CHINA AND THE CHINESE.—No. III.
IF there is one feature more remarkable than another in the history of China, it is without doubt its early civilization. No one who has glanced for an instant at the most superficial of Chinese annals can refrain from regarding the phenomenon as one of the profoundest in the whole philo- sophy of history. Perhaps one of the most emphatic emblems of civilization is the pos- session of a systematic agriculture. To reap from land which they had never tilled, to live on roots which they had never planted, is the cha- racteristic of savages. It was thus that the aborigines of the earth sus- tained themselves ; in this desultory manner to this day the Bosjesman of South Africa and the wild tribes beyond the Rocky Mountains live. This want of social economy has never, as far as it is possible to judge, distinguished the inhabitants of China. While Abraham was yet a nomad in the plains of the Jordan, the reputed ancestor of Tae-ping had inaugurated the goddess of the plough by the banks of the Yellow River. Nor were these agrarian laws the only trait of primitive civilization in the Celestial Empire. It should seem that so long ago as four thousand years, the natives of Keangnan and Hoope had anticipated the factors of Man- chester and Liverpool. Young lads of Chfikeang plied the loom, and brown-faced girls of Fokien plucked the full cocoon, while Jacob was a herdsman, and Rachel sat by Laban's well, watching her drowsy flocks. And the historical rem presents to our minds even greater objects of wonder and admiration than the sera of poetic mythology. Confucius was engaged in founding a theology, instituting laws, and proposing ethics, while the village population of future Rome had left their huts by the yellow Tiber to do battle for their freedom on the slopes of the Sacred Hill. Nor does that social superiority which characterized China in times of patriarchal simplicity appear to have failed in the more ad- vanced ages of the world. Other nations were deep in the excesses of an extravagant barbarity while the Chinese were comparatively civilized. In the arts, as well as in the sciences, the same prefiminence is observed. The arches that bore the Claudian aqueduct were yet unbuilt, while Chinese genies floated in the waters of canals the very name of whose founders had long before been lost in the depths of antiquity. Our an- cestors were engaged in gathering acorns in the forests of Hampshire and the Isle of Wight, while the husbandman of the Celestial Empire regaled himself and his children on bowls of home-grown rice. The manuscript on whose pages were engraved the Ethics and the Organon, lay buried in a meadow in Asia Minor, while illuminated copies of the Lun-ju were to be found on the stall of every bookseller in China. It would be useless to institute a further comparison between the civilization of China five hundred years before Christ and the civilization of Europe five hundred years after Christ. The latter was supremely behind the former. The former indeed was first, and the latter was nowhere. Spite of all tho luxuries of imperial Rome, and spite of all the scientific glories of con- quered Greece, the kingdom of the despised barbarian on the other side of the Himalaya was itself less barbarian than half the empire of the mistress of the world. And though the phenomenon is a strange one, it is never- theless easy to be accounted for. From time immemorial the character of the Chinese has been preeminently pacific. They have never yet dis- played any other feeling than aversion for the pomp and circumstance of war. The chronicles of their nation tell of no victorious warriors, and have handed down for the emulation of future generations no tales of martial prowess. The hero who holds a place in the memory of posterity is the man who was foremost in the cultivation of the social arts, who had patronized astrology, founded some seminary, or dug out some canal. The name of the successful warrior indeed is always reverenced, but never adored. And to this day the same military phobia prevails. There is not a captain in the Chinese militia'whose estimation of valour would admit him to the benches of the Junior United, and there is not a military mandarin that struts along the alleys of Canton who does not in his heart indorse the sentiments of Sir John Falstaff. No soldier in the Tartar ranks owns a musket that the humblest squatter in the savannahs of the Mississippi would not scorn. And perhaps this distaste for war in the youths of the Celestial Empire ought not to be the source of any personal regret. A martial disposition, it is well known, finds little fa- vour with the Imperial Government at Peking. A Napier or a Gough would long ago have been punished "as rash and arrogant men" had they fought in the ranks of China,. while the cautious Wellington himself must have despaired of ever attaining the blue ball had he commanded in the service of the Celestial Empire. To gain honours at Nankin, it is necessary to eschew the attraction of arms. The aspirant to fame, if he would receive encouragement, must turn his back on the porticoes of the war-office. The youth in pursuit of substantial reward, who has written a new play, or discovered a new star, is sure to be more successful than the grey-beard who has vanquished a Koshing, or brought a Meaou-tso chief in chains to Peking. Literary accomplishments and scientific re- searches are the only royal roads to favour with the Brother of the Moon. A single treatise is of greater value to the author than a national victory to the conqueror. The greatest warrior can never hope to rank above the poorest scholar. A successful general, in the estimation of the su- preme ruler, is an inferior being when compared to a successful master- potter. But of all the sciences the science of agriculture is at once the most pacific and the most honourable. Every countryman in China is his own husbandman, and occupies his own farm. So sacred is the pro- fession, that the Emperor himself annually presides over an agricultural meeting, and guides the plough with his own imperial bands. The largest peach or the finest lichi, not the most splendid victory, is sure of the greatest reward. The factor is above the soldier, but the agricultu- rist is above both. The interests of the agriculturist are the interests of the state. A Cobden or a Bright would be regarded in China as the divinities of trade, but the profoundest adoration they could receive would be subordinate to the adoration that would be paid at the shrine of a Derby or a Disraeli.
