[33]"Disciple.Then, sir, one may hold that God is 'with form.' But surely He is not the earthen image that is worshipped!"Master.But, my dear sir, why should you call it an earthen image? Surely the Image Divine is made of the Spirit!"The disciple cannot follow this. He goes on: But is it not one's duty, sir, to make it clear to those who worship images that God is not the same as the clay form they worship, and that in worshipping they should keep God Himself in view and not the clay images?* * * * * * *"Master.You talk of 'images made of clay.' Well, there often comes a necessity of worshipping even such images as these. God Himself has provided these various forms of worship. The Lord has done all this—to suit different men in different stages of knowledge."The mother so arranges the food for her children that every one gets what agrees with him. Suppose she has five children. Having a fish to cook, she makes different dishes out of it. She can give each one of the children what suits him exactly. One gets richpolowwith the fish, while she gives only a little soup to another who is of weak digestion; she makes a sauce of sour tamarind for the third, fries the fish for the fourth, and so on, exactly as it happens to agree with the stomach. Don't you see?"Disciple.Yes, sir, now I do. The Lord is to be worshipped in the image of clay as a spirit by the beginner. The devotee, as he advances, may worship Him independently of the image."Master.Yes. And again, when he sees God he realises that everything—image and all—is a manifestation of the Spirit. To him the image is made of Spirit—not of clay. God is a Spirit."
[33]"Disciple.Then, sir, one may hold that God is 'with form.' But surely He is not the earthen image that is worshipped!
"Master.But, my dear sir, why should you call it an earthen image? Surely the Image Divine is made of the Spirit!
"The disciple cannot follow this. He goes on: But is it not one's duty, sir, to make it clear to those who worship images that God is not the same as the clay form they worship, and that in worshipping they should keep God Himself in view and not the clay images?
* * * * * * *
"Master.You talk of 'images made of clay.' Well, there often comes a necessity of worshipping even such images as these. God Himself has provided these various forms of worship. The Lord has done all this—to suit different men in different stages of knowledge.
"The mother so arranges the food for her children that every one gets what agrees with him. Suppose she has five children. Having a fish to cook, she makes different dishes out of it. She can give each one of the children what suits him exactly. One gets richpolowwith the fish, while she gives only a little soup to another who is of weak digestion; she makes a sauce of sour tamarind for the third, fries the fish for the fourth, and so on, exactly as it happens to agree with the stomach. Don't you see?
"Disciple.Yes, sir, now I do. The Lord is to be worshipped in the image of clay as a spirit by the beginner. The devotee, as he advances, may worship Him independently of the image.
"Master.Yes. And again, when he sees God he realises that everything—image and all—is a manifestation of the Spirit. To him the image is made of Spirit—not of clay. God is a Spirit."
As I read this, I remembered the answer invariably given to me when I asked about Hindu idolatry. The people, I was told, even the humblest and most ignorant, worshipped not the idol but what it symbolised. Actually, this hideous Kali stood to them for the Divine Mother. And I was told of an old woman, racked with rheumatism, who had determined at last to seek relief from the goddess. She returned with radiant face. She had seen the Mother! And she had no more rheumatism. In this popular religion, it would seem, the old cosmic elements have dropped out, and the human only persist. So that even the terrifying form of Shiva, the Destroyer, stands only for the divine husband of Parvati, the divine wife. Hinduism, I admitted, is not as inhuman and superstitious as it looks. But I admitted it reluctantly and with many reserves, remembering all I had seen and heard of obscene rites and sculptures, of the perpetual repetition of the names of God, of parasitic Brahmins and self-torturing ascetics.
What manner of man, then, was this Sri Ramakrishna? I turned the pages and read:
"The disciples were walking about the garden. M. walked by himself at the cluster of five trees. It is about five in the afternoon. Coming back to the verandah, north of the Master's chamber, M. comes upon a strange sight. The Master is standing still. Narendra is singing a hymn. He and three or four other disciples are standing with the Master in their midst. M. is charmed with their song. Never in his life has he heard a sweeter voice. Looking at the Master, M. marvels and becomes speechless. The Master stands motionless. His eyes are fixed. It is hard to say whether he is breathing or not. This state of ecstasy, says a disciple in low tones, is called Samadhi. M. has never seen or heard of anything like this. He thinks to himself, 'Is it possible that the thought of God can make a man forget the world? How great must be his faith and love for God who is thrown into such a state!'"
"The disciples were walking about the garden. M. walked by himself at the cluster of five trees. It is about five in the afternoon. Coming back to the verandah, north of the Master's chamber, M. comes upon a strange sight. The Master is standing still. Narendra is singing a hymn. He and three or four other disciples are standing with the Master in their midst. M. is charmed with their song. Never in his life has he heard a sweeter voice. Looking at the Master, M. marvels and becomes speechless. The Master stands motionless. His eyes are fixed. It is hard to say whether he is breathing or not. This state of ecstasy, says a disciple in low tones, is called Samadhi. M. has never seen or heard of anything like this. He thinks to himself, 'Is it possible that the thought of God can make a man forget the world? How great must be his faith and love for God who is thrown into such a state!'"
"Yes," I said, "that is the Hindu ideal—ecstatic contemplation." Something in me leapt to approve it; but the stronger pull was to Hellenism and the West. "Go your way, Ramakrishna," I said, "but your way is not mine. For me and my kind action not meditation; the temporal not the eternal; the human not the ultra-divine; Socrates not Ramakrishna!" But hardly had I said the words when I read on:
[36]"M. enters. Looking at him the Master laughs and laughs. He cries out, 'Why, look! There he is again!' The boys all join in the merriment. M. takes his seat, and the Master tells Narendra and the other disciples what has made him laugh. He says:"'Once upon a time a small quantity of opium was given to a certain peacock at four o'clock in the afternoon. Well, punctually at four the next afternoon who should come in but the selfsame peacock, longing for a repetition of the favour—another dose of opium!'—(Laughter.)"M. sat watching the Master as he amused himself with the boys. He kept up a running fire of chaff, and it seemed as if these boys were his own age and he was playing with them. Peals of laughter and brilliant flashes of humour follow upon one another, calling to mind the image of a fair when the Joy of the World is to be had for sale."
[36]"M. enters. Looking at him the Master laughs and laughs. He cries out, 'Why, look! There he is again!' The boys all join in the merriment. M. takes his seat, and the Master tells Narendra and the other disciples what has made him laugh. He says:
"'Once upon a time a small quantity of opium was given to a certain peacock at four o'clock in the afternoon. Well, punctually at four the next afternoon who should come in but the selfsame peacock, longing for a repetition of the favour—another dose of opium!'—(Laughter.)
"M. sat watching the Master as he amused himself with the boys. He kept up a running fire of chaff, and it seemed as if these boys were his own age and he was playing with them. Peals of laughter and brilliant flashes of humour follow upon one another, calling to mind the image of a fair when the Joy of the World is to be had for sale."
I rubbed my eyes. Was this India or Athens? Is East East? Is West West? Are there any opposites that exclude one another? Or is this all-comprehensive Hinduism, this universal toleration, this refusal to recognise ultimate antagonisms, this "mush," in a word, as my friends would dub it—is this, after all, the truest and profoundest vision?
And I read in my book:
[37]"M.'s egotism is now completely crushed. He thinks to himself: What this God-man says is indeed perfectly true. What business have I to go about preaching to others? Have I myself known God? Do I love God? About God I know nothing. It would indeed be the height of folly and vulgarity itself, of which I should be ashamed, to think of teaching others! This is not mathematics, or history, or literature; it is the science of God! Yes, I see the force of the words of this holy man."
