CHAPTER XVI
TSÊNG'S PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE
The story of the Taiping uprising and of the attempt to organise the imperial forces to suppress it has carried us from the modern world of the West into a mediaeval environment. It is hard to realise that the Crimean War synchronised with the earlier stages of the great rebellion and the American Civil War and the rebirth of Japan with the last years, yet it was so. But if we step from the thought-world of Europe and America of that period to the inner life of the Chinese of Tsêng's day, we are transported into the dim days of antiquity when the Nile River, Crete, and the Mesopotamian Valley were the centers of civilisation. To realise how extended a mental journey he made from his boyhood till he and Li Hung-chang memorialised the emperor to send capable young men abroad, we must imagine a person born in the age of Confucius or Plato and living to the mid-Victorian period. It would be an interesting study to compile a biography of Tsêng's inner life and development from the abundant materials preserved in his essays, letters, reports, and diaries. A single chapter is all too brief to include the interesting material that is available, but it will at least show what were the animating principles that guided his personal and family life, and that determined his attitude towards some of the institutions of his native land.
