cRRDULITY.
Credulity is defined as the readiness to believe without sufficient evidence. The Chinese as a rule, seem to be singularly insensible to the relative value of evidence, and to be very little aware of the need of it. The result is naturally to make them easy victims of deception, in matters of which we should suppose the means of judging to be within the reach of every one. According to Archbishop Whateley, the way to avoid credulity, or incredulity—for they are correlates—isto listen to and yield to the best evidence, and to believe and disbelieve, on grounds. This is exactly what the Chinese do not, and what they can by no possibility do, as long as they have no instinct of weighing evidence, and no adequate criteria for determining what are, and what are not good grounds. In the presence of the bewildering results of western science, the Chinese are and feel themselves to be at sea. They behold forces at work, of the nature of which they are totally ignorant, and they see no reason to question an lieged result,, Examples of this trait, wi occur to every one. A few years ago, one of the Legations in Peking had a- cart, ich was fitted with strong springs, designed to ease the dreadful jolts to which travel in the Capital is always subject.
of those Chinese who had the opportunities to know the nature of the innovation, was heard to explain that this was a contrivance by which the vehicle could be propelled "without the aid of the mule, which he supposed to be simply an ornament, a micro tribute to custom. The Chinese have always been alive to the advantages of foreign travel, though they can scarcely be said to be a nation of travellers; and they readily accept the results, or supposed, of those whose observations have extensive than their own. This often leads them into errors, but errors which they share with all mankind. But if there is the verdict of Western is the belief in the uniformity of nature, however the fact of this uniformity may be explained. this important topic, however, the Chinese intellect is by no means clear in fact it is sometimes highly befogged. It is by no means uncommon to meet with scholars w1 talent, gauged by competitive has been adjudged to be flourishing," inquire ae in all sincerity, if in your honorable country there is also a sun and a moon." We have seen a popular audience gathered by the roadside to gaze at the foreigners, entirely satisfied with the information that in Western lauds, the plants are the same as in China, except that they have the peculiarity of always growing with the roots in the air, and the fruits in the soil. The announcement attracted no more interest than statistics as to the depth of the sea, or the distance of Venus. When the British troops occupied North China, the Chinese soldiers for the first time saw foreign ladies mounted on the backs of ponies. The singular appearance, gave rise tothe tale doubtless implicitly believed to this day—that there is a variety of Occidental wonien, with but one leg! In the days of Sir dog, in the British Legation in Peking, in Frederick Bruce, there was a fine large regard to the age of which the curiosity of the Chinese was excited. They were informed, by way of banter, that he was—like the most esteemed Chinese pottery—"Ta Ming," that is, the product of the ling Dynasty. This intelligence was received in a way to leave no doubt that it was credited, and was doubtless set down in the same category with many other extraordinary and somewhat surprising things of which the natives were daily obliged to take cognizance. In a count where it is popularly supposed that there is somewhere a country the inhabitants of which are all women, and where it is not thought incredible' that there is a and in the inhabitants all have a hole through their abdomen, there seems no entirely satisfactory reason for discrediting the existence of a race of females with but one leg, or the survival of intelligent dogs from the seventeenth century. There is a variety of credulity to in western lands, duo not to the lac of scientific facts, but to the excess of them. A. generation that has witnessed the evolution of steam, and the dawn of the reign of the still mightier electricity. is prepared to believe almost anything. The celebrated canard known as the "Moon-hoax," is an instance of this sort, illustrations of which might be indefinitely extended. While we smile at the gullibility of educated friends among the Chinese, we shall well to consider whether, we are, after all, so greatly their superiors in the art of occu: rate discrimination in the regions of the vague and little known. It is obvious at a glance, how important a factor the creduity of the Chinese is and may always become, in their intercourse with foreign nations. The most irrational notions are widely held in regard to our capacity for evil, or for It does not seem at all improbable that two men who are surveying the bank of the Yellow River, may be masters of Feng-shui, who have got themselves into the favour of the unsuspecting officials, and are intending to metamorphose a whole prefecture into a pellet, and make off with it, to their remote Iand. The singular persistence of the belief in the use of human eyes, as an ingredient in the manufacture of silver, is an example of the survival of the least fit. Beliefs of this type, are not rife product of reasoning, and. they are not to be dispelled by rativcination, An attack by reasoning on such a foe, is as.inert as the discharge of a park of artillery into a Scotch mist. The projectiles are irresistible, and make their way through the yielding mass, with infinite ease, But the mist is in the sam
jut though a mist cannot be disturbed by and of the same density as before. the discharge of artillery, nor waving of a million brooms, yet by the a stron; On steady breeze it may be utterly dispersed. The new force from without, which China needs to scatter the mists of ages, will be found only in the breezes of a Christian civilization.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.