Page:Chinese Characteristics.djvu/19

Rh at the picture and not see the Napoleon too. In like manner, many things are to be seen in China which do not at first appear, and many of them once seen are never forgotten.

While it has been impossible to introduce a qualifying clause into every sentence which is general in its form, the reader is expressly warned that these papers are not intended to be generalisations for a whole Empire, nor yet comprehensive abstracts of what foreigners have observed and experienced. What they are intended to be is merely a notation of the impression which has been made upon one observer, by a few out of many "Chinese Characteristics." They are not meant as a portrait of the Chinese people, but rather as mere outline sketches in charcoal of some features of the Chinese people, as they have been seen by that one observer. Taken together, they constitute only a single ray, of which an indefinite number are required to form a complete beam of white light. They may also be considered as studies in induction, in which many particulars taken from the experience not of the writer only, but of various other individuals at various times, are grouped. It is for this reason that the subject has been so largely treated by exemplification.

Mr. Meadows, the most philosophical of the many writers on China and the Chinese, expressed the opinion that the best way to convey to the mind of another person a correct idea of the genius of a foreign people would be to hand him for perusal a collection of notes, formed by carefully recording great numbers of incidents which had attracted one's attention, particularly those that seemed at all extraordinary, together with the explanation of the extraordinary parts as given by natives of the country.

From a sufficient number of such incidents a general principle is inferred. The inferences may be doubted or denied, but such particulars as are cited cannot, for that reason alone, be set aside, being so far as they go truthful, and they must