auspicious site and the appeals issued for the repair of sacred buildings often point out the danger impending if edifices essential to the good Feng Shui of a district are allowed to decay.  The scepticism and laughter of the educated does not clear the air, for superstition can flourish when neither respected nor believed.  The worst feature of religion in China is that the decently educated public ridicules its external observances, but continues to practise them, because they are connected with occasions of good fellowship or because their omission might be a sign of disrespect to departed relatives or simply because in dealing with uncanny things it is better to be on the safe side.  This is the sum of China’s composite religion as visible in public and private rites.  Its ethical value is far higher than might be supposed, for its most absurd superstitions also recommend love and respect in family life and a high standard of civic duty.  But China has never admitted that public or private morality requires the support of a religious creed.

As might be expected, life and animation are more apparent in sects than in conventional religion.  Since the recent revolution it is no longer necessary to confute the idea that the Chinese are a stationary and unemotional race, but its inaccuracy was demonstrated by many previous movements especially the T’ai-p’ing rebellion, which had at first a religious tinge.  Yet in China such movements, though they may kindle enthusiasm and provoke persecution, rarely have the religious value attaching to a sect in Christian, Hindu and Mohammedan countries.  Viewed as an ecclesiastical or spiritual movement, the T’ai-p’ing is insignificant:  it was a secret society permitted by circumstances to become a formidable rising and in its important phases the political element was paramount.  The same is true of many sects which have not achieved such notoriety.  They are secret societies which adopt a creed, but it is not in the creed that their real vitality lies.

If it is difficult to say how far the Buddhism of China is a religion, it is equally difficult to define its relation to the State.  Students well acquainted with the literature as well as with the actual condition of China have expressed diametrically opposite views as to the religious attitude of the Imperial Government,[571] one stating roundly that it was “the most intolerant, the most persecuting of all earthly Governments,” and another that it “at no period refused hospitality and consideration to any religion recommended as such."[572]

In considering such questions I would again emphasize the fact that Chinese terms have often not the same extension as their apparent synonyms in European languages, which, of course, means that the provinces of human life and thought have also different boundaries.  For most countries the word clergy has a definite meaning and, in spite of great diversities, may be applied to Christian clerics, Mollahs and Brahmans without