered industrialism. 
 
 In a highly interesting work on Buddhism, M. Barthelemy-Saint- 
 Hilaire sums up the opinion of a Chinese pilgrim about India, and 
 follows it up by some observations of his own. ' Yuan Chwaug indicates 
 *' in a few lines the distinction of castes, and he dwells, as usual, upon 
 " the four principal ones, only because it would take too long to give a 
 41 detailed account of the others, as he himself says. He gives a short 
 41 anatysis of the laws of marriage amongst the Indians, and he takes 
 
 J In spite of vague economic maxims about free trade, it is certain that it has 
 become the duty of every government to prevent a cultivation and commerce such 
 as that of opium. By talcing some such action, the West could show to the East 
 the superiority of its civilization, instead of presenting the spectacle of public force 
 placed at the service of unprincipled and unbridled greed. 
 
WRONG NOTION OF PEOGBESS. 115 
 
 " care to note the horror they have of a woman marrying a second time. 
 " Once a woman is married, she is expressly forbidden, for the rest of 
 " her life, to have a second husband. We know that this law, sanctioned 
 " by inflexible usage, has been perpetuated to the present day ; and quite 
 " recently the English papers in India have told us, as a quite unpre- 
 " cedented fact, and as a great victory over inveterate prejudices, that a 
 " young Hindu widow had just been married a second time. This is an 
 " immense step of progress which the English authorities have achieved 
 " after great efforts, and of w r hich they are as proud as of having at length 
 " suppressed the atrocious custom of Sati." (Barthelemy- Saint- Hilaire: 
 Buddha and His Religion, p. 257.) 
 
 Here was a custom which all sensible men in all times had been 
 pleased to respect. In all countries the state of widowhood has been 
 held in honour, as being a more perfect state than that of second 
 marriage. It has always been held that there was something worthy in 
 this faithfulness unto death. The Westerns come to India, and they 
 account as the greatest step of progress, the fact that they succeed in 
 destroying an honourable custom, which at all costs they ought to have 
 treated with respect. This is a truly characteristic example of the strange 
 infatuation of the Western mind, which leads it to extol as progress the 
 violation of some moral rule which should be extended instead of 
 repressed, merely because such a rule is not in keeping with the present 
 anarchical state of our civilization. 
 
 A protestant clergyman published, some time ago, an interesting 
 work on China, animated by the most benevolent feelings towards that 
 nation, which he had closely studied. He sums up in a few lines the 
 way in which, as he conceives, the West may civilize China : 
 
 " If some hope may be formed of a change for the better, it should 
 " be based not on a more or less organized agitation, but upon this fact, 
 " that thought is beginning to circulate amongst the people. New ideas 
 " have been infused into the popular mind. Since the establishment of 
 " free intercourse with foreigners in 1842, the schoolmaster has been 
 " abroad in China. The spirit of self-reliance, so manifest in the last 
 " insurrections, has begun to take among the people a more elevated 
 " tone. Such commotions, like storms and hurricanes, purify the 
 " atmosphere. Movements of so grave a nature call forth thought and 
 
116 WRONG NOTION OF PROGRESS. 
 
 " efforts ; teach the people to act for themselves, and to throw down the 
 "fossil debris of prejudices, bigotry and superstition. Every shock in 
 " the nation reveals the working of this vast laboratory in which new 
 " and unexpected results are being prepared. We cannot help believing 
 " that all these moral undulations of the soil of China will result in 
 " producing something good. It is thus that our entire globe, after the 
 " terrible convulsions of nature had swept over its surface, ended by 
 "presenting an appearance which the sovereign Creator himself was 
 " pleased to pronounce good." (liev. W. Milne: Real Life in China.) 
 
 Let us remark, to begin with, in passing, how singular it is to hear 
 a minister of the Christian religion talking about superstition and 
 bigotry in connection with a civilization so free from supernatural 
 beliefs, properly so called, as Chinese civilization is. But what is, at 
 bottom, the ideal which it is thus proposed to introduce into China ? 
 It is simply a state of complete anarchy, which it is hoped may some- 
 how finally eventuate in a regeneration of which neither the spirit, nor 
 the conditions nor the nature are at all defined. 
 
