Page:Through China with a camera.pdf/25

Rh of antiquity in which the Empire is shrouded. Signs of forward movement, however, have not been wanting, but they are solely due to pressure from without, not unfrequently applied at the point of the bayonet. There has been no spontaneous advance. The efforts of the Chinese have been spent, and their resources exhausted, in futile endeavours to safeguard their ancient institutions. Arsenals, Naval and Military Schools and Colleges have been founded, a fleet and armaments purchased, and untold wealth lavished on useless defences which have left the Empire at the mercy of her foes. Still with all these reluctant and costly innovations the Chinese to-day place implicit faith in their time-worn methods of training for government service, civil and military. The nine books of the Classics are the Examination Text-books, just as they were two thousand years ago, and on them they have staked their existence. Five of the books were written before the days of Pythagoras, and the remaining four compiled by Confucius and his immediate disciples. In these sacred tomes the authors are supposed to have completed the circle of human knowledge, and left to their countrymen a store of wisdom sufficient for all time. All discoveries in Science and Art should conform to, and be tested by these primitive standards, sources which were frozen up during what may be termed the glacial epoch of Chinese progress. Confucian philosophy stands at the opposite pole to that of Bacon, and if not inoperative as a means of cultivating the mind, is useless for all work of human development. It is the modern Great Wall, hedging round the ignorance and superstition of the race. The moral maxims of Confucius "are excellent, but they have not made the Chinese a moral people." While his doctrine is full of faultless