When some Chinese literati were questioned {144} about this architecture they freely confessed that they preferred their native buildings, but they seemed to think that a Western school could not be efficient unless it was held in a Western building. Missionaries and others being questioned on this point maintained that Western houses were in the end the cheapest, but the Chinese would not allow this. They said that a Chinese house would cost far more than a Western house if it were beautifully adorned with carving, but if it was built simply it would work out at less cost. Chinese architecture is obviously a construction which lends itself to the use of iron. A Chinese building with iron substituted for wood would look as well, for they always paint their wood; this ought to be a very cheap form of construction in a land which is going to produce iron at a very low rate. The truth is that it is neither a question of cost nor of efficiency which makes the Chinese architecture despised; it is part of the great movement which expresses itself in stone and brick--a movement which is tending to bring the Eastern countries into misery--a movement which is planting in the East all that is commonplace, all that is hideous in the West, and that is destroying all that is beautiful in the East both in thought and colour and form. It is the counterpart of the movement which is destroying the faith of the Eastern nations and is only substituting the materialism which has degraded the West. {147} RELIGIONS OF CHINA AND THE MISSIONARY CHAPTER XII RELIGIONS IN CHINA The real power of a race lies in its religion; other motives inevitably tend to egotism, disorganisation, and national death, and China is no exception to the rule; the strength and the weakness of China lies in her religion and in its absence. There are few nations who set less store by the outward observance of religion and yet there are few nations with a greater belief in the supernatural. On the one hand, the temples are deserted or turned into schools, and the Chinese are believed to have no other motives than self-interest. On the other hand, the whole of Chinese life turns round the relation of man to the spirit of his ancestors and to the spiritual world, and the Chinaman obviously believes that a man's soul is immortal and that its welfare has the very closest connection with the welfare of his descendant.