18th Nov.
In one of his books Robert Louis Stevenson says:—"'I'o be wholly devoted to some intellectual exercise is! to have succeeded in life." Luckily there are other sorts of success, or it is to be feared that, unless we may rank the difficulty of outwitting the wily Chinese, or preventing his outwitting us as " intellectual exercise," we should; have to write down Shanghai a failure. We do not wish to be too sweeping tin this statement, for it would doubt-§.j less be unfair and untrue to stigmatise our fellow-residents as greater intellect tual failures. than anybody else in the Far East. Still everybody will agree in this that we do not take to intellectual pursuits with anything like the avidity-displayed towards amusements and pastimes. Shanghai likes to be entertained nnd amused; it refuses instruction, and eschews study. No university extension lecturer need apply for employment in the Far East, Intoxication of the intellectual type claims few victims, and these are overwhelmed with pity. Literary societies have sprung up again and again, as if in evidence of an uneasy feeling on the part of some that there is. another life b worth having, and that the literary society is the incarnation. of its idea, But nothing results except a precarious existence for the little coterie, a flicker or two, and then extinction, So with art and science. Music struggles on from year to year with vicissitudes, and we have a society or two besides, which have had the extraordinary luck to Inst until their age has rau into double figures as the cricketers say. Frequently in the doldrums they have now and again a favouring breeze, when, with al! sail set astonishing progress is made, but anon the wind Arops, dies away, and leaves the idly flapping sails empty and powerless. "Why things should be so it is not easy to say. We were in times gone by proud to think that the Shanghai community consisted of picked men, and that the average of ability here would be much higher than that in any European town of similar size so far as foreigners are concerned. We still think that this is true to a considerable extent. But as numbers increase the characteristics of new communities begin to show their strength. And these are always in the direction of freedom from restraint, and rebellion' against strict law. Democracy is in the air, and anything that is a little above the heads of "the people" is frowned upon as too high class. The novel in literature and the comic song in music are the prevailing requirements. Que has but to ask at the various libraries to find what the proportion of light literature is, But figures convey no adequate idea of the lack of intellectuality in most even of this reading, It is at the best only pastime so far as men are concerned, and does not, by. any means evince that "constant preference for higher thoughts over lower thoughts" which Gilbert Hamerton says is the very essence of intellect triality. "It is not erudition," he writes, "that makes the intellectual man, bat a sort of virtue which delights in vigorous and beautiful thinking, just as moral virtue delights in vigorous and beautiful conduct."
When we turn our backs on books and listen to the daily round of common talk we have one more example of our intellectual condition as a community, What is our table-talk, for instance? What passes "over the walnuts and the wine?" Cricket, shooting, ponies, racing, billiards or sports of some kind, sometimes even "shop," according to the character of the assembly, It is no uncommon thing for ladies to sit bored and angry at their inability to join in, the jargon current at the moment. How 'l'randler bowled Timmins with a" yorker" for a "duck"; and how Swiper* got me away to square leg for fons, and placed the next between cover and third man for three," and so on ad nauseam. We do not deny the intensity of the pleasure of fighting one's battles over again, especially when they were won, ut we do deny that the place to do this is in a mixed company round er-table. By this means the principal meal of the day, which should be as stimulating mentally as it is restorative physically, is despoiled of half its promise, Even our best bats, boilers, runners, and riders might add greatly to the pleasures of life were they to remember and act upon the fact that man has subjective joys quite as keen xs those objective ones in the shape of bat, ball, gun, and pony, their vocabularies were less filled from books on sport and more from familiarity sith the problems of life, they would be none the less welcome in the field, and more acceptable in the drawing-room.
Lack of ready means of travel has always had a deadening influence on the intellectual life of Far Eastern communities, When every man knows every other inwardly as well as outwardly there is a tendency to staguation, and nothing prevents this so much as contact with strangers. The narrow local groove must under such circumstances be given up, and much width is added to the mental horizon in consequence. In London or New York one may select one's. own intellectual circle, and be ever sure of finding ample material on which to sharpen one's wits, but in sucha community as this, divided into sections and cliques as it is, this is not so easy, and hence we have to do without' that "conference which maketh the ready man."
One of the' most. comnion signs of non-intellectual life. is, the, inability to find something to do on -wet days
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.