y, it is more like noise; and as for their singing, it is only
very loud talking. Then their women are so immodest; striding about in
ball-rooms with very little on, and embracing strange men in a whirligig
which they call dancing, but very unlike the dignified movements which
our male dancers exhibit in the Confucian temple. Their men and women
shake hands, though know from our sacred Book of Rites that men and
women should not even pass things from one to another, for fear their
hands should touch. Then, again, all foreigners, sometimes the women
also, carry sticks, which can only be for beating innocent people; and
their so-called mandarins and others ride races and row boats, instead
of having coolies to do these things for them. They are strange people
indeed; very clever at cunning, mechanical devices, such as fire-ships,
fire-carriages, and air-cars; but extremely ferocious and almost
entirely uncivilized."

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,