 And this is all the more characteristic from the fact that this 
 deplorable revolutionary jargon emanates from a man of order, from the 
 minister of a religion of peace, who all the better on that account does but 
 give involuntary expression to that disposition, which is becoming more 
 and more preponderant in the West, to consider every vague agitation 
 as constituting a step of progress. 
 
 To state the matter briefly, the West has opened up indispensable 
 commercial relations with China, but it has imported into those relations 
 a truly anarchical and oppressive tendency, by its continual appeal to 
 public force to back up, instead of to restrain, the most culpable 
 excesses of commercial greed ; whilst those who sincerely desire the 
 amelioration of China by its contacts with the West, unfortunately bring 
 nothing but the narrowest prejudices to the appreciation of a civilization 
 which they completely misunderstand, and their only conception of what 
 is required for the civilization of that vast oriental empire is indeter- 
 minate anarchy. Their civilizing process consists in applying the 
 vague notion of progress, which, oftener than not, is but a synonym 
 for anarchy, and which is becoming more and more a cant fermula for 
 justifying the most foolish enterprises. 
 
WESTERN RELATIONS NEED REGULATING. 117 
 
 An urgent need exists, therefore, for laying down the general 
 principles of a more rational and a more moral policy which shall at 
 length regulate relations which have arisen spontaneously from the 
 unregulated activity of the West. 
 
 We must now rapidly indicate what are the fundamental principles 
 in accordance with which the relations between the West and the rest 
 of the planet should be regulated, and then we shall have to apply these 
 considerations to the special case of China. 
 
 The past has, in the West, developed all the human forces under 
 all their various aspects. This long and laborious preparation is now 
 come to an end. The normal state ought to regulate the forces which 
 the past has developed. It is this regulating function which the 
 demonstrated religion inaugurates. For all the truly regenerate this 
 regulating process should begin at once in all the various phases of 
 private and public life. But from the social point of view, the most 
 general relations, that is to say those of people to people, having been 
 the first to be troubled, ought to be the first to be regulated, at least in 
 their main scope. These general relations, troubled since the opening 
 of the fourteenth century, are those over which we have most power, 
 especially the extra-occidental relations, inasmuch as the usages with 
 which they are connected are at once fewer and less confirmed. It is in 
 the ordering aright of these relations that Positivism will be able from 
 the very outset to make its superiority manifest ; because it alone can 
 conceive them without doctrinal bias whether in the direction of 
 disparagement or admiration ; and because it, at last, comes to regulate 
 them in a moral, not in an arbitrary way ; in accordance with 
 principles based upon the whole range of the abstract branches of 
 knowledge. 
 
 The universal religion, the final problem of which is to make 
 sociality prevail over selfishness in all the various aspects of our 
 existence, has at length laid down the principles of such regulation. But 
 the preliminary question is, what, in the West, are the forces upon 
 which Positivism can rely to constitute that public opinion which 
 will make the general principles of the demonstrated morality 
 prevail against the disturbing forces fostered by the revolutionary 
 state ? The forces to which Positivism can and ought to make its 
 
118 THE SUPPORTERS OF MORAL REGULATION. 
 
 appeal to support, of their own free opinion, the prescriptions of the 
 demonstrated morality are, essentially, -women and the working 
 classes. 
 
 Positivism lays down as a principle that morality is one ; and that 
 its prescriptions must be applied to all relations whatsoever, even 
 to those between man and the animals ; as indeed has been spon- 
 taneously admitted by the practical instinct of the West. Two classes 
 are naturally disposed, apart from all dogmatic belief, by virtue of their 
 nature and of their position, to admit and sanction this great principle ; 
 namely women and proletaries. For these classes necessarily suffer 
 from an unregulated condition of the human forces, a condition which is 
 invariably due either to the theoretical or the practical classes who, from 
 the very fact that they constitute the directing forces of society, are 
 always prone to abuse. The very characteristic of every true force is 
 its liability to abuse. 
 
