Page:Leaves from my Chinese Scrapbook - Balfour, 1887.djvu/186

 often amusingly exemplified in little every-day matters. A high military mandarin, handsomely apparelled, comes riding by on a filthy, spavined little horse that was never combed, perhaps, since it was foaled. To the natural question of a foreigner, "Why don't you groom your horses?" the reply comes, prompt and conclusive, "It is not our custom." Tell a farmer how he may render a naturally unfruitful soil fertile, or improve the flavour of his fruits, or achieve greater results at the cost of less labour by the use of finer implements; he will only stare, and tell you it is not their "custom." Ask a schoolmaster why he forces tiny children to learn by rote a number of abstruse books he does not pretend to understand himself, and why he does not explain those which are capable of explanation; whether he does not think a child would be more benefited by learning something of the world in which he lives than by gabbling over the meaningless formulæ of the Yih Ching, and be better fitted for the business of life by a little knowledge of arithmetic than by a parrot-familiarity with the conversations between Mencius and King Hui of Liang; he will raise his eyebrows in amazement, and contemptuously reply that such is not their "custom." No real progress can result from such petrifaction of the intellect; a fossil cannot grow. And the disease, as we have pointed out, exists in every department of life: in education, in government, in mechanics, in agriculture, in society. It will cost a mighty effort to free the Chinese from these bonds and ligatures, which have held them in durance vile so long. Naturally utilitarian, they seem to have been despoiled of all power of putting their utilitarianism into practice, and to fall back, in a shiftless way, upon "custom" as their