ppy Land, which are
however of respectable antiquity. As in India, each sect selects rather
arbitrarily a few books for its own use, without condemning others but
also without according to them the formal recognition received by the
Old and New Testaments among Christians.

No Asiatic country possesses so large a portion of the critical spirit
as China. The educated Chinese, however much they may venerate their
classics, think of them as we think of the masterpieces of Greek
literature, aS texts which may contain wrong readings, interpolations
and lacunae, which owe whatever authority they possess to the labours of
the scholars who collected, arranged and corrected them. This attitude
is to some extent the result of the attempt made by the First Emperor
about 200 B.C. to destroy the classical literature and to its subsequent
laborious restoration. At a time when the Indians regarded the Veda as a
verbal revelation, certain and divine in every syllable, the Chinese
were painfully recovering and re-piecing their ancient chronicles and
poems from imperfect manuscripts and fallible memories. The process
obliged them to enquire at every step whether the texts which they
examined were genuine and complete: to admit that they might be
defective or paraphrases of a difficult original. Hence the Chinese have
sound principles of criticism unknown to the Hindus and in discussing
the date of an ancient work or the probability of an alleged historical
event they generally use arguments which a European scholar can accept.

Chinese literature has a strong ethical and political flavour which
tempered the extravagance of imported Indian ideas. Most Chinese systems
assert more or less plainly that right conduct is conduct in harmony
with the laws of the State and the Universe.

18. _Morality and Will_

It is dangerous to make sweeping statements about the huge mass of
Indian literature, but I think that most Buddhist and Brahmanic systems
assume that morality is merely a means of obtaining happiness[67] and is
not obedience to a categorical imperative or to the will of God.
Morality is by inference raised to the status of a cosmic law, because
evil deeds will infallibly bring evil consequences to the doer in this
life or in another. But it is not commonly spoken of as such a law. The
usual point of view is that man desires happiness and for this morality
is a necessary though insufficient preparation. But there may be higher
state