The Canon of Reason and Virtue

TH1- CANON OF REASON AND VIRTUE (LAO-TZE'S TAO TEH KING)

DR. PAUL CARUS >d Edition CHICAGO THE OPEN COURT PUBLISHING COMPANY LONDON AGENTS KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRUBNER & Co., LTD. 1909 COPYRIGHT, 1903 BY THE OPEN COURT PUBLISHING COMPANY CHICAGO FOREWORD. booklet, The Canon of Reason and Virtife, is an extract JL from the author's larger work, Lao-Tze's Tao i eh King + "* * / and has been published for the purpose of making our reading public more familiar with that grand and imposing figure Li Er,1 who was honored with the posthumous title Poh- Yang, i. e., Prince of the Strong Principle ; but whom his countrymen simply call Lao-Tze, the Old Philosopher. Sze-Ma Ch'ien, the Herodotus of China, who lived about 136- 85 B. C., has left a short sketch of Lao-Tze's life in his Shi Ki (Historical Records) which is here prefixed as the most ancient and only well attested account to be had of the Old Philosopher. Being bornln 604 B. C., Lao-Tze was by about half a century the senior of Confucius. He must during his life have attained great fame, for Confucius is reported as having sought an interview with him. But the two greatest sages of China did not understand each other, and they parted mutually disappointed. If Confucius's visit to Lao-Tze were not historical, we should have to regard it as ben trovato, for the contrast between these two leaders of Chinese thought remains to the present day. The disciples of Confucius, the so-called "Literati," are tinged with their master's agnosticism and insist on the rules of propriety as the best methods of education, while the Tao Sze, the believers in the Tao, or divine Reason, are given to philosophical specula- tion and religious mysticism. The two schools are still divided, and have never effected a conciliation of their differences that might be attained on a common higher ground. At an advanced age Lao-Tze wrote a short book on Reason and Virtue, Tao Teh, in all outward appearances a mere collection of aphoristic utterances, but full of noble morals and deep meditation. It met the reward which it fully deserved, having by imperial decree lAlso spelled 'Rh. 20O509S IV FOREWORD. been raised to the dignity of canonical authority ; hence the name King or "canon," completing the title Tao Teh King, as now commonly used. Lao- Tze's Tao Teh King contains so many surprising anal- ogies with Christian thought and sentiment, that were its authen- ticity and pre-Christian origin not established beyond the shadow of a doubt, one would be inclined to discover in it traces of Chris- tian influence. Not only does the term Tao (word, reason) corre- spond quite closely to the Greek term Logos, but Lao-Tze preaches the ethics of requiting hatred with goodness. He insists on the necessity of becoming like unto a little child, of returning to prim- itive simplicity and purity, of non-assertion and non-resistance, and promises that the deficient will be made entire, the crooked will be straightened, the empty will be filled, the worn will be re- newed, those who have too little will receive, while those who have too much will be bewildered. The Tao Teh King is brief, but it is filled to the brim with suggestive thoughts. In the present edition of the " Canon of Reason and Virtue" the translator has incorporated all the changes and emendations which he proposes in the preface to the second issue of his more complete work on the same subject, entitled Lao-Tze" 's Tao Teh King. The latter contains an historical introduction, the Chinese text, a transliteration, explanatory notes and an index, including the Chinese terms.1 The present extract is limited to that portion which to English speaking people is of universal interest, the Eng- lish translation. For the convenience of the reader and to prevent confusion in quotations, the paging of this larger book has been retained in this extract. May this little book fulfil its mission and be a witness to the religious spirit and philosophical depth of a foreign nation whose habits, speech, and dress are strange to us. We are not alone in the world ; there are others who search for the truth and are grop- ing after it. Let us become better acquainted with them, let us greet them as brothers, let us understand them and appreciate their ideals ! PAUL CARUS. 1 For further information the reader is referred to the articles "Chinese Philosophy" (Religion of Science Library. No. 30) and "The Authenticity of the Tao Teh King" (The Monist, Vol. XI., pp. 574-601). THE OLD PHILOSOPHER'S CANON ON REASON AND VIRTUE SZE-MA-CH'IEN ON LAO-TZE. T AO-TZE was born in the hamlet Ch'ii-Jhren \^ (Good Man's Bend), Li-Hsiang (Grinding County), K'u-Hien (Thistle District), of Ch'u (Bram- ble land). His family was the Li gentry (Li meaning Plum). His proper name was Er (Ear), his post- humous title Po-Yang (Prince Positive), his appella- tion Tan (Long-lobed). In Cho he was in charge of the secret archives as state historian. Confucius went to Cho in order to consult Lao- Tze on the rules of propriety. [When Confucius, speaking of propriety, praised reverence for the sages of antiquity], Lao-Tze said : "The men of whom you speak, Sir, have, if you please, together with their bones mouldered. Their words alone are still extant. If a noble man finds his time he rises, but if he does not find his time he drifts like a roving-plant and wanders about. I observe that the wise merchant hides his treasures deeply as if he were poor. The noble man of perfect virtue as- sumes an attitude as though he were stupid. Let go, Sir, your proud airs, your many wishes, your affecta- tion and exaggerated plans. All this is of no use to 96 LAO-TZE'S TAO-TEH-KING. you, Sir. That is what I have to communicate to you, and that is all." Confucius left. [Unable to understand the basic idea of Lao-Tze's ethics], he addressed his disciples, saying : "I know that the birds can fly, I know that the fishes can swim, I know that the wild animals can run. For the running, one could make nooses ; for the swimming, one could make nets ; for the flying, one could make arrows. As to the dragon I cannot know how he can bestride wind and clouds when he heavenwards rises. To-day I saw Lao-Tze. Is he perhaps like the dragon?" Lao-Tze practised reason and virtue. His doc- trine aims in self-concealment and namelessness. Lao-Tze resided in Cho most of his life. When he foresaw the decay of Cho, he departed and came to the frontier. The custom house officer Yin-Hi said : "Sir, since it pleases you to retire, I request you for my sake to write a book." Thereupon Lao-Tze wrote a book of two parts consisting of five thousand and odd words, in which he discussed the concepts of reason and virtue. Then he departed. No one knows where he died. THE OLD PHILOSOPHER'S CANON ON REASON AND VIRTUE. I. i. REASON'S REALISATION. 0<^H&,, 'T^HE REASON that can be reasoned is not the -1- eternal Reason. The name that can be named is not the eternal name. The Unnameable is of heaven and earth the beginning. The Nameable becomes of the ten thousand things the mother. Therefore it is said : "He who desireless is found The spiritual of the world will sound. But he who by desire is bound Sees the mere shell of things around." These two things are the same in source but dif- ferent in name. Their sameness is called a mystery. Indeed, it is the mystery of mysteries. Of all spirit- uality it is the door. 2. SELF-CULTURE. When in the world all understand beauty to be beauty, then only ugliness appears. When all un- 98 LAO-TZE'S TAO-TEH-KING. derstand goodness to be goodness, then only badness appears. For "To be and not to be are mutually conditioned. The difficult, the easy, are mutually definitioned. The long, the short, are mutually exhibitioned. Above, below, are mutually cognitioned. The sound, the voice, are mutually coalitioned. Before and after are mutually positioned." Therefore the holy man abides by non-assertion in his affairs and conveys by silence his instruction. When the ten thousand things arise, verily, he refuses them not. He quickens but owns not. He works but claims not. Merit he accomplishes, but he does not dwell on it. "Since he does not dwell on it It will never leave him." 3. KEEPING THE PEOPLE QUIET. .Not exalting worth keeps people from rivalry. Not prizing what is difficult to obtain keeps people from committing theft. Not contemplating what kindles desire keeps the heart unconfused. There- fore the holy man when He governs empties the peo- ples hearts but fills their souls. He weakens their ambitions but strengthens their backbones. Always he keeps the people unsophisticated and without de- sire. He causes that the crafty do not dare to act. When he acts with non-assertion there is nothing un- governed. CANON ON REASON AND VIRTUE. 99 4. SOURCELESS. Reason is empty, but its use is inexhaustible. In its profundity, verily, it resembleth the father of the ten thousand things. "It will blunt its own sharpness, Will its tangles adjust; It will dim its own radiance And be one with its dust." Oh, how calm it seems to remain ! I know not whose son it is. Before the Lord, Reason takes pre- cedence. 5. THE FUNCTION OF EMPTINESS. Heaven and earth exhibit no benevolence ; to them the ten thousand things are like straw dogs. The holy man exhibits no benevolence ; to him the hun- dred families are like straw dogs. Is not the space between heaven and earth like unto a bellows ? It is empty; yet it collapses not. It moves, and more and more comes forth. [But] "How soon exhausted is A gossip's fulsome talk ! And should we not prefer On the middle path to walk?" 6. THE COMPLETION OF FORM. "The valley spirit not expires, Mysterious mother 'tis called by the sires ioo LAO-TZE'.S TAO-TEH-KING. The mysterious mother's door, to boot, Is called of Heaven and earth the root. Forever and aye it seems to endure And its use is without effort sure." 7. DIMMING RADIANCE. Heaven endures and earth is lasting. And why can heaven and earth endure and be lasting? Because they do not live for themselves. On that account can they endure. Therefore the holy man puts his person behind and his person comes to the front. He surrenders his per- son and his person is preserved. Is it not because he seeks not his own? For that reason he can accom- plish his own. 8. EASY BY NATURE. Superior goodness resembleth water. Water in goodness benefiteth the ten thousand things, yet it quarreleth not. Because it dwells in [lowliness] the place which the multitude of men shun, therefore it is near unto the eternal Reason. For a dwelling goodness chooses the level. For a heart goodness chooses commotion. When giving, goodness chooses benevolence. In words, goodness chooses faith. In government goodness chooses or- der. In business goodness chooses ability. In its motion goodness chooses timeliness. It quarreleth not. Therefore, it is not rebuked. CANON ON REASON AND VIRTUE. IOI g. PRACTISING PLACIDITY. Holding and keeping full, had that not better be left alone? Handling and keeping sharp, can that wear long? If gold and jewels fill the hall no one can protect it. Rich and high but proud, brings about its own misfortune. To accomplish merit and acquire fame, then to withdraw oneself, that is Heaven's Way. 10. WHAT CAN BE DONE. >' *-J He who sustains and disciplines his soul and em- braces unity cannot be deranged. Through attention to his vitality and inducing tenderness he can become like a little child. By purifying, by cleansing and profound intuition he can be free from faults. In loving the people and administering the country he can practise non-assertion. Opening and closing the gates of heaven he can be like a mother-bird : bright, and white, and penetrating the four quarters, he can be unsophisticated. He quickens them and feeds them. He quickens but owns not. He acts but claims not. He excels but rules not. This is called profound virtue. ii. THE FUNCTION OF THE NON-EXISTENT. Thirty spokes unite in one nave and on that which is non-existent [on the hole in the nave] depends the wheel's utility. Clay is moulded into a vessel and on that which is non-existent [on its hollowness] depends IDS LAO-TZE'S TAO-TEH-KING. the vessel's utility. By cutting out doors and win- dows we build a house and on that which is non-ex- istent [on the empty space] depends the house's utility. Therefore, when the existence of things is profit- able, it is the non-existent in them which renders them useful. 12. ABSTAINING FROM DESIRE. "The five colors the human eye will blind, The five notes the human ear will rend. The five tastes the human mouth offend." " Racing and hunting will human hearts turn mad, Objects of prize make human conduct bad." Therefore the holy man attends to the inner and not to the outer. He abandons the latter and chooses the former. 13. LOATHING SHAME. "Favor and disgrace bode awe. Esteeming the body bodes great trouble." What is meant by "favor and digrace bode awe?" Favor humiliates. Its gain bodes awe; its loss bodes awe. This is meant by "favor and disgrace bode awe." What is meant by "Esteeming the body bodes great trouble " ? I have trouble because I have a body. When I have no body, what trouble remains ? CANON ON REASON AND VIRTUE. IO3 Therefore, if one administers the empire as he cares for his body, he can be entrusted with the em- pire. 14. PRAISING THE MYSTERIOUS. We look at Reason and do not see it ; its name is Colorless. We listen to Reason and do not hear it ; its name is Soundless. We grope for Reason and do not grasp it ; its name is Incorporeal. These three things cannot further be analysed. Thus they are combined and conceived as a unity which on its surface is not clear but in its depth not obscure. Forever and aye Reason remains unnamable, and again and again it returns home to non-existence. This is called the form of the formless, the image of the imageless. This is called transcendentally ab- struse. In front its beginning is not seen. In the rear its end is not seen. By holding fast to the Reason of the ancients, the present is mastered and the origin of the past under- stood. This is called Reason's clue. 15. THE REVEALERS OF VIRTUE. Those of yore who have succeeded in becoming masters are subtile, spiritual, profound, and penetrat- ing. On account of their profundity they cannot be understood. Because they cannot be understood, therefore I endeavor to make them intelligible. 104 LAO-TZE'S TAO-TEH-KING. How they are cautious! Like men in winter cros- sing a river. How reluctant! Like men fearing in the four quarters their neighbors. How reserved! They behave like guests. How elusive! They re- semble ice when melting. How simple! They re- semble unseasoned wood. How empty! They resem- ble the valley. How obscure! They resemble troubled waters. Who by quieting can gradually render muddy waters clear? Who by stirring can gradually quicken the still? He who keeps this Reason is not anxious to be filled. Since he is not filled, therefore he can grow old ; and without reform he is perfect. 16. RETURNING TO THE ROOT. By attaining vacuity's completion we guard our tranquillity truthfully. All the ten thousand things arise, and I see them return. Now they -bloom in bloom, but each one homeward returneth to its root. € Returning to the root means rest. It signifies the return according to destiny. Return according to des- tiny means the eternal. Knowing the eternal means enlightenment. Not knowing the eternal causes pas- sions to rise ; and that is evil. Knowing the eternal renders comprehensive. Com- prehensive means broad. Broad means royal. Royal means heavenly. Heavenly means Reason. Reason CANON ON REASON AND VIRTUE. 105 means lasting. Thus the decay of the body implies no danger. 17. SIMPLICITY IN HABITS. Where great sages are [in power], the subjects do not notice their existence. Where there are lesser sages, the people are attached to them ; they praise them. Where still lesser ones are, the people fear them ; and where still lesser ones are, the people des- pise them. For it is said : "If your faith be insufficient, verily, you will re- ceive no faith." How reluctantly sages consider their words! Merit they accomplish ; deeds they perform ; and the hun- dred families think: "We are independent; we are free." 18. THE PALLIATION OF VULGARITY. When the great Reason is obliterated, we have benevolence and justice. Prudence and circumspec- tion appear, and we have much hypocrisy. When family relations no longer harmonise, we have filial piety and paternal love. When the country and the clans decay through disorder, we have loyalty and allegiance. 19. RETURNING TO SIMPLICITY. Abandon your saintliness; put away your prudence; and the people will gain a hundred-fold! Abandon your benevolence; put away your justice; 106 LAO-TZE'S TAO-TEH-KING. and the people will return to filial devotion and pa- ternal love! fckrj.c*^"-' - Abandon your scheming; put away your gains; and thieves and robbers will no longer exist. These are the three things for which we deem cul- ture insufficient. Therefore it is said : "Hold fast to that which will endure, Show thyself simple, preserve thee pure, Thy own keep small, thy desires poor. " 20. DIFFERENT FROM THE VULGAR. Abandon learnedness, and you have no vexation. The "yes" compared with the "yea," how little do they differ! But the good compared with the bad, how much do they differ! If what the people dread cannot be made dread- less, there will be desolation, alas ! and verily, there will be no end of it. The multitude of men are happy, so happy, as though celebrating a great feast. They are as though in springtime ascending a tower. I alone remain quiet, alas! like one that has not yet received an en- couraging omen. I am like unto a babe that does not yet smile. Forlorn am I, O, so forlorn ! It appears that I have no place whither I may return home. The multitude of men all have plenty and I alone appear empty. Alas ! I am a man whose heart is foolish. CANON ON REASON AND VIRTUE. 107 Ignorant am I, O, so ignorant ! Common people are bright, so bright, I alone am dull. Common people are smart, so smart, I alone am confused, so confused. Desolate am I, alas ! like the sea. Adrift, alas ! like one who has no place where to stay. The multitude of men all possess usefulness. I alone am awkward and a rustic too. I alone differ from others, but I prize seeking sustenance from our mother. 21. EMPTYING THE HEART. "Vast virtue's form Follows Reason's norm. And Reason's nature Is vague and eluding. How eluding and vague All types including. How vague and eluding ! All beings including. How deep, and how obscure. It harbors the spirit pure, Whose truth is ever sure, Whose faith abides for aye From of yore until to-day. Its name does not depart. Thence lo ! all things take start." Whereby do I know that all things start from it, thus indeed? By [Reason] itself! io8 LAO-TZE'S TAO-TEH-KING. 22. HUMILITY'S INCREASE. "The deficient will recuperate. And the crooked shall be straight. The empty find their fill. The worn with strength will thrill. Who have little shall receive. Who have much will have to grieve." Therefore the holy man embraces unity and be- comes for all the world a model. He is not self-dis playing, and thus he shines. He is not self-approving, and thus he is distinguished. He is not self-praising, and thus he acquires merit. He is not self-glorifying and thus he excels. Since he does not quarrel, there- fore no one in the world can quarrel with him. The saying of the ancients: "The deficient will recuperate," is it in any way vainly spoken? Verily, they will recuperate and return home. 23. EMPTINESS AND NON-EXISTENCE. To be taciturn is the natural way. A hurricane does not outlast the morning. A cloud- burst does not outlast the day. Who causes these events but heaven and earth? If even heaven and earth cannot be unremitting, will not man be much less so? Those who pursue their business in Reason, men of Reason, associate in Reason. Those who pursue their business in virtue associate in virtue. Those CANON ON REASON AND VIRTUE. IOQ who pursue their business in ill luck associate in ill luck. When men associate in Reason, Reason makes them glad to find companions. When men associate in virtue, virtue makes them glad to find companions. When men associate in ill luck, ill luck makes them glad to find companipns. " He whose faith is insufficient shall not find faith." 24. TROUBLES IN [THE EAGERNESS TO ACQUIRE] MERIT. A man on tiptoe cannot stand. A man astride can- not walk. A self-displaying man cannot shine. A self-approving man cannot be distinguished. A self- praising man cannot acquire merit. A self-glorying man cannot excel. Before the tribunal of Reason he is like offal of food and like an excrescence in the sys- tem which all people are likely to detest. Therefore, one who has Reason does not rely on him. 25. IMAGING THE MYSTERIOUS. There is a Being wondrous and complete. Ere heaven and earth, it grew. How calm it is ! How spiritual! Alone it standeth, and it changeth not; around it moveth, and it suffereth not ; yet therefore can it be the mother of the world. Its name I know not, but its nature I call Rea- son. Constrained to give a name, I call it Great. The Great I call Departing, and the Departing I call far away. The Far-away I call the Coming Home. no LAO-TZE'S TAO-TEH-KING. The saying goes: "Reason is great, Heaven is great, Earth is great, and Royalty also is great. [There are four things in the world that are great, and Roy- alty is one of them.]" Man's standard is the Earth. The earth's standard is Heaven. Heaven's standard is Reason. Reason's standard is intrinsic. 26. THE VIRTUE OF DIGNITY. The heavy is of the light the root, and rest is mo- tion's master. Therefore the holy man in his daily walk does not depart from dignity. Although he may have mag- nificent sights, he calmly sits with liberated mind. But how is it when the master of the ten thousand chariots in his personal conduct is too light for the empire? If he is too light he will lose his vassals. If he is too passionate he will lose the throne. 27. THE FUNCTION OF SKILL. "Good travellers leave not trace nor track, Good speakers, in logic show no lack, Good counters need no counting rack. "Good lockers bolting bars need not, Yet none their locks can loose. Good binders need not string nor knot, Yet none unties their noose." Therefore the holy man is always a good saviour of men, for there are no outcast people. He is always CANON ON REASON AND VIRTUE. Ill a good saviour of things, for there are no outcast things. This is called concealed enlightenment. Therefore the good man is the bad man's instruc- tor, while the bad man is the good man's capital. He who does not esteem his instructor, and he who does not love his capital, although he may be prudent, is greatly disconcerted. This I call significant spiritu- ality. 28. RETURNING TO SIMPLICITY. "Who his manhood shows And his womanhood knows Becomes the empire's river. Is he the empire's river, He will from virtue never deviate, And home he turneth to a child's estate. "Who his brightness shows And his blackness knows Becomes the empire's model. Is he the empire's model, Of virtue never he'll be destitute, • And home he turneth to the absolute. "Who knows his fame And guards his shame Becomes the empire's valley. Is he the empire's valley, For e'er his virtue will sufficient be, And home he turneth to simplicity." ii2 LAO-TZE'S TAO-TEH-KING. Simplicity, when scattered, becomes a vessel of usefulness. The holy man, by using it, becomes the chief leader; and truly, a great principle will never do harm. 29. NON-ASSERTION. When one desires to take in hand the empire and make it, I see him not succeed. The empire is a di- vine vessel which cannot be made. One who makes it, mars it. One who takes it, loses it. And it is said of beings : "Some are obsequious, others move boldly, Some breathe warmly, others coldly, Some are strong and others weak, Some rise proudly, others sneak. " Therefore the holy man abandons pleasure, he abandons extravagance, he abandons indulgence. 30. BE CHARY OF WAR. He who with Reason assists the master of man- kind will not with arms strengthen the empire. His methods [are such as] invite requital. Where armies are quartered briars and thorns grow. Great wars unfailingly are followed by famines. A good man acts resolutely and then stops. He ven- tures not to take by force. Be resolute but not boastful; resolute but not haughty; resolute but not arrogant ; resolute because you cannot avoid it ; resolute but not violent. CANON ON REASON AND VIRTUE. 113 Things thrive and then grow old. This is called un-Reason. Un-Reason soon ceases. 31. QUELLING WAR. Even when successful, arms are unblest among tools, and people had better shun them. Therefore he who has Reason does not rely on them. The superior man when residing at home honors the left. When using arms, he honors the right. Arms are unblest among tools and not the superior man's tools. Only when it is unavoidable he uses them. Peace and quietude he holds high. He con- quers but rejoices not. Rejoicing at a conquest means to enjoy the slaughter of men. He who enjoys the slaughter of men will most assuredly not obtain his will in the empire. 32. THE VIRTUE OF HOLINESS. Reason, in its eternal aspect, is unnamable. Although its simplicity seems insignificant, the whole world does not dare to suppress it. If princes and kings could keep it, the ten thousand things would of themselves pay homage. Heaven and earth would unite in dripping sweet dew, and the people with no one to command them would of themselves be right- eous. But as soon as Reason creates order, it becomes nameable. Whenever the nameable in its turn ac- quires existence, one learns to know when to stop. By knowing when to stop, one avoids danger. 114 LAO-TZE'S TAO-TEH-KINO. To illustrate Reason's relation to the world we compare it to streamlets and creeks in their course to- wards great rivers and the ocean. 33. THE VIRTUE OF DISCRIMINATION. One who knows others is clever, but one who knows himself is enlightened. One who conquers others is powerful, but one who conquers himself is mighty. One who knows sufficiency is rich. One who pushes with vigor has will, one who loses not his place endures. One who may die but will not perish, has life everlasting. 34. TRUST IN ITS PERFECTION. How all-pervading is the great Reason ! It can be on the left and it can be on the right. The ten thou- sand things depend upon it for their life, and it refuses them not. When its merit is accomplished it assumes not the name. Lovingly it nourishes the ten thousand things and plays not the lord. Ever desireless it can be classed with the small. The ten thousand things return home to it. It plays not the lord. It can be classed with the great. Therefore, the holy man unto death does not make himself great and can thus accomplish his greatness. 35. THE VIRTUE OF BENEVOLENCE. "Who holdeth fast to the great Form, Of him the world will come in quest : CANON ON REASON AND VIRTUE. 115 For there they never meet with harm, But find contentment, comfort, rest." Music with dainties makes the passing stranger stop. But Reason, when coming from the mouth, how tasteless is it ! It has no flavor. When looked at, there is not enough to be seen ; when listened to, there is not enough to be heard. However, its use is inexhaustible. 36. THE SECRET'S EXPLANATION. That which is about to contract has surely been [first] expanded. That which is about to weaken has surely been [first] strengthened. That which is about to fall has surely been [first] raised. That which is about to be despoiled has surely been [first] endowed. This is an explanation of the secret that the tender and the weak conquer the hard and the strong. [Therefore beware of hardness and strength :] As the fish should not escape from the deep, so with the country's sharp tools the people should not become acquainted. 37. ADMINISTRATION OF GOVERNMENT. Reason always practises non-assertion, and there is nothing that remains undone. If princes and kings could keep Reason, the ten thousand things would of themselves be reformed. While being reformed they would yet be anxious to stir ; but I would restrain them by the simplicity of the Ineffable. n6 LAO-TZE'S TAO-TEH-KING. "The simplicity of the unexpressed Will purify the heart of lust. Where there's no lust there will be rest, And all the world will thus be blest." II. 38. DISCOURSING ON VIRTUE. Superior virtue is un-virtue. Therefore it has virtue. Inferior virtue never loses sight of virtue. Therefore it has no virtue. Superior virtue is non- assertion and without pretension. Inferior virtue as- serts and makes pretensions. Superior benevolence acts but makes no preten- sions. Superior justice acts and makes pretensions. The superior propriety acts and when no one responds to it, it stretches its arm and enforces its rules. Thus one loses Reason and then virtue appears. One loses virtue and then benevolence appears. One loses be- nevolence and then justice appears. One loses jus- tice and then propriety appears. The rules of pro- priety are the semblance of loyalty and faith, and the beginning of disorder. Traditionalism is the [mere] flower of Reason, but of ignorance the beginning. Therefore a great organiser abides by the solid and dwells not in the external. He abides in the fruit and dwells not in the flower. Therefore he dis- cards the latter and chooses the former. CANON ON REASON AND VIRTUE. 117 39. THE ROOT OF ORDER. From of old these things have obtained oneness : " Heaven through oneness has become pure. Earth through oneness can endure. Minds through oneness their souls procure. Valleys through oneness repletion secure. " All creatures through oneness to life have been called. And kings were through oneness as models in- stalled." Such is the result of oneness. " Were heaven not pure it might be rent Were earth not stable it might be bent. Were minds not ensouled they'd be impotent. Were valleys not filled they'd soon be spent. " When creatures are lifeless who can their death prevent ? Are kings not models, but on highness bent, Their fall, forsooth, is imminent." Thus, the noble come from the commoners as their root, and the high rest upon the lowly as their foun- dation. Therefore, princes and kings call themselves orphaned, lonely, and unworthy. Is this not because they [representing the unity of the commoners] take lowliness as their root ? The several parts of a carriage are not a carriage. Il8 LAO-TZE'S TAO-TEH-KING. Those who have become a unity are neither anx- ious to be praised with praise like a gem, nor dis- dained with disdain like a stone. 40. AVOIDING ACTIVITY. "Homeward is Reason's course, Weakness is Reason's force." Heaven and earth and the ten thousand things come from existence, but existence comes from non-^ existence. 41. SAMENESS IN DIFFERENCE. When a superior scholar hears of Reason he en- deavors to practise it. When an average scholar hears of Reason he will sometimes keep it and sometimes lose it. When an inferior scholar hears of Reason he will greatly ridicule it. Were it not thus ridiculed, it would as Reason be insufficient. Therefore the poet says : " The reason-enlightened seem dark and black, The reason-advanced seem going back, The reason-straight-levelled seem rugged and slack. " The high in virtue resemble a vale, The purely white in shame must quail, The staunchest virtue seems to fail. " The solidest virtue seems not alert, The purest chastity seems pervert, The greatest square will Tightness desert. CANON ON REASON AND VIRTUE. " The largest vessel is not yet complete, The loudest sound is not speech replete, The greatest form has no shape concrete." Reason so long as it remains hidden is unname- able. Yet Reason alone is good for imparting and completing. 42. REASON'S MODIFICATIONS. Reason begets unity; unity begets duality; duality begets trinity ; and trinity begets the ten thousand things. The ten thousand things are sustained by YIN [the negative principle]; they are encompassed by YANG [the positive principle], and the immaterial CH'I [the breath of life] renders them harmonious. That which the people find odious, to be orphaned, lonely, and unworthy, kings and princes select as their titles. Thus, on the one hand, loss implies gain, and on the other hand, gain implies loss. What others have taught I teach also. The strong and aggressive do not die a natural death ; but I shall expound the doctrine's foundation. 43. ITS UNIVERSAL APPLICATION. The world's weakest overcomes the world's hard- est. Non-existence enters into the impenetrable. Thereby I comprehend of non-assertion the advan- tage. Of silence the lesson, of non-assertion the ad- vantage, there are few in the world who obtain them. i2o LAO-TZE'S TAO-TEH-KING. 44. SETTING UP PRECEPTS. "Name or person, which is more near? Person or fortune, which is more dear? Gain or loss, which is more sear ? "Extreme dotage leadeth to squandering, Hoarded wealth inviteth plundering. "Who is content incurs no humiliation, Who knows when to stop risks no vitiation. Forever lasteth his duration. " 45. GREATEST VIRTUE. "The greatest perfection seems imperfect, But its work undecaying remaineth. The greatest fulness is emptiness checked, But its work 's not exhausted nor waneth." "The straightest line resembleth a curve; The greatest sage as apprentice will serve ; Most eloquent speakers will stammer and swerve.' Motion conquers cold. Quietude conquers heat Purity and clearness are the world's standard. 46. MODERATION OF DESIRE. When the world possesses Reason, race horses are reserved for hauling dung. When the world is with- out Reason, war horses are bred in the common. No greater sin than yielding to desire. No greater misery than discontent. No greater calamity than acquisitiveness. CANON ON REASON AND VIRTUE. 