To this constitutional disposition to the cultivation of the gentle arts other natural stimulants are superadded. The soil of China is the most genial in the world. The moat barren field requires no severer process of tillage than a simple rake can afford, and streams of water from the canals are within the reach of every farm-yard. The climate, sometimes fickle, is always salubrious. The sun that ripens the golden orange in the orchards of Kuangsy brings to perfection the produce of the rice-fields of Macao and the tea-plants of Fokien. On these natural advantages of cli- mate the geographical features of China favourably reacted. Protected on one aide partly by vast mountain ridges and partly by an inaccessible wall, the waves of an ocean that brings to its harbours all the commerce of the New World break against its shores on the other. Art too has supplied what nature has refused. What the Nile is to Egypt the Great Canal is to China. By its means the productions of Europe are brought to the very doors of the merchants of the Celestial Empire, and through it is carried out at once a system of drainage and irrigation the most sim- ple and the most perfect that can be contrived. In the contemplation of these scientific machines it is impossible to overlook their moral effect upon the natives of the land. By the gifts of nature and the interference of art Chinese civilization has been rendered wholly indigenous. The in- habitants of China, possessing as they did all the elements of human in- dustry and all the material of human civilization, found it unnecessary to leave the land of their birth in quest of fresh stimulants to the one or fresh inducements to the other. What necessity did not require inclina- tion never prompted them to carry out. Commercial intercourse was never a sine qua non with them, and what they did not actually need they did not possess sufficient enterprise to pursue. Enclosed within their own native hills, the world without was to them an unknown land, and its people barbarians. So long as the rice-plant was green in their fields and the silk-worm still clung to their mulberry-trees, they found no reason to be discontented. A journey across the Himalaya came to be re- garded by the simple inhabitant of China as a -voluntary banishment from home, and a voluntary exile was in his eyes a disgrace voluntarily. in- curred. Thus every Chinaman was an esoteric from his birth. Finding himself thrown on his resources, he began to toil early, and his gratitude and his patriotism were the greater that his toil was repaid. He culti- vated the same garden-plot that his father had tilled before him, and the only object of his ambition was that his last resting-place might be his father's hearth. It is easy to see how personal domesticity gradually de- veloped itself in popular exclusiveness, and how popular exclusive- ness encouraged national civilization. Unwilling to suffer foreign in- trusion, and unable to import foreign commodities from abroad, the whole mind of China was concentrated for efforts at home. No exter- nal interference was invited and no internal interruption was ex- perienced. The policy which Lycurgus tried in vain to impose on the Lacedremonians was spontaneously adopted by the Chinese. Nature had enriched their land, and up to a certain point the gifts of nature were improved by the agency of art. While the gorgeous Senate of Rome were placing wreaths of laurel on the brows of her victorious sons, and the author of the " Gallic War " was dictating to his secretaries on the banks of the Garonne, the illustrious descendants of Han were engaged in driving the plough, erecting factories, or distributing imperial prizes among the schoolmen of Nankin. And the result is plain. The policy of China has at last reaped its reward. The merchant-princes of the West now occupy its squares, and the fleets of the New World now float beside its wharves, while the owl builds her nest among the broken columns of the Quirinal, and the noise of the antiquary's hammer is heard in the halls of the Caesars themselves.
