consequence the people may be said to have no
religion or morality. Faith, properly so called,
they can attain to none; and for ethical teachers,
they have to lean on a succession of broken
reeds. Confucius, their most revered instructor,
is nothing more than a good sort of man, at the
very best. His authority and influence on the
Chinese of the present day is about equal to
that of Plato or Socrates on a Fellow of Trinity
College, Cambridge. Other Chinese philosophers
are merely vanished phantoms of wisdom,
who once uttered, during the distant past, dark,
sometimes unintelligible, sayings.

The long and solitary existence of the Chinese
empire is a unique fact in the general history of
humanity. The peoples of antiquity were only
acquainted with it through its manufactured
articles, and were quite ignorant of its internal
civilisation. The travellers who succeeded in
visiting it during the middle ages, did so in a
hurried and superficial manner, and brought
home only very incomplete accounts. It was
not till the Jesuits had accomplished a lengthened
residence in the capital, and so had the
leisure to collect documents relative to the
history of Chinese civilisation, that Europe became
at all acquainted with the literature of the
Flowery Land.

The peculiar characteristic of Chinese civilisation
is its paradoxical code of morality, which
although abounding in the noblest maxims
founded on eternal truth, is a defective and
incomplete system of ethics. It extravagantly
extols the observance of private and public
duties, but leaves the universal rights of men,
that is, social justice, quite in the shade. It
loudly proclaims the reciprocal obligations
between man and man, but it has no valid sanction
to give to them; it blames every abuse of power,
but has no authority strong enough to prevent
it; it declares every human being responsible
for his deeds, and yet makes the son a
compulsory partner in his father's guilt; it preaches
humanity, and retains slavery; it exalts filial
piety, and leaves the mother, the wife, and the
daughter, in a state of servility and degradation.
It has too many moral teachers, because they
are not agreed; and not one of them has strength
enough to command implicit obedience. There
is no religious or legal obstacle to prevent
persons in high places from preferring the gratification
of their passions to the performance of their
duties, if their defective conscience so incline
them. For four thousand years, Chinese public
morality has been dependent on the chance of a
good example being set them by their ruler for
the time being.

The ante-historical traditions of China
curiously agree with the development theories which
certain modern philosophers have lately enunciated.
Their annalists reckon by millions of years;
and proceed in a mode which might be called
scientific, by dividing the primitive period into three
kingdoms: the kingdom of heaven, the kingdom
of earth, and the kingdom of man. When they
come to man, far from describing him as created
by a single act of the Divine Will, ready
endowed, like Adam, with the highest faculties of
mind and body, and then fallen in consequence
of some revolt against his Maker's injunctions—
they attribute to him a half-animal, half-human
form, wandering in the forests, dwelling in caves,
and climbing trees after the manner of apes, in
whose society, or in contests with whom, he
spent his life. It is even stated that men,
constantly associating with the brutes, never dreamt
of harming them. Does that mean that man
was not yet carnivorous, nor thought of clothing
himself with skins?

Meanwhile, the development of his peculiar
aptitudes gradually weaned him from a state of
nature. The usefulness of his hands and the
agility of his body, aided by his inventive talents,
led him to discover numerous resources, and
favoured the propagation of the human race. As
population increased, the animals, the tradition
adds, were obliged to dispute with man the
ground on which he encroached from day to
day. To protect himself from their attacks, he
built huts, fashioned weapons, and banded
himself in clans or tribes.

The historical epoch begins with the reign of
Yao. The Chou-king, the first sacred book of
China, is nothing more than a summary of the
political and moral history of China, from the
Emperor Yao (before Christ, 2357), until the
epoch of the philosophers. Confucius endorsed
its authority, but it has no pretensions to be a
revelation from any celestial power; for Chinese
requirements, a human emperor is celestial
enough. At Yao's death, the nation put on
mourning for three whole years.

The philosophers who subsequently succeeded
to the popular consideration, were Lao-tseu and
Khoun-fou-tseu, better known as Confucius.
The doctrine of the former may be summed up
in the well-known parody, "For nought is
everything, and everything is nought." Abnegation
and impassibility are the highest virtues. The most
innocent enjoyments, all arts, affections, and
sentiments are bad; knowledge and activity are bad.
The wise man remains absorbed in contemplation
of the Tao, the spiritual, the indistinct. He
who comprehends the Tao, is alike inaccessible
to favour and to disgrace, to profit and to loss,
to honours and to ignominy. The holy man
clothes himself in coarse garments, while he
conceals precious jewels in his heart. Those
jewels are gentleness, resignation, humility, the
love of man; but at the same time contempt of
the world, the absence of every desire, the hatred
of all action; charity on the one hand,
indifference on the other. In short, Lao-tseu lived
during a dissolute period; to reform it, he
preached the extreme of asceticism.

Confucius (born 551 years before the Christian
era) was by far the most practical of the Chinese
sages; but he made no pretence to anything
higher than human wisdom. A short sample of
his maxims is all we can give: Do not contract
friendship with persons who are morally and
intellectually inferior to yourself. At table, do not
try to satiate or glut your appetite. Avoid the
enjoyments of ease and effeminacy. Keep strict