[37]"M.'s egotism is now completely crushed. He thinks to himself: What this God-man says is indeed perfectly true. What business have I to go about preaching to others? Have I myself known God? Do I love God? About God I know nothing. It would indeed be the height of folly and vulgarity itself, of which I should be ashamed, to think of teaching others! This is not mathematics, or history, or literature; it is the science of God! Yes, I see the force of the words of this holy man."
Footnotes:[2]Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna.Second Edition. Part 1. Madras: Published by the Ramakrishna Mission. 1912.
Footnotes:
[2]Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna.Second Edition. Part 1. Madras: Published by the Ramakrishna Mission. 1912.
[2]Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna.Second Edition. Part 1. Madras: Published by the Ramakrishna Mission. 1912.
Here at Cape Comorin, at India's southernmost point, among the sands and the cactuses and the palms rattling in the breeze, comes to us news of the Franchise Bill and of militant suffragettes. And I reflect that in this respect England is a "backward" country and Travancore an "advanced" one. Women here—except the Brahmin women—are, and always have been, politically and socially on an equality and more than an equality with men. For this is one of the few civilised States—for aught I know it is the only one—in which "matriarchy" still prevails. That doesn't mean—though the word suggests it—that women govern, though, in fact, the succession to the throne passes to women equally with men. But it means that woman is the head of the family, and that property follows her line, not the man's. All women own property equally with men, and own it in their own right. The mother's property passes to her children, but the father's passes to his mother's kin. The husband, in fact, is not regardedas related to the wife. Relationship means descent from a common mother, whereas descent from a common father is a negligible fact, no doubt because formerly it was a questionable one. Women administer their own property, and, as I am informed, administer it more prudently than the men.
Not only so; they have in marriage the superior position occupied by men in the West. The Nair woman chooses her own husband; he comes to her house, she does not go to his; and, till recently, she could dismiss him as soon as she was tired of him. The law—man-made, no doubt!—has recently altered this, and now mutual consent is required for a valid divorce. Still the woman is, at least on this point, on an equality with the man. And the heavens have not yet fallen. As to the vote, it is not so important or so general here as at home. The people live under a paternal monarchy "by right divine." The Rajah who consolidated the kingdom, early in the eighteenth century, handed it over formally to the god of the temple, and administers it in his name. Incidentally this gave him access to temple revenues. It also makes his person sacred. So much so that in a recent prison riot, when the convicts escaped and marched to the police with their grievances, the Rajah had only to appear and tell them to march back to prison, and they did so to a man, and took their punishment. The government, it will be seen, is not by votes. Still thereare votes for local councils, and women have them equally with men. Any other arrangement would have seemed merely preposterous to the Nairs; and perhaps if any exclusion had been contemplated it would have been of men rather than of women.
Other incidental results follow from the equality of the sexes. The early marriages which are the curse of India do not prevail among the Nairs. Consequently the schooling of girls is continued later. And this State holds the record in all India for female education. We visited a school of over 600 girls, ranging from infancy to college age, and certainly I never saw school-girls look happier, keener, or more alive. Society, clearly, has not gone to pieces under "the monstrous regimen of women." Travancore claims, probably with justice, to be the premier native State; the most advanced, the most prosperous, the most happy. Because of the position of women? Well, hardly. The climate is delightful, the soil fertile, the natural resources considerable. Every man sits under his own palm tree, and famine is unknown. The people, and especially the children, are noticeably gay, in a land where gaiety is not common. But one need not be a suffragette to hold that the equality of the sexes is one element that contributes to its well-being, and to feel that in this respect England lags far behind Travancore.
Echoes of the suffrage controversy at home have ledme to dwell upon this matter of the position of women. But, to be candid, it will not be that that lingers in my mind when I look back upon my sojourn here. What then? Perhaps a sea of palm leaves, viewed from the lighthouse top, stretching beside the sea of blue waves; perhaps a sandy river bed, with brown nude figures washing clothes in the shining pools; perhaps the oiled and golden skins glistening in the sun; perhaps naked children astride on their mothers' hips, or screaming with laughter as they race the motor-car; perhaps the huge tusked elephant that barred our way for a moment yesterday; perhaps the jungle teeming with hidden and menacing life; perhaps the seashore and its tumbling waves. One studies institutions, but one does not love them. Often one must wish that they did not exist, or existed in such perfection that their existence might be unperceived. Still, as institutions go, this, which regulates the relations of men and women, is, I suppose, the most important. So from the surf of the Arabian sea and the blaze of the Indian sun I send this little object lesson.
To the north the cone of a volcano, rising sharp and black. To the east another. South and west a jagged chain of hills. In the foreground ricefields and cocoa palms. Everywhere intense green, untoned by grey; and in the midst of it this strange erection. Seen from below and from a distance it looks like a pyramid that has been pressed flat. In fact, it is a series of terraces built round a low hill. Six of them are rectangular; then come three that are circular; and on the highest of these is a solid dome, crowned by a cube and a spire. Round the circular terraces are set, close together, similar domes, but hollow, and pierced with lights, through which is seen in each a seated Buddha. Seated Buddhas, too, line the tops of the parapets that run round the lower terraces. And these parapets are covered with sculpture in high relief. One might fancy oneself walking round one of the ledges of Dante's "Purgatorio" meditating instruction on the walls. Here the instruction wouldbe for the selfish and the cruel. For what is inscribed is the legend and cult of the lord of tenderness. Much of it remains undeciphered and unexplained. But on the second terrace is recorded, on one side, the life of Sakya-Muni; on the other, his previous incarnations. The latter, taken from the "Jatakas," are naïve and charming apologues.
For example: Once the Buddha lived upon earth as a hare. In order to test him Indra came down from heaven in the guise of a traveller. Exhausted and faint, he asked the animals for help. An otter brought fish, a monkey fruit, a jackal a cup of milk. But the hare had nothing to give. So he threw himself into a fire, that the wanderer might eat his roasted flesh. Again: Once the Buddha lived upon earth as an elephant. He was met by seven hundred travellers, lost and exhausted with hunger. He told them where water would be found, and, near it, the body of an elephant for food. Then, hastening to the spot, he flung himself over a precipice, that he might provide the meal himself. Again: Once the Buddha lived upon earth as a stag. A king, who was hunting him, fell into a ravine. Whereupon the stag halted, descended, and helped him home. All round the outer wall run these pictured lessons. And opposite is shown the story of Sakya-Muni himself. We see the new-born child with his feet on lotuses. We see the fatal encounter with poverty, sickness, and death. We see therenunciation, the sojourn in the wilderness, the attainment under the bo-tree, the preaching of the Truth. And all this sculptured gospel seems to bring home to one, better than the volumes of the learned, what Buddhism really meant to the masses of its followers. It meant, surely, not the denial of the soul or of God, but that warm impulse of pity and love that beats still in these tender and human pictures. It meant not the hope or desire for extinction, but the charming dream of thousands of lives, past and to come, in many forms, many conditions, many diverse fates. The pessimism of the master is as little likely as his high philosophy to have reached the mind or the heart of the people. The whole history of Buddhism, indeed, shows that it did not, and does not. What touched them in him was the saint and the lover of animals and men. And this love it was that flowed in streams over the world, leaving wherever it passed, in literature and art, in pictures of flowers or mountains, in fables and poems and tales, the trace of its warm and humanising flood.
Still, there is the other Buddhism, the Buddhism of the thinker; his theory of human life, its value and purpose. And it was this that filled my mind later as I sat on the summit next to a solemn Buddha against the setting sun. For a long time I was silent, meditating his doctrine. Then I spoke of children, and he said, "They grow old." I spoke of strong men, andhe said, "They grow weak." I spoke of their work and achievement, and he said, "They die." The stars came out, and I spoke of eternal law. He said, "One law concerns you—that which binds you to the wheel of life." The moon rose, and I spoke of beauty. He said, "There is one beauty—that of a soul redeemed from desire." Thereupon the West stirred in me, and cried "No!" "Desire," it said, "is the heart and essence of the world. It needs not and craves not extinction. It needs and craves perfection. Youth passes; strength passes; life passes. Yes! What of it? We have access to the youth, the strength, the life of the world. Man is born to sorrow. Yes! But he feels it as tragedy and redeems it. Not round life, not outside life, but through life is the way. Desire more and more intense, because more and more pure; not peace, but the plenitude of experience. Your foundation was false. You thought man wanted rest. He does not. We at least do not, we of the West. We want more labour; we want more stress; we want more passion. Pain we accept, for it stings us into life. Strife we accept, for it hardens us to strength We believe in action; we believe in desire. And we believe that by them we shall attain." So the West broke out in me; and I looked at him to see if he was moved. But the calm eye was untroubled, unruffled the majestic brow, unperplexed the sweet, solemn mouth. Secure in his Nirvana, he heard or heheard me not. He had attained the life-in-death he sought. But I, I had not attained the life in life. Unhelped by him, I must go my way. The East, perhaps, he had understood. He had not understood the West.
It seems to be a principle among shipping companies so to arrange their connections that the traveller should be compelled to spend some days in Singapore. We evaded this necessity by taking a trip to Sumatra, but even so a day and a night remained to be disposed of. We devoted the morning to a bathe and a lunch at the Sea View Hotel, and the afternoon to the Botanical Gardens, where the most attractive flowers are the children and the most interesting gardeners their Chinese nurses. There remained the evening, and we asked about amusements. There was a bioscope, of course; there is always a bioscope; we had found one even in the tiny town of Medan, in Sumatra. There was also an opera company, performing the "Pink Girl." We seemed to know all about her without going to see her. Was there nothing else? Yes; a Malay theatre. That sounded attractive. So we took the tram through the Chinese quarter, among the "Ah Sins" and "Hup Chows," where every one was either a tailor or a washerman, and got down at a row of redlights. This was the Alexandra Hall, and a bill informed us that the performers were the Straits Opera Company. This dismayed us a little. Still, we paid our dollars, and entered a dingy, dirty room, with a few Malays occupying the back benches and a small group of Chinese women and children in either balcony. We took our seats with half a dozen coloured aristocrats in the front rows, and looked about us. We were the only Europeans. But, to console us in our isolation, on either side of the proscenium was painted a couple of Italians in the act of embracing as one only embraces in opera. We glanced at our programme and saw that the play was the "Moon Princess," and that Afrid, a genie, figured in the cast. It was then, at least, Oriental, though it could hardly be Malay, and our spirits rose. But the orchestra quickly damped them; there was a piano, a violin, a 'cello, a clarionet, and a cornet, and from beginning to end of the performance they were never in tune with themselves or with the singers. And the music? It was sometimes Italian, sometimes Spanish, never, as far as I could detect, Oriental, and always thoroughly and frankly bad.
No matter! The curtain rose and displayed a garden. The Prince entered. He was dressed in mediæval Italian costume (a style of dress, be it said once for all, which was adopted by the whole company). With gestures of ecstatic astonishment he applied his nose to the paper roses. Then he advanced and appearedto sing, for his mouth moved; but the orchestra drowned any notes he may have emitted. The song finished, he lay down upon a couch and slept. Whereupon there entered an ugly little girl, in a short white frock and black stockings and ribbons, with an expression of fixed gloom upon her face, and began to move her feet and arms in a parody of Oriental dancing. We thought at first that she was the Moon Princess, and felt a pang of disappointment. But she turned out to be the Spirit of Dreams; and presently she ushered in the real Princess, with whom, on the spot, the Prince, unlike ourselves, became violently enamoured. She vanished, and he woke to find her a vision. Despair of the Prince; despair of the King; despair of the Queen, not unmixed with rage, to judge from her voice and gestures. Consultation of an astrologer. Flight of the Prince in search of his beloved. Universal bewilderment and incompetence, such as may be witnessed any day in the East when anything happens at all out of the ordinary way. At this point enter the comic relief, in the form of woodcutters. I am inclined to suppose, from the delight of the audience, that there was something genuine here. But whatever it was we were unable to follow it. Eventually the woodcutters met Afrid, whether by chance or design I could not discover. At any rate, their reception was rough. To borrow the words of the synopsis, "a big fight arose and they were thrown to space"; but not till they hadbeen pulled by the hair and ears, throttled and pummelled, to the general satisfaction, for something like half an hour.
The next scenes were equally vigorous. The synopsis describes them thus: "Several young princes went to Genie Janar, the father of the Moon Princess, to demand her in marriage. Afrid, a genie, met the princes, and, after having a row, they were all thrown away." The row was peculiar. Afrid took them on one by one. The combatants walked round one another, back to back, making feints in the air. Then the Prince got a blow in, which Afrid pretended to feel. But suddenly, with a hoarse laugh, he rushed again upon the foe, seized him by the throat or the arm, and (I cannot improve on the phrase) "threw him away." After all four princes were thus disposed of I left, being assured of a happy ending by the account of the concluding scene: "The Prince then took the Moon Princess to his father's kingdom, where he was married to her amidst great rejoicings."
Comment perhaps is superfluous. But as I went home in my rickshaw my mind went back to those evenings in India when I had seen Indian boys perform to Indian music dances and plays in honour of Krishna, and to the Bengal village where the assembled inhabitants had sung us hymns composed by their native saint. And I remembered that everywhere, in Egypt, in India, in Java, in Sumatra, in Japan, thegramophone harmonium is displacing the native instruments; and that the bioscope—that great instrument of education—is familiarising the peasants of the East with all that is most vulgar and most shoddy in the humour and sentiment of the West.
The Westernising of the East must come, no doubt, and ought to come. But in the process what by-products of waste, or worse! Once, surely, there must have been a genuine "Malay theatre." This is what Europe has made of it.