Exclusive, however, as was the policy of China, it is to be remembered that the influence of its early civilization was by no means as indigenous as its origin. The Celestial Empire first reformed itself, and then con- tributed to the reformation of the world. It would be impossible to illustrate fully the effect of Chinese civilization on the progress of man within the limits of a single paper. Pregnant examples cannot fail to recur to the most superficial observer. One thing is certain. It should seem that the commercial intercourse between outermost China and the border tribes is even antecedent to the date at which it is usually fixed. One instance. Mention of silk is made in ecclesiastical history as being used at the court of Pharaoh. Now silk is an article the manufacture of which was never peculiar to Egypt. Where, then, if not directly or in- directly from China; could silk have been obtained ? It would be idle, however, to attempt an illustration of Chinese influence by examples drawn from the silk trade alone. Every tyro in history knows how it ministered to the delicacies of imperial Rome, fostered the emulation of republican Greece, and rendered the courts of Susa and Ecbatana syno- nymous for all that was elegant and luxurious on the earth. But though it is certain that the ancient world was indebted to China for half its civilization and almost all its refinement, it is equally certain that the in- fluence of Chinese superiority is by no means to be confined to the known world of the ancients alone. One remarkable illustration of the truth of this proposition is to be found in the early history of Peru. No one can compare the monuments of Peruvian art with the monuments of Chinese progress, and agree for an instant with the assertion of the accomplished author of The Conquest of Mexico that the civilization of the former country was as indigenous as the civilization of the latter. On the con- trary, there appears every reason for believing not only that the civi- lization of Peru was not original, but that it was derived from China itself. And by a comparison between the institutions of the two coun- tries this belief is confirmed almost to certainty. The government of Peru was exactly similar in all its fundamental features to the government of China. Both were patriarchal despotisms, founded on the same principle of paternal authority, and demanding the same filial subordination. The title which the ruler of China invariably arrogated to himself was, the Father of his People. The same title distinguished the rulers of Peru. The executive of the one govern- ment was invested in a Brother of the Moon; the executive of the other was held by a Child of the Sun. And the analogy that existed between their civil constitutions existed also between their religious rites. Similar fruit offerings were offered up to the moon and the stars from the shrines of Peking and Canton to those that guarded the altars of the golden tem- ples of Cusco and Quito. Sabeism characterized alike the theology of the Chinese Emperors and the idolatry of the Incas of Peru. In China agri- culture has always obtained the immediate patronage of the state. Chinese Emperors have made it a personal occupation, and grave manda- rins of China annually attend the pastoral festival of the empire in all the pomp of official parade. In Peru the same bucolic disposition was fostered and similar festivals observed. The architecture of both coun- tries was fundamentally similar. The same uniformity of style that per- vades the structures of Nankin is traced in the buildings of Peru. In one peculiarity, indeed, the identity is remarkable. The architects of both countries appear to have employed as a general rule masses of stone of a size that were never employed in the common architecture of any country in the world. Across the deep ravines of the Andes are suspended bridges made sometimes of rope, sometimes of the twisted osier. The same feature is visible in the mountain-landscapes of China and Thibet. From the wooded vales of Cusco rise the spires of convents where fair Pe- ruvian enthusiasts passed the livelong day in holy contemplation. The Nykoo of China are as famous as the novices of Seville and the nuns of Castile. If there instances, which we have adduced out of others that may have been more and are certainly not less emphatic, do not establish the truth of our proposition, at least stronger arguments must be brought forward than a few discrepancies or a few unimportant deficiencies afford, before it can be successfully contradicted. There is one circumstance, however, which we think offers indisputable evidence that Peru, however favourable its opportunities from within, nevertheless received its civiliza- tion from without. The national annals of the Peruvians tell of two ex- traordinary visitors to their land, who brought with them all the ensigns of a celestial origin, and whom, in their poetic simplicity, they have christened the Children of the Sun. From Mmaeo Capac and Mama Ocello, it is said, the holy Incas took their name ; and the story of their wealth, power, and beneficence, to this day the Peruvian mother tells her lisping child. Is it probable then, after this, that the whole legend is no- thing more from beginning to end than the outburst of a rich poetic ima- gination ? If it is reasonable to disbelieve this, it seems to us to be just as reasonable to believe that the loves