[260] Prof. H. A. Giles says in a recent publication: "It is beyond question that to the precepts and faithful practice of Confucianism must be attributed the high moral elevation of the Japanese people; an elevation which has enabled them to take an honourable place among the great nations of the world." (_Adversaria Sinica_, p. 202.) [261] "It is through conflict alone that the fittest can be selected, because it is through conflict alone that they are afforded the chance of manifesting those qualities, physiological and psychical, which make them the fittest. And, as a matter of fact, conflict is the law of Nature. It is no exaggeration, nor is it a mere figure of speech, to say that progress is accomplished through blood."--CHATTERTON HILL, _Heredity and Selection in Sociology_ (A. & C. Black: 1907), p. 355. [262] "We think that Confucius cut the tap-root of all true progress, and therefore is largely responsible for the arrested development of China." (Griffis, _The Religions of Japan_ (4th ed.), pp. 104-5.) See also the Lectures delivered by Mr. E. R. Bernard in Salisbury Cathedral in 1903-4. The latter says, "Now that we have concluded our survey of Confucius's work and system, I should like to draw your attention to a practical inference from the results attained by it. _The results are the condition of Chinese society at the present day with its strange mixture of benevolence and cruelty, industry and fraud, domestic virtues and impurity._ And the inference is the small value of an elevated system of ethics without religion, for of religion there is nothing in the 'Analects' from beginning to end." (The italics are mine.) One might almost suppose from this that in Christian England there is no cruelty, no fraud, no impurity. If a Chinese were to go to England and declare that the vices of the country were the results of Christianity he would probably be anathematised as a wicked blasphemer and hounded out of the land; why should the Western nations show surprise if the Chinese are indignant with foreigners who use words which in their obvious and natural sense would lead the world to suppose that the cases of cruelty, fraud and impurity one meets with in China are the result of Confucianism! As an offset to the dictum of Mr. Bernard (who I gather has never been in China) I quote the opinion of one who has made China and the Chinese his lifelong study. "The cardinal virtues which are most admired by Christians are fully inculcated in the Confucian canon, and the general practice of these is certainly up to the average standard exhibited by foreign nations." (_Religions of the World_, pp. 26-7: "Confucianism," by Prof. H. A. Giles.) [263] As Hallam says, "The rack seldom stood idle in the Tower for all the latter part of Elizabeth's reign." [264] By an Act passed in the seventh year of Queen Anne. [265] Mr. L. Giles's translation of _Lun Yü_, vi. 13. [266] Mr. Ku Hung-ming's translation of _Lun Yü_, xvii. 20.