270 Through the Yang-tse Gorges 



condition and of the past history of this vast land. Such a 

 study, carried on by unprejudiced minds, will undoubtedly 

 produce results which would modify many of our commonly 

 accepted generalizations on these subjects. The belief, for 

 instance, that order, justice, and a high state of civilization 

 is the monopoly of Christian nations, ceases to be held upon 

 a close study of this people on the spot. Yet the good 

 people of Europe and America are not deterred in their en- 

 deavours to plant our Western habits and beliefs in a soil 

 utterly unsuited to them, believing apparently that the up- 

 rooting of a system so firmly rooted in the past, and so 

 thoroughly suited to the genius of the present is only a 

 question of men and money. With eighteen provinces in 

 China proper, each as large and as populous as a European 

 kingdom, the field of observation affords room for yet count- 

 less explorers, not alone in every branch of physical science, 

 but equally in historical, ethical, ethnographical and linguistic 

 studies. We have here a nation whose civilization, con- 

 temporary with that of Nineveh and Babylon, has survived, 

 by the accident of its isolation, for the edification of the 

 critical nineteenth century. Let us study it carefully. When 

 we rightly understand and thoroughly appreciate this in- 

 teresting survival from antiquity, may we not possibly gain 

 from it some hints towards the solution of many of the grave 

 ethical problems now confronting us in the West? This 

 civilization, totally independent, both in its origin and in its 

 development, must have lessons to teach us, no less than 

 our civilization has for the Chinese. What will be the 

 ultimate result of the intermingling of the two we cannot yet 

 tell. Hitherto the Chinese seem anxious only to profit by 

 our superior attainments in the arts of war, the object, if not 

 the result of which, is to keep nations apart. Let us hope 

 that the end will be to bring them together, and that the day 



