Altruism, which has of late become a very popular term in Western lands, is defined as regard for others, both natural and moral; devotion to the interests of others; unselfishness; opposed to egoism.' plicit nations of the principle, that The Confucian classics contain several ex.
what one does not wish done to himself, he should not to do others. This is the golden tule in its negative form, and is one of the high-water marks of Chinese morality. The practice of the Chinese, like that of other people, does not come up to their theoretical standard. What that practice is, and how far it fails to conform to those standards, can only be ascertained by a wide survey of their social life. However wide such a survey may be, it is always open to the objection that it is not wide enough, for there can-be no generalization ghat takes account of more than an infinitesimal part of even the known facts; and in regard to the social life of the Chinese there is much which is not known at fectly. is one of the most import-all, and much more which is known imper-
ant und likewise one of the last character-istles of the Chinese, to which we wish to draw attention, we must bespeak the reader's considerate attention, once again assuring him that the views presented have not been suddenly reached, but are the results of the slow accumulation of evidence too strong and too varied to be ignored or resisted. It must ever be borne in mind that the population of China is dense. The disasters of flood and famine are of periodical occurrence in almost all parts of the empire. The Chinese desire for pos-tenty is 80 overmastering a passion, that circumstances which ought to operate as an factual check upon population, and which in many other countries would do 80, appear to be in China relatively inefficient for that purpose. The very poorest people continue to marry their children at an early age and these children bring up large fanuilies, just as if there were any provision for their maintenance. The result of one and other causes is, that o la proportion of the population lives in the most literal sense from hand to mouth. This may be said to be the universal condition of day labourers, and it is a condition from which there appears to be no [ong dear with the ordinary Chinese whom lity of escape. No foreigner can ho everywhere meets, without at once becoming aware of the fact that hardly any tone has any ready money. The moment that anything whatever is to be done, the first demand is for cash, that those who are to do it may get something to eat, the resumption being that as yet they have d nothing. It is often very hard even for well-to-do people to raise the most moderate sums of money, when it suddenly becomes necessary tv do so. There is a most significant expression commonly employed on such occasions, which speaks of a man who is obliged to collect a sum with which to prosecute a law-suit, to arrange fur a funeral, and the like, as putting through a famine,' that is, acting like a starving person, in the urgency and persistency of his demands for help. None but those who are well off ever e: pect to be able to manage affairs of this sort without assistance. Side by side with this chronic need of money, is the correlative fact that the great mass of the people with whom foreigners come into contact, appear to be more or less deeply in debt. The universal necessity for borrowing money is balanced by the universal necessity for Tending it. Considering the great and constant risks involved, it is amazing with what facility money is borrowed and lent, by all classes of people. This is due in part to the absence of those forms of investment, such as savings banks which in occidental lands now bring the possibility of reasonably safe deposit within the reach of the poorest people. But the promiscuous loaning of money is accompanied by a condition to which reference has been already made, in speaking of the lack of mutual confidence, to wit the high rate of interest. While three per cent. a month, or even more, is a common rate, in special cases and for peculiar exigencies the charge is much higher, rising it is said in some instances to the ruinous extortion of one per cent. a day. Hopeless poverty is the most prominent fact in the Chinese Empire, and the bearing of this fact upon the relations of the people to one another must be evident to the most careless observer. People who have no visible means of support, or no means which are at all adequate, and who have no idea where their next meal is to come from, are not in any part of the laner distinguished for their altruism.'
