The Chinese, from the highest to the lowest, have an imperturbable quiet dignity, which is usually not destroyed even by a European education.  They are not self-assertive, either individually or nationally; their pride is too profound for self-assertion.  They admit China’s military weakness in comparison with foreign Powers, but they do not consider efficiency in homicide the most important quality in a man or a nation.  I think that, at bottom, they almost all believe that China is the greatest nation in the world, and has the finest civilization.  A Westerner cannot be expected to accept this view, because it is based on traditions utterly different from his own.  But gradually one comes to feel that it is, at any rate, not an absurd view; that it is, in fact, the logical outcome of a self-consistent standard of values.  The typical Westerner wishes to be the cause of as many changes as possible in his environment; the typical Chinaman wishes to enjoy as much and as delicately as possible.  This difference is at the bottom of most of the contrast between China and the English-speaking world.

We in the West make a fetish of “progress,” which is the ethical camouflage of the desire to be the cause of changes.  If we are asked, for instance, whether machinery has really improved the world, the question strikes us as foolish:  it has brought great changes and therefore great “progress.”  What we believe to be a love of progress is really, in nine cases out of ten, a love of power, an enjoyment of the feeling that by our fiat we can make things different.  For the sake of this pleasure, a young American will work so hard that, by the time he has acquired his millions, he has become a victim of dyspepsia, compelled to live on toast and water, and to be a mere spectator of the feasts that he offers to his guests.  But he consoles himself with the thought that he can control politics, and provoke or prevent wars as may suit his investments.  It is this temperament that makes Western nations “progressive.”

There are, of course, ambitious men in China, but they are less common than among ourselves.  And their ambition takes a different form—­not a better form, but one produced by the preference of enjoyment to power.  It is a natural result of this preference that avarice is a widespread failing of the Chinese.  Money brings the means of enjoyment, therefore money is passionately desired.  With us, money is desired chiefly as a means to power; politicians, who can acquire power without much money, are often content to remain poor.  In China, the tuchuns (military governors), who have the real power, almost always use it for the sole purpose of amassing a fortune.  Their object is to escape to Japan at a suitable moment; with sufficient plunder to enable them to enjoy life quietly for the rest of their days.  The fact that in escaping they lose power does not trouble them in the least.  It is, of course, obvious that such politicians, who spread devastation only in the provinces committed to their care, are far less harmful to the world than our own, who ruin whole continents in order to win an election campaign.