The fact that the mandarinate is recruited from the democracy renders it even more pernicious than if it constituted a hereditary aristocracy, for, as it stands, nobody has any interest in overthrowing it. The most intelligent people try to enter it, and it attracts all the most gifted men in the Empire, but only to corrupt them. The literary class enjoys an enormous prestige, and the poorest man lives in the hope of seeing his son one of its learned members. It, therefore, does not excite any of that hatred usually provoked by caste privilege, and thus does not stand the least danger of being upset. On the other hand, the condition to which it has reduced the Celestial Empire is a condemnation of the system of examination for Government office, and many a Western State might do well to study this question and to take its lesson to heart. That its effects have been more accentuated in China than elsewhere is undeniable, being the result of diverse historic and ethnographical circumstances peculiar to that nation. The Chinese reached a high state of civilization long before our era, and being more numerous and intelligent than their neighbours, so soon as they were cemented into one compact nationality they proceeded to subjugate Indo-China and Korea; and so it came to pass that China had no dangerous foes to disturb her, Japan being isolated in her island Empire, and she was separated from India by a formidable mountain barrier and from the West by immense deserts. From that time the Chinese had nothing to trouble them, and had but to live in quiet admiration of the labours of their ancestors, who were the authors of the perfect peace which they enjoyed, and thus little by little they accustomed themselves to look upon them as superior beings and as types of perfection. More advanced than any of their tributary subjects, and having nothing to fear from competition, they became lost in self-admiration, or, rather, in the admiration of those who had made their country what it was, and ended by believing that no further progress was either necessary or possible, and thus are now absolutely non-progressive.