Village Life in China: A Study in SociologySmith, Arthur H.
General
Village Life in China: A Study in Sociology
Smith, Arthur H.
China -- Social life and customs; Villages
The author then reverts to his main theme, and devotes several strenuous
sentences to emphasizing the necessity for instruction in youth, "since
gems unwrought can never be useful, and untaught persons will never know
the proprieties." After a further citation of wonderful examples in
Chinese history, accompanied with due moralizing, there follow more than
sixty lines of a characteristically Chinese mosaic. The little pupil is
enlightened on the progressive nature of numbers; the designations of the
heavenly bodies; the "three relations" between prince and minister, father
and son, man and wife; the four seasons; the four directions; the five
elements; the five cardinal virtues; the six kinds of grain; the six
domestic animals; the seven passions; the eight kinds of music; the nine
degrees of relationship and the ten moral duties.
Having swallowed this formidable list of categories, the scholar is
treated to a general summary of the classical books which he is to study
as he advances. When he has mastered all the works adjudged "Classic," he
is told that he must go on to those of philosophers and sages, as in the
bill of particulars contained in the Trimetrical Classic. His special
attention is invited to history, which suggests a catalogue of the
numerous Chinese dynastic periods with the names, or rather the styles, of
a few of the important founders of dynasties. The list is brought down to
the first emperor of the present dynasty, where it abruptly stops at the
year 1644. A pupil who wishes to know the titles of the later emperors of
the Ch'ing Dynasty can be accommodated when the same shall have been
overthrown, and therefore has become a suitable object of historical
study. The pupil is urged to ponder these records of history till he
understands things ancient and modern as if they were before his eyes,
and to make them his morning study and his evening task.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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