Lore of Cathay : or, The intellect of China /

Front matter

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Preface

^HE Lore of Cathay,” is an essential compleyj ment to “ A Cycle of Cathay. The latter represents the active life of the Chinese as it appeared to the writer in the course of a long and varied experience. This book mirrors their intellectual life as it developed under investigations extending through many years of intimate association with Chinese scholars, and of identification with Chinese education.

Its contents comprise the “ Hanlin Papers,” revised and enlarged by the addition of much new matter. Its materials have been drawn exclusively from native sources, and are the result of original research. The author has treated, with considerable detail, of subjects so diverse as Chinese education and Chinese alchemy ; and he ventures to believe that he throws fresh light on some points of Oriental literature, science and philosophy ; and that he may fairly claim, as a field of his own discovery, the international law and diplomacy of the ancient Chinese.

In the San Kuo Chi it is laid down as a law of the national life, confirmed by history, that the Chinese Empire, when it has been long united, is sure to be divided ; when it has been long divided, is sure to be reunited. Just now the centrifugal forces are portentously active. Should they eventuate in partition, that state of things could not be permanent, though it might accelerate the acquisition of our Western civilization by the people of China. Quickened into new life, they would be sure to

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2 PREFACE

reconstruct the Empire and to take their place among the leading powers of the civilized world.

While the Manchu rulers have made grudging concessions to superior force, they have always, with the exception of Kuang Hsu, contrived to maintain a latent hostility in the minds of their people. That hostility has diminished — strange to say — with each defeat by foreign powers, and it almost disappeared during the reform ♦movement under the young Emperor, which followed the war with Japan.

To prevent the recurrence of outrages it is necessary to foster a fellow-feeling with the rest of the world. As Captain Mahan says : “ Toward Asia in its present condition Europe has learned that it has a community of interest that may be defined as the need of bringing the Asian peoples within the compass of the family of Christian States. They will have to insist that currency be permitted to our ideas — liberty to exchange thought in Chinese territory with the individual Chinaman. The open door, both for commerce and for intellectual interaction, should be our aim everywhere in China.”

One essential to this intellectual interaction is mutual intellectual comprehension. If China is to be a part of the family of civilized States — Chinese thought, the principles at the basis of Chinese history and life must be understood. It is with the hope that this may be furthered that “ The Lore of Cathay ” is offered to the Anglo-Saxon public.

Peking., July ist.

Book II Chinese Literature

IV. Poets and Poetry of China . . . .75

V. The Confucian Apocrypha 87

VI. Confucius and Plato — A Coincidence . . .106

VII. Chinese Prose Composition in

VIII. Chinese Letter Writing 130

IX. Chinese Fables 144

X. Native Tracts of China 148

Book III

RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY OF THE CHINESE XI- The San Chiao or Three Religions of China . 165 XII. The Ethical Philosophy of the Chinese . . 205

CONTENTS

PAGE

XIII. Chinese Ideas of Inspiration 234

XIV. Buddhism a Preparation for Christianity . . 249

XV. The Worship of Ancestors in China . . . 264

Book IV Education In China

XVI. School and Family Training 281

XVII. Civil Service Examinations ..... 308

XVIII. The Imperial Academy 329

XIX. An Old University in China 371

Book V Studies In Chinese History

XX. The Study of Chinese History .... 387

XXI. The Tartars in Ancient China .... 409

XXII. International Law in Ancient China . . . 427

XXIII. Diplomacy in Ancient China 450

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Dr. W. A. P. Martin Frontispiece

FACING PACES

President Martin and Faculty of the Chinese Imperial University 18

Dr. Martin and some of his Students 34

Shrine and Temple of Confucius 88

The Temple of Heaven |

The Altar of Heaven . } ^

Arch and Temple of Confucius 200

Gateway of Lama Temple 240

Buddhist Monument 254

The Imperial Ancestral Temple 274

The Watch-tower in Examination Grounds . . }

Furnace for burning paper in Examination Grounds J ’ '

Row of Cells in Examination University .... 326

The Imperial Lecture Room, Old University . . . )

Prospect Hill where the last of the Mings hanged himself j

FOR a long time the giant of the East has been rubbing his eyes. Each collision with foreign powers has had the effect of making him more conscious of his helpless condition and more ready to open his lids to the light of a new day.

