Ad Astra * Index: Letters from a Chinese Official, New York, 1903

V

When I was first brought into contact with the West what most immediately impressed me was the character and range of your intelligence. I found that you had brought your minds to bear, with singular success, upon problems which had not even occurred to us in the East; that by analysis and experiment you had found the clue to the operation of the forces of nature, and had turned them to account in ways which, to my un-traveled imagination, appeared to be little short of miraculous. Nor has familiarity diminished my admiration for your achievements in this field. I recognize in them your chief and most substantial claim to superiority, and I am not surprised that some of the more intelligent of my countrymen should be advocating with ardor their immediate introduction into China. I sympathize with the enthusiasm of these reformers, but I am unable, nevertheless, to endorse their policy; and it may be worth while to set down here the reasons which have led me to a conclusion which may appear at first sight to be paradoxical.

The truth is that a study of your history during the past century and a closer acquaintance with the structure of your society has considerably modified my original point of view. I have learnt that the most brilliant discoveries, the most fruitful applications of inventive genius, do not of themselves suffice for the well-being of society; and that an intelligence which is concentrated exclusively on the production of labor-saving machines may easily work more harm by the dislocation of industry than it can accomplish good by the increase of wealth. For the increase of wealth—that is, of the means to comfort—is not, to my mind, necessarily good in itself; everything depends on the way in which the wealth is distributed and on its effect on the moral character of the nation. And it is from that point of view that I look with some dismay upon the prospect of the introduction of Western methods into China. An example will best explain my point. When we began to construct our first railway, from Tientsin to Peking, the undertaking excited among the neighboring populace an opposition which quickly developed into open riot. The line was torn up, bridges were destroyed, and it was impossible to continue the work. We therefore, according to our custom in China, sent down to the scene of action, not a force of police, but an official to interview the rioters and ascertain their point of view. It was as usual a perfectly reasonable one. They were a boating population, subsisting by the traffic of the canal, and they feared that the railway would deprive them of their means of livelihood. The Government recognized the justice of their plea; they gave the required guarantee that the traffic by water should not seriously suffer, and there was no further trouble or disturbance. The episode is a good illustration of the way in which we regard these questions. Englishmen to whom I have spoken of the matter have invariably listened to my account with astonishment not unmingled with indignation. To them it seems a monstrous thing that Government should pay any regard whatever to such representations on the part of the people. They speak of the laws of supply and demand, of the ultimate absorption of labor, of competition, progress, mobility and the "long-run." To all this I listen with more or less comprehension and acquiescence; but it cannot conceal from me the fact that the introduction of new methods means, at any rate for the moment, so much dislocation of labor, so much poverty, suffering, and starvation. Of this your own industrial history gives abundant proof. And I cannot but note with regret and disappointment that in all these years during which you have been perfecting the mechanical arts you have not apparently even attempted, you certainly have not attempted with success, to devise any means to obviate the disturbance and distress to which you have subjected your laboring population. This, indeed, is not surprising, for it is your custom to subordinate life to wealth; but neither, to a Chinaman, is it encouraging; and I, at least, cannot contemplate without the gravest apprehension the disorders which must inevitably ensue among our population of four hundred millions upon the introduction, on a large scale, of Western methods of industry. You will say that the disorder is temporary; to me it appears, in the West, to be chronic. But putting that aside, what, I may ask, are we to gain? The gain to you is palpable; so, I think, is the loss to us. But where is our gain? The question, perhaps, may seem to you irrelevant; but a Chinaman may be forgiven for thinking it important. You will answer, no doubt, that we shall gain wealth. Perhaps we shall; but shall we not lose life? Shall we not become like you? And can you expect us to contemplate that with equanimity? What are your advantages? Your people, no doubt, are better equipped than ours with some of the less important goods of life; they eat more, drink more, sleep more; but there their superiority ends. They are less cheerful, less contented, less industrious, less law-abiding; their occupations are more unhealthy both for body and mind; they are crowded into cities and factories, divorced from Nature and the ownership of the soil. On all this I have already dwelt at length; I only recur to it here in explanation of a position which may appear to you to be perverse—the position of one who, while genuinely admiring the products of Western intelligence, yet doubts whether that intelligence has not been misapplied, or at least whether its direction has not been so one-sided that it is likely to have been productive of as much harm as good. You may, indeed—and I trust you will—rectify this error and show yourselves as ingenious in organizing men as you have been in dominating Nature. But meantime we may, perhaps, be pardoned if even when we most admire we yet hesitate to adopt your Western methods, and feel that the advantages which might possibly ensue will be dearly bought by the disorders that have everywhere accompanied their introduction. And there is another point which weighs with me, one less obvious, perhaps, but not less important. In any society it must always be the case that the mass of men are absorbed in mechanical labors. It is so in ours no less, though certainly no more, than in yours; and, so far, this condition does not appear to have been affected by the introduction of machinery. But, on the other hand, in every society there are, or should be, men who are relieved from this servitude to matter and free to devote themselves to higher ends. In China, for many centuries past, there has been a class of men set apart from the first to the pursuit of liberal arts, and destined to the functions of government. These men form no close hereditary caste; it is open to anyone to join them who possesses the requisite talent and inclination: and in this respect our society has long been the most democratic in the world. The education to which we subject this official class is a matter of frequent and adverse comment among you, and it is not my intention here to undertake its defence. What I wish to point out is the fact that, by virtue of this institution, we have inculcated and we maintain among our people of all classes a respect for the things of the mind and of the spirit, to which it would be hard to find a parallel in Europe, and of which, in particular, there is no trace in England. In China letters are respected not merely to a degree but in a sense which must seem, I think,, to you unintelligible and overstrained. But there is a reason for it. Our poets and literary men have taught their successors, for long generations, to look for good not in wealth, not in power, not in miscellaneous activity, but in a trained, a choice, an exquisite appreciation of the most simple and universal relations of life. To feel, and in order to feel to express, or at least to understand the expression of all that is lovely in Nature, of all that is poignant and sensitive in man, is to us in itself a sufficient end. A rose in a moonlit garden, the shadow of trees on the turf, almond bloom, scent of pine, the wine-cup and the guitar; these and the pathos of life and death, the long embrace, the hand stretched out in vain, the moment that glides for ever away, with its freight of music and light, into the shadow and hush of the haunted past, all that we have, all that eludes us, a bird on the wing, a perfume escaped on the gale—to all these things we are trained to respond, and the response is what we call literature. This we have; this you cannot give us; but this you may so easily take away. Amid the roar of looms it cannot be heard; it cannot be seen in the smoke of factories; it is killed by the wear and the whirl of Western life. And when I look at your business men, the men whom you most admire; when I see them hour after hour, day after day, year after year, toiling in the mill of their forced and undelighted labors; when I see them importing the anxieties of the day into their scant and grudging leisure, and wearing themselves out less by toil than by carking and illiberal cares, I reflect, I confess, with satisfaction on the simpler routine of our ancient industry, and prize, above all your new and dangerous routes, the beaten track so familiar to our accustomed feet that we have leisure, even while we pace it, to turn our gaze up to the eternal stars.