in its lack of solidity.  The most civilized portion under the alphabetical culture is also inhabited by the most fickled people.  The history of the Western land repeats the same story over and over again.  Thus up and down with the Greeks; up and down with Rome; up and down with the Arabs.  The ancient Semitic and Hametic peoples are essentially alphabetic users, and their civilizations show the same lack of solidity as the Greeks and the Romans.  Certainly this phenomenon can be partially explained by the extra-fluidity of the alphabetical language which cannot be depended upon as a suitable organ to conserve any solid idea.  Intellectual contents of these people may be likened to waterfalls and cataracts, rather than seas and oceans.  No other people is richer in ideas than they; but no people would give up their valuable ideas as quickly as they do....

The Chinese language is by all means the counterpart of the alphabetic stock.  It lacks most of the virtues that are found in the alphabetic language; but as an embodiment of simple and final truth, it is invulnerable to storm and stress.  It has already protected the Chinese civilization for more than forty centuries.  It is solid, square, and beautiful, exactly as the spirit of it represents.  Whether it is the spirit that has produced this language or whether this language has in turn accentuated the spirit remains to be determined.

Without committing ourselves wholly to the theory here set forth, which is impregnated with Chinese patriotism, we must nevertheless admit that the Westerner is unaccustomed to the idea of “alphabetical civilization” as merely one kind, to which he happens to belong.  I am not competent to judge as to the importance of the ideographic script in producing the distinctive characteristics of Chinese civilization, but I have no doubt that this importance is very great, and is more or less of the kind indicated in the above quotation.

2.  Confucius (B.C. 551-479) must be reckoned, as regards his social influence, with the founders of religions.  His effect on institutions and on men’s thoughts has been of the same kind of magnitude as that of Buddha, Christ, or Mahomet, but curiously different in its nature.  Unlike Buddha and Christ, he is a completely historical character, about whose life a great deal is known, and with whom legend and myth have been less busy than with most men of his kind.  What most distinguishes him from other founders is that he inculcated a strict code of ethics, which has been respected ever since, but associated it with very little religious dogma, which gave place to complete theological scepticism in the countless generations of Chinese literati who revered his memory and administered the Empire.