phabetic 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
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