Philip Lake, Richard Lydekker, Augustine Henry, Herbert A. Giles, George Jamieson, Henry Yule, Friedrich Hirth, Robert K. Douglas, Ignatius V. Chirol, Laurence Binyon, Charles J. Holmes and Lionel Giles

“ Painting.—Painting is the pre-eminent art of China, which can boast of a succession of great painters for at least twelve centuries. Though the Chinese have an instinctive gift for harmonious colour, their painting is above all an art of line. It is intimately connected with writing, itself a fine art demanding the same skill and supple power in the wielding of the brush. The most typical expression of the Chinese genius in painting is the ink sketch, such as the masters of the Sung dynasty most preferred and the Japanese from the 15th century adopted for an abiding model. ”

“ But the ideas of the Renaissance, its scientific curiosity, its materialism, its glorification of human personality, are wholly missing in China. For Europe, Man is ever the hero and the foreground—hence the dominant study of the nude, and the tendency to thronged compositions, with dramatic motives of effort and conflict. The Chinese artists, weak in the plastic, weak in the architectural sense, paint mostly in a lyric mood, with a contemplative ideal. ”

“ The whole social and political organization of the Chinese is based, in a far more real sense than in the West, on the family. The supreme duty is that of the child to its parent; on this the whole Chinese moral system is built up. Filial piety, according to the teaching of Confucius, is the very foundation of society; the nation itself is but one great family, and the authority of the government itself is but an extension of the paternal authority, to which all its children are bound to yield implicit obedience. ”

“ The chief moods of the Chinese poet are a pure delight in the varying phenomena of nature, and a boundless sympathy with the woes and sufferings of humanity. Erotic poetry is not absent, but it is not a feature proportionate in extent to the great body of Chinese verse; it is always restrained, and never lapses from a high level of purity and decorum. In his love for hill and stream which he peoples with genii, and for tree and flower which he endows with sentient souls, the Chinese poet is perhaps seen at his very best ”

“ The life of things is contemplated and portrayed for its own sake, not for its uses in the life of men. From this point of view the body of Chinese painting is much more modern in conception than that of Western art. Landscape was a mature and free art in China more than a thousand years ago, and her school of landscape is the loftiest yet known to the world. Nor was man ever dissociated from nature. As early as the 4th century Ku Kʽai-chih says that in painting a certain noble character he must give him a fit background of great peaks and deep ravines. ”

“ If the mere manual labour of writing was so great, we cannot wonder that all superfluous particles or other words that could be dispensed with were ruthlessly cut away. So it came about that all the old classical works were composed in the tersest of language, as remote as can be imagined from the speech of the people. ”

“ He therefore retired to Lo-yang, crossing the swollen waters of the Yangtsze on a reed, a feat which has ever since had a great fascination for Chinese painters and poets. There he spent the rest of his life, teaching that religion was not to be learnt from books, but that man should seek and find the Buddha in his own heart. ”

“ The Chinese are naturally reserved, earnest and good-natured; for the occasional outbursts of ferocious violence, notably against foreign settlements, are no index to the national character. There is a national proverb that “the men of the Four Seas are all brothers,” and even strangers can travel through the country without meeting with rudeness, much less outrage. If the Chinese character is inferior to the European, this inferiority lies in the fact that the Chinaman’s whole philosophy of life disinclines him to change or to energetic action. ”

“ The western idea of the liberty and dignity of the individual, as distinct from the community to which he belongs, is wholly alien to the Chinese mind. The political unit in China is not the individual but the family, and the father of the family is supposed to be responsible for the qualities and views of all his kin. He is rewarded for their virtues, punished for their faults; the deserts of a son ennoble the father and all his ancestors, and conversely his crimes disgrace them. ”

“ What remains, however, after all reductions, has been enough to secure a lasting place for Chuang Tzŭ as the most original of China’s philosophical writers. His book is of course under the ban of heterodoxy, in common with all thought opposed to the Confucian teachings. His views as mystic, idealist, moralist and social reformer have no weight with the aspirant who has his way to make in official life; but they are a delight, and even a consolation, to many of the older men, who have no longer anything to gain or to lose. ”

“ Side by side with such sacrificial rites was the worship of ancestors, stretching so far back that its origin is not discernible in such historical documents as we possess. In early times only the emperor, or the feudal nobles, or certain high officials, could sacrifice to the spirits of nature; the common people sacrificed to their own ancestors and to the spirits of their own homes. ”

“ The characters are a potent bond of union between the different parts of the Empire with their various dialects. If they should ever fall into disuse, China will have taken a first and most fatal step towards internal disruption. Even the Japanese, whose language is not only free from dialects, but polysyllabic and therefore more suitable for romanization, have utterly refused to abandon the Chinese script, which in spite of certain disadvantages has hitherto triumphantly adapted itself to the needs of civilized intercourse. ”

“ He then seems to himself and to his court to be in the centre of the universe, and turning to the north, assuming the attitude of a subject, he acknowledges in prayer and by his position that he is inferior to heaven, and to heaven alone. Round him on the pavement are the nine circles of as many heavens, consisting of nine stones, then eighteen, then twenty-seven, and so on in successive multiples of nine till the square of nine, the favourite number of Chinese philosophy, is reached in the outermost circle of eighty-one stones. ”