Never was he more wide awake than during the few years following the war with Japan, when the young Emperor, Kuang Hsu, attempted to make his reign an era of reform. The counter-revolution brought about by the Empress Dowager,* and the cosmic shock by. which it was succeeded, proved the strength and reality of the reform movement. So far from extinguishing that movement, the effect of this convulsion will be to wake it into fresh activity. The Chinese people may be expected to welcome new ideas with more eagerness than ever before.

This proposition will be received with distrust by some who are skeptical as to the doctrine of human progress. It will be questioned by others, who deride as visionary the efforts of Christian enterprise. Nor will it be readily admitted by that large class who are wont to regard the Chinese mind as hopelessly incrusted with the prejudices of antiquity.

* Having treated that subject in “ The Siege in Peking,” it is unnecessary to enlarge upon it in this place.

Never have a great people been more misunderstood. They are denounced as stolid, because we are not in possession of a medium sufficiently transparent to convey our ideas to 'them, or transmit theirs to us; and stigmatized as barbarians, because we want the breadth to comprehend a civilization different from our own. They are represented as servile imitators, though they have borrowed less than any other people; as destitute of the inventive faculty, though the world is indebted to them for a long catalogue of the most useful discoveries ; and as clinging with unquestioning tenacity to a heritage of traditions, though they have passed through many and profound changes in the course of their history.

Nothing has done so much to lower them in our esteem and to exclude them from our sympathies as the atrocities of the Boxer outbreak'. That, however, was the effect of a sudden recoil, stirred up for political purposes by a usurping Regent and her Manchu agents. Foreigners themselves, they were jealous of anything that tends to disturb the repose of the Chinese mind, or to strengthen the foothold of other foreigners. Exasperated, too, by a series of encroachments on their territory, they gave way to a mad fury that proved contagious. But if the reign of terror was the renovation of France, and the Sepoy mutiny the harbinger of better things for India, why may not this dreadful drama prove to be the birth-pangs of a new China?

That China is not incapable of reformation, we shall show first by a glance at changes that passed over the national mind prior to the first war with England. We shall then pass in review the steps taken in the way of reform in the course of the next fifty years. Finally, we shall describe in outline, the reform movement under the Emperor, Kuang Hsu, which has more right than the

Boxer craze to be accepted as the real attitude of the Chinese mind.

The Chinese have not been stationary, as generally supposed, through the long past of their national life. The national mind has advanced from age to age with a stately march ; not indeed always in a direct course, but at each of its great epochs, recording, as we think, a decided gain ; like the dawn of an arctic morning, in which the first blush of the eastern sky disappears for many hours, only to be succeeded by a brighter glow, growing brighter yet, after each interval of darkness, as the time of sunrise approaches.

The existence in such a country of such a thing as a national mind is itself an evidence of a susceptibility to change ; and, at the same time, a guarantee for the comparative stability of its institutions. It proves that China is not an immense congeries of polyps, each encased in his narrow cell, a workshop and a tomb, and all toiling on without the stimulus of common sympathy or mental reaction. It proves that China is not like Africa, and aboriginal America, or even like British India, an assemblage of tribes with little or no community of feeling. It is a unit, and through all its members there sweeps the mighty tide of a common life.

In the progress of its enormous growth, it has absorbed many a heterogeneous element, which has always been transformed into its own substance by an assimilative power that asserts the marvelous energy of the Chinese civilization. It has, too, undergone many modifications, in consequence of influences operating ab extra as well as from within ; and though the process of transmission has often been slow, those influences have always extended to the whole body. Within the bounds of China proper, there is no such thing as the waves of

Buddhism or Taoism being arrested at the confines of a particular province ; nor is there any district in which the pulsations from the great heart of the empire do not, by virtue of a common language and common feeling, meet with a prompt response.