Some recent travellers have expressed disappointment or even disgust with what they saw or learned or guessed of China. My own first impression is quite contrary. The climate, it is true, for the moment, inclines one to gloomy views. An icy wind, a black sky, a cold drizzle. March in England could hardly do worse. But in Canton one almost forgets all that. Imagine a maze of narrow streets, more confused and confusing than Venice; high houses (except in the old city); and hanging parallel to these, in long, vertical lines, flags and wooden signs inscribed with huge Chinese characters, gold on black, gold on red, red or blue on white, a blaze of colour; and under it, pouring in a ceaseless stream, yellow faces, black heads, blue jackets and trousers, all on foot or borne on chairs, not a cart or carriage, rarely a pony, nobody crowding, nobody hustling or jostling, an even flow of cheerful humanity, inexhaustible, imperturbable, convincing one at first sight of the truth of all one has heard of the order, independence, and vigour of this extraordinary people.The shops are high and spacious, level with the street, not, as in India, raised on little platforms; and commonly, within, they are cut across by a kind of arch elaborately carved and blazing with gold. Every trade may be seen plying—jade-cutters, cloth-rollers, weavers, ring-makers, rice-pounders, a thousand others. Whole animals, roasted, hang before the butchers' shops, ducks, pigs—even we saw a skinned tiger! The interest is inexhaustible; and one is lucky if one does not return with a light purse and a heavy burden of forged curios. Even the American tourist, so painfully in evidence at the hotel, is lost, drowned in this native sea. He passes in his chair; but, like oneself, he is only a drop in the ocean. Canton is China, as Benares is India. And that conjunction of ideas set me thinking. To come from India to China is like waking from a dream. Often in India I felt that I was in an enchanted land. Melancholy, monotony, austerity; a sense as of perennial frost, spite of the light and heat; a lost region peopled with visionary forms; a purgatory of souls doing penance till the hour of deliverance shall strike; a limbo, lovely but phantasmal, unearthly, over-earthly—that is the kind of impression India left on my mind. I reach China, awake, and rub my eyes. This, of course, is the real world. This is every-day. Good temper, industry, intelligence. Nothing abnormal or overstrained. The natural man, working, marrying, begetting and rearing children, growing middle-aged,growing old, dying—and that is all. Here it is broad daylight; but in India, moon or stars, or a subtler gleam from some higher heaven. Recall, for example, Benares—the fantastic buildings rising and falling like a sea, the stairs running up to infinity, the sacred river, the sages meditating on its banks, the sacrificial ablutions, the squealing temple-pipes, and, in the midst of this, columns of smoke, as the body returns to the elements and the soul to God. This way of disposing of the dead, when the first shock is over, lingers in the mind as something eminently religious. Death and dissolution take place in the midst of life, for death is no more a mystery than life. In the open air, in the press of men, the soul takes flight. She is no stranger, for everything is soul—houses, trees, men, the elements into which the body is resolved. Death is not annihilation, it is change of form; and through all changes of form the essence persists.
But now turn back to Canton. We pass the shops of the coffin-makers. We linger. But "No stop," says our guide; "better coffins soon." "Soon" is what the guide-books call the "City of the Dead." A number of little chapels; and laid in each a great lacquered coffin in which the dead man lives. I say "lives" advisedly, for there is set for his use a table and a chair, and every morning he is provided with a cup of tea. A bunch of paper, yellow and white, symbolises his money; and perhaps a couple of figures representattendants. There he lives, quite simply and naturally as he had always lived, until the proper time and place is discovered in which he may be buried. It may be months, it may be, or rather, might have been, years; for I am told that a reforming Government has limited the time to six months. And after burial? Why, presumably he lives still. But not with the life of the universal soul. Oh no! There have been mystics in China, but the Chinese are not mystical. What he was he still is, an eating and drinking creature, and, one might even conjecture, a snob. For if one visits the family chapel of the Changs—another of the sights of Canton—one sees ranged round the walls hundreds of little tablets, painted green and inscribed in gold. These are the memorials of the deceased. And they are arranged in three classes, those who pay most being in the first and those who pay least in the third. One can even reserve one's place—first, second, or third—while one is still alive, by a white tablet. You die, and the green is substituted. And so, while you yet live, you may secure your social status after death. How—how British! Yes, the word is out; and I venture to record a suspicion that has long been maturing in my mind. The Chinese are not only Western; among the Western they are English. Their minds move as ours do; they are practical, sensible, reasonable. And that is why—as it would seem—they have more sympathy with Englishmen, if not with the English Government, thanwith any other Westerners. East may be East and West West, though I very much doubt it. But if there be any truth in the aphorism, we must define our terms. The East must be confined to India, and China included in the West. That as a preliminary correction. I say nothing yet about Japan. But I shall have more to say, I hope, about China.
The Chinese, one is still told, cannot and will not change. On the other hand, Professor Ross writes a book entitledThe Changing Chinese. And anyone may see that the Chinese educated abroad are transformed, at any rate externally, out of all recognition. In Canton I met some of the officials of the new Government; and found them, to the outward sense, pure Americans. The dress, the manners, the accent, the intellectual outfit—all complete! Whether, in some mysterious sense, they remain Chinese at the core I do not presume to affirm or deny. But an external transformation so complete must implysomeinward change. Foreign residents in China deplore the foreign-educated product. I have met some who almost gnash their teeth at "young China." But this seems rather hard on China. For nearly a century foreigners have been exhorting her, at the point of the bayonet, to adopt Western ways and Western ideas. And when she begins to do so, the same people turn round and accuse her of unpardonable levity, and treachery to her owntraditions. Whatdoforeigners want? the Chinese may well ask. I am afraid the true answer is, that they want nothing but concessions, interest on loans, and trade profits, at all and every cost to China.
But I must not deviate into politics. What suggested this train of thought was the student-guide supplied me at Nanking by the American missionary college. There he was, complete American; and, I fear I must add, boring as only Americans can bore. Still, he showed me Nanking, and Nanking is worth seeing, though the interest of it is somewhat tragic. A wall 20 to 40 feet thick, 40 to 90 feet high, and 22 miles in circuit (I take these figures on trust) encloses an area larger than that of any other Chinese city. But the greater part of this area is fields and ruins. You pass through the city gate in the train, and find yourself in the country. You alight, and you are still in the country. A carriage takes you, in time, to the squalid village, or series of villages, where are housed the 350,000 inhabitants of modern Nanking. Among them are quartered the khaki-clad soldiers of new China, the new national flag draped at the gate of their barracks. Meantime old China swarms, unregenerate, in the narrow little streets, chaffering, chattering, laughing in its rags as though there had never been a siege, a surrender, and a revolution. Beggars display their stumps and their sores, grovelling on the ground like brutes. Ragged children run for miles beside the carriage, singing foralms; and stop at last, laughing, as though it had been a good joke to run so far and get nothing for it. One monument in all this scene of squalor arrests attention—the now disused examination hall. It is a kind of rabbit-warren of tiny cells, six feet deep, four feet broad, and six feet high; row upon row of them, opening on narrow unroofed corridors; no doors now, nor, I should suppose, at any time, for it would be impossible to breathe in these boxes if they had lids. Here, for a week or a fortnight, the candidates sat and excogitated, unable to lie down at night, sleeping, if they could, in their chairs. And no wonder if, every now and again, one of them incontinently died and was hauled out, a corpse, through a hole in the wall; or went mad and ran amuck among examiners and examinees. For centuries, as is well known, this system selected the rulers of China; and whole lives, from boyhood to extreme old age, were spent in preparing for the examinations. Now all this is abolished; and some people appear to regret it. Once more, whatdothe foreigners want?
The old imperial city, where once the Ming dynasty reigned, was destroyed in the Taiping Rebellion. The Tartar city, where before the revolution 3000 mandarins lived on their pensions, was burnt in the siege of 1911. Of these cities nothing remains but their huge walls and gates and the ruins of their houses. The principal interest of Nanking, the so-called "Ming tombs," lies outside the walls. And the interest is not the tombs,but the road to them. It is lined by huge figures carved out of monoliths. Brutes first—lions, camels, elephants, horses, a pair of each lying down and a pair standing; then human figures, military and civil officers. What they symbolise I cannot tell. They are said to guard the road. And very impressive they are in the solitude. Not so what they lead to, which is merely a hill, artificial, I suppose, piled on a foundation of stone. Once, my guide informed me, there was a door giving admission; and within, a complete house, with all its furniture, in stone. But the door is sealed, and for centuries no one has explored the interior. I suggested excavation, but was told the superstition of the inhabitants forbade it. "Besides," said my guide, "the Chinese are not curious." I wonder? Whether or no they are curious, they are certainly superstitious. Apropos, a gunboat ran aground on the Yangtse. The river was falling, and there seemed no chance of getting off for months. The officers made up their minds to it, and fraternised with the priest of a temple on the bank. The priest one day asked for a photograph of the boat. They gave him one, and he asked them to dinner. After dinner he solemnly burnt the photograph to his god. And—"would you believe it?"—next day a freshet came down and set the vessel afloat. Which shows how superstitions are generated and maintained in a world so little subject to law, on the surface of it, as ours.