of Sylvia and of Mars, the cradle in the reeds of Tiber, the fig-tree, the she-wolf, and the cave in the Pala- tine hill, were meaningless emblems—that they did not refer to the rob- ber-origin of the lawless founders of Rome, and that the mythology which relates of them is entitled to no more consideration than the more romances of Arthur and of Amadis de Gaul. Until further evidence can be found and more weighty arguments are advanced to the contrary, it appears certain, then, that the civilization of Peru was not an esoteno one, that it was exotic, and that its origin is to be traced to China and to Chinese influence alone. It is true, indeed, that the channels by which that in- fluence travelled are not to be pointed out with historical precision. Its geographical route, indeed, it is easy enough to conjecture. But the ob- scurity which pervades them ought not to be allowed to invalidate the position in which we stand. It is a fortunate circumstance, however, for China, that its more modern intercourse with the Old World is not involved in the same uncertainty as its earlier intercourse with the New. It is perhaps in the former instance that its great social bearing on the progress of mankind is the more to be remarked. Its effect on the generations of the middle ages is well nigh inappreciable. If the inhabitants of the Celestial Empire had fostered the luxurious inclinations of the inhabitants of Europe and Asia before, they encouraged their tastes for the useful and the profitable now. Across the steppes of Tartary, through the deserts of Arabia, by the straits of Gibel Tarik, the tide of civilization advanced. The magnetic needle, the art of printing, the black powder which exploded at the approach of fire, were Introduced among the descendants of Charlemagne and Constantine, at once to excite their astonishment and to test their ingenuity. Nor were these singular advantages of mere temporary importance ' - to this day their effect is visible. It is not too much to assert that all the influence of Byzantine wealth and of Roman power on the wild tribes that hunted the boar and the buffalo on the delta of the Danube and the Rhine was small in stability and extent when compared to the influence which China has exercised at one time and at another over the whole known world. It may be questioned, indeed, whether the refinements of philosophic Greece ever effected as much as the comparatively illiterate civilization of the Celestial Empire. The world, it must be confessed, is no better off now for all the ratiocination of the Academy and the Lyceum than it would have been had Plato never dreamed and Aristotle never lived. The De Republica' would, we imagine, be considered a very poor substitute for the Ordnance Office or the Arsenal at Woolwich. Unpalatable as may be the truth, it is neverthlesa certain, that the world would have submitted to the loss of The Categories or The Auscultation, rather than that the Haarlem press should never have been introduced. It is an undeniable fact, that a single Lord of the Admiralty must ever be a more important personage in the eye of modems than even the philosopher of Syracuse himself. It is to be doubted whether the famous black broth of Sparta ever excited the interest or guided the policy of its contemporaries in the same proportion as the smallest chest of bohea that was ever shipped from the wharves of Canton. But if it did, then its influence has long since disappeared, while the tea-trade of China is as active as ever. Nor as long as there are dowagers in the card-rooms of Bath, and Gamps and gossips in the world, is its activity at all likely to diminish.
We are not going to discuss the social and political effects of congou or souchong. In a commercial point of view, their importance is immense. Nor do we think are those associations which naturally attach themselves to the cup that cheers and not inebriates likely to be overlooked by those who, sitting with Boswell at the tea-tables of Mrs. Williams and Mrs. Thrale, have hung over the accents of the author of "Rasselas " and the " Rambler." In the foregoing paper we have endeavoured to give a short and necessarily incomplete view not only of the early progress of civilization in China itself, but also of the influence of Chinese civilization on the gradual progress of the world. It is probable that that influence for more than commercial purposes has ceased now and for ever. It is but reasonable to believe that the boasted superiority of China, formerly true, is now nothing more than a mere national superstition. The tide of civili- zation rising in the far East, set quickly towards the West. A reaction has taken place, and its course has been reversed. But though the sceptre has departed from the hand of the Chinese Emperor, as long as the funda- mental bulwarks of society, national security, national prosperity, and national intelligence, are known and appreciated, so long will mankind ontinue to express their gratitude and their admiration for that people who gave to civilization gunpowder, the loadstone, and the art of printing.
[The writer of these elaborate papers on China will guess, from the number of weeks that have elapsed since his manuscript reached us, how difficult it is to make room for so long a contribution at any time. The Session of Parliament is now at hand, and we cannot tell when it might be in our power to insert another.—En.]
Previous page