121 Therefore, he who knows contentment's content- ment is always content. 47. VIEWING THE DISTANT. "Without passing out of the gate The world's course I prognosticate. Without peeping through the window The heavenly Reason I contemplate. The further one goes, The less one knows." Therefore the holy man does not travel, and yet he has knowledge. He does not see the things, and yet he defines them. He does not labor, and yet he completes. 48. FORGETTING KNOWLEDGE. He who seeks learnedness will daily increase. He who seeks Reason will daily diminish. He will dimin- ish and continue to diminish until he arrives at non- assertion. With non-assertion there is nothing that he cannot achieve. When he takes the empire, it is always because he uses no diplomacy. He who uses diplomacy is not fit to take the empire. 49 TRUST IN VIRTUE. The holy man possesses not a fixed heart. The hundred families' hearts he makes his heart. The good I meet with goodness ; the bad I also meet with goodness ; for virtue is good [throughout]. 122 LAO-TZE'S TAO-TEH-KING. The faithful I meet with faith; the faithless I also meet with faith; for virtue is faithful [throughout]. The holy man dwells in the world anxious, very anxious in his dealings with the world. He universal- ises his heart, and the hundred families fix upon him their ears and eyes. The holy man treats them all as children. 50. THE ESTIMATION OF LIFE. He who starts in life will end in death. Three in ten are pursuers of life ; three in ten are pursuers of death ; three in ten of the men that live pass into the realm of death. Now, what is the reason ? It is because they live life's intensity. Indeed, I understand that one who takes good care of his life, when travelling on land will not fall in with the rhinoceros or the tiger. When coming among sol- diers, he need not fear arms and weapons. The rhi- noceros finds no place where to insert its horn. The tiger finds no place where to lay his claws. Weapons find no place where to thrust their blades. The reason is that he does not belong to the realm of death. 51. NURSING VIRTUE. Reason quickens all creatures. Virtue feeds them. Reality shapes them. The forces complete them. Therefore among the ten thousand things there is none that does not esteem Reason and honor virtue. Since the esteem of Reason and the honoring of CANON ON REASON AND VIRTUE. 123 virtue is by no one commanded, it is forever sponta- neous. Therefore it is said that Reason quickens all creatures, while virtue feeds them, raises them, nur- tures them, completes them, matures them, rears them, and protects them. To quicken but not to own, to make but not to claim, to raise but not to rule, this is called profound virtue. 52. RETURNING TO THE ORIGIN. When the world takes its beginning, Reason be- comes the world's mother. When he who knows his mother, knows in turn that he is her child, and when he who is quickened as a child, in turn keeps to his mother, to the end of life, he is not in danger. When he closes his mouth, and shuts his sense-gates, in the end of life, he will encounter no trouble ; but when he opens his mouth and meddles with affairs, in the end of life he cannot be saved. Who beholds his smallness is called enlightened. Who preserves his tenderness is called strong. Who uses Reason's light and returns home to its enlighten- ment does not surrender his person to perdition. This is called practising the eternal. 53. GAINING INSIGHT. If I have ever so little knowledge, I shall walk in the great Reason. It is but assertion that I must fear. 124 LAO-TZE'S TAO-TEH-KING. The great Reason is very plain, but people are fond of by-paths. When the palace is very splendid, the fields are very weedy and granaries very empty. To wear ornaments and gay clothes, to carry sharp swords, to be excessive in drinking and eating, to have a redundance of costly articles, this is the pride of robbers. Surely, this is un-Reason! 54. THE CULTIVATION OF INTUITION. "What is well planted is not uprooted; What's well preserved cannot be looted!' By sons and grandsons the sacrificial celebrations shall not cease. Who cultivates Reason in his person, his virtue is genuine. Who cultivates it in his house, his virtue is overflowing. Who cultivates it in his township, his virtue is lasting. Who cultivates it in his country, his virtue is abundant. Who cultivates it in the world, his virtue is universal. Therefore, by one's person one tests persons. By one's house one tests houses. By one's township one tests townships. By one's country one tests coun- tries. By one's world one tests worlds. How do I know that the world is such? Through Reason. 55. THE SIGNET OF THE MYSTERIOUS. He who possesses virtue in all its solidity is like unto a little child. Venomous reptiles do not sting CANON ON REASON AND VIRTUE. 125 him, fierce beasts do not seize him. Birds of prey do not strike him. His bones are weak, his sinews ten- der, but his grasp is firm. He does not yet know the relation between male and female, but his virility is strong. Thus his metal grows to perfection. A whole day he might cry and sob without growing hoarse. This shows the perfection of his harmony. To know the harmonious is called the eternal. To know the eternal is called enlightenment. To increase life is called a blessing, and heart- directed vitality is called strength, but things vigor- ous are about to grow old and I call this un-Reason. Un-Reason soon ceases ! 56. THE VIRTUE OF THE MYSTERIOUS. One who knows does not talk. One who talks does not know. Therefore the sage keeps his mouth shut and his sense-gates closed. " He will blunt his own sharpness, His own tangles adjust ; He will dim his own radiance, And be one with his dust." This is called profound identification. Thus he is inaccessible to love and also inacces- sible to enmity. He is inaccessible to profit and in- accessible to loss. He is also inaccessible to favor and inaccessible to disgrace. Thus he becomes world- honored. 126 LAO-TZE;S TAO-TEH-KING. 57. SIMPLICITY IN HABITS. With rectitude one governs the state ; with crafti- ness one leads the army ; with non-diplomacy one takes the empire. How do I know that it is so ? Through Reason. The more restrictions and prohibitions are in the empire, the poorer grow the people. The more weap.-. ons the people have, the more troubled is the state. The more there is cunning and skill, the more start- ling events will happen. The more mandates and laws are enacted, the more there will be thieves and robbers. Therefore the holy man says : I practise non-asser- tion, and the people of themselves reform. I love quietude, and the people of themselves become right- eous. I use no diplomacy, and the people of them- selves become rich. I have no desire, and the people of themselves remain simple. 58. ADAPTATION TO CHANGE. Whose government is unostentatious, quite unos- tentatious, his people will be prosperous, quite pros- perous. Whose government is prying, quite prying, his people will be needy, quite needy. Misery, alas ! rests upon happiness. Happiness, alas ! underlies misery. But who foresees the catas- trophe ? It will not be prevented ! What is ordinary becomes again extraordinary. CANON ON REASON AND VIRTUE. 127 What is good becomes again unpropitions. This be- wilders people, which happens constantly since times immemorial. Therefore the holy man is square but not sharp, strict but not obnoxious, upright but not restraining, bright but not dazzling. 59. HOLD FAST TO REASON. In governing the people and in attending to heaven there is nothing like moderation. As to moderation, it is said that it must be an early habit. If it is an early habit, it will be richly accumulated virtue. If one has richly accumulated virtue, then there is noth- ing that cannot be overcome. If there is nothing that cannot be overcome, then no one knows his limits. If no one knows his limits, one can possess the country. If one possesses the mother of the country [viz., mod- eration], one can thereby last long. This is called having deep roots and a firm stem. To long life and lasting comprehension this is the Way. 60. HOW TO MAINTAIN ONE'S PLACE. Govern a great country as you would fry small fish : [neither gut nor scale them]. If with Reason the empire is managed, its ghosts will not spook. Not only will its ghosts not spook, but its gods will not harm the people. Not only will its gods not harm the people, but its holy men will also not harm the people. Since neither will do harm, therefore their virtues will be combined. 128 LAO TZE'S TAO-TEH-KING. 61. THE VIRTUE OF HUMILITY. A great state, one that lowly flows, becomes the empire's union, and the empire's wife. The wife al- ways through quietude conquers her husband, and by quietude renders herself lowly. Thus a great state through lowliness toward small states will conquer the small states, and small states through lowliness toward great states will conquer great states. Therefore some render themselves lowly for the purpose of conquering ; others are lowly and therefore conquer. A great state desires no more than to unite and feed the people ; a small state desires no more than to devote itself to the service of the people ; but that both may obtain their wishes, the greater one must stoop. 62. PRACTISE REASON. It is Reason that is the ten thousand things' asy- lum, the good man's wealth, the bad man's stay. With beautiful words one can sell. With honest conduct one can do still more with the people. If a man be bad, why should he be thrown away? Therefore, an emperor was elected and three ministers appointed ; but better than holding before one's face the jade table [of the ministry] and riding with four horses, is sitting still and propounding the eternal Reason. Why do the ancients prize this Reason ? Is it not, CANON ON REASON AND VIRTUE. I2g say, because when sought it is obtained and the sin- ner thereby can be saved? Therefore it is world- honored. 63. CONSIDER BEGINNINGS. Assert non-assertion. Practise non-practice. Taste non-taste. Make great the small. Make much the little. Requite hatred with goodness. Contemplate a difficulty when it is easy. Manage a great thing when it is small. The world's most difficult undertakings necessarily originate while easy, and the world's greatest under- takings necessarily originate while small. Therefore the holy man to the end does not ven- ture to play the great, and thus he can accomplish his greatness. As one who lightly promises rarely keeps his word, so he to whom many things are easy will necessarily encounter many difficulties. Therefore, the holy man regards everything as difficult, and thus to the end encounters no difficulties. 64. MIND THE INSIGNIFICANT. What is still at rest is easily kept quiet. What has not as yet appeared is easily prevented. What is still feeble is easily broken. What is still scant is easily dispersed. Treat things before they exist. Regulate things before disorder begins. The stout tree has originated from a tiny rootlet. A tower of nine stories is raised 130 LAO-TZE'S TAO-TEH-KING. by heaping up [bricks of] clay. A thousand miles' journey begins with a foot. He that makes mars. He that grasps loses. The holy man does not make ; therefore he mars not. He does not grasp ; therefore he loses not. The people when undertaking an enterprise are always near completion, and yet they fail. Remain careful to the end as in the beginning and you will not fail in your enterprise. Therefore the holy man desires to be desireless, and does not prize articles difficult to obtain. He learns, not to be learned, and seeks a home where multitudes of the people pass by. He assists the ten thousand things in their natural development, but he does not venture to interfere. 65. THE VIRTUE OF SIMPLICITY. The ancients who were well versed in Reason did not thereby enlighten the people ; they intended thereby to make them simple-hearted. If people are difficult to govern, it is because they are too smart. To govern the country with smartness is the country's curse. To govern the country without smartness is the country's blessing. He who knows these two things is also a model [like the ancients]. Always to know the model is called profound virtue Profound virtue, verily, is deep. Verily, it is far- reaching. Verily, it is to everything reverse. But then it will procure great recognition. CANON ON REASON AND VIRTUE. 131 66. PUTTING ONESELF BEHIND. That rivers and oceans can of the hundred valleys be kings is due to their excelling in lowliness. Thus they can of the hundred valleys be the kings. Therefore the holy man, when anxious to be above the people, must in his words keep underneath them. When anxious to lead the people, he must with his person keep behind them. Therefore the holy man dwells above, but the peo- ple are not burdened. He is ahead, but the people suffer no harm. Therefore the world rejoices in ex- alting him without tiring. Because he strives not, no one in the world will strive with him. 67. THE THREE TREASURES. All in the world call me great ; but I resemble the unlikely. Now a man is great only because he resem- bles the unlikely. Did he resemble the likely, how lasting, indeed, would his mediocrity be ! I have three treasures which I preserve and treas- ure. The first is called compassion. The second is called economy. The third is called not daring to come in the world to the front. The compassionate can be brave ; the economical can be generous ; those who dare not come to the front in the world can be- come perfect as chief vessels. Now, if people discard compassion and are brave ; 132 LAO-TZE'S TAO-TEH-KING. if they discard economy and are generous ; if they dis- card modesty and are ambitious, they will surely die Now, the compassionate will in the attack be vic- torious, and in the defence firm. Heaven when about to save one will with compassion protect him. 68. COMPLYING WITH HEAVEN. He who excels as a warrior is not warlike. He who excels as a fighter is not wrathful. He who ex- cels in conquering the enemy does not strive. He who excels in employing men is lowly. This is called the virtue of not-striving. This is called utilising men's ability. This is called comply- ing with heaven — since olden times the highest. 69. THE FUNCTION OF THE MYSTERIOUS. A military expert used to say: "I dare not act as host [who takes the initiative] but act as guest [with reserve]. I dare not advance an inch, but I withdraw afoot." This is called marching without marching, threat- ening without arms, charging without hostility, seiz- ing without weapons. No greater misfortune than making light of the enemy! When we make light of the enemy, it is almost as though we had lost our treasure — [compas- sion]. Thus, if matched armies encounter one another, the one who does so in sorrow is sure to conquer. CANON ON REASON AND VIRTUE. 133 70. DIFFICULT TO UNDERSTAND. My words are very easy to understand and very easy to practise, but in the world no one can under- stand, no one can practise them. Words have an ancestor; Deeds have a master [viz., Reason]. Since he is not understood, therefore I am not understood. Those who understand me are few, and thus I am distinguished. Therefore the holy man wears wool, and hides in his bosom his jewels. 71. THE DISEASE OF KNOWLEDGE. To know the unknowable that is elevating. Not to know the knowable that is sickness. Only by becoming sick of sickness we can be with- out sickness. The holy man is not sick. Because he is sick of sickness, therefore he is not sick. 72. HOLDING ONESELF DEAR. If the people do not fear the dreadful, the great dreadful will come, surely. Let them not deem their lives narrow. Let them not deem their lot wearisome. When it is not deemed wearisome, then it will not be wearisome. Therefore, the holy man knows himself but does not display himself. He holds himself dear but does not honor himself. Thus he discards the latter and chooses the former. 134 LAO-TZE'S TAO-TEH-KING. 73. DARING TO ACT. Courage, if carried to daring, leads to death ; cour- age, if not carried to daring, leads to life. Either of these two things is sometimes beneficial, sometimes harmful. "Why 't is by heaven rejected, Who has the reason detected ? " Therefore the holy man also regards it as difficult. The Heavenly Reason strives not, but it is sure to conquer. It speaks not, but it is sure to respond. It summons not, but it comes of itself. It works pa- tiently but is sure in its designs. Heaven's net is vast, so vast. It is wide-meshed, but it loses nothing. 74. OVERCOME DELUSION. If the people do not fear death, how can they be frightened by death? If we make people fear death, and supposing some would [still] venture to rebel, if we seize them for capital punishment, who will dare? There is always an executioner who kills. Now to take the place of the executioner who kills is taking the place of the great carpenter who hews. If a man takes the place of the great carpenter who hews, he will rarely, indeed, fail to injure his hand. CANON ON REASON AND VIRTUE. 135 7$. HARMED THROUGH GREED. The people hunger because their superiors con- sume too many taxes ; therefore they hunger. The people are difficult to govern because their -superiors are too meddlesome ; therefore it is difficult to govern. The people make light of death on account of the in- tensity of their clinging to life ; therefore they make light of death. He who is not bent on life is worthier than he who esteems life. 76. BEWARE OF STRENGTH. Man during life is tender and delicate. When he dies he is stiff and stark. The ten thousand things, the grass as well as the trees, are while they live tender and supple. When they die they are rigid and dry. Thus the hard and the strong are the companions of death. The tender and the delicate are the companions of life. Therefore, he who in arms is strong will not con- quer. When a tree has grown strong it is doomed. The strong and the great stay below. The tender and the delicate stay above. 77. HEAVEN'S REASON. Is not Heaven's Reason truly like stretching a bow? The high it brings down, the lowly it lifts up. Those who have abundance it depleteth ; those who are deficient it augmenteth. 136 LAO-TZE'S TAO-TEH-KING. Such is Heaven's Reason. It depleteth those who have abundance but completeth the deficient. Man's Reason is not so. He depletes the deficient in order to serve those who have abundance. Where is he who would have abundance for serving the world? It is the man of Reason. Therefore the holy man acts but claims not ; merit he accomplishes but he does not linger upon it, and does he ever show any anxiety to display his excel- lence? 78. TRUST IN FAITH. In the world nothing is tenderer and more delicate than water. In attacking the hard and the strong nothing will surpass it. There is nothing that herein takes its place. The weak conquer the strong, the tender conquer the rigid. In the world there is no one who does not know it, but no one will practise it. Therefore the holy man says : "Him who the country's sin makes his, We hail as priest at the great sacrifice. Him who the curse bears of the country's failing As king of the empire we are hailing. " True words seem paradoxical. 79. KEEP YOUR OBLIGATIONS. When a great hatred is reconciled, naturally some hatred will remain. How can this be made good? CANON ON REASON AND VIRTUE. 137 Therefore the sage keeps the obligations of his contract and exacts not from others. Those who have virtue attend to their obligations ; those who have no virtue attend to their claims. Heaven's Reason shows no preference but always assists the good man. 80. REMAINING IN ISOLATION. In a small country with few people let there be aldermen and mayors who are possessed of power over men but would not use it. Induce people to grieve at death but do not cause them to move to a distance. Although they had ships and carriages, they should find no occasion to ride in them. Although they had armours and weapons, they should find no »-*<^ occasion to don them. Induce people to return to [the old custom of] knotted cords and to use them [in the place of writ- ing], to delight in their food, to be proud of their clothes, to be content with their homes, and to rejoice in their customs : then in a neighboring state within sight, the voices of the cocks and dogs would be within hearing, yet the people might grow old and die before they visited one another. 81. PROPOUNDING THE ESSENTIAL. True words are not pleasant ; pleasant words are not true. The good are not contentious ; the conten- 138 LAO-TZE'S TAO-TEH-KING. tious are not good. The wise are not learned ; the learned are not wise. The holy man hoards not. The more he does for others, the more he owns himself. The more he gives to others, the more he acquires himself. Heaven's Reason is to benefit but not to injure; the holy man's Reason is to act but not to strive. PUBLICATIONS ON CHINESE THOUGHT AND LIFE, AND ORIENTAL TOPICS IN GENERAL £ CHICAGO: THE OPEN COURT PUBLISHING CO. 1903 LONDON: KEGAN PAUL, TRBNCH, TRUBNER & co., LIMITED Lao-Tze s Tao Tek King Chinese- English. With Introduction, Transliteration, and Notes. By DR. PAUL CAR US. With a photogravure Frontispiece of the traditional picture of Lao-Tze, specially drawn for the work by Mishima Shoso, an emi- nent Japanese artist. Appropriately bound in yellow and blue, with gilt top. 345 pages. Newly bound set with 29 additional pages of Emendations and Comments. Price, $3.00 (153.) Contains: (i) A philosophical, biographical, and historical in- troduction discussing Lao-Tze's system of metaphysics, its evolu- tion, its relation to the philosophy of the world, Lao-Tze's life, and the literary history of his work ; (2) Lao-Tze's Tao Teh King in the original Chinese ; (3) an English translation ; (4) the trans- literation of the text, where every Chinese word with its English equivalent is given, with references in each case to a Chinese dic- tionary ; (5) Notes and Comments ; (6) Index. THE EXTRAORDINARY SIGNIFICANCE OF LAO-TZE. The translator says, in the Introduction to his Lao-Tze's Tao Teh King, that "No one who is inter- ested in religion can afford to leave it unread." He undertook the labor of editing and translating this wonderful little book for the purpose of helping the English-speaking public "to appreciate the philo- sophical genius and the profound religious spirit of one of the greatest men that ever trod the earth." Lao-Tze's Tao Teh King contains so many surpris- ing analogies with Christian thought and sentiment in it that we should deem it written under Christian influence were its authenticity and pre-Christian ori- iv Publications on Oriental Topics. gin not established beyond the shadow of a doubt. Not only does the term Tao (word, reason) correspond quite closely to the Greek term Logos, but Lao-Tze also preaches the ethics of requiting hatred with good- ness. He insists on the necessity of becoming like unto a little child, of returning to primitive simplicity and purity, of non-assertion and non-resistance, and prom- ises that the deficient will be made whole, the crooked will be straightened, the empty will be filled, the worn will be renewed, those who have too little will receive, while those who have too much will be disconcerted. The Tao Teh King is small in size and aphoristic in form, but it is filled to the brim with deep wisdom and sound morality. Dr. Carus's text edition has additional advantages ; it is so arranged that every reader has it in his power to verify the translation, and if he so desires, to study the Chinese language practically in connection with this celebrated classic. Every Chinese word and its English equivalent is given in the transliteration, which thus forms a complete explanation of the Chi- nese text, and for every word references are given to the exact page of Williams 's Dictionary, which is the most accessible, and, in some cases where Williams is insufficient, to the K'anghi, which is the most au- thoritative. There are also notes on pronunciation and methods of transcription, made by the Rev. Geo. T. Candlin of Tientsin and Dr. Robert Lilley of Mt. Vernon, N. Y. The roots and whole philological his- tory of the words can thus be traced by any reader. OPINIONS OF CHINESE SCHOLARS. THE REV. C. SPURGEON MEDHURST, a missionary well known as a Chinese scholar of high repute, says Publications on Oriental Topics. v in an article on the Tao Teh King, published in The Chinese Recorder of November 18, 1899: "For the student missionary perhaps the most useful work is Dr. Paul Carus's edition of the Tao Teh King, published last year (1898) by The Open Court Publishing Co., Chicago. Tastefully gotten up, it contains, in addition to the full text, a translitera- tion of the whole, with full grammatical and explana- tory notes. The scholarly introductions, with the other special features I have mentioned, and a com- plete index, make this edition of Lao's work the best that has yet seen the light. The translation is spirited and in many places reproduces better than any other the rhythm of the original. "The average Chinese missionary ought to be more familiar than he is with the thoughts of Lao-Tze. He may supply a lesser number of quotable phrases than the Four Books and the Five Classics, but he is the least racial and most universal writer China has ever produced. A study of him, even in English, will mate- rially add to any man's equipment, though no trans- lation can convey a true conception of the original." REV. ARTHUR H. SMITH, American Board of Mis- sions, Tientsin, China, writes to Dr. Carus : "I send you by this mail a few slips of a review of your Lao-Tze. They were published in the N. C. Daily News, the leading journal in China. 1 also wrote a brief notice for the Biblical World whence the copy came indirectly. Allow me to congratulate you on your capacity for seeing into mill-stones." One of the enclosed review-slips contains the fol- lowing passage : "It goes without saying that the task of obtaining vi Publications on Oriental Topics. sufficient acquaintance with the Chinese language to translate, under the conditions named, a book like that of Lao-Tze is a gigantic one. Dr. Carus's suc- cess is little short of marvellous. He frequently cites the versions of others, none of which happens to be at hand for comparison, but in the extracts given it seems clear that Dr. Carus has succeeded better than Dr. Legge or Dr. Chalmers in the passages where we are able to compare them, — a very remarkable fact, indeed." — North China Daily News. TAN TEK SOON, a native Chinese scholar of the Straits Settlement, Singapore, writes : "I have read the introductory portion with great interest, and must heartily congratulate you upon the accuracy and lucidity of your rendering of a rather obscure work, even to Chinese scholars. In my opin- ion it is a marvel of literary assiduity and application on a par with Stanislas Julien's Life of Hiuen Tsang, and I am sure it will be as greatly appreciated by scholars." PROF. S. WATAS£, a native Japanese scientist, formerly of the University of Chicago, writes : "I thank you heartily for your kindness in sending me a copy of your fine translation and critical exposi- tion of Lao-Tze's Tao Teh King. It was years ago that I read it. Your publication of the Chinese text will be highly appreciated by all who want to make a study of the philosopher. As I read the text and then the translation, I am astonished how well you kept the original terseness and severe brevity in Eng- lish. It gives me a certain fascination to read the old philosopher through two such divergent media as Chinese and English." Publications on Oriental Topics. vii THE LATE MONSIGNORE C. DE HARLEZ, one of the most prominent Sinologues of these latter days and himself a translator of Lao-Tze's Tao Teh King, writes as follows in a book review concerning Dr. Carus's translation : "Nous donnons volontiers nos eloges, en g6n£ral, aux connaissances du Dr. Carus et a la maniere dont il a execute" son reuvre." In the same article, M. de Harlez explains that Tao should be as little translated by "path," or "word," or "reason," as the verbum of the Gospel should be translated by "word." In justifying his own interpretation of Lao Tze's terms, he claims that Tao means "le principe producteur et rdgulateur," while the negative wuh should not be translated by "non-existence," or "the void," but by "the imma- terial, the imperceptible." A REVIEWER IN THE NORTH CHINA HERALD says: "There are a good many of us who have worried along in China for a term of years and yet have not come to a realising sense of the wisdom contained in the Tao Teh King. . . .The text of the classic contains only 5320 characters, but its terseness is so extreme that it is in many places susceptible of widely-differ- ent interpretation. Unlike some other translators, Dr. Carus has endeavored to preserve in his English rendering something like the rhyme and rhythm of the original .... Dr. Carus's book is a truly remarkable achievement." PROF. ISAAC T. HEADLAND, of the Peking Univer- sity, writes : " I congratulate you most heartily on your interest viii Publications on Oriental Topics. in and your efforts to open up such a wise old phi- losopher to the American reading public. " DR. FRIEDRICH HIRTH, Professor of Chinese Lan- guage and Literature at Columbia University, New York City, expresses his views in a letter to the author as follows : "I have not found the necessary leisure to ex- amine your Too Teh King in detail, but from what I have seen so far, your publication embodies the re- sults arrived at by previous investigators and transla- tors and adds improvements in many respects. I am glad to observe you published the Chinese text and the analysis of it in connection with your English translation, thus giving the critical reader every possi- bility to check your work. This more than anything else will encourage students to take up this line of research, which claims the highest efforts from the philologist's point of view as well as the philoso- pher's. Your idea of popularising works of Chinese thought will greatly contribute towards the interest taken in Chinese literature, and the method you have adopted in your representation of the Too Teh King will serve as an excellent model for similar works of the kind." MISCELLANEOUS PRESS NOTICES. "It is a convenient volume through which to make such acquaintance with the Chinese language and Chinese thought as an American scholar must con- sider desirable in view of the present increased inter- course with the Oriental world." — Reformed Church Review. "All that one could do to make the immortal Publications on Oriental Topics. ix 'canon on reason and virtue' alluring to American readers has certainly been done by the author. The translation is faithful, preserving especially the char- acteristic terseness and ruggedness of style of the original, the type work is superb, the comments judi- cious."— The Cumberland Presbyterian. "Dr. Carus's work as editor, translator, annotator is most excellent in every feature." — Western Christian Advocate, Cincinnati, O. " An indispensable book, and no one who is inter- ested in religion can afford to leave it unread." — New York Herald. ' ' The book is well gotten up, with striking exterior; while of great importance to the serious student, it is usable and interesting to any one who cares at all for the thought and religions of the Orient." — Professor Frederick Starr, in The New Unity, Chicago. "Extraordinarily interesting. Of great moment." -The Outlook, N. Y. " Much labor has been put into this book. It will be a great addition to the knowledge which English readers have of one of the greatest of religious books and religious leaders." — The Church Union, N. Y. "Nothing like this book exists in Chinese litera- ture; so lofty, so vital, so restful.. ..We have com- pared this translation with three others — two English, one German — and have no hesitation in saying it is the most satisfactory and serviceable as well as least expensive now accessible to the public. The bright cover of yellow and blue is very appropriate and sug- gestive of the Celestial Kingdom." — The Hartford Post. x Publications on Oriental Topics. "In der vorliegenden Arbeit giebt Dr. Paul Carus eine neue, sich an das Original treu anschliessende und doch recht lesbare Uebertragung in's Englische, ein schatzbarer Beitrag zur vergleichenden Religions- kunde. " — Blatter fur literarische Unterhaltung, Leip- zig, Brockhaus (No. 34, Feuilleton). "Kann den Religionsforschern empfohlen wer- den." — PROF. C. P. TIELE, of Leyden, in Theologischer Jahresbericht, XVIII., p. 447. "Readers will find much to arouse their thought and admiration in its pages." — Jewish Comment, Balti- more, Md. "Dr. Carus took a considerable onus on himself when he threw aside all previous renderings of the great thinker Lao-Tze, and embarked on the task that was recently placed before the public. He has trod- den boldly over the labors of Legge and Chalmers, not to mention other and lesser lights who have es- sayed to enter the lists. If his conception is bold, however, his reward seems to have been gained. We have, as a result, what is an excellent translation, open possibly to criticism — but then Sinologues never will lie down together — but withal satisfying." — Lon- don and China Telegraph, July, 1899. There are in addition a number of Japanese peri- odicals which give careful and detailed reviews of Dr. Carus's translation of the Tao Teh King. We mention among them the Tetsugaku Zasshi (Journal of Philoso- phy), Tokyo; the Mujinto (Eternal Light), Kyoto; \he£ukkyo (i. e., Buddhism), Tokyo, and the Shi do Kwai Kwai Shi (Reports of the Association of Seekers after Truth), Omi.