 As regards women, their tendency is to give a spontaneous support 
 to all moral regulation, by reason of that pure and noble disposition 
 which is part and parcel of their moral superiority ; hence it is rather by 
 virtue of their better inward nature than of their situation that they are 
 naturally disposed to sanction all true rules of morality. Thus, in 
 England, where the extra-occidental relations have received their most 
 anarchical development, we have seen English women giving the 
 effective support of their opinion to the abolition of negro slavery in 
 the colonies. That admirable instance shows how great is the power 
 they will be able to exercise when their noble spontaneous aid is 
 extended to all moral regulation. 
 
 On the part of the proletariate the support will be less spontaneous 
 and more systematic, as arising rather from the situation of its members 
 than from their very nature. Every disturbance in the action of the 
 social forces reacts necessarily, and with special force, on the immense 
 mass of working men who form the very foundation of our societies. 
 Now there is a close interdependence between all kinds of regulation ; 
 and those who demand the moral regulation of the relations between 
 capitalists and workmen cannot approve of the anarchic domination of 
 force in the relations of the West with the rest of the planet ; and those 
 of them, on the other hand, who, to gratify their greed or their pride, 
 
THE PROBLEM OF ORDER. 119 
 
 approve of the oppressive domination of the West, are in no position to 
 demand from their chiefs a better administration of the social forces, 
 power or wealth. It is to these two great classes, then, that Positivism, 
 apart altogether from questions of dogmatic belief, makes its appeal to 
 give their active sanction to the maxims of universal morality in their 
 application to the most general relations of Humanity. It is for women 
 and working men, guided by the incontrovertible demonstrations of the 
 positive religion, to form at length in the West a preponderant opinion 
 which shall put a rein on the disturbing forces that are taking advantage 
 of the revolutionary interregnum to use public force in the service of 
 private greed. 
 
 It is in this way .that we shall form, by degrees, that current of 
 opinion which is to moderate the disturbing elements issuing mainly 
 from the middle classes which too often bring upon other peoples of the 
 planet embroilment and oppression. But this opinion must and in the 
 end undoubtedly will, receive effectual support from governments, more 
 particularly from absolute governments. 
 
 For this disorderly action of the advanced populations upon the 
 Orient tends to develop in the West an anarchical conception of progress, 
 and this misconception, in its turn, serves as a justification in advance 
 for any sort of disturbance whatever. The only notion of progress that 
 now prevails in the West is that of an uncontrolled and limitless 
 material development. What is now aimed at is to produce much and 
 to consume more ; that is deemed to be the one thing needful. Any 
 modification whatever, especially if it be of the practical kind and 
 disturbing in its effects, meets with instant welcome. It is progress ! 
 The notion of progress has actually become a sort of mechanical 
 unreasoning justification in advance of any occurrence whatsoever, 
 provided it brings with it some disturbance of the existing state of 
 affairs. If you would like to keep things as they are, in scientific, in 
 industrial, or in political matters, you are set down as retrograde; but 
 if you want to disturb some established order, then you are progressive ! 
 The growing preponderance of such a notion as this is becoming more 
 and more a source of danger. It is in the name of such a principle that 
 the most anarchical attempts are being made, or at all events conceived, 
 in science, in morals, in politics. Let some incompetent mind, without 
 
120 MORAL PROGRESS HIGHER THAN MATERIAL. 
 
 in any way fulfilling the preliminary conditions, make an attack on some 
 most incontestable principle of science, his performances, the outcome 
 of a wayward vanity, generally allied with profound mental weakness, 
 instead of meeting with the contempt they merit, are hailed with 
 applause by a still more incompteut public in the name of progress. 
 The word is becoming henceforward a kind of mystic explanation in 
 itself, dispensing with any need for reflection. Past, present, future, 
 this wonderful word explains every thing, and thus it is that it has 
 settled down into a common place dogma, as immoral as it is absurd. 
 
