CHINA'S RENAISSANCE. 395 



adjust her relations with the world, they wish to plunge at once into 

 anarchy. They are too willing to move because they do not know China, 

 while the literati are unwilling to move because they do not know the 

 world. China needs men who know the institutions of both China and 

 the west, who see clearly the foundations of all real civilizations, and 

 hence can help their nation forward. 



From the very beginning of foreign intercourse with China, men 

 have not been wanting whose vision was clear and disinterested enough 

 to lead them to devote untiring energy to dispel the darkness of China's 

 ignorance and superstition. With the opening of the nineteenth cen- 

 tury the missionary societies began trying to find an entrance for 

 Christianity and modern civilization into the Celestial Empire, but they 

 were obliged, on account of the repellent forces still operative, to content 

 themselves with such work as could be carried on among the emigrant 

 Chinese in the vicinity of the Malay Peninsula, so that during the first 

 period of large commercial intercourse with China (1677-1841), there 

 was no modern educational effort within the confines of the empire. 

 Through the work of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowl- 

 edge in China, founded in 1831, a beginning of western education 

 within the borders of China was made by the printed page, while as yet 

 the founding of schools within the country was impracticable. 



Parallel with official China's arrogance with regard to trade was 

 literary China's proud confidence in the axiom, " What Confucius 

 teaches is true ; what is contrary to his teaching is false ; what he does 

 not teach is unnecessary." " Confucius lived 2,400 years ago. Theirs 

 was an assurance rooted in undisputed tradition, and fortified by the 

 accumulated conservatism of two and a half millenniums of undisturbed 

 conformity."* The problem was how to teach a nation that had no 

 desire to learn ; no desire, not from lack of interest in learning so much 

 as because they believed themselves to have a monopoly of valuable 

 knowledge. 



Effective contact of western thought with this colossus of conceited 

 ignorance began on the cession of Hongkong to the British in 1842, 

 when the British government assumed responsibility for the education 

 of the Chinese population of the island. Though numbering only 

 5,000 at the start, it has since multiplied to 270,000, and considerably 

 more than half a million Chinese pass annually between Hongkong and 

 various parts of the mainland, so that the importance of Hongkong as 

 a distributing center of ideas as well as of material products must not 

 be underestimated, though a frank observer is somewhat disappointed 

 at the inadequate way in which the opportunities for higher education 

 are being improved. 



* See ' Western Education in South China,' O. F. Wisner. ' East of Asia,' 

 Special Educational Number, Shanghai, June, 1004. 



