Page:Leaves from my Chinese Scrapbook - Balfour, 1887.djvu/185

 learn, for has not the soil of China been dealt with in the self-same manner for centuries, and could he be so unfilial as to improve upon the methods of his forefathers? The Chinese have acquired some celebrity in point of manual skill. They will carve wonderful balls of ivory one inside the other, and expend no small amount of time and ingenuity in the production of articles of taste. But is there a locksmith in China who can pick a lock without spoiling it, or make the commonest appliance in wood or metal which shall compare with the work of a European artificer, or do what it is intended to do? It seems that the farther we go in our observation of Chinese capabilities, in whatsoever direction, the more essentially inferior we find them. The fact is, that, having reached a certain stage of development, the Chinese have rested content, and have never progressed since. If we accept Mr. Herbert Spencer's definition of Progress, that it is the evolution of the heterogeneous from the homogeneous, we must conclude that the Chinese have no experience of progress themselves at all. Their thought, as a nation, is essentially homogeneous. The slightest divergence towards the heterogeneous is shunned and execrated as incipient heresy. They never ask the why or the wherefore of a fact; suffice it for them that such a thing exists—that such a custom is followed, such a theory held—and it would never occur to a Chinese to inquire into the reason of it, or to test its truth. Innovations are regarded with suspicion almost amounting to horror; and no arguments have any force to a Chinese mind in proving the elementary and insufficient nature of the methods so long in vogue. It is, indeed, undeniable that the Chinese are bound hand and foot by custom. This is