Leaves from my Chinese Scrapbook/Chapter 6
CHAPTER VI.
CHINESE IDEAS OF PATHOLOGY.
There are few things more amusing, and at the same time more exasperating, to a European than the utter confusion of thought which characterises the Chinese as a race. The extreme difficulty of getting a direct reply to a simple question, in examinations before a magistrate, for instance, has become almost proverbial. There seems a looseness of reasoning, a want of consecutiveness, in the mental processes of the Chinese which argues an inherent defect in their constitutions; and it is a fact that can be proved by experience, that scarcely a Chinaman will be found free from this strange defect who has not been brought into long and intimate contact with Europeans. The same phenomenon is, of course, observed in all their so-called scientific theories. Physiology and metaphysics appear to form but one science according to Chinese notions, no clear distinction being recognised between phases of matter and phases of mind. This is almost incomprehensible to a European intellect; but it is none the less a fact. Take, for instance, the idea of anger, in the view of a Chinese. In the native language it is ch'i which means, popularly speaking, breath or air. But this is not simply an instance of one word doing duty for two different ideas. Anger has been defined to us by Chinese as an actual rush of breath, or wind, from the heart to the head, which flushes the face and stiffens the muscles of the neck. No difference is allowed between the material and the immaterial, the cause and the effect. An angry man is said to shêng ch'i, produce breath or air, and this air is anger, the too great predominance or inrush of which into the human system is apt to bring about insanity or even death. It is a purely physical, not a mental, phenomenon in the eyes of native physicists; or, rather, the Chinese system does not recognise or admit of any element of the immaterial whatever. Another curious example is afforded by the use of the word hsin or heart, and the sense in which it is understood. In discussing metaphysical subjects with a cultured Chinese it is almost impossible to make him distinguish clearly between the physical organ and the word in its popular acceptation of mind. In the study of Taoist books the distinction is still more difficult to trace. But it is in what may be called the popular philosophy of the common people that the most glorious confusion arises. There we find the actual blood-pump made the seat or embodiment of the man's mental and moral characteristics; so much so, that every form of what we understand by the term heart-disease should logically be regarded as the sign of some special depravity or sin. Hence comes the curious Chinese doctrine of the effect of climate upon character. Now, the Chinese are sufficiently well acquainted with the functions of the heart, and the relation to that organ of the blood. They know that for perfect health of body it is necessary that the blood should be kept completely pure, and that everything that taints the blood has an injurious effect upon the heart, through which it passes. It follows, therefore—and we now quote the words of a certain curious old empiric of Peking, a strange compound of shrewdness and folly—that the inhabitants of the northern capital are the most corrupt community in China. The reasoning is clear. The atmosphere of that city is intensely impregnated with two things—foul smells and pulverised ordure. This impure air is inhaled by the lungs; from the lungs it passes into the blood, and the blood thus defiled pours into the heart, which is thus corrupted and contaminated in its turn. Consequently the people whose hearts are thus infected become treacherous and insincere; they lose all sense of morality, propriety, and good faith; and what is worse—concluded our interlocutor, solemnly—"foreigners themselves are falling victims to this defiling process too." Of course to argue against this congeries of contradictions is generally a waste of time; for even if one's opponent is pushed into a corner and unable to reply, it by no means follows that he is convinced of the untenableness of his views. The earnest simplicity and seriousness with which an amiable and lettered man in China will sit and propound the most preposterous and fantastic theories that ever entered a human brain, and the profound unconsciousness he shows of the nonsense he is talking, affect one very curiously. Foreign science, such as that of medicine or anatomy, for example, impresses him with the notion of something strange and heterodox, which is too far removed from the traditions of the sages to be ever regarded as more than a bizarrerie to be wondered at, instead of a subject calling for grave investigation. He is firmly impressed with the belief that the heart is the seat of the intellect, and is situated in the centre of the body, although he can feel it beating on his left; that courage resides in the gall, the affections in the liver, the direction of bodily movement in the lungs, temper in the stomach, and mental force and wisdom in the kidneys. It is true that even we in the West appear to sanction this confusion of ideas by speaking of a coward as white-livered, and of a fastidious or haughty person as a man of delicate or proud stomach. But what are popular and figurative expressions with us are scientific axioms among the Chinese, and it will take a long term of educational courses before their eyes are opened to the untenable nature of their theories. At the same time, we must not forget that the action and reaction of the mind upon the body and the body on the mind is still a matter of much mystery even to Western thinkers, and the fact that deaths have actually occurred from the influence of imagination solely ought to make us lenient in dealing with the quaint confusions between mind and matter which exist in the Chinese intellect.