A Synopsis of the Writings of DR. PA UL CA RUS A N epitome of the philosophy with which Dr. Carus has identified his life work. It contains an intro- duction written by himself, summaries of his books (48) , and editorial articles (956) published in The Monist and The Open Court; and a subject index of 25 pp., making the volume a complete reference to date, of the writings of this author. Bds. , Clo. Back, 50c. Paper 25c. PRESS OPINIONS. Prof. E. B. McGilvary, of the Uni- versity of Wisconsin, says (see Philosophy as a Science, Dr. Paul Carus) : "Your short epitome seems to me a masterpiece of clearness and directness. If all philoso- phers pould only succeed in making themselves understood as you do, there would be much less discussion among us." Prof. Edward F. Btichner, of Johns Hopkins University, says (see Philosophy as a Science, by Dr. Paul Carus): "We all have been many a time indebted to you for special services in the history of philo- sophy and in breaking new ground for present and future construction work. And, now comes this Wegweiser which en- ables us to appreciate to the leadership, and at the same time to sum up our total indebted- ness to the stimulating work you have achieved." The Dial, Chicago, says: "This Volume, (Philosophy as a Science) after an introduction, in which the author sets forth the leading ideas of the monistic doctrine which he represents, gives us brief summaries of all his published writings, which amount to no less than 48 books and 959 editorial articles. All of these writings are carefully indexed, which makes it pos- sible to find out readily just what Dr. Carus thinks about any given subject, and his ideas are apt to be both well-consid- ered and weighty. The intro- ductory essay is to be particu- full your industry, and i your A& larly commended." Chinese Philosophy Being an Exposition of the Main Characteristic Features of Chinese Thought. By DR. PAUL CARUS. Illustrated with numerous diagrams, tables, and other sym- bols. This essay, which appeared first in The Monist, Vol. VI., No. 2, is an exposition of the main characteristic features of Chi- nese thought : it is a sketch, not an exhaustive treatise, and still less a history of Chinese philosophy. It purports to serve as an introduction to the intricacies of typically Chinese notions, ex- plaining their symbols and revealing their mysteries in terse and intelligible language. The brevity is intentional, for the essay is meant to give a bird's-eye view of the Chinese world-conception. While appreciating the remarkable genius exhibited by the founders of the Chinese civilisation, the author points out the foibles of the Chinese and traces them to their source. It is note- worthy that in spite of its candid and unreserved criticism, the essay was well received by the Chinese authorities and was granted the rare honor of being recommended by the Tsungli Yamen of Peking, the Imperial Foreign Office. In reply to a copy of this article forwarded through the Amer- ican representative to H. M. the Emperor of China, the Tsungli Yamen, returned the following informal communication : THE TSUNGLI YAMEN TO THE HON. MR. DENBY. Informal. PEKIN, May 6th, 1897.

We have had the honor to receive Your Excel- lency's note, wherein you state that by particular re- quest you send the Yamen a copy of The Monist — an American Magazine. Your Excellency further states Publications on Oriental Topics. xiii that it contains an article on "Chinese Philosophy" and the author asks that it be delivered to H. M. the Emperor. In reply we beg to state, that the article in ques- tion has been translated into Chinese by order of the Yamen and has been duly perused by the members thereof. The article shows that the writer is a scholar well versed in Chinese literature, and has brought together matters which indicate that he fully understood the subject he has treated. The book will be placed on file in the archives of the Yamen. OPINION OF A CHINESE SCHOLAR. A Chinese scholar writes with reference to the communication of the Chinese government as follows : "When the Tsungli Yamen voluntarily certifies that a Western scholar fully understands Chinese phi- losophy, and the Book of Changes as an incidental sec- tion of the same, it would be well for those who hap- pen to be interested in either of these topics to inquire what he has to say. . . . Suffice it to say that the author made a profound, if not an absolutely incom- prehensible, topic to a certain extent luminous, and to an even great degree interesting." PRESS NOTICES. "The author gives in his introduction terse and discriminating characterisations of the 'rare mixture of deep thought and idle speculations ' which make up the Chinese philosophy, and in his conclusion ex- presses equally just opinions of China's present un- xiv Publications on . Oriental, Topics. happy helplessness." — ].• M. Foster > Swatow, China, in The American Journal of Theology. "Valuable and of unquestioned reliability. The delineation of the philosophy that-underlies the Chi- nese civilisation is so ably done in these pages that the reader cannot fail to appreciate the causes which produce Chinese conservatism." — Toledo Blade. "Will enable Western readers to appreciate more clearly the causes which produce Chinese conserva- tism, thus explaining many apparent irreconcilable phases of Chinese character and thought. . . . All stu- dents of Oriental religion and philosophy will find this study of Dr. Cams a suggestive and valuable contribution to the literature of their subject." — Hart- ford Post, Hartford, Ct.

378 Wabash Avenue, Chicago KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRUBNER & CO., LIMITED London, England

STUDIES OF ORIENTAL LIFE AND THOUGHT. EDWARD P. THWING, M.D., PH.D.,

AND ART, LONDON ; BRITISH MEDICAL ASSOCIATION, N. Y. ACADEMY OF ANTHROPOLOGY,

"OUTDOOR LIFE IN EUROPE," "THE PERSIAN QUEEN," "THE KING IH HIS BEAUTY," "WINDOWS OF CHARACTER," ETC. S. W. PARTRIDGE & Co., LONDON. library. CONTENTS. I — Asiatic Thought, a Historic Evolution . 7 II. — Anatomy of National Life ... 12 III.— Oriental Characteristics . . . .19 IV.- ... 31 Y. — Religion in the East 37 VI. — Language, Literature and Art . . 49 VII.— " . . .57 VIII.- — Rejuvenescence of the East ... 70 IX.— Supernatural Factors . . . .79 X. — Practical Problems . . 94 EX ORIENTE LUX. During a recent tour in India, China and Japan, the study of Asiatic Thought as reflected in language, monumental art and social life has occupied much of my attention. Acquaintance with the work of Oriental scholars in the Far East has revealed the opulence of resources now available. There is an imperative need of a more general knowledge of the East in its relation to the religious, scientific and commercial enterprise of the West. We are rapidly extending the material domination of the Anglo-Saxon race. Its moral su- premacy should keep pace with its material conquests. The teachers, preachers and physicians whom we are sending to the Orient as pioneers of a Christian civilization, will welcome any brief, comprehensive plan of study which will prepare them for their work. If this volume proves to be, in any degree, suggestive and helpful the aim of the author will be attained. CHAPTEB I. ASIATIC THOUGHT AS A HISTORIC EVO- LUTION. AN ALLUKING THEME. The first sight of the shores of Asia awakens in a scholar profound emotion. Sir William Jones has re- corded the thoughts that thrilled him when he beheld for the first time this " nurse of sciences, the inven- tress of delightful and useful arts, the scenes of glori- ous actions, fertile in the productions of human genius, and infinitely diversified in the forms of religion and government, in the laws, manners, customs and lan- guages, as well as in the features and complexions of men." The breezes of Arabia were blowing astern as this historic dreamer, at the close of a long, weary voyage around the Cape, saw the continent of Asia rise on the horizon. He says it gave him " inexpres- sible pleasure " to gaze for the first time on shores so illustrious in the histoi'y of human thought. But more than a century has passed since the vision of that August morning, 1783. It has been a most enriching portion of history. It has seen an awakening of the East under the extending influence of commercial in- tercourse and scientific inquiry. Never had the Latin phrase Ex Oriente Lux the plenary significance it now has. Light, indeed, is streaming from Sunrise Lands. 8 ASIATIC THOUGHT AS A HISTORIC EVOLUTION. Long closed doors are now open, and entombed treas- ures are revealed. The records and ruins of the past and the social life of to-day are accessible. The stag- nation of centuries is stirred, the petrifaction of na- tional life is breaking up, and historic processes are receiving a mighty acceleration. There is a prescient fear that heathenism is doomed, and that from the West a conquering power will come. " Intelligent Mussulmeu themselves admit that the proper symbol of the present prospects of their faith is a waning crescent." " The moon of Mahomet Arose, and it shall set; While, blazoned as on Heaven's immortal noon, The CROSS leads generations on! " Said Daniel Webster, "Whoever would see the Eastern World before it turns into a Western World must make his visit soon." " There is nothing left of Japan but its scenery," says an educated Japanese now in this country. AWAKENED ATTENTION. The last hundred years have not only seen the dawn- ing of a new day in Asia, but witnessed an awakening of interest on our part in Oriental Studies. The first meeting of the Royal Asiatic Society was held in London, March 15th, 1823. Its aim was dis- tinctly declared to be the investigation of subjects re- lating to Asia. The Duke of Somerset, the Earl of Aberdeen and three hundred others were enrolled from among the nobility, army officers and others whose wealth and culture and opportunity were de- voted to this end. Four guineas admission fee and AWAKENED ATTENTION. 9 three guineas annual subscription, in addition to other income, enabled them, through their Translation Com- mittee, organized under King Leopold's patronage in 1828, to offer four gold medals of fifteen guineas each, and prizes as high as <£100, to stimulate Oriental scholars to make available Chinese, Indian, Persian and Arabic manuscripts through carefully edited trans- lations. A museum was also founded and branches formed, each declared to be " an integral part " of the London Society, and its members considered non- resident members of the parent society. English and Continental universities and other bodies have also contributed to the awakening of popular in- terest in the study of Asiatic Life. Private wealth has been put at the service of exploring enterprises. Pro- fessor Max Muller, in his monograph, "What can India teach us ? " appeals to young men who are go- ing there to occupy civil and military posts to pre- pare themselves by the study of the people and their national characteristics. With much more empha- sis does this appeal come home to those who go to the East for educational and religious purposes, to mould the moral and religious life of the Eastern races. Materials for study abound. Every year witnesses an increase. An English publisher has said that the literary world is divided into two classes : those who have written books on Egypt and those who have not ! This pleasantry indicates the opulent stores open to those who wish to study the development of Eastern thought. This process is, as Professor Max Muller observes, a historic development from the first beginnings of intellectual life up to the highest stages, through various combinations and differentiations. The very 10 ASIATIC THOUGHT AS A HISTORIC EVOLUTION. essence of history, is the history of the human mind. The true historian is not a mere chronicler, but a philosopher. THE GENESIS OF THOUGHT. We come, therefore, at the outset, to study the gene- sis and characteristics' of Oriental Thought. There are two ever present factors in the evolution of human thought. Their unity is constant. Their mutual in- teraction is inevitable. They form, therefore, a ground of differentiation. These structural forces, these or- ganizing elements are physical and psychic. They are best studied by historic methods. The metaphysician says, for example, that thought is " cognitive energy," and analyzes it into concepts, precepts and other facts of consciousness. He assumes, as did Adam Smith, certain ineradicable principles like human selfishness, and then by deductive processes from cause to effect, comes down to facts and opinions about men, instead of ascending from facts to laws, from aspects to es- sence. So Cullen in pathology, and Hunter and Bell in physiology, have reasoned from the abstract to the concrete. This a priori reasoning Sir James Mackin- tosh made" to be a distinguishing feature of the Scotch of his day. John Stuart Mill thinks it is the true path in political economy, which he regards as an abstract science. The two poles of philosophy are thought and ex- istence. From Aristotle till now, thinkers divide in their study of thought and nature, of the subjective and the objective. Into the conflict of nominalism and realism it is useless for us to enter. It is enough to assume that the genesis of Oriental Thought is its ethnic history. If ethnology, as Mill affirms, is the THE GENESIS OF THOUGHT. 11 science of character, character is embodied thought. Its lexical meaning suggests a combination of inscrip- tions, a record of physical, mental and moral develop- ment. By a careful collection and analysis of facts the basis of a true synthesis, and so of a rational sci- ence of civilization, is laid. The thorough interweaving "of its roots with the his- tory of the race on which it has sprung, is the source of the power of Christianity, according to James Mar- tineau. So we are to study the life of the East as a concrete symbol, revealed to observation ; not in arid and recondite speculations, but in actual visibilities under recognized laws and historic periods of growth. This historic method of study is followed by the wisest teachers in other lines. Taine teaches the growth and decline of art by presenting Titian and Angelo, and then the features of a degenerate age that followed. In literature he exhibits the same chang- ing epochs in their salient features, disengaging from their complexity the fundamental principles on which they work. He, preeminently, had the instincts of a historian, and his literary culture rested on the solid basis of the natural sciences, mathematics and medicine. Enough has been said to indicate the purpose and method of our research, and now we turn to the study of this fruitful and inviting theme, the nativity of thought in the Orient. CHAPTER II. THE ANATOMY OF NATIONAL LIFE. This felicitous phrase is used by Buckle in his His- tory of Civilization to express some of the material factors which go to form the articulated skeleton of a nation in its physical existence. These are the funda- mental conditions of material and moral progress, the modifying influences that mould its life and growth. Some of these are location, geographical boundaries, soil and climate. To illustrate, it is claimed that " the civilization of Asia has always been confined to thv, vast tract where a rich alluvial soil has secured to man that wealth, without some portion of which no in- tellectual progress can begin." As the gulf stream has given Europe its civilization, so the occlusion of Arctic seas from the Pacific, by the peculiar conformation of its northern boundary, and the juxtaposition of Ameri- can and Asiatic shores, have made Polynesian life what it is. SCOTLAND AND SPAIN. The paradoxes of Scotch history, the contradictions and discrepancies of its national life are phenomena which find at least a partial solution in the facts of its physical geography and its relations to adjoining countries. The causes which hindered the accumula- tion of wealth, which discouraged the municipal spirit, SCOTLAND AND SPAIN. IJj tind so changed the life and temper of the people through several generations, are ingeniously traced out by Buckle, and his conclusions are fortified by copious citations from contemporary writers. The civilization of a semi-tropical country like Spain is also another illustration of the modifying influence of physical factors in the evolution of national life. As the temperament of man is his fate, so the climate of a country is justly called its fate. The slant of in- tellectual light and of solar rays change the destiny of men and races. The Iberian peninsular is exposed to peculiar vicissitudes of climate. The infrequency of rain and difficulty of irrigation combine with the heat to produce drought, famine and pestilence. During two centuries there have been more .earthquakes in Spain than in all Europe combined, Italy excepted. " No other part of Europe is so clealy designated by nature as the seat and refuge of superstition. Aspects of nature, by inflaming the imagination, encouraged superstition and prevented men from daring to analyze such threatening physical phenomena, in other words, prevented the creation of the physical sciences. We may form some idea of the insecurity of life and of the ease with which an artful and ambitious priesthood could turn such insecurity into an engine for their own power." " So," says Buckle, " Spain sleeps on, a huge and torpid mass of medievalism, the most back- ward country in Europe, impassive amid the stir of intellectual life about her, and bound by a superstition that centuries have graven on the minds and eaten into the hearts of her people." Moreover, in Spain and in isothermal zones of the * History of Civilization, vol. ii., p. 5. 14 THE ANATOMY OF NATIONAL LIFE, East, the intense heat of a part of the year interrupts ordinary outdoor vocations. Work, of necessity, is suspended. There is a loss of impulse, momentum, continuity; and so there is, in time, engendered an instability of character, more or less marked, as a re- sult of enforced idleness, where there are no equalizing moral forces. Alike under the skies of India and amid the August heats of Central Spain and Italy I have seen abundant evidence of this impairment of charac- ter and resolution through the deteriorating influence of physical environment. Pritchard, Rey and Bitter have collected materials on this point and on the influence on character of a wandering, pastoral life. Barbaric tribes which have left regions of sterility and emigrated to a more genial and uniform climate have developed a comparatively high civilization. ASPECTS OF NATURE. Lyell, in his Geology, has referred to the influence of volcanic disturbances on the imagination ; so also Darwin, Word, Beale and Tschudi. They state the curious fact that, instead of becoming indifferent to them through their repetition, people become more troubled by each recurrence of seismic phenomena. Nor are these apprehensions confined to the credulous and ignorant. The educated clergyman and the phy- sician in the East have told me that they grew more nervously apprehensive with each new earthquake. In Coleman's Mythology of the Hindus, there is a striking instance of theological fiction given which was founded on such occurrences. Among primitive, unphilosophic peoples the portents of the heavens, visual phenomena, such as are caused in paludal dis- THANATOPHIDIA OF THE EAST. 15 tricts by emission of gases, by mirage, fog*, or by elec- tric disturbances, startling apparitions and auditory impressions, explicable to us, but baffling to their thought, contribute to develope the imagination wholly out of proportion to the reasoning faculties. The journals of the Eoyal Asiatic Society are rich in data bearing upon this point. Sir Thomas Brown's In- quiries into Vulgar Errors, 1646, William's Expedi- tion on the Niger, and Forry's Influence of Climate, also illuminate the subject. * THANATOPHIDIA OF THE EAST. The presence of deadly reptiles and wild beasts, and the terror awaked by them, as related to demonology, is another branch of the subject which can only be alluded to here. Bruce, in his travels through Abys- sinia, found that hyenas were regarded as enchanters, and the skin of the dead beast, even, was not touched till a priest's incantations had exorcised the demon. Marsden in Sumatra found the people unwilling to take the life of a tiger, although the number of lives destroyed was frightful. The same fact is observed in India. So of snakes. A deadly cobra was caught on the grounds of a friend with whom I afterwards tarried several days. The charmer who had caught it refused to kill it, for " a god is in it," he said. The worship of the serpent and other reptiles, and the charms used as prophylaxis are referred to by Coleman in his Hindu Mythology and in Mather's History of Gnosticism. A tiger's nose, for example, Beausobre Histoire Critique tie Manichee, vol. i., p. 243 ; Bombay Society Translations, vol. iii., pp, 98-105; Journal Asiatic Society, vol. ii., p. 337 ; Nineteenth Century, Dec. 1889. 1C THE AX ATOM 1" OF NATIONAL LIFE. is generally supposed to bring good luck if bung about the neck of a woman in childbirth. Buriie, in his Bohara, records the curious super- stitions prevalent among the Seiks respecting wounds inflicted by tigers. In the Japan Mail, June 13th and 14th, 1890, I have considered this matter at some length, under the head of " Snakes in India." INFLUENCE OF CLIMATE. Climate determines the food of the people. Whether it is abundant or scant}', spontaneously produced or with great labor ; whether it is favorable to the de- velopment of vigorous life, or the contrary, are facts related to the question of population, employment, wages, distribution of wealth, and thus of inteDigeuce. and character. Here is a wide field of research in social economics, as well as physiological science. Vegetable food, according to some, increases the fe- cundity of people. High living retards and poor living seems to increase population. There is, however, a compensative element found in the fact that, though the birth rate of poverty is large, its mortality rate is larger than it is among the higher classes. Food affects disposition. " Knock him down ! He is only tea and rice," said one foreigner to another in the streets of Canton, referring to a troublesome China- man. When roused, "the Chinese fight like tigers and elephants," but ordinarily they are very patient, yielding and self-contained. Some animal food is used by the poor, but, as a nation, the Chinese do not eat it as we do. No one can doubt that a large amount of animal food strengthens animal passions. " Jeshu- run waxed fat and kicked," while Squeers' boys, of Dotheboys Hall, fed on milk and water, grew both INFLUENCE OF CLIMATE. 17 lean and' tame. " Conquer your passions, and don't be eager after vittles," was the master's advice. Sir William Hunter says that there are forty millions underfed in India, and that the struggle for life is harder throughout a large portion of the land than it was when it passed uncjer British rule. He does not wonder that writers have spoken of it as " bleeding to death." Ninety per cent, of the rural population are tillers of the earth. The heat is intense. Drought is common. Irrigation is inadequate. The sweeping off of vast jungles has dried up countless reservoirs of moisture. Cattle degenerate from deficiency of pasture, and pasture lands die from lack of moisture and man- ure. Its waters have been nearly exhausted of fish, practically the only form . of animal food allowed by the caste rules of eighty per cent, of the people. Famines have been accepted as inevitable concomi- tants of the climate. " It is not surprising that from the earliest period to which our knowledge of India extends, an immense majority of the people, pinched by the most galling poverty, and just living from hand to mouth, should always have remained in a state of stupid debasement broken by incessant misfortune, crouching before their superiors in abject submission, and only fit either to be slaves themselves or to be led to battle to make slaves of others." * The relation of climate to the clothing, dwellings and the health of a people invites study. Dr. Coan, of the Hawaiian Islands, has referred to the incidental evils introduced by a Christian civilization. Natives who had lived out doors all their lift1, and wearing little if any clothing, subsisting on simple food, and * Buckle, vol. i. p. 53. 18 THE ANATOMY OF NATIONAL LIFE. knowing little of mental activity, found their health suffered as they adopted the methods of life, dress, in-door activities and daily study, introduced by for- eign missionaries. Dr. Clarence Thwing, in charge of a hospital at Sitka, connected with a large Training School of young Alaskan Indians, has noticed the same impairment of health in the case of not a 'few whose whole mode of living is revolutionized by be- coming students. It is obvious that the physical geography of a continent to a great degree determines its civilization through the operation of meteorological laws. An insular climate has increased moisture. A tropical country has heat. It has also a third factor, the trade winds, with those modifications noticed by Humboldt and others, called monsoons. The striking contrast which Eg}rptian civilization presents to that of Arabia, and of other similarly con- ditioned countries, illustrates the influence of phy- sical factors on the growth, wealth and character of a people. From the days of Herodotus till now this thought has attracted the attention of all geographers of the East. But Buckle himself, who presses this point, also admits that, although priority in the march of civilization belongs to the fertile zones of the East, a better, more permanent progress was made in the West. This came, not from the bounty of nature, but from the energy of man. The former is limited and stationary ; the latter almost boundless. As the re- sources of mind increase, there is a dominion estab- lished over external nature by man himself, who was, in a sense, the product of its material forces. There are other influences, natural and supernatural, to which we may now turn. CHAPTEE III. ORIENTAL CHARACTERISTICS. Potential increments of a still higher type remain to be examined. Important as is the accumulation of data in physical geography, vital statistics and similar material conditions, there are modifying influences to be studied, which are represented in lineage, language, literature, legislation, religion and social usages. It has been said that the progress of humanity is not an advance in natural capacity, but simply in opportun- ity ; not of internal growth, but of external advantage ; that one born in a civilized community is not likely to be, as such, superior to one born among barbarians, but that the character of each is solely the product of the mental atmosphere about him. Such a theory is contradicted by the facts of anthropological science. Heredity is one. We are a part of all that has pre- ceded us. An umbilical cord binds us to generations gone, hence it is hardly a hyperbole to say that a child's education should begin a hundred years before his birth. Heredity is understood by all who have to do with penology, and it no more needs defence than the system of modern astronomy. Without going to the extreme of Ferri, Lombroso and other physiolo- gists in circumscribing human freedom, we must trace alike the perfection or defacement of cerebral stric- ture largely to atavistic influences. * * Study of Brains, Charles K. Mills, M. D., 188G, Moritz Bene- clikt, 1881. 20 ORIENTAL CHARACTERISTICS. The Oriental and Occidental races present to-day salient points of divergence which reflect the growth of centuries. There is a solidarity which we cannot ignore, a homogenesis in mind as in matter. As phy- sical forces have carved the mountains and channeled the rivers of a continent, spread out field, forest, des- ert and ice plain, so in the historic evolution of a nation's life we trace the recurrent and progressive mental influences which mould it generation after gen- eration into an individuality all its own. NATIONAL INDIVIDUALITY. Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes utters a profound truth when he says : " There is no use of trying to graft the tropic palm upon the northern pine. The same divine forces underlie the growth of both, but leaf, and flower and fruit must follow the law of race, of soil, of cli- mate." Dr. John W. Draper reasons on this subject clearly in the interests of naturalism along physiological lines. In his Philosophy of Civilization he draws a parallel between the infancy, childhood, youth, maturity and age of individual life and the corresponding stages of credulity, inquiry, faith, reason and decrepitude in national growth. From legend and miracle the mind passes on to investigation and science, as society ad- vances from rudeness to culture, from poverty to wealth. The same inexorable laws, he believes, will end in national decay and ruin, as Gibbon has shown in his Decline and Fall of the Koman Empire. On the other hand, Mr. Herbert Spencer founds his spec- ulations in Evolution, and postulates an inevitable ad- vance in culture and refinement. Altruistic considera- tions will come to be a natural and spontaneous fruit, NATIONAL INDIVIDUALITY. 21 by a necessity of our being. These theories are in collision. The tendency to advancement, and also the fact of recession must be admitted. Only in the super- natural, however, can we find adequate forces to resist and overcome the gravitating tendency revealed in human history. Christianity alone gives dignity to man, value to life and permanency to civilization. As the late Professor B. N. Martin has remarked : " It alone can supply the force which can raise man so above himself as to curb these mighty tendencies to evil, and secure the steady progress of society toward its destined end of blessedness and glory. These anti- nomies of the scientific reason find their harmony, these insoluble problems shall reach their solution in the predicted days of love and purity when 'they shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain, saith the Lord.' Under all the simply natural condi- tions observed hitherto, the tendency to social im- provement has been by far too weak to contend suc- cessfully with the accumulating tendencies in a wealthy society to corruption and decay. This is incontest- ably the verdict of history, and as an absolute fact, philosophy must accept it as the basis of her reason- ing."* The East has an individuality. Thought and life have strongly marked characteristics. Whatever may be our theory of the genetic influences that shaped them, they present distinct features as a historic study. There is a mental as well as a physical anatomy clearty revealed. " As far as the East is from the West " has more than a geographical meaning. Sir Edwin Ar- nold, in his Light of the World, says that in East- journal of Christian Philosophy, April, 1883. 22 ORIENTAL CHARACTERISTICS. eni lands, "light and life are larger" than with us, passions are stronger and heart-storms are like their earthquakes and floods. " Withering simoons and winds that tear the seas To milky madness, find their counterparts In those own children of the Light, who live And love and hate with pulse at quicker beat. " TBe aim of this manual is simply to give suggestions of practical points of study, rather than to elaborate them. So, perhaps, by naming a few features in which race, language and religion have stamped themselves on Asiatic Thought we may be better able to detect the higher organizing elements. SELF-ABASEMENT. Oriental manhood is said to rest in self-abasement, as Occidental manhood is founded in self-respect. The American is audacious, assertive ; the Briton is brave and bold ; both showing it in facial signs, in vocal tones, in the contour and movement of the body, hand, foot, eye, every way. The Asiatic is ordinarily supple, servile, often timid. Some one has said that the Bengali is born with an essay in his hand and a speech in his mouth ; a good writer and speaker, but physically a poltroon, "particularly averse to physical contests. Bishop Thorburn, of Calcutta, speaks of the sternness with which he has been obliged to rebuke personal worship and kissing of his feet. In a Japanese restaurant you are welcomed by the lady in charge, who not only falls on her knees before you, but brings her forehead and lips to the floor. The physician in China and elsewhere is viewed with special reverence, and his photograph is sometimes secured and worshipped with the respect paid to the SELF-ABASEMENT. 