``The Chinese are undoubtedly a libidinous people, with a decided inclination to be nasty about it. . . . Rich mandarins are the most profligate class. . . . Next come the wealthy merchants. . . . The crapulous leisured classes of Peking openly flaunt the worst of vices. Still, amongst all classes and ranks the moral sense is decidedly weak. . . . Offenses which with us are regarded as almost capital-- in any case as infamous crimes--do not count for as much as petty misdemeanours in China.[8] [8] ``China,'' pp. 272, 273 More patent to the superficial observer is a cruelty which appears to be callously indifferent to suffering. This manifests itself not only in most barbarous punishments but in a thou- sand incidents of daily life. The day I entered China at Chefoo, I saw a dying man lying beside the road. Hundreds of Chinese were passing and repassing on the crowded thoroughfare. But none stopped to help or to pity and the sufferer passed through his last agony absolutely uncared for and lay with glazing eyes and stiffening form all unheeded by the careless throng. Twenty-four hours afterwards, he was still lying there with his dead face upturned to the silent sky, while the world jostled by, buying, laughing, quarrelling, heedless of the tragedy of human life so near. And when in Ching-chou-fu, I stopped to see if I could not give some relief to a woman who was writhing in the street, I was hastily warned that if I touched her unasked, the populace might hold me responsible in the event of her death and perhaps demand heavy damages, if, indeed, it did not mob me on the spot. Undoubtedly the Chinese are often deterred from aiding a sufferer because they fear that if death occurs ``bad luck'' will follow them, a horde of real or fictitious relatives will clamour for damages, and perhaps a rapacious magistrate will take advantage of the opportunity to make a criminal charge which can be removed only by a heavy bribe. And so the sick and poor are often left to die uncared for in crowded streets, and drowning children are allowed to sink within a few yards of boats which might have rescued them. But everywhere in China, little attention is paid to suffering and many customs seem utterly heartless. In spite, too, of the agnostic teachings of Confucius and their own practical temperament, the Chinese are a very superstitious people and live in constant terror of evil spirits. The grossest superstitions prevail among them, while beyond any other people known to us they are stagnant, spiritually dead, densely ignorant of those higher levels of thought and life to which Christianity has raised whole classes in Europe and America.