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250
CHINESE APHORISMS MIS-
INTERPRETED.
(Daily Press, 2nd April).
THE HONGKONG WEEKLY PRESS AND
As there is no country where the ancient literature contains more practical aphorisms concerning the business of government, there certainly is no country on earth where the application of these wisely conceived aphorisms is so persistently and studiously ignored as in China. It is not that they are forgotten, for they are in every scholar's mouth, and are repented ad nauseam by every village dominie, but it seems to be the case that in the course of ages they have become so diluted by inane repetition, and so
disguined by glosses of the particularly impractical kind that dis tinguishes the school of Cau II and his successors, that it has become an actual impossibility for the ordinary student to pick out the few remaining grains of truth from the vast accumulation of chaff and rubbish which surrounds them on every side. The more the modern student tries to go on his own account into the ancient literature of China, the more he is struck with this inability of the expounder to grasp the plain meaning of these simple rules handed down from an earlier and more practical age. The Shu King is full of these misunder- standings. Originally, in the main, composed of metrical ballads, as was com- mon with all nations who had established settled government prior to the introduction of writing, when they came to be reduced to writing there were found to be attached to these ballads innumerable glosses which the scribes were unable or unwilling to separate; and their successors, more remote in time and feeling from the original rhymes, in- troduced still worse perplexity by attempting to amalgamate the two, and adding to this confused farrago their still more inane
[April 7, 1906,
Established officers over the hundred affairs: | that innocence of manners and public trau- Within they exercised their prescribed quillity are the basis of gond government.
daties (in the four quadrants).
Without were the chiefs of the nomads
(each in his own lead).
The whole land was in harmony: And the many states at peace,
The commentaries give here no light on the text. Truly the Book of Proverbs says rightly, "The conies are but a feeble folk! Unfortunately it is the misfortuce
With His and Shang the officers became of China that it has ever been by the conies
perverse:
To secure respect they resorted to violence. But our glorious kings,
Thinking not of the feelings of their
officers,
Respected the desires of the people. Now we, their degenerate descendants, Day and night take no rest;
Diligently basing our conduct ou the prin-
cip'es of virtue,
And pondering deeply the councils of
former days.
We point the Path for our officers."
that the government of the land has been. administered, and its ancient philosophy misapplied.
MISSIONARY AMENITIES.
(Daily Press, 3rd April.)
K
The North-China Daily News appears to have been taken to task for publishing mendacious native versions of the recent affair at Nanchang, and our contemporary explains that No-one could think that when we reprinted the Nanfangpao's dis- patches we endorsed them in any way; we merely reprinted them that our reulers might know the version that was being circulated to excite an anti-foreign feeling in the Chinese." And to leave no doubt as to its opinion of the mischievous reports referred to, our contemporary says:
We have already expressed a decided opinion, based on all the evidence that had come to our kaowledge, that the magistrate CHIANG at Nanchang committed suicide, and that no one in the Roman Catholic Mission had any hand. in his death. We know now on the highest authority that this opinion is confirmed by the post-mortem exami ation, which has left no doubt that it was a case of deliberate suicid."
This, as confirming our own view of the matter, and once for all settling the only material fact, was gratifying reading; but in the same issue of our contemporary there appears a letter from a Protestant missionary which has given us still greater satisfaction. It has raised the community, to which the writer belongs, very con-
So much for the principles of the sages. They were at least practical, and their rhythmical form in the early days of the states, before the literate had become an element in the body politic, male them
the people at large. But with the introduc universally known and easily understood of tion of writing, which from the beginning assumed an ileographic form, and was in cousequence coulined to a very limited class of experts, these old floating ballads by degrees went out of use; and even their form was forgotten. As a fact the new ideographic writing bad as little in common with the vernacular language as has the tightly compressed press telegram of to-day with the ordinary conversational English of current use. The natural result of all this was that the old rhythmical songs died out of popular recollection; and this process was hastened by the introduction under T'SIN SHIHWANGTI, of what he called his "univer- sal" script, which was intended to make the speakers of the numerous languages and dialects which then prevailed in the land conclusions. The modern commentators, as LEGGE, accepting all these as of equal other and, we may add, less profitable re- mutually intelligible. But the process had
"I am a Potestani-before coming to China authority, have introduced still greater con-
sults for China at large. It introduced a
a pretty narrow oue, I fear. For a good many fusion in their vain attempts to make out seperate class with aims and thoughts city of Chius. At the time of my arrival here years I have been a missionary in an interior of the result a connected history. A curious essentially their own, and opposed to the the work of my mission was in its early stages example of this is to be found in the collec
instincts of the people at large, and this class and the Catholic propaganda, as usual, older tion known as the Cheo Shu, "Book of has ever since contrived to monopolise the and much more extensive. I had heard and read Cheo," which, a misture of ancient verse avenues to influence. We see their be- mach about the un-Christian methods employed and more modern gloss thickened with a numbing effects even in the chapter with by the Catholics, and they were more than paste of modern comment generally of the which we commenced. The very next para-
corroborated to all seeming by the iniquities most jejune and tasteless description, bas graph shows how marked is the difference poured into our ears by the natives with the been offered to the West as a true aud genuine in style.