Yet the existence of this oneness and sympathy, — this nationality of mind, which brings modifications on a vast scale within the range of possibility, necessarily interposes an obstacle in the way of their speedy consummation. Planted on the deep foundations of antiquity, extending over so wide an area, and proudly conscious of its own greatness, its very inertia is opposed to change. In China, accordingly, great revolutions, whether political, religious, or intellectual, have always been slow of accomplishment. Compared with the facility with which these are brought about in some Occidental countries, they resemble the slow revolution of those huge planets on the outskirts of the solar system, which require more than the period of a human life to make the circuit of the sun, while the little planet Mercury wheels round the center once in three months.

Great dynastic changes, involving as they do a period of disintegration, and another of reconstruction, have usually occupied from one to three generations, while the growth of those grand revolutions, which resulted in the ascendency of a religion or a philosophy, must be reckoned by centuries.

A brief review of some of the more remarkable changes that have occurred in the progress of Chinese civilization, will enable us better to understand the nature of the intellectual movement now going on.

To begin with the development of political ideas. Instead of being wedded to a uniform system of despotic government, the Chinese have lived under as many forms

1 1 of government as ancient Rome or modern France. While the Romans passed under their kings, consuls, and emperors, the Chinese had their tis, their wangs, and their huang tis. And as France has passed through the various phases of a feudal and centralized monarchy, a military despotism, and a republic, so China exhibits an equal variety in the forms of her civil government.

When the hand of history first lifts the curtain, two thousand years before the Christian era, it discloses to us an elective monarchy, in which the voice of the people was admitted to express the will of Heaven. Thus, Yao, the model monarch of antiquity, was raised to the throne by the voice of the nobles, in lieu of his elder brother, who was set aside on account of his disorderly life. Yao, in turn, set aside his own son, and called on the nobles to name a successor, when Shun was chosen. Again, Shun, passing by an unworthy son, transmitted the “ yellow ” to an able minister, the great Yu.

Yu, though a good sovereign, departed from these illustrious precedents, and incurred the censure of “ converting the empire into a family estate.” The hereditary principle became fixed. Branches of the imperial family were assigned portions of the empire, and their descendants succeeding to their principalities, the feudal system was confirmed.

This, in China, is the classical form of government, but it was overthrown completely two thousand years ago, by one of the most sweeping revolutions on the records of history. Since that date, China has been a consolidated monarchy, living in complete isolation ; without neighbors, and without a conception of international intercourse. This has been a fruitful source of conflict with the great nations of the West and East.

Under the dynasty of Han, about the commencement of the Christian era, a still more important modification was introduced into the constitution of the empire — viz., a democratic element, in virtue of which appointments to office were not left to the caprice of the sovereign and his favorites. This consisted in testing the capacity of candidates by a literary examination ; and it operated so well that it was not only adopted but greatly improved by succeeding dynasties, and continues in force at the present day. The Americans would as soon surrender their ballot-box, as the Chinese that noble system of literary competition, which makes public office the reward of scholarship, and gives every man an opportunity of elevating himself by his own exertions.

Nor are the Chinese less familiar with the idea of change in the region of religious thought. Three systems of religion have appeared on the arena of the empire, and struggled for ascendency since the sixth century before the Christian era. Confucianism was persecuted under the dynasty of Ch’in ; and Taoism and Buddhism alternately persecuting and persecuted, kept up a conflict for ages, each in turn seating its own disciples on the throne of the empire. The last of these is of foreign origin ; and its universal prevalence does much to reconcile the people to the introduction of religious ideas from abroad ; while it stands forth as a visible proof of the possibility of converting the Chinese to a foreign creed. A leading statesman* of China has made use of this as an argument to show that the emperor should not object to the propagation of Christianity. “ From the time of Ch’in and Han,” he says, “ the doctrines of Confucius began to be obscured, and the religion of Buddha spread. Now Buddhism originated in India, but many of the Hindus have renounced Buddhism and embraced Mohammedan-

♦Tseng Kuo Fan, viceroy of Nanking.

