of disappointed contractors who have been in China have discovered. With few exceptions, the Chinese do not wish (though they may be forced to take) foreign models for anything whatever. They care nothing for sanitation, for ventilation, nor for physiology. They would like some, but by no means all, of the results of Western progress without submitting to Western methods, but rather than submit to Western methods they will cheerfully forego the results. Whatever has a direct, unmistakable tendency to make China formidable as a "power," that they want and will have, but the rest must wait; and if there were not a Zeitgeist, or Spirit-of-the-Age, superior to any Chinese, other improvements might wait long. Some Chinese scholars and statesmen, apparently realising the inferiority of China, claim that Western nations have merely used the data accumulated by ancient Chinese who cultivated mathematical and natural science to a high degree, but whose modern descendants have unfortunately allowed the secrets of nature to be stolen by the men of the West.
The Chinese do not appear to be much impressed by the undoubted ability of individual foreigners in practical lines. Saxons admire the man who "can," and, as Carlyle was so fond of remarking, they make and call him "king." The skill of the foreigner is to the Chinese amusing and perhaps amazing, and they will by no means forget or omit to make demands upon it the next time they chance to want anything done; but so far from regarding the foreigner in this respect as a model for imitation, it is probable that the idea does not even enter the skull of one Chinese in ten thousand. To them the ideal scholar continues to be the literary fossil who has learned everything, forgotten nothing, taken several degrees, has hard work to keep from starvation, and with claws on his hands several inches in length, cannot do any one thing (except to teach school) by which he can keep soul and body together, for "the Superior Man is not a Utensil."
