€HINA. iqs 



the bodies of the meanest animals, in which the sufferings are to be 

 proportioned to the transgression committed in the human form. 



According to Du Halde, the ancient Chinese adored a Supreme 

 Being, under the name of Chang-Zi, or Tien ; which, according to 

 some, signified the spirit presiding over the heavens, but has been, 

 supposed by others to mean only the visible firmament. They also- 

 worshipped subaltern spirits, who presided over kingdoms, provinces, 

 cities, rivers, and mountains. Since the fifteenth century, many of 

 the Chinese literati have embraced a new system, which acknow- 

 ledges a universal principle which they call Taiki. Their doctrine 

 appears to have a resemblance to that of the soul of the world, as held 

 by some ancient philosophers ; and they have been denominated 

 atheists. Such opinions are, however, confined to a comparatively- 

 small number of persons, the generality of the Chinese being addict- 

 ed to the superstitions above described. 



Genius, learning, and arts. ...The genius of the Chinese is pe- 

 culiar to themselves : they have no conception of what is beautiful 

 in writing, regular in architecture, or natural in painting ; and yet, 

 in their gardening and planning of their grounds, they exhibit the 

 true sublime and beautiful. They perform all the operations of arith- 

 metic with prodigious quickness, but differently from the Europeans, 

 Till the latter came among them, they were ignorant of mathemati- 

 cal learning and all its depending arts ; they had no proper apparatus 

 for astronomical observations ; and the metaphysical learning which 

 existed among them, was only known to their philosophers. But even, 

 the arts introduced by the Jesuits were of very short duration among 

 them ; and lasted very little longer than the reign of Hang-hi, who 

 was contemporary with our Charles II, nor is it very probable they 

 will ever be revived. It has been generally said, that they under- 

 stood printing before the Europeans; but that can only be applied to- 

 their method of block-printing, by cutting their characters on blocks 

 of wood ; for the fusile or moveable types were undoubtedly Dutch 

 or German inventions. The Chinese, however, had almanacks which 

 were stamped from plates or blocks, many hundred years before print- 

 ing was discovered in Europe. 



The difficulty of mastering and retaining such a number of arbi- 

 trary marks and characters as there are in what may be called the Chi- 

 nese written language, greatly retards the progress of their erudition. 

 But there is no part of the globe where learning is attended with 

 such honours and rewards, and where there are more powerful in- 

 ducements to cultivate and pursue it. The literati are reverenced 

 as another species, and are the only nobility known in China. If 

 their birth be ever so mean and lpw, they become mandarins of the 

 highest rank, in proportion to the extent of their learning. On the 

 other hand, however exalted their birth may be, they quickly sink into 

 poverty and obscurity, if they neglect those studies which raised their 

 fathers. It has been observed, that there is no nation in the world 

 where the first honours of the state lie so open to the lowest of the 

 people, and where there is less of hereditary greatness. The Chinese 

 range all their works of literature into four classes. The first is the 

 class of King, or the sacred books, which contain the principles of the 

 Chinese religion, morality, and government, and several curious and 

 obscure records relative to these important subjects. History forms 

 a separate class : yet, in this first class, there are placed some his- 

 torical monuments, on account of their relation to religion and gov- 