 It is high time to set our faces against this dangerous notion, 
 which would compromise the existence of all order whatever. Progress 
 is only the development of order. Moral jwogress is more important than 
 intellectual progress. Such are the two great principles laid down by 
 August Comte ; and it is under the guidance of these principles that 
 Western minds can be at last brought back to the normal situation, from 
 which they now tend more and more to swerve. Progress must be held 
 subordinate to order ; the supremacy of moral progress must be at length 
 proclaimed. Such are two of the essential conclusions resulting from 
 the vast body of thought worked out by Positivism ; and though these 
 principles required the most mighty meditative efforts for their systematic 
 establishment, as scientific truths they will win an ever-increasing 
 sanction from common sense. Women and workmen will feel the 
 profound danger of progress conceived independently of order ; and the 
 immense inconveniences of the supremacy of material over all other 
 kinds of progress. 
 
 From Western governments, too, support ma} 7 , on good grounds, be 
 expected. Absorbed, as those governments are certain to be, in the 
 problem of maintaining material order a problem that is becoming 
 more and more difficult in the midst of a growing mental and moral 
 anarchy they will before long come to perceive the solidarity that knits 
 material order with moral order. They will soon perceive what 
 tremendous danger there would be in developing, by an unsettling action 
 upon the East, the disturbing notion of progress in vogue in the West. 
 And even if it be true that our overt political intervention would be 
 actually useful to the East, still the demoralizing reaction upon 
 Westerners which such intervention undeniably produces would be 
 
CHANGE IN PUBLIC OPINION NEEDED. 121 
 
 enough to make us refrain from it, and confine ourselves to simple 
 commercial relations, freely accorded on both sides and freely ac- 
 cepted. 
 
 It will be necessary, in short, that the public force should regard 
 itself as bound to regulate, and at times even to restrict, instead of 
 blindly fostering, the relations of the West with the East. It is in this 
 sense that a change must be brought about in the opinions of peoples 
 and of governments. 
 
 I should remark, that it is necessarily from the middle classes that 
 these elements of disturbance emanate ; and it is parliamentary govern- 
 ments, middle-class organs that they are, which especially favour and 
 foster such a policy. . Moreover, it is in England that this line of extra- 
 occidental policy finds its complete development. Thanks to its 
 parliamentary regime, a portion of the English middle class has been 
 able to make use of a haughty aristocracy to back up and to direct 
 military expeditions for the purpose of opening up, by any and every 
 means, fair or foul, outlets for their trade. The effect of such a course 
 of policy is to impede the regulation of the industrial forces and to 
 demoralize even the working classes themselves by making them parties 
 to the exploiting of the rest of the planet for profits. This policy, too, 
 has always had the unfailing support of journalism, which is but the 
 necessary complement of a parliamentary regime. We have seen the 
 most respectable organs of English journalism calling out for systematic 
 massacre of the Hindus, and, to attain their end, inventing the most 
 monstrous calumnies. Against these sanguinary outbursts some noble 
 protests have been made in England. But Western journalism as a 
 body has not raised its voice against such blameworthy diatribes. 
 
 It is in public opinion then, and in governments, especially strong 
 personal governments, that will make themselves its organ, that we 
 shall find a fulcrum for energetic reaction against an extra-occidental 
 policy that is fraught with harm. 
 
 To begin with, in the special case before us, public opinion must 
 undergo a profound change in its way of looking at Chinese civilization. 
 It must recognize that there, some stupid prejudices notwithstanding, 
 is a respectable civilization, of which the determining conditions ought 
 to be understood before any attempt is made to modify it. There must 
 
122 THE TRUE POINT OF VIEW. 
 
 be a recognition too, of the fact that the West has to get itself started 
 in the way of making its escape from a profoundly revolutionary condi- 
 tion in order to arrive at a condition really normal, before it takes upon 
 itself to modify other civilizations. Any such modifications, by reason 
 of their indeterminate character, can only have a disturbing influence 
 upon the peoples acted on, and a demoralizing influence on the peoples 
 who attempt such action. 
 
