THE HAMILTON ASSOCIATION. 67 



devotes itself chiefly to landscape, while 'sculpture busies itself with 

 the production of huge images or grotesque figures. 



But in no place, perhaps, is the evil effect of the absence of a 

 high and active spiritual ideal more apparent among the Chinese than 

 in their emotional life. Imagination, that mother of all spiritual 

 beauty and human progress, may be said to be absent from the na- 

 tional character. This is in no place more apparent than in the 

 utter absence of the scientific spirit. Both fine and mechanical arts 

 the Chinese have had from remote antiquity, but in no department 

 do they pass beyond the stage of copyist. To search for general 

 principles, to pass from the particular to the universal is a stretch of 

 imagination too great for the meagre philosophic spirit of the ordin- 

 ary Chinaman. 



Unsatisfactory as these leading national traits of character may 

 seem from the western standpoint, we must not forget that they 

 have not been without their accompanying compensation. It is to 

 this very lack of personality, this dread of change in thought and 

 environment, this bringing down of the divine to the level of every 

 day life, that has enabled the nation to conserve itself throughout 

 the centuries in spite of extortion and injustice in its government, 

 and extreme poverty and wretchedness among its people. 



But that such a state can much longer continue seems strongly 

 improbable. We have seen that a time will come in the history of 

 every nation when she must adjust herself to the progressive con- 

 ditions of humanity. The onward wave of western life and thought 

 is already forcing itself through the shattered wall of Chinese isola- 

 tion Can we, from the light of past history, form any conceptions 

 as to the probable results ? 



First, there is always the possibility of the nation rising to the 

 requirements of its new environment, and working out its own salva- 

 tion by means of its inherent energy. That such a result will happen 

 in the case of this people seems strongly improbable. The Chinese 

 nation presents in a most intensified form the disadvantages associ- 

 ated with a too close relationship between government and religious 

 belief. Every disturbance, therefore, which takes place on one of 

 these fields is sure to be accompanied with corresponding upheavals 

 in the other sphere. Such a condition could result only in long and 

 bloody internal contentions among a people too prone to the phrensy 



