Page:Leaves from my Chinese Scrapbook - Balfour, 1887.djvu/76

 CHAPTER VI.

CHINESE IDEAS OF PATHOLOGY.

There are few things more amusing, and at the same time more exasperating, to a European than the utter confusion of thought which characterises the Chinese as a race. The extreme difficulty of getting a direct reply to a simple question, in examinations before a magistrate, for instance, has become almost proverbial. There seems a looseness of reasoning, a want of consecutiveness, in the mental processes of the Chinese which argues an inherent defect in their constitutions; and it is a fact that can be proved by experience, that scarcely a Chinaman will be found free from this strange defect who has not been brought into long and intimate contact with Europeans. The same phenomenon is, of course, observed in all their so-called scientific theories. Physiology and metaphysics appear to form but one science according to Chinese notions, no clear distinction being recognised between phases of matter and phases of mind. This is almost incomprehensible to a European intellect; but it is none the less a fact. Take, for instance, the idea of anger, in the view of a Chinese. In the native language it is ch'i which means, popularly speaking, breath or air. But this is not simply an instance of one word doing duty for two different ideas. Anger has been defined to