ome utterance
on the problem of most interest to mankind. And yet, in spite of the
extreme healthiness of Confucian ethics, there has grown up, around
both the political and social life of the Chinese, such a tangled maze
of superstition, that it is no wonder if all intellectual advancement
has been first checked, and has then utterly succumbed. The ruling
classes have availed themselves of its irresistible power to give them
a firmer hold over their simple-hearted, credulous subjects; they have
practised it in its grossest forms, and have written volumes in
support of absurdities in which they cannot really have the slightest
faith themselves. It was only a year or two ago that the most powerful
man in China, a distinguished scholar, statesman, and general,
prostrated himself before a diminutive water-snake, in the hope that
by humble intercession with the God of Floods he might bring about a
respite from the cruel miseries which had been caused by inundations
over a wide area of the province of Chihli. The suppliant was no other
than the celebrated Viceroy, Lu Hung-chang, who has recently armed the
forts at the mouth and on the banks of the Peiho with Krupp's best
guns, instead of trusting, as would be consistent, the issue of a
future war to the supernatural efforts of some Chinese Mars.

Turning now to the literature of China, we cannot but be astonished at
the mass of novels which are one and all of the same tendency; in
fact, not only throughout the entire stratum of Chinese fiction, but
even in that of the gravest philosophical speculations, has the
miraculous been introduced as a natural and necessary element. The
following passage, taken from the writings of Han Wen-kung, whose name
has been pronounced to be "one of the most venerated," is a fair
specimen of the trash to be met with at every turn in that trackless,
treeless desert, which for want of a more appropriate term we are
obliged to call the literature of China:--

"There are some things which possess form but are devoid of sound,
as for instance jade and stones; others have sound but are without
form, such as wind and thunder; others again have both form and
sound, such as men and animals; and lastly, there is a class
devoid of both, namely, _devils and spirits_."

Descending to the harmless superstition of domestic life, we find that
the cat washing her face is not, as with us, a sign of rain, but that
a stranger is coming. On the other h