60 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE. 



1. Ilistonj before Clirist. 



The movement of humanity, like that of nature, ia 

 from East to West. It is from the East that the liglit 

 comes, morning by morning. Thence we receive Chris- 

 tianity, the light of the soul. Thence, also, came the 

 Aryan races, from which we are descended. Of what 

 sort were these jmmeval communities? Theocracies, 

 in which the national sentiment was so rooted in the 

 religious sentiment, that the two were confounded to- 

 gether: — vast empires of Egyptians, Assyrians, Persians, 

 Avhose first dynasties were composed of gods, wliose law- 

 givers were priests, and who claimed to conquer their 

 enemies less by force of arms tlian by the might of their 

 divinities. Ear beyond the regions in which these em- 

 pires flourished, I perceive, in the remotest East, an- 

 other, at once their contemporary and ours — Cliina, that 

 strange empire, the least religious in the world, and 

 which, for that matter, comes nearest to the dreams of 

 modern democracy. It is, in fact, an immense democ- 

 racy, in which liberty is always willingly held subordi- 

 nate to equality; — an authoritative democracy, disci- 

 plined under the mighty liand of a chief. It is the 

 government, ex officio, of educated men. Instruction is 

 not obligatory (and in this respect China is governed by 

 a better inspiration than its imitators), but it penetrates 

 none the less into the innermost recesses of the nation, 

 and tliere it takes on those forms of ^' inilcpoKleiit moral- 

 itif' which are so much preached up. It has i)uslied 

 dogmas out of the way, southward toAvard India, nortli- 

 ward toward Thiljet. Scarcely has there been retained 

 a vague, inoffensive deism; and the morality taught in 

 tlie (?mi)iré is, uft<M' that of Socrates, th(^ noblest and 



