Washington standard. [volume] (Olympia, Wash. Territory) 1860-1921, 1886-08-06

hAclal PrOcl1vltleS as Factors in Develop
ment of Chinese Character Solidity of
Chinese Religious Observances, Social
Customs and Political InslitutiOns-Co-
operation in China-PrOgress in China
Slow but Positive Development Re-
stricted to Certain Lines Chinese Dip
Chinese Chala"ter-Absence of Ideality
in the Chinese Intellect.
II.
we may now pass to more COM
plex phase of the inquiry; that in
which racial proclivities are added to
physical conditions as factors in the
development of Chinese character, and
of the elements, good or bad, of Chi
nese power. And in this we should
trace the induration Of native endow-
ments by the reiterated effect, through
four thousand years, of moral and in
lectual laws, as We have sought to
trace the results of physical condi-
tions upon those of their institution
more directly acted upon by the
moulding action of subjective in
fuences. The process is perhaps
more difficult in the one case than in
the other, because we must Judge of
character by its manifestations, while
the facts of the physical world lie upon
the surface. But it is not necessarily
more obscure in its inductiOns or un-
certain in its results. In the pursuit
Of this branch of our study We may
learn that current Caucasian public
opinion has underrated the strength
and astuteness of the Chinese intellect,
and has overrated any other claim
which China may have to the favor
able consideration of Caucasion COM
munities. We may find, if / mistake
not, that the Chinese character is
strong not only in its positive but in
its negative elements; that the very
absence of those finer and higher
qualities, which are with us believed
to be essential to enlightened commun-
tiles, has given, and will continue to
give, a preponderating power to the
Chinese in all that relates to merely
material success; in brief, that their
civilization bears the same relation to
that of Europe and America that the
proverbial iron pot bore to the flask
of porcelain as the two in contact
floated down the stream.
We have already seen that the in
dustries of China were self-evolved |;
sprang from no foreign source, and
were unaffected by any external
agency. This carries with it the con-
viction that the intellectual type must
have been developed in like manner,
for the same conditions which exclude
the idea of any subjective force in the
formation Of industries necessarily ex-
clude any corresponding idea as to the
formation, development, or progress
of the racial mind. That this is the
case is also shown by the fact that the
governmental, social and religious in
stitutions are simply an extension of
those which control the family in the
earliest stages of society. This can be
traced in the constitution of the Chi
nese Empire as clearly and certainly
as the banyan tree, spreading its con-
nected trunks over many acres can be
traced to the solitary stem from which
it originally sprang. The Emperor
stands as paterfamilias to all his peo-
pie; the governors of the eighteen
provinces are in the same relation to
those below them, and so on, through
all the grades or authority, down to
the family over which the father exer-
cises absolute control. The social du-
ties have for their essential foundation,
first, reverence for the head of the
family, and second, reverence for the
paternal authority embodied in the
officers of the law. Religion, although
tolerated in almost all its forms by the
state, is with the Chinese, little else
than the worship of ancestors, not
withstanding that their mythology is
full of gods,-some of them mortals
who died within historic times, and
others merely the evils which they
dread, for to them even the smallpox
is an object of alteration. In the
dwellings, of the great mandarians are
sanctuaries sacred to the burning of
perfumes, the presentations of offer
ings, and the making of prostrations
to the memories of their forefathers,
and for communication with the spirits
of the dead. The poorest laborer,
crowded with score of others in q
single room of a mud-built dwelling,
has, in a corner of his lodgment, a
shelf sacred to the same purpose.
Sacrilege itself is defined by the Book
of Rites as disrespect to ones progen-
itors. This, strange and puerile as it
may seem to us, becomes almost grand
in view of its depth and intensity. 1t
shows how far, after all, the emotional
nature of man is superior to external
surroundings. For this worship,
which dominates China to-day as it has
done for thousands of years, is but the
survival, developed and intensified, of
the awe with which the earliest Scy-
thians, impressed with the fearful mys-
terry of death, heard the voices OF the
departed in the storms Of the noun
tain valleys or the rustic of the wind