 Chinese civilization has developed itself gradually and steadily in 
 one determinate direction for some four thousand years. It presides 
 over the destinies of one-third of the human species, enabling them to 
 live respectable lives and in circumstances in many ways preferable to 
 those enjoyed by a large section of the working classes of the West. 
 This civilization, truly organic and firmly founded on an admirable 
 family system, presents a spectacle from which the superficial revolu- 
 tionary conceit of the West has some lessons to learn. Rightly placing 
 themselves at the normal point of view, the Chinese hold that continuity 
 must be accepted as the basis of all social development ; and that the 
 present, born of the past to prepare the future, should first of all respect 
 and honour the past instead of reviling and misunderstanding it, with 
 an ingratitude as immoral as it is senseless. This great empire, too, in 
 the course of last century, at length reduced to order the Tartar 
 peoples ; brought them at last into connexion with its own civilizing 
 centre. China thus fulfils the function which a superficial view assigns 
 to Russia ; and assuredly fulfils it better than Russia could. 
 
 This great civilization, then, enables one-third of the human species 
 to live peaceful lives, 1 without opposing to reforming influences any 
 
 1 "I should be disposed to add my own testimony," says Sir George Staunton, 
 " to the same facts and in the same spirit. In the course of our journey through 
 " the Chinese empire on the occasion of that embassy, I can recall to my recollection 
 " (the seaport of Canton of course excepted) but very few instances of beggary or 
 "abject misery amongst the lower classes or of splendid extravagance amongst the 
 ,' higher." 
 
 J. F. Davis then proceeds to quote the characteristic words of a Chinese, 
 Tien Ke Chi, explaining his reasons for felicitating himself that lie was born in 
 China. J. F. Davis follows up the quotation by the following comments of his 
 own : 
 
 " The country cannot, upon the whole, be very ill-governed whose subjects 
 
THE WEST TO BE FIRST MORALIZED. 123 
 
 other really serious resistance than that which results from a well- 
 founded distrust of the truly anarchical guise in which Western civiliza- 
 tion presents itself. Although the West has within itself a development of 
 the social forces which iudefeasibly confers upon it the supreme initiative, 
 it is none the less true that those forces, unregulated as they are, are 
 the cause of a profoundly anarchical state of things, the action of which 
 upon China cannot be other than disastrous. Let the West solve, in 
 short, the problem of its own moral organization. Until it shall have 
 done that, the directors of Chinese civilization can only contemplate, 
 with more aversion 1 than sympathy, a restlessness that grows more and 
 more convulsive, and the reaction of which upon their own society could 
 only promote disorder. Are we to introduce our disregard of all 
 authority, our family system in such decay that proper respect for the 
 paternal power is becoming the exception rather than the rule, into the 
 
 " write in this style. But it is a still more remarkable fact that the following is 
 "a popular maxim of the Chinese, and one frequently quoted by them : 'To 
 " ' violate THE LAW is the same crime in the emperor as in a subject.' " (China: 
 by J. F. Davis.) 
 
 1( 'Some years ago I was in close friendly relations with a young Chinese 
 "literate whom the desire of seeing Europe had brought to Paris. He was an 
 "unreserved admirer of our modern scientific discoveries, photography, galvanism, 
 " the marvels of electricity. But, in the main, he hardly envied us anything 
 " beyond the positive results of our sciences : the moral side of our social condition 
 " gave him anything but a favourable impression of us. 
 
 " He freely acknowledged the superiority of our intellectual enterprise, without 
 "being at all persuaded that it was a thing for which we were to be envied. 
 
 "'The eyes of your intelligence,' he used to say to me, ' are more piercing 
 " ' than ours, but you look so far that you do not see about you. 
 
 " ' You have a bold spirit, which must make you successful in many things ; 
 "'but you have not enough respect for what deserves to be respected. This 
 " 'perpetual agitation in which you live, this constant want of diversion, clearly 
 " ' indicates that you are not happy. 
 
 " ' With you, a man is always as if he were on a journey; whereas we like to 
 " ' be at rest. As to your governments, I am willing to believe they have some 
 " ' good in them ; but if they suited you as well as ours suits us, you would not 
 " ' change them so often as you do. I am quite sure to find, when I go back to my 
 " 'country, the same institutions as when I left it; and I see that not one of you 
 " ' would guarantee me for even a couple years the solidity of your government as it is 
 " ' to-day.' " (China in presence of Europe : by the Marquis d'Hervey-Saint-Denys.) 
 
