e working and
uneducated classes concerning such natural phenomena as it is quite
impossible for them to ignore? Their theory of eclipses is well
known, foreign ears being periodically stunned by the gonging of an
excited crowd of natives, who are endeavouring with hideous noises
to prevent some imaginary dog of colossal proportions from
banqueting, as the case may be, upon the sun or moon. At such
laughable exhibitions of native ignorance it will be observed there is
always a fair sprinkling of well-to-do, educated persons, who not
only ought to know better themselves, but should be making some
effort to enlighten their less fortunate countrymen instead of joining
in the din. Such a hold, however, has superstition on the minds of
the best informed in a Chinese community, that under the influence
of any real or supposed danger, philosophy and Confucius are
scattered to the four winds of heaven, and the proudest disciple of
the master proves himself after all but a man." [297] No doubt Mr.
Doolittle and Mr. Giles are both right: custom and superstition form
a twisted rope which pinions the popular mind. But there is yet
another strand to be mentioned which makes the bond a threefold
cord which it will take some time to break. _Prescriptive right_
requires that the official or cultured class in China, answering to the
clerical caste elsewhere, should keep the other classes in ignorance;
because, if science and religion are fellow-helpers, science and
superstition can never dwell together, and the downfall of
superstition in China would be the destruction of imperial despotism
and magisterial tyranny. "Sirs, ye know that by this craft we have
our wealth. But this Paul says that they be no gods, which are made
with hands: so that our craft is in danger to be set at nought. Great is
Diana of the Ephesians!" The mandarins know why they encourage
the mechanics and merchants to save the moon.

We once met a good story in reading one of Jean Astruc's medical
works. "Theodore de Henry, of Paris, coming one time into the
church of St. Dionis, he fell prostrate at the foot of the statue of
Charles the Eighth, as in a sudden fit of devotion. When being told
by one of the monks that was not the image of any saint, he replied,
he was not ignorant of that, but was willing to pay a grateful
acknowledgment to the memory of that prince who had brought the
_Morbus Gallicus_ into France, by which he had made his own
fortune." Herein lies