Chinese civilization

“ Ethnological, anthropological, and sociological research has begun for China and her neighbours; thus we are in a position to write with some confidence about the making of China, and about her ethnical development, where formerly we could only grope in the dark. The claim that "the Chinese race" produced the high Chinese civilization entirely by its own efforts, thanks to its special gifts, has become just as untenable as the other theory that immigrants from the West, some conceivably from Europe, carried civilization to the Far East. ”

“ Underneath a mask of complete facial stolidity, the Chinese conceal one of the most exciteable temperaments to be found in any race, as will soon be discovered by watching an ordinary street row between a couple of men, or still better, women. A Chinese crowd of men—women keep away—is a good-tempered and orderly mob, partly because not inflamed by drink, when out to enjoy the Feast of the Lanterns, or to watch the twinkling lamps float down a river to light the wandering ghosts of the drowned on the night of their All Souls' Day, sacred to the memory of the dead ”

“ In later days, that is, since the beginning of our era, undoubtedly much that has been looked upon as the outcrop of Chinese culture is due to the Indo-Aryans. My own conclusion is that in all important elements the ancient Chinese civilization was a home product, a spontaneous growth of an intellectually gifted people, but one whose capacity of development was limited, and that 200 later generations were satisfied to borrow and appropriate from the nations with whom commerce brought them into contact. ”

“ The Chinese in strictly obeying the injunction to walk in the old ways, to conform to the customs of the ancients, have failed to mark out any new footpaths for themselves. Hence their lack of originality, their habit of imitation: hence the unchanging, unprogressive character of Chinese civilization. ”

“ Touching on the problem of culture mixing in China, Laufer writes:
“In opposition to the prevalent opinion of the day, it cannot be emphasized strongly enough on every occasion that Chinese civilization, as it appears now, is not a unit and not the exclusive production of the Chinese, but the final result of the cultural efforts of a vast conglomeration of the most varied tribes, an amalgamation of ideas accumulated from manifold quarters and widely differentiated in space and time; briefly stated, this means China is not a nation, but an empire, a political, but not an ethnical unit. ”

“ The Chinese are one of the strongest races of people in existence. They have only been conquered twice but in both cases they absorbed their conquerors and made Chinese of them. Although old, out of date and slow, they have principles in their civilization that will last as long as time, and China will be a great nation long after some of the so-called great nations now in existence are forgotten. ”

“ The continuity of Chinese civilization depends not alone upon its political virtues, but upon its working effectiveness in all relevant spheres of human activity. In emphasizing certain aspects of old China, it is impossible to trace the entire broad evolution.1 In fact, the emergence of those devices which, along with government in the narrow sense, guided China in her long past dates back to prehistory. ”

“ The culture of China is changing rapidly, and undoubtedly rapid change is needed. The change that has hitherto taken place is traceable ultimately to the military superiority of the West; but in future our economic superiority is likely to be quite as potent. I believe that, if the Chinese are left free to assimilate what they want of our civilization, and to reject what strikes them as bad, they will be able to achieve an organic growth from their own tradition, and to produce a very splendid result, combining our merits with theirs. ”

“ The question has often been asked, but has never found a satisfactory answer, why and how it is that Chinese civilization has persisted through so many centuries, while other civilizations, with equal if not superior claims to permanency, have been broken up and have disappeared from the sites on which they formerly flourished. Egypt may be able to boast of a high level of culture at a remoter date than we can reach through the medium of Chinese records, for all we can honestly claim is that the Chinese were a remarkably civilized nation a thousand years before Christ. ”

“ Yet the Chinese have long had a civilization identical in many of its constituents with our own: civil government, rimed poetry, painting, trousers, wheat and barley, our common domestic animals, bronze and iron, for instance. Since most of these culture elements are wanting in Africa and Oceania, as well as in native America, there is no inherent reason why they should be expectable in China. ”

“ Compare these characteristics with the universal black hair and black eyes of men and women throughout China, exclusive of a rare occasional albino; with the long, flowing, loose robes of officials and of the well-to-do; with their slow and stately walk and their rigid formality of position, either sitting or standing. To the Chinese, their own language seems to be the language of the gods; they know they have possessed it for several thousand years, and they know nothing at all of the barbarian. ”

“ It is certain that anything like a full and sincere observance of the Chinese rules of life would result in a community of human beings far ahead of the "pure men" dreamt of in the philosophy of the Taoists.
As has already been either stated or suggested, the Chinese seem to be actuated by precisely the same motives which actuate other peoples. They delight in the possession of wealth and fame, while fully alive to the transitory nature of both. They long even more for posterity, that the ancestral line may be carried on unbroken. ”

“ Mere education in the science of the west, mere contact with western civilization, commerce, railways, telegraphs, mines, etc., can not be expected and are not calculated to regenerate China, because they have no direct moral or spiritual value, and the Chinese seem never to have been profoundly moved by other than moral and spiritual forces. ”

“ What the youth has been at home, in his habits of thought, in his purpose and spirit, in his manifestation of action, will largely determine his after life. Chinese mental and moral history has so stamped certain ineffaceable marks on the language, and the thought and character of her people, that China will never—even were she so inclined—obliterate her Oriental features, and must always and inevitably remain Chinese. The conflict, however, is not racial, it is a question of civilization. ”