124 THE MAIN DEFECT AND THE REMEDY. 
 
 midst of a civilization solidly supported on an admirable organic 
 constitution of the family ? It is easy to understand, then, the well- 
 grounded repulsion felt by this people against closer contacts with the 
 West. And the most exact and searching scientific analysis must 
 sanction the feeling, and must at the same time proclaim, in the name at 
 once of reason and morality, the need of restricting such contacts 
 instead of enlarging them. 
 
 The regenerated West will have, without doubt, to exercise, later ' 
 on, a pacific action, as salutary as it will be thorough, on this great 
 civilization, in order to found the normal state of the human species on 
 our planet. It will be of use, therefore, to indicate the defects inherent 
 in this civilization, which our gradual action on it will supply, in 
 order to constitute at length Humanity. 
 
 The main defect, the one which from the mental point of view 
 dominates all the others, is the absence of the social institution of 
 scientific abstraction. Concrete observation and science have been 
 amply originated and extensively developed in China, but not abstract 
 observation and science. Thence the absence of sufficient generalization, 
 and the impossibility of a true mental systcmatizatiou. Generalisation, 
 like systematization, is the result of scientific abstraction, and can 
 result from that alone. 
 
 But the mental constitution of China will furnish, as indeed I have 
 already indicated, an admirable opening for the gradual introduction and 
 admission into it by its directing minds, of that vast abstract construction 
 which is the glory of the West, and the foundation of its final supremacy. 
 And the possibility of this achievement will be due wholly and solely to 
 the fact that science, co-ordinated, finds its ultimate outcome in morals, 
 as is shown by the incomparable systematization of Auguste Cointe. 
 We admit, as do the Chinese thinkers, that theoretical speculation, like 
 practical activity, should be subject to moral sway. But it can readily 
 be shown, in accordance with this very principle, that, from the stand- 
 point of theory, as well as from the standpoint of practice, what is 
 required for an efficacious constitution of morals is precisely a long 
 abstract preparation proceeding by successive stages from Mathematics 
 to Morals. (Mathematics, Astronomy, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, 
 Sociology, Morals.) 
 
THE IMPROVEMENTS REQUIRED. 
 
 For it is the business of morals to establish the government of 
 human nature on the basis of a thorough knowledge of it. Now 
 knowledge of human nature, to be really thorough, must rest on the 
 knowledge of the actual laws of the various phenomena by which it is 
 influenced. How is it possible to know Man without knowing the laws, 
 statical and dynamical, of the phenomena of Society ? And how can 
 these phenomena themselves be adequately understood without a 
 knowledge of the laws of Life ? And are not these in their turn 
 dependent on Chemical phenomena, just as the latter are on Physical 
 phenomena ; which again operate under the influence of Astronomical 
 phenomena, and finally of Mathematical ? But if abstract knowledge of 
 the laws of the various distinct phenomena is indispensable for a sound 
 scientific theory of human nature, it is not less so for the establishment 
 of the governance of it. For the power of modifying depends, as much 
 as does the possibility of systematizing, upon the knowledge of abstract 
 laws. 
 
 Thus it is, then, that the mental constitution of Chinese civilization, 
 in spite of its immense deficiency, nevertheless presents an opening 
 through which the regenerated West will be able to introduce into it 
 modifications as salutary as they will be deep reaching. 
 
 From the family point of view, the "West has, as regards the filial 
 and paternal relations, more to learn from China than to teach her. In 
 accepting, under this head, a truly organic constitution, all we shall 
 have to do will be to systematize it. As regards the conjugal relations, 
 the incompleteness of China's military development has kept them in 
 an imperfect state. But, in this respect, and in the name of the 
 universal perfectionmeut acknowledged by the school of Confucius as 
 the final aim of human existence, it will be an easy task to bring about 
 the full adoption of monogamy ; of monogamy pushed to the extent of 
 perpetual widowhood. Indeed the respect universally paid to widow- 
 hood in China will render such a transformation easy. 
 
