It has mystic doctrines and a way of salvation and a future life.  It has a message to the world intended to cure the despair which it regards as natural to those who have no religious faith.  It assumes an instinctive pessimism only to be cured by some gospel.  Confucianism has nothing of all this.  It assumes people fundamentally at peace with the world, wanting only instruction as to how to live, not encouragement to live at all.  And its ethical instruction is not based upon any metaphysical or religious dogma; it is purely mundane.  The result of the co-existence of these two religions in China has been that the more religious and contemplative natures turned to Buddhism, while the active administrative type was content with Confucianism, which was always the official teaching, in which candidates for the civil service were examined.  The result is that for many ages the Government of China has been in the hands of literary sceptics, whose administration has been lacking in those qualities of energy and destructiveness which Western nations demand of their rulers.  In fact, they have conformed very closely to the maxims of Chuang-Tze.  The result has been that the population has been happy except where civil war brought misery; that subject nations have been allowed autonomy; and that foreign nations have had no need to fear China, in spite of its immense population and resources.

Comparing the civilization of China with that of Europe, one finds in China most of what was to be found in Greece, but nothing of the other two elements of our civilization, namely Judaism and science.  China is practically destitute of religion, not only in the upper classes, but throughout the population.  There is a very definite ethical code, but it is not fierce or persecuting, and does not contain the notion “sin.”  Except quite recently, through European influence, there has been no science and no industrialism.

What will be the outcome of the contact of this ancient civilization with the West?  I am not thinking of the political or economic outcome, but of the effect on the Chinese mental outlook.  It is difficult to dissociate the two questions altogether, because of course the cultural contact with the West must be affected by the nature of the political and economic contact.  Nevertheless, I wish to consider the cultural question as far as I can in isolation.

There is, in China, a great eagerness to acquire Western learning, not simply in order to acquire national strength and be able to resist Western aggression, but because a very large number of people consider learning a good thing in itself.  It is traditional in China to place a high value on knowledge, but in old days the knowledge sought was only of the classical literature.  Nowadays it is generally realized that Western knowledge is more useful.  Many students go every year to universities in Europe, and still more to America, to learn science or economics or law or political theory.  These men, when they return to China, mostly become teachers or civil servants or journalists or politicians.  They are rapidly modernizing the Chinese outlook, especially in the educated classes.