18th Sept. Tue inaugural Lecture of Professor Max Muller, delivered before the Royal Asiatic Society on March 4th of this year, alludes to China in more respects than one. He seems to regret that from ancient China nothing has been learned by Europe, while from India much valuable information has been received. Now the fact is that we owe more to China than many persons believe or are accustomed to suspect, and if we consider the circumstances of the ages before the birth of Christ and the facilities for communication which then existed, it will be seen that it could not well be otherwise. The moment the traveller climbs the mountain range along the edge of which the Great Wall is built, he sees before him a boundless plateau of grass which for untold ages has been the feeding ground of innumerable horses, camels, cows, sheep, and various wild animals. Whatever race possesses this plateau has the means of locomotion at its own disposal, as well as a ceaseless supply of animal food. There is no doubt that nomad races have produced the most remarkable effects in history. Goths, outens, Huns, Gauls, Mongols and Turks have gone from Asiatic homes at different times and conquered vast empires. Agricultural nations have never been able to make head against them. A few miles north of the Shensi capital and of the Chihli capital of to-day the traveller is on the ground of quick locomotion where rapid communication is easy between east and west. The vast table lands of Central Asia are all grassy plateaux except in the central parts, where they have a surface of stones and sand. The configuration of the continent has therefore rendered intercourse unavoidable between east and west. 'I'he races which have conquered the world have been very frequently Tartar nomads. The same physical configuration that favoured the growth of conquering dynasties favoured also the communication of scientific, religious, and philosophical ideas. Civilisation, springing up on the banks of the Euphrates and the Nile, was spread in every direction, especially after the invention of writing. In Tartary it was always possible for Persian diviners, astrologers and magicians, teachers of astronomy, and professors of the art of medicine to make a living by travels on the plateau, because they professed to cast nativities, to dispossess the possessed, to read the stars, to cure diseases and to foretell the weather. Powerful states of a feudal character existed in Tartary, and various tartar tribes had at that time a home in North China where they lived as neighbours with the Chinese. In the visits of such men to China and Manchuria there would be giving and taking. We know what was brought to China three thousand years more or less ago. The visitors from the west brought a knowledge of the outer world with the circumambient Ocean, the theory of Babylonian medicine, the doctrine of the stars with the five elements, the globular shape of the earth, and other facts and opinions of western Asia. The Chinese and Hindoos regarded. days as Incky and unlucky, because the Babylonians did so before them, and became astrologers for the same reason. They did not think out these things for themselves but adopted them from travellers, and modified them so far as fancy Jed them in the endeavour to suit their own country, as they imagined, more exactly. For instance the zodiac of twenty-eight stars would be brought from Mesopotamia in the first instance and became Arabic, Chinese and Hindoo in each case with certain variations which suited the country adopting the zodiac.
Phe reciprocations, the gifts of China to Europe, were in the region of social, political and religious questions, Here China could become to some extent 2 teacher, Chinawasfeudaland maintained a very ancient and curiously interesting form of religious worship. Her social state was modified by her feudal politics and by her fond clinging to the ceremonies of antiquity. ter system of laws was worked out for herself and could become the model of surrounding nations. The creative power of China has been in this sphere, and while she has done her share in science and in useful inventions, it is in practical philosophy and politics that her great successes have been achieved. When she likes she can throw off a foreign yoke, or if she prefers it she can retain foreign dynasty and teach her rulers how to govern, This she is able to do by the great mass of her population, and the uniformity of their intellectual training. China was feudal before Europe was feudal. Ihe tartar races of Mongolia copied the feudal institntious of China and carried them into Europe. Not that China alone was feudal in conjunction with any great nation that gained supremacy in central or northern Asia, but China's position to such nomad feudal sovereignties was that of teacher in politics and legislation, Nearly the whole of the old Japanese laws were of Chinese origin and so it was in Tartary. The Turkish deg, for instance, is the Chinese word pek ff "a chief." Tu the second century before Christ China was accustomed to give a sash and seal with a Chinese feudal title to tribal chiefs all over 'I'artary. China sent officers as envoys, priticesses as wives to high chiefs, agriculturists and artisans as instructors in practical civilisa~ tion, just as the same thing took place later in the case of Japan, She also invited artars to come and learn in China how to improve the comfort of living in their own country, in the same way as she invited the Japanese afterwards to do this. Here then is the real sphere of China in the history of the world. She has a very old feudal law book, the Chovw-li, based on a still older work consisting of law and history combined. To these two books she clings still. In them is found the oldest feudalism in the world, put in a legislative form, and there is a striking similarity existing between Chinese and Teutonic feudalism. For instance, the sash and seal of the investiture, the kneeling ceremony, the duty of following
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.