CHINA'S RENAISSANCE. 393 



whole race of man, or from looking with scorn upon entire divisions of 

 the race whom his training has not fitted him to appreciate. " A proper 

 reverence for humanity will not allow him to exalt his own position at 

 the expense of the entire east, or to attempt crudely to force upon a 

 whole continent external domination or those forms of civilization which 

 are the product in some part of himself." From the higher level of 

 human development, expansion and domination we may well feel that 

 the world is destined to profit greatly by present events in the far east 

 if they result in restoring to humanity the whole continent of Asia, free 

 to join in making the history of the next hundred years, free to be itself 

 and to supplement, with all of good there is manifest or dormant in it, 

 the strength and goodness of the west. 



The shortest road to a partial success in this endeavor to preserve 

 free nationality in Asia is the development of China's material re- 

 sources, which will not only enrich China and the world, but will help 

 to arouse the people from their age-long sleep ; and it may be that mili- 

 tary development consequent upon this awakening will serve to main- 

 tain the empire's independence. 



But China's independence should concern her friends in the west 

 chiefly because such independence is essential to something far more 

 important : true freedom for the Chinese people. " The dormant 

 powers now awaking in this race and promising such a future for it in 

 the commercial and political affairs of the world demand imperatively 

 that there be set in motion, side by side with this material transforma- 

 tion, forces far more subtle that shall bring about a true renaissance of 

 the nation by influencing profoundly the intellect and the soul of the 

 race. Only so can the Chinese people be speedily restored to the mod- 

 ern world." 



Without books, newspapers, the pulpit, political debate, general 

 assemblies, etc., China's people have long been groping in the dark. 

 An ignorant people can not be patriotic, nor can there be any steady 

 progress in commerce, agriculture or manufactures among them. These 

 are not due to any extent to differences in government. Democracy 

 among an ignorant people is impossible, or at least dangerous. Al- 

 though China's scholars of the old school have a superior education in 

 some respects, it is after all too narrow to fit them for lives of service 

 to their fellows. The literati oppose changes because they are ignorant 

 and fear to tread a new path in the dark. 



But the ignorance of the people in general or of the literati is not 

 the most dangerous part of China's ignorance; it is the blatant and 

 conceited ignorance of those young men who know little of the founda- 

 tions of China's civilization and less of western institutions, who wish 

 to tear down the old without knowing how to build up the new. 

 Ignorant of what it means to govern so great a nation as China and to 