My anecdote has brought me to the Yangtse, and it is on a river-boat that I write. Hour after hour there passes by the panorama of hills and plain, of green wheat and yellow rape, of the great flood with its flocks of wild duck, of fishers' cabins on the shore and mud-built thatched huts, of junks with bamboo-threaded sails skimming on flat bottoms, of high cliffs with monasteries perched on perilous ledges, of changing light and shade, of burning sunset and the stars. Travelling by river is the best of all travelling—smooth, slow, quiet, and soothingly contemplative. All China, I am informed by some pessimists, is in a state of anarchy, actual or latent. It may be. But it is difficult to believe it among these primitive industrious people living and working as they have lived and worked for 4000 years. Any other country, I suppose, in such a crisis as the present would be seething with civil war. But China? When one puts the point to the foreigner who has been talking of anarchy he says, "Ah! but the Chinese are so peaceable! They don't mind whether there's a Government or no. They just go on without it!" Exactly! That is the wonderful thing. But even that seems to annoy the foreigner. Once more, whatdoeshe want? I give it up.
At the upper end of the gorge poetically named "Ox Liver and Horse Lungs" I watched the steamboat smoking and splashing up stream. She had traversed in a few hours the distance I, in my houseboat, had taken three days to cover; and certainly she is much more convenient and much more comfortable. That, however, is not necessarily an advantage. What may be urged with some force is that travelling by steamboat is more humane. It dispenses with human labour of a peculiarly dangerous and strenuous kind. Twenty-eight boatmen are attached to my single person. A big junk may have a crew of two hundred. When the wind is not fair they must row or tow; and towing is not like towing along the Thames! Suddenly you see the men leap out and swarm up a precipice. Presently they appear high above, creeping with the line along a ledge of rock. And your "boy" remarks nonchalantly, "Plenty coolie fall here. Too high place." Or they are clambering over boulders, one or two told off to disentangle the line wherever it catches. Or they arestruggling along a greasy slope, their bare feet gripping the mud, hardly able to advance a step or even to hold their own. As a labour-saving machine one must welcome the advent of the steamboat, as one is constrained to welcome even that of the motor-omnibus. But from the traveller's point of view it is different. Railways and steamboats enable more of us to travel, and to travel farther, in space. But in experience he travels the farthest who travels the slowest. A mediæval student or apprentice walking through Europe on foot really did see the world. A modern tourist sees nothing but the inside of hotels. Unless, that is, he chooses to walk, or ride, or even cycle. Then it is different. Then he begins to see. As now I, from my houseboat, begin to see China. Not profoundly, of course, but somehow intimately. For instance, while my crew eat their midday rice, I stroll up to the neighbouring village. Contrary to all I have been taught to expect, I find it charming, picturesque, not so dirty after all, not so squalid, not so poor. The people, too, who, one thought, would insult or mob the foreigner, either take no notice, or, if you greet them, respond in the friendliest way. They may, of course, be explaining to one another that you are a foreign devil, but nothing in their countenance or manner suggests it. The children are far better-mannered than in most European countries. They may follow you, and chatter and laugh; but at least they have not learnt to beg.Curiosity they have, and gaiety, but I detect no sign of hostility. I walk down the long street, with its shops and roomy houses—far roomier and more prosperous-looking than in most Indian villages—and come to the temple. Smilingly I am invited to enter. There are no mysteries in Chinese religion. I begin to wonder, indeed, whether there is any religion left. For everywhere I find the temples and monasteries either deserted or turned into schools or barracks. This one is deserted. It is like a series of lumber-rooms, full of dusty idols. The idols were once gaudy, brightly painted "to look like life," with beards and whiskers of real hair. But now their splendour is dimmed. The demons scowl to no purpose. To no purpose the dragons coil. No trespasser threatens the god behind his dingy curtains. In one chamber only a priest kneels before the shrine and chants out of a book while he taps a bronze vessel with a little hammer. Else, solitude, vacuity, and silence. Is he Buddhist or Taoist? I have no language in which to ask. I can only accept with mute gestures the dusty seat he offers and the cup of lukewarm tea. What has happened to religion? So far as I can make out, something like the "disestablishment of the Church." The Republic has been at work; and in the next village I see what it has been doing. For there the temple is converted into a school. Delightedly the scholars show me round. On the outside wall, for him who runs to read, are scored up longaddition sums in our Western figures. Inside, the walls are hung with drawings of birds and beasts, of the human skeleton and organs, even of bacteria! There are maps of China and of the world. The children even produce in triumph an English reading-book, though I must confess they do not seem to have profited by it much. Still, they can say "cat" when you show them a picture of the creature; which is more than I could do in Chinese. And China does not change? Wait a generation! This, remember, is a tiny village in the heart of the country, more than 1000 miles from the coast. And this is happening all over the Celestial Empire, I suppose. I start to return to my boat, but have not gone a quarter of a mile before I hear a shout, and looking back find half the school following me and escorting their teacher, who speaks English. He regrets to have missed my visit; will I not return and let him show me the school? I excuse myself, and he walks with me to the boat, making what conversation he can. One remark I remember—"China a good place now; China a republic." And I thought, as we exchanged cards, that he represented the Republic more essentially than the politicians whom foreigners so severely criticise. Anyhow, Republic or no, China is being transformed. And there is something other than steamboats to attest it.
Which brings me back to my starting-point. On the steamboat you have no adventures. But on thehouseboat you do. For instance, the other day the rope broke as we were towing up a rapid, and down we dashed, turning round and round, and annihilating in five minutes the labour of an hour. I was afraid, I confess; but the boatmen took it as a matter of course. In some way, incomprehensible to me, they got us into the bank, and, looking up, the first thing I saw was an embankment in construction—the railway from Ichang to Chungking. When it is finished we shall go by train—not even by steamboat,—and so see nothing except tunnels. Certainly, we shall not be compelled to pass the night in a small village; nor permitted to see the sunset behind these lovely hills and the moon rising over the river between the cliffs of the gorge. Nor shall we then be delayed, as I was yesterday, till the water should run down, and so tempted to walk into the country. I made for a side valley, forded a red torrent, and found myself among fields and orchards; green of mulberries, green of fruit trees, green of young corn; and above, the purple hills, with all their bony structure showing under the skin of soil. I followed a high path, greeted by the peasants I met with a charming smile and that delightful gesture whereby, instead of shaking your hand, they clasp theirs and shake thematyou. I came at last to a solitary place, and, sitting down there, watched the evening light on the mountains. I watched, and they seemed to be saying something. What?
"Rocks that are bones, earth that is flesh, what, what do you meanEyeing me silently?Streams that are voices, what, what do you say?You are pouring an ocean into a cup. Yet pour, that all it can holdMay at least be water of yours."
"Rocks that are bones, earth that is flesh, what, what do you meanEyeing me silently?Streams that are voices, what, what do you say?You are pouring an ocean into a cup. Yet pour, that all it can holdMay at least be water of yours."
