For instance, the life of China[157] (above discussed) and that of India may at first sight seem to give little colour to the assumption of a constant play of social attraction and repulsion. The "unprogressiveness of Asia" is dwelt on alike by many who know Asia and many who do not. But this relative unprogressiveness is to be explained, like European progress, in terms of the conditions. China is simply a case of comparative culture-stability and culture-isolation. The capital condition of progress in civilisation has always been, as aforesaid, the contact of divergent races whose independent culture-elements, though different, are not greatly different in grade and prestige. Now, the outside contacts of China, down till the eighteenth century, had been either with races which had few elements of civilisation to give her, like the Mongols, or with a civilisation little different from or less vigorous than her own, like that of India. Even these contacts counted for much, and Chinese history has been full of political convulsions, despite--or in keeping with--the comparative stagnation of Chinese culture. (On this see Peschel, _Races of Men_, Eng. tr. pp. 361-74. Cp. Huc, _Chinese Empire_, Eng. tr. ed. 1859, p. xvii; Walckenaer, _Essai sur l'histoire de l'espèce humaine_, 1798, pp. 175, 176; and Maine, _Early History of Institutions_, pp. 226, 227). The very pigtail which for Europe is the symbol of Chinese civilisation is only two hundred years old, having come in with the Mantchoo dynasty; and the policy of systematically excluding foreigners dates from the same period (Huc, p. 236). "No one," writes Professor Flint, "who has felt interest enough in that singular nation to study the researches and translations of Remusat, Pauthier, Julien, Legge, Plath, Faber, Eitel, and others, will hesitate to dismiss as erroneous the commonplace that it has been an unprogressive nation" (_History of the Philosophy of History_, vol. i, 1893, p. 88).