23 ancestral tablet. The Japanese who was wont to call me to breakfast bowed low before tlie closed door as obsequiously as if it were open and lie were person- ally saluting me. Standing before cages filled with crazy creatures, I have noticed the supremest form of reverence paid, the kowtow, a knocking of the head on the floor with repeated blows. The navigator, Cook, suffered himself to be taken into a Hawaiian temple and worshipped as the god Lono, wearing a scarlet necklace. Prayers, incantations and offerings were made before him. Infatuated like Herod, he " died by visitation of God " in a quarrel with the natives soon after. * Dutch envoys in 1655 stooped to the most servile humiliation at Peking to secure pecuniary advantage, making the kowtow to the throne and to the mere name of the emperor. Williams tells us, however, that the mercantile speculation they represented proved nearly a total loss. The audience question has always been a crucial point. It was not enough to say, as did Kweiliang, thirty years ago, " I will willingly burn incense before the President of the United States if asked to do so." The point was, how far shall Occi- dental manhood bend to degrading forms of Oriental self-abasement. The details of the triumph of the West in this matter, 1873, and those of the audience with foreigners had by the Emperor March 5th, 1891, form very instructive data on the point in hand. Physiological facts doubtless lie at 4he bottom, and partly account for these mental characteristics. Peo- ple of tropical climes cannot be expected to possess the push, pluck and power of those in colder zones. * Sandwich Islands (Hirain Biiigham), p. 35. 24 ORIENTAL CHARACTERISTICS. Passions are hot, but there is not that uniform reso- luteness and resiliency of spirit which forms so large a segment of our mental sphere. * The influence of a rice diet has already been alluded to. Famine, pov- erty, over-breeding, incontinence and social oppres- sion, particularly caste, also combine to narrow, dwarf and degrade manhood. Says a Hindu pundit : " Caste has suppressed the development of individuality and independence of character. It has made the country fit for foreign slavery by previously enslaving the peo- ple in the most abject spiritual tyranny. It has brought on physical degeneracy by confining marriage within narrow circles, and developing other injurious customs like early marriage." The latter " is the greatest evil of our country," says an educated native physician ; " among the principal causes of our phy- sical degeneration as a race," says another. Half the mothers of India die prematurely or are invalids in consequence, and the vast majority of the other half suffer in health from it, says Dr. Lai Sircar, after thirty years observation among his people. Aristotle in his day spoke of the weak and puny offspring pro- duced by premature wedlock. That this physical de- terioration is related to the condition of abject mental subserviency cannot be questioned. A government inspector of schools in India says that many of these boy-husbands " are exhausted and spent by the time they reach seventeen, their for- mer energy and brightness all gone." " The masses multiply without any more thought of the future than rabbits," says Sir Henry Maine. Ten has been the age for marriage to be consummated. Dr. Mansell, a lady * Windows of Character (Dr. E. P. Th \ving), pp. 109-128. SELF-ABASEMENT. 25 physician, reports four cases of fearful, hopeless muti- lation which she had tried to treat. One of these little girl-wives appeared to be no more than seven years of age. The man who had summoned the surgeon, " said in plain English, without the. slightest appearance of shame or pity, that this was his last wife ! " Well does pundit Vidyasagara exclaim, " In such a coun- try, where men are void of compassion, would that women never were born ! " Professor Chamberlain, of the Imperial University of Japan, remarks : " we may sometimes regret the substitution of common-place European ways for the glitter and glamor of picturesque Orientalism ; but can it be doubtful which of the two civilizations is the higher, both materially and intellectually ? Does not the experience of the last three hundred years go to prove that no Oriental state which retains distinctive Oriental institutions can hope to keep its territory free from Western aggression ? " He points to India. He also says of Japan that it was a question of life or death with her. She must cease to be Oriental or cease to be her own mistress. Hence " history has never witnessed a more sudden volte-face" The Occi- dental is full of virile energy and self-assertion. Be- cause-of this audacity and independence he aims to extend his dominion from sea to sea and from the river to the ends of the earth. He is doing it, too. •But the repressive influence of Buddhism is another factor not to be overlooked. The pitiful self-abase- ment and annihilation of individuality, this extinction of all the hopes and aspirations of a true manhood is enough to belittle and abase, apart from all these other considerations. Nobility of character is impossible. St. Hilaire says that this ancient system has never 26 ORIENTAL CHARACTERISTICS. been able to found a single government, nor a toler- able social state. How could it ? Among ethnic re- ligions this is conspicuously sterilizing, for it teaches men, as Professor Mpnier Williams observes, to "be- ware of action and aim. at inaction, indifference and apathy,* as the highest of all states." OEIENTAL IMMOBILITY. As a sequence we find, as a second feature, quies- cence, stagnation, petrifaction of life, in sharp and striking contrast to the eager, alert and progressive temper of the West. To illustrate : China is fitly com- pared to Lot's wife, a stony column, a stiffened figure, with its rigid face looking backward on the past. The dominant thought of Confiicianisna is man's duty to conserve, not to create. To create implies improve- ment, advance, discovery and, therefore, a leaving of the things which are behind. This would be treason to Confucian formalism, which doctrine is rather a body of ceremonies than a religious system. It merges individuality into the rank and file of uniformity, while it deadens the sensibilities of the heart. Its watch- word is Return ! Its perfect manhood is found in the long gone past. Antiquity is its changeless theme. This is China's lamp and guide ; this her pattern and her goal. Confucius disclaimed all originality. He was not, ho said, an author, but ah editor. His aim was simply to transmit. He was anchored, and an- chylosis seems to some the empire's beauty and de- fence.* Corea, the Land of the Morning Calm, just twenty years ago warned off from her coast the American * Dragon, Image and Demon (Dr. DuBose), pp. 102-107. ORIENTAL IMPERTURBABILITY. 27 Admiral Eogers with the proud taunt, " Corea boasts four thousand years of history. She is satisfied with it and wants no other ! " She had been for ages a Hermit Nation, not only passively but actively. It was death to any Corean to cross the river Tumen, which for two hundred miles forms its northern bound- ary. Three centuries ago a belt of desolation, seventy miles wide, was made by destroying towns and vil- lages. Pickets guarded the frontier. At about the same time an imperial edict of the Mikado made it a crime, punishable with death, for a Japanese to leave the country or to return to Japan again. Christians were to be seized and imprisoned as felons. Thus has the East isolated herself, de- clared her unwillingness to change, and proved the immobility of her civilization. No Hindu can cross the black water without losing caste. If he returns, he must humble himself and eat penitential pills made of bovine excrements. ORIENTAL IMPERTURBABILITY. Causes already signalized combine to make Asiatics imperturbable, stoical, and apathetic. Nervousness is called the barometer of civilization. It marks the tu- multuous vitality of the West, which is fitly compared to an Atlantic that knows no repose. " We buy, we sell, we tear down, we build up. We put girdles round the globe as if time were but an hour, and eternal des- tiny hung on these material issues. Every day of the year somebody's brain reels. Insanity is a part of the price we pay for our Western civilization." As Dr. Talmage says, " We are born in a hurry, we live in a * Dr. J. O. Putnam, Buffalo State Asylum. 28 ORIENTAL CHARACTERISTICS. hurry, we die in a hurry, and are driven to Greenwood on a trot ! " The magnetic intensities of our latitudes and the feverish rush of life develop an abnormal nerve sensi- bility in vivid contrast to the dull unconcern of the average Asiatic. In no particular does race reveal itself more clearly. The medical man sees it in the comparative indifference to pain in surgical operations. An old woman at Canton, from whose eye Dr. Parker was about to remove a cataract, declined to take chlo- roform. He expressed doubt as to her ability to bear the knife, when she declared that he might take both eyes out and put them back again if he chose, which showed her confidence in him and in her own stoical fortitude. A cancerous breast was removed from a woman at Tokyo, sixty years of age. No anaesthetic was used, and not a groan or movement made.* In that same city, a foreigner who spent a night with a native, noticed about midnight a slight movement and a few words spoken in the adjoining room,' separated by a thin paper partition. He soon dropped asleep again. His host in the morning told the visitor that a son had been born. The next day the guest saw the mother, and expressed his surprise at the stillness which attended the event. She replied, " O, we call a woman stupid who ciies out at such a time ! " Men can be found at a criminal court ready, for money, to bear the beating and torture. Even if de- capitation is the penalty, heads are sometimes offered as substitutes, so 'that the doomed man, unless his crime be specially heinous, may buy his life and liberty. But for this lessened nerve sensitiveness deaths under British Medical Journal, 1888, p. 1465. ORIENTAL IMPERTURBABILITY. 29 terrific Chinese torture would be more common. Un- til one lias seen and liandled-tlie instruments by which the body is sometimes crushed and mutilated, no con- ception can be had of the brutality suffered. As a remedy for sickness in a parent, a Chinaman some- times slices off flesh from his own body. Dr. Dudgeon has had cases to treat where serious results followed self-mutilation. The austerities of mendicants in the East illustrate the same dulled nature. Shanghai once had four men who played the part of Simon Stylites. One crawled into a cage about three feet square, and was hoisted forty feet into the air, where he remained with neither food nor drink for seven days. He hoped to get money for a temple. Some lie on spikes. The gift of a cer- tain sum will pull out one spike. A man at Allahabad endured fifty years of this self-crucifixion. Filial self- sacrifice illustrates the same stoicism. At Ningpo the spirit of a dead daughter is still worshipped. She saw her father baffled as to the working of a boiler furnace. Inspired with the idea of sacrifice indigenous in the Asiatic mind, she leaped into the fiery depths and was consumed. The iron moukler ever afterward had great success and wealth. A moral and physical insensi- bility unite even in young children. Miss Cumming saw some Ningpo boys greatly enjoying one day the torture of rats, which they had dipped in oil and set on fire. The boys I met while examining the crosses and severed heads on the Execution Ground, Canton, showed the same brutal instincts. These are a physi- cal inheritance. A miniature city was once built at the Summer Palace, Peking, a mile square, where the Emperor might see on a small scale what his seclusion from the real world did not allow him to see. Trades 30 ORIENTAL CHARACTERISTICS. were carried 011 by imperial attendants, goods hawked about, arrests made and real floggings inflicted, to the anguish of the innocent actors, but to the amusement of the Son of Heaven. The readiness with which an Asiatic commits suicide is still another illustration of moral obtuseness. So, too, the indifference shown in taking another's life. The passengers on the East Bengal Railway are warned by the police against tak- ing anything from unknown persons, to eat or drink. AVater is poisoned as it is drawn from the well, and sweetmeats as they are brought from the bazar. AA^heii unconscious the victim is robbed. The history of the Thugs may be read in this connection. The use of opium is related to Oriental impassi- bility. The habit is an expression of inborn tastes.. It also contributes to the perpetuation of deadened sensibilities quite in harmony with the features of self-abasement and immobility already noticed. CHAPTEE IV. ORIENTAL CHARACTERISTICS. ORIENTAL MYSTICISM. Western minds are analytic, philosophical, disputa- tious, while Eastern thought is intuitive, nebulous and transcendental. We make but little of inward voices, vigils and self-illuminations, but the East is full of dreamers, " ten thousand Emersons," idealists who leave, as Carlyle says, the anchorage of an actual uni- verse and soar away into the perilous altitudes of be- liefs and revelations. Averse to logical reasoning and mathematical consistency, they trust to impressions and yield to the touch of a god within them. When Mr. Joseph Cook asked one of the coadjutors of Keshub Chunder Sen how the Brahmo Somaj dis- tinguished between what it calls inspiration from above and one's own individual thought, the evasive reply was given, " That's one of the secrets of religious genius." Reason is to be silenced as well as sense. Personality is lost in an introspective vision. A di- vine union is accomplished in a celestial ecstacy and divine afflatus. Helpful to this process certain ob- jects are used, with which occult meanings are asso- ciated. These are made known, step by step, to the initiated. Mr. Sen used various theistic symbols, bor- rowed from heathenism, in the worship of his church ; for example, lighting a basin of oil and burning sandal sticks, one by one, saying, " Thus perish our lust and pride." He also had Hindu dances and spectacular 32 ORIENTAL CHARACTEKISTICS. performances, which remind an Orientalist of the rites of Egyptian and Hellenic mystics. The criticism qf discerning men then was that "this composite set of ceremonies and religious doctrines has in it so many appeals to ancient Hindu prejudices, that it can never lead the mass of the Hindu populations out of their attachments and hereditary misbeliefs.'* So it has proved since his death in 1884. Emerson himself admits the superiority of Western over Eastern thought when he says that the former is active and creative ; its philosophy is a discipline, and it promotes art, commerce and freedom ; while " Asia is the country of immovable institutions, the seat of a philosophy delighting in abstractions, of men faithful in doctrine and in practice to the idea of a deaf, un- implorable, immense fate." As Dr. Holmes has said, " The Oriental side of Emerson's nature delighted it- self in these narcotic dreams, born in the land of the poppy and of hashish," and that his poem, Brahma, was " a vacuum of intelligibility." " The geography of an undiscovered country, and the soundings of an ocean that has never been sailed over, may belong to the realm of knowledge." t There is no lack of literature on the subject, and he who would understand the Oriental of to-day must know the mystic of the past. Not that his knowledge is transmissible, for " it begins and ends with the soli- tary dreamer. The next who follows him has to build his own cloud-castle, as if it were the first aerial edifice that a human soul had e.ver constructed." But the causes that gave rise to mysticism, the methods by Orient (Joseph Cook, 1886), p. 121. Life of Emerson, (Holmes) p. 391, THE OltlENTAL HOME. 33 which it has so long been fostered, and the practical influence it still has on Asiatic thought, demand pa- tient and thorough investigation. It is not an unrea- sonable demand made by Eastern Christians that some- thing of the color and flavor of Oriental life should mark the nascent thought of to-day. Each land has its own mental atmosphere and perspective. New comers must adapt themselves to it. Wisdom was not born in the West. It will not die there. Light still streams from the East. THE ORIENTAL HOME. Aii important ground of differentiation, not yet no- ticed, is that which is furnished by the domestic life of the Oriental. Mr. Seward once exclaimed, " There are no homes in Asia ! " Only where Christianity pre- vails is the conception of HOME realized. Professor M oilier Williams finds in no Indian tongue " any equiv- alent to that grand old Saxon monosyllable, Ifo/>/<-, that little word which is the key to our national great- ness and prosperity." The word Zenana simply means the place of women, a designation of apartments, where females are kept as toys or drudges. "Home," he says, " is the hallowed place of rest and of trustful in- tercourse, where husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, male and female relatives and friends, gather together round the same hearth, in loving confidence and mutual dependence, each and all working together like the differently formed limbs of one body, for the general good and for the glory of the great Creator." According to Mr. Gladstone, the position of woman is the one. effective test of civilization. Her position in India, he says, is midway between the extremes of barbarism and Christianity. Japan is in advance of 34 ORIENTAL CHARACTERISTICS. all Asiatic people in the education of woman. In 1886 about one female out of eighteen in Japan was at school, while in India there was hardly one in sixty under instruction. There is a Brahininic saying, " To ediicate a woman is to put a knife in the hand of a monkey." The Indian wife of ancient times, it is true, was spoken of in the Mahabharata as " half of man, his truest friend ; " but wre also read in Mauu's code that " she should be kept in a state of dependence, and should be beaten with a bamboo cane if she commit faults" (ix., 2, 3; viii., 299). Professor Wilson quotes from Hindu tales which dwell on the depravity of wo- men, making "their appetites two fold, their intellect four, their lust eight fold." Pundit Sastri writes, "the mean jealousies of our women have ruined the peaee of many a household, and caused the disruption in many cases of once united, happy families." He at- tributes this to their ignorance and seclusion. The Indian Mirror, when edited by Keshub Chunder Sen, remarked that a home in Bengal was " a whited sepul- chre ! There may be exceptions, but this is the rule. The horrors of the Zenana are multiplied tenfold by the misery of the joint family, and the degradation which domestic ill-will produces." THE JOINT FAMILY SYSTEM. Western life makes the man a unit ; Eastern life makes the family the social unit. We believe that personal responsibility is quickened, industry fostered, wealth, public spirit and patriotism developed by dis- tinct, individual family life, in place of the patriarchal and joint household system. In the beginning of society, when life and property were insecure, and food difficult to obtain, this clannish feeling served a good THE JOINT FAMILY SYSTEM. 35 purpose. Self-preservation, cheap living and brother- ly feeling Avere secured. But as society advances from the archaic stage, this copartnership breeds evils. 'In an economic view, indolence is one result of having all things in common. There is little to encourage self- exertion. One of the Hindu judges says that the idle fatten on the industrious, seniors defraud the juniors, and unpleasant friction is unavoidable. Fresh groups of subordinate families, with separate interests and affections, make the partnership burdensome. Litiga- tion is common where there is property, and this is most demoralizing. The joint system in India, accord- ing to Judge Mullick of Calcutta, " is destined to die a sure death, and nothing on earth can save it." Re- strictive legislation is needless. In China the joint family system is a vital factor. The economical support of households, the claims of kinship, the proper cultivation of the soil and, above all, the ancestral dignity of the family name, make it a necessity, in their view. After the death of a father, the eldest son is the representative head. He acts as high priest of the families of the male children, when sacrifices are offered to the ancestral manes. He is the chief at bridal and burial. At his death his eldest son, though an infant, succeeds to the rights of primo- geniture. If there be no heir, a nephew or cousin is adopted, so that some one in a direct line may burn incense to the spirits of the dead. There may be dif- ferent heads of families, but only one head of the clan. In Japan the idea of clan is feudal, and does not in- volve the use of the same surname, as in China or in Scotland. There is a nearer approach to our home life among tli<> Japanese than among other Asiatics, but the status 30 ORIENTAL CHAItA< TI.KISTICS. of woman is low. Professor Chamberlain remarks : " The greatest duchess in the land is still her husband's drudge. She fetches and carries for him, bows down humbly in the hall, waits upon him at meals, and may be divorced at his good pleasure. In 1888, one mar- riage in three ended in a divorce." ' The seven grounds for separation are disobedience, dishonesty, jealousy, loquacity, sterility, leprosy and lewdness. The great moralist, Kaibara, writing on the Whole Duty of Woman, Onna Diagaku, says that seven- tenths of his countrywomen are afflicted with " the five worst maladies : indocility, discontent, slander, jealousy and silliness. From these arises her inferiority to men. Such is the stupidity of her character, that it is incum- bent on her, in every particular, to distrust herself and obey her husband." Miss Bacon says : " She must bear all things from him with a smiling face, even to the receiving with open arms into the household some other woman whom she knows to bear the relation of concubine to her own husband. As long as the wife has no rights which the husband is bound to respect, no great advance can be made. European practice cannot be grafted upon the Asiatic theory, but the change in the home must be a radical one to secure permanent good results." t If this be true in en- lightened Japan, it is a more imperative need in other parts of the Eastern world. * Things Japanese (Kelly & Walsh, Yokohama), pp. 92-366. f Japanese Girls and Women (Boston, 1891), pp. 85-116. CHAPTEE V. RELIGION IN THE EAST. We are studying Asiatic Thought as a historic devel- opment. The organizing forces have been found to be physical, at the start, such as climate, soil, food and material environments. These fundamental conditions of civilization form the anatomy of national life. The location of a continent, the configuration of its surface and boundaries, its atmospheric vicissitudes, its scenic aspects, its physical disturbances, the presence of wild beasts and reptiles, with other physical factors, deter- mine the character of its primitive population. These genetic influences steadily mould its aboriginal life. Not in saltatory or zigzag steps, but by a natural, pro- gressive growth there is developed a national indi- viduality. We have glanced at a few of the features of Asiatic character, results of this historic evolution. Repressive influences have tended to dwarf manhood and quench self-respect. There is petrifaction and immobility of life. Asiatics generally are imperturba- ble and apathetic. Though passionate at times, they ordinarily show languor and indifference. The aver- age Oriental thinker is mystical, introspective, tran- scendental. The domestic life of the East has fur- nished still further data, and we now naturally come to the more vital elements of Eastern Thought, expressed in its religious life. Hero are concrete results of forces already studied. They are also causes. Historically 38 UELIGIOX IN THE EAST. they appear both as antecedents aud products. Their corelatiou aud interaction are apparent. It is well to consider the generic idea of religion in the East. All men worship. We may traverse the world, as Plutarch has remarked, and find cities with- out walls and without wealth, without kings and with- out coins, but never without prayer and worship. The Ashautee rain-maker and the Arcadian shepherd, the Parsee and Moslem alike feel " the breedings of some Over-soul." Professor Tyndall truly says, " No athe- istic reasoning can dislodge religion from the heart of man. As an experience of the consciousness it is per- fectly beyond the assaults of logic." Of newly-dis- covered tribes in the heart of the Dark Continent, Dr. Livingstone says, " They have clear ideas of the Su- preme God." The Eastern races specially show how universal and ineradicable is this religious conviction. Primitive, unphilosophical people seem to ba more responsive in spiritual instincts than wre, whose visional grasp of the unseen is hampered by our education. Their languages are freighted with figures which show how warm and luxuriant their imagination is. Nature to them is vital, vivid, inspiring. Fancy,- though rude, is creative and picturesque. The transition to Jhe supernatural is easy where the imagination is alert, clairvoyant and un- fettered by reason. PRIMITIVE MONOTHEISM. The learned Schlegel remarked that his studies of ancient religion convinced him that men started with the worship of the Supreme Being, but that the power of nature over the imagination introduced polytheism and obscured the more spiritual ideas, which were pre- PRIMITIVE MONOTHEISM. 39 served a secret by the wise alone. Popular thought flowed in this channel, while the few thinkers saw a unity in natural phenomena, and recognized a center and source of all things. Semitic races held to the one invisible God, while the Aryan deified second causes,* and the Turanian trembled before the Un- known. " The watersheds of language have been the great watersheds of thought. In the search for the ideal these great races have taken different directions. The Turanian, impressed with a vague and childish sense of the mysterious, has not yet advanced into the idealizing stage. To the nomads of Northern Asia God is awful, undented. The ideal of the Chinese is a perfectly organized government." * A panoramic view of ethnic religions, like that which Humboldt's Cosmos gives of men's conceptions of nature in suc- cessive historic epochs, would here be inviting, but delay us from the more practical ends in view. The monotheism of the Jew became the deism of the Moslem. It is declared in the Zendavesta that Abraham taught the religion it records. Leading Arabian writers claim this to be true of Brahminism, equally with Persian Magianism, as shown by Hyde in his elaborate work a century ago. t It -is said that to-day the Brahmins of the Coroinandel Coast hold to the idea of one, independent, perfect, Supreme Being ; and when a young Brahmin receives his sacred cord, his father says to him privately, " Kemember, my son, there is but one God, and every Brahmin is bound to worship Him in secret." £ This is, however, a theoretic * Origin and Development of Religious Belief (S. Baring Gould), vol. i., p. GO. f Historia Religionis Veterum Parsarum. J Mmurs des Indes (Du Bose), tome i., 225. 40 RELIGION IN THE EAST. and not a practical principle. Nature is made tlie inactive, inferior part of the great Invisible. This Being has no interest in human affairs. Orientals re- gard any form of labor on the part of their sovereign as derogatory to imperial dignity. Furthermore, evil is regarded as inherent in matter. But the idea of God will focus itself on single objects as centers of a spiritual essence. However ludicrous the expression of this natural impulse, the principle is legitimate. We are wont to make one place, one person, one ob- ject more significant than another in our worship, in our social, commercial and political life. A cheque is but a bit of paper and ink, yet it* is more. A national banner is but a bit of bunting, yet it is more. So corn, wine and oil, the dog and cow have played a part in worship for ages. Cointe traces the domestication of animals and plants, the basis of agriculture and indus- try, to this universal adoration in primitive religion. To the natural expression of ideas in symbols we owe the arts of writing, painting and sculpture. But when the spiritual significance is lost and the worship of the symbol remains, idolatry is the result. IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. The immortality of the soul has been another article in ethnic religion. The deification of dead ancestors proves it. The methods of interment and monumental inscriptions shoAV it. The Book of the Dead records the belief of the ancient Egyptians in future felicity and woe, rewards and punishments. The mysteries of Isis, Mithras, Cybele and Eleusis appealed to the im- agination of the initiated by scenic representations which contrasted the states of the good and the bad in the other world. IMMORTALITY OP THE SOUL. 41 Keferring to this belief, the Greek poet Pindar says : " The righteous pass a tearless age, The wicked are in frightful pain." The Tartarus and Elysium pictured by Virgil, Bishop Warburton believes to be an implicit copy of what these esoteric teachings exhibited. Dodona's oracle, the Babylonian, Hellespontic and Erythrean shrines were centers of illumination, in some sense divine. Here men, like Balaam fourteen centuries before Christ, sought God, if haply they might feel after Him and find Him, who has promised to every nation that he who feareth God and worketh righteousness is ac- cepted of Him. Turn to India. Her monumental records are said to make the pyramids seem young. Bailly makes their astronomy five thousand years old. Vernon Harcourt finds their ancient traditions supported by strongest linguistic proofs, and in their mythologic characters and historic remains, the solution of problems involved in the history of Indo-Germanic nations in general. The Upanishads, or mystic portion of the Vedas, re- veal a heavenly city, palace, throne, river and gardens. The city of Indra is forty miles high. Buildings of gold and precious stones are there ; fruits and flowers, perfume and beauty by the banks of the ageless stream and the tree of Hya, where the crown of eternal youth is given. But this is but a beginning. Another city, Vishnu's home, is a hundred times larger than Indra. Ascending and descending souls may spend uncounted years in their migrations. One theory makes a man pass throiigh eight million births. Ample accommo- dations for shiners of high and low degree are found 42 RELIGION IN THE EAST. in twenty-one hells. Not only books, but plastic aud pictorial art present terrific conceptions of physical torment in the endless life beyond. HEATHEN SACRIFICES. Human sacrifices prevailed in India for more than two thousand years. The suttee was abolished in 1830, after not a little debate, for England had prom- ised not to interfere with Hindu religion. While the discussion went on, for a long time there were from three hundred to eight hundred widows burned alive each year.* In the temple of Heliopolis three men were daily .lain, until King Amasis ordered the burn- ing of tapers instead. Standing at the shrine of Ivarli at Calcutta, looking at the bloody floor where a goat had been offered to a god, I recalled the fact of human sacrifices, and saw in this substitution one proof of the dominance of English civilization. Voluntary as well as compulsory offerings — not of life only, but what the giver esteems dearer than life, virginity — is another revolting feature of ethnic re- ligion. Arabian maidens once were wedded to a god by a death in the flames; but in the worship of My- litta candidates for defloration crowded the avenue to the temple so closely that it was difficult for one to select in turn his partner. Home waited for years, t I saw a Hindu at Jeypore, now an elder in a Christian church, who once was a participant in heathen orgies. His testimony is such that it cannot be put into print. It justifies the language of Bishop Heber as to India : ' ' Where every prospect pleases, And only man is VILE." * Hindu Literature (E. A. Reed, 1891, S. C. Griggs & Co.), p. 66. t Herodotus, i., 193. De Syria Dca (Lucian) chap. vi. RELIGION A BEGNANT POWEH. 