s a palace built by an
ancient emperor, and a retreat in a lake for scholars weary of the
world, founded by a famous poet of the Tang dynasty. It is this outlook
that strikes the Westerner as barbaric.

The Chinese, from the highest to the lowest, have an imperturbable quiet
dignity, which is usually not destroyed even by a European education.
They are not self-assertive, either individually or nationally; their
pride is too profound for self-assertion. They admit China's military
weakness in comparison with foreign Powers, but they do not consider
efficiency in homicide the most important quality in a man or a nation.
I think that, at bottom, they almost all believe that China is the
greatest nation in the world, and has the finest civilization. A
Westerner cannot be expected to accept this view, because it is based on
traditions utterly different from his own. But gradually one comes to
feel that it is, at any rate, not an absurd view; that it is, in fact,
the logical outcome of a self-consistent standard of values. The typical
Westerner wishes to be the cause of as many changes as possible in his
environment; the typical Chinaman wishes to enjoy as much and as
delicately as possible. This difference is at the bottom of most of the
contrast between China and the English-speaking world.

We in the West make a fetish of "progress," which is the ethical
camouflage of the desire to be the cause of changes. If we are asked,
for instance, whether machinery has really improved the world, the
question strikes us as foolish: it has brought great changes and
therefore great "progress." What we believe to be a love of progress is
really, in nine cases out of ten, a love of power, an enjoyment of the
feeling that by our fiat we can make things different. For the sake of
this pleasure, a young American will work so hard that, by the time he
has acquired his millions, he has become a victim of dyspepsia,
compelled to live on toast and water, and to be a mere spectator of the
feasts that he offers to his guests. But he consoles himself with the
thought that he can control politics, and provoke or prevent wars as may
suit his investments. It is this temperament that makes Western nations
"progressive."

There are, of course, ambitious men in China, but they are less common
than among ourselves. And their ambition takes a different form--not a
better form, but one produced by the preference of enjoyment to power.
It is a natural re