At dusk I got back to the river, and found that a wind had sprung up and the junks were trying to pass the rapid. There must have been fifty of them crowded together. They could only pass one by one; and the scene was pandemonium. The Chinese are even noisier than the Italians, and present the same appearance of confusion. But in some mysterious way an order is always getting evolved. On this occasion it seemed to be perfectly understood which boat should go first. And presently there she was, in mid-rapid, apparently not advancing an inch, the ropes held taut from a causeway a quarter of a mile off. At last the strain suddenly ceased, and she moved quickly up stream. Another followed. Then it was dark. And we had to pass the night, after all, tossing uneasily in the rough water. Soon after dawn we started again. I went across to the causeway, and watched the trackers at work—twenty each on two ropes, hardly advancing a step in five minutes. Then the boat's head swung into shore, the tension ceased; something had happened. I waited half an hour or so. "Nothing doing," in the expressive American phrase. Then I went back. We hadsprung a leak, and my cabin was converted into a swimming-bath. Another hour or so repairing this. Then the rope had to be brought back and attached again. At last we started for the second time, and in half an hour got safely through the hundred yards of racing waters into the bank above. At ten I got my breakfast, and we started to sail with a fair wind. It dropped. Rain came on. My crew (as always in that conjuncture) put up their awning and struck work. So here we are at 1P.M., in a heavy thunder-shower, a mile from the place we tried to leave at six o'clock this morning. This is the ancient method of travelling—four thousand years old, I suppose. It is very inconvenient! Oh, yes—BUT!——
Professor Giles tells us, no doubt truly, that the Chinese are not a religious nation. No nation, I think, ever was, unless it be the Indians. But religious impulses sweep over nations and pass away, leaving deposits—rituals, priesthoods, and temples. Such an impulse once swept over China, in the form of Buddhism; and I am now visiting its deposit in the neighbourhood of Pekin. Scattered over the hills to the west of the city are a number of monastery temples. Some are deserted; some are let as villas to Europeans; some, like the one where I am staying, have still their complement of monks—in this temple, I am told, some three to four hundred. But neither here nor anywhere have I seen anything that suggests vitality in the religion. I entered one of the temples yesterday at dusk and watched the monks chanting and processing round a shrine from which loomed in the shadow a gigantic bronze-gold Buddha. They began to giggle like children at the entrance of the foreigner and never took their eyes off us. Later, individual monks came runninground the shrines, beating a gong as though to call the attention of the deity, and shouting a few words of perfunctory praise or prayer. Irreverence more complete I have not seen even in Italy, nor beggary more shameless. Such is the latter end of the gospel of Buddha in China. It seems better that he should sit deserted in his Indian caves than be dishonoured by such mummeries.
But once it must have been otherwise. Once this religion was alive. And then it was that men chose these exquisite sites for contemplation. The Chinese Buddhists had clearly the same sense for the beauty of nature that the Italian Franciscans had. In secluded woods and copses their temples nestle, courts and terraces commanding superb views over the great plain to Pekin. The architecture is delicate and lovely; tiled roofs, green or gold or grey, cornices elaborately carved and painted in lovely harmonies of blue and green; fine trees religiously preserved; the whole building so planned and set as to enhance, not destroy, the lines and colour of the landscape. To wander from one of these temples to another, to rest in them in the heat of the day and sleep in them at night, is to taste a form of travel impossible in Europe now, though familiar enough there in the Middle Ages. Specially delightful is it to come at dusk upon a temple apparently deserted; to hear the bell tinkle as the wind moves it; to enter a dusky hall and start to seein a dark recess huge figures, fierce faces, glimmering maces and swords that seem to threaten the impious intruder.
This morning there was a festival, and the people from the country crowded into the temple. Very bright and gay they looked in their gala clothes. The women especially were charming; painted, it is true, but painted quite frankly, to better nature, not to imitate her. Their cheeks were like peaches or apples, and their dresses correspondingly gay. Why they had come did not appear; not, apparently, to worship, for their mood was anything but religious. Some perhaps came to carry away a little porcelain boy or girl as guarantee of a baby to come. For the Chinese, by appropriate rites, can determine the sex of a child—a secret unknown as yet to the doctors of Europe! Some, perhaps, came to cure their eyes, and will leave at the shrine a picture on linen of the organs affected. Some are merely there for a jaunt, to see the sights and the country. We saw a group on their way home, climbing a steep hill for no apparent purpose except to look at the view. What English agricultural labourer would do as much? But the Chinese are not "agricultural labourers"; they are independent peasants; and a people so gay, so friendly, so well-mannered and self-respecting I have found nowhere else in the world.
The country round Pekin has the beauty we associate with Italy. First the plain, with its fresh spring green,its dusty paths, its grey and orange villages, its cypress groves, its pagodas, its memorial slabs. Then the hills, swimming in amethyst, bare as those of Umbria, fine and clean in colour and form. For this beauty I was unprepared. I have even read that there is no natural beauty in China. And I was unprepared for Pekin too. How can I describe it? At this time of year, seen from above, it is like an immense green park. You mount the tremendous wall, 40 feet high, 14 miles round, as broad at the top as a London street, and you look over a sea of spring-green tree-tops, from which emerge the orange-gold roofs of palaces and temples. You descend, and find the great roads laid out by Kubla Khan, running north and south, east and west, and thick, as the case may be, with dust or mud; and opening out of them a maze of streets and lanes, one-storeyed houses, grey walls and roofs, shop fronts all ablaze with gilt carving, all trades plying, all goods selling, rickshaws, mule-carts canopied with blue, swarming pedestrians, eight hundred thousand people scurrying like ants in this gigantic framework of Cyclopean walls and gates. Never was a medley of greatness and squalor more strange and impressive. One quarter only is commonplace, that of the Legations. There is the Wagon-lits Hotel, with its cosmopolitan stream of Chinese politicians, European tourists, concession-hunters, and the like. There are the Americans,occupying and guarding the great north gate, and playing baseball in its precincts. There are the Germans, the Dutch, the French, the Italians, the Russians, the Japanese; and there, in a magnificent Chinese palace, are the British, girt by that famous wall of the siege on which they have characteristically written "Lest we forget!" Forget what? The one or two children who died in the Legation, and the one or two men who were killed? Or the wholesale massacre, robbery, and devastation which followed when the siege was relieved? This latter, I fear, the Chinese are not likely to forget soon. Yet it would be better if they could. And better if the Europeans could remember much that they forget—could remember that they forced their presence and their trade on China against her will; that their treaties were extorted by force, and their loans imposed by force, since they exacted from China what are ironically called "indemnities" which she could not pay except by borrowing from those who were robbing her. If Europeans could remember and realise these facts they would perhaps cease to complain that China continues to evade their demands by the only weapon of the weak—cunning. When you have knocked a man down, trampled on him, and picked his pocket, you can hardly expect him to enter into social relations with you merely because you pick him up and, retaining his property, propose thatyou should now be friends and begin to do business. The obliquity of vision of the European residents on all these points is extraordinary. They cannot see that wrong has been done, and that wrong engenders wrong. They repeat comfortable formulæ about the duplicity and evasiveness of the Chinese; they charge them with dishonesty at the very moment that they are dismembering their country; they attach intolerable conditions to their loans, and then complain if their victims attempt to find accommodation elsewhere. Of all the Powers the United States alone have shown some generosity and fairness, and they are reaping their reward in the confidence of Young China. The Americans had the intelligence to devote some part of the excessive indemnity they exacted after the Boxer riots to educating Chinese students in America. Hundreds of these young men are now returned to China, with the friendliest feeling to America, and, naturally, anxious to develop political and commercial relations with her rather than with other Powers. British trade may suffer because British policy has been less generous. But British trade, I suppose, would suffer in any case. For the British continue to maintain their ignorance and contempt of China and all things Chinese, while Germans and Japanese are travelling and studying indefatigably all over the country. "We see too much of things Chinese!" was the amazing remark made to me by a business man in Shanghai. Toomuch! They see nothing at all, and want to see nothing. They live in the treaty ports, dine, dance, play tennis, race. China is in birth-throes, and they know and care nothing. A future in China is hardly for them.
