of the Chinese Empire. 355 
contrary, the human mind exhibits no different phases; that the 
moral order is there uniform and constant, maxims and usages 
invariable; and finally the laws, religion, and government there 
triumph over the irruptions of barbarians, war, proselytism, and 
even time itself, 
Let us now apply these general principles to the empire of 
China, which more than any other Asiatic state exhibits the 
happy results of local assimilations, that is to say, of the accord- 
ance of institutions and climate, and we shall perhaps succeed 
in resolving the historical problem now under consideration. 
We may, without going too far, suppose that the civil and 
religious institutions of China were very ancient, even when 
they began to write the history of that country ; and the history 
of China, according to M. de Guignes, goes back to the year 2953 
before our vulgar zra. Confucius, who lived several centuries 
before the reign of Augustus, developed and inculeated the pre- 
cepts of pure morality: but he certainly was not the first who 
instructed princes and subjects in their duties: the Chinese an- 
nals go back more than 5000 years; and probably at that epoch 
the science of morals and agriculture had attained in this vast 
empire a kind of perfection. ' 
It is here important to remark the anteriority of the Chinese 
over the rest of the world in governing and in feeding mankind, 
as well as the limits of their knowledge in the arts of imagina- 
tion, and in the sciences which bespeak all the vigour of intellect 
and all the fire of genius. 
In order to be five thousand years ago what they are at pre- 
sent, the Chinese had only to collect the lessons of experience, 
always more forward in a paternal government, and under a sky 
whose serenity and mildness inspired the desire of pleasure; ex- 
perience more certain under a paternal government protected by 
patriarchal manners, and which a fertile soil exempts from the dan- 
gers which an inconstant temperature occasions in other regions*. 
Every thing which human ingenuity can invent and execute 
for procuring easy -enjoyments to limited desires has been ef- 
fected by the Chinese ; but they will never quit the track which 
has been marked out for them by nature. Their affections re- 
tain them m some! measure near jnstinct: they trace its pro- 
gress, and it directs in turn their industry: this is not the case 
with the bee and the beaver. But the former stop, like these 
animal architects, at limits which they will never exceed. 
Ought we to complain that the inventive arts have exhausted 
their patience when they have scarcely seized upon the first 
* The government has not yet succeeded, and perhaps never will suc¢ 
ceed, in establishing a just balance between the subsistences and the im- 
mense population of the empire, 
2 rules, 
