his skull under
hashish; but the offer was rudely declined. This story serves to show,
in spite of its marvellous setting, that the idea of administering an
anaesthetic to carry out a surgical operation must be credited, so far
as priority goes, to the Chinese, since the book in which the above
account is given cannot have been composed later than the twelfth
century A.D.

CHAPTER VII--PHILOSOPHY AND SPORT

Chinese philosophy covers altogether too large a field to be dealt with,
even in outline, on a scale suitable to this volume; only a few of its
chief features can possibly be exhibited in the space at disposal.

Beginning with moral philosophy, we are confronted at once with what was
in early days an extremely vexed question; not perhaps entirely set
at rest even now, but allowed to remain in suspense amid the universal
acceptance of Confucian teachings. Confucius himself taught in no
indistinct terms that man is born good, and that he becomes evil only by
contact with evil surroundings. He does not enlarge upon this dogma,
but states it baldly as a natural law, little anticipating that within
a couple of centuries it was to be called seriously in question. It
remained for his great follower, Mencius, born a hundred years later, to
defend the proposition against all comers, and especially against one
of no mean standing, the philosopher Kao (_Cow_). Kao declared that
righteousness is only to be got out of man's nature in the same way that
good cups and bowls are to be got out of a block of willow wood, namely,
by care in fashioning them. Improper workmanship would produce bad
results; good workmanship, on the other hand, would produce good
results. In plain words, the nature of man at birth is neither good
nor bad; and what it becomes afterwards depends entirely upon what
influences have been brought to bear and in what surroundings it has
come to maturity. Mencius met this argument by showing that in the
process of extracting cups and bowls from a block of wood, the wood as
a block is destroyed, and he pointed out that, according to such
reasoning, man's nature would also be destroyed in the process of
getting righteousness out of it.

Again, Kao maintained that man's nature has as little concern with
good or evil as water has with east or west; for water will flow
indifferently either one way or the other, according to the conditions
in each case. If there is freedom on the east, it will flow east; if
ther