ON ITEMS OP CHINESE ETHICS AND PHILOSOPHY. G3 



The Chairman (D. Howard, Esq., F.C.S., D.L., &c.) — I am sure 

 all must have listened with much interest to this paper on the 

 important subject of Chinese Ethics and Philosophy. Apparently 

 it is an almost bottomless well of information and thought to those 

 who study the subject. 



I am glad to see some present who can speak on the subject. 

 Perhaps Sir Thomas Wade will commence the discussion. 



Sir Thomas F. Wade, G.C.M.Q., K.C.B.*— I should like to 

 congratulate first the meeting upon the paper to which we have 

 just listened, and then ourselves upon the increase of attention 

 which is now being aroused to the needs of that great country to 

 which the paper refers. 



The author has collected into an extremely compact essay an 

 extraordinary amount of reading. It must have taken, I am sure, 

 years to bring together all that he has set before us. 



I should recommend that we should begin to rely upon mor 

 modern compilers than Du Halde, remarkable authority as was 

 this Jesuit father, to whom and to whose fellow workmen we really 

 owe all that we once knew about China ; for it is only during the last 

 fifty years that we have got into contact with that shut-up country. 

 I trust I shall not give offence if I endeavour in some instances to 

 supplement what has fallen from the author; if I venture to move 

 some amendments to some of his propositions. I should incline to 

 say that instead of comprising the whole of Chinese philosophy 

 under the five heads of the deities enumerated, we should rather 

 commence with the five virtues to which those five sets of deities 

 are intended to give effect. There is not, however, a direct 

 relation in the numbers. The number five, has, for philosophic 

 reasons, a very special attraction to the Chinese in this arrange- 

 ment. They are, above all people, addicted to symmetrising their 

 arrangements. For the work of creation they have five processes. 

 Amongst the celestial bodies they have five planets. In the 

 creation of the world they have five elements, and they have in the 



* The reporter's rotes of this speech were twice carefully revised by 

 Sir Thomas Wade, before his lamented dectas?. — Ed. 



