Such would be a not exaggerated picture of the mental attitude of the Chinaman towards his enigma, the foreigner.  From the Chinaman’s imperturbable countenance the foreigner seeks in vain for some indications of a common humanity within; and simply because he has not the wit to see it, argues that it is not there.  But there it is all the time.  The principles of general morality, and especially of duty towards one’s neighbour, the restrictions of law, and even the conventionalities of social life, upon all of which the Chinaman is more or less nourished from his youth upwards, remain, when accidental differences have been brushed away, upon a bed-rock of ground common to both East and West; and it is difficult to see how such teachings could possibly turn out a race of men so utterly in contrast with the foreigner as the Chinese are usually supposed to be.  It is certain that anything like a full and sincere observance of the Chinese rules of life would result in a community of human beings far ahead of the “pure men” dreamt of in the philosophy of the Taoists.

As has already been either stated or suggested, the Chinese seem to be actuated by precisely the same motives which actuate other peoples.  They delight in the possession of wealth and fame, while fully alive to the transitory nature of both.  They long even more for posterity, that the ancestral line may be carried on unbroken.  They find their chief pleasures in family life, and in the society of friends, of books, of mountains, of flowers, of pictures, and of objects dear to the collector and the connoisseur.  Though a nation of what the Scotch would call “sober eaters,” they love the banquet hour, and to a certain extent verify their own saying that “Man’s heart is next door to his stomach.”  In centuries past a drunken nation, some two to three hundred years ago they began to come under the influence of opium, and the abuse of alcohol dropped to a minimum.  Opium smoking, less harmful a great deal than opium eating, took the place of drink, and became the national vice; but the extent of its injury to the people has been much exaggerated, and is not to be compared with that of alcohol in the West.  It is now, in consequence of recent legislation, likely to disappear, on which result there could be nothing but the warmest congratulations to offer, but for the fact that something else, more insidious and deadly still, is rapidly taking its place.  For a time, it was thought that alcohol might recover its sway, and it is still quite probable that human cravings for stimulant of some kind will find a partial relief in that direction.  The present enemy, however, and one that demands serious and immediate attention, is morphia, which is being largely imported into China in the shape of a variety of preparations suitable to the public demand.  A passage from opium to morphia would be worse, if possible, than from the frying-pan into the fire.