said, has now made he great and pregnant ice which lio in race, and in nothing is this marked difference more evident than in the social institutions and ife of the different races of th Who will believe," says an El iter, "who will believe, when he the matter, that where the sure, the feminine ideal and relations to them, are brought into qui tion, the delicate and apprehen! the Indo-European race, which invented the Muses and Chivalry and the Madam: to find its last word on this question in institutions of a people whose wisest ki had seven hundred wiv concubines?" Noverthelessthore which more strongly marks th points of similarity and hich ww can trace in their early institutions, between the mom-bers of one family of people and the members of another.
Now much as the modern yellow-visaged long-gow! fers from the modern blue-eyed red-haired European, yet nothing is more certain than that thers was a period in the early history of each of these peoples when they were naked engages, ranning wild upon the face of the earth without any social or moral restraint whatsoever. The Chinese writers themselves speak of a period in their early history when the people painted their skins, dwelt in caverns, and ate the flesh and drank the blood of animals raw. In an essay upon the origin of the feudal system, the writer Lin Tsung-yuan, of the Mang dynasty says:—The human race, no doubt, came into existence at the same time as all the created things of the earth. Amidst the wild gloom of the virgin fores where wild beasts of all descriptions abounded, the early man walked about, having nothing wherewith to seize upon his prey to satisfy himself. Neither could he, having no weapons, defend himself. He was therefore obliged, as the philoso-plier Jiiu-ching says, to invent instruments, Now the invention of instruments gave rise to the possession of property, and the possession of property necessarily to disputes, The disputes were, of course, referred to him who was able to decide between the right and the wrong of the matter in question. Those therefore, who distinished themselves by their intelligence and. prowess would have many who came to them for decisions. Finally, in order to enforce these decisions, punishment had occasionally to be inflicted. In this manner kings and rulers and a system of govern+ ment came into existence."
The earliest ancestors of the. Chinese people—it is now impossible to know whether they were originally immigrants or indigenes of the soil—seem to have float appeared in the modern province of
already leaders, who led them wandering, Shensi, Among these people there were about, living the unsettled life of a noma people. At Inst there arose a great ruler, the Emperor whom the Chin Fae his, who finally settled with his people in the western regions of China, solectin, for his capital, it is said, a place which is now identified with a town in modern Honan. To this Ewporor Fu-hsi, ti is ascribed the honour of having foun the soci and political institutions of the Chinese people. To him. snee uang and Huang-ti or the Ye Emperor, both of whom wore sai carried on the great work of people, commenced by Fu-hsi. the sacred rite of marriage was and with the rite of marriage we may begin our essay upon the domestic life of the Chinese Now, before I enter into the details of the married lifo of the Chiiese, allow me to remark that it is one of the greatest unexploded errors among European writers, ko the one I have quoted above, to wapposo that the low, degraded position in which women are held, is peculiar to races other than the Aryan' or Indo-European, and that the system of polygamy or conceubinago i ed to the ie, among, whom the Chinese are of course included, In the early history of every people there was a period when man ruled over his brother man by the mere force of his arms and the right of might. In such times, slavery, and theconcomitantofalavery, polygamy or concubinage, necessarily existed, Of captives taken in' warfare, the males were made slaves, and employed in monial Arudgeries, while the females, unless they were old and ugly,—it is, L think, one of the great social problems of the present day in Eutopo as to what roslly is to be done with women who are old and ugly,—were made hand-maids or concubines to amuse and delight the leisure hours of powerful captors. This, I take it, is the origin of polygamy or concubinage, as it is of slavery. It was, in fact, a birth of the cruel iron law of sity; but gradually, as among us Asiatic people, it became an established institution sanctioned by the people from long usage. In early Greek and Roman times in Europe, the position of women was certainly not much better than it is among us Eastern people at the present any. And in the feudal times of the Middle Ages it was perhaps even worse, as may be judged
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.