ABSTRACT
WHEN I landed in China, indeed, when I first saw the Mongolian type at Darjeeling, I was aware of a feeling as though an oppressive cloud had lifted. I realised then how strange and how tragic India had been to me, how utterly alien I had felt there. The brooding over the whole country of a spirit not merely religious, but religious in a sense so remote from anything religion has meant in the West; the tremendous forces antagonistic to man marching over the land, famine, plague, malaria, drought, flood; the handful of English camped there, fighting these things with so little help and so little hope; the gulf between rulers and ruled; the spirit of revolt, which yet seemed to have in it no real capacity or promise; all these things, felt sub-consciously even more than consciously, had lain like a nightmare upon me, clouding all the interest and all the pleasure of my travels. India was sublime, but it was terrible. China, on the other hand, was human. At the first sight of these ugly, cheery, vigorous people I loved them. Their gaiety, as of children, their friendliness, their profound humanity, struck me from the first and remained with me to the last. I can imagine no greater contrast than that between their character, their institutions, their habits, and those of the Indians. The Chinese are, and always have been, profoundly secular, as the Indians are, and always have been, profoundly religious. It is true, of course, that the Chinese have had religion, as the Europeans have had it; Buddhism came to them from India as Christianity came to us from Judaea, and Taoism was an indigenous growth. They have had also saints and mystics, as Europe has had them. But Buddhism and Taoism have never suited the Chinese character any more than Christianity has suited the European. Both Buddhism and Taoism quickly degenerated to mere superstition, systems of magic, imaginary means to obtain material ends. It was, and is, Confucianism with its rationalism, its scepticism, its stress on conduct, that expresses the Chinese spirit. Over India gleam the stars; over China the sun shines. Mankind is the centre of the Chinese universe, as the Absolute is the centre of the Indian. Confucianism may easily be translated into terms of Western positivism; it could never be translated into terms of Hinduism. The religion of the mass of the Chinese has always been mere superstition, whereas in India, as I have said, it appears to be true that the superstition symbolises a real spiritualism. Ancestor worship is the centre of the Chinese system; but that, perhaps, ought not to be called worship at all. It is rather commemoration, and as such all educated Chinamen regard it.1 It is thus rather a social than a religious institution, and serves to bind the family together rather than to foster a spiritual life. Its bearing on life is a bearing on conduct, and it is but an intensified form of the feeling which, even in the West, leads a man of distinguished family to fee1
feel that he must try to be worthy of his ancestors. What distinguishes the Chinese attitude in this matter from that of the modern West is its backward rather than its forward look. We look to our descendants, they to their forebears. And the discrediting of Confucianism under the new régime is due to its supposed conservatism rather than to any idea that it is irrational and superstitious. In this matter of religion the Chinese have only to throw over their superstition-and over the educated superstition never had any hold-and they will be immediately in line with the West. In India, as we saw, things are far otherwise. For what is most characteristic and profound in the Indian spirit is antagonistic to and irreconcilable with rationalism and science.
