Page:Chinese Characteristics.djvu/139

Rh the natives of the provinces of Canton and Fukien, coverings once adopted to hide the national disgrace. The introduction of the Buddhist religion into China was accomplished only at the expense of a warfare of the most determined character; but once thoroughly rooted, it appears as much like a native as Taoism, and not less difficult to supplant.

The genesis of Chinese customs being what it is, it is easy to perceive that it is the underlying assumption that whatever is is right. Thus a long-established usage is a tyranny. Of the countless individuals who conform to the custom, not one is at all concerned with the origin or the reason of the acts. His business is to conform, and he conforms. The degree of religious faith in different parts of the Empire doubtless differs widely, but nothing can be more certain than that all the rites of the "three religions" are performed by millions who are as destitute of anything which ought to be called faith, as they are of an acquaintance with Egyptian hieroglyphics. To any inquiry as to the reason for any particular act of religious routine, nothing is more common than to receive two answers: the first, that the whole business of communication with the gods has been handed down from the ancients, and must therefore be on the firmest possible basis; the second, that "everybody " does so, and therefore the person in question must conform. In China the machinery moves the cogs, and not the cogs the machinery. While this continues to be always and everywhere true, it is also true that the merest shell of conformity is all that is demanded.

It is a custom in Mongolia for every one who can afford it to use snuff, and to offer it to his friends. Every one is provided with a little snuff-box, which he produces whenever he encounters a friend. If the person with the snuff-box happens to be out of snuff, that does not prevent the passing of the snuff-box, of which each guest takes a deliberate, though