Various

“ Tien is far more an abstract Being, while Shang Ti partakes rather of the nature of a personal God, whose anthropomorphic nature is much more strongly accentuated. Shang Ti is described as walking and talking, as enjoying the flavour of sacrifices, as pleased with music and dancing in his honour, and even as taking sides in warfare; whereas Tien holds aloof, wrapped in an impenetrable majesty, an ignotum pro mirifico. So much for religion in primeval days, gathered scrap by scrap from many sources; for nothing like a history of religion is to be found in Chinese literature. ”

“ If these traditions really represent the oldest prehistoric creations of the popular mind, it would almost seem that the most ancient Chinese shared that naïve sentiment which caused our own forefathers to invent gender. The difference is that, with us, the conception survives merely in the language, where the article or suffixes mark gender, whereas with the Chinese, whose language does not express gender, it survives in their system of metaphysics. For all their attempts at fathoming the secrets of nature are based on the idea that male or female powers are inherent in all matter. ”

“ It was not alone this action of Balmaceda in connexion with congress that brought about the revolution. He had alienated the sympathy of the aristocratic classes of Chile by his personal vanity and ambition. The oligarchy composed of the great landowners have always been an important factor in the political life of the republic; when President Balmaceda found that he was not a persona grata to this circle he determined to endeavour to govern without their support, and to bring into the administration a set of men who had no traditions and with whom his personality would be all-powerful. ”

“ 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. ”

“ At the opening of the 19th century Chile was a colony whose resources had hardly been touched, with a population of about 500,000 persons, of Spanish and mixed Spanish and Indian blood: a people endowed with the vigour of character bred by a mountainous country and a bracing climate and by a hard struggle for existence, but ignorant through lack of education, shut out by a narrow-minded commercial system from knowledge of the outside world, and destitute of the character-training that free institutions afford.
The national independence of Chile dates from the second decade of the 19th century. ”

“ 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 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 K‘ai-chih says that in painting a certain noble character he must give him a fit background of great peaks and deep ravines. ”

“ In the pagoda alone may be found some trace of a religious imagination such as in Europe made Gothic architecture so full and splendid an expression of the aspiring spirit. The most famous pagoda was the Porcelain Tower of Nanking, destroyed by the T‘aip‘ing rebels in 1854. This was covered with slabs of faience coated with coloured glazes. The ordinary pagoda is built of brick on a stone foundation; it is octagonal with thirteen storeys.
No Chinese buildings show more beauty than some of the graceful stone bridges for which the neighbourhood of Peking has been famous for centuries. ”

“ 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 Chinese express actual dislike for the representation of relief. Whoever compares the painting of Europe with that of Asia (and Chinese painting is the central type for the one continent, as Italian may claim to be for the other) must first understand this contrast of aim. The limitations of the Chinese are great, but these limitations save them from mistaking advances in science for advances in art, and from petty imitation of fact. ”

“ The Manchu dynasty came to the throne as foreign conquerors, nevertheless they base their right to rule, not on the power of the sword, but on divine approval. On this moral ground they claim the obedience of their subjects, and submit themselves to the corresponding obligations. The emperor, unless he has gained the throne by conquest, is selected by his predecessor or by the imperial family in conclave. He is usually a son (but seldom the eldest son) of his predecessor, and need not be the child of the empress-consort,28 though (other things being equal) a son of the empress is preferred. ”

“ In fiscal matters, as for many other purposes, the Chinese empire is an agglomeration of a number of quasi-independent units. 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Even when master of the empire, thirteen years later, he still professed to dislike the idea of assuming the imperial title. His scruples were overcome, and he declared himself emperor in 1368. He carried his arms into Tatary, where he subdued the last semblance of Mongol power in that direction, and then bent his steps towards Liao-tung. Here the Mongols defended themselves with the bravery of despair, but unavailingly, and the conquest of this province left Hung-wu, as the founder of the new or Ming (“Bright”) dynasty styled himself, without a foe in the empire. ”

“ General after general and army after army were despatched from Spain and Peru; Chile was given a government independent of the viceroy of Lima; attack after attack was made on the Indians, their lands were laid waste, and the struggle was conducted with merciless ferocity: all in vain. Settlements and forts were never free from assault and were taken and retaken; if one Indian army was destroyed another took its place, if one toqui was killed another was chosen; when defeated, the Indians retired to their forests, marshes and hills, recruited their forces, and fell on the pursuing Spaniards. ”

