Page:The passing of Korea.djvu/402

 CHAPTER XXIII UST as Korea and China have a very high moral standard that they never even pretend to live up to, so each of these countries has the utmost regard for literature, while all the time the common people are grossly illiterate. Both morals and literature have gone to seed, and we much fear the seeds are not fertile. The Chinese character possesses a certain hypnotic power which it exercises in varying degree upon everyone who acquires a smattering of it. It can be proved to a certainty that this character is a most cumbersome and unscientific affair so far as being a medium for the acquisition of actual knowledge is concerned. No one dare deny that it stands like a stumbling-block in the path of general education throughout the Far East, and yet almost every foreigner who acquires a modicum of it becomes so enamoured of it that he is unwilling to see it laid aside for some system which will make the vast range of human knowledge accessible to the masses of these countries. The tens of thousands of characters which form the written language of China are a wonderful mosaic which has been built up during thousands of years, so that if anyone once gets the key to it the mere etymological study, irrespective of positive and useful intellectual results, is almost irresistibly fascinating. While the process by which this system has been built up appears to have followed certain general laws, yet the divergences and exceptions have been so many and so great that in the acquisition of a knowledge of them memory alone seems to be required. All sorts of methods have been devised whereby foreigners can acquire the Chinese character with facility, but it is much to be doubted whether they are any better than the method in use in