§ 1. Peculiarities of Chinese Civilization.
§ 2. Chinese Government based on Education. Civil-Service Examinations.
§ 3. Life and Character of Confucius.
§ 4. Philosophy and subsequent Development of Confucianism.
§ 5. Lao-tse and Tao-ism.
§ 6. Religious Character of the "Kings."
§ 7. Confucius and Christianity. Character of the Chinese.
§ 8. The Tae-ping Insurrection. NOTE. The Nestorian Inscription in China
of the Eighth Century.



§ 1. Peculiarities of Chinese Civilization.


In qualifying the Chinese mind as prosaic, and in calling the writings of
Confucius and his successors _prose_, we intend no disrespect to either.
Prose is as good as poetry. But we mean to indicate the point of view from
which the study of the Chinese teachers should be approached. Accustomed
to regard the East as the land of imagination; reading in our childhood
the wild romances of Arabia; passing, in the poetry of Persia, into an
atmosphere of tender and entrancing song; then, as we go farther East into
India, encountering the vast epics of the Mahá-Bhárata and the
Rámáyana;--we might naturally expect to find in far Cathay a still wilder
flight of the Asiatic Muse. Not at all. We drop at once from unbridled
romance into the most colorless prose. Another race comes to us, which
seems to have no affinity with Asia, as we have been accustomed to think
of Asia. No more aspiration, no flights of fancy, but the worship of
order, decency, propriety, and peaceful commonplaces. As the people, so
the priests. The works of Confucius and his commentators are as level as