398 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



of the empire. Although the active response of the provincial officials 

 has been somewhat tardy and inadequate in many instances, there are 

 abundant signs that, without doubt, the renovation of the worn-out 

 system of education is at hand. Just what the efforts of the govern- 

 ment have been and the results they are producing will be noticed in 

 more detail in a later paper ; suffice it* now to point out that whereas at 

 first it was a problem of how to educate a people who did not desire 

 enlightenment because they fondly thought they already possessed all 

 useful knowledge, the present problem is how to pass from old ways to 

 radically new ones with the least friction among a people still in great 

 part thoroughly conservative, but embracing numerous individuals 

 thirsting for the newer learning. For realizing that the complete 

 refutation of the age-long methods of the past is China herself, the most 

 progressive officials and many of the young men are becoming sensible 

 not only of the precarious position of their nation, but of their indi- 

 vidual poverty and need of education. 



During 1903 the new publications of the Society for the Diffusion 

 of Christian and General Knowledge among the Chinese amounted to 

 11,434,600 pages, while The Review of the Times, a Chinese monthly, 

 edited by Dr. Young J. Allen, published 54,400 copies. The corre- 

 sponding figures for 1904 are 19,256,800 pages of new publications, 

 45,500 copies of The Review of the Times and 80,000 copies of The 

 Chinese Weekly, edited by W. A. Cornaby. The total of reprints and 

 new publications has grown from 25,353,880 pages in 1903 to 30,681,- 

 800 pages in 1904. Moreover, a conservative estimate puts the piracy 

 of all the best books of this society by various native presses at five 

 times the direct output of the society ! During 1903 the Diffusion 

 Society sold 35 complete sets and four supplements of the ' Encyclo- 

 paedia Britannica " in English, while hundreds applied for it in Chinese. 

 Several legitimate native publishing houses have recently sprung up, 

 the chief of which, the Commercial Press of Shanghai, is literally send- 

 ing forth volume after volume of new literature, mostly translations 

 of works that have proved their usefulness among other nations. That 

 the high officials are being influenced by the translations of the Diffu- 

 sion Society is clear from the remarkable changes in the questions set 

 throughout the empire for the literary examinations for the second 

 degree, samples of which will be fully treated in a later article. 



