THE PASSING OF CHINA'S ANCIENT SYSTEM 101 



the realm should of all the learned men of the age be the most ignorant 

 of essential and practical truths; that a nation which possessed the 

 most elaborate system of civil service examinations should be served 

 by officials at least as corrupt and as inefficient as those of any other 

 great nation ; that a government which made literary attainment a con- 

 dition of office-holding was content to develop an imposing superstruc- 

 ture of examinations and rewards and neglected to lay the foundation 

 for such in a system of common schools. 



The method of instruction which has prevailed wherever there have 

 been any schools at all — a method not only very ancient, but proceed- 

 ing from, and at the same time in great part responsible for, those 

 characteristics which mark the Chinese under every variety of phys- 

 ical condition — has been of a hard and unyielding nature, and has 

 caused enough wasted energy during the last seven hundred years to 

 have sufficed for more than ten thousand years of true education, and 

 this has made China what she is to-day. While the government has 

 fostered culture by testing attainments and granting rewards, thus 

 affording an efficient stimulus on a large scale and constituting a 

 regulated state patronage of letters according to which the reward of 

 literary merit was a law of the empire and a right of the people, it is 

 also true that up to the present time Chinese education has been en- 

 tirely political in aim and has been valued merely as a means of secur- 

 ing the repose of the state, and, as soon as a sufficient supply of dis- 

 ciplined agents has been at hand, the enlightenment of the people has 

 lacked governmental regard. 



But such a state of affairs can not longer endure — the wall is break- 

 ing down ; and it is the purpose of the present paper, without attempt- 

 ing to characterize further this old method of instruction or to point 

 out its gradual and general renovation under the influence of West- 

 ern thought and life and especially of the christian schools through- 

 out the land, to call attention to the latest and perhaps most important 

 step in the line of advance, viz., the practically complete abolition of 

 the ancient system of literary examinations and degrees given to ad- 

 vanced students in Chinese history, philosophy and poetry. 



Perhaps the most accomplished of China's long line of monarchs 

 was Li Shi-min, second emperor of the Tang Dynasty (618-908 A. 

 D.). ( Famed alike for his wisdom and nobleness, his conquests and 

 good government, his temperance, cultivated tastes and patronage of 

 literary men,' he ranks with Marcus Aurelius, or with Charlemagne, 

 who came to his throne in the next century. Under his direction great 

 pains were taken to preserve the records of former days and to draw 

 up full annals of the recent dynasties. He published a complete and 

 accurate edition of all the classics under the supervision of the most 

 learned men of the realm, and honored the memory of Confucius with % 



