CHINESE IMMIGRATION. 733 



improving to the highest degree those suggestions which we have re- 

 ceived from them. 



As they have taught us many useful arts in the past, it is not im- 

 probable that we may learn from them still others in the future. But 

 inventions may be adopted by those who wish them ; customs are 

 acquired by contact with those who practice them. Arts may be 

 learned from a distance, or by the casual contact of travel, with equal 

 certainty and greater safety than by a union of the societies. Inven- 

 tions and arts are regulated in their distribution, rather as commerce 

 is, by the laws of supply and demand, than by the involuntary influ- 

 ence of social contact. 



The most complete account of the customs and institutions of the 

 Chinese would but add to the testimony here presented of the wonder- 

 fully conservative character of their civilization. The development 

 of a society from a single race, under one government, with constantly 

 similar surroundings and but little subject to the influence of foreign 

 races or nations, has produced a homogeneous society, which is con- 

 stant in the repetition, for generation after generation, of the characters 

 which marked it at its commencement. 



The nations of the West, on the other hand, have developed, with 

 ever-varying surroundings, and under the influence of various nations 

 and races. We have our language from India, our alphabet from 

 Phoenicia, and our religion from Israel. Our civilization bears the 

 impress of the various peoples who have spread around the Mediterra- 

 nean Sea, from the builders of the pyramids of Egypt to the Moorish 

 philosophers of Cordova. 



In government, the Chinese have always been well content with a 

 monarchy ; with the Aryan nations there has been an ever-increasing 

 tendency to democracy. This difference of civilizations is made in- 

 telligible only by that theory which is an explanation also of the phys- 

 ical varieties of races. It is the effect of development through ages, 

 under the influence of different environments. There is more than an 

 analogy between this development of the civilization and the physical 

 characters of a race. It is the same relation that exists between the 

 mind and the brain ; they can not be separated. The mental charac- 

 ters which determine the genius of a civilization are thus but a mani- 

 festation of the physical organization of the individuals composing 

 the society. The characters of the civilization and of the physical 

 organization must, therefore, be controlled by the operation of the 

 same laws. A change in one is the cause or the effect of a change in 

 the other. 



The application of the law of heredity, that older characters are 

 more constant than those of later development, we find is exemplified 

 in the unparalleled persistence of the ancient habits and institutions 

 of the Chinese ; and to such a degree is this extended, that it seems 

 an illustration of that persistence of characters, once beneficial, after 



