JANUARY 12, 1912] 
the United States. It shows what we would 
come to if nothing was done. It is also a 
lesson to the laissez faire economists and is a 
fair sample of the legitimate consequences of 
the laissez faire policy in general. 
Another modern economic doctrine is here 
exemplified, namely, that of historical mate- 
rialism, as it is called, otherwise named eco- 
nomic materialism, economic determinism, or 
the economic interpretation of history. I do 
not refer to the facts, which of course can be 
relied upon, and we have them here on a grand 
seale, but to the contention that economic 
effects are exclusively the result of impersonal, 
or, as it were, of physical laws, with which 
men as men, and human ideas have nothing to 
do. That the entire series of degrading con- 
ditions in China is due to the ideas and fixed 
beliefs of the Chinese is clear almost at a 
glance. We have seen that their terrible 
overpopulation is the result of an inveterate 
conviction of the duty of unlimited propaga- 
tion, which nothing seems able to shake. The 
same is true of most of their other calamities, 
which a sound philosophy might have averted. 
On this point Dr. Ross says: 
Chinese conservatism, unlike the conservatism of 
the lower races, is not merely an emotional atti- 
tude. It is not inspired chiefly by dread of the 
unknown, horror of the new, or fanatical attach- 
ment to a system of ideas which gives them confi- 
dence in the established. It is the logical outcome 
of precedent. Change the ideas of the Chinese 
and their policy will change. Let their minds be 
possessed by a philosophy that makes them doubt 
the past and have confidence in the future, and 
they will prove to be as consistently progressive as 
are the Germans of to-day (pp. 53-54). 
It is perfectly clear that the Japanese 
awakening has been due to a change in their 
ideas, and when the Chinese similarly change 
theirs they too will awake and start in a new 
direction. That the Chinese are not an “ in- 
ferior” race, that their intellectual capacity 
is fully equal to that of the Caucasian, nay, of 
the Aryan race, is clearly brought out in this 
book, and no one can foresee the results of a 
development there, should it ever take place, 
analogous to the intellectual development of 
Europe since the middle ages. 
SCIENCE 67 
There are many great subjects treated in 
this work which space will not permit us more 
than to mention. One is the condition of 
women and the prospect of their emancipation. 
In China, as in India, the androcentrie world 
view is supreme, and its overthrow seems al- 
most hopeless, but progress is being made even 
here, and foot-binding at least seems destined 
to disappear. In the relations of the sexes 
China is certainly medieval if not positively 
ancient or even barbaric. There is absolutely 
no mutuality in the choice of partners. None 
of the three forms of sexual selection to which 
I gave special names in 1903, viz., gyneclexis, 
andreclexis and ampheclexis (terms which are 
defined in the Supplement to the Century 
Dictionary), can be said to exist in China, but 
a fourth form, which I did not name, but 
which may be called altreclexis, is universal. 
This is the selection of wives by third parties 
—parents, relatives and usually by the house 
or clan to which the parties belong—and in 
which neither of the parties to the marriage, 
least of all the woman, has any voice what- 
ever. Under such a system, which is of course 
not confined to China, but has widely pre- 
vailed in other countries, there can obviously 
be no romance, and life becomes utterly prosy 
and uninteresting. But it also shows, as do 
unnumbered other facts, that there is no 
psychologic basis in China for a romantic 
life, that the sentiment underlying it, com- 
monly called romantic love, does not exist in 
the Chinese constitution, being wanting there 
as it is in all other races outside of the Cau- 
casian peoples subsequent to the middle ages 
of European history. 
The opium curse of China is treated in an 
interesting chapter, and the remarkable fact 
developed is that the crusade against it has 
been mainly waged by the Chinese themselves. 
The Christian missionaries residing there, be- 
longing, as they do, to races in which the evil 
does not exist, have, it is true, cooperated in 
the movement, but the claim so often made, 
that they are the chief cause of the progress 
attained, is utterly unfounded. On the con- 
trary, the strongest resistance that the Chinese 
