Among the Anglo-Saxon race the idea extensively prevails, that each man is an individual by himself and is to be dealt with as such. It does not follow because a man isa banker, that his son is to pursue that business—or any other. No profession, no trade, no pursuit of any kind is hereditary. The son of a Conservative may bea Liberal, and the son of a Liberal a Tory. Apart from that general sense, in which solidarity may be predicated of all human society, we in the wear have very little which can be cotmoted under that term. The individual is the social unit.
In China all is quite different. Ancestry is reckoned a long way back with definite terms for each generation. Relationships are complicated and precise, with a compleity and precision which toa stranger are bewildering and confounding, The social fact of capital importance, that each Chinese family is practically rooted to the spot where it exists, and that it always has been so rooted, is of itself well nigh incomprehensible to the roving Occidental, who has visited half the countries on the globe, not improbably with a view toa: ettlement. Chinese social life runs in grooves, or rather in ruts, and in very ancient ruts. A man in China isa part of a gigantic social machine, a mere cog in one of many wheels, and from ancient times, until now, it has always been customary for the wheels to move the cogs, never for the cog to control the wheels. In fact the mere mass to be moved makes it impossible for any particular part to move any family asawhole, exceptinlines and enplanes to which the social iniad is alread; adjusted. A Chinese family is like a hil of potatoes—one cannot get at any of them, without a process by which all are brought to view. The shrewdly practical ancients, who laid out the plan on which the Chinese race was to be governed, understood perfectly this characteristic of their people and have used it to the utmost. The Empire, in (theoretically) a vast whole with a head who governs by the decree of Heaven.
gradation from the Empire as a whole, down to the individual and collective family, is likewise a unit, of which the parts are niutually interdependent and mutually responsible for each other. To what an extent this theory and practice of responsibility for others is pushed, we are continually reminded not less by the oceurin daily Chinese life, than by the documents published in the Peking Gazette ded in the singularly self-revealing
Let the reader run through a year of this unique publication, and mentally compare—or rather contrast—the principles whic evidently rule in the adjustment of cases, whether arising from the destructive outburst of the Yellow River, or from a flagrant case of parricide, with Western ideas. He will have an instructive series of pictures of the practical workings of the Chinese theory of solidarity. But it is not alone in the natural relationship, or in the more artificial political ones, that Chinese soli-clarity is manifested. There seems to be in the Chinese nature an inherent capacity for combination, united with a powerful tendency to combine, which it might be difiicult to equal in any other race. Guilds are inventions by no means peculiar to China, but where are there any trade guilds with strongercohesivepowers, thanthosein China? There seems in fact, to be not cohesion simply, but a kind of chemical union. In the presence of such enormous forces of attraction the foreigner is helpless, baffled: and outwitted by a quality which operates like the pressure of the atmosphere, equally in all directions, and which it seems equal hopeless to resist. There are occasionally col-hsiens of guilds with guilds, and in dealing with them occidental machinery and modes of procedure are practically worthless. Such conflicts render the government of colonies like the Straits Settlements and Hongkong, matter of extreme delicacy and difficulty. Nor need one go to the remote confines of the empire, to secure illustrations of the principle which we have named. We find them in too abundant measure in our own places of business, and in our own domestic service. A compradore, a cook, a "boy," a coolie, comes to some (invisible) crisis of his career, and deserts us. Of the nine reasons which he may not improbably assign for this step, eight will have no relevancy whatever, and the ninth will not be the real clue. It is impossible, in fact,
Perhaps he does not know himself. But to ascertain exactly why! he does as he does, one re he knows, which is that he must go. And he goes. The truth is, that in the occult social machinery of which he is a part, he has been in the course of many revolutions, pressed upon by another cog and is thrown out of gear.' A Chinese is always a part of the machine—not the machine itself. Or ithe be a very important wheel and turn the rest, then solidarity impressively asserts itself in a new form. fe have heard of Chinese joint-stock companies in which solidarity had a great deal too much to do. In fact, solidarity in a Chinese sense, and individual equality in an Occidental sense are scarcely compatible. This essential and significant quality of Chinese society is of great consequence in estimating the future of Chinese reformiations. As long as China remains in the condition in which she has been for 80 many ages, solidarity is the incarnation of inertia. But if she is beginning to exhibit signs of what Marquis 'Te ug calla an awakening,' there is hope that if once awake she will be wide awake, she cannot rouse herself from the lethargy of centuries in a day nor in a decade. Nor when she is awake will she bestow, let us hope, her principal energies,—ns the Marquis seems to expect—on material resources such arsenals and navies, but rather on intellectual and moral regeneration, and the rehabilitation of the energies which once made China great, and through which alone she can hope to recover her greatness, and place herself among the foremost nations of the time.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.