and Asia Minor too, for that matter--by conquests and crusades, and the
rise and fall of civilizations as well as dynasties? while China has
endured, almost undisturbed, under a system of law, administration,
morality, as old as the Pyramids probably--existed a coherent nation,
highly developed in certain essentials, meeting and mastering, so far as
we can see, the great problem of an over-populated territory, living in a
good degree of peace and social order, of respect for age and law, and
making a continuous history, the mere record of which is printed in a
thousand bulky volumes. Yet we speak of the Chinese empire as an instance
of arrested growth, for which there is no salvation, except it shall
catch the spirit of progress abroad in the world. What is this progress,
and where does it come from?

Think for a moment of this significant situation. For thousands of years,
empires, systems of society, systems of civilization--Egyptian, Jewish,
Greek, Roman, Moslem, Feudal--have flourished and fallen, grown to a
certain height and passed away; great organized fabrics have gone down,
and, if there has been any progress, it has been as often defeated as
renewed. And here is an empire, apart from this scene of alternate
success and disaster, which has existed in a certain continuity and
stability, and yet, now that it is uncovered and stands face to face with
the rest of the world, it finds that it has little to teach us, and
almost everything to learn from us. The old empire sends its students to
learn of us, the newest child of civilization; and through us they learn
all the great past, its literature, law, science, out of which we sprang.
It appears, then, that progress has, after all, been with the shifting
world, that has been all this time going to pieces, rather than with the
world that has been permanent and unshaken.

When we speak of progress we may mean two things. We may mean a lifting