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THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



3. Reverence, often changing its ob- 

 ject, but ever there. 



4. The sense of fihal obligation, never 

 diminishing, and extending even to the 

 unseen personaHties. 



These are great forces in Hfe — indi- 

 vidual and national — and in no land are 

 they so powerful or so all-pervading as 

 in China. No people are more potently 

 influenced by the unseen world. 



Chinese civihzation is one of the oldest 

 on earth, and the only one which has 

 continued uninterruptedly and vigorous 

 till the present day. That it is vigorous 

 is strongly impressed upon the man who 

 travels far in that land. The reach of 

 imperial authority is a constant subject 

 of surprise and wonder. The card of an 

 imperial prince, given to a traveler, will 

 convey him safely and unmolested and 

 secure for him courteous treatment to 

 the remotest borders of the land : and yet 

 China, unlike Japan, has never been 

 under the domination of an aristocracy. 

 The strength of certain governmental 

 forces, under apparently disjointed con- 

 ditions, is to the bewildered traveler as 

 pier sing as it is surprising. 



He finds relays of guards ready to 

 receive him from the hands of one official 

 and to convey him to the safe conduct 

 of the next, and that frequently among 

 peoples who have no knowledge of each 

 other's speech and through officials ut- 

 terly unknown to each other. 



All officials, the binding links of this 

 great government, come first from all the 

 provinces, through their ancient system 

 of civil service examinations, held in 

 every great city. Finally they reach 

 Peking, the capital, to be there fully 

 equipped for government service and 

 then sent back to represent and exercise 

 imperial authority over the whole empire. 



This civilization is unique and exceed- 

 ingly difficult to understand. It is in 

 some particulars so fixed and apparently 

 impracticable, and in others so flexible 

 and even loose, that it seems a mass of 

 contradictions. 



THE FORM OF GOVERNMENT 



The form of the government is an im- 

 perial democracy. The imperial author- 



ity is absolute, but only within the law. 

 The right of the people to revolt and 

 dethrone the sovereign is most tena- 

 ciously maintained, notwithstanding the 

 fact of the sacredness of his person in 

 his being the ecclesiastical as well as the 

 civil head of the nation. 



The imperial censors, a department of 

 the government, have been known to call 

 down the Emperor, when acting illegally, 

 as inflexibly as they would the humblest 

 official. A censor, in fact, has been 

 known to do this, and then take his own 

 life at his sovereign's feet. 



'The divine right of kings" has never 

 had a place in China's polity as it was 

 understood in Europe. Democracy is 

 most plainly manifest in her municipal 

 organization and administration. 



This is the land whose cities have no 

 lights, no plan, no sewers, and no side- 

 walks. Her people have no public spirit, 

 no patriotism, no idlers, no national feel- 

 ing, and no secrets. The splendid monu- 

 ments of one dynasty are almost invaria- 

 bly destroyed by its successor. A deeply 

 religious people, yet, according to their 

 proverbs, priests and temples are a curse. 



Notwithstanding all these anomalies, 

 every province, every city, every hamlet 

 is districted, and in the hamlets some 

 respected citizen is recognized as head 

 man. He is held responsible for its good 

 conduct. If any crime is committed he 

 is held till the culprit is found. In a 

 land where there are few secrets, and 

 where these head men are very close to 

 the people, the guilty seldom escape. 

 Numberless cases of social trouble and 

 dispute are, through this arrangement, 

 never brought to the courts, but are set- 

 tled among themselves. This paper, of 

 course, records the conditions only among 

 those Chinese who have come little in 

 contact with foreigners and who consti- 

 tute the vast majority of the nation; 

 whose heroes are pictured sitting on their 

 halos instead of wearing them. 



Her millions amply testify to ages of 

 untiring energy in her stupendous public 

 works, her myriad walled cities, her 

 great wall, 1,500 miles in length and from 

 20 to 25 feet both in thickness and 

 height, climbing the mountains and span- 



