Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 36.djvu/201

Rh in the things that fall under their senses, that their whole life is only materialism put in action. ...

"Lucre is the sole object on which their eyes are constantly fixed. ... A burning thirst to realize some profit, great or small, absorbs their faculties, the whole energy of their being. They never pursue anything with ardor but riches and natural enjoyments. God, the soul, a future life, they believe in none of them, or rather they never think about them at all."

The Chinese maxim is "Pon-toun-kiao" ("Religions are many, reason is one: we are all brothers"). This phrase is on the lips of every Chinese, and they bandy it from one to the other with the most exquisite urbanity. It is indeed a clear and concise expression of their feelings on religious questions. In their eyes, a worship is merely an affair of taste and fashion, to which no more importance is attached than to the color of garments.

Let it not be forgotten that we are dealing with a race which holds among other singular tenets the abhorrent doctrine that woman plays no other part in nature than as an indispensable necessity for the propagation of mankind; that she has no soul, but is merely a necessary animal adjunct in the human race, serviceable for its perpetuation, for the gratification of the animal passions of men, for the common drudgery of the household or field labor, but not worthy of education and not eligible to salvation as taught by any scheme of future existence within their belief or knowledge. Let us make no mistake about this. It is in proof in the writings of Chinese missionaries and travelers of every nationality. It is the one point on which they all agree. It is the belief and teaching upon which the practice of infanticide prevails in China, in which the female child is invariably the victim and