the earth, and even in this respect may well challenge the attention of
the historical enquirer. This empire is not absolutely the greatest in
territorial extent, though even in this respect it is scarcely inferior
to the greatest; but in point of population it is in all probability the
first. Spain, if we could now include in the number of her possessions
her American colonies, would exceed all empires in extent. The same may
be said of Russia, with her annexed colonies, and boundless provinces in
the north of Asia. But, great as the population of this Empire may be,
when considered in itself and relatively to the other European states,
it can sustain no comparison with that of China. England with the East
Indies and her colonial possessions in the three divisions of the globe,
Polynesia, Africa, and America, has indeed a very wide extent, and,
perhaps, when we include the hundred and ten millions that own her sway
in India, comes the nearest in point of population to China. Of the
amount of the Chinese population, which is not with certainty known,
that of India may furnish a criterion for a conjectural and probable
estimate. The British ambassador, Lord Macartney received an official
document, in which the whole population of China was computed at the
monstrous amount of 330 millions. Even if the Chinese possessed those
exact statistical estimates we have in Europe, it would still be a
matter of doubt how far in such cases we could confide in their
veracity, especially in their relations with foreigners and Europeans.
In another and somewhat earlier statistical work, composed towards the
close of the 18th century, the population of this empire is estimated at
147 millions; and the very incredible statement is added, that a hundred
and fifty years before, or about the middle of the 17th century, the
Chinese population amounted only to 27 millions and a half. This rapid
rise, or rather this prodigious stride in the numbers of a people, would
be in utter opposition to all principles and observations on the growth
and progressive increase of population, even in the most civilized
countries. Thus even the statistical estimates of the Chinese furnish us
with no certain information on this subject. However as this vast region
is every where intersected by navigable rivers and canals, every where
studded with large and highly populous cities, and enjoys a climate as
genial, or even still more genial, and certainly far more salubrious
than that of India; as, like the latter country, it every where presents
to the eye the richest culture, and is in all appearance as much
peopled, or over-peopled, we may take India, whose total population is
not near included in the 110 millions under British rule, as furnishing
a pretty accurate standard for the computation of the Chinese
population. Now, when we reflect that even the proper China is larger
than the whole western peninsula of India, and that the vast countries
dependent on China, such as Thibet and southern Tartary are very
populous, the conjectural calculation of the English writer, from whom I
have taken these critical remarks on the early estimates of Chinese
population, and who reckons it at 150 millions, may be regarded as a
very moderate computation, and may with perfect safety, be considerably
raised. Thus then the Chinese population is nearly as large as the whole
population of Europe, and constitutes, if not a fourth, at least a
fifth, of the total population of the globe.
I permit myself to indulge in cursory comparisons of this kind, and for
the reason that the history of civilization, which forms the basis, and
as it were the outward body, of the philosophy of history, which should
be the inner and higher sense of the whole, is deeply interested in all
that refers to the general condition of humanity. And such an interest,
which does not of itself lie in mere statistical calculations, but in
the outward condition of mankind, as the symbol of its inward state, may
very well attach to comparisons of this nature.
The interest, however, which the philosophic historian should take in
all that relates to humanity in general, and to the various nations of
the earth, ought not to be regulated by the false standard of an
indiscriminate equality, that would consider all nations of equal
importance, and pay equal attention to all without distinction. This
would indeed betray an indifference to, or at least ignorance of, the
higher principle implanted in the human breast. But this interest should
be measured not merely by the degree of population in a state, or by
geographical extent of territory, or by external power, but by
population, territory and power combined--by moral worth and
intellectual pre-eminence, by the scale of civilization to which the
nation has attained. The Tongoosses, though a very widely diffused race,
the Calmucks, though, compared with the other nations of central Asia,
they have much to claim our attention, cannot certainly excite equal
interest, or hold as high a place in the history of human civilization,
as the Greeks or the Egyptians; though the territory of Egypt itself is
certainly not particularly large, nor according to our customary
standard of population, were its inhabitants in all probability ever
very numerous. In the same way, the Empire of the Moguls, which embraced
China itself, has not the same high interest and importance in our eyes
as the Roman Empire either in its rise or in its fall. Writers on
universal history have not however always avoided this fault, and have
been too much disposed to place all nations on the same historical
footing,--on the false level of an indiscriminate equality; and to
regard humanity in a mere physical point of view, and according to the
natural classification of tribes and races. In these sketches of
history, the high and the noble is often ranked with the low and the
vulgar, and neither what is truly great, nor what is of lesser
importance, (for this, too, should not be overlooked) has its due place
in these portraits of mankind.
