In establishing schools he adopts five principles. The first is one to which we have already referred, that the new and the old are to be woven into one, the Chinese Classics are to be made by some magical process the foundation of the teaching of Western education. The second is a very un-Western but possibly a sound way of looking at the question. He puts forward two objects of education: first, government; secondly, science. The first includes all knowledge necessary for the government of mankind--geography, political economy, fiscal science, the military art, and though he does not mention it, I suppose history. The second is natural science, and includes mathematics, mining, therapeutics, sound, light, chemistry, &c. The third principle is one that we rarely act on in our own country, namely, that the child shall be only educated in the subjects for which he has a natural aptitude. The fourth principle is one that applies absolutely to China; it is the abolition of what is called the three-legged essay, a complicated feat of archaic and artificial writing which only exists for the purpose of examination, something analogous to our Latin verses. The fifth principle shows that China is as far ahead of us in some ways as she is behind us in others. China has passed beyond the stage of free education to the stage of universal scholarship; all students are paid, and this has brought about a great abuse; {271} men study merely to obtain a living who have no aptitude for learning, and on whom educational money is really wasted, and so he abolishes payment. His Excellency closes his advice with a suggestion that societies for the promotion of education should be formed. The Chinaman loves these little social clubs and gatherings. His chess club, his poetry club, his domino club, are national institutions. Why not, suggests His Excellency, have an educational club, or as I suppose we should call it, a mutual improvement society. Thus wrote the great Viceroy who more than any other man prevented the spread of the Boxer outbreak from desolating Central and Southern China. During that Boxer rebellion all advance was impossible, but after that overflowing flood of disorder was passed, the reforms suggested by Chang-Chih-Tung began to be seriously considered, and on January 13, 1903, an Imperial Edict was put forth renovating and organising, at least on paper, the whole educational system of China. It would not be China if there were not a great deal of sound sense in that edict; it would not be China if on paper the organisation did not seem to be perfect; it would not be China if as a matter of fact the whole scheme were not to a great extent a failure.