However flattering to the Chinese some of the preceding statements may be, it will be seen, on the whole, that they by no means hold a high place in regard to might of intellect. The discoverers of many important facts, and inventors of many useful arts, they yet seem as if they had stumbled upon them by chance, and were unable to appreciate their value; and the highly civilised race who, ages ago, were familiar with astronomy and printing, gunpowder and the magnetic needle, are now incomparably surpassed in their use by nations comparatively of yesterday. “Their mechanical contrivances,” says Mr Wade, “remain but as monuments of an originality which seems to have exhausted itself by its earlier efforts. They appear never to have investigated the principles of the discoveries by which the requirements of their agriculture, architecture, or navigation, were first satisfied. The means which their genius suggested to meet their immediate wants they adopted, and, without the aid of theory, perfected—in some instances, to a degree not surpassed, if attained, by the most scientific of nations; but errors and defects were left untouched; no spirit of inquiry quickened the dormant powers of their reason, and the lack of a habit of reflection prevented their pushing their invention beyond a certain necessary point.” There is something stunted or microscopic in the intellect of the Chinese, which leads them to magnify trifles, yet to be blind when great facts stare them in the face,—to keep the steam-engine a toy and gunpowder a plaything, yet to spend an infinity of skill and patience upon the manufacture of one of their ivory “puzzles.” Excellent in imitation, and well adapted for details, they are yet deficient in that highest quality of genius, which grasps a subject at once in all its bearings—which reasons outwards and upwards from the centre-object of contemplation, and which discerns in it its latent powers and the uses to which they may be applied,—which sees in the vapour of a kettle the embryo of the mighty steam-engine, and in the fall of an apple the gravitating force that sustains the universe.
There cannot be a doubt, however, that the Chinese character has never yet had fair play. It has never had such advantages as those enjoyed by the nations of Europe, or indeed by every civilised community of modern times. We will not speak of the over-population, and consequent ceaseless and absorbing struggle for the necessaries of life, which ever tends to act injuriously upon the moral and intellectual qualities of the majority of the people,—by extinguishing all high aspirations, and bending down the soul in slavery to the wants of the moment; for that over-population is not peculiar to China, and has, moreover, the attendant, though hardly compensating benefit of sharpening the national wits, and placing a large supply of cheap labour at the disposal of capital. We would rather point out the following peculiarity which affects this people alone of the nations of the earth, and which must ever be kept in mind by those who would correctly appreciate China’s place in universal history.
The Chinese empire belongs to the ancient—indeed, we ought to say to the primitive, world. It has long survived the empires of Egypt and Assyria, and the kingdoms of ancient India,—yet it is with these States alone that the isolated civilisation of China can fairly be compared. Like them, China has reared a civilisation for herself, without any help from without. Throughout her unparalleled existence of more than forty centuries, she has been a world to herself. No influx of new ideas, no inspection of other civilisation than her own, has been granted to her. She has grown up like a Crusoe and his children and grandchildren, upon a solitary island,—forced ever to compare themselves by themselves, and never enjoying the rare privilege, and help to improvement, to “see ourselves as others see us.” We Europeans of the present day—in this age of “running to and fro upon the earth”—are privileged to behold the endless variety of life, manners, and institutions with which the world is stored—to judge of them by their several effects, as revealed in the pages of history, and to draw from them their moral; thus benefiting by the experience of a whole world, and perfecting ourselves upon the model of the best of our race. Moreover, the blood of a dozen different tribes of mankind runs in our veins (as was the case on a smaller scale in ancient Greece), producing a richly-blended nature, excelling in all departments, whether of thought or action—producing now a Shakespeare and now a Napoleon, now a Hildebrand and now a Howard, now a Richard Cœur-de-Lion and now a Peter the Hermit, now a Luther and now a Mozart, now a Cromwell and now a Robespierre, now a Scott, a Watt, a Burns, a Dickens, a Kean, or a Grimaldi. China, on the contrary, presents but one phase of human nature,—but to that phase it has done marvellous justice. Good sense is its only idol—practical usefulness its prime test; but we have yet to learn that the former of these qualities has ever been more wisely or so perseveringly worshipped, or the latter been so unflinchingly and universally applied.