»3 ism. The Roman Catholic faith originated in the West, but some nations of the West have adopted Protestantism, and set themselves in opposition to the faith of Rome. Whence we see that other religions rise and fall from age to age, but the doctrine of Confucius survives, unimpaired throughout all ages.” The writer is careful to disavow any sympathy for Christianity, and he by no means recommends its adoption ; but he wishes to assure His Majesty that there is no serious evil to be apprehended even if Christianity should succeed in supplanting Buddhism, as long as the people adhere to the cardinal doctrines of their ancient sage. It is a great thing for the leading minds to acknowledge the possibility of a change even in this hypothetical form.

Aside from these religious revolutions, and altogether distinct from them, are several periods of intellectual awakening, that constitute marked epochs in the history of literature.

The first of these was occasioned by the teachings of Confucius. Another occurred in the time of Mencius, a century later, when the ethical basis of the school underwent a searching revision, the great question of the original goodness or depravity of human nature being discussed with acuteness and power. A third and more powerful awakening took place, when the classic books which Lu Cheng had burned, rose, phcenix-like, from their ashes, or to speak more correctly, issued, Minerva-like, from the retentive brain of those venerable scholars who had committed them to memory in their early boyhood.

This was the age of criticism ; the very circumstances which roused the national mind to activity, directed its efforts to the settlement of the text of their ancient records. But it did not stop here. Slips of bamboo, and tablets of wood, the clumsy materials of ancient books, gave place to linen, silk, and paper. The convenience and elegance of the material contributed to multiply books and to stimulate literary labor.

But the grandest of all the revivals of learning, was, as might be expected, that which ensued on the discovery of the art of printing. In the period above referred to, about A. D. 177, the revised text of the sacred books was engraved on tablets of stone, by Imperial order, as a precaution to secure it against the danger of another conflagration. Impressions must have been taken from these, and the art of printing thus practiced to a limited extent at that early date; but it was not till the eighth century that it came into general use for the manufacture of books.

It was not so much the augmented rate of production that marked this epoch, as the improved character of its original literature. This was eminently the age of poetry; when Li Tai Po, and Tu Fu, and a whole constellation of lesser lights rose above the horizon. The Poems of T’ang are still recognized as forming the text-books of standard poetry.

This period was succeeded by another in the reign of the Sung dynasty (960-1279), when the mind of China exhibited itself in a new development. It became seized with a mania for philosophical speculation, and grappled with the deepest questions of ontology. Choutze, Chengtze, and, above all, the famous Chu Hsi, distinguished themselves by the penetrating subtlety and the daring freedom of their inquiries. Professing to elucidate the ancient philosophy, they in reality founded a new one — a school of pantheistic materialism, which has continued dominant to the present hour.

The last two dynasties have not been unfruitful in the products of the intellect ; indeed, there seems to be no x5 end or abatement to the teeming fertility of the Chinese mind. Less daringly original than in the preceding period, it has yet, under each of these dynasties, appeared in a new style — the writers of the Ming being distinguished for masculine energy of expression, and those of the Ta Ch’ing for graceful elegance.

Enough has been said to show that the Chinese have not maintained through all the ages that character of cast-iron uniformity so generally ascribed to them. Worshipers of antiquity, they certainly are, and strongly conservative in their mental tendencies ; hut they have not been content, as is too commonly supposed, to hand down from the earliest times a small stock of crystallized ideas without increase or modification. The germs of their civilization, like those of any civilization worth preserving, are not precious stones to be kept in a casket, but seeds to be cultivated and improved. In fact, modifications have taken place on an extensive scale, foreign elements have from time to time been engrafted on the native root, and the native scholar, as he follows back the pathway of history, fails to discover anything like uniformity or constancy, except in a few of the most fundamental principles. The doctrine of filial piety, carried to the point of religious devotion, extends like a golden thread through all the ages, as the foundation of family ties and social order; while the principle of the divine origin of government, administered by one man as the representative of Heaven, and modified by the corresponding doctrine that the will of Heaven is expressed in the will of the people, is found alike in every period, as the basis of their civil institutions.

