Arizona republican., 1900-07-15
THE CHINESE CHARACTER
Not to Be Reckoned With by the
 Western Intelligence.

We know of no national character about which there is so much dispute as that of the Chinese. They have been profoundly studied by able men who have given their lives to the pur- suit, but the result is not a consensus, except upon two points, that they are fncurably conceited and that even among Asiatics they are exceptionally callous. The Chinese are no more moved by human suffering even among their own people than the animals are. No Chinaman cares if a famine breaks out near him, or is shocked if another Chinaman is tortured, or will exert himself against his own interest to pre- vent suffering to any other human be- ing. And no Chinaman ever forgets or questions that he is a member of the supreme civilization of the world-in- deed, of the only one to which. in his Judgment, that great term in it's orig inal meaning can be fittingly applied
 Upon these two points there is no doubt among observers, or was none until the Japanese war shook even Chi ' other there is violent conflict of opin- ion. Some. especially those who judge solely from living among them, hold the Chinese ts hc decidedly - infsrio. people, with a low and cumbrous civil izatiOn, wholly unable to improve, and enduring a distinctly evil rule because they are too imbecile to make it better. The same men, with few exceptions, consider the Chinese towards, believe them to be slaves to singularly feeble superstitions, and think they would be immensely benefited by even inferior European rule. They describe them as vicious in all ways to a degree which in Europe would dissolve society cor rupt in the matter of bribes beyond anything of which the modern world has experience. and, owing to their. de- votion to personal interests, incapable of large combinations. The same ob- servers, when inferior persons, are uni Versally struck with something comic Tn China and it's people-they have the same feeling about animals. the cause in both cases being that there is always something unaccountabie in their ways and this feeling has diffused itself in Europe, producing a contempt which. though sometimes kindly is never toI- erant. In England especially the idea of Chinaman is that of a buffoon in a pigtail who dances, as in TennieTs car toon, because he has cheated a Euro pean ambassador.
 These, however are not the views of those who used a few years ago to be called "Sinologues," the cultivated ex- perts in Chinese literature, history and politics. These men maintain almost with one voice that the Chinese are a great people, with a civilization which was once energetically progressive though it is now arrested, and which still holds fourth of the human race in an orderly cOntentment; that they possess philosophy of their own which, though strangely secularist. sets before them ideal rules of conduct. and which has penetrated deeper than any philosophy has penetrated into any other race, and that the extraordinary difference which Europeans perceive between them and every other people is in part fancy in part result Of peculiar artistic notions, and in part consequence of the civiliza ton having captured even the uncducated, so that there is perpetual and amazing Gs well as amusing contrast between the maxims they profess and the conduct they pursue. IL is as if the roughs of London had been bred to talk like cur