The West cannot either by right or through self-interest ignore the problem that China has to solve. From being the most conservative country in the world, she has become a country in which there is rapid change. The whole civilisation of this vast country of 400,000,000 is becoming fundamentally altered by the importation into it of ideas and thoughts which are not native to her, and which have been created by a system of religion and by a history belonging to nations very different to herself. The full difficulty does not present itself till after some thought. The problem is quite different from that which has been before mankind in other parts of the world. China is trying to accept Western civilisation, but there is a danger that it will be without Christianity. I know that many Europeans living in Tientsin and Shanghai, who give but little thought to the problems before them, somewhat vaguely hope that in the near future China will become a European nation; but a little consideration must convince everybody that this is impossible. We have also already shown that China is quite determined--in fact, she has no alternative--not to {37} remain the old conservative country that lives on ancient traditions, that looks back two thousand years for all teaching in the arts of government. If China, therefore, is neither to become Western nor to remain what she is, of necessity she will have to blend the two civilisations together and to take a part from each. The Chinese themselves, with a sanguineness for which they have no warrant, are quite certain that this is an easy matter. They tell the inquirer that they have considered it well, and that they see their way completely through it. They intend to select from Europe only those things that are advantageous to the race, and they expect to have no difficulty in weaving these incongruous elements into their own very complete system of thought. Statesmen seriously say that three or four months' extra study will enable the educated Chinaman to learn all that is necessary of Western civilisation, and then those who have acquired this knowledge can return to China and teach their fellow-countrymen; and it is impossible to convince the Chinese that the uniting together of two different webs of thought is a matter of extreme difficulty, and, it may be added, of extreme risk. The pleasing dream that you can arbitrarily select the good points of West and East and weave them into one is the very reverse of the truth. What naturally happens is the very opposite. There is a tendency to preserve that which is bad and not that which is good in two different systems of thought when they are united into one. The reason {38} probably is that as the bad has its common origin in the wickedness of human nature, it belongs to both systems of thought, and therefore both the Chinaman and the Western meet on common ground when they meet in vice or vileness. On the other