Though not so much given to change as their more mercurial antipodes, it is still true that the constant factors of their civilization have been few, and the variai6 ble ones many. Bold innovations and radical revolutions rise to view all along in the retrospect of their far-reaching past, and prepare them to anticipate the same for the future. With such antecedents, and such a character for intellectual activity, it would be next to impossible that they should not be profoundly affected by their contacts and collisions with the civilization of Christendom.

In point of fact the impression was profound, though it was not immediately apparent. For over half a century the West had been acting on China by the combined influence of its arms, its commerce, its religion, and its science. Some of these influences commenced to operate at a much earlier date, and their effects were by no means insignificant. But of late years all of them have been combined with an oxyhydrogen blow-pipe intensity, that one would think sufficient to melt a mountain of adamant. They could not, in the nature of things, have been brought to bear on China so effectively at any earlier period on account of her geographical isolation. The nations of the West were too remote to cause solicitude; but when steamships and the cutting of the Isthmus brought them nearer, and when in two wars they displayed their ability to beat her in every battle, they taught her a lesson, without which all attempts to benefit the Chinese must have proved like irrigating the side of a mountain by projecting water from its base.

The effect was immediate. The Chinese were for the first time convinced that they had something to learn. Within less than a year from the close of hostilities in i860, large bodies of Chinese troops might have been seen learning foreign tactics under foreign drill-masters, on the very battle grounds where they had been defeated. Arsenals, well supplied with machinery from foreign countries, were put in operation at four important points,

*7 and Navy Yards were established at two principal seaports, where native mechanics were taught the construction of steam gun-boats.

Such, indeed, was their proficiency in the arts of war, that they supposed themselves able to cope with a firstclass power, until the war with Japan dispelled the illusion.

Nor was education in other lines wholly neglected. A school for the training of interpreters was opened in Canton, and a similar school established in the Capital. It is significant of the animus of the ruling race that in both schools the students were exclusively drawn from the Tartar tribes, or from Chinese whose families had been adopted into the Manchu race in the age of the conquest. The government was not desirous of extending the benefits of the new education to its Chinese subjects. One Manchu statesman there was, with sounder views and greater breadth — Wen Hsiang, the enlightened chief of the Board of Foreign Affairs. He induced the throne to open the doors of the College to Chinese who were highclass graduates in letters; but the haughty graduates declined to enter. Wojin, the Emperor’s teacher, denounced the proposal to have her learned doctors sit at the feet of foreigners as derogatory to the dignity of China. Being at the head of the Imperial Academy, he encouraged the Hanlins in their opposition to such an innovation. Unable to reach the higher literati, Wen Hsiang had to content himself with recruits from lower grades. The number of scholarships was raised from thirty to one hundred and twenty, and the curriculum enlarged to embrace a liberal course in sciences and arts, as well as languages. The Imperial T’ung Wen College became an important factor in helping forward the cause of progress.

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Some of its students found employment in schools and arsenals. Many of them were attached to embassies in foreign parts, and two of them had the distinguished honor of becoming tutors in English to His Majesty, the Emperor, then in his early minority. Instead of printed books, they were required to place in the hands of their Imperial pupil, a series of lessons written out in beautiful manuscript. These they always brought to me to be sure that they were correct. I may here mention that my first appointment in connection with the T’ung Wen College, was the charge of a class of boys, ten in number, who were studying English. After a short time, I proposed to give up the charge. An aged minister, who had the oversight of the school, inquiring my reason for resigning, I told him I thought the business too small for me.

“ Don’t call it small,” he said, “ some of your students may yet become teachers of the Emperor.”

Needless to say, this argument proved conclusive; not only was his prophesy with reference to the students fulfilled, a prediction which he had a good deal to do in fulfilling, but, in the further enlargement of the institution, I was appointed to the Presidency in connection with the Chair of International Law, a two-fold position, which I continued to hold for twenty-five years, until ill-health compelled my resignation.

