II.
INTERCOURSE BY SEA.
In 1388 the Mongols were expelled. The Christian bishopric was swept away, and left no trace; but a book of the younger Polo, describing the wealth of China, gave rise to marvellous results. Together with the magnetic needle, which originated in China, it led to centuries of effort to open a way by sea to that far-off fairyland. It was from Marco Polo that Columbus derived his inspiration to seek a short road to the far East by steering to the West,--finding a new world athwart his pathway. It was the same needle, if not the same book, that impelled Vasco da Gama to push his way across the Indian Ocean, after the Cape of Good Hope had been doubled by Bartholomew Diaz. A century later the same book led Henry Hudson to search for some inlet or strait that might open a way to China, when, instead of it, he discovered the port of New York.
The mariner's compass, which wrought this revolution on the map of the world, is only one of many discoveries made by the ancient Chinese, which, unfruitful in their native land, have, after a change of climate, transformed the face of the globe.
The polarity of the loadstone was observed in China over a thousand years before the Christian era. One of their emperors, it is said, provided certain foreign ambassadors with "south-pointing chariots," so that they might not go astray on their way home. To this day the magnetic needle in China continues to be called by a name which means that it points to the south. It heads a long list of contraries in the notions of the Chinese as compared with our own, such, for example, as beginning to read at the back of a book; placing the seat of honor on the left hand; keeping to the left in passing on the street, with many others, so numerous as to suggest that the same law that placed their feet opposite to ours must have turned their heads the other way. To the Chinese the "south-pointing needle" continued to be a mere plaything to be seen every day in the sedan chair of a mandarin, or in wheeled vehicles. If employed on the water, it was only used in coasting voyages.
So with gunpowder, of which the Arabs were transmitters, not inventors. In other lands it revolutionized the art of war, clothing their people with irresistible might, while in its native home it remained undeveloped and served chiefly for fireworks. Have we not seen, even in this our day, the rank and file of the Chinese army equipped with bows and arrows? The few who were provided with firearms, for want of gunlocks, had to set them off by a slow-match of burning tow; and cannon, meant to guard the mouth of the Peiho, were trained on the channel and fixed on immovable frames.
The art of printing was known in China five centuries before it made its way to Europe. The Confucian classics having been engraved on stone to secure them from being again burned up, as they had been by the builder of the great wall, the rubbings taken from those stones were printing. It required nothing but the substitution of wood for stone and of relievo for intaglio to give that art the form it now has. The smallest scrap of printed paper in the lining of a tea chest, or wrapped about a roll of silk, would suffice to suggest the whole art to a mind like that of Gutenberg. In China it never emerged from the state of wood engraving. The "Peking Gazette," the oldest newspaper in the world, is printed on divisible types, but they are of wood, not metal, more than one attempt to introduce metallic types having proved unsuccessful, for the want of that happy alloy known as type-metal. It is from us that they have learned the art of casting type, especially that splendid achievement, the making of stereotype plates, and, later, electrotype plates, by the aid of electricity and acid solutions. Chemistry, from which this beautiful art takes its rise, carries us back to China, for it was there that alchemy had its birth, as I have elsewhere shown.[[4]]
"The Lore of Cathay." New York: Fleming R. Revell Co., p. 41.
Man's first desire is long life; his second, to be rich. The Taoist philosophy commenced with the former before the Christian era, but it was not long in finding its way to the latter. A powerful impulse was thus given to research in the three departments of science,--chemistry, botany, and geography. As in the case of gunpowder, the Arabs transmitted these discoveries to the West, and along with them the Chinese doctrine as to the twofold objects of alchemic studies,--the elixir of life and the philosopher's stone.
From this double root sprang the chemistry of the West, which in no mean sense has fulfilled its promise by prolonging life and enriching mankind. In all these the West has performed the part of a nursing mother, but she has brought the nursling back full grown, and prepared to repay its obligation to its true parent by effective service.
Portuguese merchants made their way to Canton early in the sixteenth century, but it was not till the latter part of the century that Catholic missionaries entered on their grand crusade. In 1601 the Jesuit pioneer Matteo Ricci and his associates, impelled by religion and armed with science, presented themselves at the court of Peking. The Chinese had been able to reckon the length of the year with remarkable accuracy two thousand years before the time of Christ, but their science had made no headway. The missionaries found their calendar in a state of confusion, vanquished the native astronomers in fair competition, and were formally installed as keepers of the Imperial Observatory; and these missionaries supervised the casting of the bronze instruments which have since been taken to Berlin.
This honor they retained even after the fall of the native dynasty that patronized them. When the Manchus effected their conquest in 1644, not only were the Jesuit missionaries left in charge of the observatory, but the heir apparent was placed under their instruction. Coming to the throne in 1662, under the now illustrious title of Kanghi, the young prince showed himself a generous patron as he had previously been a respectful pupil. He was apparently not averse to the idea of his people's adopting Christianity as their national religion, and allowed the missionaries a free hand to plant churches throughout the vast interior. Rarely if ever has so fine an opportunity offered for making an easy conquest of a pagan empire. It was lost through the jealousy of contending societies, and especially through the blunder of an infallible Pope. The Dominicans denounced the Jesuits for tolerating the practice of pagan rites, such as the worship of ancestors, and for employing for God the name of a pagan deity. The name which they then objected to was Shang-ti, Supreme Ruler, a venerable designation for the Supreme Power found in the earliest of the Chinese canonical books, and at this day accepted by a large proportion of Protestant missionaries.
The question as to its fitness was referred to the Emperor, who decided in favor of the Jesuits. It was then brought before the Papal See, condemned as idolatrous, and Tien Chu, the Lord of Heaven, adopted in its stead. That Shang-ti, however pure in origin, had come to be applied to a whole class of deities was perfectly true, but the name proposed in its stead was not free from a taint of idolatry,--Tien Chu, Lord of Heaven, being one of eight divinities, and worshipped along with Ti Chu, Lord of Earth, Hai Chu, Lord of the Sea, etc.
The manner in which his opinions had been set aside by the Pope had no doubt a repelling influence on the mind of the Emperor, so that if he had ever felt inclined to embrace Christianity, he drew back in his later years. Not only so, but he left behind him a series of Maxims in which he censures the foreign creed and warns his people against it. These Maxims were ordered to be read in public by mandarins, and they continue to be recited and expounded as a sort of religious ritual. Is it surprising that this lost opportunity was followed by a century and a half of open persecution? That most of the churches survived, not only attests the zeal with which the Faith had been propagated, it throws a pleasing light on the force of the Chinese character. At the dawn of our new epoch, there were still some half a million converts,--with here and there a foreign Father hiding in their midst.
In bringing about this change of policy there was indeed another influence at work. Had not the Emperor of China heard some rumors of what was going on in the dominion of his cousin, the Great Mogul--how the French were dispossessing the Portuguese; and how the English later on succeeded in expelling the French? How could they doubt that a large community of native Christians would act as an auxiliary to any foreign invader? A suspicion of this kind had in fact sprung up under the preceding dynasty. In consequence of it not a single seaport except Macao was opened to foreign trade; and when foreigners went to Canton, they were lodged in a suburb and not allowed to penetrate within the walls of the provincial capital. Such misgivings as to the designs of foreigners we find strikingly expressed in a book of that period called "Strange Stories of an Idle Student."
One story is as follows: When Red-Haired Barbarians first appeared on our coast they were not allowed to come ashore. They begged, however, to be permitted to spread a carpet on which to dry their goods, and this being granted, they took the carpet by its corners and stretched it so that it covered several acres. On this, they debarked in great force and, drawing their swords, took possession of the surrounding country.