“ Such is the form of this religion which prevails in China, of which, however, the Chinese layman understands nothing. He goes to a temple, worships the gods with prostrations, lighted candles, incense, &c., to secure his particular ends at the moment; he may even listen to a service chanted in a foreign tongue and just as incomprehensible to the priests as to himself. He pays his fees and departs, absolutely ignorant of the history or dogmas of the religion to which he looks for salvation in a future state. ”

“ Grammar.—When about to embark on the study of a foreign language, the student’s first thought is to provide himself with two indispensable aids—a dictionary and a grammar. The Chinese have found no difficulty in producing the former (see Literature) . Now what as to the grammar? He might reasonably expect a people so industrious in the cultivation of their language to have evolved some system of grammar which to a certain degree would help to smooth his path. ”

“ Wu Taotzü seems to have given supreme expression to the central subject of Buddhist art, the Nirvana of Buddha, who lies serenely asleep, with all creation, from saints and kings to birds and beasts, passionately bewailing him. The composition is known from Japanese copies; and it is in fact from the early religious schools of Japan that we can best conjecture the grandeur of the Tʽang style. Wu Taotzü excelled in all subjects: other masters are best known for some particular one. Han Kan was famous for his horses, the models for succeeding generations of painters, both Chinese and Japanese. ”

“ Writing, in its origin, is merely a symbolic representation of speech. But in Chinese, as we shall see, for reasons connected with the peculiar nature of the script, the two soon began to move along independent and largely divergent lines. This division, moreover, will enable us to employ different methods of inquiry more suited to each. With regard to the colloquial, it is hardly possible to do more than consider it in the form or forms in which it exists at the present day throughout the empire of China. ”

“ The Chinese farmer, if his methods be primitive, is diligent and persevering. In the richer and most thickly populated districts terraces are raised on the mountain sides, and even the tops of lofty hills are cultivated. The nature of the soil and means of irrigation as well as climate are determining factors in the nature of the crops grown; rice and cotton, for example, are grown in the most northern as well as the most southern districts of China. This is, however, exceptional and each climatic region has its characteristic cultures. ”

“ The only class which at all resembles the territorial magnates of other countries is the class of retired officials. The wealth of an official is not infrequently invested in land, and consequently there are in most provinces several families with a country seat and the usual insignia of local rank and influence. ”

“ Loess.—One of the most characteristic deposits of China is the loess, which not merely imparts to north China the physical character of the scenery, but also determines the agricultural products, the transport, and general economic life of the people of that part of the country. It is peculiar to north China and it is not found south of the Yangtsze. The loess is a solid but friable earth of brownish-yellow colour, and when triturated with water is not unlike loam, but differs from the latter by its highly porous and tubular structure. The loess soil is extremely favourable to agriculture. ”

“ Each province has a complete administrative staff, collects its own revenue, pays its own civil service, and other charges placed upon it, and out of the surplus contributes towards the expenses of the imperial government a sum which varies with the imperiousness of the needs of the latter and with its own comparative wealth or poverty. The imperial government does not collect directly any part of the revenues, unless the imperial maritime customs be excepted, though these, too, pass through the books of the provincial authorities. ”

“ Supposing it were possible to prove that none of the persons mentioned in the Bible from Adam down to the Apostles ever lived, even the most sceptical critic would still have to admit that the history of a great portion of the human race has been materially affected by the belief in the examples of their alleged lives. Something similar may be said of the alleged earliest history of the Chinese with its model emperors and detestable tyrants, the accounts of which, whether based on reality or not, have exercised much influence on the development of the nation. ”

“ For the foreign student, it is not necessary to accentuate the obscurity and difficulty even of poems in which the motive is simple enough. The constant introduction of classical allusions, often in the vaguest terms, and the almost unlimited licence as to the order of words, offer quite sufficient obstacles to easy and rapid comprehension. Poetry has been defined by one Chinese writer as “clothing with words the emotions which surge through the heart.” ”

“ He protected capital, in the sense that he considered capitalists to be necessary for the development of commerce in time of peace, and for the protection of the state in time of war.
Mencius (see above) was in favour of heavily taxing merchants who tried to engross for the purpose of regrating, that is, to buy up wholesale for the purpose of retailing at monopoly prices; he was in fact opposed to all trusts and corners in trade. He was in favour of a tax to be imposed upon such persons as were mere consumers, living upon property which had been amassed by others and doing no work themselves. ”

“ Therefore, argues Wang Chʽung, when the body perishes and the fluid loses its vitality, each being dependent on the other, there remains nothing for immortality in a life beyond the grave. Ghosts he held to be the hallucinations of disordered minds, and miracles to be natural phenomena capable of simple explanations. His indictments of Confucius and Mencius are not of a serious character; though, as regards the former, it must be borne in mind that the Chinese people will not suffer the faintest aspersion on the fair fame of their great Sage. ”

“ The above are only two metres out of many, but enough perhaps to give to any one who will read them with a pause or quasi-caesura, as marked by ° in each specimen, a fair idea of the rhythmic lilt of Chinese poetry. To the trained ear, the effect is most pleasing; and when this scansion, so to speak, is united with rhyme and choice diction, the result is a vehicle for verse, artificial no doubt, and elaborate, but admirably adapted to the genius of the Chinese language. ”