entence, which results in a kind of parallelism
or rhythmic balance. This parallelism is a noticeable feature in
ordinary poetical composition, and may be well illustrated by the
following four-line stanza:

"[Ch][Ch][Ch][Ch][Ch] The bright sun completes its course behind the
mountains; [Ch][Ch][Ch][Ch][Ch] The yellow river flows away into the
sea. [Ch][Ch][Ch][Ch][Ch] Would you command a prospect of a thousand
_li_? [Ch][Ch][Ch][Ch][Ch] Climb yet one storey higher." In the first
line of this piece, every single character is balanced by a
corresponding one in the second: [Ch] white by [Ch] yellow, [Ch] sun by
[Ch] river, and so on. In the 3rd and 4th lines, where more laxity is
generally allowed, every word again has its counterpart, with the sole
exception of [Ch] "wish" and [Ch] "further."

The question is often asked: What sort of instrument is Chinese for the
expression of thought? As a medium for the conveyance of historical
facts, subtle emotions or abstruse philosophical conceptions, can it
compare with the languages of the Western world? The answers given to
this question have varied considerably. But it is noteworthy that those
who most depreciate the qualities of Chinese are, generally speaking,
theorists rather than persons possessing a profound first-hand knowledge
of the language itself. Such writers argue that want of inflection in
the characters must tend to make Chinese hard and inelastic, and
therefore incapable of bringing out the finer shades of thought and
emotion. Answering one a priori argument with another, one might fairly
retort that, if anything, flexibility is the precise quality to be
predicated of a language in which any character may, according to the
requirements of the context, be interpreted either as noun, verb or
adjective. But all such reasoning is somewhat futile. It will scarcely
be contended that German, being highly inflected, is therefore superior
in range and power to English, from which inflections have largely
disappeared. Some of the early Jesuit missionaries, men of great natural
ability who steeped themselves in Oriental learning, have left very
different opinions on record. Chinese appeared to them as admirable for
the superabundant richness of its vocabulary as for the conciseness of
its literary style. And among modern scholars there is a decided
tendency to accept this view as embodying a great deal more truth than
the other.

Another question, much debated years ago