Our duty to the record of Federal legislation is obvious; and our index of it under preparation during the past 20 years has been in routine fulfilment of this duty. The legislation of the several States is, however, a matter of primary concern, chiefly to their sister States; so that an index to it might have seemed appropriate for the States themselves in cooperation. The assumption that it could be undertaken effectively only at the National Library, and with Federal appropriations placed at our disposal, seems one further evidence of a conviction that all such bibliographic undertakings, involving a large literature within such a field, must centralize here. ORIENTALIA The recital of accessions to our Chinese collection, as usual, prepared by Dr. Walter T. Swingle, of the Department of Agriculture, to whose extraordinary enthusiasm and exertions we owe all recent developments in this field, will be found in Appendix III. In transmitting it, however, Doctor Swingle appends some general reflections, which are of such pertinent general interest that I quote them here: IMPORTANCE OF THE STUDY OF CHINESE BOOKS IN ORDER TO UNDER- At this time, when the Chinese people are going through a very troublous period and when many of the old traditions are rapidly losing force and the newer ideas being taken over from western countries have not yet been sufficiently mastered to give a stable administrative procedure, it is perhaps worth while for thoughtful people the world over to pause for a moment and inquire just what are the qualities of the Chinese people and what have been the methods that have enabled them to maintain for many thousand years, almost uninterruptedly, a very high standard of civilization. Had the Chinese been a barbarous people without printed records they would long ago have been completely studied and thoroughly understood by western peoples, but instead of being barbarous, they are a highly civilized people having a well-developed historical sense and probably the most magnificent set of records to be found in any country in the world. The enormous number and wide scope of these records has operated to keep them practically a sealed book to the western world. Here, indeed, we are in the presence of an embarrassment of riches a mass of documents and of records so colossal that the Chinese collec tion. human mind is appalled in any effort to take an inventory of this gigantic accumulation of records, annals, biographies, practical and scientific treatises, encyclopedias, literary and dramatic works, bibliographies, etc. Furthermore, Chinese civilization has shown certain marked elements of permanency which are conspicuous by their absence from the great civilizations of the west. The great Sumerian and Babylonian civil zations of the Euphrates and Tigris valleys, the Sabaean civilization of southern Arabia, that of Egypt, of ancient Greece and finally that of Rome, have collapsed and largely disappeared from the face of the earth. It is only in China that a truly permanent civilization was ever developed, that is, permanent in the sense that it would doubtless have persisted for indefinite millenia had not the western world invaded China both by force of arms and still more effectively by force of ideas, and caused, first the decay and finally the rapid disintegration of the whole Chinese civilization. It would seem worth while, while this ancient civilization still persists, while old-style Chinese scholars, steeped in the lore of past ages, still live, for the world to concern itself actively with the unsurpassed records to be found in China which, if studied by properly qualified scholars, would enable them to present a clear picture of just what were the vital principles of Chinese civilization. Many of the basic discoveries utilized by all modern civilized people were made by the Chinese. The printer's art in its entirety from manufacturing of paper, printer's ink, blocks for printing and movable type, both engraved and cast, to the printing presses themselves, are all without doubt Chinese inventions. Is not printing on paper the basic art of civilization? The art, indeed, which renders civilization possible without which it could not persist in its present form? Centuries ago the Chinese faced, and to a certain extent solved, the problems arising from pressure of population, that nightmare of statisticians and far-sighted statesmen. They have, unlike most other peoples, been able to maintain a stable and orderly society with a relatively high level of intelligence and culture in spite of a pressure of population probably not equaled anywhere else in the world. Doubtless one of the means which permitted them to maintain their relatively high civilization in the face of such an ominous pressure was the adoption, centuries ago, of a truly democratic civil-service system which actually opened all careers, even the highest administrative positions, to any young man, however humble his birth, provided only that he possess sufficient talent. The old-style Chinese examination has been contemptuously dismissed by many western educators who have not taken the trouble to investigate its action carefully by the statement that it did not give adequate training and was occupied with a stereotyped copying of the old traditions as embodied in the classical literature. As a matter of fact, the candidate who passed with honor the great old-style examination held every 3 years at Peking had been engaged for at least 12 years in a very careful study of the historical, literary, and philosophic records of China, and in order to pass these examinations, must have acquired a first-class knowledge of these records together with an ability to express himself in literary Chinese of a high order, free from all mistakes of composition, grammar, or even calligraphy. Only what the Chinese call superior men could pass such an examination, and they were immediately given high and important positions. In the old Chinese Government they automatically established among the vast army of civil servants of China a respect for the lessons learned by several thousand years of experience that might well be envied by the administrators of many modern western nations. What is most needed in the world to-day is a credit balance in China's favor in the public opinion of the leaders of the world which will permit a calm and considerate study of what China's actual and future needs are and of her proper relations to the rest of the world. At the present time, when diplomatic, business, and missionary relationships have been pretty largely disrupted, it is perhaps a good time to undertake, in cooperation with the leading minds of China, a new appraisal of China from an entirely different standpoint; in other words, attempt to make a dispassionate appraisal of just what China has to teach the rest of the world as well as what China could, with advantage, learn from the rest of the world. Such a study would not be without obvious advantages to the western nations, provided the secret of China's apparently permanent civilization and orderly Government, maintained with a minimum of force, could be found out and elucidated. At any rate, the problem of how to understand and how to live in good neighborly relations with the Chinese people is of more than passing importance in view of the fact that they constitute nearly a third of the human race and occupy a vast region replete with natural resources of every description and still more so in view of the fact that they have an enviable reputation for hard work, sobriety, technical skill, and business ability. It goes without saying that one of the best ways to learn about the Chinese is to use the methods they themselves have used for ages with such good results, namely, to study the records of their illustrious past. These records, fortunately, are still obtainable and, furthermore, obtainable at very moderate cost. They are written in a language which has changed less since the time of Christ than the English language has since the time of Queen Elizabeth. It would seem, therefore, that the obvious and proper thing for this country and other western countries to do would be to obtain these records, study them critically and sympathetically with the idea of obtaining thereby a new basis for a proper appraisal and sympathetic understanding of the Chinese people and their attainments. |