Our students, who went abroad in connection with embassies, were some of them interpreters, some secretaries, some consuls and vice-consuls, while one or two even rose to the dignity of minister plenipotentiary : notably was this the case with Mr. Ching Chang,* late minister to France.

♦The late Marquis Tseng. Minister to England, though not a student of the College, took private lessons from me, and always manifested towards me the respect due to a teacher.

PRESIDENT W. A. P. MARTIN AND FACULTY OF CHINESE IMPERIAL UNIVERSITY

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The embassies themselves must not be overlooked as an educational agency. Each minister and his suite regarded themselves as on a mission of exploration. Sometimes the minister embodied his observations in a set of volumes. More frequently their secretaries published an account of their travels. These publications, not being pigeon-holed like official reports, had the effect of doing much to awaken the reading class.

One of the most remarkable enterprises of that age was the educational mission originated by Mr. Yuflg Wing, a graduate and doctor of laws of Yale University. By him and his successors, about three hundred picked youth were led to Hartford for training in every branch of knowledge that could make them useful to their country. The mission was, as I have elsewhere stated, finally recalled, because it was thought these young men were learning too much.

The efforts hitherto made in this direction, were mainly official, and intended for the use of the Government. They wrere feeble in comparison with the strength of the movement which followed on the w-ar with Japan. The first effect of defeat was to excite earnest inquiry as to the cause of China's humiliation. Those haughty sc'uol ars, the members of the Hanlin, who had disdained to enter the T’ung Wen College, now became convinced that the Japanese w'ere victorious because a new education had supplied them with new sources of power. They began the organization of reform clubs in the capital and throughout the empire, in many places. They sought the advice of missionaries, such as Dr. Allen, the Rev. Timothy Richard, and the Rev. Gilbert Reid. They were encouraged by Viceroys and Governors. The Great Viceroy, Chang Chih Tung published a book to stimulate the movement, showing that a change of base for the educational system is “ China’s Only Hope.”

In 1897, the eminent Cantonese scholar, Kang Yii Wei, went to the capital to compete for a place in the Imperial Academy. He won for himself a more distinguished position by getting the ear of the Emperor. Deeply penetrated with the conviction that China’s safety required her to imitate the example of Japan, he fired the mind of the Emperor with enthusiasm to be the leader of his people in the path of reform.

The Emperor issued a series of decrees, all commending themselves to the judgment of reasonable men, but fraught with the spirit of innovation. He proposed, instead of choosing the employees of the government as the result of a competition in ornamental handwriting and verse making, to have them examined in sciences and practical arts. With this in view, he ordered the establishment of common schools, for which the idol temples in the provinces were to be thrown open, an act regarded by his people as equivalent to confiscation. He also ordered the creation of upper schools and colleges in the provinces, and established a University in the capital, which should gather in the provincial graduates and train them for the service of the state. The writer was called to the Presidency of this institution. It had been in operation for two years with a corps of ten foreign professors, and twelve native assistants, mostly Christian graduates of mission schools, when its operations were brought to a standstill by the Boxer outbreak.

That temporary madness which showed itself in the burning of the Hanlin Library, the destruction by fire of the richest sections of the capital, and the destruction by water of the library of our University, is sure to have the effect of giving a fresh impetus to the cause of educational reform.

BOOK I China’s Contribution to Arts and Sciences

I

THAT a people whose history runs hack almost as far as that of Egypt, and whose continuity has been far less disturbed by foreign conquest, should hit on many useful discoveries is not to be wondered at. The wonder is that so little pains have been taken to point out the extent of our indebtedness to the ancient civilization of the Far East. In many instances our obligations can be proven. In others, where the evidence is not conclusive, the fact of priority creates a presumption in favor of the Chinese. The channel of transmission may not be easy to detect ; but there is no doubt that such existed even prior to the records of history, just as the ocean throbs with a common pulse, and secret currents connect its distant shores.