An attentive observation seems to indicate that this most ancient of empires, for long stationary in power and intellect, has of late been in many respects retrograding. “The arts once peculiarly their own,” says Mr Wade, “have declined;—neither their silks nor their porcelain, in their own estimation, equal in quality those of former years.” And Mr Fortune arrives at a similar conclusion from the signs of decay which he met with in his wanderings. “There can be no doubt,” he says, “that the Chinese empire arrived at its highest state of perfection many years ago, and since then it has been rather retrograding than advancing. Many of the northern cities, evidently once in the most flourishing condition, are now in a state of decay, or in ruins; the pagodas which crown the distant hills are crumbling to pieces, and apparently are seldom repaired; the spacious temples are no longer as they used to be in former days; even the celebrated temples on Poo-too-San (an island near Chusan), to which, as to Jerusalem of old, the natives came flocking to worship, show all the signs of having seen better days. And from this I conclude that the Chinese, as a nation, are retrograding.” Were this falling off only visible in the case of the temples, it might be wholly accounted for by the increasing apathy or scepticism of the people in regard to their religion; but, in truth, these signs of decay extend into almost every department of the State. And, writing immediately before the present rebellion broke out, Mr Wade says, “With a fair seeming of immunity from invasion, sedition, or revolt, leave is taken to consider this vast empire as surely, though slowly, decaying. It has, in many respects, retrograded since the commencement of the present dynasty, and in none that we are aware of has it made any sensible progress.”
It would be a great error, however, to suppose that this vast empire is now stooping irretrievably to a fall. The whole tenor of its past history forbids the supposition. Again and again has it reformed itself;—again and again has it passed through the purifying furnace of suffering and convulsion, and re-emerged firm as before. Its periodic convulsions are the healthy efforts of nature to throw off the corruptions which ease engenders in the system; and however much temporary suffering may attend the present, like every other of its score of preceding revolutions, the resultant good will ultimately atone for all. China will never fall. Its homogeneousness, and the unconquerable vastness of its population, endow it with an earthly immortality. We have said that it lacks the variety of Europe; but in that variety, be it noted, there lurks political weakness, as much as intellectual strength. Every unit of Chinese society is homogeneous. The whole population are one—in blood, sentiments, and language;—and hence it contains none of those discordant elements, those unwillingly-yoked parts, which proved the destruction of the old “universal empires,” and which are destined ere long to annihilate the present territorial system of Europe. China, in fact, has ever been, and is, what European Germany and Slavonia, and every other great State of the future will be—a Race-Empire;—and therefore indestructible. The Monguls may reign in it for eighty years, or the Mantchoos for two hundred,—and even then only by adopting the political and social institutions of the natives. But as time runs on, the wheel ever turns; one after another the foreign hosts are chased from the land, and a native dynasty is destined still to wield the sceptre of the Flowery Land.
But we must say more than this in regard to the fortunes of China. What it has hitherto wanted is, new ideas,—and now it is about to get them. In old times, nations could hardly inoculate their neighbours with their ideas save by conquest, and new mental life was only produced after a temporary death of liberty. It is otherwise nowadays, and China is likely to benefit by the change. As long as she was feeble, and as long as the sword was the only civiliser, Providence kept her shut in from the prowess of the restless Western nations. But now that her people have grown like the sands on the sea-shore for multitude, and that steam has become the peaceful “locomotive of principles,” China is opened. Often as she has reformed herself before, the present is her true second-birth. She will now obtain those new ideas of which she has hitherto been starved, and will enter into ever-memorable union with the rest of the civilised world. The energy and science of the Anglo-Saxons will penetrate the empire, and the Chinese will not be slow to avail themselves of the new lights. Aversion to change, when such change is recommended by manifest utility, is not an original element of the Chinese character,—as we learn on the authority of Jesuit writers two centuries ago, before the advent to power of the Tartars, and their jealous exclusion of foreigners. And then, what country in the world can compare with China as a field for the triumphs of mechanical enterprise! Its vast rivers and canals present unrivalled scope for steam-navigation; and its wide plains and valley-lands offer matchless facilities for railways. And then all this amidst the densest and perhaps busiest population in the world. The amount of internal travelling in China is such, that we are assured by those who have penetrated into the interior, that there are continuous streams of travellers on horse, on foot, and on litters, as well as long lines of merchandise, from Canton to the Great Wall, and over distances of fifteen hundred miles;—in many parts so crowded as to impede one another, and even in the mountain-passes so numerous as to leave no traveller out of sight of others before or behind. In what other country of the world are such phenomena to be met with? And though it were vain to enter upon the tempting field for speculation which these few facts—and they could be multiplied indefinitely—present to us; yet we need have no hesitation to predict a striking future for the Chinese race, and one which will benefit the world at large, perhaps not less than themselves.
RELEASE.
I.
Away!—No more, the sport of scorn,
My vassal love shall serve the Past.