43 



to be regarded as one of the most powerful of agencies for 

 the advancement of science and the promotion of human wel- 

 fare in this State of Illinois. 



The chairman then introduced T. C. Chamberlin who gave 

 the following address. 



THE CHINESE PROBLEM. 



When I replied affirmatively to the Secretary's request that 

 1 give some account of my recent studies in the East it was with 

 the thought that my remarks would fall into a much less im- 

 portant place on the program. I should in any case have been 

 embarrassed to select from the many things which ought to 

 fall under observation on such a trip, but I am especially em- 

 barrassed in choosing what may be appropriate to a talk follow- 

 ing the scholarly address just delivered by the President of 

 the Academy. My trip to the Orient had an educational rather 

 than a scientific purpose, but the educational and the scienti- 

 fic are intimately related, and a study of educational develop- 

 ment in the Orient is scarcely less than a scientific study in it- 

 self, since in its broader aspects it embraces everything that 

 enters into the welfare of the people. 



The education oif the Chinese people, to which I shall con- 

 fine myself, is essentially a problem of transition from an old 

 adjustment to a new adjustment. What we see today are but 

 the early stages of the transition from an adaptation to a past 

 set of conditions to an adaptation to a coming set of condi- 

 tions. The past evolution of China has been controlled by con- 

 ditions of isolation ; the coming evolution is to be controlled 

 by contact with the rest of the world. The past evolution il- 

 lustrates the influence of the factor of isolation in evolution, a 

 factor much discussed recently by Jordan and others. The 

 evolution of a civilization is indeed broader than the evolution 

 of a biologic species, for it is at once a physical, a biological 



