for
stiffening the covers or strengthening the folded leaves of books; still
more so, to employ it in the manufacture of soles for boots and shoes,
though in such cases as these the weakness of human nature usually
carries the day. Still, from the point of view of the Taoist faith, the
risk is too serious to be overlooked. In the sixth of the ten Courts of
Purgatory, through one or more of which sinners must pass after death in
order to expiate their crimes on earth, provision is made for those who
"scrape the gilding from the outside of images, take holy names in vain,
show no respect for written paper, throw down dirt and rubbish near
pagodas and temples, have in their possession blasphemous or obscene
books and do not destroy them, obliterate or tear books which teach man
to be good," etc., etc.

In this, the sixth Court, presided over, like all the others, by a
judge, and furnished with all the necessary means and appliances for
carrying out the sentences, there are sixteen different wards where
different punishments are applied according to the gravity of the
offence. The wicked shade may be sentenced to kneel for long periods on
iron shot, or to be placed up to the neck in filth, or pounded till the
blood runs out, or to have the mouth forced open with iron pincers and
filled with needles, or to be bitten by rats, or nipped by locusts while
in a net of thorns, or have the heart scratched, or be chopped in two
at the waist, or have the skin of the body torn off and rolled up into
spills for lighting pipes, etc. Similar punishments are awarded for
other crimes; and these are to be seen depicted on the walls of the
municipal temple, to be found in every large city, and appropriately
named the Chamber of Horrors. It is doubtful if such ghastly
representations of what is to be expected in the next world have really
any deterrent effect upon even the most illiterate of the masses;
certainly not so long as health is present and things are generally
going well. "The devil a monk" will any Chinaman be when the conditions
of life are satisfactory to him.

As has already been stated, his temperament is not a religious one; and
even the seductions and threats of Buddhism leave him to a great extent
unmoved. He is perhaps chiefly influenced by the Buddhist menace of
rebirth, possibly as a woman, or worse still as an animal. Belief
in such a contingency may act as a mild deterrent under a variety of
circumstances; it certain