As from the great central mass of mankind, the first accumulation of
life on our planet, there was parted off into Africa a fragment called
the Negro variety, so into eastern Asia there was detached, by those
causes which we seek in vain to discover, a second huge fragment, to
which has been given the name of the Mongolian variety. Overspreading
the great plains of Asia, from the Himalehs to the Sea of Okhotsk,
this detachment of the human species may be supposed to have crossed
into Japan; to have reached the other islands of the Pacific, and
either through these, or by the access at Behring’s Straits, to have
poured themselves through the great American continent; their
peculiarities shading off in their long journey, till the Mongolian
was converted into the American Indian. Blumenbach, however, erects
the American Indian into a type by himself.
Had historians been able to pursue the Negro race into their central
African jungles and deserts, they would no doubt have found the
general Ethiopic mass breaking up there under the operation of causes
connected with climate, soil, food, etc., into vast sections or
subdivisions, presenting marked differences from each other; and
precisely so was it with the Mongolians. In Central Asia, we find them
as Thibetians, Tungusians, Mongols proper; on the eastern coasts, as
Mantchous and Chinese; in the adjacent islands, as Japanese, etc.; and
nearer the North Pole, as Laplanders, Esquimaux, etc.; all presenting
peculiarities of their own. Of these great Mongolian branches
circumstances have given a higher degree of development to the Chinese
and the Japanese than to the others, which are chiefly nomadic hordes,
some under Chinese rule, others independent, roaming over the great
pasture lands of Asia, and employed in rearing cattle.
There is every reason to believe that the vast population inhabiting
that portion of eastern Asia called China, can boast of a longer
antiquity of civilization than almost any other nation of the world, a
civilization, however, differing essentially in its character from
those which have appeared and disappeared among the Caucasians. This,
in fact, is to be observed as the grand difference between the history
of the Mongolian and that of the Caucasian variety of the human
species, that whereas the former presents us with the best product
of Mongolian humanity, in the form of one great permanent
civilization――the Chinese――extending from century to century, one, the
same, and solitary, through a period of 3000 or 4000 years; the latter
exhibits a succession of civilization――the Chaldean, the Persian, the
Grecian, the Roman, the modern European (subdivided into French,
English, German, Italian, etc.,) and the Anglo-American; these
civilizations, from the remotest Oriental――that is, Chaldean――to the
most recent Occidental――that is, the Anglo-American――being a series of
waves falling into each other, and driven onward by the same general
force. A brief sketch of Chinese history, with a glance at Japan, will
therefore discharge all that we owe to the Mongolian race.
Authentic Chinese history does not extend father back than about 800
or 1000 years B. C.; but, as has been the case more or less with all
nations, the Chinese imagination has provided itself with a
mythological history extending many ages back into the unknown past.
Unlike the mythology of the Greeks, but like that of the Indians, the
Chinese legends deal in large chronological intervals. First of all,
in the beginning of time, was the great Puan-Koo, founder of the
Chinese nation, and whose dress was green leaves. After him came
Ty-en-Hoang, Ti-Hoang, Gin-Hoang and several other euphonious
potentates, each of whom did something towards the building up of the
Chinese nation, and each of whom reigned, as was the custom in those
grand old times, thousands of years. At length, at a time
corresponding to that assigned in Scripture to the life of Noah, came
the divine-born Fohi, a man of transcendent faculties, who reigned 115
years, teaching music and the system of symbols, instituting marriage,
building walls round cities, creating mandarins, and, in short,
establishing the Chinese nation on a basis that could never be shaken.
After him came Shin-ning, Whang-ti, etc., until in due time came the
good emperors Yao and Shun, in the reign of the latter of whom
happened a great flood. By means of canals and drains the assiduous Yu
saved the country, and became the successor of Shun. Yu was the first
emperor of the Hia dynasty, which began about 2100 B. C. After this
dynasty came that of _Shang_, the last of whose emperors, a great
tyrant, was deposed (B. C. 1122) by Woo-wong, the founder of the Tchow
dynasty.
[Illustration: OPIUM SMUGGLING, CHINA.]
[Illustration: JAPANESE FUNERAL PROCESSION.]
In this Tchow dynasty, which lasted upwards of 800 years, authentic
Chinese history commences. It was during it, and most probably about
the year B. C. 484, that the great Con-fu-tse, or Confucius, the
founder of the Chinese religion, philosophy, and literature,
flourished. In the year B. C. 248, the Tchow dynasty was superseded by
that of Tsin, the first of whose kings built the Great Wall of China,
to defend the country against the Tartar Nomads. The Tsin dynasty was
a short one: it was succeeded in B. C. 206 by the Han dynasty, which
lasted till A. D. 238. Then followed a rapid series of dynastic
revolutions, by which the nation was frequently broken into parts; and
during which the population was considerably changed in character by
the irruptions of the nomad hoards of Asia who intermingled with it.
Early in the seventh century, a dynasty called that of Tang acceded to
power, which ended in 897. After half a century of anarchy, order was
restored under the Song dynasty, at the commencement of which, or
about the year 950, the art of printing was discovered, five centuries
before it was known in Europe. ‘The Song dynasty,’ says Schlosser,
‘maintained an intimate connection with Japan, as contrary to all
Chinese maxims; the emperors of this dynasty imposed no limits to
knowledge, the arts, life, luxury, and commerce with other nations.
Their unhappy fate, therefore (on being extinguished with
circumstances of special horror by the Mongol conqueror Kublai Khan,
A. D. 1281), is held forth as a warning against departing a
hairsbreadth from the old customs of the empire. From the time of the
destruction of the Song dynasty by the Mongol monarchy, the
intercourse between China and Japan was broken, until again the Ming,
a native Chinese dynasty (A. D. 1366) restored it. The Mongol rulers
made an expedition against Japan, but were unsuccessful. The
unfortunate gift which the Japanese received from China was the
doctrine of Foë. This doctrine, however, was not the first foreign
doctrine or foreign worship that came into China. A religion, whose
nature we cannot fix――probably Buddhism, ere it had assumed the form
of Lamaism――was preached in it at an earlier date. About the time of
the Tsin dynasty (B. C. 248-206), a warlike king had incorporated all
China into one and subdued the princes of the various provinces. While
he was at war with his subjects, many of the roving hordes to the
north of China pressed into the land, and with them appeared
missionaries of the religion above mentioned. When peace was restored,
the kings of the fore-named dynasty, as also later those of Han and
the two following dynasties, extended the kingdom prodigiously, and
the western provinces became known to the Greeks and Romans as the
land of the _Seres_. As on the one side Tartary was at that time
Chinese, so on the other side the Chinese were connected with India;
whence came the Indian religion. It procured many adherents, but
yielded at length to the primitive habits of the nations. In
consequence of the introduction of the religion of Foë, the immense
country fell asunder into two kingdoms. The south and the north had
each its sovereign; and the wars of the northern kingdom occasioned
the wanderings of the Huns, by whose agency the Roman Empire was
destroyed. These kingdoms of the north and south were often afterwards
united and again dissevered; great savage hordes roamed around them as
at present; but all that had settled, and that dwelt within the Great
Wall, submitted to the ancient Chinese civilization. Ghenghis Khan,
indeed, whose power was founded on the Turkish and Mongol races,
annihilated both kingdoms, and the barbaric element seemed to triumph;
but this was changed as soon as his kingdom was divided. Even Kublai,
and yet more his immediate followers, much as the Chinese calumniate
the Mongol dynasty of Yeven, maintained everything in its ancient
condition, with the single exception that they did homage to Lamaism,
the altered form of Buddhism. This religion yet prevails, accommodated
skillfully, however, to the Chinese mode of existence――a mode which
all subsequent conquerors have respected, as the example of the
present dynasty proves.’ The dynasty alluded to is that of _Tatsin_
Mantchou, a mixed Mongol and Tartar stock, which superseded the native
Chinese dynasty of Ming in the year 1644. The present emperor of China
is the sixth of the Tatsin dynasty.
From the series of dry facts just given, we arrive at the following
definition of China and its civilization: As the Roman Empire was a
great temporary aggregation of matured Caucasian humanity, surrounded
by and shading off into Caucasian barbarism, so China, a country more
extensive than all Europe, and inhabited by a population of more than
300,000,000, is an aggregation of matured Mongolian humanity
surrounded by Mongolian barbarism. The difference is this, that while
the Roman Empire was only one of several successive aggregations of
the Caucasian race, each on an entirely different basis, the Chinese
empire has been one permanent exhibition of the only form of
civilization possible among the Mongolians. The Jew, the Greek, the
Roman, the Frenchman, the German, the Englishman――these are all types
of the matured Caucasian character; but a fully-developed Mongolian
has but one type――the Chinese. Chinese history does not exhibit a
progress of the Mongolian man through a series of stages; it exhibits
only a uniform duration of one great civilized Mongolian empire,
sometimes expanding so as to extend itself into the surrounding
Mongolian barbarism, sometimes contracted by the pressure of that
barbarism, sometimes disturbed by infusions of the barbaric element,
sometimes shattered within itself by the operation of individual
Chinese ambition, but always retaining its essential character. True,
in such a vast empire, difference of climate, etc., must give rise to
specific differences, so that a Chinese of the north-east is not the
same as a Chinese of the south-west; true, also, the Japanese
civilization seems to exist as an alternative between which and the
Chinese, Providence might share the Mongolian part of our species,
were it to remain unmixed; still the general remark remains
undeniable, that from the extremest antiquity to the present day,
Mongolian humanity has been able to cast itself but into one essential
civilized type. It is an object of peculiar interest, therefore, to us
who belong to the multiform and progressive Caucasian race, to obtain
a distinct idea of the nature of that permanent form of civilization
out of which our Mongolian brothers have never issued, and apparently
never wish to issue. Each of our readers being a civilized Caucasian,
may be supposed to ask, ‘What sort of a human being is a civilized
Mongolian?’ A study of the Chinese civilization would answer this
question. Not so easy would it be for a Chinese to return the
compliment, confused as he would be by the multiplicity of the types
which the Caucasian man has assumed――from the ancient Arab to the
modern Anglo-American.
Hitherto little progress has been made in the investigation of the
Chinese civilization. Several conclusions of a general character have,
however, been established. ‘We recognise,’ says Schlosser, ‘in the
institutions of the Chinese, so much praised by the Jesuits, the
character of the institutions of all early states; with this
difference, that the Chinese mode of life is not a product of
hierarchical or theocratic maxims, but a work of the cold
understanding. In China, all that subserves the wants of the senses
was arranged and developed in the earliest ages; all that concerns the
soul or the imagination is yet raw and ill-adjusted; and we behold in
the high opinion which the Chinese entertain of themselves and their
affairs, a terrible example of what must be the consequence when all
behavior proceeds according to prescribed etiquette, when all
knowledge and learning is a matter of rote directed to external
applications, and the men of learning are so intimately connected with
the government, and have their interest so much _one_ with it, that a
number of privileged doctors can regulate literature as a state
magistrate does weights and measures.’ Of the Chinese government the
same authority remarks――‘the patriarchal system still lies at the
foundation of it. Round the “Son of Heaven,” as they name the highest
ruler, the wise of the land assemble as round their counselor and
organ. So in the provinces (of which there are eighteen or nineteen,
each as large as a considerable kingdom), the men of greatest sagacity
gather round the presidents; each takes the fashion from his superior,
and the lowest give it to the people. Thus one man exercises the
sovereignty; a number of learned men gave the law, and invented in
very early times a symbolical system of syllabic writing, suitable for
their mono syllabic speech, in lieu of their primitive system of
hieroglyphics. All business is transacted in writing, with minuteness
and pedantry. Their written language is very difficult; and as it is
possible in Chinese writing for one to know all the characters of a
certain period of time, or of a certain department, and yet be totally
unacquainted with those of another department, there is no end to
their mechanical acquisition.’ It has already been mentioned that
Chinese thought has at various times received certain foreign
tinctures, chiefly from India; essentially, however, the Chinese mind
has remained as it was fixed by Confucius. ‘In China,’ says Schlosser,
‘a so-named philosophy has accomplished that which in other countries
has been accomplished by priests and religions. In the genuine Chinese
books of religion, in all their learning and wisdom, God is not
thought of; religion, according to the Chinese and their oracle and
lawgiver Con-fu-tse has nothing to do with the imagination, but
consists alone in the performance of outward moral duties, and in zeal
to further the ends of state. Whatever lies beyond the plain rule of
life is either a sort of obscure natural philosophy, or a mere culture
for the people, and for any who may feel the want of such a culture.
The various forms of worship which have made their way into China are
obliged to restrict themselves, to bow to the law, and to make their
practices conform; they can arrogate no literature of their own; and,
good or bad, must learn to agree with the prevailing atheistic Chinese
manner of thought.’
Such are the Chinese, and such have they been for 2000 or 3000
years――a vast people undoubtedly civilized to the highest pitch of
which Mongolian humanity is susceptible; of mild disposition;
industrious to an extraordinary degree; well-skilled in all the
mechanical arts, and possessing a mechanical ingenuity peculiar to
themselves; boasting of a language quite singular in its character,
and of a vast literature; respectful of usage to such a degree as to
do everything by pattern; attentive to the duties and civilities of
life, but totally devoid of fervor, originality, or spirituality; and
living under a form of government which has been very happily
designated a pedantocracy――that is, a hierarchy of erudite persons
selected from the population, and appointed by the emperor, according
to the proof they give of their capacity, to the various places of
public trust. How far these characteristics, or any of them, are
_inseparable_ from a Mongolian civilization, would appear more clearly
if we knew more of the Japanese. At present, however, there seems
little prospect of any reörganization of the Chinese mind, except by
means of a Caucasian stimulus applied to it. And what Caucasian
stimulus will be sufficient to break up that vast Mongolian mass, and
lay it open to the general world-influences? Will the stimulus come
from Europe; or from America after its western shores are peopled, and
the Anglo-Americans begin to think of crossing the Pacific?