To write from China about the Englishman may seem an odd choice. But to see him abroad is to see him afresh. At home he is the air one breathes; one is unaware of his qualities. Against a background of other races you suddenly perceive him, and can estimate him—fallaciously or no—as you estimate foreigners.
So seen the Englishman appears as the eternal school-boy. I mean no insult; I mean to express his qualities as well as his defects. He has the pluck, the zest, the sense of fair play, the public spirit of our great schools. He has also their narrowness and their levity. Enter his office, and you will find him not hurried or worried, not scheming, skimping, or hustling, but cheery, genial, detached, with an air of playing at work. As likely as not, in a quarter of an hour he will have asked you round to the club and offered you a whisky and soda. Dine with him, and the talk will turn on golf or racing, on shooting, fishing, and the gymkhana. Or, if you wish to divert it, you must ask him definite questions about matters of fact.Probably you will get precise and intelligent replies. But if you put a general question he will flounder resentfully; and if you generalise yourself you will see him dismissing you as a windbag. Of the religion, the politics, the manners and customs of the country in which he lives he will know and care nothing, except so far as they may touch his affairs. He will never, if he can help it, leave the limits of the foreign settlement. Physically he oscillates between his home, his office, the club, and the racecourse; mentally, between his business and sport. On all general topics his opinions are second or third hand. They are the ghosts of old prejudices imported years ago from England, or taken up unexamined from the English community abroad. And these opinions pass from hand to hand till they are as similar as pebbles on the shore. In an hour or so you will have acquired the whole stock of ideas current in the foreign community throughout a continent. Your only hope of new light is in particular instances and illustrations. And these, of course, may be had for the asking.
But the Englishman abroad in some points is the Englishman at his best. For he is or has been a pioneer, at any rate in China. And pioneering brings out his most characteristic qualities. He loves to decide everything on his own judgment, on the spur of the moment, directly on the immediate fact, and in disregard of remoter contingencies and possibilities. He needs adventureto bring out his powers, and only really takes to business when business is something of a "lark." To combine the functions of a trader with those of an explorer, a soldier, and a diplomat is what he really enjoys. So, all over the world, he opens the ways, and others come in to reap the fruit of his labours. This is true in things intellectual as in things practical. In science, too, he is a pioneer. Modern archæology was founded by English travellers. Darwin and Wallace and Galton in their youth pursued adventure as much as knowledge. When the era of routine arrives, when laboratory work succeeds to field work, the Englishman is apt to retire and leave the job to the German. The Englishman, one might say, "larks" into achievement, the German "grinds" into it. The one, accordingly, is free-living, genial, generous, careless; the other laborious, exact, routine-ridden. It is hard for an Englishman to be a pedant; it is not easy for a German to be anything else. For philosophy no man has less capacity than the Englishman. He does not understand even how such questions can be put, still less how anyone can pretend to answer them. The philosopher wants to know whether, how, and why life ought to be lived before he will consent to live it. The Englishman just lives ahead, not aware that there is a problem; or convinced that, if there is one, it will only be solved "by walking." The philosopher proceeds from the abstract to the concrete. The Englishman starts withthe concrete, and may or, more probably, may not arrive at the abstract. No general rules are of any use to him except such as he may have elaborated for himself out of his own experience. That is why he mistrusts education. For education teaches how to think in general, and that isn't what he wants or believes in. So, when he gets into affairs, he discards all his training and starts again at the beginning, learning to think, if he ever does learn it, over his own particular job. And his own way, he opines, must be the right way for every one. Hence his contempt and even indignation for individuals or nations who are moved by "ideas." At this moment his annoyance with the leaders of "Young China" is provoked largely by the fact that they are proceeding on general notions of how a nation should be governed and organised, instead of starting with the particularities of their own society, and trying to mend it piece by piece and from hand to mouth. Before they make a Constitution, he thinks, they ought to make roads; and before they draw up codes, to extirpate consumption. The conclusion lies near at hand, and I have heard it drawn—"What they want is a few centuries of British rule." And, indeed, it is curious how constantly the Englishman abroad is opposed, in the case of other nations, to all the institutions and principles he is supposed to be proud of at home. Partly, no doubt, this is due to his secret or avowed belief that the whole world ought to be governed despoticallyby the English. But partly it is because he does not believe that the results the English have achieved can be achieved in any other way than theirs. They arrived at them without intention or foresight, by a series of detached steps, each taken without prescience of the one that would follow. So, and so only, can other nations arrive at them. He does not believe in short cuts, nor in learning by the experience of others. And so the watchwords "Liberty," "Justice," "Constitution," so dear to him at home, leave him cold abroad. Or, rather, they make him very warm, but warm not with zeal but with irritation.
Never was such a pourer of cold water on other people's enthusiasms. He cannot endure the profession that a man is moved by high motives. His annoyance, for example, with the "anti-opium" movement is not due to the fact that he supports the importation into China of Indian opium. Very commonly he does not. But the movement is an "agitation" (dreadful word!). It is "got up" by missionaries. It purports to be based on moral grounds, and he suspects everything that so purports. Not that he is not himself moved by moral considerations. Almost invariably he is. But he will never admit it for himself, and he deeply suspects it in others. The words "hypocrite," "humbug," "sentimentalist" spring readily to his lips. But let him work off his steam, sit quiet and wait, and you will find, often enough, that he has arrived at the sameconclusion as the "sentimentalist"—only, of course, for quite different reasons! For intellect he has little use, except so far as it issues in practical results. He will forgive a man for being intelligent if he makes a fortune, but hardly otherwise. Still, he has a queer, half-contemptuous admiration for a definite intellectual accomplishment which he knows it is hard to acquire and is not sure he could acquire himself. That, for instance, is his attitude to those who know Chinese. A "sinologue," he will tell you, must be an imbecile, for no one but a fool would give so much time to a study so unprofitable. Still, in a way, he is proud of the sinologue—as a public school is proud of a boy so clever as to verge upon insanity, or a village is proud of the village idiot. Something of the same feeling, I sometimes think, underlies his respect for Shakspere. "If you want that kind of thing," he seems to say to the foreigner, "and it's the kind of thing youwouldwant,wecan do it, you see, better than you can!"
So with art. He is never a connoisseur, but he is often a collector. Partly, no doubt, because there is money in it, but that is a secondary consideration. Mainly because collecting and collectors appeal to his sporting instinct. His knowledge about his collection will be precise and definite, whether it be postage stamps or pictures. He will know all about it, except its æsthetic value. That he cannot know, for he cannot see it. He has theflairof the dealer, not the perceptionof the amateur. And he does not know or believe that there is any distinction between them.
