I mention this side of his attitude because there is another that must be brought out here so clearly that no failure to see it is possible. He never allowed himself to be blinded as to radical faults of the most serious nature in the Chinese. It was about the same time as his entrance on his missionary work that Americans were set agog by the “Burlingame Mission,” and indulged in very extravagant notions of the civilization of old China and very rosy anticipations of the future. Even missionaries caught the fever of the hour, and for home publication wrote articles that seconded this view. This was so completely foreign to the reality, as Dr. Mateer saw it, that he responded with an elaborate article in which he calmly punctured these current notions. It was the fashion then to regard the Chinese as leading the world in past ages, but in his opinion in none of their boasted achievements do they deserve such credit. Largely they have been imitators; and in the realm of their own inventions and discoveries and organizations they have seldom shown themselves capable of making the applications that ought to have been so patent to them that they could not miss them. Perhaps—writing as he did in reply to overdrawn appreciations on the other side—he may have fallen into the opposite mistake, to some degree. Perhaps also in later years he would not have gone quite so far in the direction he then took; but he never wavered in his opinion that in the lapse of ages during which the Chinese had lived so exclusively within themselves, characteristics that are racial have been developed, some of which must be overcome, and others of which must be immensely transformed, before China can take her place among the advanced nations of the world. Also, ignorance, prejudice and superstition stand in the way, and cannot suddenly be dispelled. He continued to believe that, notwithstanding the present rush to introduce western appliances, the hatred of the foreigner, except among a minority, remains in the heart of officials and people. He believed too that, because of their faithlessness to obligations which they had assumed toward other governments, the apparent aggressions of foreign nations were not always and altogether without a measure of justification. Chinese law he considered to be still so much a mere whim of officials, often corrupt, that the time has not yet come for an American citizen, whether missionary or merchant or mechanic, to be left safely to the uncertainties of a native court.