“ Yet this present was addressed in Chinese: "To His Excellency the Great English Devil, Consul X."
The Chinaman may love you, but you are a devil all the same. It is most natural that he should think so. For generation upon generation China was almost completely isolated from the rest of the world. The people of her vast empire grew up under influences unchanged by contact with other peoples. ”

“ The Chinese Empire, which embraces near four hundred million human beings, has existed for five thousand years; yet the countless millions of China, springing up like tropical weeds and sinking back to dreamless dust, have contributed far less to civilization than the twenty thousand Athenians who in the brief Periclean age followed the footsteps of Plato and Socrates. ”

“ And so the ancient civilization of the yellow race has persisted down through the centuries. It is almost forty thousand years since the first important advances were made in Chinese culture, and though there have been many retrogressions, the civilization of the sons of Han comes the nearest of all to presenting an unbroken picture of continual progression right on down to the times of the twentieth century. The mechanical and religious developments of the white races have been of a high order, but they have never excelled the Chinese in family loyalty, group ethics, or personal morality. ”

“ The whole system is now undergoing certain modifications, which, if wisely introduced, should serve only to strengthen the national character. The Confucian teachings, which are of the very highest order of morality, and which have moulded the Chinese people for so many centuries, helping perhaps to give them a cohesion and stability remarkable among the nations of the world, should not be lightly cast aside. ”

“ The Chinese are emphatically not a religious people, though they are very superstitious. Belief in a God has come down from the remotest ages, but the old simple creed has been so overlaid by Buddhism as not to be discernible at the present day. Buddhism is now the dominant religion of China. It is closely bound up with the lives of the people, and is a never-failing refuge in sickness or worldly trouble. It is no longer the subtle doctrine which was originally presented to the people of India, but something much more clearly defined and appreciable by the plainest intellect. ”

“ Her plight is sore to-day. But China has held together longer than any other empire in history. We Chinese never forget, and we do not meekly forgive. Again and again we have seemed to accept innovations, have tried them, have found them unacceptable, and then we have discarded them once and forever. We are in peril now; but the end is not yet. Already the word passes over China, as a breath of summer over the head-heavy poppy fields, ‘Back to Confucius’! And I—I descended from that great sage—I, too, who love China as I did not love your mother—I, too, have betrayed China—and you! ”

“ Thieves of a most dexterous kind, and rogues of every description, are plentiful in China, because she has a swarming population to give them birth,—but they are not numerous enough to affect a general estimate of the national character.”
The imperfections of human language render it a difficult matter to give a description, at once short and correct, of national character. Thus it is both true and false to say that the Chinese possess a high degree of fortitude. ”

“ While on the other side of the globe civilisation has been handed from nation to nation, and a civilised race has become barbarous and a barbarous race civilised, the Chinese, without making any very great advance, have steadily proceeded along a path of progress, and at the present time they possess a very carefully organised system of society. ”

“ The answer, however, is not difficult for those who possess the merest insight into the workings of the Chinese mind; for just as every inhabitant of the eighteen provinces believes China to be the centre of civilisation and power, so does he infer that his language and customs are the only ones worthy of attention from native and barbarian alike. The very antagonism of the few foreign manners and habits he is obliged by his position to cultivate, tend rather to confirm him in his own sense of superiority than otherwise. ”

“ It has a much more difficult task to achieve, and one which, on account of the size of the Empire, is likely to have a far greater importance for the world at large. The Chinese are strongly animated by the spirit of patriotism ”

“ They have a horror of blows, not so much from the pain inflicted, as from the sense of injury done to something more elevated than their mere corporeal frames; and a friend of ours once lost a good servant by merely, in a hasty fit, throwing a sock at him. We therefore think that, considering the vast extent of the Chinese empire and its innumerable population, all of whom are constructed mentally more or less on the same model, their language and customs are deserving of more attention than is generally paid to them by foreigners in China. ”

“ Had even the whole population of China been miraculously converted to Christianity, as suggested by Sir Robert Hart ('Fortnightly Review,' November 1900) , it is not permissible to assume that they would have continued turning the other cheek to so many smiters. If we suppose the case of any Western nation subjected to the experiences through which the Chinese have had to pass at the hands of foreign dictators, the mode in which it would act may afford us some measure by which to gauge the excesses of the Chinese. ”

“ Never doubting that it is our first duty as a Christian nation to disseminate those truths that come from an inspired source, why should we, under the influence of a false sympathy, strive to do for the Chinese what so many of our own people yet require. The Chinese have an advantage over many of our lower classes; they are intelligent and reflective, and have Confucian maxims daily brought even in the highways before their notice, that enjoin most of the social duties that render man’s life more in accordance with the Divine wish. ”

“ And we may here remark that the number of a people and the size of its territory have absolutely no bearing on the estimate which we ought to form of its character. Who would say that the Chinese are the most interesting and commendable nation on the surface of the globe? They are certainly the most ancient and most populous; their code of precise and formal morality is the most exact and clear that philosophers could ever dictate, and succeed in giving as law to a great people. ”

“ The rules for private and public life, the social and political institutions of China, handed down from age to age, surviving dynastic overthrows and popular convulsions, have exercised a great and lasting influence not only on the people which lived in the fostering shade of the Son of Heaven, but also on the tribes and nations not blessed to dwell within the circle of his potent virtue but beyond the limits of the Flowery Land. In its own sphere, which is not a small one, the Chinese nation has done much, though not unmixed good. ”