Page:Chinese Characteristics.djvu/103

Rh "Fifty-eight," he replies, with accuracy of aim, his piece being now in working order.

A prominent example of intellectual turbidity is the prevalent habit of announcing as a reason for a fact, the fact itself. "Why do you not put salt into bread-cakes?" you ask of a Chinese cook. "We do not put salt into bread-cakes," is the explanation. "How is it that with so much and such beautiful ice in your city none of it is stored up for winter?" "No, we do not store up ice for winter in our city." If the Latin poet who observed, "Happy is he who is able to know the reasons of things," had lived in China, he might have modified his dictum so as to read, "Unhappy is the man who essays to find out the reasons of things."

Another mark of intellectual torpor is the inability of an ordinary mind to entertain an idea, and then pass it on to another in its original shape. To tell A something which he is to tell B, in order that C may govern his actions thereby, is in China one of the most fatuous of undertakings. Either the message will never be delivered at all, because the parties concerned did not understand that it was of importance, or it reaches C in such a shape that he cannot comprehend it, or in a form totally at variance with its original. To suppose that three cogs in so complicated a piece of machinery are capable of playing into each other without such friction as to stop the works, is to entertain a very wild hope. Even minds of considerable intelligence find it hard to take in and then give out an idea without addition or diminution, just as clear water is certain to refract the image of a straight stick as if it were a broken one.

Illustrations of these peculiarities will meet the observant foreigner at every turn. "Why did he do so?" you inquire in regard to some preposterous act. "Yes," is the compendious reply. There is a certain numeral word in constant use,