DEFICIENCIES AND LIMITS OF CHINESE LITERATURE.
Such is the general range and survey of Chinese literature, according to the Catalogue of the Imperial Libraries. It is, take it in a mass, a stupendous monument of human toil, fitly compared, so far as it is calculated to instruct its readers in useful knowledge, to their Great Wall, which can neither protect from its enemies, nor be of any real use to its makers. Its deficiencies are glaring. No treatises on the geography of foreign countries nor truthful narratives of travels abroad are contained in it, nor any account of the languages of their inhabitants, their history, or their governments. Philological works in other languages than those spoken within the Empire are unknown, and must, owing to the nature of the language, remain so until foreigners prepare them. Works on natural history, medicine, and physiology are few and useless, while those on mathematics and the exact sciences are much less popular and useful than they might be; and in the great range of theology, founded on the true basis of the Bible, there is almost nothing. The character of the people has been mostly formed by their ancient books, and this correlate influence has tended to repress independent investigation in the pursuit of truth, though not to destroy it. A new infusion of science, religion, and descriptive geography and history will lead to comparison with other countries, and bring out whatever in it is good.
A survey of this body of literature shows the effect of governmental patronage, in maintaining its character for what appears to us to be a wearisome uniformity. New ideas, facts, and motives must now come from the outer world, which will gradually elevate the minds of the people above the same unvarying channel. If the scholar knows that the goal he strives for is to be attained by proficiency in the single channel of classical knowledge, he cannot be expected to attend to other studies until he has secured the prize. A knowledge of medicine, mathematics, geography, or foreign languages, might, indeed, do the candidate much more good than all he gets out of the classics, but knowledge is not his object; and where all run the same race, all must study the same works. But let there be a different programme of themes and essays, and a wider range of subjects required of the students, and the present system of governmental examinations in China, with all its imperfections, can be made of great benefit to the people, if it is not put to a strain too great for the end in view.
CHINESE PROVERBS.
The Chinese are fond of proverbs and aphorisms. They employ them in their writings and conversation as much as any people, and adorn their houses by copying them upon elegant scrolls, carving them upon pillars, and embroidering them upon banners. A complete collection of the proverbs of the Chinese has never been made, even among the people themselves any more than among those of other lands. Davis published, in 1828, a volume called Moral Maxims, containing two hundred aphorisms; P. Perny issued an assortment of four hundred and forty-one in 1869; and J. Doolittle collected several hundred proverbs, signs, couplets, and scrolls in his Vocabulary. Besides these, a collection of two thousand seven hundred and twenty proverbs was published in 1875 by W. Scarborough, furnished with a good index, and, like the others noted here, with the original text. Davis mentions the Ming Sin Pao Kien, or ‘Jewelled Mirror for Illumining the Mind,’ as containing a large number of proverbs. The Ku Sz’ Kiung Lin, or ‘Coral Forest of Ancient Matters,’ is a similar collection; but if that be compared to a dictionary of quotations, this is better likened to a classical dictionary, the notes which follow the sentences leaving the reader in no doubt as to their meaning.
Manuscript lists of sentences suitable for hanging upon doors or in parlors are collected by persons who write them at New Year’s, and whose success depends upon their facility in quoting elegant couplets. The following selection will exhibit to some extent this branch of Chinese wisdom and wit:
Not to distinguish properly between the beautiful and ugly, is like attaching a dog’s tail to a squirrel’s body.
An avaricious man, who can never have enough, is as a serpent wishing to swallow an elephant.
While one misfortune is going, to have another coming, is like driving a tiger out of the front door, while a wolf is entering the back.
The tiger’s cub cannot be caught without going into his den.