43 Quoting these words in an address in New York, a theosophist .once exclaimed, "What"a$d/" His im- pudence was only equalled by his ignorance. People who have never been in a heathen community, and have never known the "depths of Satan," by per- sonal inspection, as medical men may, can sneer at facts, but the sad truth remains, for all that. KELIGION A KEGNANT POWEE. Religion enters into everything. The Hindus, for example, eat, drink, toil, sin, religiously. Their gods are vile. The book which two-thirds of the Hindus call their bible is untrauslateable in its vileness. The word priest is used as a climax, when other words of abuse have been exhausted. With such gods and guides what can be expected of the people ? Religion controls all their activities. It is not, as with many of us, a Sunday matter, but an all-pervasive, ubiquitous and imperious power. It is a mighty historic force, the growth of centuries, gigantic yet flexible, and ac- commodating itself to varying conditions. It has been compared to an immense glacier, slowly moving down from a mountain, gathering up stones and debris, yet adapting itself to the configuration of the mountain. This flexibility characterizes the religious system of China, and so unites the ethical, physical and rneta-. physical ; morality, idolatry and superstition in one mighty controlling powrr. Strict Confucianism op- poses idolatry and inculcates a splendid morality. So the pure, exalted Vedic teachings deserve all praise. But neither are a practical, redeeming force. The Chinaman recognizes a triple compound of idolatry. He makes a friendly alliance of various systems, to suit his social or political surroundings. 44 RELIGION IN THE EAST. He dovetails, as Dr. Du Bose expresses it, Confucian- ism, Buddhism and Taoism, using temple, image and ritual, priest, shrine and song, as convenience or policy may suggest. Theoretically, the first is the State re- ligion, and its temples are maintained by imperial revenues. But Buddhist monasteries are also endowed by government, and deceased dignitaries of state be- come gods in Taoist temples. A hundred priests of one class and a hundred of the other, with the man- darins between them, have been seen at one time and in one temple engaged in worship, just as in Rome worshipping senators surrounded Elagabalus as he celebrated the Syrian worship of the sun, side by side, perhaps, with the devotees of the Babylonian Mylitta, or those of Isaic and Serapic worship from the Nile. Gibbon was not mistaken in his conception of the policy of paganism. It was not aggressive and pre- scriptive, but it utilized superstition as a power more serviceable than armies. The gods and worship of every nation had a place in the Pantheon. " All were considered by the people as equally true ; by the phil- osophers as equally false, and by the magistrate as equally useful." Look at Japan. Is its heathenism prescriptive ? No ; it is tolerant and inclusive, as in China. Ancient Shinto, without sacred books, dogmas and moral code, a worship of deified rulers of heroes, was a political ceremonial. In the sixth century after Christ its de- crepitude began, as Buddhism introduced its ritualistic attractions and ethical features. Shinto temples then came to be served by the priests of Buddha, who add- ed the forms of their own worship. Recently a tem- porary revival of Shinto took place, but " It had no root in itself, being too empty and jejune to influence RELIGION A REGNANT POWER. 4o the heart of men. Buddhism soon rallied. Though Shinto is still the official cult — in so far that certain temples are maintained out of public moneys, and at- tendance of certain officials is required from time to time at ceremonies of a. half religious, half courtly nature — the whole thing is now a mere shadow." The literary classes are largely indifferent or agnostic, but the common people remain practically idolaters. Social life, business and pleasure are all tinctured with heathenism. The Japanese drama, for instance, is traced to the religious dances of antiquity, attended with recitations, comic and historic, and choric songs. Japanese literature, rich in romances in which court- esans play their part — not all debased by sinful pas- sion, but in many cases in obedience to the strange demands of filial piety — the prevalence of concubinage throughout the Empire, the worship of the seven gods of luck, visits to the graves of the dead, and a multi- tude of other customs show how thoroughly idolatrous the Japanese are to-day. So simple an act as tea- drinking has a heathen history. Seven centuries ago a Buddhist abbot wrote a tract on the subject, intro- duced a sacred ceremonial, told how to make and drink the infusion amid the smoke of incense and beat of drum in honor of the dead. Ever since, it is said, a flavor of this superstition has clung to tea-drinking, particularly in the Zen sect. Action and gesture, the washing of hands, the ringing of a bell, the touching of the canister, handling flower and scroll, with other formalities, have been fixed by priestly ritualism. I remember how pathetic an appeal to their gods was made by some sailors at Canton, who were trying * Things Japanese (Professor B. H. Chamberlain), p. 311. 46 RELIGION IN THE EAST. to raise from the deck a new must into position. There were a dozen of them. They had raised it by means of spiked poles to a perilous angle. It halted and hung in air, as did the red monolith at Home, three hundred years ago, when Bresca shouted, " Wet the ropes ! " but for which it would have fallen. At this juncture one of the men took a bunch of fire-crackers, apparently at hand for the occasion, and exploded them. It was an invocation, or recognition of a power beyond their own. The mast slowly rose to its place. So I have seen my boatwoman, or her child, light the incense before the miniature shrine as we started on a river trip, and have felt again how all-pervasive is the religious element in Eastern life. One who comes within the sphere of Asian thought will soon learn to appreciate this feeling in dealing, not only with idolaters, but with native converts. Social usages, business relations, political life, lan- guage itself, nay, the very air, earth and sky are vehi- cles of this sentiment. Nothing is too high or too low to be reached by it. The imaginative faculty, as we have, seen, is very active from earliest infancy. Hel- lenic children at their sports cried out when the sun- shine was obscured by a passing cloud, " Come forth, beloved Sun ! " as if it were a playmate hidden.* So the Oriental to-day lives his out-door life in closer contact with nature than we. Over land and sea, field and forest, grove and garden, uncounted deities are brooding. The movements of the wind and water, of bird, insect or reptile are .auguries or omens. The drought that withers, the flood that overwhelms, the mildew and murrain that destroy, are expressions of a * Hellenes (St. John), vol. i., p. 149. UELIGION A 11EGNANT POWER. 4:7 power that must be propitiated. In every hamlet in China, during the first moon, the god of agriculture is worshipped with offerings or food, fruit and flowers. Processions are formed and theatrical exhibitions are ordered in his honor. The building of a house, the forming of a business partnership, the date of a mar- riage, bridal and burial, the location of a tomb, feasts, games, the handicrafts of men, domestic employments and affairs of state are all governed by some reference to the Unseen. What Ingraham Kip said of the speech of primitive Christians, in his Early Conflicts of Chris- tianity, is substantially true now : " The phrases of common life were rilled with allusions to their popular religion ; words of affection and worship were so en- twined that it seemed impossible to banish the one and retain the other. Good wishes became chilled and un- meaning, when they dropped the customary allusions to the gods of their faith. The adoption of Christian- ity, therefore, alienated them and severed the dearest bonds of life." As then, s« now, language in the East is everywhere so saturated with pagan thought, it has to be remodelled. It is a cheering fact that in India and elsewhere the English tongue has ennobled, where it has not wholly superseded, the vernacular of hea- thenism. This brief survey points to a practical suggestion. We are not to approach the Oriental in an intolerant or disputatious temper, as too many have done, in- sensitive to influences which for ages have moulded his thought and life. We ye not to be so impressed with the authority of our belief as to show disdain for his. Paul, at Athens, brg:in with a compliment rather than a taunt : " I perceive that in all things you are very devout," We may recognize this worshipful •18 RELIGION IN THE EAST. spirit without at all compromising the truth. We can adapt our thought to his mental horizon, awaken his interest, equalize his sensibilities, and so disarm his opposition, when we may not secure his acquiescence. An educated Japanese who has spent several years in America, whom I met at Tokyo, looking at the matter from the position of an influential gentleman, writes : " Japan is already tired of soothsayers, theorists, ser- mon-makers. I believe that I am speaking the senti- ments of my nation when I tell you that we care at present more for earnestness and conviction than for views. We would see men who love iis and give them- selves for our sakes, as the Saviour of mankind did ; those wiio have had spiritual experiences as practical realities, and who can treat of the things of the Spirit just as definitely as that which they have seen, touched and felt. Let each be thoroughly convinced of what he believes, else the sharp-witted heathen will not hearken to him. We need here only men of moral earnestness, who can give fruits of their own experi- ence, taught through discipline and mental struggles of many years." CHAPTER VI. LANGUAGE, LITERATURE AND ART. " The Past shall always wear A glory from being far." Tennyson is right. There is no lens like distance. It magnifies and gives enchantment to the view. The antiquity of Eastern lore invites attention. But the opulence of these treasures is more than their age. Let us glance at a few items of this wealth. The author of What can India teach us? has well said that no "Western thinker can there be an intellectual exile, for in India the human mind has busied itself with life's greatest problems, and found solutions that deserve our consideration. There, an intellectual world can be studied from the beginning of national thought, along its historic development up to the highest stages. There, the most subtle philosophies, the most elaborate laws and the most primitive religions have had their home for ages. The study of ancient Yedic verse has laifl the basis of a science of mythology. It has cleared up questions of philology, such as the growth and de- cay of dialects and the mixture of languages. It has shown us legends older than the time of Solomon. THE SANSCRIT. Through the whole history of this part of the Ori- ent, says Max Muller, there runs a highway of litera- ture for thous-uxls of years, in which are found the 50 THE SANSCRIT. true representatives of the people from age to age. The record of their noble thought is instructive, so are their puerilities and monstrosities. The ten thousand MSS. of the Sanscrit now in existence have a human interest. Though for more than twenty centuries it has been what we call a dead language, it has given life and soul to all the living tongues of that wide em- pire, both Aryan and Dravidiau. " Such is the mar- velous continuity of the past and present, Sanscrit may be said to be still the only language that is spoken over the whole extent of that vast country ; more widely understood in India than Latin was in Europe at the time of Dante. Whenever I receive a letter from a learned man in India, it is written in Sanscrit. Whenever there is a controversy on ques- tions of law and religion, the pamphlets in India are written in Sanscrit." Thousands of Brahmins, adds Max Muller, can repeat from memory the entire Rig- veda and other books. Recitations of these ancient epic poems are given to crowds in village temples, continuing weeks or even months. Journals are pub- lished in this tongue, commentaries and treatises on philosophy. Moreover, ease, purity and elegance in the use of the dialects in common use come from acquaintance with this parent tongue. This is the most perfect efer known, according to Bosworth, and very nearly a primitive language, inasmuch as all its words are com- posed of its own elements, free from exotic terms. It is the polished tongue, as the name indicates. It em- balms not only epic, lyric, didactic and dramatic poe- try, but philosophic criticism, the germs of jurispru- dence, of dramatical science, linguistic analysis, lexi- cography, rhetoric, music, mathematics, astronomy LANGUAGE, LITERATURE A!sTD ART. 51 and medicine. It has been called the mediator and interpreter of the differences which divided Greek, Latin, Slavonic and Teutonic tongues. As soon as " the eldest sister of them all stepped in, there came light, warmth and mutual recognition. They all ceased to be strangers, and each fell of its own accord into its right place." Oriental literature, read in the Orient, has a plenary significance and beauty in keeping with the brilliancy and tropical luxuriance about you. Last year I sailed from Hong Kong to Bombay and back, day after day, for six thousand miles, floating over Indian seas that seemed charmed into stillness, where the waves slept and the heavens were bright, surrounded by luxurious comfort, with ample opportunity for reading and study. I remember how impressively the fact came home to me one day that seventeen centuries before Christ and seventeen centuries after Christ, the god of thunder was invoked by the same name, by Hindus of the In- dus and peasants on the borders of Prussia. This bit of linguistic unity taught me the continuity of life and language through all time. It acted like a mystic word to introduce me into the hidden past and to show prostrate worshippers on the plains of India before Moses was born, recognizing the same deity that men in modern times have ignorantly adored. It is " as if we saw the blood suddenly beginning to flow again through the veins of old mummies, or as if Egyptian statues were to speak again. All that is old becomes new, all that is new becomes old, and that one word, Parganya, seems, like a charm, to open before our eyes the cave or cottage in which the fathers of the Aryan race — our own fathers, whether we live on the Baltic or the Indian ocean — are seen gathered together tak- 52 THE SEMITIC TONGUES. ing refuge from the buckets of Pargauya." But we are only on the threshold of this department. Other landmarks of study may be rapidly noted. THE SEMITIC TONGUES. Professor Noldeke of Strasburg sees a closer kinship between these than exists between Indo-European languages. The Hebrew, Phoenician, Assyrian, Ara- maic, Arabic and Ethiopic show common characteris- tics in the order and form of sentences, in vowel changes, consonant roots and verbal stems. The first two are dialects of one language. The Aramaic, as a cultivated language, became dominant before Christ, and was used by Arabs before theirs had been reduced to writing ; but after ten centuries it was supplanted by the Arabic. Islam raised this to the dignity of a sacred tongue when Bedouins brought half the Avorld under their sway. It became the vehicle of poetry, law, religion, business and science, while Assyrian — of close kin to Hebrew — survived the destruction of Nin- eveh as a sacerdotal speech, the vernacular of the official and scholar. Continuous immigration into Africa by various Se- mitic people with diverse dialects, introduced heter- ogeneous elements and linguistic corruptions into the languages of that region. The roots of the Coptic in Egypt, and its grammatic structure, bear the impress of the Semitic, while comparative philologists, pointing out its monosyllabism, see a similarity to the Syriac. Stuart Poole of the British Museum says that Egyp- tian literature is disappointing. " So unsystematic is it that it has not given to us the connected history of a single reign, or a really intelligible account of a single campaign. The religious documents are still LANGUAGE, LlTEltAlDKE AND AKT. 53 less orderly than the historical. It is only by the severe work of some of the ablest critics during the last fifty years, that from these disjointed materials a consistent whole has been constructed. The Book of the Dead must remain a marvel of confusion and pov- erty of thought. The temple inscriptions are singu- larly stilted and wanting in variety, but the papyri contain some hymns which are of a finer style." EGYPTIAN ART. The country and climate afforded the best means of symbolizing the leading idea of Egyptian religion in material forms of life. Life after death \vas that idea, and it found expression in the construction of tombs as lasting as the rocks on which they rested. He sees the double origin of the race in the contradic- tions of their character, the bright elements of Ni- gritian temperament shadowed by Semitic solemnity, and the generous qualities of Semites perverted by the lower impulses of Nigritians. Plain in dress and sim- ple in food, they were luxurious in ornaments and given to excess in wine ; scrupulous as to family ties, careless as to morals. While making the construction of a tomb the chief object in life, and the funeral the most costly personal event, the Egyptians delighted in music, dancing and caricature, even in the scenes of a burial. Their art is not florid and glaring, but in keeping with its serious aim, which is religious and historic. The stately shaft may be reeded, fluted or embellished with grouped clusters of the lotus, but its massive grandeur remains. While Arabic art did not allow animal figures, Egyptian lions of Gebel Barkal, now in the British Museum, are regarded the finest idealization of animal forms that any age has pro- 54 EGYPTIAN ART. duced. Professor Hayter Lewis of London University admires the early Assyrian art, and notes the delicacy and truthfulness of treatment, especially in the ani- mals. He differs from that hater, Ruskin, who says " mud-bred onion-eating creatures built Nineveh after a monarch's design." But then, he thought the orna- mentation of the Alhambra was detestable. Tastes differ. Oriental languages and art are chiefly instructive as records of history and mirrors of thought, apart from intrinsic excellencies or defects. The civil, mortuary and domestic architecture of the East reflect the life of the people, indicate climatic influences and mark so- cial, religious and political epochs. As Buddhism modified Indian art, epitomizing in metal, wood and stone the degrading conceptions of its cult, so Ionian art left its refining influence on sculpture long after the Greek invasion, 327 B. C. Hellenic ideas of beauty are embodied in the statuary of the Punjab and the sun temple of the Orissa shore. Then the invasions of Mahornetanism, from A. D. 664 onward, have left their mark on Hindu art, down to the end of the Mogul dynasty. As I looked on the Pearl Mosque and the Taj at Agra, or the superb beauty of buildings at Del- hi, studying each fanciful foliation, curious wreath, scroll and fret, with spandrils inlaid with jasper, sapphire, amethyst and other precious stones, I was reading human history more than merely analyzing architecture. We of the West are restless and capricious, governed by mercantile considerations and by fashion plates in our aesthetic temper. We lack the finer instincts of less cultivated people. Jarves says that " A Polyne- sian, Hindu or native of Japan sucks in with his LANGUAGE, LITERATURE AND ART. 55 mother's milk a sense so keen and clairvoyant in re- spect to ornament, that he appears as if endowed with a special faculty for it of an almost spiritual apprehen- sion. Textile fabrics made by Oriental fingers and toes surpass those of Europe made with the best scien- tific machinery. The subtlest laws of design and col- oring are shown in their construction, as also in the enamels, porcelains and lacquer work, which as far surpass the dainty prettiiiess of Sevres and Dresden as their porcelain is finer than ordinary crockery. Their fancy in design and color is based on a closer insight into nature than Europeans display in their decorative art. It seems equally founded in realism and mysti- cism. While nothing can be more accurate than their observation and comprehension of the forms of life, they baptize facts in the waters of an imagination that has no counterpart in the European mind for versatil- ity of invention and strangeness of types." THE VALUE OF MUSEUMS. The suggestion of Jarves as to the value of ethno- logical museums as moral teachers is timely. The museum is a vivid, tangible revelation, a truthful ex- position of the character of a people, and so an inter- preter of enigmas of history. It levels vanity and supplants pride ; shows the good and evil without dis- guise, and dispels misconceptions. India itself has been called a living ethnological museum. So is Egypt and Asia Minor, as well as the Far East. The gift of Mr. Schiff of New York, a large-hearted Semite and promoter of Semitic study, lays the foundation of a Semitic Museum at Harvard University. The recent opening of such a treasure-house of Oriental literature and art is an evidence of the awakened interest in 56 THE VALUE OF MUSEUMS. Eastern Life already referred to. Here are rare He- brew, Arabic and Syriac MSS., probably the best col- lection of photographs, finely inscribed Babylonish cylinders of clay, Assyrian tablets recording the story of creation and the flood, books of Nebuchadnezzar and the stone monument of Shalmaneser II., with the pictured effigies of the captive Israelites bringing him tribute. Wealth expended in creating and endowing such an institution is a princely offering to sound learning, and directly promotive of the highest culture of a Christian community. Professor Bawlinson has noted the health- ful reaction in sentiment since 1863, when one of the oldest English reviews expressed a scornful indiffer- ence to Oriental studies, and attempted to belittle the work of Champollion and Sir Henry Rawlinson. He would have these studies a part of the university course, and especially urges the English-speaking peo- ple, who pride themselves upon an open bible, to be- come more thoroughly acquainted with the Land that gave us the Book. CHAPTER VII. LANGUAGE, LITERATURE AND ART. It was at MACAO, .tliat picturesque city by the sea— the Gem of the Orient, as this delightful sanitarium is called by Sir John Bowriiig — that some of the choicest works of modern sinalogues first came in my way. For half a century this quaint, drowsy old Portuguese town has been the retreat of scholars and missionary workers from time to time, driven by summer heat or political disturbances in Canton and elsewhere to seek a refuge in its quiet and salubrious quarters. I well remember with what pleasure I found in one of the rooms of the large, lordly house which was my abode — built and once occupied by a foreign nobleman — a library of volumes illustrative of Chinese life and liter- ature. This was an attraction that rivalled the gar- dens of Camoens. The brilliant Praya and the pano- rama from the lofty fort and lighthouse were not so enticing as these well-worn books whose contents cov- ered centuries of Oriental life. The language and literature of China have been so fully treated by those early pioneers, Gutzlaff, Morri- son, Marshman, Medhurst, Milne, Bridgeman and Williams, not to speak of Edkins, Faber and others still living, and other Oriental scholars here and in Eu- rope, that the student of Eastern life will not lack for materials. Only a few suggestions will be offered. The antiquity, the fecundity and the unique features of 58 LANGUAGE, LITERATURE AND ART. Chinese thought and expression arrest attention. Here is the most archaic form of language ; first hiero- glyphic, but now ideophonetic, every word a root and each root a word. It is monosyllabic, without an alphabet, devoid of inflexion or even agglutination, having nouns without gender or declension, and verbs without conjugation. The thirty or forty thousand characters are represented to the ear by about five hundred syllabic sounds. To meet this exigency, six, eight or ten tones are used. Thus confusion grows confounded. The bewildered student is ready to adopt the belief of some that this language is the work of the devil. It certainly is not wanting in diabolical feat- ures. Some saintliness of temper is needed for its study and a great deal of heroism for its mastery. THE GREAT CHINESE WALL. This perplexing tongue is the real barrier which encircles the whole empire, in comparison with which the massive masonry built B. C. 204, by the Napoleon of China, for fifteen hundred miles along its northern boundary, is but a trivial affair. " Its history has al- ways been so completely isolated from the rest of the world it did not enter into the study of those civiliza- tions which have entered into our own." So wrote LeNormant to justify his omission of China in his Historic Ancienne de V Orient. The vertical position of the characters is one sign of the great antiquity of the tongiie. Like the Chaldean, the Chinese used some long leaf, like the papyrus, or stalks, for writing purposes. This was befors clay tab- lets came into use, and more enduring materials for cuneiform inscriptions. A knowledge of the antique style of writing is needed to understand ancient clas- BURNING OF BOOKS. 59 sics. Between that and the colloquial is the academic, which is less concise than the former and less diffuse than the latter. The training of youth in the study of arbitrary characters and memorizing unmeaning sounds has a dwarfing and sterilizing influence, fitly compared to the trees wrhich are stunted and put into jars. Their deformity of appearance is in keeping with the insipidity of their fruit. Still, we must ad- mire the patient industry that produced a mass of literature amazing in extent. Think, for example, of a single treatise on therapeutics in forty volumes, with references to over seven hundred other medical works ! In the Imperial palace there is a manuscript encyclo- pedia in 22,937 volumes, the result of eight thousand years' toil. Two thousand men wTote on it for four years. Three centuries later, in 1726, The Cream of Chinese Literature, so called, was published in five thousand volumes. It can be seen in the British Mu- seum. BURNING OF BOOKS. But for the memorizing power of native scholars much of China's literature would not now be in ex- istence, for the same emperor who made himself fam- ous by building the Great Wall made himself infamous by a wholesale burning of books throughout the em- pire. Science, art, history and records of early ages were destroyed. Four hundred and sixty scholars were detected in trying to secrete and save their liter- ary treasures. They were put to death by burial alive. Yet there were others who knew the Confucian classics so thoroughly that " the whole were soon faultlessly reproduced." The successor of this vandal was a friend of learning, and did much to repair the 60 LANGUAGE, LITERATURE AND ART. mischief of the Son of H — (not Heaven) who caUed himself the first emperor of united China. A revival of letters foUowed. From hollow trees, caverns of the earth and beds of rivers, even, and from the lips of aged men and women came contributions, verbal, in- scribed and printed. One blind man knew by heart a good portion of the Book of History. Tablets of wood, engraved bamboo sticks and priceless books, concealed at risk of life, were brought forth. After two centuries, eleven thousand volumes were repro- duced. " All China is an immense library," said the great traveler, Hue. Maxims and sentences are inscribed on shops, houses, pagodas, tribunals and monuments. Not only in the homes of the rich, in corridor and apartment, on teacup, plate, vase and fan do you see quotations from various classics, but in the hovels of the poor you find the cheap scroll of red paper on the wall, with large characters to catch the eye and im- press the mind. There is a great bronze bell at Pe- king, forty -five feet in circumference, cast five hundred years ago. There is inscribed on the surface, inside and out, an entire classic, containing eighty-four thou- sand characters. The eye is everywhere appealed to. He who runs may read. The directions given to the Jews seem to have been, in substance, given to the Chinese by their early sages, to teach their precepts sitting in the house, walking by the way, lying down, rising up ; by inscribing them on their door-posts and gates, and binding as a sign upon the hand and front- lets between the eyes. Any analysis of the Nine Classics or of poetic and dramatic literature in China is not expected in this brief manual, the simple aim of which is to point out CHINESE ARCHITECTURE. 61 lines of study. But it may be said, in passing, that the seed thoughts of all that is revered by Chinese in their religion, history and government will be found in the Shoo king or Book of History. It is also the foundation of their tactics, music and astronomy. It covers a period from about 2350 B. C. to 721 B. C. In its restoration after the Burning of the Books, twenty-eight of the one hundred sections were taken from the lips of a blind man. Fortunately a complete copy was found secreted in the wall of Confucius' house when it was demolished, 140 B. C.* It was during the revival of learning, 200 B. C. to 200 A. D. that changes in writing were introduced. Silk was used for valuable records, and paper, made from bark and hemp, also manufactured. Ink was in- vented to take the place of brick dust and water. The bamboo tablet and stylus gave place to the hair pencil and paper page. In 593 A. D. Wanti decreed the en- graving on wood and printing of certain documents. Moveable types were made by Pe Ching about five hundred years later. He engraved each character in fine clay, made in plates, the thickness of money. These were hardened by fire and cemented to an iron frame when used for printing. CHINESE AKCHITECTURE. There is little to be said on this point. China, Fer- gusson suggests, has no hereditary nobility and no dominant priesthood, such as in Italy and elsewhere Death is threatened any family who takes the patronymic? "Koong." (Koong Futze, master Koong). So the name Confucius is sacred in its isolation, not noininis umlira, during twenty-two centuries. It is the oldest family on the globe. Some of the sixty-third generation were recently baptized by Presbyterian missionaries. 62 LANGUAGE, LITERATURE AND ART. have given inspiration to artistic creations. Power she has, ability as well. Massive walls, bridges and engineering works are seen everywhere. With her re- dundant population China might have reared many monumental works like those of Egypt, which she so much resembles in age, in history, customs and re- ligious ideas, such as reverence for the dead. Senti- ment and imagination are wanting, however, which lie at the source of this art. The materials of the Great Wall would build a wall twice round the globe, six feet high and two feet thick. Williams says that this mon- ument of human toil and unproductiveness, with its cloud-capped towers standing in solemn stillness where they were stationed two thousand years ago, as if or- dered to await the return of their builders, and its dike below, leaping gorges and scaling cliffs in exuberance of power till it vanishes at the horizon, cannot but in- spire respect for a people who could build it. Gwilt thinks that the tent gave them, as all Tartar tribes, the original idea of their pyramidal roof, which is high-pitched, timber-framed, with concave slopes and projecting eaves. But it is objected that the Chinese are the furthest removed from nomadic, tent life than any race on the earth. The great rain fall at times, and the glare of the sun at other times, will ex- plain the features of the roof without the above hy- pothesis. The arch was known and used in bridges, it is believed, even- before Pelasgian builders made their rude attempts in the same direction. The pagoda is sometimes a family memorial, and sometimes a pillar of victory, commemorating a his- toric event. It may be reared for the use of the geo- mancer. I spent some months not far from one which was built by Moslems. It is about as high as Bunker COBEA AND JAPAN. 