“ Society, it appears to have been in the first instance merely a secret association of malcontents chiefly drawn from the lower classes. Whether the empress Tsz‘e Hsi and her Manchu advisers had deliberately set themselves from the beginning to avert the danger by deflecting what might have been a revolutionary movement into anti-foreign channels, or whether with Oriental heedlessness they had allowed it to grow until they were powerless to control it, they had unquestionably resolved to take it under their protection before the foreign representatives at Peking had realized its gravity. ”

“ To the foreign ear, a Chinese sentence spoken slowly with the tones clearly brought out has a certain sing-song effect. If we speak of the tones as a “device” adopted in order to increase the number of vocables, this must be understood rather as a convenient way of explaining their practical function than as a scientific account of their origin. It is absurd to suppose the tones were deliberately invented in order to fit each written character with a separate sound. A tone may be said to be as much an integral part of the word to which it belongs as the sound itself ”

“ All we can do is to reproduce the tradition as it is found in Chinese literature. This tradition, as applying to the very earliest periods, may be nothing more than historical superstition, yet it has its historical importance. 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. ”

“ The act of 1908, following legislation in many parts of the United States and in some of the British colonies, places a penalty on selling tobacco to any person apparently under the age of sixteen, whether for his own use or not. It empowers constables and park keepers to seize tobacco in the possession of any person apparently under sixteen found smoking in any street or public place, as well as to search them; it also empowers a court, of summary jurisdiction to prevent automatic machines for the sale of tobacco being used by young persons. ”

“ The value in sterling of the total imports into China from the United Kingdom long remained nearly constant, but inasmuch as the gold prices were falling the volume of the export was in reality steadily growing. The imports into England, however, of Chinese produce have fallen off, mainly because China tea has been driven out of the English market by the growth of the India and Ceylon tea trade, and also because the bulk of the China silk is now shipped directly to Lyons and other continental ports instead of to London, as formerly was the rule. ”

“ They had been deeply humiliated by the fact that in the struggle between Russia and Japan China had been treated as a negligible quantity, and that the war had been fought on Chinese territory. The lesson which the loot of Peking and the fall of the Boxers in 1900 had half taught was now thoroughly mastered; the awakening of China was complete. The war had shown that when an Eastern race adopted Western methods it was capable of defeating a European nation. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Ethnologically the Chinese are classed among the Mongolian races (in which division the Manchus are also included) , although they present many marked contrasts to the Mongols. The Tatars, Tibetans, Burmese, Shans, Manchu and other races—including the Arab and Japanese—have mingled with the indigenous population to form the Chinese type, while aboriginal tribes still resist the pressure of absorption by the dominant race (see ante, Population) . The Chinese are in fact ethnically a very mixed people, and the pure Mongol type is uncommon among them. ”

“ The fossilized system of examinations for the public service was to be altogether superseded by a new schedule based on foreign learning, for the better promotion of which a number of temples were to be converted into schools for Western education; a state department was to be created for the translation and dissemination of the standard works of Western literature and science; even the scions of the ruling Manchu race were to be compelled to study foreign languages and travel abroad; and last, but not least, all useless offices both in Peking and in the provinces were to be abolished. ”

“ 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 Infant Life Protection Act of 1897 did not apply where only one child was taken, but now by the act of 1908, where a person undertakes for reward the nursing and maintenance of one or more infants under the age of seven years apart from their parents or having no parents, he must give notice in writing to the local authority within forty-eight hours from the reception of the child. If an infant is already in the care of a person without reward and he undertakes to continue the nursing for reward, such undertaking is a reception of the child. ”

“ From October to May the climate of central China is bracing and enjoyable. The rainfall is moderate and regular.
In northern China the inequalities both of temperature and rainfall are greater than in the central provinces. In the province of Chih-li, for example, the heat of summer is as intense as is the cold of winter. In summer the rains often render the plain swampy, while the dry persistent westerly winds of spring create dust storms (experienced in Peking from March to June) . The rainfall is, however, uncertain, and thus the harvests are precarious. ”