 From the social point of view the Chinese have, more fully than 
 the West, arrived at the truly normal state, that is to say at the regime 
 of industry and peace ; in so much that even their military activity is 
 reduced to the pure normal function of gendarmerie. But the division 
 between masters and workmen, the necessary base of all industrial 
 
126 PRECIPITANCY DEPRECATED. 
 
 systematizatiou, has hardly been developed in China, except in a very 
 insufficient way, more particularly as regards its agriculture, in which 
 the system of very small holdings is almost universal : so that the 
 normal constitution of the industrial and pacific state can finally arise 
 only in the West : and on the other hand the lack of abstract science has 
 not allowed of the establishment in China of industry on the -.grand 
 scale finally founded on the use of machinery ; so that the mental defect 
 of this civilization has constituted a profound material defect. Under 
 this aspect, again, industrial systematization, which necessarily rests 
 upon the division between capitalists and workmen and upon the allied 
 use of machinery, could not have its beginning any where but in the 
 West, under the impulsion of regenerated science carried at length to 
 religious height. But this systematization, once it has begun, will 
 gradually obtain admittance into a civilization which acknowledges the 
 fundamental principle of the normal preponderance of industrial and 
 pacific life. Until that time shall have come, every premature attempt 
 to transport into China our Western type of vast concentrations of 
 capital, and of developed use of machinery, can have no other effect 
 but to produce frightful perturbations. 1 Indeed the spectacle of our 
 
 l " All arrangements capable of contributing to the maintenance of order and 
 " general tranquillity are made with admirable care. 
 
 " There is, in short, a business-like character about the Chinese which 
 " assimilates them in a striking manner to the most intelligent nations of the 
 " West, and certainly marks them out, in very prominent relief, from the rest of 
 " the Asiatics. However oddly it may sound, it does not seem too much to say, 
 " that in everything which enters into the composition of actively industrious and 
 "well organized communities, there is vastly less difference between them and the 
 " English, French and Americans, than between these and the inhabitants of 
 'Spain and Portugal. * * * 
 
 "We shall see that they have some ingenious contrivances by which to avail 
 " themselves of the natural moving powers, * * * but of the strength of 
 " steam they are ignorant, etc. 
 
 " Whenever the effects of our scientific machinery in abridging labour are 
 " explained to an intelligent Chinese, the first idea that strikes him is the disastrous 
 "effect that such a system would work upon his over-peopled country , if suddenly 
 " introduced into it, and he never fails to deprecate such an innovation as the most 
 " calamitous of visitations." (China : by J. F. Davis, formerly the East India 
 Company's Superintendent in China.) 
 
CONCLUSION. 127 
 
 own industrial anarchy is not such a seductive one as to incline 
 Chinese statesmen towards any such premature and disastrous 
 introduction. 
 
 To sum up, then ; let us respect this great and noble civilization. 
 Let us at length understand that, if it presents some unquestionable 
 defects, our only hope of being able to remedy them lies in setting out 
 with a thorough knowledge of the society in which it exists. The 
 actual state of that society, the outcome of its whole past, must be 
 taken as the starting point of a systematic and gradual modification. Let 
 us admit henceforward that the West itself ought to find its way out of 
 its own state of anarchy ; ought, in short, to be regenerated ; ought, in 
 the main, at least, to have arrived at the normal state, before attempting 
 any serious action upon China. Let us, in short, acknowledge that 
 our attempts at forcible action upon this great people can only disturb 
 them and demoralize ourselves. Let us await with respectful sympathy 
 the further spontaneous evolution of this grand civilization, and in the 
 free intercourse incident to commercial relations let us be able to divest 
 ourselves of truly childish prejudices and to comprehend the noble 
 aspects of an organization by which one-third of our species is directed 
 in a fitting way. It is by thus bringing to our judgments a rational 
 and moral disposition that the commercial relations now subsisting with 
 China will spontaneously prepare the way, by her free and voluntary 
 acceptance, of that action upon her which the regenerated West will 
 then be worthy to exercise. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 E. MEIKLEJOHN & Co., PRINTERS, 26 WATER STREET, YOKOHAMA, JAPAN. 
 
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