s and the
Finns, they are descended, is so different from other races in many
respects that some anthropologists suppose it to have a separate
origin. Phlegmatic and matter-of-fact by nature, exact and careful in
practical matters, and to a high degree imitative and industrious,
the Chinese are singularly devoid of imagination and indisposed to
philosophy. Their monosyllabic and uninflected language, belonging to
one of the earliest strata of human speech, and ill fitted to express
abstract or poetical ideas, is an index to their whole nature. If an
awakening, as various signs appear to indicate, is now at hand for
them, no one can tell how fast it will proceed, or what the final
issue of it may be.

China has at present three religions, all recognised by the state and
represented in every part of the country--viz. Confucianism, Taoism,
and Buddhism. For our purpose the first of these is very much the
most important, as Taoism, originally a philosophy, quickly
degenerated into a system of magic, and Buddhism is imported into
China, and has to be spoken of elsewhere. Confucianism, being the
direct descendant of the old state religion of China, is the native
growth of the mind of the nation. Like the Chinese language, the
state religion belongs to a very early formation, and presents the
symptoms of a development which was rapid at first but was early
arrested.

History of China.--Legend goes back to very remote antiquity and
tells in a shadowy way of the arrival of the Chinese from the West
(which scholars are agreed in regarding as a fact), and of early
potentates, patterns to all their successors, who treated the people
as their children, and invented for them the arts on which life in
China most depends. History proper begins about 2000 B.C., though the
Chinese had the art of writing a thousand years before that.
Researches, however, which are now being made by several scholars,
seem likely to lead to the conclusion that China received at least
the seeds of civilisation and some religious ideas from Mesopotamia.
That Chinese religion resembles in some respects that of Babylonia
was mentioned in the last chapter. In a work like this and in the
present state of knowledge it is necessary to deal with the religion
of China as an isolated one. When the history of the country opens,
the character, manners, and institutions of the people are already
fixed. They are already civilised and have an organised religion,
though