Apout twelve centuries before Christ it is recorded that the western Chinese began to colonies south China, menns ing by that term in this case, the valley of the Yungtsze, including Suochow and Hangchow. From thut tine forward there was incessant intercourse with the native tribes in south China whau we know by the examination of their Iunguages to belong all to the Himaluic stock. They spank now with. out exception dialects which show them to be of Tibetan, Burmese, Siamese or Cochin-Chinese family connexion, just og in north China at the same period there were Turkish and Ourean speaking tribes belonging to the true Tartar stock, mixed in various localities with the Chinese population. The Chinese a8 a race have an enormous power of baorption, They show a patient energy in assimilating Tartar and Tibetan con-fingents, and thus expanding more and more their own body politic, euch is truly nston The Chinese do not drive out foreign colonists or aborigines. They ngsimilate them, Yet no effect is produced on the Chinese language, Still after ench century that singular tongue is seen quietly pursuing its undeviating path of individual progress, and we ask wonderingly wh gave these Chinese such an imperial power of dominating the Tartar and Himalnic races? How is it that no one of these numerous tribes hins ever possessed the agricultural or political instinct in sufficient strength to impress China permanently with a wholesome fent, or maintain its independent ex tevoe with energy enough to form a second great power in Eusteru Asia?
Bat in the world of mind China has not the same supremacy as in the political sphere. While the thoughts of the people are given angerly to manual industry and politics, they shine less in philosophy. They have quietly received on every ccasi whatever knowledge they could get from other countries and have too often appropriated it without recognition, In extenuation of this fault it may be said that when knowledge came to them they did not seek it. It was brought to them, The old Chinese, too, were very exclusive in keeping to their own school, It is remarkable how little was known of Confucius in south China, The poet Chil-yuen who lived contemporary ions in his works either him or Confuciue, Honan was China, and Shantung was China The one was Tauist and the other Confuci The poet Chit. yuen grew "up in a Tanist atmosphere und his imagination was pleased with a mythology of which Coufacius knew almost nothing. Svuth China hind different culture to Northe eastern China in those times, and in the North-west things had undergone agent change since Won-wang and Chow-kang id lived there; but when the kingdom of Chin grew powerful in the eighth century a very different re. ligious cult grew up in those parts tinctured with strongly foreign elements, OF this also Confucius knew nothing. So, too, south Chia was sprinkled Urroughoat with foreign tribes among whom the Chinese lived as colonists, These tribes had always lived there since the days of Yun and Shu", Two lungunges were spoken where the Chinese settled in ench instance, and much knowledge from other countries could in such places filter in, It was there Uhat Tauism found " fruitful soil, and its peoaliar elements as a philogophy, 80 fur as they are of foreign origin, might very well origiunte in idene spreading from the south into central China, The allusions fraud in old ist books to the West as the lund of wisdom, and the intended y of Lau-tse to the West, imply, significantly, thut the prime ideas of Ulus religion were consequent on the communication of Indian thought. This consideration renders it much leas me comprehensible how China onto to philosophy, She emerged from politics and trade and arrangely felt i 0. speculation on death and futurity; but the Hindoos, 8 Strabo tells us, wore always ep of death and saying that there is no essential difference between life and death. The Chinese as they spread thole colonies, got to know of these ideas, and so we find them scattered through the writings of the triad of Tanist jophers with the works of their iples which survived the fires of Chin, That we are not speaking without book in this, may be seen in the fact that the Chinese for the first time begin to speak of the son! about seven coutaries before Christ, They bad never thought of the point whether a man has a soul or not. Not that the ego was not strong in them. Italwaya has been powerful among the Chinese, but there was no need of fine anal; specting what the soul might be in its essence, So the metempsychosis be" came familiar to the Tauist writers as when Li Yii kon says there is joy in death. Death and life going and a returning, We die here and are born there. Why then do I know that to dio is not to be better off than to live as I have been li argument as this is certain like what Strabo agoribes to te Tudiaus,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.