63 Hill Monument. Twice a year worship at dawn was had with loud invocations. There are about two thousand pagodas in the Empire, from five to thirteen stories in height. The oldest was put up seventeen centuries ago. Most of them are in a ruined condition. The promises of the diviner that these towers draw luck do not draw funds for their repair. The pavilion, with its pillared veranda, and the gateway are suggestive of Chinese thought. Form, color and ornamentation show rude tastes. Some de- tails are meritorious, but as works of art, these, as well as domestic and temple decorations, are inferior in style. Proportion, perspective, naturalness and Ele- gance are disregarded. The natives themselves admit a decline in painting and sculpture the last fifteen cen- turies. Their devotion to material concerns has made them increasingly indifferent to higher interests. In this connection it is worthy of note to compare the opposite influence of Confucianism and Buddhism on industrial life in the East. The former has fos- tered feudalism, caste and ancestor worship ; the latter has moulded the working classes, softening their man- ners, as Rein suggests, training up quiet, patient toil- ers in field and workshop. Both now feel the new breath of a Christian civilization, which fact recalls the lines of Schiller : " Das Alte stiirzt es andert sich die Zeit, Und neues Leben bluht aus den ruinen." COREA AND JAPAN. Twenty years ago the Hermit Nation warned out of her waters the American admiral with these words : " Corea boasts four thousand years of history and is satisfied with it, wishing no other." To-day an Ameri- 64 LANGUAGE, LITEHATU11E AND ART. can, Colonel Greathouse, is summoned to her court as an adviser of government. On her soil may be settled the problem of supremacy between the triple powers of Japan, China and Kussia. The Dragon and the Bear especially have their eye on Corea. It is a pleasant land, the Italy of the Far East, the north- eastern monsoon region and the kingdom of the mag- nolia and camellia. The straits are but fourteen fath- oms deep which separate it from the Sunrise Laud, and Japan looks upon the twelve or fifteen millions of Corea as naturally related to her own forty millions. The glimpse I had of these shores, and some facts of her liistory are referred to elsewhere.* The Land of the Morning Calm has already begun to feel the throb of the outer world. Philologists assumeVi kinship between the Japanese language and the Ural-Altaic tongues. They have not proved their postulate. The agglutinative structure of the Japanese links it with the Corean, but it has no clear relationship with any Asiatic tongue. As English embodies a vast number of Greek and Latin words, so the Japanese has adopted uncounted Chinese words. Chinese classics have been studied there for seven- teen centuries, so historians of Jap.an affirm, and they still have a prominence in academic studies. There is no such marked difference in provincial dialects as in China. One with the Tokyo tongue will have little difficulty anywhere. The gutteral patois of the Aino tribes is, however, intelligible to themselves alone. The story of these fifteen thousand hairy aborigines is well told by Miss Bird in her Unbeaten Tracks in Japan. Japanese honorifics are of prime importance Out-door Life in the Orient. Dr, E. P. Thwing. Hurst & Co. LITERATURE IN JAPAN. 65 if one would stand well in the people's esteem. Your verbal and grammatical attitude is a matter of equal concern with your bodily bearing, voico and gesture. Your style of speech is three-fold, suited to your su- periors, inferiors and equals. The use of the personal pronoun and the .verb varies according to the rank of the person addressed. The honorific San is used even by children at play. The military, as well as the liter- ary class, employ not a few verbal embellishments. Eecent acquaintance with Western languages has had, of course, its influence on Japanese. Many new words are coined. LITERATURE IX JAPAN. Heathen legends and cosmogonies make up the earliest works extant. The date of the oldest history is 711 A. D. The Lord of Mito (1622-1700) was a patron of learning, and directed the preparation of the History of Japan, a work published in two and forty Volumes. The place of women in the literature of this land is a significant fact. " A very large proportion of the best writings of the best age of Japanese literature was the work of women ; and the names of numerous female poets and authors are quoted with admiration even at the present time," says M'Clatchie. 13 ut under the new regime the higher Western education docs not fit a young woman for her position as wife and mother in a Japanese home. It only makes her r< stless and unhappy. Legislation as to marring;' and divorce needs revision. Methods of self-support are to be found. Christianity must reconstruct the home. The number of female teachers who pr< fer a'i ind •}> ••ndent Single life to the servitude of m.»r iii'.-ivasing. There were, two years ago, in Hi > eleme1 t.-i y s 66 LANGUAGE, LITERATURE AND ART. alone, eight hundred and fifty lady teachers. Miss Bacon has found among this class some of the most respected of Japanese women. In the growth of this body of teachers she sees the surest sign that the law will eventually emancipate woman from her present fetters, and make marriage a less repugnant restraint to those whose sense of self-respect has been quick- ened by Christian culture. Educational statistics and incidents of student life as seen in different parts of the empire are given in detail in my Out-door Life in the Orient. Japanese verse is freer from Chinese flavor than prose, and is more attractive, For centuries it was the custom of Japanese gentlemen to write poetry, generally lyric, and sometimes humorous. Suicides were often preceded by an afflatus in this line. Inten- tion and motive were stated. Paragrams and other pleasant forms of ainbiloquy, acrostics and palin- dromes were popular. Poetic contests were in vogue a thousand years ago. The odes were brief, and con- sisted of alternate lines of five and seven syllables. The love of nature led the poet to choose his theme from the natural world about him. Japan still has also her fairy tales, borrowed from India and China, illustrated with odd designs in wood engravings. His- torical plays are common, for the people are fond of theatrical amusements, although players were ostra- cised until 1868. The Kabuki actors were despised ; indeed, the very theatres in which they appeared, says Professor Chamberlain, were looked down on as places too vile for any gentleman to enter. Such outcasts were actors at the time, that, when a census was taken, they wciv sjioken of with the numerals used in count- ing animals. Those to whom Japanese is familiar will LITEIiATURE IN JAPAN. 67 appreciate the sting of the insult." The attempt to reform the theatre is not a success, though in some centers certain nameless appendages may have been suppressed.* Journalistic literature, scientific and linguistic learn- ing are of modern growth, and will be referred to later on when we look at the rejuvenescence of the East. INDUSTRIAL ARTS. Industrial arts, coarse and fine, architecture and kin- dred themes are treated fully by Professor Rein of the University of Bonn, by Mr. Swatow and other con- tributors to the Asiatic Society. The latter tells us that the primeval palace was a wooden hut. The frame was tied together with fibrous tendrils of, climb- ing vines. Mats were laid on the mud floor, where venomous snakes were not strangers to prince or ple- beian. The Shinto temple took its stylo from the same original. The roof, first thatched, then shingled, was afterward covered with tile or copper. The pro- jecting rafters were lengthened and elaborately carved. The inner shrine was raised from the floor, and a bal- cony and steps added. So domestic architecture grew from the simple shelter of trees, whose branches were bent and bound with rush, then covered with grass. Such extemporaneous abodes needed no tools in their construction. The people early got used to the drafts of air which to Europeans, domiciled in a native house, are so uncomfortable. As a foreign diplomat, " When you can make an oak out of a mushroom, then, and not till then, you may hope to make a living tree out of that poisonous toad- stool, the theatre. Even among heathen nations it was considered a disgrace to be connected with one. Down through all the thousands of years which it has lived since then, it has come with perpetual dis- honor on its head." — HENRY WARD BEECHEH. 68 LANGUAGE, LITERATI' UK AND ART. between his sneezes, used to say, " Les Japonais («forent les courants (Pair ! " His greatest fear, evi- dently, was the atmosphere ! The Kunst Leben or art life of Japan has so large a literature, we need not dwell on it longer than to note a few general facts. Indian taste is declining, we are told, on account of the importation of coarse, cheap, foreign wares.* "Wood carving, the preparation of textile fabrics, fine pith work and damascening with gold have all suffered. The introduction of piece goods free of duty has driven the weavers into other em- ployments. Copper and brass vessels supplant the pottery which was the product of Saracenic taste, and the finest in the world. A tinsel style of jewelry, foreign designs in carpets, with poor colors in place of the vivid blue and red of Persia, and other substitu- tions show the detrusion of artistic taste through the mercantile and mercenary spirit of the age. Japan and other parts of the East feel the same de- pressing influences. The inspiration of the old regime is gone forever in the Sunrise Land. " Nothing is left but the scenery," says one of her sons, now in Ameri- ca. The conditions no longer exist under which were developed and perfected those ideals that once made decorative art what it was. Towards mere handicraft the Japanese have little leaning. They despise trade \\\\(\ barter. Excepting, perhaps, the vocation of ar- morer, they look down on manual labor. Business contracts clash with their inherited ideas. They are unpractical, and have less ten.-ieity of purpose than \ve. They have more ability than stability. Toil is not regarded the end of life. As was said by Mr. * Nineteenth Century, February, 1891. INDUSTRIAL AETS. (39 Dening, addressing the Asiatic Society at Tokyo, No- vember 12, 1890 : " The lack of interest in industry, agriculture and commerce, so apparent among Japan- ese young men, is the outcome of the training which they have received. The books held in high esteem «/ treat of subjects far removed from the every-day life of men of business. The life of bread-earning seems to be a gloomy existence. Occidentals, in their opin- ion, are nothing the better for their big machines and appliances ; on the contrary, they render themselves, by perpetual toil and worry, unfit to enjoy the pleas- ures which nature places within their reach." An educated native, speaking before the same learned body, affirmed that it would take generations to eradi- cate from Japanese thought the evil effects of that grinding despotism which in earlier days repressed individuality and independence. Everything of origi- nal thought was suppressed by the Shoguns as sedi- tious. The lack of enterprise shown by the farmer and mechanic, the fatalistic manner in which they cling to their environment, as though it were unalter- able, are fruits of feudalism. These are also shown in the thoughts of the learned classes. " Learning is no more than a pastime, with the majority. It is pursued with no practical end in view. It is valued more as a polite accomplishment than as an organ of enlightening and ameliorating the condition of suffering humanity." Tims briefly, but broadly, have we reviewed some features of Oriental thought and life in the past, with the conditions out of which they grew. Naturally wo now turn to examine the present, and to forecast the future. CHAPTER VIII. THE REJUVENESCENCE OF THE EAST. " There sits drear Egypt, mid beleaguering sands, . . . The burnt-out torch within her mouldering hands That once lit all the East." PKOEESSOK J. R. LOWELL. Percival Lowell says that race-life in Japan is com- pleted, and the vital force of Corea and China was spent a thousand years ago. The Jordan that was fed from far-off mountains has reached its Dead Sea. The Nirvana is now being realized in the Far East. It is already wrapped in its winding sheet and destined to disappear before the advancing nations of the West. The apparent life is but superficial — that of sprouts on a stunted tree. Civilization has been a mechanical compound without affinity of elements and without the coherence that comes from thorough fusion. VARIOUS OUTLOOKS. It is amusing to note the positiveness of some views formed after brief acquaintance and narrow generali- zations. One recently deceased author, Gifibrd Pal- grave, fixed eight weeks as the proper period to qual- ify an intelligent visitor to write about Japan. A shorter time he fancied would produce superficial ideas, while a longer stay would bring about a wroug mental focus. He governed himself accordingly. Henry Finck spent eight weeks in the Iberian peninsular, and presents in his new volume, Spain and Morocco, DECREPITUDE DENIED. 71 charming samples of local color, for the transfer of which he claims, perhaps justly, that he is " better qualified after a visit of two months, than after a sojourn of two years ; for what is most novel, charac- teristic and romantic in a foreign country strikes us most vividly at the beginning. It gradually loses its fascination as daily repetition makes it seem normal." Something more, however, is needed than residence in a country. Something more, even, than acute pow- ers of observation. Max Muller writes understand- ingly about India without having seen its shores. To be a wise traveler one must have been a wide reader. A year abroad is but a brief period to gain just meas- urements of life and thought, unless one has a well- stored niind to begin with. Then, with philosophical instincts to guide research, a short sojourn serves to fertilize the studies of previous years, to illuminate early impressions, anil to correct false ones. Much which is latent comes to view, and a wonderful stimu- lus to fresh investigation is received. Is the rejuvenation of the East possible ? Is it need- ed ? If so, on what, conditions, and by whom, will the resuscitation be accomplished ? It is a profound problem. The writor feels like addressing the reader in the words of the governor of Formosa, not long ago addressed to the "Emperor — a Chinese meiosis, thor- oughly Oriental — " On my narrow views and meager opinions, I beg your sacred glance ! " DECREPITUDE DENIED. The English rac'j is apt to look on Asian life as doomed. Western life alone has promise of eternal youth. Manifest 'iestiny has given us the earth and the fullness the^xofr Fourth of July orators put the 72 THE KK.TrYKNKsn.NCE OF THE EAST. poles as the proper limits of American power north- ward and southward, and the day of judgment the oiilj limit westward ! The same imperious spirit of pro- prietorship led Beaconsfield uniformly to speak of England as essentially an Asiatic power. The assump- tion is that Eastern life, as a whole, is senile, if not moribund ; that its physical forces are degenerating, and its mental activity feeble. AVhat are the facts ? Since beginning this chapter, a letter from my friend Dr. Ashmore of Swatow informs me of the amazing vitality of the oldest -race now Living on the earth. He says : " We dwell on the growth of our own popu- lation at home, but China is advancing nearly three times as fast — forty millions in ten years ! Enough to start and stock a new nation." This, it must be re- membered, is not by immigration, as here, but by natural increase. Japan, too, has steadily increased to upwards of forty millions. Indeed, the vernacular press has been discussing the inadequate food supply for the rapid growth of population. Malthusian ap- prehensions trouble them, and various plans are sug- gested.* In five years fourteen thousand thrifty Japanese in Hawaii sent home two million dollars. This is but one hint of the expanding material pros- perity of that part of the East. The fifteen millions increase in India since its last census is another proof that Oriental races are not dying out. They seem to be, some of them, at least, " as full-blooded, as virile in their physical make, and as likely to endure for thirty generations as they did a thousand years ago. They seem to be waiting in grand reserve as the beds of anthracite have waited with latent fires for future * Japan Mail, August 9th and 30th, 1890. DECREPITUDE DENIED. 73 use. That ancient development of man which began on the plains of Shinar, bids fair to live by the side of its Occidental rival, even if it does not outlive this by reason of its calmer flow of life. If it does thus live, all analogy would lead us to believe that there is some- thing in it which deserves to live, which Providence has a use for in the future, something or other, which, under divine regeneration, will be a cause of growth, if inf usiul into the life-blood of the Western races. The circle of Occidental development may be en- larged by it. The channel in -which our civilization is moving may be widened and deepened." * Are there signs of mental decrepitude ? Certainly not in Japan, China and India, which represent half the human race. I found a vigorous intellectual fer- ment iii all these empires. Decomposition and re- composition are going on. The thousands of new books by Indian scholars issued yearly, and the pub- lished proceedings of the National Congress — two portly folios sent to me by the presidents of the Bom- bay and Allahabad bodies — are significant signs of a fruitful and aggressive mental activity. So, also, are their schools and universities. The great arsenals of China, like Foochow and Kiangnan, with their schools for interpreters, translating departments, libraries and printing establishments, are unique and commanding witnesses to a nascent intellectual life, which must bring about great changes in the ruling classes of the Empire. In eight years 83,454 scientific volumes were translated from the English and other foreign tongues, and sold to eager and appreciative readers. The first four volumes were on geometry, algebra, military Men and Books (Prtfessor Phelps), p. '2'M. 74 THT REJUVENESCENCE OF THE EAST. engineering and differential calculus. Books on the physical sciences, law, medicine, philosophy and re- ligion have followed. Some have been adopted as text-books of mission schools and in the Peking Uni- versity. Professor Fryer and his staff have overcome the difficulty of nomenclature and other obstacles which confront pioneers of modern sciences. The Emperor can, indeed, decide the exact manner in which characters shall be written. He has forbidden certain forms, but he cannot check the growth of ideas, or of the expression of those ideas in the ver- nacular. The venerable Oriental scholar, Dr. Edkins of Shan- gai, says that the temper of the literati is not as in- tolerant as formerly, and so the acceptance of the gospel by 'the younger generation is not as hopeless as it once was. China may become like Japan in this respect. He quotes one scholar who urges govern- ment to use foreign methods in cultivating laud, and boldly proclaims the folly of Feng-Slmi, the wind and water delusion. " No one engaged in public affairs should give it any attention. It is dreamy talk with- out a basis." Another high Confucian scholar, land- holder and owner of European machinery asked Dr. Edkins if Christian converts could be secured on his estates as settlers. He would gladly put in their hands modern appliances, and would aid in erecting a Chris- tian chapel for their use. From time to time the liter- ati have borrowed from the West. The Manchu alpha- bet is the result of Christian missions in Central Asia in the middle ages. Fung Yee, late Secretary of the Legation at London, recently replied to the remark that the news were too good to be true that China was now really in favor of the immediate construction of DECREPITUDE DENIED. 75 railways, by saying that government has been ready, ever since treaty ports were opened, to adopt all for- eign ideas " that were unmistakably calculated to en- rich and strengthen her." China has adapted her policy to the exigencies of the time and circumstances of the people. There had been no real retrogression. The ill-advised and abortive Woosung railway was no Exception. Sir Frederic Brace's remark to Charles Sumner may be repeated here, in support of the fact that there is no mental decrepitude to be found in the statesmanship of the Far East. He said to Sumner that the officials he had met were " unequalled for character and abili- ty." Being pressed, he repeated the remark, and said that he would not except even Palmerston in making his comparison. These astute diplomats of the Flow- ery Kingdom very soon take the measure of their Western peers, and also know how to handle their in- feriors. A recent author, speaking of the disgraceful and cruel treatment of Chinese by America, warns us that these statesmen have quietly made note of it and patiently bide their time. " Their memories are long. Some day they wiU collect their bill, and it will be made up with compound interest." * What has been said of the mental awakening in India and China can be said witli special emphasis of Japan. Nothing, perhaps, in history equals it. To-day Japan is spending proportiouably more for schools than the United States. Its ratio of attendance is larger than here. Does this look as if the Land of the Morning were " wrapped in its winding sheet," destined to disappear in its own Nirvana V Not much. A. A. Hayes in Atlantic Monthly. M.iv, is:*7. 76 THE HE.TUYEXESCTATE OF THE EAST. Mr. Lowell " reads his own ideas into facts and draws out undreamed inferences," remarks a keen Japanese critic, wlio advises liim to drop liis evolutionary the- ories and make " a more impartial and thorough ex- amination of Oriental life." * No, Nippon is not " a clock run down." This state- ment of Mr. Lowell is as far from the truth as his other, that Christianity is a failure in the Orient. The wish is sometimes father to the thought. One proof of national life is the patriotism of the people. The Yamato DamashU — the Spirit of Unconquerable Japan — is vigorous still. Nations that show this tem- per are not lapsing into senility. Personal and family pride in Japan are inseparable from a chivalric love of countiy. It has always been the chief object of edu- cation, observes Nakashima, to intensify and develop this sense of honor. All actions are tested by it. A MOKAL REJUVENATION. Circumstances threw me into somewhat intimate re- lations for several days during the summer of 1890, with a gentleman now in the House of Peers. An in- tense patriotism seemed to be the guiding impulse of his life. He appreciated what he had seen in America and Europe, and earnestly desired, he told me, to have all the best elements of Western thought incor- porated into the nascent civilization of his native land. He would not admit a physical or mental decay in the Far -East ; but he did see the need of a moral reju- venation. Though not a convert to Christianity, he declared himself favorably inclined to it from what he had read and heard, also from his relations to a Chris- * Rikizo Nakashinin, New Englander, February, 1889. A M01IAL REJUVENATION. 77 tian teacher in his University course. This is a typical case. Intelligent men in the East feel that moral ele- ments are indispensible to lift the Oriental mind to its truest altitude. The recent deliverance of the Mikado declares this, in substance, in reference to education. It follows a similar utterance of the Yice- roj of India. The material forces of commerce, sci- ence, arts and philosophy cannot generate the new life needed, valuable though they are. Professor Phelps says it is useless to " look for a rejuvenes- cence of Asia in coming ages from any internal forces now acting there, independently of the Scrip- tures. The East is the land of pyramids and sphinxes. Whatever that immense territory has to contribute to the civilization of the future must come from the ger- mination of biblical thought. It must be the working of biblical inspiration in the spiritual renewal of Ori- ental character, which nothing but the religion of the Scriptures can produce. Why should it be deemed visionary to look for this as one of the results of the infusion of European mind now going on in Western and Central Asia ? Already the germs of Christian universities and libraries exist there, which may one day allure literary travel from the West, as those of England and Germany do to-day. Inspired prophecy aside, it is no more visionary to predict the recreation of the Oriental mind in forms of new literature su- perior to any the world has yet known, through the plastic influences of the Scriptures, than it was to ;m- anticipate the birth of the three great literatures of Europe, as the fruit of the modern revival of the liter- tures of Greece and Home. The minds of nations move in just such immense waves of revolution. Rea- 78 THE IlEJUVENESCENCE OF THE EAST. soiling a posteriori they are only the natural effect of ;i great force generating great forces. The Asiatic races, indeed, have a fairer intellectual prospect than Europe had at. the time of the revival of letters, for they are to receive their higher education in Christian instead of Pagan forms. Conceive what difference would have been created in the destinies of Europe, what centuries of conflict with barbarism would, to human view, have been saved, if the Greek and Roman literatures could have come into the possession of the modern European mind, .freighted with Christian, instead of Pagan thought, and if, thus Christianized, they could have been wrought into European culture ! " "::~ Thii acute thinker saw a providence in the fact that the divine Word was forever stereotyped in an Ori- ental mould, as if the Oriental type of the race was yet to be not only a power in the world's history, but the vital bond between its future and its past. Napoleon called Europe provincial and contracted. The East was the only fit theater for great exploits, where are great races and ancient seats of empire. " There may be more of truth in this than he meant to utter. The grandest intellectual and moral conquests of the world may yet follow the track of Alexander." This rapid review of the need and possibility of a moral resuscitation of the East has brought us to the consideration of matters of practical concern to those who desire, in one way or another, to aid in so great and grand a work. By what methods may the vivify- ing influence of Protestant Christianity be brought to bear upon Asiatic thought? How may we best im- prove this pivotal period and hasten the occupancy of the Oriental world for Christ ? * Men and Books, p. 234. CHAPTER IX. SUPERNATURAL FACTORS. " All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth ; THEKEFORE go ye and teach all nations." — JESUS. Will tlie moon of Mahomet wane, and the cry of the muezzin be heard no more ? Will Brahminic wisdom and Confucian scholarship ever be humbled before the Crucified, and the wealth of the Orient be laid at His feet ? A wild dream indeed it is to those who ignore the supernatural in human affairs ; but to those who see God's hand in history it is a sober verity. Christ has a kingdom. The uttermost parts of the earth are His possession. " This gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world, for a witness unto all nations, and then shall the end coine." Matt, xxiv : 14. Because God our Saviour has all power, because there is "given Him dominion and glory, and a kingdom, that all people, nations and languages should serve Him," we go forth with His truth, which is the power of God and therefore omnipotent. The success of missions during the past" century can only be interpreted by conceding this superhuman ele- ment. Their final triumph can be hoped for on no other ground. Material factors are not forgotten. War has played its part, commerce, politics, science, human skill and learning ; these all are allies in pre- paring the way of the Lord, but with nothing more, we should be impotent to contend with the great historic forces of heathenism. 80 SUI'KKXATUKAL FACTORS. Sydney Smith and other English reviewers eighty odd years ago ignored the supernatural factors of the missionary work, and therefore sneered at it. Carey and his associates were called " didactic artisans, whose proper talk is of bullocks and not the gospel ; delirious mechanics ; the lowest of the people ; detach- ments of lunatics." The profound ignorance of these clerical railers was shown by their estimate of the hea- then to whom the missionaries went. They extolled the pagan at the expense of the Christian, saying, " We believe a Hindu is more mild and sober than most Europeans, and as honest and chaste." There are scholarly men to-day who show as little knowledge of the field and the work. IGNOKANT CEITICS. A public man in England, an Oxford graduate and doctor of laws, was conversing with a lady. She ex- cused herself, saying that she had an engagement at the Zenana mission. He innocently replied that he had heard of that place, Zenana, but where in the world it was located he did not know ! In Ferguson's History of Ceylon, reference is made to a member of the Brit- ish Parliament who protested against stationing troops in " this deadly climate of West Africa," Ceylon, evi- dently, being in his thought a shortened form of Sierra Leone. An English sportsman, W. S. Percival, admits that there have been a few great missionaries, but he jeers at the bulk of them as " poor enthusiasts . . . with the average education of the class to which they be- long." He is particularly bitter against unmarried ladies, and says, " Respectable Chinese do not admit missionary visitors ; what can they think of these girl THREE AGENCIES. 81 wanderers ? " The author of A Girdle Round the Earth adds falsehood to scorn, saying, " Missionaries in China live in luxury. No foreign class do so little work. There are more pagans born here every minute than are converted in a century." Thus are the Mas- ter's words fulfilled. He was called Beelzebub by those whose lives were reproved by His presence. " Because ye are not of the world, therefore the world hateth you." Sir Richard Temple indignantly met similar calumnies aimed at the self-denying and hard worked missionaries among the Hindus, by saying, " I assure you, as a man who has himself actually gov- erned one hundred and five millions of these natives of India, that nothing can be a greater caricature and travesty." Those who look upon missions as a human enter- prise, and ignore the supernatural factors concerned in it, apply simply mercantile and mercenary tests. Men and methods, aims and results, are viewed from a low and narrow outlook. The means employed are likely to be of a secular and worldly character. The temper in which they would carry on the work is also worldly, and they demand immediate and palpable results. We cannot wonder so much at the shallow criticisms which , are passed upon it when the supernatural element that inspires and directs it is lost sight of. Those who come to the missionary field must expect to encounter them continually. THREE AGENCIES. First and foremost is the piocl, . • ., , • .? i .s the power of the gospel has I) m demonstrated!!! the triumphs it has won among A\ esteni nations, the past nineteen cen- 82 SUPERNATURAL FACTO I ;s. turies, wo are sure that it has an equally glorious mis- sion to accomplish for the Orient. Said Jonathan Ed- wards : " America has received- the true religion of the old continent. The church of ancient times has been there, and Christ is from thence. But that there may be an equality — and inasmuch as that continent has crucified Christ — they shall not have the honor of com- municating religion in its most glorious state to us, but we, to them." He believed that the heathen needed the gospel, and that they needed it this side of the grave. This Pauline idea was not then regarded " an exploded theory," nor was Christianity to him a spent force. Yet he died, in 1758, before the first modern missionary society was formed. William Carey at Ket- tering, in 1795, organized this pioneer of the two hun- dred and fifty formed since. It is estimated that these Boards have sent twenty-five thousand laborers into the foreign field. If President Edwards has in heaven, seen the " Miracles of Missions " on earth of the past half century — and why should we doubt the fact of his knowledge and continued sympathy ? — his reminis- cences must be full of joy. Because it was God's planting, the fir-tree has displaced the thorn, and the myrtle, the brier. Because God gave the increase, the earth has brought forth in a day, and a nation has been born at once. Because the Lord gave the word, great was the company of men and women that wil- lingly proclaimed it. "Nations have been transformed, Christianity has become the law of the land, and idols, once in every house, have not been found, even as curios and relics ! The adamantine wall of caste, the iron wheel of transmigration, the brazen fetters of Moslem bigotry, the hopeless thraldom of • fetichism have alike proved powerless to oppose the simple gos- EDUCATIONAL METHODS. 