Page:Chinese Characteristics.djvu/71

 corruption may be used as an adjective, forming with the original appellation a compound title.

The Chinese are unfortunately deficient in the education which comes from a more or less intimate aquaintance with chemical formulæ, where the minutest precision is fatally necessary. The first generation of Chinese chemists will probably lose many of its number as a result of the process of mixing a "few tens of grains" of something with "several tens of grains" of something else, the consequence being an unanticipated earthquake. The Chinese are as capable of learning minute accuracy in all things as any nation ever was—nay, more so, for they are endowed with infinite patience—but what we have to remark of this people is that, as at present constituted, they are free from the quality of accuracy and that they do not understand what it is. If this is a true statement, two inferences would seem to be legitimate. First, much allowance must be made for this trait in our examination of Chinese historical records. We can readily deceive ourselves by taking Chinese statements of numbers and of quantities to be what they were never intended to be—exact. Secondly, a wide margin must be left for all varieties of what is dignified with the title of a Chinese "census." The whole is not greater than its parts, Chinese enumeration to the contrary notwithstanding. When we have well considered all the bearings of a Chinese "census," we shall be quite ready to say of it, as was remarked of the United States Supreme Court by a canny Scotchman who had a strong realisation of the "glorious uncertainty of the law," that it has "the last guess at the case!"