much for such
trifling gain? How much better a due observance of time-honoured
custom, ensuring as it would a flow of prosperity continuous and
everlasting as the waves of the sea! O ye merchants and
shopkeepers, know that in heaven as on earth written words are
esteemed precious as the jade, and whatever is marked therewith
must not be cast aside like stones and tiles. For happiness,
wealth, honours, distinctions, and old age, may be one and all
secured by a proper respect for written paper."

SUPERSTITION

Educated Chinamen loudly disclaim any participation in the
superstitious beliefs which, to a European eye, hang like a dark cloud
over an otherwise intellectually free people. There never has been a
State religion in China, and it has always been open to every man to
believe and practise as much or as little as he likes of Buddhism,
Taoism, or Mahomedanism, without legal interference or social stigma
of any kind. Of course it is understood that such observances must be
purely self-regarding, and that directly they assume--as lately in the
case of Mahomedanism--anything of a political character, the Chinese
Government is not slow to protect the unity of the Empire by the best
means in its power. And so, but for the suicidal zeal of Christian
missions and their supporters, who have effected an unnatural
amalgamation of religion and politics, and carried the Bible into
China at the point of the bayonet, the same toleration might now be
accorded to Christianity which the propagators of other religions have
hitherto been permitted to enjoy.

As to religion in China, it is only of the ethics of Confucius that
the State takes any real cognizance. His is what John Stuart Mill
alluded to as "the best wisdom they possess;" and, as he further
observed, the Chinese have secured "that those who have appropriated
most of it shall occupy the posts of honour and power." His maxims are
entirely devoid of the superstitious element. He recognises a
principle of right beyond the ken of man; but though he once said that
this principle was conscious of his existence and his work on earth,
it never entered his head to endow it with anything like retributory
powers. Allusions to an unseen world were received by him with scorn;
and as regards a future state, he has preserved a most discreet
silence. "While you do not know life, how can you know about death?"
was the rebuke he administered to a disciple who urged s