THE GREAT UNPROGRESSIVE PEOPLE 365 



Now, were the legislature to step in and carry out reforms, 

 were a ubiquitous and incorruptible police to be introduced, 

 the government would have to continue on the path on which 

 it had entered. It would have to persevere in its efforts to 

 deal with new abuses, as they arose, instead of leaving the 

 citizens to feel how intolerable life is made by certain forms 

 of wickedness and so stimulating them to use the means at their 

 command to extirpate the evil. The enforcement of right- 

 dealing by ubiquitous state officials would inevitably lead to a 

 weakening of family life. There would be a tendency for the 

 individual to take the place of the family as the unit of Chinese 

 society. 



The religion of the people has been sufficient until now to Ancestor 

 prevent the disintegration of a society, the constitution of which w 

 reduces very greatly the tendency to dissolution. Moreover, it 

 cannot be denied that the ancestor worship which is universal 

 among the Chinese, is of the nature of religion. It may not be 

 a really noble thing ; it may lack, no doubt, some of the elements 

 that are essential to religion, at least in its highest forms. Still 

 it is an attempt to idealise family affection, and, therefore, we 

 cannot but regard it as helping largely to cement Chinese society. 

 And before leaving the subject, I must point out how a nation's 

 need of religion increases with progress in civilisation. When 

 almost the whole energies of the tribesman or citizen go to 

 getting food out of the earth, there is but a small field for anti- 

 social tendencies. China, measured by our European standard, 

 has not advanced very far ; her citizens get their living by 

 patient manual labour. In her present circumstances she has 

 a working minimum of religion enough to prevent disintegra- 

 tion. If her civilisation ever advances, and she has to face the 

 dangers that beset European communities, with their great 

 inequality of wealth, their labour and socialist troubles, then 

 her ideals must be higher, or decadence will speedily set in. 



We come now to problem No. 3 : why has civilisation in China The third 

 not produced physical degeneration ? Here, as everywhere, we P roblem 

 shall see how China's failures in one direction have helped her 

 in another. In science there has for ages been stagnation. Mrs 



