Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 29.djvu/647

Rh. In China, the higher the office to be filled, the higher must be the education. Such being the estimate placed upon education by this people, we should not judge that stagnation would prevail in China for over twenty-five hundred years and education become nothing but pitiable mummery. We learn a valuable lesson here as to the way in which one fundamental error can vitiate centuries of national existence. China, as arrested development, has been aptly compared to the feet of her women.

In seeking the cause for such arrest of growth, we come upon the idea which this people entertained of themselves: they were members of a family—nothing more; the emperor was their father. This family-idea, applied everywhere and never transcended, kept the people children. With our modern feeling of individuality so fiercely coursing in our veins, we find it almost impossible to realize that in China there were no persons, no individuals. A human being fully grown, and with what should have been the strength of manhood upon him, was simply a son, a child. He did not belong to himself or to a nation, but to a family. Absolute obedience to father and teacher prevented all progress beyond the condition of father and teacher: learning was ceaseless repetition. The Chinese had village schools, town schools, and universities; their highest reverence was for the most learned, and their education found its supreme test in an act of memory.

Passing from China to India, we find that man's idea of himself is somewhat enlarged. The people are divided into four castes: Brahmans, warriors, merchants, Sutras. Birth determines each man's condition and duties; to be a Brahman is to live and die a Brahman, to be born a Sutra is to live and die a Sutra. No physical law is more inflexible than the law of caste in this far-off land. But these social divisions show improvement over the condition in China. Man is nearer himself as member of a caste than as member of an enormous family. Further, man in India has been shaped by a most wonderful religion. The special mental characteristic of the Indian, imagination, fancy, was constantly and powerfully influenced by the outside world. Nature seemed to have produced one impression above all others upon the Indian mind, the impression of universal necessity. We find these elements at work determining the idea which man had of himself and molding the education of India. The Sutras were so low as to be beneath all education; the other classes were trained for their special duties—the Brahmans in religion, the rulers and warriors in government and war, the merchants in trading. As there might be members of the higher castes in villages, provision was made for their instruction by elementary schools. This instruction consisted in reading, writing, and reckoning. A teacher, with staff in hand, would take his place under a tree and teach the boys sitting around him. In arithmetic only the rudiments were taught. Writing was