THE HAMILTON ASSOCIATION. 5,7 



CHINA, PAST AND FUTURE. 



Read before the Hamilton Association, Noi-. 7th, 1895. 

 BY S. A. MORGAN, B. A. 



It has been said that the family precedes the nation, as the in- 

 vidual does the family. While this may be physically true, as regards 

 the first stages of national life, we find the very opposite to hold 

 good in the relationship existing between the individual and the 

 nation in the more advanced stages of civilization. Like the indi- 

 vidual, the nation which is truly national is a living and unified 

 organism. It lives not to itself alone, but moves ever on, guided by 

 some spiritual impulse to the realization of its mission to humanity. 

 To partake, therefore, of national life it is not sufficient simply to set 

 our dwelling place within certain geographical limits or to trace our 

 lineage through certain ancestral lines. That m.an is truly a citizen 

 who finds fixed in his own breast these impulses which give char- 

 acter and permanence to the nation, and who in his own life gives 

 expression and development to the same. Instead, then, of the in- 

 dividual being above the nation, the individual will ever be found to 

 inherit from the nation whatever he possesses of intellectual and 

 moral permanence in his character. 



In what, then, may national life be said to consist? National 

 life finds its source in the establishment of certain civic ideals as 

 universal motives among any number of individuals. To develop 

 the nation is to develop the individual in and through these national 

 traditions ; to unify and solidify the nation is to give these ideals 

 such an environment as will enable them to develop in every 

 direction. 



This being true, how are we to pursue our investigations into 

 the nature and progress of individual nations ? Not by devoting our 

 whole attention to the idiosyncrasies of particular individuals, but by 

 establishing the sources and relative values of the living forces, physi- 



