t he was a
Szech'wanese, that he had known the missionaries down by the Yangtze,
and that he knew he would be welcome to accompany me to Hsiakwan.[AT] He
switched himself on the main line of my caravan. Here was a man who had
been brought in contact with the missionary away down in another
province, and he knew he was welcome. I liked that. In all my
journeyings in Yuen-nan I was increasingly impressed with the value of
the missionary, that man who of all men in the Far East is the most
subject to malicious criticism, and generally, be it said, from those
persons who know little or nothing about his work. You cannot measure
the missionary's work by conversions, by mere statistics. I venture to
assert that it is through the missionary that the West applied pressure
and supplied China with political ideas, and put within her reach the
material and instruments which would enable her to carry such ideas into
practice--this apart from religious teaching. More particularly is this
the case in respect to popular education, perhaps, by means of which the
transformation of Old China into New China will be a less long and
difficult process. The people may not want the missionary--I do not for
a moment say that they do--but they need to know the secret of his power
and the power of his kind, and they must study his language, his
science, his machinery, his steamboats, his army, his _Dreadnaughts_.
They realize that the foreigner is useful not for what he can do, but
for what he can teach--therefore they tolerate the missionary. This is
virtually the national policy of China towards foreigners, a policy
gaining the acceptance of the people with remarkable quickness.

After having set aside all considerations of national prejudice and
patriotism, it is interesting to ask whether it is actually a fact that
the Chinese, as a race, are inferior to the peoples of the West? Much
has been said on the subject. I give my opinion flatly that the Chinese
is _not_ inferior, and the longer I live with him the more numerous
become the lessons which he teaches me.

"The question, when we examine it closely, has really very little to do
with political strength or military efficiency, or (_pace_ Mr. Benjamin
Kidd) relative standards of living, or even the usual material
accompaniments of what we call an advanced civilization; it is a
question for the trained anthropologist and the craniologist rather than
for the casual observer of men and manners