ce versa, it is only because I fear
we are unteachable.

I propose in this chapter to deal with the purely cultural aspects of
the questions raised by the contact of China with the West. In the three
following chapters, I shall deal with questions concerning the internal
condition of China, returning finally, in a concluding chapter, to the
hopes for the future which are permissible in the present difficult
situation.

With the exception of Spain and America in the sixteenth century, I
cannot think of any instance of two civilizations coming into contact
after such a long period of separate development as has marked those of
China and Europe. Considering this extraordinary separateness, it is
surprising that mutual understanding between Europeans and Chinese is
not more difficult. In order to make this point clear, it will be worth
while to dwell for a moment on the historical origins of the two
civilizations.

Western Europe and America have a practically homogeneous mental life,
which I should trace to three sources: (1) Greek culture; (2) Jewish
religion and ethics; (3) modern industrialism, which itself is an
outcome of modern science. We may take Plato, the Old Testament, and
Galileo as representing these three elements, which have remained
singularly separable down to the present day. From the Greeks we derive
literature and the arts, philosophy and pure mathematics; also the more
urbane portions of our social outlook. From the Jews we derive fanatical
belief, which its friends call "faith"; moral fervour, with the
conception of sin; religious intolerance, and some part of our
nationalism. From science, as applied in industrialism, we derive power
and the sense of power, the belief that we are as gods, and may justly
be, the arbiters of life and death for unscientific races. We derive
also the empirical method, by which almost all real knowledge has been
acquired. These three elements, I think, account for most of our
mentality.

No one of these three elements has had any appreciable part in the
development of China, except that Greece indirectly influenced Chinese
painting, sculpture, and music.[93] China belongs, in the dawn of its
history, to the great river empires, of which Egypt and Babylonia
contributed to our origins, by the influence which they had upon the
Greeks and Jews. Just as these civilizations were rendered possible by
the rich alluvial soil of the Nile, the Euphrates, and the Tigris, so
the