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CHDfESE EELIGIONS AND INSTITUTIONS. 155
I
scientific in the Western sense of the term.
a science ?
But is medicine
Dr. Kerr is doing an excellent work, and Chinamen
have in him great faith. Speaking, at the breakfasttable,
of the general intelhgence of the Chinese, Mrs. Kerr
remarked, " These Chinese are in some respects in
advance
of the Europeans and Americans : all they need is the
Christian religion."
It must be remembered that Chinese literature is not onlyextensive,
but absolutely massive. The Chinese dictionary
is a work of one hundred and fifty volumes ; the history of
China is a work of three hundred and sixty volumes ;
while
there are one hundred and twenty volumes in just the catalogue
of the imperial library at Pekin. The learned Lew
Heang (120 B.C.) wrote several voluminous works entitled,
" The Biography of Famous Women." Two thousand, and
even one thousand years previous to Heang's time, women
in the Mongolian countries were considered the equals of
men. The greatest of these nations was governed by a
queen, with a liberal sprinkling of mothers and sisters for
officials. No traveler reading ancient literature, and studying
old ruins, can deny the " fall of man."
When the French and English, under their national banners,
entered the gates of Pekin in 1860, be it said to the
lasting shame of that portion of the •' allied army," the
French, that they burned a very valuable
library connected
with the summer-palace of the emperor ; and these Frenchmen
are called Christians, and the Chinese "heathen."
Not only is Chinese literature, extensive as it is, free from
all obscene allusions, but most of it is eminently suggestive
and moral.
In one of their odes treating of " discontent," the voyage
of life is graphically traced from babyish longings to
youth,
then to ambitious schemes, thence to family associations,
to the possession of horses and vehicles, to thousands of
fertile acres, to official stations, and finally to positions of
rank. Still discontented, he aspires to be prime minister,