result of the pressure for the means of subsistence, and of the habits which this pressure cultivates and fixes, even after the immediate demand is no longer urgent, isto bring life down toa hard materialistic basis, in which money and food are the prowment facts. Money and food are in fact the two foci of Chinese ellipse, and it is about them as centres that the whole social life of the people revolves. In speaking of filial piety among the Chinese, we have endeavoured of the people in general as to the duty of to do justice to the strong moral convictions
proper treatment of the aged. Perhaps there is no other subject to which the national conscience 80 quickly and so uniformly responds. Yet whoever has the opportunity of intimate acquaintance with the inner aspects of Chinese social life, well aware that it is not uncommon to rents who are insufficiently provided with food. The writer is personally acquainted with several such, and the facts are certified not only by the affirmation of the old people themselves, but by the general consensus of the neighbours who are in all cases thorough! particulars. Cases of harsh treatment of parents, even to the extent of beating them can be heard of by careful and judicious enquiry, but they are certainly not very common, and in such cases the sentiment of ly, the clan, and the village is sometimes escape punishment. fu the against the offenders, although they Hsien district where the writer lives, there have been two instances of this sort within recent years. In one of them, a man after beating his own mother, took a gun and shot at her, but was compelled by public opinion to run away from home. He subsequently returned, made an apology through an uncle, and he and his mother are still living together and since then he has never once tried to kill her! In another village but a few miles distant from this one a
killed his father with an axe, use he wealthy man not many years ago actually was ashamed of the old man's poverty stricken appearance! In this case the guilty son was sent to the provincial capital for trial and was executed by the slicing process. On the other hand, in the same town with the man who shot at his mother, lives a dumb man, whose zeal it caring for his aged mother has long since attracted public notice; and by means of a representation of the local magistrate, the dumb man has been honoured by the hanging of a lacquered tablet over his humble door, cer tifying to his virtues. In the village where these lines are written, lives an old lady seventy-two years of age, who has been for almost a generation a refugee from her home. She is entirely blind, and has been so for many years, and yet she contrives to cook, make her own trifling purchases, spin thread, which she sells at the markets, and laboriously gather fuel a straw ata time, wherever she can find it. It is impossible even for a Chinese to live in_a condition of greater bitterness' than this old woman, whose existence has only been prolonged by the kindness of some of her neighbours. Yet the object of this kindness has two sous living, who at last accounts were perfectly aware of their mother's condition, in which they have never taken the smallest interest and with whom they have not even communicated, for more than twenty years, There is a tradition of an old lady who remarked of the doctrine of total depravity, that it is very good one, if it is only lived up to. The same observation might be made with justice on the Chi age theory of filial piety.
Tt was a saying of Geo. D. Prentice, a distinguished Kentucky editor, that man was the principal object in creation, woman being merely **a side issue." The phrase is a literal expression of the position of a wife in a Chinese family. The object had view innastsimouy 6 ihe hu nile of the girl is to get rid of supporting her. The object on the part of the husband's family is to propagate that family. These objects are not in themselves ey en to criticism, except on the ground of a too complete occupation of the field of human motives. But in China no one indulges in any illusions on the subject. 'That which is true of mar-nages of those in the ordinary walks of life,' is pre-eminently true of the poorer classes, "It is a common observation in "gard to a widow who has re-married, that now she will notstarve." It is a popular proverb that a second husband and a second wife are husband and wife only as long as there is anything to eat; when the food supply fails, each shifts for him or herself. In times of famine relief, cases have often been observed where the husband simply abandons the wife and the children, leaving them to pick up a wretched subsist: tence, or to starve. In many instances daughters-in-law were sent back to their mothers' family to be support-starved as the event might be. 'She is your daughter—take care of her yourself.' In other cases where special food was given by distributors of famine relief to women who were nursing small infants, it was sometimes found that this allowance had been taken from the women, and devoured by the men, although these stances were probably exceptional. While it would be obviously unfair to judge a people only by the phenomena of such years as those of great famine, there is an important sense in which such occasions are a species of touchstone by which the underlying principles of social life may be ascertained with more accuracy and certainty than on ordinary occasions. The sale of wives and of children in China is a practice not confined to years of peculiar distress, but during those years it is carried on to an extent which throws all ordinary transactions of this nature into insignificance. It is perfectly well known to those acquainted with the facts, that during the early part of the current year, in many districts stricken with a famine only less grievous than those of eleven and twelve years ago, the sale of women and children was conducted as openly as that of mules and donkeys, the only essential difference being that' the former were not driven to market. Durin, the great famine of 1878, which extendes over nearly all parts of the three most northern provinces, as well as further south, so great, a trafic sprang up in women and girls who were exported to the central provinces, that in some places it was difficult to hire a cart, as they had all been engaged in the trans: portation of the newly purchased females to the regions where they were to ba
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.