362 Memoir upon the long Duration of the Chinese Empire. 
If the fables which charm the vulgar in China could have filled 
their brains with fanaticism; if the reason of the Chinese had 
been so far deranged as to pretend that the worship of the 
bonzes ‘is the only one which is agreeable to the divinity, and 
that the Father of mankind has chosen the emperor of China 
to convert all the world, or to cut their throats; Asia would 
have been burnt many centuries before fanaticism carried fire 
and sword to the innocent cities of the Incas. Ere the Euro- 
peans were in political existence, the Chinese had discovered the 
composition of gunpowder, which we have converted into a 
weapon of death ; whereas in China it is only used to give éclat 
and solemnity to public rejoicings. 
It is equally well ascertained that the Chinese invented printing 
many centuries before Germany attributed the honour of this dis- 
covery to herself, and that they confined the use of it to trans- 
mit from age to age the lives of the sovereigns, and the annals of 
the empire. 
Printing, on the contrary, was scarcely known in Europe, than 
it opened all the schools to the most frivolous disputes. Down 
to the 17th century it was less serviceable to letters than to the 
propagation of lies and errors. 
Thus all the secondary causes of the duration of the govern- 
ment of China bring us back to the primary cause of this sin- 
gular phenomenon, the influence of climate. This influence, 
which equally affeets the moral and physical powers, marks limits 
to the latter, which the Chinese neither have the power nor the 
wish to exceed. Their minds are constantly directed to what 
is useful, and there remain fixed; experience is their guide, 
good sense their companion, and they never desire a better con 
dition. They can conceive none preferable to their mild state 
of servitude. Of all our opinions, that which would astonish 
them most, even their learned men, is our opinion as to the dig- 
nity of man, his honour, and liberty. With sound ways of 
thinking, the Chinese therefore never experience violent passions; 
their tastes, wants, and institutions bear the impression of uni- 
formity, and of a succession of ages, which the authentic history 
of the empire has not been able fully to describe. 
India presents a far different spectacle to the traveller, who 
cannot take one step in this ancient and primitive country with- 
out recognising the fatal effects of the revolutions which it has 
undergone-since the people of Europe began to dispute for it as 
their prey. A single people now holds it in the most complete 
subjection. A merchant born on the banks of the Thames im- 
poses tributes on the Indian princes; and their thrones have 
been levelled perhaps by a tradesman, who dees not know how 
to manage any thing but a counting-house, 
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