t their language; but it is doubtful whether even these,
if they had a voice in the matter, would allow a finger to be
laid on the very subjects with which European legislation is
beginning to concern itself--social and religious usage. There
is not, however, the shadow of a doubt that the enormous mass
of the Indian population hates and dreads change.[265]

To the fact that the enthusiasm for change is comparatively
rare must be added the fact that it is extremely modern. It is
known but to a small part of mankind, and to that part but for
a short period during a history of incalculable length.[266]

The oriental attitude does not argue a lack of brain power, but a
prepossession hostile to scientific inquiry. The society represented
does not interest its members in what, from the western standpoint, is
knowledge.

The Chinese afford a fine example of a people of great natural ability
letting their intelligence run to waste from lack of a scientific
standpoint. As indicated above, they are not defective in brain
weight, and their application to study is long continued and very
severe; but their attention is directed to matters which cannot
possibly make them wise from the occidental standpoint. They learn
no mathematics and no science, but spend years in copying the poetry
of the T'ang Dynasty, in order to learn the Chinese characters, and
in the end cannot write the language correctly, because many modern
characters are not represented in this ancient poetry. Their attention
to Chinese history is great, as befits their reverence for the past;
but they do not organize their knowledge, they have no adequate
textbooks or apparatus for study, and they make no clear distinction
between fact and fiction. In general, they learn only rules and no
principles, and rely on memory without the aid of reason, with the
result that the man who stops studying often forgets everything, and
the professional student is amazingly ignorant in the line of his own
work:

Multitudes of Chinese scholars know next to nothing about
matters directly in the line of their studies, and in regard
to which we should consider ignorance positively disgraceful.
A venerable teacher remarked to the writer with a charming
naivete that he had never understood the allusions in the
Trimetrical Classic (which stands at the very threshold of
Chinese study) until at the age of sixty he had an opp