most plausible and convincing detail. I appoint," the king is made to priest had knocked a mandarin's hat off in his fragment of a cient history. The twentieth
"the Grand Teacher, Grand Assistant, of these so-called books, denominated the and Grand Guardian.
own yameu "that one had dragged a por man These to be the who chauced to offend him through the streets officers of CEO, the (Cleo Kwan) is
three Kung, to talk over the ways and courses with his queue tied to his horse's, tail, etc., eto. a good iustauce of the method. The
of the land, and to amicably separate the Surely men capable of such audacious wicked- introduction tells us that CH'ENG, the Yin and Yang: these need only be appointedness were sealing the doom of the very cause «Finisher", who by the euhemerists is if capable men are available. I also appoint they would adrance, But I soon found that
made to follow the two twins of the legend, WAN and Wu, is represented, as returning to the State Capital after inspecting the country brought into order by his predecessors. For the guidane of his officers he repeats the ancient ballad containing the rules handed down by tradition for the governance of the kiug-
..dom.
This may
保邦于未意
制治于未亂
若昔大
be freely translateu: --- To men of yore these two great guiding prin- ciples we owe: Before disorder rears its head, your government consolidate; To arm your troops do not neglect, e'er
hostile forces storm the gate. He then takes up the burden of the old ballad, half mythical, half astronomical, which had floated down the centuries:-
In the olden days Yao and Shun
|
say,
a Junior Teacher, Junior Assistaut and Junior Guardian. These to be the three Ku, to help the Kung to diffuse the trans- forming influences, and reverently to enlighten the ways of Heaven and Earth, and assist the Sovereign." Practically the distinction is much the same as between ARISTOTLE and the Schoolmen. The com- mentators quoted by LEGGE, and LEGGE him- self, fall into a still worse Serbonian bog of ineptitude and ignorance. After quibbling about certain characters they go on to say, The whole meant 'in ancient times, the age when right principles greatly pre- vailed.'" GAUBIL takes the passage thus and appears to think that some great mean- ing lies hid in it. He translates:
Anciently in the time de la grande loi, good government consisted in preventing troubles, and in preserving the kingdom without danger": adding in a note, We see that the time of the graud law is a time of innocence: the troubles and the dangers of States come not till after this time. I believe that King CH'ENG means to say
siderably in our estrem. Fairminded' begins,
This
the community at large by no means accredited
all the depravity of the "foreign devils" to the Catholics. In the Protestant hospitals, with all their patronage, eyes were gouged out, and hearts made into foreign medicine."
After pointing out the serious crimes to which repetitions of such nonsense instigates the Chinese proletariat, this mis- sionary remarks, with a shrewdness that some of his colleagues might be the better for possessing, "If we could hear such stories about ourselves, by a little enquiry, how must we be represented to the Catholics?" This missionary and his colleagues decided that co-operation was better than quarrelling, and they learned to esteem their Catholic neighbours most highly, "and to feel that the rumours circulated to their discredit are without foundation." It appears, and it is a very likely thing to happen, that there are Chinese who go from Catholic to Protestant, and vice versa, tittle-tattling for personal gain, carrying slander to a quarter in which they cun ningly assume it will be favourably received. Unhappily we know that it has often been
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