But there are other forces at work besides those that may come from foreign commercial or industrial enterprise, whereby Weihaiwei may become a far less desirable school than it is at present for the student of the Chinese social organism. Hitherto Weihaiwei has with considerable success protected itself behind walls of conservatism and obedience to tradition against the onslaughts of what a Confucian archbishop, if such a dignitary existed, might denounce as "Modernism." But those walls, however substantial they may appear to the casual eye, are beginning to show signs of decay. There is indeed no part of China, or perhaps it would be truer to say no section of the Chinese people, that is totally unaffected at the present day by the modern spirit of change and reform. It is naturally the most highly educated of the people who are the most quickly influenced and roused to action, and the people of Weihaiwei, as it happens, are, with comparatively few exceptions, almost illiterate. But the spirit of change is "in the air," and reveals itself in cottage-homes as well as in books and newspapers and the marketplaces of great cities. Let us hope, for the good of China, that the stout walls of conservatism both in Weihaiwei and elsewhere will not be battered down too soon or too suddenly.
One of the gravest dangers overhanging China at the present day is the threatened triumph of mere theory over the results of accumulated experience. Multitudes of the ardent young reformers of to-day—not unlike some of the early dreamers of the French Revolution—are aiming at the destruction of all the doctrines that have guided the political and social life of their country for three thousand years, and hope to build up a strong and progressive China on a foundation of abstract principles. With the hot-headed enthusiasm of youth they speak lightly of the impending overthrow, not only of the decaying forces of Buddhism and Taoism, but also of the great politico-social structure of Confucianism, heedless of the possibility that these may drag with them to destruction all that is good and sound in Chinese life and thought. Buddhism (in its present Chinese form) might, indeed, be extinguished without much loss to the people; Taoism (such as it is nowadays) might vanish absolutely and for ever, leaving perhaps no greater sense of loss than was left by the decay of a belief in witchcraft and alchemy among ourselves; but Confucianism (or rather the principles and doctrines which Confucianism connotes, for the system dates from an age long anterior to that of Confucius) cannot be annihilated without perhaps irreparable injury to the body-social and body-politic of China. The collapse of Confucianism would undoubtedly involve, for example, the partial or total ruin of the Chinese family system and the cult of ancestors.
With the exception of Roman Catholics and the older generation of Protestant missionaries with a good many of their successors, who condemn all Chinese religion as false or "idolatrous," few, if any, European students of China will be heard to disapprove—whether on ethical or religious grounds—of that keystone of the Chinese social edifice known to Europeans as ancestor-worship. To the revolutionary doctrines of the extreme reformers Weihaiwei and other "backward" and conservative parts of China are—half unconsciously—opposing a salutary bulwark. They cannot hope to keep change and reform altogether at a distance, nor is it at all desirable that they should do so; indeed, as we have seen, their walls of conservatism are already beginning to crumble. But if they only succeed in keeping the old flag flying until the attacking party has been sobered down by time and experience and has become less anxious to sweep away all the time-honoured bases of morality and social government, these old centres of conservatism will have deserved the gratitude of their country. What indeed could be more fitting than that the Confucian system should find its strongest support, and perhaps make its last fight for life, in the very province in which the national sage lived and taught, and where his body has lain buried for twenty-five centuries?
FOOTNOTES:
[1] See pp. [230] seq., [233] seq.
[2] The Religious System of China, vol. ii. p. 806.
[4] Op. cit. vol. iii. p. 854.