83 pel of Christ." * Methods of evangelistic labor vary with country and clime, but they all involve the train- ing up of a native force of preachers and teachers, hence a second agency, the Educational. EDUCATIONAL METHODS. The discipling of all nations is done by the school as truly as by the sermon, by the printed page as well as by the living voice. There should be no friction. Yet in some fields, a disproportionate attention has been given to teaching and to branches of purely secu- lar learning. It is easy to yield to the eager demand in Eastern communities for instruction in secular sci- ence, made by those who are moved by mercenary motives alone, and who care nothing for Christianity. Again, when governmental patronage and aid are promised to schools whose pupils reach a certain per- centage in studies required by government, a strong pressure is brought to bear on the missionary. A laudable desire to conciliate local prejudices also tempts him to keep the distinctive religious character of education out of sight, when surrounded by un- friendly influences. A desire to stand well before those at home, who watch with admiring interest the numerical growth of school as well as church, and a desire to compare favorably with competing societies in the field, also affect educational methods. Rev. Charles R. Hager, in a recent article on Suc- cess in Missionary Life, gives a timely caution on this point, drawn from his experience in China. " Seem- ing success is based chiefly on outward appearance. One exhibits quantity, the other quality, irrespective * Missionary Keview of the World, vol. iii., p. 660. 84 SUPERNATURAL FACTORS. of numbers. Missions are ill the same danger as home churches of becoming outwardly prosperous, while the real spiritual life remains dormant." He shows, more- over, that districts differ in fruitfulness to as marked a degree as the soil of farms ; that local characteristics, political history and social conditions combine to make the people of one district responsive to preacher and teacher, while with people under opposite conditions, effort seems utterly hopeless; and, finally, that the supernatural element must be a constant factor, pre- paring alike the one to teach and the other to learn. The Word of God as a divine instrument must be made central in education, and never made to take a subordinate place. This gives dignity and power to all the instruction. " Without it the school is useless ; therefore no pains should be spared to secure this pre- dominant religioiis influence, and no conditions should be imposed or allowed, which will interfere with it." So said one at the Shanghai Conference, speaking from twenty -five years experience in the school at Tungchow, Rev. C. AV. Mateer, D.D., LL.D., a man second to none in ability in that large and memorable assembly. Heathen classics are studied in mission schools, for they represent more to native students than Greek or Latin to ours. Pupils would be illiterate who knew not the books of their sages. These in China are not antagonistic to Christianity, and are as clean as those we teach in our colleges. A wise, adroit teacher need not be embarrassed. The regnant power of the AVord of God will be felt as a constant corrective. This matter will be referred to again in connection with certain practical problems related to the work of the preacher, teacher and physician. MEDICAL MISSIONS. 85 In no branch of the work has God's blessing been more conspicuously shown than in this. No method of labor brings us into closer contact with Eastern life. No service so sharply contrasts Western science and Oriental superstition, the unselfishness of Christianity with the cruelty and ignorance of heathenism. Nothing is so directly antidotal to the dislike of foreigners which has been often awakened by unscrupulous deal- ings with the people of the East. In no part of the work has the romance of modern missions been more graphically exhibited. Again and again surgical skill has succeeded in removing obstacles where diplomacy and military force have failed. Dr. Parker is said to have opened China with a lancet. So Dr. Allen opened Corea with his forceps. A nephew of the king was among the wounded, at the time of a civil outbreak. Native physicians were about to pour melted wax on severed arteries. Dr. Allen took charge of the royal patient, picked up the bleeding vessels with his for- ceps, tied them and treated the wound with antiseptic appliances. Excellent results followed, and the grate- ful King founded the Royal "Hospital and put Dr. Allen in charge. The preacher followed in the steps of the physician. Dr. Peck of China has in nine years treated seventy thousand cases, through which forty- five thousand different persons have been brought under his Christian influence. Dr. Kerr has treated a half a million patients, educated a hundred medical students, and prepared thirty medical works. Daring the Shanghai Conference, when called upon to bear witness as to what I had seen in the East of Medical Missions, I spoke as follows : It is a privilege for one whose work, to somo ex- tent, lies in the medical as well as clerical profession, #) SUPERNATURAL FACTORS. and whose opportunities for observation are not limited to one continent, to pay his tribute to the toilful ser- vice of missionary physicians in the East. This service is threefold. 1. In maintaining the moral tone and professional ability of this sacred vocation. There are influences at work which tend to lower the standard, not only of scientific attainment, but of personal character. It is hard at home to withstand the debasing influences of the venal, sordid, increasingly sensuous civilization of the age, but harder still when the tonic impulses of a strong Christian sentiment, such as dominate England and America, are wanting. If they have done nothing else, medical missionaries of the East have done this — all praise to them for their grit and grace — they have kept their Hippocratean oath, taken at graduation, and maintained the purity, probity and honor of a profession which is regarded at home as second to none in the lustre of its fame, in the honor of its name. 2. They have broadened the field of investigation and enriched the accumulations of science. The eti- ology and natural history of diseases peculiar to the East have competent observers and careful statisticians among our medical missionaries. The eulogiums of Carl Bitter and Agassiz as to the services of mission- aries, though emphatic, are deserved. The reports of resident physicians connected with the Customs, made to the Inspector-General, are hints as to what may be done in future years in the enrichment of medical literature, by men whose opportunities are rare for the study of disease in its endemic seat, as leprosy, for example, or mental diseases in tropical climes. 3. Their direct ministry to the body and soul. I THE ACCELERATION OF GOD'S MOVEMENTS. 87 could speak for hours upon tliis point, for several months' residence in Canton Hospital has taught me, what nothing else could so vividly and pathetically illustrate, the urgency and promise of medical mis- sions. Here, as in India and Japan, the successful work of female physicians has been conspicuously shown. Here, too, the disinterested nature of the medical service has been daily observed. Here^also, the mighty power it wields as an evangelizing agency. On each of these points and others I might enlarge, but only respond to the call you have made on me to accentuate the three points named, the noble influence your physicians exert in preserving untainted that social purity which dominates the Christian homes and countries we represent, which has made marriage honorable, womanhood sacred and continence iudis- pensible ; their services as contributors to professional and scientific research, and their crowning work as priests and priestesses of Him who came to seek and to save the lost, and whose benediction is their choicest recompense : " Inasmuch as ye did it unto them ye did it unto Me ! " At the same convention, which continued about two weeks, the following address was given by the writer. It is copied from the Volume of Transactions recently published by the Presbyterian Press, Shanghai. THE ACCELERATION OF GOD'S MOVEMENTS. The altitude and proportions of an edifice may be sometimes better estimated by one who stands a little removed from it, rather than within its walls. The magnitude, significance and promise of modern mis- sions may bo better appreciated by one who inspects SITEKNATUIIAL FACTolJS. them in both hemispheres, not as a missionary, not as a hurrying tourist, but as a patient, candid, serious student of God's movements in human history. Returning home from this eighth foreign tour, which represents nearly a year's absence and thirty thousand miles' travel, an unexpected summons meets me to ad- dress this Conference on the first day of its delibera- tions. No theme has been assigned ; but a few thoughts occur to me on a subject on which I have often re- flected, but never before spoken, The inherent mo- mentum of ideas and the special acceleration of that momentum which God is to give in these latter days. Von Herder, when dying said, " Give me a great thought that I may be refreshed." "We want great thoughts to live by, to refresh us in the strenuous ac- tivities of a service in which the most devoted are sometimes weary and depressed. Have we not here an exhilarating truth, the mighty vigor, velocity and vitality of ideas, when once started on their endless career ? When railways were first opened in Spain we are told that the simple-minded peasants, supposing that the trains could stop any where, any time, as easily as a mule or ox team, stood on the track and were fre- quently run over. They had no conception of speed and momentum. Herbert Spencer uses the incident to characterize the mental incapacity of those who cannot comprehend the ever-increasing momentum of ideas in the world. "An idea is mightier than a million men," said Dr. Edward Beecher, the pastor of my boyhood. It is true. Men are circumscribed by physical limitations to which spiritual forces are strangers. A man can be in but one place at a time ; he comes and he goes; h<- lives and dies; but these THE ACCELERATION OP GOD*S MOVEMENTS. Si) unseen increments which we call ideas, travel as the light by which we see, abide with us as the air by which we breathe, brood over us as do these star-lit heavens to-night, all-encompassing, pervasive, eternal ! Embodied, they become laws, literatures, civilizations. Institutions are called the lengthened shadows of sin- gle lives. Luther gave the world Lutheranism, and Calvin, Calvinism ; so all history is but the biography of a few sturdy souls, as Emerson has said, and these souls are the incarnation of ideas, the onward march of which nothing can obstruct. It is a perilous thing to antagonize ideas which express essential truth. It is to commit the folly of those who have put out a foot to stop what was thought to be a spent cannon ball, and have thereby lost a leg. There is nothing so revolu- tionary and convulsive to society, Dr. Thomas Arnold has said, " as the strain to keep things fixed, when all the world, by the law of its being, is in eternal pro- gress." Confucius attempted this when he taught that China's work was not to create, but to conserve and transmit. Hence the usages of centuries crystalize into unvary- ing forms. Her people have been content to follow ancestral traditions ; to think, live and act as those before them, indifferent to new conditions, possibili- ties and responsibilities. The nation is fitly com- pared tp Lot's wife, looking backward, wedded to the past, vainly hoping to resist the influences which im- pel the human race onward. It was observed at one of the Northtield meetings that " the Lord himself cannot switch a motionless engine." There can be no guidance of stationary ob- jects. To go right we must move. God said to Moses, " Speak to the children of Israel that they go for- 00 SUPERNATURAL FACTORS. ward ! " Jesus said to his disciples, " Launch forth into the deep ! " "\Vheu the germinal impulse of an idea is divine, its mission is world-wide and its power deific. Inspired of God and guided by Him, it is not a transient, purposeless thing, but a gigantic moral force, a strange, intrusive, resistless energy, ubiquitous and immortal ! It will not die with the life first in- spired by it, but live in other lives, and so wields a power richer in quality, vaster in limit and more com- manding in influence as the years go on. This is spiritual momentum. The possessor and herald of such eternal verities is not to timidly stand, as did the propounder of a new law in olden time in England, who placed himself meekly in the market-place with a halter about his neck, with which the populace might hang him if displeased with the innovation ; but he is to enunciate them with the imperative emphasis of authority. Nothing in the world is so intolerant as truth. It brooks no rival and stoops to no compromise. Truth is the reality of things, and therefore is unchangeable in every age and every clime ; therefore is mandatory, unconquerable and eternal. There is unspeakable com- fort in this thought for the weary worker, oppressed by the burden, depressed by the obstacles in his work. But there is another quickening thought. In latter days we may expect an acceleration of God's movements in human history. He is not slack concerning His promises, though their fulfillment may seem to us very slow. The martyred saints above are crying, " How long, O Lord ? " and the tired earth below, with its old headache and heartache, repeats the same appealing prayer, "How long?" This Gibraltar of heathenism before us here stands firm in THE ACCELERATION Otf GOD*S MOVEMENTS. 91 its stony strength, hoary with age, apparently invul- nerable. Sixty generations of missionaries, resolute, robust, consecrated men and women, have passed by, each smiting heavy blows. Fragments have fallen, but the mountain stands. Scoffers sneer. It is not easy to answer the scorn of the godless, " who find the salt of their wit in the brine of our tears." It is not easy to hush our own doubts and fears. But we do know that " God's chronometer never loses time." Ideas are imperishable. The mind is a palimpsest. What appears to have been lost will surely reappear. The on-going of truth is irresistable. Now, to its intrinsic momentum we believe that God's outstretched arm will give, as it were, an added push, to make what He caUs " a short work " of it as the end of all things hastens. Has He not promised that the plowman shall overtake the reaper, the treader of grapes the sower of seed, and that a nation shall be born at once ? This con- ception rebukes the pessimistic philosophy of those who see the world going to the bad, and fancy that their duty is but to save here and there a few from the wreck. Macaulay says that in his day he saw nothing but progress, yet he heard only of decay ; the birds of ill omen chanting their saddest notes when the future was brightest. No, no ! we are in no sinking ship ; we are following no failing cause ! God's word returns not void. His truth is omnipotent, and its onward velocity increases every decade. We may expect a more rapid evangelization of the world as a result. The branch of the Lord grows more beautiful and comely, the fruit of the earth more excellent. The light of the moon is to change to the splendor of the sun, and the light of the sun is to be sevenfold, as the light of seven days. 92 SUPERNATURAL FACTORS. The splendid leaps of science in the discovery and application of physical forces are a type and promise of the augmentation of personal power and holiness in the Church of Christ. There is coming a manlier life, more healthful and aggressive. The feeble knees are to be strengthened, the lame man is to leap as the hart, the tongue of the dumb is to sing. One will chase a thousand, and two put ten thousand to flight. Those who have been weak in the church are to be- come as David, and the house of David as God. Years of preparation seem slow and fruitless ; but enterprises move with increased celerity when the pre- paratory work is done. Standing in St. Isaac's Church, St. Petersburg, I thought of the many millions spent in its erection, largely on the foundations. A Russian forest wras sunk in the form of piles. After this long, tedious work was done, the massive monoliths, the marble and malachite, the jasper and the gold, went readily to their places. Fitly framed together, the building stood complete, " frozen music, an anthem in stone." So men and millions were sacrificed in exca- vations at Hell Gate, in East River, New York. The years went on and we saw no fruits. But the tiny finger of Mary Newton on an electric button exploded the powder and dynamite, and in an instant removed a formidable barrier to navigation. One day a hea- then in India ran after a missionary and bade him not be discouraged, for there is, he said, a silent, secret work going on among his people. The whole fabric of heathenism is honeycombed, and some day will suddenly disintegrate. Prophetic signs multiply. When Neesima of Japan was buried, Buddhist priests sent memorial banners as a tribute of respect to the herald uf a gospel they did not accept, but the conquering THE ACCELERATION OF GOD'S MOVEMENTS. 93 power of which they acknowledged. No arithmetic of ours can calculate the movements of Iinmanuel, but we do know that " His going forth is as the morning," brighter and swifter, till the noontide splendor of His reign is reached. Coming out of St. Peter's one day, wearied with the caricatures of Christian worship, my delighted eyes read on the Egyptian obelisk that graces the square, CHRISTUS REGNAT ! Not " Christ will reign," a prom- ise and a hope ; not has reigned, a memory and re- gret; a Troja fait, something that was and is no more; but CHRIST REIGNS ! in Rome, in China, in all the world ! The government is on His shoulders. The scepter is in His hands. He is the center of truth, the summit of history, the goal of human hope ! Halle- lujah ! for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth ! Come, Lord Jesus, come quickly ! There are two audiences T behold before me. Be- yond and above this eager, listening congregation I see a larger throng, I hear a sweeter choir. There is an innumerable assembly of redeemed ones gathered from every land and language ; apostles, saints and martyrs ; a white-robed company. There are converts from every clime. There are faces that are familiar ; feet that will soon fly to meet us ; lips that wait to greet us ; but best of all, there is Jesus, the Captain of our salvation, under whose illustrious leadership we are marching, and at whose pierced feet it will soon be our joy to cast our crowns ! Let us ever walk under the shadow of these august realities, feeling the in- spiration of His presence, the thrilling impulse of His truth, day by day, till we are summoned one by one to meet Him face to face, when our joy shall be supernal and eternal, in the presence of the KING ! CHAPTEE X. PRACTICAL PROBLEMS. First, What should be our attitude towards the peo- ple of the Orient ? How shall the Anglo-Saxon ap- proach the Asiatic in the intercourse which modern civilization has established throughout the earth ? Can we of the West come to an agreement as to the true temper in which we are to meet them ? As a whole, Asiatic people are not friendly to foreign ideas. They have looked upon those of other nations among them as intruders ; their aim as either mercenary or political ; their ideas revolutionary, and their presence a menace to their civilization. Can we wonder at this distrust, when we see the prejudice here towards the very people of the East whom we once invited to our shores ? Can pagans be blamed for expressing their antipathy by as active measures of expulsion as we ourselves have adopted towards them ? In general, it may be said that Christian nations must divest themselves of the pride and prejudice of race if they would hope, under God, to secure the moral conquest of the earth. The teacher, preacher or the merchant, going to the East, must carry broad sympathies, founded not only on moral considerations, but on an intellectual appreciation of what these na- tions are to-day as historic factors in the world's de- velopment. We have brieHy indicated the gem-sis and growth of Asiatic thought, the outlines of character, art, industry, literature and social life. Enough has MUTUAL ACQUAINTANCE. 'Jo • been adduced as evidence to validate the statement of Sir William Jones with which we began. Yet there are few who really appreciate what the East is, and what it has done for the West. The lack of informa- tion on the part of intelligent people is amazing, when the literature of the subject is so opulent, attractive and cheap.* MUTUAL ACQUAINTANCE. The scorn of the Oriental for the European comes from ignorance. He looks down from his position as inheritor of ancient religious, philosophies and social customs upon the new comer as a mere upstart, a parvenu, if not a barbarian or demon. Coming to In- dia full of conceit, the Englishman has shown similar scorn, and has been heard to say of the Hindu, " He is only a nigger ! " For the proud-spirited Japanese, strangers have sometimes shown no more regard. " Natives may apply for admission at the back door," was the notice posted by one family at their front en- trance. Another case I heard of, where a man who taught a school of three hundred boys, in ignorance or in defiance of the old samurai spirit that still survives there, gave one of them a caning, as he would had he had a Yorkshire school and Smike for a pupil. For- tunately, there was no Nicholas Nickleby to return blow for blow, and the foreigner escaped from the place unharmed, but more than three-quarters of the * Dr. Pierson says that but one out of forty, of the 72U,(KH» com- municants of his branch of the church, takes the only missionary magazine of the denomination. He says that ignorance is the great obstacle, and information the foremost need. He cites incidents of astounding ignorance of missions on the part of Christians, and also in the case of journalists and public men. Missionary Review, July, 1890. '•)() 1'K.UTICAL PROBLEMS. • students at once left. The injury to the school proved irreparable. A meeting of women in Washington recently ex- pressed their approval of the exclusion of Chinese in a resolution which stigmatized that imperial race as " hordes of leprous Mongolians." There are lepers in the East, and there are thousands of imbeciles here. Is it any more fair to call one people leprous, than to call the other idiotic ? A little more knowledge and candor will wonderfully help in the solution of some of these international problems. •• What is needed, is not " a race sentiment," as a NCAV York daily urges, a recrudescence of Know-nothing-ism, or any such spirit of exclusiveness and hate, but, rather, a revival of magnanimity, of Christian brotherhood and unself- ish interest in all men as our kin, whatever be their color or their clime. A wealthy, powerful nation can afford to be both just and generous. Noblesse oblige. ETHNIC EELIGIONS. A second problem concerns our attitude towards Oriental religions and the customs which they make obligatory upon the people. We may take the ex- treme of those who are disputatious, antagonistic, belligerent; cut down, root and branch, everything distinctly heathen. Or we may be temporizing, sub- servient, concurrent. The former demand the aban- * Royse in his Study of Genius says, " If we catechize human his- tory, we shall find that all the great achievements of the past, whether material or intellectual, social or political, have proceeded from but two of the five generally recognized races- the Caucasian and the Mongolian. All the extraordinary individuals, the geniuses, known to us have emerged from one or the other of the branches of these most iulluontial races." Mongols ("brave") form nearly one-half the human family, according to Professor Dieterici. ETHNIC RELIGIONS. 97 doument of all social usages tinctured with super- stition. They are stringent, coercive, uncompromising. Others come, as did a recent embassy from Boston to Japan, " to confer " with Confucianist, Buddhist and Shinto as to some common ground of humanitarian work, ignoring as dead issues the beliefs on which idolaters and Christians differ, and making personal sympathy the simple bond between them. This em- bassy had much in common with Japanese, they said, and sought to supplement, not to overthrow, existing religions. Between these antipodal positions stands the intelli- gent missionary. He has made himself acquainted with the fact that religion in the East is a regnant power, ubiquitous and authoritative, entering into the personal and social life, into history, art, law and language. He appreciates what is really excellent in Asian thought, as the wisdom of Vedic verse and all that is beautiful and dutiful in Confucian morality. He realizes the vitality of hereditary instincts, and he respects the rights of conscience everywhere. He aims to Christianize, but not to Anglicize. Confident in the power of the gospel to reconstruct society, observant of the changes in Eastern life already accomplished by contact with Western thought — partly compulsory through military force or international treaty, and partly spontaneous, through conviction — he waits with patience and courage for providential developments in the near future still greater than those in the past. He is loyal to the truth as it is in Jesus. Toleration of idolatry is treason to Christianity. But a precipitate assault on time-honored customs, such as the seclusion of women, the betrothal of infants, the adoration of the departed, foot binding, clan tax, burning of lettered 98 PRACTICAL PROBLEMS. paper, or decoration of graves, he sees may at once create such a revulsion of feeling as will be likely to prevent any further intercourse with those whom he would benefit. The true philosophy of reform is that of substitution and exchange, of transfer and recompense. Light dis- places darkness, and the love of Christ secures the ex- pulsion of all His foes. It is better to draw than drive ; to gain by gentle indirection what we cannot get by abrupt assault. NATIVE CUSTOMS. Ancestor worship is universal in the East. It is " The keystone of China's social fabric," and for more than four thousand years has been the most august ceremonial of their ancient faith. The adoption of an heir to the throne, or the succession of a son, in order, is signalized by this solemn homage. The ancestral temple is the rallying point for each family clan, and the humblest home has its little shrine, its lettered tablets and its daily incense burning before the spirits of the dead. It is claimed that filial piety is its es- sence, and that its observance has consolidated and perpetuated the empire for ages ; that to oppose it is to do violence to the best feelings of the heart and needlessly to engender among the common people, as well as among the learned or ruling class, hatred to- wards Christianity. It was my privilege to hear the long and animated discussion of the subject at the Shanghai Conference. In no debate was there more warmth of feeling shown. Learned scholars gave us a history of the cult, and our oldest missionaries rehearsed their experience ; but the most effective reply to the appeal for toleration, NATIVE CUSTOMS. 99 • or the laisser faire method, was by a highly educated native pastor. He was specially qualified as a con- verted heathen to reflect the real feelings of his peo- ple, both pagan and Christian. Mr. Yen affirms that, with rare exceptions, the divine honor and human rev- erence are inseparable in ancestor worship. " If they do the one, the other is involved in it. The associa- tion has become so hereditary among the Chinese, that to prostrate and to make offerings, bring up in their minds the feeling that the spirits are present, hear their prayers, accept their gifts, and in return will care for them ; in short, will do for them what Christians believe that God can do." He approves the method adopted by his Christian countrymen of rearing over a grave a monumental cross, inscribed with verses from the Scriptures, and the planting of flowers ; also, in place of the domestic tablet, hanging up a framed photograph, with the phrase appended, " In Paradise." This will illustrate the way in which a wise man will avoid needless collisions, while main- taining his fealty to truth. At another time the objector was silenced by this reply : " It is you, not we, who dishonor the dead, for you assume that their hungry ghosts will come and plague you unless you appease them with offerings. They treated you kindly here, and you degrade them and do their character injustice by attributing to them such a disposition now. Confucius has said that you should treat them as you did on earth." A foreigner on entering a Chinese town was assailed by a shower of missiles. He calmly faced tin; crowd jind quoted the memorable precept of Confucius, " Not to do to another what we should not wish him to do to us." At once opposition ceased, and the ringleaders, im- 100 PRACTICAL PROBLEMS. • pressed with his adroitness, caine forward and apolo- gized to the stranger. The Oriental carries a heavy pecuniary burden in maintaining ancestral worship. Dr. Yates estimates the annual expense to China, alone, of this adoration of the dead to be £151,752,000 — more than ten tim; s the expense of Buddhism and Confucianism combined. In Tndia the Shradda is a service to provide the de- parted spirit with a body. A man without a son to make offerings falls into hell. Enormous sums arc paid to get a soul out of this purgatorial disquiet. High families, as well as low, impoverish themselves for the remainder of their lives by burial, as in bridal, expenses. One funeral and Shradda cost $600,000, " the greater part of that amount being squandered on worthless Brahmins, indolent, pundits, hypocritical devotees and vagabond religious mendicants." In both China and India infanticide and suicide have often been connected with the idolatrous customs re- ferred to. The attitude of the missionary should be, of course, that of uncompromising opposition. The barbarous mutilation of the female foot began A. D. 600, introduced by Mauchu Tartars. It prevails among the poor. No small footed women are allowed in the palace or grounds of the Emperor. At first, missionaries tolerated the inhuman practice, though one of them writes, " I have heard cries of anguish that might have moved the very rocks to pity." In 1875, the Fooehow M. E. Mission resolved to forbid it among their churches. Other bodies have taken simi- lar action. To avoid the suspicion of being a lewd character, " a Christian shoe, similar to that of the Empress, a Tartar, was made and worn." T/ie Chinese Recorder, June, 1878, mentions a number of cases ASCETICISM IN MISSIONS. 