This is
virtually the national policy of China towards foreigners, a policy
gaining the acceptance of the people with remarkable quickness.
After having set aside all considerations of national prejudice and
patriotism, it is interesting to ask whether it is actually a fact that
the Chinese, as a race, are inferior to the peoples of the West? Much
has been said on the subject. I give my opinion flatly that the Chinese
is _not_ inferior, and the longer I live with him the more numerous
become the lessons which he teaches me.
"The question, when we examine it closely, has really very little to do
with political strength or military efficiency, or (_pace_ Mr. Benjamin
Kidd) relative standards of living, or even the usual material
accompaniments of what we call an advanced civilization; it is a
question for the trained anthropologist and the craniologist rather than
for the casual observer of men and manners. The Japanese people are now
much more highly civilized--according to western notions--than they were
half a century ago, but it would be ludicrously erroneous to say that
they are now a higher race, from the evolutionary point of view, than
they were then. Evolution does not work quite so rapidly as that even in
these days of 'hustle.
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