Page:China- Its State and Prospects.djvu/101

Rh inhabiting south-eastern Asia, communicating intelligence throughout the whole region. What a stimulus does this afford to an active and energetic mind, while engaged in studying the Chinese language, or inditing a book for their instruction, that he is doing what may be available to the benefit of so many millions, and that to the latest generation! Such a book needs only to be multipled and circulated, without undergoing the slightest alteration, in order to enlighten and edify one-third of the human race.

The morals, also, of his numerous people have one striking characteristic, and their religious views and practices are precisely similar throughout the empire. When a man has studied the main features of the Chinese character in one place and one person, he has studied them in all; and when he has discovered a train of argument that will silence the philosophical and superstitious objections of one individual, he has provided himself with materials that will be serviceable on all occasions. This uniformity and unvariableness of the Chinese mind is to be traced to their possessing one set of opinions on philosophy and religion; which being laid down in their ancient books, and stereotyped from age to age, constitutes the public and universal sentiment on the above topics, and runs through the whole mass of society. Hence the missionary finds the Chinese always using the same arguments and starting the same objections, which having been often answered before, may be easily replied to again. In this view of the matter, the multiplicity of their population dwindles into insignificance, and affords an advantage to the missionary not to be met with elsewhere.

Whilst considering the population of China in all its