101 where unbound feet liave recovered so much of their former motion, that girls not only walked and carried burdens, but ran once more. Miss Noyes last year had but five out of nine-two girls in her school in Canton, with deformed feet, and thinks that the cruel custom will, in time, be abandoned. ASCETICISM IN MISSIONS. Speaking in reference to celibacy, Mr. Yen remarked that " There is no rule. In some places married people are better ; in others, single people. So in dress, each man must j udge for himself, in the place where he moves. There is no cast iron rule to suit all cases. Where foreigners are better known, and where they would look strange if wearing Chinese dress, let them wear the foreign ; but in places Avhere Chinese dress is more convenient, and the foreign would be novel to the Chinese, let them wear the Chinese." Every plant has its habitat. Monastic brotherhoods and sisterhoods are exotics on Protestant soil. I called on one community of celibates in India and, from what was seen and learned, the work impressed me favor- ably. Still, the query put by the Indian Witness comes to mind : " Why should the absence of the family, God's unit of human society, be so highly es- teemed ? " To begin by presenting the heathen with a false ideal of Christianity is to prejudice the work from the start. " One might suppose," says Dr. Ellin- wood, " that asceticism had been tried long enough in India and throughout the East. The moral and re- ligious life has gone to corruption and decay in spite of hordes of beggars and fakirs. What have the mon- asteries of Sinai and Lebanon done for the regeuera- 102 PRACTICAL PROBLEMS. tion of the Holy Land ? What did a celibate and cloistered priesthood accomplish for Mexico through three hundred years of undisputed sway ? The Greek and Latin churches of the Levant, lacking the domestic element, have scarcely held their ground ; they have received from Islam a deeper impress than they have given. Why, then, should Protestant Christendom yield to the cry of those who, in the very midst of in- creasing success, would turn to the effete agencies of the past ? " Why should our exiled missionaries and their wives, he says, be asked to add to the dreary and depressing influence of a life among idolaters the misery of a beggar's bowl, while Christians at home are surfeited in their self-indulgence ? * Is this the time to turn the last screw of impoverishment on their kindred and brethren abroad ? Is this the way to im- press heathen with the divinity of our religion and the honesty of our purpose ? The suggestion is simply monstrous ! The system of asceticism, Dr. Cyrus Hamlin justly observes, " Protestantism has rejected with overwhelming abhorence and scorn." Dr. Ellinwood once visited a missionary whose field of labor was amid equatorial heats, and whose miser- able abode was directly under the tiled roof of a ware- house. His income was near the starvation point. The scant dress of wife and child revealed numerous boils, of which they had had ninety, the result, in part, of defective nutrition and poverty of blood. He notes the incident " for the benefit of those well-to-do Chris- tians who think that self-immolation is the duty of * Dr. Gracey says, "After Protestant Christianity has used all it needed, given all it would, and wasted most wantonly, it yet has a reserve of UNSPENT fortune, reaching the enormous sum of FIVE HUN- DRED MILLION DOLLARS annually ! " QUALIFICATIONS. the foreign missionary." If asceticism be tried, let it begin at liome.t Having surveyed some of the unique features of the field, we are ready to consider a third problem, the selection of the missionary force. QUALIFICATIONS. Mr. Meredith Townsend, in The Contemporary Keview, has lately discussed the proposition of send- ing out " Cheap Missionaries," whatever that phrase may mean. He would, however, substitute this plan : Let each ordained minister from these shores till his place abroad as a true bishop, taking that word, he says, in its accurate sense. Each bishop is to train and use native evangelists, thousands of whom there are on the ground already. They are fully acclimat- ized ; they have no languages to learn, and no preju- dices to unlearn. They understand the thought of their countrymen, and can rouse that enthusiasm which the European sighs for in vain. A hundred of them might be had in India for seventy-five dollars each per annum. Put under the seven hundred Prot- estant missionaries there, they would form a force of seventy thousand native preachers, who would " do the work infinitely better than that which is sought to bo done through cheap missionaries." That Orientals are to be brought to Christ by Ori- entals is a truism, but it needs repetition. How far the native church is to be relieved of the responsibil- ity of supporting its own evangelists is a delicate ques- tion. Some missionaries say, with Mr. Cardwell of Shanghai, " No native helper should be paid out of f Missionary Review of the World, Sep. 188'.), pp. 685, 698 ; Jau. 1890, Dec., p. 947; Feb. 18'Jl, p. 1U5, April, p. 251. 104 PRACTICAL PROBLEMS. mission funds, but by the native church. If paid agency had never been adopted, we should have had a far more spiritual and earnest Chinese church than we have to-day." On the other hand, Dr. Corbett of Chefoo says that the laborer is worthy of his hire, an J foreign money should be used when the native church is not self-supporting, on the same ground that aid is furnished to destitute communities at home. It was said at the Shanghai Conference that five hundred native evangelists would be a far greater power than five thousand foreigners, and that this number would soon be spread over China, if her forty thousand con- verts realized the privilege they now have of evan- gelizing their own country. Dr. Edkins urged that Christian laymen come to the East and introduce Western arts and industries. Those who are skilled in trade and manufactures will aid in developing the commercial products of the" coun- try. They will be allies to the missions, and also make themselves valuable to the government. Who can estimate the value of the services of such a man as Hon. S. Welles Williams, who acted as inter- preter and Secretary of the U. S. Legation in the negotiation of treaties and in other diplomatic rela- tions ? Our Consuls and Ministers abroad occupy posts of high influence and broad observation. They may, and some of them do, render efficient aid to mis- sions. Addressing the merchants of Philadelphia on his return from the Orient, U. S. Minister Heed re- marked, " I went to the East with no enthusiasm as to missionary enterprise. I come back with the fixed conviction that it is, under Providence, the great agent of civilization. I feel it my duty to add, that every- where in Asia and Africa, among the Kaffirs in Natal, QUALIFICATIONS. 105 on the continent of India, among the forests of Cey- lon, and over the vast expanse of China, the testimony to the success and zeal of our countrymen, as mission- aries of truth, is earnest and concurrent. I heard it everywhere and from high authority." As to health qualifications, it should be said that the climate of the East, is specially trying to those of weak nerves and prone to extremes of excitabilty and depression. The process of acclimatization brings a mental and physical strain. If this and the added burden of acquiring the language be successfully un- dergone by ladies before marriage, it will be a great gain. So says Rev. J. Hudson Taylor, after many years' residence in China. Personal presence is a factor of influence, even more noticeable than at home. The leading journal of Cal- cutta ascribes much of the success of Dr. Pentecost to " his striking personality and manner." It would be easy to name others whose capacity, natural leader- ship, manliness and self-control make them masters in every emergency ; whose eye, voice, hand and step create a magnetic sphere, into which to enter is to capitulate to a psychic force which is as hard to de- scribe, as it is to resist. I once was led about an ancient Chinese city by such a Greatheart. His genial smile disarmed the opposition which his audacity would have otherwise created. The fluency of his speech and his wit charmed those who were attracted by his fine physique ; then, above all, his moral ear- nestness gave him a ready mastery of men. We went into two great opium dens, where a thousand natives in each congregate to smoke •' foreign dirt " daily. He boldly reproved the men and their female com- panions for their immoralities, but in such a way that 106 PRACTICAL PROBLEMS. he commanded their respect. During the recent riots he saved valuable property by his fearless and heroic conduct, at one time holding a murderous crowd at bay with his revolver, for half an hour, until the magistrate arrived. In Japan and India I met others of this knightly, chivalric spirit, which has, to a great extent, a physical basis, but which is ennobled by culture and grace. Versatility, tact, common sense, are all-important. There was a medical student- who always stood first in college examinations. At graduation, his book knowl- edge amazed his examiners, who tried in vain to cor- ner him. But in actual practice he was so lacking in judgment, that he could not be trusted with the sim- plest case of childhood's ailments. Dr. Cyrus Harnlin knew a scholarly young mis- sionary, who was a good sermonizer, but did not know how to drive a board nail. This veteran mis- sionary pleads for men who have a concern for the earthly life; who can not only feel for die ignorant and thriftless, but can instruct and stimulate them ; who can show them the use of tools and how to mas- ter the forces of nature. His own splendid career at Constantinople illustrates the versatility of a man who made a steam engine and built a college, who taught in five languages and ran a bakery. One of the oldest and most gifted missionaries in China has done incalculable service in teaching natives of his district the culture of small fruits. The Zulu missionary, Dr. Wilder, who introduced the sorghum or sugar plant, opened a yearly revenue to us of millions of money. Missionaries should be many- sided men. Our seminaries should provide a definite niissionarv curriculum. How to secure it is another of SPECIAL TRAINING. 107 those practical problems pressing upon us. Could not the Latin thesis, medieval scholasticism and other an- tiquated lore give way to something better ? SPECIAL TKAINING. All- round men are in demand everywhere, but abroad particularly. When Dr. Pentecost says that it is useless to send to India any but " first-class men," he means more than men of piety and education. To natural abilities special training should be added, just as with candidates for the army or navy. This is an age of specialists in every branch of science. The work of missions needs men who, as Professor Hul- bert of Corea says, are selected for definite fields, and have made the topography, history, literature and -social customs of the country they go to, the theme of special study, just as each student of the science of war is drilled in the technics of his chosen branch of the service. AVest Point educates the soldier, but Annapolis, the sailor and naval officer. There is much in common, but there is much that is distinctive and peculiar to each. So in theological education. The same gospel is needed in the East that is preached in the West ; but there is an Oriental perspective to truth which cannot be ignored. No one can appreciate its importance till he himself has secured it. Some of these peculiarities of Asiatic life and thought have been alluded to, but it would take a volume to go into details. What the author of Things Japanese has said of one Oriental nation, under the title of Topsy- turveydom, illustrates the contrarieties of life every- where met with in the East. One meets with physical oppositefl that arc suggestive of moral contrasts. Our ideas appear as absurd to Asiatics as theirs do io us. 108 PRACTICAL PROBLEMS. It is well to be reminded of these social antitheses be- fore one goes abroad. It will soften the shock which his sensibilities are likely to receive, teach him con- sideration for other people's views, and save him some mortifying experiences which otherwise his awkward- ness and ignorance will be likely to bring to him. This part of special training is important to all who woiild appear well in the eyes of those whom they seek to benefit. Our most successful diplomats, teach- ers and preachers have been those who have mastered the details of Oriental etiquette, and have made them- selves at home amid circumstances strangely unlike those in which they have been educated. A few amusing illustrations will suffice out of hundreds that might be cited. AMUSING ANTITHESES. In the Far East, a book is begun where we end, the line running to the left of each page, and the finis is found where we should expect the title page. Foot- notes are placed at the top. We put the name on the back of the book and set it up on end ; but there the volumes lie flat, with edges stamped. We use small, stiff, printed visiting cards ; the Chinaman uses sheets of thin, folded, verniilliou paper, inscribed with brush. The Japanese reverse our method in directing a letter and places the general before the particular, thus : New York, Brooklyn, St. Mark's Avenue 156, E. P. Thwiug. He beaches his boat stern first, instead of prow on ; he pulls the saw and plane towards him, instead of pushing them from him ; turns a lock in an opposite direction to what we should expect, and in needlework reverses the stich. A foreign lady has sometimes found her cuffs and frills sewed on inside AMUSING ANTITHESES. 109 out and upside down, as she thought. A horse is mounted on his right side, which is the wrong side to us ; his harness, also, is fastened on that side, while his mane is made to hang the wrong way — we are "tempted to say — to the left hand rather than to the right. In the stall his head is put where his tail ought to be ! The figures of an item are written down first and the designation follows. The roof of a house is the first thing made by the builders ; then, numbering the pieces, they take them apart and wait till the building is ready for the reunited roof. The wearing of rings, bangles, brooches and other baubles is scorned as barbarous by Japanese ladies, whose glory is in their hair and oM ; but the Chinese women look with won- der on a sensible European lady whose ear has never been mutilated for ornaments, and ask her as to her sex, for to them the earring is a distinguishing sign of a female, the other articles of whose attire are much • like those of men. Cold weather is indicated by two, three or more " coats cold," instead of degrees Fahren- heit. Perfect health and complete success are called " ten parts," from which the scale is graduated down- ward. The compass needle points to the South, in- stead of North. The rower is wont to face the prow of his boat and push with his oars, instead of pull. The scull-post is on the side, instead of the center of the stern. I have seen the tow-line fastened to the top of a foremast instead of being kept at the level of the deck. The Chinaman shakes his own hand instead of yours. He takes off his foot-gear, perhaps, but keeps his head covered. We wear our hair and shavo ourselves. A Chinaman would feel belittled to do his own shaving, and still more degraded without his 110 PRACTICAL PROBLEMS. queue. Like the ancient Greeks, we regard the walk- ing-stick as a sign of ease and social comfort, but he, of infirmity. A thousand years ago, the laws pro- hibited this luxury to all under fifty years of age. At that time of life one could use the staff in his ow» compound, the next decade in his own village, and at eighty, anywhere. Instead of a dog, a singing bird is taken for a com- panion. We play battledoor with the hands, but boys in the East use their feet, and sometimes catch the shuttlecock on the forehead. Instead of the punish- ment of stocks, there is a huge wooden collar, called the cangue, which encloses the neck, and sometimes the wrists. Somebody has said that the Chinamen every other day put clean clothes on unwashed bodies, while the Japanese put unwashed clothes on a clean skin. Professor Dixon says that, with many, "Summer clothes are mostly made of fresh air." • OKIENTAL MODESTY. Miss Bacon, long intimate with Japanese women, defends them from the charge of immodesty, and shows how delicate their instincts really are, even in matters where their actions shock our ideas of de- cency. She says, " Any exposure of the person that is merely incidental to health, cleanliness, or conveni- ence in doing necessary work, is perfectly modest and allowable ; but an exposure, no matter how slight, that is simply for show, is in the highest degree in- delicate." She goes on to note the horror they feel at the indecency of our ball room attire, or a street dress made so tight as to purposely display outlines that clothing professes to conceal. It would cause " an agony of shame " thus to appear in public, though O1UENTAL MODESTY. Ill they would not hesitate to bathe, unclad, at the beach or bath house, in company with men and women, without thought of evil. So, too, in regard to the sacrifice which a loving daughter makes to support an aged father or mother, or meet a husband's pecuniary misfortune, we are told that " Conscience seems as active, though often in a different manner, as the old-fashioned New England conscience, transmitted through the bluest of Puritan blood. And when a duty has once been recognized as such, no timidity or mortification will prevent the performance of it." Miss B. does not, of course, justify the sacrifice of chastity, but simply explains the act from the Japan- ese point of view. With them the philosophy of virtue is inherently opposed to ours. We make purity the queen of virtues, but they put filial obedience above it and say, " even if the body be defile^, there is no defilement of the soul, for the woman is fulfilling her highest duty in sacrificing all, even her dearest pos- session. It is a climax of self-abnegation that brings nothing but honor to the soul. Consider the moral training of the Japanese maiden. From earliest youth she is taught that obedience and loyalty are the su- preme virtues ; for good of father or husband she must be willing to meet any danger, endure any dis- honor, perpetrate any crime. Place this thought of self-abnegation in the foreground and your perspec- tive is altered, the other virtues occupying places of varying importance. Does it follow that all Japanese women are unchaste? Let us rather seek the causes that underlie the actions, than pass judgment upon the actions themselves. From a close study of the char- acters of many Japanese women and girls, I am quite convinced that few women in any country do their 112 PRACTICAL PROBLEMS. duty, as they see it, more uobly, more single-mindedly and more satisfactorily to those about them, than the women of Japan." Illustrations of the opposite conceptions of life and duty entertained by the Oriental might be multiplied. These few, however, show the importance of a more thorough and special instruction in these matters. Oriental studies cover a larger field than many sup- pose. They deserve more attention than they receive. Special institutions for training medical and mission- ary candidates for foreign work are multiplying. They suggest a lack in the curriculum of our older and well endowed professional schools. Text-books, also, are needed. He would do help- ful service who compiled a manual on the topics briefly alluded to in these pages. A careful and co- pious Index of Missionary Data, issued yearly, would serve an excellent purpose in awakening general inter- est, and in guiding the studies of students of the for- eign field. It would furnish writers and speakers with opulent materials, and — possibly — it might be of serv- ice to certain journalists, naval officers and travelers who are just now making themselves ridiculous by their wild statements in reference to missionary work abroad. The reports to the Inspector-General of Customs, China, on sanitary and medical topics, lunacy, leprosy, climatic and endemic diseases, with numberless sug- gestions as to food, domestic life, susceptibility to, or exemption from, certain maladies, have grown richer year by year in suggestiveness. They show what men of scientific instincts on the ground may do towards the solution of biological and sociological, forensic and economic problems of Eastern life. International CHRISTIAN UNITY. 113 Congresses in New York, London and continental cities gladly avail themselves of such contributions. No class of observers are more competent than our resident missionaries. Said the late Louis Agassiz : " Fsw are aware how much we owe to the missionaries for their intelligent observation of facts. . . . We must look to them not a little for aid in our effort to advance future science." That prince of geographers, Carl Hitter, confesses that, but for what they had ac- complished, he would not have been able to write his Erdkunde and similar works. He says : " Their com- munications have become a part of the world's knowl- edge." The Eoyal Commission under Lord Amherst regarded Morrison and Gutslaff as indispensible to their plan of international amity, for they understood the language and the people, their modes of thought and social customs. So Judge Goddard, late Consul- General at Constantinople, said: " The missionaries in Turkey have added to the respect with which our nation is regarded in that country. Without them it would not have been so easy for our Government to manage its affairs in that Empire as it now is." There are many practical methods by which the accumulated data, now in the hands of educated for- eigners abroad, might be utilized in the illumination of international questions of the highest importance, per- taining alike to the material and moral interests of the race. Leaving this line of thought, however, there is a final problem of deeper moment. CHRISTIAN UNITY. How shall a more vital and visible unity among Christians be secured ? The need is imperative at home, but more so abroad in the presence of pagan- 114 PRACTICAL PROBLEMS. ism. Professor Drummond may have spoken too hastily about the " guerilla warfare, and rival sects,"- forty of them in China, it is said — for the grand work done at the recent Conference in regard to versions of the Scriptures is a monumental evidence of practical cooperation ; but still there is too much of self-will, dogmatism and indocility shown in denomination alism on both sides of the sea. In his essay at Shanghai, on Cooperation, Rev. John McCarthy made a strong point when he said that it seemed out of place to dis- cuss such a theme, in face of the foe, when the battle is on 1 But," he added, "as a matter of fact, if all the missionaries in China were fully convinced of the value and importance of united action, their connec- tion with home churches, for the most part, altogether prevent any practical step towards closer union. One fails to see how it can be otherwise, while missionaries represent denominational and even political differ- ences to the Chinese, instead of only representing the . Christ of God." These geographical as well as sec- tarian issues cannot be denied, though each tries to defend his own. " If they would let us alone at home, we should have united here in Japan," said a veteran Methodist leader to me. So said the oldest and most experi- enced of other communions. They feel that their efficiency as working boards is weakened by division, and that they are ill prepared to meet the soul-hunger of many in the East, coming out of the darkness of idolatry, or out of the apathy of agnosticism, who cry out, as did the Japanese noticed already on page 48, for the moral earnestness of conviction rather than for theories and forms. " O for men of God ! " writes a burning soul at Nanking, " students from the CHRISTIAN UNITY. 115 university of experience, able to teach the Bible, not as a theology, but as a regenerative power in the con- version of souls and the upbuilding of the Kiugdom of Christ ! Send us men who will preach the essence of Christianity, Jesus the Christ, the Son of the living God." The question, then, is one which the home churches are to decide, both as to the fact and methods of a closer visible union of working forces. When the tide is low, says Dr. James Hamilton, then every tiny shrimp thinks its little pool to be the ocean. When the great sea comes surging in, it finds a larger ocean with which its little pool mingles. So when spiritual life is low, one sect or another assumes to be THE Church, and rears its barriers about itself. " But when the flood of God's reviving grace flows in, and brings its members into fellowship with others of the Lord's people, they find that there is a church, worthy of God, far more extensive than their own sect. Let the Spirit of God work mightily, as of old, and there will never be any difficulty about true cooperation." Things are tending to this end. The unity of the church, the parity of her clergy, the privilege of her sacraments, the glory of her unbroken fellowship, the dignity of her mission, and the power of her diversi- fied, but concurrent, life are coming to be more heart- ily accepted as the years go on. STAR OF THE EAST. Ex ORIENTE Lux. The Light of the WTorld came from the East. For nineteen centuries its glory has brightened the West, while the Orient has again grown dark, where degenerate Christianity, or absolute pa- ganism has prevailed. The STAR OF THE EAST in its 116 EX ORIENTAL LUX. westward way has not only marked the course of em- pire, but the triumphs of Immanuel's Kingdom. Ethnic migrations have their limits ; but not so with Messiah's march. " The great westward movements of history," says Professor Dennis of Beirut, " have reached at least a geographical limit on our Pacific shores; but the star of the world's destiny, which first arose in the East, has held to its westward pro- gress until it shapes its course once more to the Ori- ent. It only remains that fully developed and per- fected republican institutions should bring in the Golden Age of political and civil empire, to give its brightest radiance to this westward-moving Star." We cannot doubt that the Oriental is yet to be a power in the world's history, and the East is to be a theatre of some of the sublimest scenes of the future. Who is there that does not desire to contribute to the consummation of events so vast and momentous ? INDEX. Ability of Missionaries, 86, 104, 113. Abraham, 39. Acceleration of events, 87. Actors despised, 66. Agassiz, 86, 113. Alaskan youth, 18. Alexander, 78. Allen, 85. American brag, 71. Amherst, Lord, 113. Anatomy of national life, 12. Ancestor worship, 98. Angelo, 11. Animal food, 16. An- titheses of life, 108. Arabic, 52. Aramaic, 52. Architecture of Chi- na, 61. Aristotle, 10. Armorer esteemed, 68. Arnold, 21, 89. Art of Egypt, 53 ; of India, 54 ; of Greece, 54. Aryan, 50, 51. As- ceticism in missions, 101. Ash- more, 72. Asia, first sight, 7 ; its thought, 78. Aspects of nature, 13, 14. Assyria, 52. Atavism, 19. Atlantic Monthly, 75. Bacon, Miss, 36, 66, 110. Bail- ly, 41. Balaam, 41. Baths, pro- miscuous, 31. Battledoor, 110. Beaconsfield, 72. Beale, 14. Bean- sobre, 15. Bedouin, 52. Beecher, 67, 88. Bell, 10. Benedikt, 19. Bengalese, 22. Bible to be cen- tral, 84. Bird, Miss, 64. Birds in- stead of dogs, 110. Book of the dead, 40, 53 ; burning of, 59; of history, 61. Bosworth, 50. Bow- ring, 57. Brahma Somaj, 31. Bridgeman, 57. British Medical Journal, 28. Brown, 15. Bruce 15, 75. Buckle, 12, 13, 17, 18. Buddhism, 25. Burne, 16. Calvin, 89. Camoens, 57. Can- ton, 57, 87. Cardwell, 103. Caste, 24, 82. Cataract of eye, 28. Cey- lon, 80, 105. Chamberlain, 25, 36, 66. Champollion, 56. China, a library, (10 ; language, 58 ; archi- tecture, 61; arsenals, 73; fecundi- ty, 72; statesmen, 75; wall, 58, 62. Chefoo, 104. Christianize, not Anglicize, 97. Church, unity, 113. Clergy, parity, 115; each a bish- op, 103. Climate, 13, 16, 105. Clothing, 17, 110. Coan, 17. Coats cold, 109. Cobra, 15. Coleman, 14, 15. Conceit, European, 95. Conferring with heathen, 97. Con- ference at Shanghai, 85, 98, 104. Confucianism, 26, 43, 61, 63, 89, 97, 99. Congress, Indian, 73; In- ternational, 113. Continence need- ful, 87. Cook, Captain, 23 ; Jo- seph, 31. Copper vessels, 68. Cor- bett, 104. Corea, 63, 70, 85. Cul- len, 10. Customs, report, 86, 112. Customs, strange, 108. Dante, 50. Darwin, 14. De- crepitude denied, 71. Degeneracy by caste, 24. Dening, 69. Den- nis, 116. Despotism and art, 69. Dieterici, 96. Dixon, 110. Domes- tication of animals, 40. Drama in Japan, 45. Draper, 20. Dress, immodest, 110. Drummond, 114. DuBose, 26, 39, 44. Earthquakes, 13, 14, 22. Ed- kins, 57, 74, 104. Edwards, 82. Egypt, many books on, 9; people, 53; art, 53. Eight weeks enough, 70. Ellinwood, 101, 102. Emer- son, 31, 32, 89. Emperor's recep- tion, 23. Encyclopedia, Chinese, 59. Ethiopia, 52. Ethnology de- fined, 10. Faber, 57. Fairy tales, 66. Fam- ily, joint, 34. Famine, causes, 17. Fear of heathen, 8, 92. Ferguson, 80. Ferri, 19. Feudalism, fruits INDEX. of, 69. Finck, 70. Floggings, 30. Foochow, 100. Food, 16. Foot- binding, 100. Forry, 15. Fryer 74. Genesis of thought, 10. Gib- bon, 20, 24. Gladstone, 33. God- dard, 113. Gospel, needed now, 82; will reconstruct, 97. Gould, 39. Gracey, 102. Greathouse, 64. Gutzlaff, 57, 113. Gwilt, 62. Hager,82. Hamilton, 115. Ham- lin, 102, 106, Harcourt,41. Hayes, 75. Heat, 14. Heathen classics, 84. Heaven, Hindu, 41. Heredity, 19. Hilaire, St., 25. Historic evo- lution, 9. Hoarded wealth, 102. Holmes, 20, 32. Home, Oriental, 33. Honorifics. 65, 71. Hulbert, 107. Humboldt, 18, 39. Hunter, 10, 17. Ideas, mighty, 90. Idolatry, a compound, 43. Ignorance of the East, 80, 95, 108, 112. Imagina- tion developed, 13, 46. Immobil- ity, 26. Immortality of the soul, 40. Imperturbability, 27. India, a study, 49 ; a museum, 55. In- dian Congresses, 73. Individual- ity, national, 21. Industrial Arts, 67. Tnfe made, 61. Insanity of the West, 27. Insensibility to pain, 28. Japaneee schools, 75; language, 64; not unchaste, 111; at Hawaii, 72. Jarves, 54, 55. Jeypore, 42. Jones, 7, 95. Kaffirs, 104. Kerr, 85. Keshub Chunder Sen, 31, 34. Kip, 47. Kissing feet, 22. Kiangnan ar- senal, 73. Labor despised, 68. Learning a pastime, 69. Le Normant, 58. Lewis, 54. Literature of China, 57; Egypt, 52; Japan, 65; Hindu, 42. Lions, Egyptian, 53. Lom- broso, 19. Lowell, J. R., 70. Low- ell, Percival, 70, 76. Luther, 89. Lyell, 14. Macao, 57. Macnuley, 91. Mack- intosh, 10. Maine, Sir H., 24. M'Clatchie, 65. McCarthy, 114. Magnetism, personal, 105. Man- sel, 24. Manuals needed, 112. Marriage, premature, 24. Mars- den, 15. Marshman, 57. Marvin, 21. Martineau, 11. Mateer, 84. Medhurst, 57. Mendicants, 29. Mill, J. S., 10. Mills, 19. Milne, 57. Mirage, 15. Missionaries, de- spised, 80, 114; fettered, 114; suc- cessful, 79, 82 ; praised, 86, 104, 113; medic.ol, 85; self-supporting, 104; asceticism, 101 ; lay helpers, 104; qualifications, 48. Mobs con- trolled, 99, 106. Modesty, Japan- ese, 110. Mohametanism, 54. Mongolians, 96. Morrison, 57, 113. Muller, Max, 9, 49, 50, 71. Museums, 55. Mutilated child- wives, 25. Mysticism, 31. Nakashima, 76. Napoleon, 78. Nature worship, 38, 46, Neesima, 92. Nineveh, 52, 54. Noyes, 101. Noldeke, 52. Occidental worry, 27, 69. Orien- tal characteristics, 19, 107 ; taste, 55 ; studies, 8 ; broad, 112 ; atti- tude towards, 94, 96 ; Out-door life in Europe, 24. Pagodas, 62. Palgrave, 70. Pa- pyrus, 58. Parganya, 51. Par- ker, 85. Passions in Asiatics, 22, 24. Patriotism in Japan, 76. Paul, 47. Peck, 85. Penitential pills, 27. Pentecost, 105, 107. Perci- val, 80. Phelps, 73, 77. Physical factors, 10, Pierson, 95. Poetry in Japan, 66. Poole, 52. Poly- nesia, 12. Printing invented, 61. Pritchard, 14. Problems, practi- cal, 94. Putnam, 27. Race hatred, 95. Railways in China, 74. Rawlinson, 56. Re- form, its philosophy, 98. Reed, 42, 104. Rein, G3, 67. Rejuve- nation of the East, 70. Religion in the East, 37. Rey, 14. Rice INDEX. diet, 1G, 24. Bitter, 14, 86, 113. Royal Asiatic Society, 8, 15. Royse, 96. Kuskin, 54. Roof, 62. Sacrifices, 42. Sailors and fire- crackers, 46. Sanscrit, 49. Scen- ery, alone left, 8, 68. Schiff 55. Scotland and Spain, 12. Sectari- anism, 114. Self-abasement, 22; immolation, 29, 42. Seminary studies, 107. Semitic tongues, 52. Seward, 33. Shanghai, 85, 98. Shinar, 73. Shintoism, 44. Simon Stylites, 29. Sircar, 24. Smith, A., 10. Smith, S., 80. Sorghum, 106. Special training, 107. Spen- cer, 20. Stagnation stirred, 8. Substitutes, 28. Sumner, 75. Su- pernaturalisni, 79. Swatow, Mr., 67. Sympathy craved, 48, Taj, 54. Talmage, 27. Taine, 11. Taylor, 105. Tea drinking, 45. Temple, Sir R., 81. Tenny- son, 49. Textile fabrics, 55. Than- atophidia, 15. Theaters, 66. The- osophy, 43. Thwing, 18, 24. Thorburn, 22. Tiger's nose a charm, 15. Titian, 11. Topsy- turvydom, 109. Tortures, 28. Trade despised, 68. Translation of books, 73. Trinkets despised, 109. Truth ever intolerant, 90. Tschudi, 14. Tyndall, 38. Underfed in India, 17. Unity, Christian, 113. Upanishads, 41. Vedas, 41, 43, 49, 97. Vidyas- agara, 25. Virgil, 41. Virginity sacrificed, 42. Vishnu, 41. Von Herder, 88. Washing of body, 110. Water- sheds of thought, 39. Webster, 8. Wilder, 106. Williams, 15, 26, 33, 57, 104. Woman in Japan, 36, 65. Yates, 100. Yenn, Rev. Y. K., 99, 101. Zenana, 34, 80. A 000 022 960 9