Page:Leaves from my Chinese Scrapbook - Balfour, 1887.djvu/78

 It follows, therefore—and we now quote the words of a certain curious old empiric of Peking, a strange compound of shrewdness and folly—that the inhabitants of the northern capital are the most corrupt community in China. The reasoning is clear. The atmosphere of that city is intensely impregnated with two things—foul smells and pulverised ordure. This impure air is inhaled by the lungs; from the lungs it passes into the blood, and the blood thus defiled pours into the heart, which is thus corrupted and contaminated in its turn. Consequently the people whose hearts are thus infected become treacherous and insincere; they lose all sense of morality, propriety, and good faith; and what is worse—concluded our interlocutor, solemnly—"foreigners themselves are falling victims to this defiling process too." Of course to argue against this congeries of contradictions is generally a waste of time; for even if one's opponent is pushed into a corner and unable to reply, it by no means follows that he is convinced of the untenableness of his views. The earnest simplicity and seriousness with which an amiable and lettered man in China will sit and propound the most preposterous and fantastic theories that ever entered a human brain, and the profound unconsciousness he shows of the nonsense he is talking, affect one very curiously. Foreign science, such as that of medicine or anatomy, for example, impresses him with the notion of something strange and heterodox, which is too far removed from the traditions of the sages to be ever regarded as more than a bizarrerie to be wondered at, instead of a subject calling for grave investigation. He is firmly impressed with the belief that the heart is the seat of the intellect, and is situated in the centre of