Vast populations, some of them with a civilization considerable but peculiar, detest that which in the language of the West would be called reform.  The entire Mohammedan world detests it.  The multitudes of colored men who swarm in the great continent of Africa detest it, and it is detested by that large part of mankind which we are accustomed to leave on one side as barbarous or savage.  The millions upon millions of men who fill the Chinese Empire loathe it and (what is more) despise it....  There are few things more remarkable, and in their way more instructive, than the stubborn incredulity and disdain which a man belonging to the cultivated part of Chinese society opposes to the vaunts of western civilization which he frequently hears....  There is in India a minority, educated at the feet of English politicians and in books saturated with English political ideas, which has learned to repeat their language; but it is doubtful whether even these, if they had a voice in the matter, would allow a finger to be laid on the very subjects with which European legislation is beginning to concern itself—­social and religious usage.  There is not, however, the shadow of a doubt that the enormous mass of the Indian population hates and dreads change.[265]

To the fact that the enthusiasm for change is comparatively rare must be added the fact that it is extremely modern.  It is known but to a small part of mankind, and to that part but for a short period during a history of incalculable length.[266]

The oriental attitude does not argue a lack of brain power, but a prepossession hostile to scientific inquiry.  The society represented does not interest its members in what, from the western standpoint, is knowledge.

The Chinese afford a fine example of a people of great natural ability letting their intelligence run to waste from lack of a scientific standpoint.  As indicated above, they are not defective in brain weight, and their application to study is long continued and very severe; but their attention is directed to matters which cannot possibly make them wise from the occidental standpoint.  They learn no mathematics and no science, but spend years in copying the poetry of the T’ang Dynasty, in order to learn the Chinese characters, and in the end cannot write the language correctly, because many modern characters are not represented in this ancient poetry.  Their attention to Chinese history is great, as befits their reverence for the past; but they do not organize their knowledge, they have no adequate textbooks or apparatus for study, and they make no clear distinction between fact and fiction.  In general, they learn only rules and no principles, and rely on memory without the aid of reason, with the result that the man who stops studying often forgets everything, and the professional student is amazingly ignorant in the line of his own work: