Leaves from my Chinese Scrapbook/Chapter 19
CHAPTER XIX.
CHINA'S GREATEST TYRANT.
China may justly be said, in many ways, to be the country of pretensions. There are few things in which the Chinese do not claim pre-eminence, and it is this habit of self-complacency which renders them so very much averse to being enlightened on those points on which they habitually are found wanting. The belief in their own infallibility cannot but be a standing obstacle to the progress of the people in all departments where it prevails, and the difficulty of getting a Chinaman to acknowledge that he is beaten in an argument is but another phase of the same phenomenon. It is a sufficient answer, for him, that, however useless or hurtful a given practice may be, it is the "custom" of the country; and the belief that all the customs which have descended from generation to generation are, for that very reason, incapable of improvement, renders him a very hopeless subject to deal with.
A very few illustrations will, we think, suffice to prove the justice of this remark. In no country, for instance, are morals more highly esteemed as a basis of public administration and private conduct. Nothing could be more unexceptionable than the theories on which the government of the country is professedly carried on. Foreign writers have over and over again applauded the Chinese for resting all their rules of life on right reason, and bringing to the test of principle, rather than to that of material welfare or advantage, their general policy of action. In spite of this, China is one of the most miserably misgoverned countries in the whole world. There is, perhaps, no place where peculation is rifer, or more unblushingly carried on. Considering, for instance, the unrivalled estimation in which literature and education are held by both governors and governed, it is astounding to read in the official gazette the gross impositions which are practised every year at the public examinations. Then the innocent are being constantly plundered by the rich and powerful, and although false accusations, made with a view to extorting money, do sometimes recoil upon the guilty parties, it too often happens that the only recompense received by the victim takes the form of an honourable burial for his corpse. The high position accorded to agriculture in China might naturally lead us to look for corresponding results in the fruits and vegetables that are cultivated, and to some sound principles as actuating the Chinese farmer or market-gardener in his work. But what is the state of matters here? China scarcely produces a fruit worth eating. The apples are soft and woolly, the pears not nearly so toothsome as a good turnip, the peaches are full of worms, and all, fruits and vegetables alike, are inferior, tasteless, and poor. The Chinese labourer has no idea of manipulating the ground. He contents himself with scratching its surface, and then deluges it with liquid manure. Of what may be called agricultural chemistry he never heard; still, he fancies that he has no more to learn, for has not the soil of China been dealt with in the self-same manner for centuries, and could he be so unfilial as to improve upon the methods of his forefathers? The Chinese have acquired some celebrity in point of manual skill. They will carve wonderful balls of ivory one inside the other, and expend no small amount of time and ingenuity in the production of articles of taste. But is there a locksmith in China who can pick a lock without spoiling it, or make the commonest appliance in wood or metal which shall compare with the work of a European artificer, or do what it is intended to do? It seems that the farther we go in our observation of Chinese capabilities, in whatsoever direction, the more essentially inferior we find them. The fact is, that, having reached a certain stage of development, the Chinese have rested content, and have never progressed since. If we accept Mr. Herbert Spencer's definition of Progress, that it is the evolution of the heterogeneous from the homogeneous, we must conclude that the Chinese have no experience of progress themselves at all. Their thought, as a nation, is essentially homogeneous. The slightest divergence towards the heterogeneous is shunned and execrated as incipient heresy. They never ask the why or the wherefore of a fact; suffice it for them that such a thing exists—that such a custom is followed, such a theory held—and it would never occur to a Chinese to inquire into the reason of it, or to test its truth. Innovations are regarded with suspicion almost amounting to horror; and no arguments have any force to a Chinese mind in proving the elementary and insufficient nature of the methods so long in vogue. It is, indeed, undeniable that the Chinese are bound hand and foot by custom. This is often amusingly exemplified in little every-day matters. A high military mandarin, handsomely apparelled, comes riding by on a filthy, spavined little horse that was never combed, perhaps, since it was foaled. To the natural question of a foreigner, "Why don't you groom your horses?" the reply comes, prompt and conclusive, "It is not our custom." Tell a farmer how he may render a naturally unfruitful soil fertile, or improve the flavour of his fruits, or achieve greater results at the cost of less labour by the use of finer implements; he will only stare, and tell you it is not their "custom." Ask a schoolmaster why he forces tiny children to learn by rote a number of abstruse books he does not pretend to understand himself, and why he does not explain those which are capable of explanation; whether he does not think a child would be more benefited by learning something of the world in which he lives than by gabbling over the meaningless formulæ of the Yih Ching, and be better fitted for the business of life by a little knowledge of arithmetic than by a parrot-familiarity with the conversations between Mencius and King Hui of Liang; he will raise his eyebrows in amazement, and contemptuously reply that such is not their "custom." No real progress can result from such petrifaction of the intellect; a fossil cannot grow. And the disease, as we have pointed out, exists in every department of life: in education, in government, in mechanics, in agriculture, in society. It will cost a mighty effort to free the Chinese from these bonds and ligatures, which have held them in durance vile so long. Naturally utilitarian, they seem to have been despoiled of all power of putting their utilitarianism into practice, and to fall back, in a shiftless way, upon "custom" as their final court of appeal in everything. There is a movement now, as we all know; but at present it is confined to a very few persons who have had the benefit of foreign intercourse and education, and it will be long before it spreads over the masses in the interior of China.