A numerous, or even excessive population is undoubtedly an essential
element of political power in a state; but it is not the only, nor in
any respect, the principal symptom or indication of the civilization of
a country. It is only in regard to civilization that the population of
China deserves our consideration. Although in these latter times, when
Europe by her political ascendency over the other parts of the world has
proved the high pre-eminence of her arts and civilization; England and
Russia have become the immediate neighbours of China towards the north
and west; still these territorial relations affect not the rest of
Europe; and China, when we leave out of consideration its very important
commerce, cannot certainly be accounted a political power in the general
system. Even in ancient, as well as in modern times, China never figured
in the history of Western Asia or Europe, and had no connection whatever
with their inhabitants; but this great country has ever stood apart,
like a world within itself, in the remote, unknown Eastern Asia. Hence
the earlier writers on universal history have taken little or no notice
of this great Empire, shut out as it was from the confined horizon of
their views. And this was natural, when we consider that the conquests
and expeditions of the Asiatic nations were considered by these writers
as subjects of the greatest weight and importance. No conquerors have
ever marched from China into Western Asia, like Xerxes, for instance,
who passed from the interior of Persia to Athens; or Alexander the
Great, who extended his victorious march from his small paternal
province of Macedon, to beyond the Indus, and almost to the borders of
the Ganges, though the latter river, he was in despite of all his
efforts, unable to reach. But the great victorious expeditions have
proceeded not from China, but from central Asia, and the nations of
Tartary, who have invaded China itself; though in these invasions the
manners, mind, and civilization of the Chinese have evinced their power,
as their Tartar conquerors, in the earliest as in the latest times, have
after a few generations, invariably conformed to the manners and
civilization of the conquered nation, and become more or less Chinese.
Not only the great population and flourishing agriculture of this
fruitful country, but the cultivation of silk, for which it has been
celebrated from all antiquity; the culture of the tea-plant, which forms
such an important article of European trade; as well as the knowledge of
several most useful medicinal productions of nature; and unique and, in
their way, excellent products of industry and manufacture; prove the
very high degree of civilization which this people has attained to. And
how should not that people be entitled to a high or one of the highest
places among civilized nations, which had known, many centuries before
Europe, the art of printing, gun-powder, and the magnet--those three so
highly celebrated and valuable discoveries of European skill? Instead of
the regular art of printing with transposeable letters, which would not
suit the Chinese system of writing, this people make use of a species of
lithography, which, to all essential purposes is the same, and attended
with the same effects. Gunpowder serves in China, as it did in Europe in
the infancy of the discovery, rather for amusement and for fire-works,
than for the more serious purpose of warlike fortification and conquest:
and though this people are acquainted with the magnetic needle, they
have never made a like extended application of its powers, and never
employ it either in a confined river and coasting navigation, or on the
wide ocean, on which they never venture.
The Chinese are remarkable too for the utmost polish and refinement of
manners, and even for a fastidious urbanity and a love of stately
ceremonial. In many respects indeed their politeness and refinement
almost equal those of European nations, or at least are very superior to
what we usually designate by the term of oriental manners--a term which
in our sense can apply only to the more contiguous Mahometan countries
of the Levant. Of this assertion we may find a sufficient proof in any
single tale that pourtrays the present Chinese life and manners, in the
novel, for instance, translated by M. Remusat.[43] In their present
manners and fashions, however, there are many things utterly at variance
with European taste and feelings; I need only mention the custom of the
dignitaries, functionaries, and men of letters, letting their nails grow
to the length of birds' claws, and that other custom in women of rank,
of compressing their feet to a most artificial diminutiveness. Both
customs, according to the recent account of a very intelligent
Englishman, serve to mark and distinguish the upper class; for the
former renders the men totally incapable of hard or manual labour, and
the latter impedes the women of rank in walking, or at least gives them
a mincing gait, and a languid, delicate and interesting air. These
minute traits of manners should not be overlooked in the general sketch
of this nation, for they perfectly correspond to many other
characteristic marks and indications of unnatural stiffness, childish
vanity, and exaggerated refinement, which we meet with in the more
important province of its intellectual exertions. Even in the basis of
all intellectual culture, the language, or rather the writing of the
Chinese, this character of refinement pushed beyond all bounds and all
conception is visible, while on the other hand it is coupled with great
intellectual poverty and jejuneness. In a language where there are not
much more than three hundred, not near four hundred, and (according to
the most recent critical investigation,) only 272 monosyllabic primitive
roots without any kind of grammar; where the not merely various but
utterly unconnected significations of one and the same word are marked
in the first place by a varying modulation of the voice, according to a
fourfold method of accentuation; in the next place, and chiefly by the
written characters, which amount to the prodigious number of eighty
thousand; while the Egyptian hieroglyphs do not exceed the number, of
eight hundred; and this Chinese system of writing is the most artificial
in the whole world. An inference which is not invalidated by the fact
that, out of that great number of all actual or possible written
characters, but a fourth part perhaps is really in use, and a still less
portion is necessary to be learned. As the meaning, especially of more
complex notions and abstract ideas can be fully fixed and accurately
determined only by such artificial ciphers; the language is far more
dependent on these written characters than on living sound; for one and
the same sound may often be designated by 160 different characters, and
have as many significations. It not rarely occurs that Chinese, when
they do not very well understand each other in conversation, have
recourse to writing, and by copying down these ciphers are enabled to
divine each other's meaning, and become mutually intelligible. To
comprehend rightly this immeasurable chaos of originally symbolic, but
now merely conventional signs--in other words, to be able to read and
write, though this science involves great and difficult problems even
for the most practised, constitutes the real subject and purport of the
scientific education of a Chinese. Indeed it furnishes labour sufficient
to fill up the life of man, for even the European scholars, who have
engaged in this study, find it a matter of no small difficulty to devise
a system whereby a dictionary, or rather a systematic catalogue of all
these written characters may be composed, to serve as a fit guide on
this ocean of Chinese signs.--But we shall have again occasion to recur
to this subject; and indeed it is only in connexion with the peculiar
bearings of the Chinese mind this writing system can be properly
explained and understood in its true meaning, or rather its meaningless
construction and elaborateness.
Of the external civilization of China, we have a striking proof and a
standing monument in the construction of so many canals that intersect
the whole country, and in every thing connected therewith. As the
extraordinary fertility of the soil is produced by the many rivers of
greater or less magnitude that intersect the country, but which at the
same time threaten the flat plains with inundation, it is the first
object and most important care of government, to avert the danger of
such inundations, to distribute the fertilizing waters in equal
abundance over the whole country, and thus by means of canals, to
maintain in all parts the communication by water which is at the same
time of equal benefit and importance to industry and internal commerce.
In no civilized state are establishments of this kind so extensively
diffused and brought to so high a state of perfection as in China. The
great imperial canal which extends to the length of 120 geographical
leagues, has, it is said, no parallel on the earth. Although the
construction of canals, and all the regulations on water-carriage could
have attained by degrees only to their present state of perfection,
still this alone would prove the very early attention which this people
had bestowed on the arts of civilized life. Mention is often made of
them in the old Chinese histories and imperial annals; and the canals of
China, like the Nile in Egypt, were ever the objects of most anxious
solicitude to the government. These annals, whenever they have occasion
to speak of those great inundations and destructive floods, which are of
such frequent occurrence in Chinese history, invariably represent the
attention bestowed on water-courses and water-regulations, as the most
certain mark of a wise, benevolent, and provident administration. On the
other hand the neglect of this most important of administrative concerns
is ever regarded as the proof of a wicked, reckless and unfortunate
reign; and in these histories some great calamity, or even violent
catastrophe, is sure to follow, like a stroke of divine vengeance, on
this unpardonable neglect of duty. Together with the imperial canal, the
great Chinese wall, which extends on the Northern frontier of China
proper, to the length of 150 geographical leagues, is another no less
important, and still standing monument of the comparatively high
civilization which this country had very early attained. Such is the
height and thickness of this wall, that it has been calculated that its
cubic contents exceed all the mass of stone employed in all the
buildings in England and Scotland; or again that the same materials
would serve to construct a wall of ordinary height and moderate
thickness round the whole earth. This great wall of China may be
considered as a characteristic, and as it were a symbol of the seclusive
spirit and aversion to every thing foreign in person, manners and modes
of thinking which distinguish the Chinese state. This spirit, however
has been as little able as the great wall itself, to defend China
against foreign conquests, or even against the introduction of foreign
sects. This wall, which was built about two centuries before the
Christian era, is a historical monument, which furnishes far stronger
proof than all the dubious accounts of the old annals that even in
ancient times, and long before the conquest of the Monguls, and the
establishment of the present dynasty of Mantchou Tartars, the empire had
been often conquered, or at least was constantly exposed to the
invasions of the Tartar tribes of the North.
The long succession of the different native dynasties of China, Tchin,
Han, Tang, and Sung, down to the Monguls, which fills the diffuse annals
of the empire, furnishes few important data on the intellectual progress
of the Chinese; and every thing of importance to the object of our
present inquiries, that can be gathered out of the mass of political
history, may be reduced to a very few plain facts. The English writer,
whom we have already cited, though otherwise inclined to a certain
degree of scepticism in his views, fixes the commencement of the
historical ages of authentic history in the ancient dynasty of Chow,
eleven hundred years before the Christian era. The first fact of
importance, as regards the moral and intellectual civilization of China,
is that this country was originally divided into many small
principalities, and, under petty sovereigns, whose power was more
limited, enjoyed a greater share of liberty; and that it was formed into
a great and absolute monarchy only two hundred years before Christ. The
general burning of the books, of which more particular mention will be
presently made, as well as the erection of the great wall, are
attributed to the first general Emperor of all China, Chi-ho-angti; in
whose reign, too, Japan became a Chinese colony, or received from China
a political establishment. At a still later period, as in the fifth
century of our era, and again at the time of the Mogul conquest under
Zingis Khan, China was divided into two kingdoms, a northern and a
southern. But there is another fact already mentioned that throws still
stronger light on the high civilization of China--it is that at every
period, when this empire has been conquered by the Moguls and Tartars,
the conquerors, overcome in their turn by the ascendancy of Chinese
civilization, have, within a short time, invariably adopted the manners,
laws, and even language of China, and thus its institutions have
remained, on the whole, unaltered. But here is a circumstance in Chinese
history particularly worthy of our attention. In no state in the world
do we see such an entire, absolute, and rigid monarchical unity as in
that of China, especially under its ancient form; although this
government is more limited by laws and manners, and is by no means of
that arbitrary and despotic character which we are wont to attribute to
the more modern oriental states. In China, before the introduction of
the Indian religion of Buddha, there was not even a distinct sacerdotal
class--there is no nobility, no hereditary class with hereditary
rights--education, and employment in the service of the state, form the
only marks of distinction; and the men of letters and government
functionaries are blended together in the single class of Mandarins; but
the state is all in all. However, this absolute monarchical system has
not conduced to the peace, stability, and permanent prosperity of the
state, for the whole history of China, from beginning to end, displays
one continued series of seditions, usurpations, anarchy, changes of
dynasty, and other violent revolutions and catastrophes. This is proved
by the bare statement of facts, though the official language of the
Imperial annals ever concedes the final triumph to the monarchical
principle.
The same violent revolutions occurred in the department of science and
of public doctrines, as in the instance already cited of the general
burning of the books by order of the first general Emperor; when the men
of letters, or at least a party of them, were persecuted, and four
hundred and sixty followers of Confucius burnt. This act of tyranny
undoubtedly supposes a very violent contest between factions--an
important political struggle between hostile sects, and a mighty
revolution in the intellectual world. At the same time, too, a favourite
of this tyrannical prince introduced a new system of writing, which has
led to the greatest confusion, even in subsequent ages. Such an
intellectual revolution is doubtless evident on the introduction of the
Indian religion of Buddha, or Fo (according to the Chinese appellation),
which took place precisely three-and-thirty years after the foundation
of Christianity. The conquest of China by the Moguls, under Zingis Khan,
occurred at the same time that their expeditions towards the opposite
quarter of Europe spread terror and desolation over Russia and Poland,
as far as the confines of Silesia. This conquest produced a re-action,
and a popular revolution, conducted by a common citizen of China, by
name Chow, restored the Empire; this citizen afterwards ascended the
throne, and became the founder of a new Chinese dynasty. The Emperors of
the present dynasty of Mantchou Tartars, that has now governed China
since the middle of the 17th century, are distinguished for their
attachment to the old customs and institutions of China, and even to its
language and science; and their elevation to the throne has given rise
to many great scientific enterprises, and has been singularly favourable
to the investigations of those European scholars whose object it is to
make us better acquainted with China. But at the moment I am speaking, a
great rebellion has broken out in the northern part of the kingdom, and
in the opposite extremity the Christians are exposed to a more than
ordinary persecution.
These few leading incidents in Chinese history may suffice to make known
the principal epochs in the intellectual progress and civilization of
this people. As the constitution and development of the human mind are
in each of those ancient nations closely connected with the nature of
their language, and even sometimes (as in the case of the Chinese) with
their system of writing, the language of the latter people, being on
account of its amazing copiousness less fit for conversation than for
writing, I shall now make a few remarks on the very artificial mode of
Chinese writing, which is perfectly unique in its kind; but I shall
confine my observations to its general character, and shall forbear
entering into the vast labyrinth of the 80,000 cipher-signs of speech,
and all the problems and difficulties which they involve. The Chinese
writing was undoubtedly in its origin symbolical; though the rude marks
of those primitive symbols can now scarcely be discerned in the
enigmatical abbreviations, and in the complex combinations of the
characters at present in use. It is no slight problem even for the
learned of China to reduce with any degree of certainty the boundless
quantity of their written characters to their simple elements and
primitive roots; in this, however, they have succeeded, and have shown
that all these elements are to be found in the 214 symbols, or keys of
writing as they call them. The Chinese characters of the primitive ages
comprise only such representations indicated by a few rude strokes, of
those first simple objects which surround man while living in the most
simple state of society--such as the sun and moon, the most familiar
animals, the common plants, the instruments of human labour, weapons,
and the different parts of human dwellings. This is the same rude
symbolical writing which we find among other uncivilized nations, the
Americans for example, and among these, the Mexicans in particular.