368 PROBLEMS OF HUMAN EVOLUTION 



though there are noble exceptions corruption seems the rule 

 among mandarins. But the life of the nation will be sapped : 

 the prizes of life will vanish from the eyes of her young men, 

 and the people will not be educated by the necessity of managing 

 their own affairs. The importation of honesty from abroad 

 reduces the demand for the home-grown product. It is better 

 for China to keep on trying to produce mandarins of high 

 integrity though the failures much preponderate, than that she 

 should be condemned as incapable of self-government and be 

 treated like a child. 



But hitherto China has made herself ridiculous when she has had 

 to face European enemies or enemies who had adopted European 

 methods. Is there any inherent incapacity in Chinamen that 

 makes it impossible for them to organise an army ? If they 

 cannot do this, their undeniable courage will avail them nothing. 

 They will have to put themselves in leading strings and the 

 nation will sink into an apathy far more profound than that in 

 which it at present lies. But it may be hoped that when the 

 Chinese have once seen a better system, they may be able them- 

 selves to maintain it : they have honesty enough and brain 

 enough : but in the past the spur of necessity has been lacking. 

 The capacity of the nation has not for centuries been directed 

 towards military affairs. Where the vitality is so great and the 

 numbers so enormous, evolution has a grand field in which to 

 work and he would be a bold prophet who would maintain that 

 China will not eventually be able to take her place among pro- 

 gressive nations, when the character of the race has been modi- 

 fied by much elimination of those who will look only backward, 

 and when European ideas have become slowly assimilated. 