But these, from his point of view, are trifles. What matters is that he has pre-eminently the virtues of active life. He is fair-minded, and this, oddly, in spite of his difficulty in seeing another man's point of view. When hedoessee it he respects it. Whereas nimbler-witted nations see it only to circumvent and cheat it. He is honest; as honest, at least, as the conditions of modern business permit. He hates bad work, even when, for the moment, bad work pays. He hates skimping and paring. And these qualities of his make it hard for him to compete with rivals less scrupulous and less generous. He is kind-hearted—much more so than he cares to admit. And at the bottom of all his qualities he has the sense of duty. He will shoulder loyally all the obligations he has undertaken to his country, to his family, to his employer, to his employees. The sense of duty, indeed, one might say with truth, is his religion. For on the rare occasions on which he can be persuaded to broach such themes you will find, I think, at the bottom of his mind that what he believes in is Something, somehow, somewhere, in the universe, which helps him, and which he is helping, when he does right. There must, he feels, be some sense in life. And what sense would there be if duty were nonsense?
Poets, artists, philosophers can never be at home with the Englishman. His qualities and his defectsalike are alien to them. In his company they live as in prison, for it is not an air in which wings can soar. But for solid walking on the ground he has not his equal. The phrase "Solvitur ambulando" must surely have been coined for him. And no doubt on his road he has passed, and will pass again, the wrecks of many a flying-machine.
The Chinese Revolution has proceeded, so far, with less disturbance and bloodshed than any great revolution known to history. There has been little serious fighting and little serious disorder; nothing comparable to that which accompanied, for instance, the French Revolution of 1789. And this, no doubt, is due to the fact that the Chinese are alone among nations of the earth in detesting violence and cultivating reason. Their instinct is always to compromise and save everybody's face. And this is the main reason why Westerners despise them. The Chinese, they aver, have "no guts." And when hard pressed as to the policy of the Western Powers in China, they will sometimes quite frankly confess that they consider the West has benefited China by teaching her the use of force. That this should be the main contribution of Christian to Pagan civilisation is one of the ironies of history. But it is part of the greater irony which gave the Christian faith to precisely those nations whose fundamental instincts and convictions were and are in radical antagonism to its teaching.
Though, however, it is broadly true that the Chinese have relied on reason and justice in a way and to a degree which is inconceivable in the West, they have not been without their share of original sin. Violence, anarchy, and corruption have played a part in their history, though a less part than in the history of most countries. And these forces have been specially evident in that department to which Westerners are apt to pay the greatest attention—in the department of government. Government has always been less important in China than in the Western world; it has always been rudimentary in its organisation; and for centuries it has been incompetent and corrupt. Of this corruption Westerners, it is true, make more than they fairly should. China is no more corrupt (to say the least) than the United States or Italy or France, or than England was in the eighteenth century. And much that is called corruption is recognised and established "squeeze," necessary, and understood to be necessary, to supplement the inadequate salaries of officials. A Chinese official is corrupt much as Lord Chancellor Bacon was corrupt; and whether the Chancellor ought properly to be called corrupt is still matter of controversy. Moreover, the people have always had their remedy. When the recognised "squeeze" is exceeded, they protest by riot. So that the Chinese system, in the most unfavourable view, may be described as corruption tempered by anarchy.
And this system, it is admitted, still prevails after the Revolution. Clearly, indeed, it cannot be extirpated until officials are properly paid; and China is not in a position to pay for any reform while the Powers are drawing away an enormous percentage of her resources by that particular form of robbery called by diplomatists "indemnity." The new officials, then, are "corrupt" as the old ones were; and they are something more. They are Jacobins. Educated abroad, they are as full of ideas as was Robespierre or St. Just; and their ideas are even more divorced from sentiment and tradition. A foreign education seems to make a cut right across a Chinaman's life. He returns with a new head; and this head never gets into normal relations with his heart. That, I believe, is the essence of Jacobinism, ideas working with enormous rapidity and freedom unchecked by the fly-wheel of traditional feelings. And it is Jacobinism that accounts for the extraordinary vigour of the campaign against opium. Many Europeans still endeavour to maintain that this campaign is not serious. But that is because Europeans simply cannot conceive that any body of men should be in as deadly earnest about a moral issue as are the representatives of Young China. The anti-opium campaign is not only serious, it is ruthless. Smokers are flogged and executed; poppy is rooted up; and farmers who resist are shot down. The other day in Hunan, it is credibly reported, some seventy farmers who hadprotested against the destruction of their crops were locked into a temple and burnt alive. An old man of seventy-six, falsely accused of growing poppy, was fined 500 dollars, and when he refused to pay was flogged to death by the orders of a young official of twenty-two. Stories of this kind come in from every part of the country; and though this or that story may be untrue or exaggerated, there can be no doubt about the general state of affairs. The officials are putting down opium with a vigour and a determination which it is inconceivable should ever be applied in the West to the traffic in alcohol. But in doing so they are showing a ruthlessness which does not seem to be native to the Chinese, and which perhaps is to be accounted for by what I have called Jacobinism, resulting from the effects of a Western education that has been unable to penetrate harmoniously the complicated structure of Chinese character.
The anti-opium campaign is one example of the way in which the Revolution has elicited and intensified violence in this peace-loving people. Another example is the use of assassination. This has been an accompaniment of all great revolutions. It took the form of "proscriptions" in Rome, of the revolutionary tribunals in France. In China it is by comparison a negligible factor; but it exists. Two months ago a prominent leader of the southern party was assassinated; and popular suspicion traces the murder to highGovernment officials, and even to the President himself. The other day a southern general was killed by a bomb. For the manufacture of bombs is one of the things China has learned from the Christian West; and the President lives in constant terror of this form of murder. China, it will be seen, does not altogether escape the violence that accompanies all revolutions. Nor does she altogether escape the anarchy. Anarchy, indeed, that is a simple strike against authority, may be said to be part of the Chinese system. It is the way they have always enforced their notions of justice. A curious example has been recently offered by the students of the Pekin University. For various reasons—good or bad—they have objected to the conduct of their Chancellor. After ineffectual protests, they called upon him in large numbers with his resignation written out, and requested him to sign it. He refused; whereupon they remarked that they would call again the next day with revolvers; and in the interval he saw wisdom and signed. Last week there was a similar episode. The new Chancellor proved as unpalatable as his predecessor. The students once more presented themselves with his resignation written out. He refused to resign, and, as the students aver, scurrilously abused them. They proceeded to the Minister of Education, who refused to see them. Thereupon they camped out in his courtyard, and stayed all day and all night, sending a message to the professors dated "from underthe trees of the Education Office" to explain that they were unfortunately unable to attend lectures. This Chancellor, too, it would seem, has seen wisdom and resigned.
How strange it all seems to Western eyes! A country, we should suppose, where such things occur, is incapable of organisation. But it is certain that we are wrong. Our notion is that everything must be done by authority, and that unless authority is maintained there will be anarchy. The Chinese notion is that authority is there to carry out what the people recognise to be common sense and justice; if it does otherwise, it must be resisted; and if it disappears life will still go on—as it is going on now in the greater part of China—on the basis of the traditional and essentially reasonable routine. Almost certainly the students of the University had justice on their side; otherwise such action would not be taken; and when they get justice they will be more docile and orderly than our own undergraduates at home.
Another thing surprising to European observers is the apparent belief of the Chinese in verbal remonstrance. Under the present régime officials and public men are allowed the free use of the telegraph. The consequence is that telegrams of advice, admonition, approval, blame, fear, hope, doubt pour in daily to the Government from civil and military governors, from members of Parliament and party leaders. In thepaper to-day, for example, is a telegram from the Governors of seventeen provinces addressed to the National Assembly. It begins as follows: