OvR recent review of the Arsenals in China would not be' complete without mention of that at Tientsin, commenced by Mr. Meadows, undertheauspicesof Chunghow, asupowder manufactory, Mr. Meadows has scarcely yet received the- amount of appreciation which he might have fairly looked forward to, for his share in founding thisestablishmeut, Thecombination ofthe two scarcely compatible objects, a Powder million the one hand and an Arsenal on the other, seems. mainly to be the cause why the Tientsin Arsenal has never proved itself able to afford an outturn in any respect commensurate with the large sums which have been expended on it. The Arsenal was commenced, it will be remembered, when Chunghow was in power; and when that official was sent away to endeavour, in France itself, to clear his conduct in connexion with the Tientsin massacre, the Arsenal works fell into other hands, The story of Mr. Meadows' treatment is akin to that of the other foreigners connected with the Chinese Arsenals. As soon as a certain proficiency was thought to be obtained, plots were started in all directions to get rid of the foreign Head, or, failing to oust him, to reduce his position to the lowest possible standard. It was too irksome to the pride of an uneducated. Chinese Mandarin, to find that a foreigner should have any control along with himself. He could not see, because he had not the necessary knowledge, that tle foreigner had something within him, in the naturally inductive turn of his mind, to which he himself, as.n member of a different race, was a stranger. To him, it seemed'only necessary to learn, superficially and by rote; the details of the various processes, in order that: they might be carried on successfully. The long train of induce tive agreement on which each detail, however apparently trivial, was founded, waste his mind an utter blank. So, from the moment in each case where the Euitopean was superseded, or reduced in nominal or actual power, the story has been the same, of rapid degeneration from day to day.
The history of Chinese literature and Chinese philosophy shows us that the Chinese mind has never risen above the subjective stage, When we consider that the Greeks themselves, with; all their strivings, never thoroughly emancipated themselves from the same blemish, we can form some conception of the difficulties which the Chinese mind has in grasping the practical details of problems so fur removed from its ordinary experience. European speculators on the advance of the Chinese, have omitted this most important element from their calculations. We doubt not that the Chinese have got some vague ideas of progress; they are willing to acknow-edge' that in many, or, if they speak as their mind honestly dictates, in most, things, they are behind the natives of Europe. But they havenet appreciated the true reason of their backwardness; which is, that they have never been able to grasp the inductive as distinguished from the subjective method, If we quote the remarks of G.-H. Lewis on the Philosophy of Plate, we shall have a fair idea of the highest range of the Chinese intellect. "The method employed by Plate," he tells. us, " was the subjective. The test he uniformly applied, was that submitting the external order to his conceptions of what was rational, without previously determining how he came by those conceptions of rationality, and what guarantee they offered of being themselves demonstrable," Such opinions would never have led to the revival of the world after the darkness of the Middle Ages. To Aristotle, the philosophic world-owes: the first promulgation of a truer principle; but to the rude and practical wit of the Teutonic race, which. after worrying itself over the childish sophisms of the schoolman, at last took a firmer hold of the doctrines promulgated by the great Greek philosopher, and finally culminated in the inductive minds of Bacon and Descartes, the world is itidebted for the steady but real progress of the last four centuries. This phase is so entirely wanting inthe Chinese character, that we may search the literature of the Empire from its earliest foundation to the present, without finding a trace of it. We wonder at Fengshui, but Fengshui is only the hard setting of primitive truths in' the subjective mind of the Chinese. The processes learnt today, would, were foreign influence withdrawn, become to-morrow the foundation of a similar system. The inductive learning which led up to their invention, would be forgotten in a maze of speculations as to their abstract relations. The processes themselves, in the state of degeneracy to which they would assuredly fall, might; under such a' system, be preserved, bit itis certain that in such a frame of mind no improvement would be possible, This is our experience of the Chinese. Wo'bave been acquainted with them for many years; tot hommes, tot sententie; we might naturally have imagined that many of our processes, when submitted to men accustomed to work in a different groove, would have received some slight modification, which, under the circumstances, we would have accepted as an improvement. Our experience, however, tells us that, amongst the thousands of artisans in China who have been brought in contact with foreign appliances, not one has ever attempted the slightest modification which could have Ween construed into an improvement. If he have made a change, it is invariably, as in the case of the amps and the Arsenals, a reversion to a former state of things, acknowledged to be inferior.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.