Page:Leaves from my Chinese Scrapbook - Balfour, 1887.djvu/71

 CHAPTER V.

FILIAL PIETY.

the early Jesuit missionaries to China compiled their valuable Memoires concernant les Chinois, they devoted the half of one large volume to the literature which has grown up around the doctrine of filial piety. It is noteworthy, however, that there is a marked abstention from either praise or blame of this celebrated article of faith—for so we may almost call it—on the part of the editors of the series. But we have heard the filial piety of the Chinese commended in the highest terms by foreign critics, and even by foreign missionary critics. One writer, at any rate, has gone so far as to say that in the long-continued existence of the Chinese Empire we have a fulfilment of the Fifth Commandment—"Honour thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long in the land." It would be idle to speculate what connection there may be between respect to parents and a prolongation of land-tenure in any given society, and equally idle to attempt to prove, from what we know of Chinese history, that the doctrine of filial piety as practised in China has directly or indirectly conduced to the preservation of that country in a national and political sense. Our object is less ambitious, and we will state our meaning in the fewest and most pointed words at